HexScape

[awesomeunleashed]

Originally Posted by Ninja Status

I tried to download HexScape but my computer keeps opening a window that says: "Warning, this Download can harm your computer, continue download?"

What does this mean exactly? I'm using Mac OSX.

It just means that .jar files can potentially do bad things to your computer if they're programmed to do so. This one obviously isn't. Just hit continue or whatever.

[Sheep]

Originally Posted by awesomeunleashed

It just means that .jar files can potentially do bad things to your computer if they're programmed to do so. This one obviously isn't. Just hit continue or whatever.

Well, I would consider downloading HexScape (an addictive HS gaming app) a bad thing...

...But probably not in the way you mean it.

[Lyrgard]

@qt.bangerang : as awesomeunleashed said, can you post your .hsa army file, or send it to me or awesomeunleashed ?

@Arch-vile : I'm aware of this problem. I have exactly the same problem at home, on my linux computer. It is a problem with mouse handling. I didn't take the time to look at it yet, but will definitively do. I'l let you know.

@Ninja Status : it is as awesomeunleashed explains, it just warn you because it is an executable program from an unknown source. I can assure you that I inserted no ill-will code in HexScape, and that you can ignore this warning safely. On Windows, some browser will have the same behaviour if one tried to download .exe file, for instance.

@heroscaper2010 : haha, sorry to try to keep you enslaved to HS

[Spuke Boy]

Okay I've tested Hexscape a bit now and I've got some bugs and suggestions and a question:

Bugs:
I tried out Hexscape on four computers.
I think the first one (Windows 7) is just pretty slow, it lagged a lot and it wasn't even possible to really try out the Solo mode.
The second one (Windows 7) didn't create lines for the start zones but created walls, as if the start zone line was not just drawn once, but multiple times one over the other. It also failed to display the Wave 1 figures and the glyphs correctly, sometimes they disappeared completely and sometimes they were sort of transparent. It was laggy, but not as bad as on the first one.
The third one (Windows 7), which is newer than the other two, ran HexScape fine, but it did not let me move or rotate figures in Online mode. It was also a bit laggy, better than on the other two, though.
By the way, these three computers all needed to have Java update to the newest version for it to work, so if anyone has problems with running HexScape, this might be the problem.
My own laptop (Windows 8.1), the fourth computer I tried it on, is only a year old, so there was no lagging and everything worked perfectly fine on it. It was really fun playing around with HexScape on it. Great Job!

Suggestions:
- A possibility to load multiple armies in Solo mode that creates more tabs.
- Is there a reason that only the magnifying glass button opens the full scaled card? It would be easier to just have to click the mini-card.
- Returning to the same perspective of the map when switching back from the point of view would save a bit of time repositioning the camera on small maps, and pretty much time on large maps.
- As it's not possible to place opponent's figures on the map, the button with the arrow to place opponent's figures could probably be removed.
- Show mini-card when clicking on opponent's figures.

Originally Posted by Lyrgard

It is the server part of HexScape. I run an instance of the server on hexscape.lyrgard.fr:4242, but anyone can download the server and run an instance if one want.

So when I run it on my computer, what do I change the hexscape.lyrgard.fr:4242 in the options to connect to the server on the computer? Or is it possible to somehow do it on the local network?

[Lyrgard]

@Spuke Boy : Wahoo, thanks for the intensive testing !

For the first computer, perhaps it was too old or with a graphic card not powerfull enough.

For the second computer, DanieLoche seems to have the exact same problems ! He sent me two images, is it the same as what you experienced ?
"Wall" for start zone in the Room View
Invisible or Transparent Wave 1 figures
I think it is the same problem, so if we manage to solve the probleme, it should work for you two. Was the driver for the graphic card up to date on this computer ?
[EDIT] for the map, DanieLoche said to me that it was your game that showed like that for him. Could you send me the map you used ?[/EDIT]

For the third one, it is strange. Can you give me more details ? Moving and rotating figures worked in solo mode ? Do you means that you were unable to move a figure, or that the move didn't display on the other client (if you used two players to test online mode) ? It is done this way in online mode : the move (and rotating) is done locally, without any communication with the server. Only when the move has finished is the information about the move sent to the server.

Great to hear that it worked on at least one computer ! I was begining to despair


For the suggestions :
- Added loading of multiple army in solo mode to the feature request list. Not top priority, as you can put all the card in one big army, but I see how it could be usefull.

- The reasonning for the magnifying glass was to clearly show that you could click here. Can be easilly changed to a click on the image. I see how the click on the whole image can be easier, but the player would have to know that he can click here for that. I could have both at the same time, though. Added to the list

- Yes, I know I should return the cam to the previous place, just didn't take the time to do it yet. Added to the list

- Yes, it is easy to remove the unnecessary button on opponent armies. Or I could allow to place any figure, even your opponent (you can also move them, so why not place them). Could make sense for games where each player place the other's player figure, for instance.

- The mini card doesn't show when clicking on opponent figure ? Do you mean on the army panel (left), or when selecting a figure in the 3D view ?



Lastly, for your question :

If you run the HexScape server yourself, you need to change the server url in the option, right.
If you run it on the same computer as the client, use :
localhost:4242
If you run it on another computer on the local network, use :
<ip of the computer that runs the server>:4242
Tell me if you have any problem with that.

Once agin, a big thanks for the testing and report !

[Spuke Boy]

Yes, I had the same problem with the second computer as in the image. The Virtualscape file is not the problem, I could open it correctly on two other computers. It has an AMD Radeon HD 7570 graphics card and the driver is up to date.

I don't have access to the third computer currently, I'll try to check that out soon.

I've tried HexScape on a fifth computer (Windows 8.1) now, and it works without lagging.

The mini-card doesn't appear when I click an opponent's figure in 3d view.

One more suggestion, by the way: It would be handy to have the file selection window start out at the location that was last used to open a file instead of starting out at Documents.

To the server:
When I double click the server .jar file, nothing happens, I assume it runs in the background without a window?
Anyhow, it doesn't work with localhost or the ip-address (I assume it needs the local ip-address). When I click the Online mode button nothing happens.

[awesomeunleashed]

Originally Posted by Spuke Boy

The mini-card doesn't appear when I click an opponent's figure in 3d view.

I just tested this, and same here. Although I thought that it was working last time I tested it, in a previous version (maybe not and I didn't notice).

As for the server thing, I'm guessing it's not running at all, @Spuke Boy . I checked the java console when I ran it, and it just errored out with "no main manifest attribute."

[Lyrgard]

@Spuke Boy , @awesomeunleashed : can you download the server and try again ? There was something wrong with the previous file (didn't use the good command to compile it, so it was missing some data, included the manifest declaring the main class to use to start the program. To make it short it was packaged as a library instead as a autonomous program)

and localhost:4242 will work better

Btw : the servee require no graphical card, and very little power. Any old computer will sufice, and you can run it along a client without noticeable performance change.

[awesomeunleashed]

Originally Posted by Lyrgard

@Spuke Boy , @awesomeunleashed : can you download the server and try again ? There was something wrong with the previous file (didn't use the good command to compile it, so it was missing some data, included the manifest declaring the main class to use to start the program. To make it short it was packaged as a library instead as a autonomous program)

and localhost:4242 will work better

Btw : the servee require no graphical card, and very little power. Any old computer will sufice, and you can run it along a client without noticeable performance change.

Works as well as the HexScape server for me now.

[Lyrgard]

After some time without too much HexScape, I'm back (some other personnal projects required my attention).

@Spuke Boy : DanieLoche greatly helped me to pin down the "invisible figures" problem. Could you download again HexScape and the assets, and try it again on your computer that had this problem ? Did you manage to make the server work, too ?

I entered all you suggestions in the tickets list
@Arch-vile : I tried to fix HexScape for MacOs and Linux, without success for now. I'll definitelly manage to make it work !

[Spuke Boy]

I've played 3 full games with HexScape in the meantime and I love it!

Originally Posted by Lyrgard

DanieLoche greatly helped me to pin down the "invisible figures" problem. Could you download again HexScape and the assets, and try it again on your computer that had this problem ?

In two of the games I played against this computer (which is not mine) and tested it again. Unfortunately, the wave 1 figures still appear transparent most of the time.
Ah, I just realize something - was just the Hexscape.jar file changed or was the assets file of Wave 1 changed, too? He just downloaded the newest version of Hexscape.

Originally Posted by Lyrgard

Did you manage to make the server work, too ?

The third game I played was on the local network, and that worked great! Thanks for fixing the server issue.


And having played those games, here comes a new report:


Bugs:

- When two players leave a game and one of them creates a new game, the other player can't join the game because the bottom panel doesn't appear when clicking on the game. Restarting HexScape seems to be the only solution.

- Sometimes a game seems to just be stuck in the left panel of the server room window, even though no players are in it anymore. It usually disappears after a while, though the last game is still in there even though it's been a few hours since leaving it.

- This only happened to my opponents, for some reason: The circles marking which figures are selected by each player start blinking alternating, as if only one of them could be displayed at once. Sometimes they couldn't even see which figure they had selected. I could see both of the circles clearly in two different colors all the time.

- Figures are not placed on glyphs, but in them.


Bugs that happened only once and are absolutely inexplicable to me:

- One game started with the Point of view and Map view buttons visible right next to each other. Clicking the Map view button did nothing, while clicking the Point of view button made the Map view button disappear.

- One game I had to quit before starting because clicking anywhere in the 3d part of the window made the camera rotate around itself, making it impossible to drag figures with the mouse properly.

- This one is probably the weirdest bug of all: My opponent and I both had the Krav Maga Agents in our armies, his were placed. After placing my first one, the woman, I suddenly was placing one Blade Grut after another. There was no limit to placing figures, and even after pressing Esc the place-a-Krav-Maga-Agent-button was still not deactivated. Removing a Blade Grut made the number of Krav Maga Agents go up, so after removing them, it said that I had 7/3 Agents left to place.


Suggestions:

- It would be nice if one could select which markers and which dice one wants to use in a game. With a lot of figures using markers out there, the list of them would grow constantly, and they just waste space when they're not being used.

- I deleted all the dice files except for the 20-sided die and the normal Heroscape dice, because the dice bar seemed so filled up. When my opponent rolled the Heroscape attack dice (which I had deleted) I didn't get any notification about it. It would be usefull if it said something like: "You're opponent rolled X unkown dice."

- It would be nice to be able to remove a marker entirely from a card. When you add a wound marker and remove it again, it still displays the wound marker image with a 0 next to it.

- Always having to right click a figure to add and remove wound markers is a bit tiresome, it would be cool to just have to click the wound marker symbol once it is there to add one wound at a time. Maybe adding the right click option to the wound marker symbol would be practical, too.

- A possibility to mark that a certain card is destroyed would be nice (like a red bar across the figure's box, or a thick red border), maybe even the possibility to change the order in which your own and your opponent's cards appear. It makes it less chaotic in big armies when many cards are not in use anymore when they are destroyed.

- A warning message when trying to leave a game. I wasn't that happy when instead of clicking on the magnifying glass to look at a full resolution card I left the game, having to restart the game (fortunately my opponent could take screenshots of the game so it we could resume the game).

- The size of the Map view button is a bit too large, as it cuts into the 3d screen a tiny bit. Hardly noticeable, though.

- Maybe a second main camera would be handy when being on a larger map and not wanting to have to change the camera angle every turn to see what the opponent is doing exactly. Then you could leave one camera at your own start zone and the other at your opponent's start zone.

- I think this has been said before, but the possibility to move the camera to any position and angle would be great. Especially on bigger maps it is very difficult to get closer to figures on the borders of the map. Maybe different camera moving modes would be helpful, having one working the way the camera is working at the moment and one working the way the Virtualscape camera works.

- It would also be practical if one could have the camera centered on the selected figure, so moving the camera just moves it around the figure.

- Knowing that scrolling is reserved for rotating figures, it would be nice if one could zoom in and out by scrolling. Maybe ctrl + scrolling?

- A way of marking spaces on the map, I guess similar to the start zones. So maybe right clicking a space and then ctrl right clicking another would hightlight them both. This way, both players would be able to tell exactly which spaces they're talking about (also useful when telling you're opponent which figure is attacking which figure). The highlight could be the same color as used for the players themselves.

- A way of telling which figure belongs to which player. Like just highlighting the player on the army player when selecting a figure that belongs to his army.

- It would be nice to be able to place figures on cards. This is already needed for Finn and Thorgrim, for example. Creating a marker for each figure that can be placed on other cards doesn't seem to be the right solution to me. I'm not quite sure myself how I would do it, maybe someone else has an idea?

- When adding an army, if there are figures that HexScape doesn't recognize, then it would be nice if it imported all known figures and output an error message for every unknown figure.

- An option to remove the added army to add a different one.


That's it from me for now. Keep up the great work, it's really an incredible job you've done already!

And looking at the models in Autodesk 123D, it seems like Wave 2 might not be that far away!

[awesomeunleashed]

Originally Posted by Spuke Boy

Unfortunately, the wave 1 figures still appear transparent most of the time.
Ah, I just realize something - was just the Hexscape.jar file changed or was the assets file of Wave 1 changed, too? He just downloaded the newest version of Hexscape.

The assets for Wave 1 were updated, so if you didn't re-download/import those, I don't think anything would have changed.

Originally Posted by Spuke Boy

- This one is probably the weirdest bug of all: My opponent and I both had the Krav Maga Agents in our armies, his were placed. After placing my first one, the woman, I suddenly was placing one Blade Grut after another. There was no limit to placing figures, and even after pressing Esc the place-a-Krav-Maga-Agent-button was still not deactivated. Removing a Blade Grut made the number of Krav Maga Agents go up, so after removing them, it said that I had 7/3 Agents left to place.

I *think* I've actually seen this before, once. I think I was just checking a LOS or something and quickly went past it without paying much attention (I likely had Blades in my army at the time and so didn't really notice).

As for marking figures on cards, I'd probably use grenade markers at the moment (obviously not a great solution, but it's there).