PA - Game Experiences

Where exactly are the improvements? You talk about this "improvements" as if you were knowing them exactly and coded them. Who tells you that it has improved when it doesnt show in the actual game?

after long testing i can state for myself that nothing has improved with it throughout the last patches.

units glitch so often in the terrain, its devastating
units still wont move were you order sometimes
units still split up for no reason
units still run around like they had some strong mental disorder
Pathes taken are still inefficient and sometimes total random
units STILL wont do what the're supposed to

NO IMPROVEMENT. dot.

Dont tell me their pathing has been improved, when this is clearly not the truth. That's embarrasing. Like lying to your mother that you achieved an A+ when you really achieved an F. ******* embarrassing, nothing else.

Alright, I know when I'm talking to a wall.

Mike

Post 19 , full ignore? Also waiting for answers for that one.

Yup, there have been at least 20 builds, you've seen a couple and claim there is no progress and ignore any comments otherwise, it's not worth my time to keep arguing.

Mike

wow, 20 builds and the movement of units still works like this ?!? wow...what can i say ?

That...is shocking!

Look at it, it's completely broken, after 20 builds, what information do u get from this?
4 month left, how many builds are yet to come? How many builds will it take to make units move proper ? 30? 40? maybe 60?

There is no ******* reason for even arguing about that. Everybody that actually plays the game (if that is possible due to its hideous stability) sees, experiences, knows that it's clearly fucked up.

to be honest, i dont have hopes anymore. 4 month left , with these bugs in the game?

a 5 year old mental disturbed can see that the game wont work proper on release date.

Well, in terms of pathfinding...

Pathfinding is one of the hardest things to do in games. For a game where 1000's of tanks are trying to path around obstacles, AND around others, you've got something that isn't in the scope of a few weeks-worth of work, it's in the scope of a few months to half a year's worth of work. Source: I've coded simple pathfinding before, and it took at week to make it work with a tile based system (though to be fair I'm not the best programmer). A vector based 3d system with complex collision bodies is a russian nesting doll of complexity.

Already we have an impressive pathfinding system that works. I honestly believe that you're exaggerating a bit: Even I have a good bit of problems, but when I grab a bunch of bots and tell them to move to a point on the map, they will find the best path to that point 99% of the time.


In terms of complaining about framerate/performance...
If you want to see improvement, look at this latest patch. FPS tripled for every player. I repeat, FPS tripled.


With regards to crashes, that's definitely not the game's fault. Maybe you need to update your drivers, or disable antivirus, or something. I dunno. But the game only crashes occasionally for me, usually because of not having enough memory to run the game well at this point. If you're managing 15 fps endgame then this isn't your issue at all. Maybe check your connection, it might be a little jumpy?

edit: Just a thought, optimism is a good thing when you're looking at an alpha. Complaining about non-working features months before release date does nothing, the developers are working very very hard to fix all of the issues with play right now. In terms of alphas, this is a damn good alpha to even be playable and fun at this point...

are you really serious about that one ?
just asking cause iam experiencing a totally different game. at all..

no iam not exaggerating, i can make a video about it if u like to see.

That would be really useful actually. Perhaps there's some issue you're having we're not seeing.

Really, though, I think the reason you're not getting much feedback here is because no one else is experiencing the issue's you're having. If you ARE having issues, posting a video would be super-useful so the developers can find out what's making your specific computer screw up the pathing and whatnot.

Try looking at this: a video of a "pro" player of PA. He's sending units around, clicking madly, micro-managing bot squads to maneuver them around. It's an example of how pathing DOES work, and how there are no real issues with it right now...

One question would be is if you're experiencing actual frame rate lag or server/net lag. Video would be handy, but the issues you're discussing are not widespread, which is why you're being met with some amount of incredulity.

Is pathing perfect? Certainly not. Does it do what you would expect 90%+ of the time? Yes. When assisting and using a lot of fabbers, I tend to see the most pathing errors personally. But for combat, it's pretty rare.

More info is of course helpful! If there's a specific situation going on here, we'd like to know what it is so we can fix it.

ill make that video as soon as i find time for it, in the next few days.

Todays pa matches were extremely buggy in pathing.

the gameengine didnt even react anymore to some of my commands at some point. in other situations i commanded a bunch of units and just some of them were running while the others just wouldnt move. Some units moved only a bit and stopped half way or earlier. in the end, pathing was so random, i was happy that the game was over because controls totally broke down and fps was under 15 fps.

Maybe its connected to the low fps and performance issues but overall this is no excuse, cause performance problems are a known issue.


@ galaticcow

thx for the video but did u notice how furiously the Player always double or triple clicks?
maybe triple clicking does the job, single clicking often glitches or does nothing for me. Not only on my machine, friends are experiencing the same issue.

tco84 - We'd appreciate more info. It sounds like this may also be an issue with expectations. 15FPS, at this stage, is still quite playable.. Below 5 becomes pretty intolerable, agreed.

As for "no excuse".. Well, our excuse is - that's not how game development works. We need to finish systems before we spend extensive time optimizing. Just be mindful of that please. There are extensive conversations about our development process, in this sub, in the Backers sub, and in the Alpha sub. If you want more detail on how we iterate on our development.

I dunno why Zaphodx always spams clicks on orders. With microing units, more clicks is an easy way to get units to respond to the immediate "oh crap there's a turret there retreat retreat" moments. [edit: not because there's an issue/bug/glitch with the pathing, it's just that if you notice the turret and you're already rapidly clicking you just move the cursor a little farther back so your units go back] Other than that, maybe it's just a habit of his?

It might also be a problem with this specific patch. I haven't played this patch because my gaming PC is in transit to university, but since June I have not experienced such problems with unit orders except in one of the builds around July (fixed like 2 days after).

I hope you keep an open mind about this game though. I absolutely love being part of an evolving community, but it's never easy when not everybody can experience the same fun everybody else is having.

Tco, it sounds like you might be experiencing server lag in the end. Could you run through speedtest.net and let us know what you got? I'll be looking forward to that video.

The pathing hasn't improved? I haven't got the alpha, but I've been watching videos from day 1, and the pathing has improved enormously.

And ZaphodX likely spams clicks because its a panic thing - you see something, go "oh sh*t", and spam clicks away. If you don't do that you just won't be responding fast enough to something - if you're constantly clicking and you're moving your mouse, you're more likely to be able to respond to what happens, then if you click just a few times but deliberately - no where near the reaction time.

The spam clicks is partly a habitual thing. The first click is to start the units accelerating, the last click is to set the destination point. For the record I consider myself to be a noob, making videos doesn't give you much opportunity to play the game :/

Try checking out my first update videos, they paint a very different story to the most recent ones. I think the additions and improvements from those very early patches to now are quite clear to see and I've never had a problem getting footage to accompany the details of the patches I cover.

Your experience doesn't mirror most of the other alpha users, so perhaps you can help sort out the issue by sharing hardware settings etc to allow Uber to work out what's wrong.

just one short scene from yesterday's footage, ignore the voices, just look at it.



my building-vehicle does freaking nothing, simply ignoring my commands...in the same manner, even big armys get completely stuck, and that happens very very often..

thats just an example, i can add much more if you like

since the mouse is not visible I don't understand what kind of command you want to give.

Generally your expectations are way too high, as you were told already. The game has improved QUITE a lot since I first got to play it (which was on the very first day of alpha). Back than units often not only got stuck randomly, they also often lifted off and flew into the orbit or dropped through the planet to reappear somewhere else. Sending an army through a base was guaranteed to have it 99% stuck in it and the performance was waaay worse.

Just because the game is not perfect yet doesnt mean there is no improvement.

u can here the sound of my command, its the assist sound, you can also see the green visual that appears under the anti nuke luncher as i click. thx hd quality


the units in your game are ignoring simple commands at total random. thats a major problem. just saying..

I count 17 workers that have followed your command.
From the games I play on a daily basis I can tell that this is not a general issue that prevents you from playing. There are still a few bugs and problems in path finding that players need to work around by giving extra commands (as garat said: workers are the best example of this, they sometimes get stuck in buildings, do funny dances, etc), but apart from that it's all fine.

plus the crashes/freeze/FPS issues are not depicted in that video. Is that really the best you have? also a bsod cannot be the fault of PA. check your system with prime95.
Reinstall windows, turn off sli/crossfire if you have, boot with only one screen plugged in, turn off shadows and turn all other graphics to min as well, you will have all kinds of performance increase. don't touch until release when it's optimized = much more happyness
we have been more patient than you deserve. you are a rude as a flamer gets.