[Kenner]

I've been playing the latest development version available in SVN, and it seems to be pretty solid to me. No crashes or new bugs of any kind. That annoying bug - where the repair droid fixes everything, but your speed still won't return to maximum until you land on a planet - is still there. However, that seems to be the only remaining problem that I've run across, and there are many good fixes, including the fact that the game is easier (with fewer enemies) at the start of the game.

I really think that this version could be considered for release (maybe as version 1.03a?). It's been a while since the last release, and enough has changed to make this worthwhile, imho.

[Gunther]

It seems to be quite stable...

I found a problem while using the tractor beam. If I shot down a "mission enemy" which would normally be friendly (Captain Seelig in Pentonville, a Roman Lynch Mission; or the Maniac Garrovick in the Mission of the ES Taryn Cross in Rygannon), there might be the pilot or cargo floating around. If I try to tractor this blue marked pilot or cargo from this destroyed ship the game always stops / hangs with an error message.
I got several hangs while trying the tractor beam of the rear turret on a centurion. The sound of the beam starts, the pilot or cargo is moved and short before the "clack" of the shutting cargo doors should be played the game hangs.
Pressing "ESC" will close the whole game.
Using the task manager, the message "Vegastrike space simulator does not work properly anymore ... The program will be closed and you will be noticed if a solution is found." or something like this (is shown in german on my computer) is displayed in a separate small window.
No Error files are written in this case.

An other problem I found is the radar. If you jump in a system, select a nav point outside the normal radar range, the nav point will not be shown in the radar any longer. Before selecting it is shown as a grey dot (normal nav point) or light blue (a jumppoint), but after selecting it is gone. If you can use the autopilot it works fine, but if you want to flee (for example because you don't want to shot the militia while running a contraband cargo) you will have to make some circles to find the white cross in your window, marking the nav point, to know the dicrection you will have to fly to.
And the colors of the radar are different to the normal 1.03 version. For example missiles are shown as grey dot. I think this could be done by modifying the vegastrike.config (I will have to check this later).

[Kenner]

I can confirm the second problem - with the radar. I have the same problem. Sometimes, you just want to avoid getting involved in a combat, but you can't fly away from it easily because your destination won't show up on the radar. The other change with radar is that when you blow up a ship, the pilot left drifting in space will show up on the radar as a blue dot (friendly), even if you blew up an enemy. As I recall, drifting pilots used to show up as a brown dot?

I know some of the patches did deal with changes to the radar, so something must have gotten changed inadvertantly. Hopefully, it will be fixed soon.

Regarding the tractor beam, I haven't been able to test that yet since I started from scratch, without any hacks, so I'm still flying my Tarsus while I build up enough cash to buy a centurion. Did you start over from scratch, or did you copy over your saved games?

[Gunther]

Completely new, no old saved files.

But after about 5 flights I modified a savegame to increase the credits so that I could buy a centurion.
I am currently avoiding the drone shots...

I have checked the vegastrike.config for radar colors. The colors in this config file are different to what is displayed in game.

The problem with the sound / speech and text (shown on wrong place or even not shown) in the Masterson (Oxford) missions have not yet been fixed. I will make some screenshots later to show.

[Kenner]

The problem with the sound / speech and text (shown on wrong place or even not shown) in the Masterson (Oxford) missions have not yet been fixed. I will make some screenshots later to show.

Yep - it also happens on Perry, when you go to visit Terrell's office before you're supposed to, and in Oxford when you try to go to the library before time.

[Gunther]

Some found problems...

1.
The scans of militia and confed do not end with a message "no contraband found...".

2.
After finishing the Taynn Croos ES missions in Rygannon I was fleeing from Rygannon with the drone I my neck. I was flying straight to Nexus to the next mining base to find Godin in the bar. When I was in Nexus after the Autopilot to the mining base I suddenly faced 5 or 6 drones firing at me from different directions.

3.
After destroying the drone there was no video sequence shown. Normally there should be the sequence of the exploding drone followed by the sequence of the steltek fighter moving away the old relict steltek space station in Delta Prime with a tractor beam.

4.
The start scene (with the robot man) on planet Jolson is missing too. Only a short green message was displayed "they have stolen my steltek gun" on top of the screen with the landing pad.

[Kenner]

Update: Revision 294 (posted today) "fixed radar tracking problems"

I haven't tested it yet. If anyone gets to try it out, please post here how well it works. And as always, a big thank you to the developers for continuing to work on this most excellent remake of the best game ever!

[Gunther]

The cross of the selected navpoint is back.

And the speech / text part of the Masterson missions in the righteous fire part of the game are complete messed up. Sometime no text (only sound), sometimes text at the landing pad and sometimes correct, but only after accepting a mission.

[Kenner]

I suspect that the text/speech related to Masterson's missions in both the Privateer and Righteous Fire missions are somehow linked to the wrong trigger point and that's why they often play at the wrong time. For me, when I land on Oxford, the text for Masterson's warning about not being allowed into the library always plays on the landing pad (without sound) and the sound plays (without text) when you meet Masterson in the library.

For me, it's not the end of the world, so I've learned to live with it. I have other bugs that I'd like to see fixed first, like how AI ships continue to fire long after the enemy has been destroyed.

[Gunther]

Right, the problems with text / speech in Oxford and Perry are minor problems. I just wanted to show, that they still exist.

The AI is sometimes really confusing.
For example retro Talons which are only floating around. It is like shooting bottles.
I have seen several "friendly" ships which are shooting each other, like militia vs confed, confed vs merchant and so on, all mixtures possible. Especially the two militia Talons on the last Murphy mission in Palan will shot each other after finishing this mission in about 80% of cases.
For me the all time shooting ships (after a first reason to start shooting), which are mostly one of the bigger ships like Galaxy, Broadsword and Paradigm are annoying but not really a big problem.