Seth: Yes .. which distro you using?

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 01:29 pm: Edit

Question - is there any facility in the SFB Online client to handle the 'Advanced Boarding Party Combat' (D16 in Module M) rules?

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 06:23 pm: Edit

Sorry, no.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 07:26 pm: Edit

"Coming Soon"?

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - 11:59 pm: Edit

Another question...

The pictures on the top of the SFB Online site have some very spiffy counters. Any way to get higher res/better rendered counters for the SFB Online client app, itself? At least, when looking at mine, I just can't seem to scale it up or down to stop the counters looking REALLY jaggy/jagged.

By Gregg Dieckhaus (Gdieck) on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 01:21 pm: Edit

At one time wasnt there counters from Megahex that you could choose? Seems that I recall we had those.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 02:55 pm: Edit

That'd be pretty awesome.

How to get those?

Honestly, I think part of the problem is the rendering method used. Looking at the source images for the counters, they don't look bad square-on. And, certainly, Photoshop can rotate them to any angle (bicubic sampling) with no loss of quality.

Is there any option to enable something like that in the client?

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Wednesday, June 02, 2010 - 07:29 pm: Edit

There was something like and then we had to pull it. Because of a legal issue.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Saturday, June 05, 2010 - 01:10 am: Edit

Okey-dokey, one more question.

Why does the client trigger UAC on Win Vista/7? 'Running' startup.jar seems to work just as well, and doesn't trigger the UAC warning. Unless I'm missing something?

What's the scoop?

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Saturday, June 05, 2010 - 08:54 am: Edit

What is UAC?

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Saturday, June 05, 2010 - 09:12 am: Edit

User Account Control

It is the casue of lots of headaches for Windows users:P Basically it is there to stop unauthorised downloading and install of programs.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Account_Control

By Andrew J. Koch (Droid) on Saturday, June 05, 2010 - 12:11 pm: Edit

I really dont find it to be that onerous. And I also find Windows 7 to be a dramatic improvement over Vista. Another win for Microsoft IMO.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Thursday, June 10, 2010 - 01:19 pm: Edit

Something that might be useful to add to the FAQ is - what is the difference between c4f and IA? Those appear to be the two methods of announcing impulse activity people use, but I have not seen a good explanation of the differences.

What buttons or notes to push when? What does a typical impulse look like using either method? (Is this really just the difference between using the 'Simul' button on an impulse vs 'Activity' button?)
----------
In another question (possibly related) - is there any way to get the impulse activity box to pop-up automatically every impulse, with players clicking 'no activity' to indicate willingness to move on to next impulse (rather than clicking 'ready' continuously - the net effect is basically the same - but as the impulse activity ALWAYS comes up, seeing it pop up isn't automatically a clue your enemy is "doing something")

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Thursday, June 10, 2010 - 11:31 pm: Edit

c4f - Call For Fire: You announce that you might be firing during the "DisDev Announcement Segment" that impulse and then define the fire during the "Fire Decision Segment" for that impulse.

pia - Pure Impulse Activity: You do not pre-announce firing. You just define it in the "Fire Decision Segment".

The "Simul" button is used to resolve simultaneous activities. (Like simultaneous movement)

Both use the "Activity" button. It just means if you going to fire using c4f you need to first announce it and then define your fire after the announcement.

Steps To Fire using c4f:

1) Press the "Activity" button
2) Select "DisDev Announcement Segment"
3) Enter "Call For Fire" as the text.
4) Press "Execute"
5) Assuming there is no activity before the Call For Fire the "Call For Fire" will show up in the chat log.
6) Press the "Activity" button
7) Select "Fire Decision Segment"
8) Select the Weapons, Fire Mode and Target
9) Press "Execute"
10) The Fire Decision your fire is announced in the chat log.

Steps To Fire using pia:

1) Press the "Activity" button
2) Select "Fire Decision Segment"
3) Select the Weapons, Fire Mode and Target
4) Press "Execute"
5) If there is no activity in the impulse before the Fire Decision your fire will be announced in the chat log.

On Part 2, this is a possible future solution to the pia problem and make it more pure.

Note: To anybody reading this, do not discuss the c4f vs. pia topic. It is banned topic.

By Barry Kirk (Barrykirk) on Sunday, June 13, 2010 - 09:01 am: Edit

Paul,

I just had my local computer supplier upgrade my wife's tower from XP to win 7 and the client seems to work great.

However, they goofed and installed the 32 bit win 7 instead of the 64 bit version. I've got a 64 bit processor and 4 Gigs of RAM so I could really benefit from 64 bit win 7.

I'm taking the tower back to the shop on Monday, to have them do a complete re-install using the 64 bit version.

How does the client handle 64 bit windows?

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, June 13, 2010 - 09:23 am: Edit

Barry,
The client will still use the 32-bit JVM and I see no reason to change this because of the 10%-15% performance penalty for switching to 64-bit. And I do not need more than 2GB of RAM.

As it is, two things about 64-bit Windows:

1) Unless you need access to more than 4GB there is no reason to upgrade to 64-bit.
2) Not all devices have 64-bit device drivers and there might limit the hardware that you can use. (So just this)

Paul Franz

By Barry Kirk (Barrykirk) on Sunday, June 13, 2010 - 04:57 pm: Edit

Paul,

I've noticed with Microsoft that they have an upgrade path rather than reinstall path. Going from Windows Vista to Windows 7.

Hopefully, and this is just a guess they will provide an upgrade rather than reinstall for windows 8 or 9.

What I have noticed is that you can't do an upgrade from 32 to 64... For that you need to reinstall.

I already have 4 Gigs of memory and all my peripherals are really recent so device drivers are not an issue.

As long as the client will run on win 7/64, it's worth it to me to do the upgrade.

As for client performance, my processor is a screamer and that is not an issue.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, June 13, 2010 - 07:02 pm: Edit

Understood.

By Gregg Dieckhaus (Gdieck) on Sunday, June 13, 2010 - 07:23 pm: Edit

Paul,
I'm not familiar with coding for the Apple platform at all so don't laugh when I ask this...
Since it is java...Could SFBOL run on an Ipad?

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, June 13, 2010 - 07:37 pm: Edit

Gregg,
i would like to say yes. But currently Java is not available on the iPhone or iPad. And according to the latest Developers Agreement. That is not going to happen any time soon. So to run run the client on the iPad will require me to port it from Java to Objective-C.

By Gregg Dieckhaus (Gdieck) on Sunday, June 13, 2010 - 09:54 pm: Edit

Bleh...

By Peter Thoenen (Eol) on Sunday, July 11, 2010 - 12:13 am: Edit

"1) SFB: Add "Mine activates two impulses after being laid" segment to
decision list."

Is that even an decision or activity?

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, July 11, 2010 - 02:41 pm: Edit

It is more of an announcement than anything.

By Peter Thoenen (Eol) on Sunday, July 11, 2010 - 03:11 pm: Edit

Guess what I meant is do you have have to announce this

By Gregg Dieckhaus (Gdieck) on Thursday, November 11, 2010 - 09:57 pm: Edit

Is there a way to turn off the annoying big target arrow?