Unhappy discovery about old vs new sprite packing formats...

[Saddletank]

... you cannot use both in a multiplayer game. All the sprites in use must be either the new, more efficient packed method or the old method.

This is a huge plea to all modders creating new sprites, please pack them only in the new format.

Many thanks!

[Davinci]

... you cannot use both in a multiplayer game. All the sprites in use must be either the new, more efficient packed method or the old method.

Tank - not that I have ever played Multi-Player but are you sure about this.

I was under the impression that the old-way of having the sprites unpacked worked in Multi-Player, before the newer method came into being.

But, I might be wrong about that!

davinci

[Saddletank]

Very sure. Thoroughly tested it today for 90mins with Leffe7.

Old sprites work fine in MP - don't get me wrong on that. New sprites work fine as well.

But mixing the two together in the same OOB does not work in MP. In SP they do work together.

I wanted to mention it here so as to politely prompt everyone making new sprites for Napoleonics, etc to please pack them in the new format, or we are back to Napoleonics in SP only once again.

[Davinci]

Very sure. Thoroughly tested it today for 90mins with Leffe7.

But mixing the two together in the same OOB does not work in MP.

OK, Thanks for the reply back on this!

But, that's still sort of not making sense to me, not what you are saying, but that the game can distinguish between mixing the two together.

Question - Did you have any errors in the SOW.log file after exiting out of the game?

The reason that I'm having a hard time understanding this is that Norb have always had a habit of keeping the game backwards compatible, or not removing the older code.

davinci

[Saddletank]

Yes, the errors were that the game could not load the unpacked sprites. It listed a whole stack of units. If someone else can test this by making a sandbox OOB that has some of Gunships sprites in it and some of Zeke's Revolutionary Wars ones (these are in the old format) and seeing if MP play is possible it would be much appreciated, but last night when 2 of us were testing we could play online when we took the old style sprites out of the OOB and it crashed when we put them back in, even just 1 of them, in one unit class.

It is possible I've done something wrong and if so then a test by someone else is what's needed.

[Marching Thru Georgia]

Assuming one of you didn't make a mistake such as not renaming/deleting the Road To Wagram \Logistics folder, it sounds like a pretty definitive test. As Davinci says, it is odd that we can mix and match in SP but not in MP, but the test speaks for itself.

[Davinci]

Hey, I thought that I read that a person can Log-On and play against the AI sort of like a Multi-Player - Single-Player type of game.

So, if that is possible, Tank have you tried that and then checking for errors?

I think that the Multi-Player game is more sensitive than the Single-Player game, so a error in Single-Player may not crash the game, but it will in Multi-Player.

Also - where did you get the sprites that you are using from Zeke ? (i.e..Download Site)

davinci

[Saddletank]

Yes, you can play co-op vs the AI but that is still multi-player, its just that the players are all on one side. Its all the same communications cod.

Zeke's sprites are in his mod (1800 battles mod). As these also use Gunships Austrians it would be interesting to see if any of those OOBs/scenarios can be played MP.

[Davinci]

Zeke's sprites are in his mod (1800 battles mod). As these also use Gunships Austrians it would be interesting to see if any of those OOBs/scenarios can be played MP.

OK, are these the same sprites that you asked about getting into the game, and if so can you provide a link to where they are?

I don't have anything planned for the day, so I'll see if I can get them to work, and then you can compare the files that you are using to the ones that I have.

davinci

[Saddletank]

Zeke's sprites are in his mod here:

http://www.norbsoftdev.net/forum/napole ... t-campaign

You can't play his mod MP though because it uses Gunships unitglobal.csv file in addition to his own unitglobal.csv and in MP the host can only have 1 unitglobal.csv file.

You have to do all the work of merging Zeke's mod with Gunships which is what I've been doing this last 2 to 3 weeks only to hit this brick wall. Testing is not quick or easy and you can get it to work in SP as I said, no problem.