I recently downloaded the 915 alpha version (4th) I was wondering if anyone else had done so.

I keep running into a number of issues, most if not all of which appear to be reported in the bug tracker. As I am unable to read German, and would like to help with Alpha testing, I'm wondering if anyone else is doing this out of curiosity.

Just give a few hints what the issues are ;) Then we can propably decide, if it is already reported.

At the moment there isn't much testing or working on the 915 due to time restrictions, but a while ago several players helped us and reported bugs in the 915.

Basically we have two main bugs remaining which we need to get solved before we can publish the next version - there are several more minor bugs as well, but those don't have the same level of consequences as the two big ones.

- alien placement at ground combat start is sometimes wrong and might cause crashes in ground combat.

- some skript commands stop being executed while the rest of the skript continues to work, causíng strange behaviours in the skripts (that is the reason why the Eariol UFOs don't work correctly in 915).

That being said - we always need more testers. Several times in the past we had to make quick patches to versions we thought to be correct and final, because big errors weren't discovered in previous test versions.

If you're not sure wether a bug has been reported yet you might describe it here before entering a mantis ticket and we'll check if there is a german bug report on it.

Unfortunately it will still be some time before a new version can be programmed and put online...

Ok, both of those bugs I have experienced in particular DirkF.

The ground combat mission for me, "locks up", so sending a bug report with the error log attached wouldn't be possible without some method to "break" the game loop and make it report it as an error. To date, it will just hang there until I do a manual close. It appears so far to be random, doesn't pop up on the same save game every time. Might be related to a specific map so I will start making screenshots when it locks up to try and narrow it down, it might be a vista issue as well, though I've not seen any reports of vista issues.

Another thing I've noticed with this alpha is that research options don't show up, even when I seemingly have enough research done. eg. 3 races researched weapon, ammo, armor, body.

Do you mean that the button for the techcenter doesn't appear on the right or that the research options don't appear inside the techcenter?

No techcenter button on the right.

Also, most recent error message with script.

Run Time Error in misssion CON002Action:RANDOMACTION - Line: 65, Col:3

Null Pointer Exception

And I do have the save game for the techcenter issue along with that error repeating.

No need for the savegame - I wanted to reprogram the techcenter anyway, and because of this any error messages from the current skript are useless.

Will take some time however

Another question: did you update the gameset and the script.pak by the extra links? If you still have a pure 0.915a4 without copying the extra files into it, you should do so - several bugs were fixed in the scripts that way, especially bugs with the con002action-script.

Yes, I did managed to figure out what everything meant using online translations. ;) Not the easiest way, but certainly did work. I would imagine, I could translate German to English in that way as well.

I ended up looking at the AI files in skripte.zip over in the editor and realized the scripting looks a lot like C++. So might try to dabble with the editor some.

X-Skript is based on Pascalscript, so its more like Pascal/Delphi than C++

syntax looked very similar, but good to know, I've not really done much programming with Pascal, hello world a few years ago was the full extent :) Dabble more in C++ but even that knowledge has become less useful without relearning every new standard someone writes. ;)

Did a patchwork translation on the script message for X-Force just to see if I could do it. Let me know if it was poorly done or not. My other projects I was previously working on have died, so I'm looking for something to do, if it helps, I'll do more.

  {$IFDEF ENGLISH}				// Sprache Englisch
   {$DEFINE CONSTOK}
   message_1 =  message_1 = 'Welcome Commander %s to X-Force - Fight for Destiny. "#13#10#13#10
               + 'This game is still in development stage, this translation is rough. '
               + 'It is not yet an integrated story yet. Also, '
               + 'other areas there will be deficiencies (eg missing AI).
               + 'Those who wish to complete the game based on the version 1.0.'
               + ' Current information can be found under:'#13#10#13#10
               + 'http://www.xforce-online.de.'#13#10#13#10
               + 'A guide to the game arises under'#13#10#13#10
               + 'http://doc.xforce-online.de/'#13#10#13#10
               + 'For all newcomers who are not up to X-Force version 1.0,'
               + 'There is also a tutorial-game which shows uses of X-script.'#13#10#13#10'
               + 'Start a new game, and then select the tutorial. '
               + '
               + 'We hope you enjoy X-Force...';;