Early R6 Experience on OS X the worst yet

So, I know this only affects a small subset of users, I'm sure all the windows testers will be fine, but It's really disappointing to see this many problems in the OS X client when the previous versions (even R1 !!!) were in much better shape. Since R4, I've lost the ability to launch the app correctly, I can't leave any town via path or moon gate, and the lighting was messed up in 22, (corrected in 23), I can't bring up my character, I can't do *anything*

Here's some screenshots of my experiences:




The most egregious problem : Bringing up character crashes the game, even with different graphics cards... https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...r-in-patch-23-crashes-game.10848/#post-183666

 

Fixed it!!

 

Hahaha, yes Grace... but I really don't want to run windows for games unless I absolutely have to.

We were promised a multi-platform game, and since I have the hardware, the time, and the inclination to test on the platform that is represented by 15 percent of SoTA players,

I would like to help out with correcting issues.

I have had no problems playing up through R4 (well, not NO problems, but it was playable and getting better each release.)

R5 is where the OS X related problems started and we definatley told them about it in the R5 bug reports.

So I'm not expecting in R6 for the game to become unplayable... I've logged many hours on OSX builds of this game since R1.

 

*facepalm*

 

Ok, so you're also experiencing the graphics-on-acid issue. I thought it was just my specific Mac Pro issue. With build 23, I believe they turned off tone mapping as that's resolved the oversaturation issue for me.

 

I agree. This release is unplayable on the Mac and is a terrible disappointment. In the past I have been able to play but never made it through a Moongate. This release I cannot even play without crashing. Each time the crash is the game freezes up and what is worse it cannot be Force Quit. The only way out is to literally pull the plug. I must say that I have noticed since the first release even that the Macintosh is being treated as a second-class and low-priority platform. But when I pledged (at the Knight level) I felt very confident that this would be like Warcraft -- as complete and as fun to play on the Mac as on a PC. I am no longer confident and had I known how this was going to go at the time would have chosen a much lower pledge. So far, no fun at all with the beta releases on the Mac and this is so bad as to verge on insulting.

 

OK, I give up for today. Just now was online for about three minutes when the graphics began to shake. I noticed that when I tried to move I could see other graphics below the shaking graphics but they never became the main graphics. Decided to let it go. After about four to five mints the graphics stopped shaking although my avatar was in a different spot from having moved when I could not see the movement. It seemed to be working so what the heck tried a Moongate. Immediately froze at Loading Scene 0%. For crying out loud.

 

Oh, and it is imfreakingpossible to quit or force quit or even shutdown the computer or restart so pardon me while I go UNPLUG my computer.

 

I haven't had time to sit down and play, but I was defeated several times in my attempt to claim a lot last night.

Definitely issues loading new scenes - over world map seemed to do ok, but moongate problems continue to be a frustration.

I don't know if there's a way to provide for shutting down the game on a lockup - I have to restart bc the wheel of death has been engaged.

Looking forward to playing regardless, but hopefully things won't be too bad. Find out tonight! I suppose I can work on my dance moves if I'm stuck in town.
"Look out dames, look out knights, R6 presents Kid Dyn-O-MITE!"

I will say, the graphics are noticeably more beautiful - hope I don't have to turn them down all the way to play

 

I've found that my macbook pro with the Intel Iris graphics chip works much better. I'm able to get through moon gates, walk around town without crashing. My iMac with the extra Nvidia chip/graphics adapter seems to exhibit the myriad issues other Mac folks are having as well. I'm not sure if this is the smoking gun per say, but it has been in my case.

 

Oh and during R5 I ended up setting up Bootcamp and booting to Windows to play. I'm likely to do the same to play R6 now that a number of the bugs have been reported for OSX and it's become unplayable on my iMac. Time to have fun playing now

 

I just played this game for the first time. I have to say that I think this game looks insanely dated (uh 90s?), the art direction is terrible (90s again), and the overall performance I'm experiencing on a Mac Pro is way less than stellar.

I've held off on trying out the alpha because I assumed it would be a little sluggish. But sluggish, dated looking, and graphic anomalies are not what I expected. It's like playing Runescape, but with 9fps and loading screens that take ten minutes.

 

I can play a little further on the Iris Pro with Crystalwell (128 eDram buffer!) than I can on the Nvidia 750m. Like maybe 60 seconds more.

Luckily for me that card is only about 15 percent slower than the Nvidia card, although the nvidia card has better ram type (GDDR5) and 2x as much.

It's really not any better. The crashes are just random, I can sometimes play for a while without one occurring.

I'm able to force quit with no problems.

I've sent to apple every single crash report, so I hope you can access those.

I played many hours with R5, even getting into a screenshot and hangout with Lord British, so I'm a little confused why this version is such a regression.

Surely there is at least one state of the art macbook there for testing that is checked ?

As a mac user I'm used to being treated as a second class citizen for gaming. This game is one of the bright spots for me... An RPG that is online and 3 different platforms. I'm really disturbed by how regressed this one became compared to R5 for us Mac users.

I mean, I've got a machine capable of playing Bioshock Infinite and Witcher 2 at pretty respectable frame rates for a laptop... Shroud should be no problem.

I did try turning the settings down, but the game is still unplayable and untestable due to random crashing. Sigh. I will miss this weekend and the obligatory meet ups.

Hopefully we get a patch this weekend that fixes the hanging issues. 24 is a little better, but it still seems like equipping your character kills the game, the game hangs after a period in owls head, I can't leave by any method, and chests have some kind of wacky behavior. (was fine before !)

I'm pretty sure the crashes are random at this point, regardless of which GPU I use.

Finally I would like to say - Please keep this thread positive. It's okay to express dismay, but I don't want this thread to become a hatefest on how you think the game sucks or has dated graphics. Stability on OS X for this release is my main concern - I've been happy with the graphics for a little bit. It is a multiplayer game after all on an indie budget. Perspective.

 

Hopefully this will be helpful.

Character window corruption screenshot on nvidia 750m:

 

Yeah... It's always been faster for me native on OS X, but I guess I'll have to setup a bootcamp partition and everything.. yuck.

 

Graphically since patch 23, the game looks great. I've also had a positive experience with the performance on my 27in iMac on Fantastic graphics setting. I'm sure the Dev team will work out the kinks and bring the OS X client up to par with the windows client as far as stability goes. Like everything else, it takes time, particularly since they did a lot of work with the shading and other graphical areas for this release.

Trady of Blix, I'm with you, the trolls should stay out of the threads, especially since their comments don't make sense for what they're trying to compare.

 

Lord Night Owl, I agree very much with you. For the few moments I got to play, it's definitely in the range it needs to be in for me, personally. I don't need anything groundbreaking graphics wise. Just something modern.

A windows user just posted similar issues, so maybe the problems are on the back end and not graphics rendering or GPU driver issues.

They might get it working smoothly over the weekend; you sorry souls. If you're in Austin PM me anytime, I'll buy any of the game devs a drink on me for your troubles and the angst this forum causes

I don't like getting into arguments with people that start talking a lot of "smack talk" that isn't constructive. It usually leads to mods closing threads and warning a ton of people because they don't really know what went on.

I do like good, constructive arguments with some of the interesting people on here however. As long it it doesn't derail threads.

What can you do ? Hope the mods don't take it all out on you lol

 

I've crashed every time I to to the overland map in R6. It has gotten worse.

 

I'm going to try running it NOT in full screen mode, which it seems to go into by default, and see if that's any better.

Server doesn't seem to want to let me in at the moment tho.

It's been the case the last couple releases that things improved later in the weekend after the initial rush of newbies wears off, you know the "people running around towns" stuff.

Hopeful. I am a fan of this game inspite of myself

 

wow that is amazingly bright... I saw that happened to me once... I loaded another program and, when I switched back to SotA, the screen was very bright but slowly adjusted itself...