PTE Stream: 68772-main (Read before playing or posting)

Discussion in 'Support!' started by garat, July 11, 2014.

  1. cptconundrum

    cptconundrum Post Master General

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    This confused me too because PTE "Single Player" goes directly to Galactic War. I know most of us here are fine with going to Multiplayer to get a game against the AI, but a lot of people are so stuck in the convention of Skirmish/Multiplayer that they don't even think to check in the second one for skirmish. If anything, changing "Multiplayer" to "skirmish" would be better because then the confused people understand it and people looking for multiplayer will be more likely to find lobby creation too.

    I kind of like that the system editor ignores the smash. It allowed me to change the timing planets get by just simulating the system until they passed each other. My biggest problem right now is that I can't get a precise timing since the planets start moving as soon as you start selecting your spawn point. It allows players to potentially wait their full two minutes if they would prefer to force a shorter timer.
    aevs likes this.
  2. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    Either you missed the point of my post, or I'm not sure what it is you're saying.
  3. wondible

    wondible Post Master General

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    I double checked with my non-cosmic account, it doesn't seem to be restricted.

    Screen Shot 2014-07-11 at 17.37.31 .png
    ArchieBuld likes this.
  4. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

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    That's likely what's gonna happen, yes. For a brand new player, Galactic War means nothing. We're not 100% decided on the flow from here, but for now, since Galactic War is the primary single player, we wanted to make the term something most people understand, and as we continue working on UI flow, figure out how to break all these up in the most sensible fashion possible.
    igncom1, wondible and cptconundrum like this.
  5. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    Just, please, don't push it to live as it stands now. The Steam forums will implode. Galactic War might be what you see as the primary single-player mode, but that's not necessarily what a number of the playerbase think. Skirmish is something people expect to see, and they expect to see it in single-player. If it's not there, then it doesn't exist, cue the howls.
  6. brandonpotter

    brandonpotter Well-Known Member

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    Weird, I dont see that one at all.
  7. duncane

    duncane Active Member

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    How about pushing the single player option then prompts you to pick either "Galactic War (randomized campaign)" or "Skirmish Lobby"?

    Or you could have 3 buttons on the main menu - Galactic War, Skirmish, Multiplayer.
    fajitas23 and cptconundrum like this.
  8. wondible

    wondible Post Master General

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    So just for kicks I loaded up an old system with lots of collisions (positioning restrictions in system editor) It's easily reproducible with an newly created PTE system. Low priority since no one would do this (intentionally...) except as a troll ;^)

    If a planet collision occurs before a player finishes landing on one of said planets, the player goes into limbo (which is apparently located somewhere in the sun)

    Replayid: 13210550635493481063 (newly generated system)

    I can select my commander in the sun, but can't do anything. If it happens to an AI, I can see gamestats changing, so they don't seem to be similarly inconvenienced.

    Screen Shot 2014-07-11 at 18.15.30 .png

    Different game with multiple AI - they are still going (not recorded because I forgot I had cheats on) Easy to reproduce on request.

    Screen Shot 2014-07-11 at 18.15.59 .png
  9. tollman

    tollman Member

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    This seems like the clearest option to me, each accessible with one click from the first page.
    You would have to probably do two other things though.
    1) When you mouse over the buttons on the main menu you get a short discription of what they are. Some people won't know what Galactic War is.
    2) To avoid confusion Skirmish should only be single player skirmish and the normal multiplayer lobby should not be accessible from there.
    cptconundrum likes this.
  10. Engineer1234

    Engineer1234 Well-Known Member

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    System creator keeps crashing on me, not using any mods.
    Steps to reproduce:

    Create new system, put down a default planet, hit preview to generate terrain, then try and move one of the sliders like water height, client crashes.
    Entering a number instead of moving the slider also crashes.

    If you don't hit preview yet you can use the sliders, after that you can hit preview and it'll generate a planet just fine.
    Crash only seems to happen when altering the values after terrain has been generated.

    Earth desert and tropical biomes planets suffer from this problem, lava metal and moon biomes are ok, might be water related, haven't tried every possible combination yet.
    Not using any mods, deleted the PTE folder and redownloaded, problem persists.
  11. aevs

    aevs Post Master General

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    I tried opening and closing the pathing view in one game; closing the pathing view crashed my game, reconnected to the game and it crashed again.

    Boom bots appear to deal no damage for some reason, though it could be that they explode before reaching their target or something.

    EDIT: Also got a crash in the system editor, changing a 'desert' planet type into an 'earth' one. Not really much else I can say for that though...
    Last edited: July 12, 2014
  12. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

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    I think it's would be helpful if you add some advice for AI skirmishes in "Multiplayer" tab.
    I already seen many players who didn't understand they can create AI skirmish there.
  13. mjshorty

    mjshorty Well-Known Member

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    just for your info on mods, mod-batch size works xD
  14. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

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    The point is that AI skirmishes should not be in multi-player, in my opinion, unless they involve multiple players. :)
  15. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

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    I agree with it, but I just mean that when you renamed GW to "Single Player" current location of skirmishes will confuse everyone even more.
  16. mjshorty

    mjshorty Well-Known Member

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    ok i have played through some of the PTE, very interesting changes and i like the menu changes as well.
    Im not sure if you can change the orbits of planets or not (havent lived long enough/beat everything else by that point) however it would be needed since those planets will eventually smash into eachother and be wiped off the map
    (i love how there are 2 types of collisions, glancing and head on) because sometimes you really need to save a planet, and need to get it out of the way.
    very interesting stuff so far
  17. thetrophysystem

    thetrophysystem Post Master General

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    Yes, this is what I meant earlier.

    I like if they used the conventional traditional way, where "local singleplayer" has Galactic War and Skirmish which automatically uses AI as slots, and a Multiplayer that automatically assumes server and client and other possible client connections and can assign AI when directed (and multiplayer galactic war obviously).

    Then again, that really doubles over and specializes two options. I wouldn't mind technically their new way of having galactic war as one tab and single matches as another, and galactic war defaulting to single and having an option to publish to multi, as well as single matches defaulting to single and having an option to publish as multi.
  18. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    Campaign, Skirmish, Multiplayer. It's the naming scheme almost all RTSs use.
  19. vorell255

    vorell255 Active Member

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    I agree. But I also know nothing is finish. Galactic war as it is right now is a randomly generated single player campaign. But it will hopefully eventually be playable with multiple players. So I understand why @garat doesn't want to change the UI too much atm. Because all the options and possibilities aren't fleshed out yet.

    It seems reasonable to me long term that you may have multiplayer galactic war campaigns as well as the current skirmish we have. And the same for single player. Which of course the UI doesn't support those flows atm.

    I know @Quitch you are worried about people being confused. But the question is when 1.0 goes live will everyone come back and try it again that has bought it and will they then with a finished product be able to understand what is happening? I know it is a little frustrating that we have waves of new players every time there is a sale and then a majority of those players then drop off because they want to wait for more features or a finished product. Hopefully none of this will affect the long term success of the game. In my experience if the game is good people will play it, tell their friends, and the game will be successful. It is just a little awkward with games exposing more of the development process these days.
  20. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    I think you're missing the point. The current PTE setup is inferior to the existing live setup and introduces further confusion into a situation where it already exists. If skirmish is integrated into the single-player button, or gets its own button, before it hits live then fantastic. Otherwise not so much.

    Hahahhahaahhaahah. No.

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