I have never played Total Annihilation or Sup Com. I've also never been in an alpha. I have been following this game for quite a while and decided to buy into the alpha just recently on a whim. Please read the post before commenting. So far played 5 hours and there are a few glaring problems to me (in order of importance in my opinion): 1. The game does not run smooth, at all. I have 3770k Oc'd to 4.8ghz, GTX 680 4gb Classified, 16gb Vengeance RAM and an SSD. I'm not sure if it's server side or client side but either way it's pretty damn clunky. Strategy games, especially competitive ones, need constant framerates. They also need smooth interfaces and zoom, pan and scroll mechanics. Currently the games is stuttering, clunky and with bad camera controls. 2. The pathing is great when it works and absolubtly ******* horrible when it doesn't. I understand what they're trying to do with the pathing and it's a cool idea. However if it's not implemented properly or has even the tiniest of glitches then it would be better to just scrap it in favour of traditional RTS pathing mechanics. SC2 has great pathing, yes it's not as clever as this could be but it works great. Currently the pathing system makes the game quite terrible to play. I would have greater enjoyment from playing a 2D, terrible graphics game but with great pathing and ai than this. 3. UI and Building Graphics. The building graphics are really bad atm. They need to make them a lot more distinctive and characterfull. Currently they feel like placeholders and it just doesn't feel obvious (first impression, but first impressions are huge) which buildings are which to a new player and this is bad, very bad for competitive scene (streamers etc...). The UI is also a bit bland and default key shortcuts are not intuitive. 4. Music. The music is great but it cuts of abruptly and could be doing with being coded better to react the situation. Anyway this game is going to be transitioning to Beta very soon and really if those first 2 issues aren't fixed before beta then I can see this getting some very bad undeserved press. I really think UBER should be aiming to open BETA access around the christmas period with a more polished beta and then aim to release final game next spring/summer. What are peoples thoughts on this?
1] Alpha, the engine isn't optimized at all yet really, also given the Client-server Setup what you're experiencing might be due to bandwidth issues with Uber is aware and had a part in setting up as part of the process for identifying areas for optimization and other engine creation stuffs stuffs. 2] Alpha, they're writing an entirely new system for pathfinding from scratch, it's come a long way since early Alpha when units would willingly drive into crevasses. 3] Do you mean the Building icons in the UI or the actual in-game models? Neutrino has mentioned on several occasions they have a lot planned for the UI yet. I wouldn't expect any serious effort wasted on art assets for the UI until they are confident they have a good layout and know exactly what assets are needed. 4] Music is all temp, the final scored will be recorded using a Live Orchestra. Anyone who judges a game by the initial Beta release should be shamed and mocked, Alpha has come a long way in the last couple of months and the Beta will be no different, this isn't like many Beta's up until recently that are nothing more than glorified demos used to sell pre-orders. Mike
"Anyone who judges a game by the initial Beta release should be shamed and mocked, Alpha has come a long way in the last couple of months and the Beta will be no different, this isn't like many Beta's up until recently that are nothing more than glorified demos used to sell pre-orders". I don't agree with your statement, UBER as a company must react to market conditions to make a competitive product. You are right, beta's have become a glorified demo, probably for the worse, but the fact remains a lot of people, therefore money which UBER needs, are expecting betas to be exactly that. Because Steam is now on a big push to make pre paid access, alphas and betas as an actual product for users to buy the market has changed. I just can't see UBER fixing the pathing and lag/stutter issues withing the timeframe to a current market beta standard and this will generate bad press.
Like knight said, pathing SUCKED when the game first "released". Every build has been an improvement on that. Uber's not the kind of group that works on one thing at a time, or at least that's the general impression I get. Plus, they have a person starting soon to specifically work on graphics optimization! Stuff is happening, even with access to the game we only see a small snippit of what's being worked on!
So conform or die? Isn't that why we haven't had any proper TA style large scale RTSes since 2007 to begin with as it's such a niche market and isn't trying to be Starcraft? Making Games isn't easy, Uber has a lot on their plate, and given the core features still missing it's not a smart idea to start optimizing things that are still being worked on as it can start a domino effect later on. Yes the game needs optimizations before it gets released, luckily there is still 4 months before that happens. Alpha is for getting things working, Beta is for making them work better. the issues you have with the game fall primarily under stuff that happens in Beta. Mike
it is a problem that most ppl dont know what an alpha realy is. this alpha is very good playable and rly makes fun. you mentioned by yourself that modern betas are nothing but what demo's used to be several years ago, and if ppl are used to the so called betas for example blizzard gives out....that are mostly no betas, its a tiny bit of the finished product allrdy. also if you bought the alpha acces lately, you dont know what issues we had before. knight listet them. it was all way worse, and made gread advances till now. for your point 3....ui is clearly in very early stage and will change, but the unit and building graphics are exact the style we did see in the kickstarter video, so it is kinda what we get promised. maybe they will make them a little nicer, but i dont see that as a must have. the only thing i would want to see graphically better are the nuclear explosions, but thats personal opinion cause i like nukes
People are dumb, so cater to them...? All you said was, yes Uber, you were wrong for making the alpha open at a price, you should have kept it closed to backers so the naggy complaining idiots wouldn't get to see it, because warned time and time again they don't understand it is a really shoddy first write of a game you will need to in the end completely rewrite simpler and with patched code to fix bugs. I am just going to throw this out there. At the beginning of every live stream they ever made, they said this game, until late beta, will be aweful. Aweful as in minecraft alpha aweful. And minecraft in alpha and beta had aweful bugs. Pigs exploded, then were renamed creepers. But since minecraft, prereleases being called betas and stuff really have been overglorified initial releases with promises of patching until "release". You can call a stick of dynamite a vacuum cleaner, but it doesn't mean it will suck instead of blow. Alphas are alphas, while unlike "alphas" are marketing devices. In the end, the game should be fine, they will pretty much patch it until it is.
To be fair, from what I've seen, Blizzard does decent Betas, they just start off with something a lot more finished and don't show much progression of things outside of the actual gameplay. The problem is that Blizzard has so much damn money they really are in a league of their own and it's not really fair to directly compare them to other developers. Also consider that for example Heart of the Swarm was based on the same engine(a much tweaked and added to engine mind you) so there wasn't nearly as much progression to even see in the HotS Beta really. And IMO they won't get that broader view unless it's shoved up thier nose. They won't make that leap if we keep feeding them the same drivle that many Publishers do nowadays. People's expectations are skewed by what they think they know based on what they've been showed so far by slimy PR types, caving in and showing more of the same is not going to change anything. Luckily the tides are slowly turning, so very slowly and maybe in 5-10 years we'll have a much better educated consumer, but until then you can't just give up, that only works to undermine all the progress made so far. Mike
Well said Mike, can't counter that. I hope this game turns out as good as we are all hoping. I am just skeptical about the timescales to finished product.
I suppose it depends on how you defined "Finished". A Game like PA that will truly embracing modding is never really finished, even SupCom is still doing pretty well with FAF after THQ shut down the GPGNet service and although there aren't many mods in active development, there are still many great Mods to be found. Even if you ignore modding, when is a game really finished? When it's released? When it gets it's Last Update? When it gets it's last DLC/Expansion? It's a very mutable thing especially in this digital age, and Uber is in a GREAT position to keep the game going because they hold all the cards, there is no red tape with Publishers and such. In 4 years if Uber says, "Lets release 5 new units for PA" they can just Do it. It's true a few things might be missing from the initial release if things get crazy between now and release, but that doesn't mean they won't still happen and if it comes down to it you can bet Uber will be up-front about it because they don't have to clear everything with PR, they'll explain what's what and get back to work to deliver on what they said. Mike
Homeworld 2 still has an active modding community and look at how old that game is! (10 years) Also the primary time sink is going to be adding new features,mechanics, and units. Once they have all the actual game-play mechanics in then profiling the game and optimizing it isn't as large of a feat as some people think, at least compared to the entire project. Right now there is no LOD on units. When you zoom all the way out if you can that unit (even if it is just an icon) your graphics card is still rendering all those vertices with their default texture resolution! Also they have an enforced bandwidth limit on their servers so when lots of units exist is starts to slow down separate of anything graphics related. I bet we will still see lag for a decent portion of beta. Near the end is when the game will start to smooth out.
Well, All the problems mentioned sounds pretty much like... uhm... Alpha? Also regarding the timeline for release, Uber always stated that the game should be in a releasable state, but they will still improve the game and add stuff. This is not like the old fashioned game release, pressed on DVD and thats it... It is their very own game, they don't need a publisher to grant time and money to develop a patch.
Mike, many of us just would like Uber to sales lots of PA copies. And we just wonder if in its current state the game will be enough attractive for new beta players. Hopefully, with the new graphic engineer (and post processing stuff), with a drastically improved pathfinding and with multi/inter planetary stuff in place, it will be enough.
Uber isn't trying to 'sell' anything here, they are offering Alpha and eventually Beta Access, it's up to the consumer to realize that the game is not complete and decide if that is something they want to support. I have no doubt that PA will do very well in terms of sales once release rolls around, until then, it doesn't really matter. As I said, trying to judge the product as a whole based on the initial Beta release is foolish, If they feel the Beta doesn't meet thier standards that's just fine, they can just wait until the Beta gets better or they see via friends/Youtube/Live Streams/what-have-yous that the game is fine and will make the purchase then or they'll wait for release and do the same thing. The game is coming out, no worries there so if you don't like the status of the Beta that's fine, just wait for release and re-evaluate. Mike
I think this thread can be summarized as "making games is hard" because it is. In fact this is a common saying among industry veterans where we just look at each other, nod, and admit that this is an insane profession. Lots of second guessing is happening our strategy and that's fine. So far I think things are going great and I wouldn't change much about the way we are doing things unless our resources situation was massively different (e.g. we had a huge pile of money sitting around which we do not). We second guess our own strategy a lot so I'm perfectly happy for other people to do that. I would rather see them do it with their own games first though
True. Writing any kind of non-trivial software is hard. I recently wrote my first iphone app (yep, a bit late to the party) and every single step was 3 times more complex and time consuming than I'd expected. The rabbit hole goes down a long way. I do think there's a public perception (by your everyday steam consumer for example) that differs from what a coder would perceive. Beta is 'nearly done, just getting a few bugs out' for many, and as someone mentioned earlier in the thread, those consumers aren't going to go and research the definition of a beta before they go to twitter et al to decry that PA isn't good. So from an image management POV, I'd be looking to get things relatively refined before calling it 'beta'. Maybe that isn't possible economically; maybe it's not possible because the beta date has been indicated to those with beta keys. I'd love the game to be a retail success - no matter what happens, there are some good facts to bear in mind. 1 - There is a bedrock set of fans and they'll play this game for years so long as it's good for modding. 2 - They've already paid, which mitigates the chance of the 'pour millions in, get $75k back after 2 years' situation. But to make it really shine a bunch of retail customers would be nice on top of all this - and they'll look at PA with different eyes than the group who played PA and Supcom. Thanks why I started the viewtopic.php?f=64&t=49390 thread - people coming in without a background in TA etc should see an art style that's revolutionary - to match the gameplay which will be revolutionary. If it looks derivative, but has revolutionary gameplay, many won't scratch deep enough to discover it.
Starcraft betas were/are basically for the e-sports participants to give them time before official release to work on their game before tournaments change to the new version, etc. Or at least that's my observation.
From what I saw I noticed a lot of unit/balance changes, and as HotS is building upon the already existing engine used for WoL doing that kind of balance stuff with real players is definitely better than most 'Betas' Nnot to mention I'm sure either Blizzard has a whole QA team in-house or a big contract with a QA firm that handles a lot of the engine stability type stuff. Thing to remember is that every game has some form of Alpha and Beta Phase, the problem is more so when consumers are introduced, usually by the time a significant number get in there isn't all that much left to do really aside from handling those weird 1-million scenarios and things like balance fine-tuning. So the Problem is not that PA's Beta isn't good enough, just that people are getting access way sooner than usual but many don't grasp what the difference is because they only have 1 point of reference(That being of the "PR/Demo" type Betas). As I said, over time things will turn around, guys like Uber are pretty much the trailblazers in this regard, and to quote one of the 'sayings' or whatever from the Curiosity program, "Dare Mighty Things" BTW, Curiosity's 1 year anniversary of Landing on Mars just passed on August 6th, here's to many more years to come! Mike
