[MoO] Master of Orion 2 unofficial patch

[Alex/150]

Probably that was the issue. I made a fresh install from CD, applied patch 1.31, 1.50.8, copied sufficient files from ICE version, and it works now.
As far as I do not have a launcher, is there any way to launch all those new modes? Because what I have got by running ORION150.exe looks stable, but not as difficult and interesting as ICE mode.

put these 2 lines:

enable ICE-X;
enable MAP2_ICE;

into 150/ENABLE.CFG and run ORION2150.EXE. In main menu you should see Config: ICE-X15.

May you please make launcher fit into 640x480? Just for those who uses game as is.

Maybe some day GUI will change. If we support android for example. But don't expect it soon.

You can hack launcher yourself a bit, by editing files in /src:

1. edit file banner.gif so it is 1 pixed high. WIll be ugly but will take less space. Don't change its width tho.
2. in src/main.tcl, you can remove dosbox options, find line

set ::gui_dosbox [enum_widgets .r.dosbox_form Dosbox

you'll see groups of records after it. Add skip 1 to each group but last, e.g. was:

        {
            label m-output
            help  m-output-help
            spath {dosbox sdl output}
            options {surface overlay opengl openglnb ddraw}
            default openglnb
            readonly 1
        } {

becomes:

        {
            label m-output
            help  m-output-help
            spath {dosbox sdl output}
            options {surface overlay opengl openglnb ddraw}
            default openglnb
            readonly 1
            skip 1
        } {

most dosbox parameters will be gone, launcher will become smaller. You also can hack it to run ORION150.EXE directly vs running dosbox by changing

    exec [lindex $d 0] -noconsole \
        -conf $dbc_name \
        -conf [norm_path $c 150 dosbox-base.conf] \
        &

to

    exec [app_path ORION150.EXE] &

Note that i did not check any of this, so might or might not work. Happy oldschooling.

 

[MegaZAC]

Looks like somewhat close to be handy. Is there any way to use several modes simultaneously without changing config every time? For example, by having 5 configs and running exe with arguments like -ICE.cfg? That would allow to create shortcuts for each of required set of settings and modes.
Yes, manual copying and installing updates one-by-one is not really user friendly. Of course, it could be easier if there will be a single package with game+all modes+all settings out of the box. Unless it is not possible I am OK to change settings wherever it needs. I will post here what I have got.

 

[Rocco.40]

Looks like somewhat close to be handy. Is there any way to use several modes simultaneously without changing config every time? For example, by having 5 configs and running exe with arguments like -ICE.cfg? That would allow to create shortcuts for each of required set of settings and modes.
Yes, manual copying and installing updates one-by-one is not really user friendly. Of course, it could be easier if there will be a single package with game+all modes+all settings out of the box. Unless it is not possible I am OK to change settings wherever it needs. I will post here what I have got.

all-in one
Since the game is not abondonware and is still being sold online, on gog and steam, we cannot distribute the full game as a single package. Nor would we want to.

switching mods/configs
The exact reason of creating Launcher for MOO2, that was freshly introduced with 1.50.8, is to make it easier to change between mods (gui !) without changing stuff in a cfg file.
So you are asking for a solution that already exists.

not using DOSBox
I have re-read all you posts this morning and it's still unclear for me why you would choose not to use dosbox to play the game.
You mention to have issues after exiting the game, like BSOD on one laptop and broken palette of desktop on another. These are not just minor annoyances imo.
Also you mention to lower the cycles of the actual cpu (!) to optimise the game speed, while instead this could be done easily by editing a simple line in dosbox cfg.
Further, the beauty of DOSBox is that it abstracts from diferent OS-es and enables the game to be played easily on the different windows and linux versions.
And lastly, all of our testing of the fan patch has been done with the game running under dosbox, since its the de facto standard way to play the game.

So why would you go through all that pain of bsod's and doing manual work of moving some files and still not being able to start ice, when an easy solution is available?

 

[MegaZAC]

Rocco,

The launcher does not fit into the screen resolution I normally use for MOO2. I also did not see the run button after applying all settings in the launcher, probably it did not fit on screen.
Issues after exiting the game are normally not important, because if I quit I will power off the device anyway. I prefer to make all settings once, even if it would be a hard time, but then just double click and play. I do not need to slowdown features of DOSbox because for this need I use software coming with the laptop, which actually economies battery in the same time. So my favourite use of this laptop is to play in MOO2 or X-COM, or something like that, when I am waiting for something in trips. I think I have perfect small laptop with bunch of batteries, which does not require emulators, settings, and able to run DOS software as is. Unfortunately, its resolution is just 800*480, so some new applications (like the launcher) are too long to fit into 480 pixels.
I thought dosbox is not a standard, but now it looks like I am the special guest on this party I think I will try different mods and will keep 1-2 hardest ones in the config, as Alex has suggested earlier in two lines.

 

[Alex/150]

I thought dosbox is not a standard, but now it looks like I am the special guest on this party I think I will try different mods and will keep 1-2 hardest ones in the config, as Alex has suggested earlier in two lines.

Have you tried to adapt launcher as i suggested above? A little work might be worth it.

In any case ICE-X is the hardest mod, if you want the hardest -- keep it.

About configs what you asked is possible, see Startup and Command Line in the manual.

 

[MegaZAC]

Have you tried to adapt launcher as i suggested above? A little work might be worth it.

In any case ICE-X is the hardest mod, if you want the hardest -- keep it.

About configs what you asked is possible, see Startup and Command Line in the manual.

Thanks a lot, your two lines in cfg helped to get ICE-X. Now I have seen 2 battleships above my colony in 3 weeks since the beginning, what is a huge challenge

Everything is perfect. You did really well. Appreciate, guys.

 

[proprich]

Really appreciate all the work in this great mod. I was playing a game last night and encountered a bug, least I think it was a bug. At some point, mid gamish, my research labs starting disappearing. I rebuilt them then they would disappear again the next turn. This was empire wide. My settings were 1.5i, with Ice maps playing base psylons. I saved the game if it would help.

 

[Alex/150]

Never have seen such bug, please upload save.

 

[proprich]

Loaded the game up, it's not doing it now. I usually do labs first or after factories but looking at the tech tree it's possible I didn't as I'm working on the second computer level. To save your time I'll keep playing with these settings to see if it was a me or a bug. Thanks.

 

[proprich]

Started a new game and the same thing happened. The research labs went poof. I'll upload both saves. It wouldn't let me upload a *.gam file so I changed it to *.sav. Hopefully you can change it back and it'll work. Settings were 1.5i and ICE standard maps with 1.5 standard antarans.

 

[Alex/150]

I see absent labs in your save but can't reproduce disappearances. Can it be that you had negative treasury and labs got auto-scrapped to cover other buildings' maintenance? If you think this is not the case, provide a save just before research lab vanishes. It is easier to pinpoint such moments if you run watch-save10.bat from game directory while playing, it backups save10.gam every turn.

 

[proprich]

I think you might be right. I haven't played a standard race in a long time, not use to cash being so tight. I'll pay better attention and if I see it again I'll post, but I've played several games today and haven't seen it. Sooo .

 

[MegaZAC]

Is there any way to make autosave not every turn?

 

[Alex/150]

Is there any way to make autosave not every turn?

No

 

[MegaZAC]

No

Sad to hear that. Original game has up to 5 turns (not sure), which were extremely important for hardcore difficulties like the Impossible. In current version they are even more impossible because one turn is not enough to fix dangerous situation. It is just a little better than no save at all.
Is there any intermediate mods between 1.4 and 1.5* with the old autosave?

 

[Rocco.40]

The patch comes with a bat file "watch-save10.bat", that makes a copy of the save game every turn, so you can effectively record your entire game from t0 to end.

 

[MegaZAC]

The patch comes with a bat file "watch-save10.bat", that makes a copy of the save game every turn, so you can effectively record your entire game from t0 to end.

Do I need to run it in advance every time before starting the game, or I can add it into the config file?

 

[Rocco.40]

Do I need to run it in advance every time before starting the game, or I can add it into the config file?

You need to start it in advance, not necessarily at the start of a game, but from the point that you want to save your saves

 

[Yee]

Hey, sorry if this isn't the right place to post this. Feel free to yell at me if it isn't.

I tried using this line of text in the orion2.cfg file: "ANTARAN_FLEET_RATES Attack_Frequency_Determinant = 10; # default: 200" and on launching, is giving me this error:


"An error occured, MoO2 version 1.50.8 will now exit.

failed to load config:
in ORION2.CFG line 33:
error: unknown token 'ANTARAN_FLEET_RATES', expected config key:
{here}--> ANTARAN_FLEET_RATES Attack_Frequency_Determinant = 10; # default: 200
0

The copy of the message can be found in ORION2.LOG"


Any thoughts? I already have a couple savegames going with some edits to the .cfg, but I wouldn't expect this to make a difference.

 

[Rocco.40]

Hi,
here are my thoughts-
this happens because the antaran parameter names have changed in some prior version.
so, in 1.50.8 you need to write:
"antaran_fleet attack_frequency_determinant = 10; # default: 200"
instead of:
"ANTARAN_FLEET_RATES Attack_Frequency_Determinant = 10; # default: 200"

if you get such errors, best is to check the file EXTRACT.CFG that is in the root of your moo2 folder.
that file contains all parameters, so you can check spelling there.

also note fyi that if you write your custom mod lines in USER.CFG they won't get overwritten when updating to a newer version of the fan patch while the file ORION2.CFG will get overwritten.