AI War Beta 3.701 Released!

[Giegue]

the game seems to lag now. not sure if its due to graphics, different structure, or something else.

[Mánagarmr]

Umm, guys, did you miss the fact that this is a very early beta? Very early beta usually means there's a ton of bugs that needs to be fixed. If you aren't interested in helping with testing, there's always the retail version for you.

[eRe4s3r]

i finally got around to add my starfield bickering to the "bug tracker"

As for the rest of my issues, too lazy for now 

[madpinger]

Yay!  Getting it now

[Ozymandiaz]

Seems to be a bug every time I install the beta, I must exit and reenter the game to be able to select objects.

Seems somewhat more laggy compared to my the other versions of AI war.

[vonduus]

Seems to be a bug every time I install the beta, I must exit and reenter the game to be able to select objects.

This may happen if you alt-tab out of the game. The solution is to press the alt key once, when you are in the game, this should fix the problem.

[x4000]

I think Shardz was getting a bit of an unfair group jumping-on.  What he actually said was that he was dissatisfied with recent AAA buggy games, and so he might not be the most patient with dealing with a beta of AI War that is expected to have a lot of bugs.  I thought he was pretty clear about not criticizing us.

Regarding those saying it seems more laggy than in the past: that is incredibly vague.  Do you mean:
1. The framerate stutters?
2. The scrolling, etc, lags?
3. It takes longer for commands you issue to actually execute?
4. The game actually runs slower (game-time passes slower)?
5. ?

There are still a number of graphics optimizations I intend to make in order to help the framerate a bit -- should be able to get it about 30% more efficient than now in terms of the HUD, far zoom, and health bars.  During battles, you will see more framerate lag than on the SlimDX versions, but it will keep the gametime vastly closer to realtime.  That's incredibly valuable, actually, and makes the periods of framerate lag a lot shorter.

Regarding input speed, commands are indeed a bit slower in 3.701 because of some changes I made there, it's a 300ms turaround instead of 200ms, or something like that.  I intend to shift that back, but it's something that's partly in progress due to the various timing shifts.

[Giegue]

for me, the farther zoomed out it is, the more laggy it gets. the commands are fine, I think, and I'm not sure how 1 and 4 are different things.

in my experience, it seems to lag the most where the main action is taking place.

also: are the planet's numbers (like mk III planet, or something) supposed to blink red and white?

edit: some of the shots end up shooting upwards. aka: a ship is shooting to the left, but the actual shot graphic is vertical when it should be horizontal. this doesn't happen with all ships, and I haven't been able to tell which ones do, and if they always do.

[x4000]

for me, the farther zoomed out it is, the more laggy it gets. things.

Hmm.  In general, or in a specific locale?  If there's a place that is particularly laggy, can you post it?

the commands are fine, I think, and I'm not sure how 1 and 4 are different

With 1, you see visual stuttering, but the game clock keeps going at a 1:1 interval with realtime.  With 4, regardless of what happens with the visual stuttering or not, the game clock goes slower than realtime.  So in other words, one second on the timer takes two actual seconds, etc.  Usually that's accompanied by lag as well, but it's far more severe.

in my experience, it seems to lag the most where the main action is taking place.

So mainly in battles, then?  That's not completely unexpected, of course, as that's when the most is being drawn.  I still have a number of optimizations in store that will help with that, but to some extent it will always have a lower framerate in the unity version compared to the AI War version, when the framerate suffers.

Example:

1. In SlimDX, if it was lagging bad enough that you were getting only 10fps, then it would run at 10fps and would have a 1:2 ratio with realtime.  In other words, everything would take twice as long.  That's enormously irritating, because it feels like you're playing in molasses and it also impacts other players in multiplayer even if their computers are better, because they have to wait on you.

2. In Unity, in the same situation, you might only get 5fps, or 3fps, depending on the ratio of GPU/CPU load.  However, game time would keep very close to a 1:1 relationship with realtime, which makes the game feel choppy but keeps it moving as fast as possible.  And it doesn't impact other players in multiplayer, and it presumably gets you through the period of lag sooner, since the action doesn't slow down to wait for your rendering to catch up.

Anyway, hopefully that helps answer the questions some.

also: are the planet's numbers (like mk III planet, or something) supposed to blink red and white?

At the moment, yeah, mainly because I haven't got the new interface for that completely figured out yet.

edit: some of the shots end up shooting upwards. aka: a ship is shooting to the left, but the actual shot graphic is vertical when it should be horizontal. this doesn't happen with all ships, and I haven't been able to tell which ones do, and if they always do.

Yep, known issue -- but thanks.

[Giegue]

the lag takes place over an area with a large number of ships in it, the ships have to be visible to lag aka: not outside the point of view.

[x4000]

Ok.  Sounds like good old fashioned graphics lag.  What are your specs?

[Giegue]

hm... I have an ATI radeon... 2400 I think... an Imac (that means I'd have to send it in to get a new card), and... well, I really have no idea.

also: if this helps, the shot glitch only seems to happen when something is shooting at an enemy that is to the northwest of it.

[x4000]

Yep, I know on the shot glich.  As for the graphics card, etc, that seems like it should work reasonably well.  I've made a note to have the F3 debug menu start showing some better debugging info, which should in turn let us have a more objective look at what's going on in terms of graphic load and performance.  Hopefully that will be in 3.172, but we'll see -- lots of stuff cooking at the moment.  Will be shortly, either way.

[x4000]

New version: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,7283.0.html

[RCIX]

Aesthetic comment:   Better now as the conversion is still young ;P

The stars are very nice........ except theres too many ;p I am only mentioning it because tis the same problem with the background noise that was there before - the star "parts"have too much low-brightness noise which results in the "splotches" of brightness in the nebula. But now its not because of editing error but rather because the starfields as they are now are too densely populated when they are layered over each other.

The weird thing is i can't trace back the noise to any particularly star image.png...so they are all contributing to the effect but if they are "layered" then the starfield png's need drastically less stars than they have now. Someone just needs to go trough them with the eraser (heh no thats pun on my name) and make them a bit drastically more sparse.


So this is not always as noticeable depending on what starfields are used how (as this seems random)

Just dropping this here as thats the first thing that i noticed, besides that the new effects are awesome, though i would also kindly request to have all GUI elements (and of course, sprites in the research and galaxy tabs) preloaded at all times. I opened the research and galaxy tab and i saw it loading which makes the GUI appear the very opposite of "snappy"

Besides that it looks all pretty well and nice, particularly the engineer beams are very neat ;P

Edit: Also

Can we get FPS Limiter and Vsync settings please?  

I'll have to chime in here and agree with the star density. It's almost like dumping an entire can of fish food into an aquarium and trying to look down through it. I want to take my hand and squeeze a ton of them together and form a nebula or something...LOL. I had one game that had so many stars that the background (space) was almost 75% gray. The Vsync is also a good idea to avoid 'tearing' and I'm all for that one, as well.

It would be much easier for me to test this game if the last 5 or 6 blockbuster releases didn't suck so bad...

Command & Conquer 4    :  Fail
Elemental: War of Magic  : Disaster
Supreme Commander 2:   : Laughable
Disciples III: Renaissance : Mediocre
Civilization V                  : Disappointment

It seems I've spent all year pouring over lack of features, game stopping bugs, ineffective game mechanics, and other various sundry items not worth mentioning. I'm not sure how much help I can be at this point other than to point out stuff that is happening on my end and trying to grin and bear it all.

I do have faith in Arcen, that isn't debatable. But it's my level of patience that I question the most at this stage.

The reason most of these games "failed" (read: at least SC2 and Civ V) were because the enthusiasts expected 2 things:
 * a game that was exactly what they wanted
 * A perfectly bug free experience with every feature that any player could think of plus 50 more on release day
and when gamedev companies finally decided to do a bit of innovation it caused the hardcore group to explode in a giant mushroom cloud all over the internet because they didn't get what they wanted. Both SupCom 2 and Civ V are just fine and really better than their predecessors, andn i feel bad for people that don't see that.
/rant
I've just been getting frustrated by the fact that so many gamers seem to think that when they buy a game, they're entitled to play dictator and rule whether the game is good or not for all time. From what i can tell though, that's been going for a long time, so i dunno if i can change it