===== Vega Strike Anleitung (English) =====
=== VEGA STRIKE 0.5.2 alpha Upon the Coldest Sea README ===
* 0) New Features*
Shader Support
*VS now supports normal maps
(@all artists: yet another chance to contribute -- most units still
need normal maps)
Integrated Multiplayer Support
*Deathmatch
*Missions, money, and upgrades
Reimplemented physics system
*Support for simultaneous simulation at variable fidelity of all ships
present in a system
*Support for large numbers of active vessels per system
New and revised content
*New and restatted units, weapons, and upgrades
*New music, models, and factional textures
*Civilian traffic
Miscellaneous improvements
*Improved automation of in-system travel (simple autopilot mode)
*Pre-compressed(DXT) texture support
*Integrated Soundserver
* 1) Contents*
0. New Features
1. Contents
2. Starting a New Game
3. Tutorial -- Making a few Credits
4. Saving and Loading
5. Docking to a Planet, base, or Capital vessel
6. Accepting Missions
7. Trading Cargo
8. Upgrading and Downgrading your Ship
9. Buying a new ship
10. Interstellar Warp Transit (Jump Drive)
11. SPEC, Autopilot, and Noncombat flight modes
12. Relative Velocity
13. Tractor Beam
14. ReSpawn
15. Ordering Wingmen
16. Communications with Friends and Foes
17. Transfer Command
18. Turrets
19. Default Controls
20. Changing Controls
21. Cockpit Views
22. Troubleshooting
23. ALPHA Multi-player Mode
24. License
* 2) Starting a New Game
*Windows Users*
To start a new Vega Strike game, run the "vegastrike"
*Mac Users*
Drag VegaStrike.app to the Applications directory.
Double Click on VegaStrike.app
*Linux Users*
Install the rpm or run the Installer.
run "vegastrike" from the terminal
Once it loads, Select Campaign from the main menu.
Be patient while it generates ships in the universe and creates
BSP trees for the system. This will only happen the first time.
**NOTE** Make sure you have the latest graphics card drivers for
your operating system.
* 3) Tutorial -- Making a few Credits *
When the game starts you will be docked at the Oceanic planet
"Atlantis". You can walk around the station by clicking on various
doors or if you cannot see a mouse cursor you can right click to
select the different options and left click to select the
corresponding door.
Look in the bar to see if there are any people to talk to. If you run
into one you will find that they often offer good deals -- and
sometimes start you onto mult-mission quests! You may find
particularly interesting people in Heinlein and other interesting
systems. Scout about, and use shift-M in flight to bring up an
in-flight navigation display.
You will find yourself at the controls of an well-traveled, and
recently refurbished, Llama class starship. You may wish to read the
introduction story for some information about how you got to where you
are sitting. While armed, the Llama is designed primarily as a cargo
shuttle, so be careful when taking early bounty missions. In
particular, the Llama is a vessel of civilian manufacture, and extreme
caution should be used when engaging military vessels.
Press *t* a few times to survey your surroundings. *t* will target all
objects with your radar range, as well as navigational and
"significant" objects (capital vessels and mission targets that are
presumed to be either broadcasting their locations or discernable at
greater distance). *u* will target only vessels within your radar
range, *h* will target hostile objects, and *n* will cycle through
navigational objects. Locate the Fighter Barracks "Ataraxia" by
pressing *n* repeatedly until you see it in your right-most HUD. Then
press *a* to turn on autopilot. The autopilot will engage both
normalspace and FTL drives as necessary to place you near the
targetted object. Manual control of the ship will be disabled until
either A) you have reached your destination, or B) you cancel the
autopilot manually by pressing *a* again.
When you exit Autopilot you _may_ encounter pirates, Luddites, or
other unfriendlies. If this is the case, press *r* or *R* to select
the nearest of the hostile craft and engage them! *h* cycles through
hostile targets. They should not be difficult at this stage of the
game, so they should be easy kills. Your initial sensor system,
however, does not give an indication of presumed intent of the
starships around you, so you must be cautious until you can
afford a better one.
When you get near Ataraxia, press *alt-0* to request docking
clearance. A number of green and red boxes should appear around. A box
turns red if it is occluded, and turns green if it is on your side of
the unit. Fly into one of the docking bays. Press *d* to dock.
You will find yourself in a hangar. Exit to the main concourse, and
make your way to the weapon surplus store. Fighter barracks aren't
good places to buy cargo, but they're not bad for ship upgrades. Buy
any upgrades you can afford, and then Click on the Save/Load button on
the top right. Then go to the menu (where the upgrades used to be)
and click SAVE You will get a confirmation dialog. Next time you run
the Launcher you should Open up your saved game to continue from where
you left off. Click done on the bottom right. We have some nice
foodstuffs, lets deliver them to a base where they are needed.
Find your way back to your ship and click on it to launch. Use *n* to
target Atlantis. Fly back to atlantis using autopilot as before. To
land, request docking clearance and fly toward the green box. Note
that it may take several seconds of flying to get within docking
distance of Atlantis, but there is no penalty for pressing *d*
prematurely. Once on Atlantis, visit the Trade Center. Oceanic planets
are good places to buy food -- especially seafood :). Food is found as
a subcategory under the "Natural Products" category.
We want to run this food to a mining base. There's only one mining
base in this system -- Serenity, and it's quite a long way from
Atlantis, orbiting the secondary star in this binary system. They're
often in need of food with these pirates around, interrupting trade
routes. Target Serentity with *n*, and then hit *a* to get there.
Again you may encounter some enemies.... prepare to engage them! When
you reach close enough to see and then fly into a green guide box,
press 'd' again to dock. Once inside the base, you will see the
docking screen, like before. Proceed to the cargo screen. This time,
however, you should click on SellMode to get a list of items you can
sell the miners. Browse through the Food categories like you did
before. You should see the same cargo that you bought back at the
planet. Select both of them. Notice that the prices are greater; you
can sell them for more than you bought them for! so click on the
SellCargo button until all of your cargo is gone.
By doing this, you get some cash for spending. You should eventually
buy something useful with this money, like an Overdrive to increase
your acceleration or a Jump Drive to go to other star systems. Go to
Upgrade Ship and look for the Overdrive or Jump Drive categories. Make
sure to go to the Load/Save button in the top right and click on SAVE
if you're happy with how things have been going. We recommend saving
after conducing landing operations.
You can do missions as well to earn money. To find a list of missions,
go to the Mission Computer. The categories are listed by who offered
the mission or who you have to kill, rescue, defend, or deliver cargo
to. Make sure not to take missions where you kill someone you wish to
be an ally of. Killing units of a given faction affects your
relationship with them far more than merely taunting them, so be
careful who you choose to be your friends. In the beginning it would
be wise to take cargo missions and simple scout and patrol
missions. Make sure you select missions that occur "in system"... many
missions require you to jump out of system to complete them, and you
need at least 9000 credits to afford a jump drive. This is one of the
most important improvements you can get for your starship. It will
allow you to complete many more missions and explore a better part of
the galaxy. Jump drives require your FTL capacitors (blue energy
bars) to be charged to a certain value before you may jump. Also be
sure your FTL capacitors are fully functional before trying to jump:
an undamaged jump drive doesn't do any good if the capacitors are so
damaged they can't hold enough charge to jump. If you are inside a
green jump wireframe just wait until your jump status says "READY".
The starting ship has extra jump energy for your convenience... but
oftentimes more powerful ships will take longer to charge up and get
out of there, forcing players
If mission directions get lost in the battle chatter use page up and
page down to scroll through the messages and find the directions you
need to complete a mission.
So take a mission, take off, and prepare to meet your destiny!
* 4) Saving and Loading*
Go to any computer screen when docked to a base, and they will give you
the option to save or to load.
* 5) Docking to a Planet, Base, or Capital vessel*
IMPORTANT NOTE: If, as happens in some delivery missions, you must
dock with a moving starship, making a docking request will drop it out
of FTL and it will attempt to slow down to accommodate your request to
dock for 20 seconds. If this is not long enough, repeat the request to
dock (*alt-0*) message as many times as necessary.
If you wish to earn money, you will need to know when and where to
land. First of all, planets without a type on them on the right vdu
do not have any cargo on them. But if it has a type on it on the
right vdu, feel free to dock to it! You may also see rocky, overgrown,
molten, or gas planets, which are not inhabitable, and thus may have
little beyond a landing station.
If you wish to get clearance to land at the base or planet, you must
communicate that you wish to land by targetting a base and flying near it.
In order to dock to starships, you must press 'd' once inside the green box.
* 6) Accepting Missions*
Accepting missions is a solid way to earn money. The first step is to
click on the "Mission BBS" button. This will give you a list of
mission categories. You will then need to click on the category name
There will be missions to attack targets in the Attack categories. In
the Neutral category, there will be neutral missions like patroling,
escorting and scouting. Finally, the Confed, Aera, Pirate, Rlaan,
etc. categories will give you missions to diliver cargo, search for
contraband or escort ships to other places. Once you have accepted
the missions, you may check your cockpit screen to see the
instructions for the missions. When you have completed them, the
credits will immediately be added to your account.
* 7) Trading Cargo*
You may buy cargo at the base that you are docked to. To find the
list of cargo, use the Buy Mode button. When you click on it, you will
most likely find a list of categories. (If you don't, then the planet
or capship that you are docked at doesn't sell cargo.) After browsing
through the categories, you should select the Cargo that you want to
buy.
The selected item will be blue, with the name and the quantity in the
base in parentheses.
Jade (3)
On the right side of the screen, there will be the item, the price, the
mass and the volume.
Jade
Price: 124.83
Mass: 0.01
Cargo Volume: 1.00
To buy it, simply click the "Buy Cargo" button at the bottom.
Different planets or bases will have different prices and quantities
for groups of items. For example, Mining Bases will have cheaper
minerals.
After buying cargo, you may want to go to a planet that is in need of
that cargo. When you are done docking at that planet, you may go the
Sell Cargo screen. In the sell mode, you will see the same
categories, except only those of the items that you bought. Find your
item again and click on it. Notice that the price has changed, but
everything else has stayed the same. Click The "Sell Cargo" button if
you wish to sell it, and you will immediately be rewarded with your
credits. Note: you should NOT go the "upgrades" or "starships"
categories if you want to buy a ship or upgrade it UNLESS you wish to
have a starship or upgrade in your cargo hold.
* 8) Upgrading and Downgrading your Ship*
If you want your ship to get better (so you can do more missions and
kill harder enemies), you will have to eventually upgrade your ship.
You must click on the "Upgrade Ship" button to get a list of possible
upgrade categories. Browse through them until you find a good Upgrade
that you need. The screen will look similar to the cargo section,
with the name and the quantity in parentheses.
Upgrades are color-coded based upon whether or not they can be
currently applied to the ship. Yellow items are too expensive, purple
items are too large, and other colors denote conflicts (too many of
that type already installed or superior hardware already
installed). If the color is plain old white though, you can buy it.
It may also ask you which mount to place the gun, missle or turret on.
Mounts with brackets [] on are empty mounts. Select which mount to put
it on.
Laser
[LIGHT MEDIUM HEAVY]
ImageRecognition
Here you could put another laser or beam in the LIGHT MEDIUM HEAVY mount
because it can hold those categories.
Downgrading works the same way. If you need to earn more money, just
click the Downgrade button. It will give you a list of caregories of
items on your ship. When you have the item that you wish to sell,
make sure that you have selected the best item in that category. For
example, you may have an "engine_level_0" and an "engine_level_1" in
the list you should downgrade the engine_level_1 if you want to get
more money out of the item.
* 9) Buying a new ship*
Buying a ship is simple, if you have enough money. Just go to the Ship
dealer and select the ship that you want. The ships listed as "stock"
are minimally equipped ships. You will have to buy upgrades to put on
them before they are more than technically flyable. There are a some
ships sold as "milspec" or other "milspec variant" that come
pre-equipped. You can buy those ships and then you will not have to
put upgrades on.
Once you buy a new ship, your old ship is stored in the current system.
You can switch between ships of different type for free. You can own up
to one ship of each type (you can own a blank and non blank version of a
ship even). It costs 6000 to ship a starship to a different system, and
it is free to switch to a ship in your own system. Click on My Fleet in
the Ship Dealer section of the computer. You will find that you wish to
"collect them all" so to speak. All your upgrades are saved, so you
needn't sell them back for half price. Enjoy this new feature.
* 10) Interstellar Transit (Jump Drive)*
Many starships come equipped with a jump drive. Unfortunately they can
only be used at pre-weakened points in the space-time manifold. Your
computer signals these points by placing glowing hud projections in those
areas. It is in the shape of a doughnut, and it is colored depending on the
faction who owns the system.
To engage a jump drive, position your ship inside and press 'j' when
the blue "Jump" light turns on. You may have to recharge your energy
somewhat to make the interstellar transit. Your jump energy is
indicated in blue. Regulations state that starships should be stopped
before jumping-- disasters have resulted from starships travelling at
any great speed into a jump point.
You do not come equipped with one at the beginning, so you must do
missions to earn enough money to buy one.
* 11) SPEC, Autopilot, and Noncombat flight modes*
Most intrastellar transit happens through a insystem warp system,
called SPEC.
The ship's autopilot system will try to find a fast route to your
target. To use it, just target a destination and press 'a'. However,
note that this will only function if you are far from your target.
The autopilot system will face away from your target if it thinks that
doing so will take less time.
You may press 'y' to swich governor settings between maneuver and
travel modes. Only your velocity governors are affected, you will not
miraculously gain acceleration capabilities you did not previously
possess. Thus, be careful when using travel modes near destinations,
as you must allow for sufficient time to slow down.
You can also use SPEC manually, which will warp space in the direction
your ship is travelling ( press *A*). This operates simarly to the
non-combat flight mode, and will also drain your shields due to
shield/SPEC incompatibility.
* 12) Relative Velocity*
In space all speeds are relative...Flight-groups can be travelling at
great velocity with respect to a surrounding sun yet appear to be idly
drifting into space.
A player may instruct his computer to match velocity of a starship by
pressing the 'home' key on the keypad. This will set '0' to be the
speed of that starship. Backspace will assure that your ship is
stationary relative to the other starship (unless it accelerates
faster than you and is accelerating).
To stop matching velocity press the 'end' key on the keypad.
If you do not specifically instruct your navigation computer, it will
use the nearest significant target (base, planet, or jump) as a reference.
Note that requests to match velocity with hostile vessels are unlikely
to succeed.
* 13) Tractor Beam*
A tractor beam is just like a normal beam weapon except that it exerts a
small force upon its target. If the target is small relative to your
ship or is a chunk of cargo, holding a tractor beam on it will cause the
cargo to come towards you and eventually enter your hold. It is almost
impossible to tractor cargo that is moving with respect to your ship, so
the suggestion is to press 'home' to match velocity with the cargo, and
then to press backspace to stop... this will allow one to pick up cargo
with ease.
* 14) ReSpawn*
If you sadly lose your life in combat you may respawn by pressing ';'
Your game will be loaded with your last saved file.
Or, you may press 'q' to quit.
* 15) Ordering Wingmen*
If you are in a mission with more than 1 ship in your flightgroup you
may order them to do certain things.
Press alt-shift-F to have them form on your wing and follow you through jump
points
Press alt-shift-D to have them attack your target
press alt-shift-H to have them attack the object attacking you
Press alt-shift-B to release them from the above orders
Wingmen are fickle and may not always obey your commands. They will
inform you if they do or not.
Certain missions will require you to escort people to places. Your
escorts will follow you whever you go, and they will autopilot with you
to your destination. If you hit auto just before the jump point they
will go beside you. Then stop in the jump point, wait until they get
near, and then press 'j'. They will follow you through the jump and
appear on the other side. Voilla! Then continue to the next destination.
Getting escorts right is essential to completing the plot missions in
Heinlein.
* 16) Communications with Friends and Foes*
When flying in space one may wish to engage in casual conversation
with nearby starships. Target a starship and press the F1-F8 keys to
communicate with the ship. Conversation topics are generally ordered
from nice (low numbers) to threatening (high numbers), however you may
wish to change your vdu to comm mode (press 'v' to cycle to it) in
order to see exactly what you will say to your target. If you choose
particularly menacing taunts, the target may get angry and attack you
instead of its current target. Likewise often one can use the comms
to restore relationships with hostile people. Be careful as the local
authorities may choose to scan your ship for contraband. If you refuse
to fly straight during this process you may be attacked!
* 17) Transfer Command (depricated)*
NOTE: This functionality is disabled by default, but may be re-enabled by altering the appropriate keybindings.
If you wish to transfer command to another starship, simply press '[' to
switch over. This is useful if you have died and do not wish to upset
the blaance. The AI that took over for the ship you left will attack
your previously targetted unit, be it friendly or enemy. You can use
this to in effect give orders to friends.
* 18) Turrets*
Turrets do not begin with their own AI at all times. To toggle the AI
of your turret, you must press 'o'. Turret status is displayed above
the weapons listing at the upper left of the HUD. Pressing this when
your turret is off will turn on your turret and tell it to attack your
target. Pressing o again will turn off your turret and make it sit
idle. Turrets can be told to attack your target. Do this by pressing
'shift-P'. once they attack your target you may switch your target and
they will continue to attack the target you told them to. Turrets can also be placed in Fire-at-will mode by pressing *shift-O*.
Press ']' to physically go to a turret. Press ']' to return to
cockpit again. Another press of ']' will get you to your next turret,
and so forth. Like with Transfer command, the AI of the turret will
attack your previously targetted object when you leave the turret.
* 19) Single-Player Controls*
The full list of controls can get very exhaustive.
Check in vegastrike.config, which will lay out each key,
or find a graphical description of the keys.
* 20) Changing Controls*
If you would like to change the controls of Vega Strike, open either
vegastrike.config or vegastrike.config.2player They will both have a
section at the very top called "bindings":
The above will start the bindings section and then bind the "S" key to
SkipMusicTrack for player 0. The player defaults to and should only
be 1 in multiplayer.
This line will bind the FireKey command to the mouse button #0 (the
left button) for player 0. Button 1 and 2 will be the midle and right
buttons. After that, buttons are experimental...
This binds the axes of the mouse... should you wish the mouse to drag
in opposite direction set inverse to true.
The previous line will bind the FireKey command to the joystick button
#0 for player 0. You can add as many buttons as you want, as long as
your joystick has them.
This binds the axes of the joystick... should you wish the joystick to
move in opposite direction set inverse to true.
* 21) Cockpit Views*
You can use the following keys to switch between different views:
* 1 cockpit/hud mode
toggles between cockpit and HUD only mode, with/without
background You may have to press F1 several times to get back to
the cockpit. For the 0.5.1 release, only Rlaan and Aeran fighters
currently have cockpit art.
* 2 left view
* 3 right view
* 4 backward view
the camera points either due left, right, or backwards with
respect to the front of the vessel.
* 5 follow-mode
the camera is positioned directly behind your ship and follows
it as it moves
* 6 pan
the camera is positioned outside your ship, showing your ship if
you steer the ship (with cursor-arrows or joystick), the camera
will show different sides of the ship
* 7 follow target
shows your target as per follow
* 8 pan target
shows target, as per pan
* 9 zoom in
* 0 zoom out
Work only in external camera modes
There are the following instruments:
* In the middle of the screen, there's the crosshair - it shows
where you're going to fire your lasers :
Use your joystick or keyboard arrows to steer your ship until
the crosshair is over your target - fire!
* At the top left of the cockpit you see the message display: o
The game will print out messages for you to notify you of
certain events (like the launching of new ships) o The
'story' will also be told on the message display o The first
line of the message display shows the targeted flightgroup
(yellow-2), the shiptype (Goddard), the AIname of your
target (ignore it for now), and the current gametime (0.05
minutes) o The lines below are messages, they most current
message is printed at the bottom of the list o you can
scroll the list of messages up and down with pageup and
pagedown keys
* The Radar is located in the bottom middle of the cockpit:
use the radar to have an overview about what's going on
o friendly ships are green blips
o enemy ships are red blips
o enemies which target you (and will attack you) are
light-blue blips
o neutral ships will be yellow
o the currently targeted ship is painted twice as big as the
other blips
* Shield Display
shows your current shield status (front, back, left and right
shields)
Blue indicates the potency of your energy shields. As your shields
absorb more energy they get closer to failing. When all blue lines
are gone your starship itself (armor) takes damage. Armor is a
thin layer of protection before actual internal damage is wreaked
on your starship. How much interal structure after armor is
depleted is not displayed on the status screen, but instaed in a
video display
* VDUs (Video Display Units):
each VDU can by cycled through different modes to see different views
o press 'w' to cycle the left VDU
o press 'v' to cycle the right VDU
The Left VDU is weapon and defense VDU, and the right VDU is
targetting and navigation. You can use each VDU for different
options; however certain starships have merely 1 VDU that has some
of the features of both VDU's. Look forward to more cockpits in
the future.
* the left VDU can be cycled between the following modes:
o Weapons: show your selected weapons
o Hull: shows your hull status
o Shields: show your shield status
This your starships shield status in case the cockpit
does not have view.
* the right VDU can be cycled between these modes:
o Target status
This display shows on top the targeted flightgroup
(serpentine) and it's ship type (Areus)
At the bottom you can see the distance to the target
In the middle you see the shield status of the target
The target's hull is unknown from external scans.
o Navigation
shows the name of the system (Wasteland), the target ship
type, and the relative location of the target
o various target camera modes
* 22) Troubleshooting*
If you should encounter problems, then you should check these things:
- Always check if the setup utility has configured options to ones
most closely matching your computer
- Check the bottom of stdout.txt and stderr.txt to see if there are
any errors. Then, send us an e-mail with those 2 files attached,
along with a description of the mission you chose and what you
did to cause it to: vegastrike-users@lists.sourceforge.net
* 23) ALPHA Online Multiplayer Mode*
To Connect to a Multiplayer game, start up Vega Strike.
Then, from the main menu, select "Multiplayer".
Multiplayer currently has two modes:
*** LAN/Deathmatch mode
* Creating a game *
To play a LAN game in deathmatch mode, you can run "vegaserver".
The terminal window will show connection information... After this
information appears, you can connect to the server.
The way that information
* Joining a game *
In Vega Strike, click on "Independent Server". If you are connecting
from a different computer, you must type in the "IP Address" of the
server you are connecting to.
Also, type in a username, and supply a password if one is set up in
the "server_password" variable in vegastrike.config.
*** MMO (online multiplayer) style play
This style will act like Single Player mode, but will allow you to
interact with other players.
To connect to a server, click on Multiplayer, and in the Online
Account mode, type in your username and password.
Register an account athttp://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums/
and sign up for an account.
It is also in late alpha, so please report any bugs you find (we
know they're there). In addition, be aware that the servers may
have significant downtime. Do not be surprised if you get an error
message.
If you would like to run your own server, consult the wiki or
forums for more information. You will need an accountserver,
and also will probably have to keep up-to-date with Subversion.
* 24) License*
Vega Strike is distributed under the GNU General Public License,
version 2. You may find the full text of this license in the
"vega-license.txt" file, or online at:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html