DescentBB

I got Skorpion to make some kind of "Gate" or "GLMax" for these days. We called it "Vortex". Today we released the first public alpha release...

-> includes a IRC-Client to connect to PXO (down), Descentforum.NET, Shadowfire, and Gamesurge.
-> includes a Buddy-List with online-detection
-> includes a Server-List of the Descent.CX tracker by esa (thank you very much man)
-> includes a mission-downloader with broken-link-detection and auto-extractor.

Learn more:

http://www.descentforum.de/forum/viewforum.php?f=42

Download here:

http://www.slyclan.de/vortex/

Have fun!

Awesome stuff! I'll have to include this in my D3 manual. I guess you'll do the honors of posting the news at PD .

Whoa...this is really good stuff. The program just puts everything in the same place and makes it easy to get to.

Totally awesome

Several requests got me to make a screenshot of the tool:

http://www.descentforum.net/Do_Checkor/ ... enshot.gif

This looks sweeter than sugar!
Maybe the topic of this thread should be changed to something more indicative of the nature of Vortex (e.g not another level)

Way to go, fellas! I just downloaded it. Man, Check, when you were talking about it yesterday, I thought you were talking about a D3 mission. Dude, this rocks so far. Will post more after further investigation. Thanks, again fellas! You rock!

IsAB wrote: Maybe the topic of this thread should be changed to something more indicative of the nature of Vortex (e.g not another level)

okay - good idea...

Good job! Very sweet utility!

I can't connect to the IRC servers... maybe work is filtering out the IRC port...

Working fine for me...must be the ports.

I'm sure thats what it is. What port does IRC use again??? if I remember right the old PXO chat didn't use the 'standard' port number and so I was able to get Gate to work here.

RC

crashes my 98se machine every time I use it. very cool till that happens tho.
my 98se machine is a fresh install with only firefox, winrar, party poker and mirc installed on it.
any ideas?

sorry to hear that Pugwash - I told the developer of your problem. Please remember: The tool is alpha! Alpha means Pre-beta - so it may cause errors and have bugs...

Any need for PXO is now gone.

Trackball

oh erm Mr. C: Standard Port for IRC is 6667...

Tried to run it under Linux (using WINE), but it didn't quite work . Got a message about something having to do with WinSock.

...the first update is aviable:

Version 0.1.7.1 Alpha
Changes:
[fixed]download crashes Vortex
[fixed]broken links are shown as working
[fixed]closing serverlist still consumes bandwidth

For some reason, Vortex doens't keep my settings even after saving them. It started to keep my buddy list, but not that I had disabled timestamp.

Is their anyway to make it so I don't have to scroll side to side on the server list to see what servers are occupied?
I don't mind scrolling but it doesn't stay their long enough for me to see whats up.
It refreshes it self back to the left side every few seconds.

but all in all this seems like a great alternative to gate, This is just what this community needed, thanks for all the hard work fellas.

Bonz, sort it by # of players. It will keep games with players in them at top.

SSC-Thunderbird wrote:Tried to run it under Linux (using WINE), but it didn't quite work . Got a message about something having to do with WinSock.

Interestingly, it worked for me. The user interface doesn't act perfectly - text sometimes becomes unreadable (showing a black box where text should be), and the non-standard windowing causes problems, mainly minimising to tray (maybe?) because that causes it not to minimise normally but to just become a very small window instead.

I got some kinds of issues with network components when I tried GLMax on Wine just out out curiousity, but not with Vortex. Of course the Wine version is also different. I'm using the latest Wine build from Debian unstable repositories.

Okay, it's not much of an issue because I don't think I'd play D3 for Windows under Linux anyway, and the native Linux build of the game probably can't be started from a Win32 application running in a Wine sandbox, and the Linux version of D3 also lacks a crucial command-line option...

great tool!

First thing:

There are 2 topics from now on at the Vortex-Board: bugreports and feature-requests and one mor topic as a "to-do pile"...

from now on bug-reports are welcome...

Second thing:

Some people misunderstood something: NOT I MADE VORTEX. It was SKORPION aka Sly-Skorpion - the dude who made PXM once... I am just helping as a betatester, give ideas, make somce conversation and "public-relations" and I yea - I got him to do Vortex But the honor belongs to Skorp

Well, you can fill in the bug report. I'm tired ofm having to register for every new thing that comes out. I'm not creating an account hust for this.

again a new Vortex-Version is availble:

Version 0.1.7.2 Alpha

Changes:

[new] made a few options working(Servers, Sound, ...) - more will come with further releases
[new] disabled some not working options
[fix] some more bugs in the serverlist
[fix] doubleclick on any server causes errors (hopefully fixed)
[fix] make settings work: D3-Commandline is ignored partially
[fix] make settings work: en-/ disable timestamp, profanity, flashing
[new] link to Fastshoot-Clan (thx for support)
[new] the list of nicknames in the settings should all cause the nick-sound.
[new] the size of the windows (width of buddie-list and height of serverlist) should be remembered from last time.
[new] you can now always resize the chatwindow on the right bottom corner
[fix] crash on quit finally fixed
[new] the list of friends / buddies (if you want to add alias to existing accounts) should be in alphab. order.
[new] option to stay connected while playing on a server

get it here: http://www.slyclan.de/vortex/

Woot!

nice program man. feels more like d3 now ;p

ps: anyway to change the pm window? it gets in the way of my d3 chat.

Zero! wrote:nice program man. feels more like d3 now ;p

ps: anyway to change the pm window? it gets in the way of my d3 chat.

do you have it fullscreen or what? It is like it is, because you can now see the chat (main lobby) AND the PMs at the same time...

New Version of VORTEX is aviable at www.slyclan.de ->

[Version 0.1.7.3]

[fix] urls didnt work
[new] add an info to the title bar of the serverlist ala "19 players in 8 active games out of 47 total servers"
[new] make the autosorting serverlist an switchable option in settings ->d3server, its somewhat disturbing that the
servers in the list jump up and down on every ping
[fix] nickchange caused an index error if you used private messages before
[new] display user-joining and -leaving messages directly in the chat-channels (options: on/off/buddies only)
[fix] ignore didnt work
[new] default edit (copy/paste/cut/delete) popupmenu added for the chat-inputfields
[new] d3://ip:port d3-game-links
[fix] oversized vortex after joining a game
[new] option to disable the animated orb

get it while it's hot

this might be the last update for the next 2 weeks or so...

a terrific program!

I havent even looked for a server since pxo went down (and havent played in longer than that).

thanks for your work.

RM

i have been asked if it isn't possible to join more than one channel automatically when joining a server.

you can add a perform-buffer to the connection dialog like this:

/join #descent3
/join #descent3rookie

Thanks for making it easer to play.

Oh wow this thing is great. Thanks a lot!
I'm feeling the play D3 bug again=) We should hop in a game sometime Readyman. And find Jagger somewhere.
Thanks again for Vortex

Vortex only gives cx servers now. Active - alive - total list . I only get alive games not total list of games. any help?

First: the next release (0.1.8 Alpha) will be here today.

Second: why should we list dead games?

The problem I had was some of the "dead" games had players in them when I check the CX Tracker web site? Today vortex is showing all games on servers not just about 7 out of 59. Hope it was just my old system; 98SE. Thanks for the help. Server Info is great to have again.

New Version 0.1.8 aviable:

[change] waittime set to 5sec
[new] ctcp commands should work now
[fix/new] trackerserver down doesnt causes errors but shows a message now
[fix] dead servers are removed now
[fix] unsorting serverlist crashs vortex
[fix] Vortex crashes if the connection to the IRC gets lost (internet-connection error / dialup ended / IRC server restart or so).
[new] Connection-Dialog rewritten (add as many irc-servers u want/need)
[new] Gamespy-Support ->> More Game-Informations are shown
[change] only Mission-Name are colored red instead of the complete row if mn3 are missing
[new] add the stats of the players in the games BTW: kquery even shows the team-color of each player in teamgames wich could be solved by blue / red / green / yellow bg-colors or flag-icons ...
[change] add "channel #" before the log-output-tags for joining and leaving msgs
[change] change the "Link" to "Direct-Join-Link" or "Join-Link" or "Launch-Link" or so...
[new] mod-download
[fix] del-key didnt work
[change] change the order in the buddylist: Friends go up, Offliners go down.
[new] Relay for d3-ingame list (Direct TCP-IP Games -> "Scan for local games" now works)
[new] change color of the cell "players" in the serverlist: light-green if players on server, red if full.
[new] auto-update for vortex (we'll see if it works with the next release)

this might be the version for the next 4-8 weeks.

get it here:

http://www.slyclan.de/


@ Mickey: Sounds like the timeout in the serversettings was a bit low. Whatever: Try the NEW version from today where the timeout is a lil better and: If you are leeching or downloading the list maybe get smaller

Thanks again.