Owen: Missions, bug hunting and 2.0

Hi everyone. This is Owen Lake (aka Xenon_Slayer), mission programmer for X3: Terran Conflict. I missed my chance to write for this blog during the initial development phase, so I’ve got some catching up to do. As you may have read in my interview in X-Universe News 35, I’ve been keeping myself busy with the latest update, 2.0. Well, where to start?

My main area of focus is on mission design and development, for both the plot and generic missions. In previous games such as X3: Reunion, these missions were programmed in the game code itself, a language called KC. Programming missions in KC gave the mission authors a great amount of freedom to do whatever they wanted, as every game function is a simple line away. Coding a mission directly into the game code has its drawbacks though. The only way to include a new mission is by recompiling the game, and distributing it with a patch, leaving community missions out in the cold unless they are accepted by EGOSOFT through the DEVNET. This system has given us some classics such as the Perseus Mission from X-Tension.

For X3: Terran Conflict, KC missions were dropped in favour of the Mission Director. The MD is a scripting tool, using XML files to store the mission itself, outside of KC. I started working with it back in 2006 along with several other volunteers. We tinkered around, making several missions and testing the MD functionality. I was not a programmer back then, and I found the MD was very easy to get my head around. Over the years, more functionality was added, giving us the jam packed MD we have today. All we needed then was mission content.

Several of us sat down to discuss what the plot of X3TC would be, including fellow mission programmer Al and X author, Helge. Many ideas were tossed around, such as exploring more about the Sohnen race. In the end, we decided on the 5 plots we currently have. I was assigned to code the Terran, HUB and HQ plots. The Terran plot was the most challenging as it was the main plot of the game and needed to carry the story along and immerse the player, while keeping the universe free and open. Most of the time, I would need to look though the list of MD ‘conditions’ just to refresh my memory of what the player could do to potentially break or exploit my mission. We really have so much freedom in X that different players may see or play the mission in entirely different ways.

We developed several small chunks of mission code which was designed to be re-usable. These ‘libraries’ are used in several parts of the plot and generic missions. The upcoming Aldrin Expansion mission in X3TC 2.0, uses these libraries extensively. The entire plot was coded very easily and within two months. The aim of the plot was to advance the Terran story further and present the player with several activities which they may not have done yet, not to mention show off some new content.

Much of the new content is obviously focused in the Aldrin region of the universe, which is very unique. The large asteroid in the centre of the sector separates stations to great distances. While the initial exploration phase is more extreme than any other in the X-Universe, it can become a chore to fly 300km from station to station. So, ‘how to solve a problem called Aldrin’. That is where Terran ingenuity (namely mine and Toasties) comes in. Using tractor beam technology, they have pulled several stations closer together. Then, using the Transorbital accelerators, they create easy, quick access between station groups.

The future of missions in X3TC is bright. We have several community missions on the script and modding forums, and a few in the pipeline for a future update. I have dived straight into the world of KC programming, adding new functionality to the MD or improving some UI. This is entirely new for me as I couldn’t really program anything this time last year. As well as adding new stuff, I have been able to do battle with my mortal enemies - Bugs!

I started testing far back in 2005, when X3: Reunion was in the Alpha phase. As we warn our betatesters, it isn’t all fun and games. Having a sneak peak at the new content is a bonus, but it is hard work to get results. Some bugs are easy to find and reproduce, but some only occur in very special, sometimes strange circumstances. A few weeks ago, we heard reports of “Zombie Hyperions”. Some ships seemed to have a mind of their own after being boarded and captured by the player. With a savegame someone had provided, I was able to see the ship was still assigned to patrol duty for the former owner. With the help of Klaus, we managed to “exorcise the demons”.

Other than the Aldrin Expansion mission in 2.0, mission development has taken a back seat for me, while I look after the rest of the game, keeping track of the bugs, organising the new text for translation and exploring the underlying code of X3. It has been a heck of an experience, but the danger was that as soon as I look at the code, playing the game would not be as much fun. While I still have not had time to play yet, I can’t wait until I do. There is so much in there that I can’t grasp it all or see it all. I’m still seeing ships during testing which I have not seen before! Just last week I saw my first Kha’ak invasion in X3TC; in the sector of Kingdom End, no less. That was fun to watch! ;-)

Simon: Updating the Universe Trader for 2.0

Hi, this is SymTec ltd. from the X3TC scripting team. For X3TC, we had improved the Trade Command Software MK3 in many areas – it got the new “Local Trader” option to make the pilot trade in one area only, a special internal blacklist that would stop it from entering into really dangerous territory, and of course was prepared for the new Terran economy. However, after many players had worked with the UT in their actual games, they told us that things were sometimes not running as smoothly as they should. Apparently, the pilots you hired got rather lazy after a while – just hanging out at the stations’ pubs when the next trading opportunity was just a few stations away, or trading in Energy Cells when there were plenty of other wares around.



For 2.0, I took some time to look over the scripts responsible for the UT, and found ways to correct some of the misbehaviour that people had reported in the previous versions. Reading through hundreds of lines of debug logs, I found the cause of the pilots’ laziness: Trying to be clever, they first checked if the current station’s products could be sold with profit – if that was not the case, they ordered another beer before going on with checking the other stations, and of course forgot about their plans right the next second. I was able to talk the barkeepers into not serving any beverages to working trade pilots anymore, so that should be fixed.

Especially for Universe/Local Traders with a big jumprange, designing the algorithm that picks a good trade run is always a compromise between game performance and trade efficiency – of course, it is possible to check every possible trade route in the whole area and pick the best, but that is performance heavy. On the other side, just taking the first opportunity that the routine finds is very simple, but most likely won’t satisfy you either. The MK3 software uses a method in between those extremes: The routine picks the trading wares based on random numbers and with those wares tries to yield a certain profit; but the probability for each ware type can be closely adjusted. With the new version, I changed these settings: Less energy, more tech wares (for fighters) and bio wares (for freighters).

As you proceed in the game, you have more and more money available, but the universe is a dangerous place for expensive high-tech traders. Creating a fighter escort for your trader is not quite a good idea, because they tend to run out of fuel if the trader uses its jumpdrive a lot and then get killed in the attempt to catch up. One solution to the danger of transporting expensive wares was to use fighter craft for the job: They have a smaller cargo bay and a higher price, but are faster, better shielded and more dangerous to potential attackers than the TS freighters. Several people asked me why they couldn’t employ a Universe Trader on TM class ships – now they can! TM class ships can carry around their own little defence/distraction fleet, have a decent speed and cargobay size, great shielding and weaponry, and are still less expensive than many super freighters: A great new opportunity for the more dangerous areas of the X-Universe.

CBJ: Paintball

Hi everyone, CBJ here. If you've spent any time on the Egosoft forums then you probably already know as much as you want know to about me, but for those who don't I'm (in no particular order) a software developer, veteran space gamer from the original Elite on the BBC Micro generation, and big fan of pizzas.

I originally started work on this project way back before it had a name, designing and developing the new Mission Director system for creating missions. At the start of this year I was asked to lead the X³: Terran Conflict project through the final stages of the development process. Hm, now that I think about it, Bernd said something about needing to concentrate on other things - if visiting games conventions was what he was referring to then maybe I got a raw deal... Anyway, like any project there were some good times when things went smoothly and a few bad times when things looked like they might go horribly wrong, but we got there in the end and delivered the Gold Master to the publishers pretty much on schedule.

With the Gold Master finally out of the door we decided to take a day off work to relax and celebrate. Team members flew in to Egosoft HQ from all over the world lured by the opportunity to shoot at each other... with paint. A couple of chaps from Koch Media were even brave enough to join us, though one turned out to be a bit of a paintball pro and the other was clearly taking no risks as he wore full body painting overalls. Despite grey skies and intermittent rain, and the best attempts of SatNav technology to send us to the wrong place, there were skirmishes in the woods, running battles in the fields and heroic dashes to capture the flag. Some people got a bit carried away and tried to shoot their own teammates (yes, I'm looking at you BurnIt!) but fun was had by all:




After a light lunch there were more exciting activities, including trying not to injure anyone with a bow and arrow:



watching some of the less sane team members falling into a pond:



working out how many developers you can squeeze into a small space without causing a rift in the space-time continuum:



and passing the boss's wife through a hole in a net:



So, I expect you're wondering: with the game about to hit the stores and the release party over, what's next? Well, even though the Gold Master has been delivered, we're not quite through with X³: Terran Conflict yet. We've woken Owen up and he's been assigned the task of continuing to improve the game after release. In fact by the time you read this the first patch should be pretty much ready, bringing you things like an extra non-plot mission, some nice little UI enhancements, and a couple of new script commands for the more technically-minded to play with. As for me, I'm now working on *censored* and *censored* *censored*... Oh dear, the NDA censor just kicked in. I guess you'll just have to wait and see what Egosoft are cooking up for the future, but playing X³: Terran Conflict should keep you occupied in the meantime!

Bernd: Gamestarts and Campaigns

I feel I have to clear up a common misunderstanding on how the various campaigns in X3:Terran Conflict are presented. Many of the somewhat preliminary reviews that I have seen about the game so far seem to confuse gamestarts with campaigns.



X3TC lets you choose between many gamestarts. A gamestart throws you into the universe from a unique position. It changes the way you look at the universe by showing it from the perspective of a Paranid or a Terran military pilot, an Argon or other of the less frequently played species. It also means you will have completely different ships, weapons, race relations AND sometimes a few special missions to get into the game.

BUT (and thats the key information here): You can usually play all campaigns (we normally call them plots) of the game with all gamestarts. There are exceptions to this rule, but especially the gamestarts available to the player right from the start allow you to play all missions including all the main campaigns.

X3:Terran Conflict has one plot which is designed to start the game with. It is easier and a bit faster paced than the rest. This is the plot about the Terran system and you have to play it on the side of the Terran USC (military). Obviously this is easier to get into, when you start the game as a Terran military pilot. With most other gamestarts you have therefore "bridge missions" which you can pick up to get the right relation with the Terrans and get into this particular plot.

HOWEVER (and this is the second key information many reviewers miss): This game has a lot more unique mission content than just the Terran plot. There is a story that evolves around a special somewhat ancient construction built by the Terraformer for example. The german translator team mentioned this in their blog article and called it the "boron plot" (a term that I didn't hear before. We usually call it something else, but that name may spoil the story a bit, so I will from now on comply with the translator team ;)

So to put it into the language game reviewers love let me give you a nice tabular overview:

• Gamestarts: 4 from start + more than 10 activated later
• Campaigns: 5 each with unique rewards and full voice recordings.
• PLUS: Special gamestart "bridge" missions, corporation specific missions and lots of generic missions.

-Bernd

Daniel: Teaser music

Hi there. I’m Daniel Finney and I’ve always been a fan of the X series, ever since X-Beyond The Frontier was first released back in the day. Hours upon hours of my childhood have been lost to trading energy cells in Seizewell, capturing Pirate Orinocos and basically flying around enjoying the view. One thing I’ve always loved more than anything else about the games however is the soundtrack. Every time I sit inside my ship, the music has me captivated and I can’t help but fall into it. I don’t know if this is just the way I am, being a musician at heart, but it is something that I have always felt. Luckily, I was a member of The X Universe forums about a year ago (where some of you may know me as Woffin) and helped contribute towards the Xtended mod with a few tracks of my own.

Then along came X3: Terran Conflict. The guys at Egosoft offered me this fantastic opportunity to be a part of something which has been such a big part of my life for so long. At short notice, I was drafted into the team not long after the project had begun and was immediately faced with writing the music for the Teaser video. I was told that this would have to be my best piece of the entire project (no pressure there!) as it would give all of you people your first glimpse at the game. I have fond memories of working with Martijn (Mishra) for this, as he was the guy who did the video side of it. We would spend night after night communicating with each other, sending various versions backwards and forwards between ourselves, fine-tuning everything you could possibly think of. We were initially aiming at a purely electronic sound and experimented with Bass, Drums, Synth and a few String parts as you can hear in one of our early mixes:

Click for first version.

Although decent, we weren’t satisfied and thought we would throw a few extra parts in there with some more percussion and some more orchestral instruments. Once again it sounded decent, but not quite enough. We both realised that only the best was good enough, so we singled out the orchestral parts, which you can have a listen to here:

Click for second version.

One night, Martijn appeared online out of nowhere and started shouting to me “Why don’t we try a guitar?!”. Good point Martijn. I’d never thought of using a guitar before because it’s not normally something you expect when you listen to X music as it’s mostly ambience, orchestral and synth parts. So out came the guitar and I put down a quick recording, mixed it down and sent it back over. “What do you think of this?” I said to him. It was at that moment that we both realised a guitar was exactly what we needed. Over the next few days (during which neither of us got any sleep!) and after many mixes and file transfers backwards and forwards, we’d refined the track and got it perfectly hooked up with the scenes in the video too:

Click for final version.

Simply put, no. That was only the start. Very shortly afterwards, Alexei and me were given our targets and our tasks, so we set off to work. While Alexei focused more on the plot and theme side of the soundtrack, I worked on the ambient tracks and general sector background music, with some of them also being used for the recent trailer videos too. What you can expect to hear on your travels in X3 Terran Conflict is more of the high quality work that you come to expect from these series of games, but with a slightly menacing twist. As you’ve probably discovered by now, the universe is on the brink of war and everywhere you go, conflict is ready to break out and this is what I aimed to achieve in the music. You’ll find that guitar from the trailer coming back to you in certain places but there’ll also be times when you should, very rightly so, feel isolated and alone and on the edge of your seat, waiting for that attack that could come at any moment. Then there’s the safe havens, the reclusive sectors, where you look around and just lose yourself in the vast and magnificent surroundings, where all of the violence and all of the troubles that face you seem to not matter any more.

All in all, you’ll have to keep your ears open when you’re exploring the many new areas that X3 Terran Conflict has to offer you. It may just be that it makes you feel like you’re really there.

Simon: Scripts, Outposts and more

Hello guys,

I’m Simon Schütz, and I’m also part of the X3TC developer team. In the egosoft forum and the DevChat, you might know me under the nickname SymTec ltd.. Regular visitors to the Egosoft Scripts and Modding forum will know me as a heart and soul scripter, always keen on extending the game’s possibilities with the powers of the game-internal script editor – and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since I started working on X3: Terran Conflict.

With all the new ship types, some of them with very special functionality, we needed scripts telling them what to do. If you command your missile frigate to fire a deadly array of missiles on your target, it will now use every single missile tube to bring death and destruction over your enemy, and at the same time show you the most beautiful fireworks in the known universe. In X3: Terran Conflict, missiles are more important than ever before – but to fire them, you first need to buy or produce them. To simplify the process, we created new resupply options and trade commands. You can now have every single one of your missile forges deliver their products to your personal equipment dock automatically, and use that dock to supply your whole fleet with cheap missiles. Or you just take a ship, install the new Resupply Command Software, and let the AI work out the rest. It’s all your choice.

However, new ship commands were not the only thing I took a close look at: I also made sure that the Flight Wings are not just a group of ships flying around together and doing the same thing, but work together as a unit that roams the universe to take out enemies. Be aware that members of the other races are profiting from new commands just as much as you do: The Military Outposts, big security installations with their own sector defence fleets, have full control over security in their systems. See their fighters patrol the area, respond to enemy threats over several sectors and punish illegal activity more than you would probably like. See the freighters build up and maintain their own supply chains, visible to you in one place, invisible in others. And watch the Terran economy closely if you can – they do some things different from what you’d expect… even after hours and hours of playing X3: Terran Conflict, you can still find something new, and that’s what makes the X-series so unique.

-Simon