Release 11 Instructions

Darkstar, when I have a crash in the game and I get the notice that its in the crash folder, does it automatically send you a crash report? Also, why not set up the ability to send a crash report when that message pops up, I have that ability in other crashes with other software..

also if its not auto sending, what is the correct procedure for sending the crash info in?

thanks
lew

 

We capture most of these automatically. If we need more information we will contact you.

 

Just wanted to take a moment to say that I think this has been the best release so far. I've been having a lot of fun.

 

From a player perspective, you could be right.

From a gaming industry perpsective, Steam = chaching! $$

More development dollars = a better game for you.

 

Oakwind, I disagree. Steam works well for me.

 

So have to do *actual work* to get to all of the Tour Guides?

 

To me, this sucks BIG TIME! SotA WAS SUPPOSED to be unique and it is moving towards WOW CLONE with every decision made to give in to the WOW MINDSET!

In case you didn't notice: a LOT of your backers want to be able to explore ALL of the world, not just a 'few' selected scenes we are being hand-led in to...
If people aren't aware they can enter non-named hexes, maybe the game mechanics need to be adjusted to make that more obvious, rather than dumbing it down. And even if half of the people don't use it, does that mean the other half should be denied the possibility?

And as for having 'the same scene' over and over again... Ever heard of procedural map generation? Talk to your friends at Star Citizen for some ideas!

I still back the game, but I am VERY disappointed in the team right now!

PS: This isn't "slightly different"... This is even a bigger deviation from the original premise than the paper map was!

 

Best move so far. The way the map is now makes so much more sense than before. As long as the areas are large enough to allow for exploring and contain interesting areas to explore and gather resources I can see this being a huge success. Now areas will exist with a purpose and not because of some photocopied or randomly generated bland repeat that is just used to fill the blank spaces in between. (Though a few of those can be thrown in anyway for good measure)

Now we have a map worth exploring and I can see how development will add to these areas and make them grow into something special.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I won't be able to play until sometime tomorrow, so I can't really say much about the new map direction yet. (Although I do wonder how they would be able to continue the claim that they 'doubled the size of the map' when it sounds like they've actually reduced the number of usable hexes from even the original 64x64.)

Generally I'm a firm supporter of the game, and mostly willing to let Portalarium make their own decisions to produce the best (and most unique) game they think they can, but lately I can't help getting the feeling that the team have only just realised that perhaps they promised far more than they'll be able to deliver.

 

Maybe instead of a dozen or so individual templated forest hexes, they can instead create one super large forest scene!?! Maybe that's what they're going to do. They could even drop you in at various locations around the scene edges, or even middle of the scene, depending on where your avatar was standing on the overland map, on top of the forest area for that scene.

 

The map is no longer explorable, that is the problem! The only thing worse than what they've done is popping up a lost of scenes to chose from when you exit a scene... To me the new map direction is nothing more than a scene-picker in map format...
If that is what they want, just make it a static 2d map and have us click directly on where we want to go... That way we'll at least save time!

Scenes are never large enough to explore and gather resources, unless they expand them to be as large as the removed hexes together, which they cannot do due to loading times!

A map is only explorable when you can go everywhere on the map! And scenes can be interesting even when auto-generated (procedural maps based on a fixed seed), just ask anyone who's been playing Star Citizen!

(PS: If you only want to go in to the named scenes - because that (apparently) makes them interesting and it makes more sense - that's fine, but why should those that want a large sandbox world be victimized? I could respect the decision *somewhat* if they said "We've found we cannot deliver what we promised, so for Episode 1 we are forced to limit the map to named scenes", but the given reasons are not good enough reasons - at least for us who want a full world where we can explore everything - to abandon the possibilities for those who *do* want to use it. Also the data they are using to justify this is BS too, since there is nothing right now to draw you in to those hexes, there's going to be nobody going there, so that makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I know there's - different, procedurally generated - scenes to explore where I can gather resource or hunt, there's a reason to explore them, until then, not so much!)

 

I've been thinking about the new approach on the dual scale map, and i side with Bodhbh Dearg on this. I acknowledge the initial concept was a little bit ambitious, but i expect Devs not to drop it and give us a world to explore when the game is released or, at least, in episode one.

Is not that i dislike the current concept either... I know it can be expanded by adding other nameplates difficult to see (maybe you need to pass very close, maybe you need to talk to an NPC to reveal it), or in the way Smack said (creating bigger scenes) though i see the latter improbable because of loading times.

I'm just not sure if making the current dual scale map model as "big" as the former one could be even more work. In the former model, it was matter of having some sort of random scene generator for each time you enter the scene. That's lots of work, but once you have it working you just need to update the algorithm with new seeds/elements to expand the content; if well done, it could last until episode 5. On the other side, current model is easier to implement since you only prepare the scenes you want to be explored, but they'll need to do the same work every episode to design the new scenes.

I side with Bodhbh because my current feeling is a bit of dissapointment. Nonetheless i hope they don't leave explorers forgotten, so they make the dual scale map something worth of going all over it.

 

Every hex should be explorable. If there are not enough different scenes currently to fill the hexes, add them when they are done. The actual scene strategy took away a main reason for me to play sota: exploration and the feel of a vast world. The strategy seems to bring sota a step closer to themepark and a step farther away from sandbox. This feels not the be the right direction for having fun with exploration in sota.

....aaaaand I very much like the look of the polished overland map, great work. Thanks.

 

I imagine hexes do technically exist behind the scenes......im sure new scenes will be added as well.

 

I can understand your viewpoint, looking at its current state, how you might see that. The truth is there is no limit to content they can add this way. Entered areas can have a multitude of interconnected scenes and dungeons in it, without " making it one large area ". Areas of interest on the overland map can be added in anywhere and at any time. Also, whose to say there will be no hexes in between these areas of interest for people to explore.

Like this we may have 1000 areas instead of 4000 photocopied repetitive areas, 3000 of which will never be explored because... well... who cares its the same anyway.

There should be main areas of interest besides just cities that are clearly marked and identifiable. Scatter in some open regions, just because, and you've got one fantastic world to explore.

Don't view it in its current state but as what it could become and the magnitude of possibilities that exist. This is just the seed. The tree that can grow from this can stand the test of time if given half a chance.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Am I meant to have access to my pledge items in this release? In R10 I had a Founder Shield in my inventory I was able to equip, since then I have upgraded to Founder level but in R11 I do not have the shield or the cloak or the Tunic.

 

Perhaps Chris can chime in on this. My understanding is that the loading times are lengthy due to the sheer number of objects in the scene. For towns, this can get crazy due to the number of houses, decoration objects, etc. But we're talking about wilderness scenes here. Villages, towns, cities, control points, etc. are all currently custom built so there's no change in the strategy there. The change here is in regards to the templated biomes. These biomes do not have a crazy number of unique objects to load. We have vast deserts, plains, forests, which aren't a whole lot of high poly objects. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the current biome scenes are quick to load and seem to have room for further expansion.

No, your pledge items won't be available until R12, per the Q4 Schedule.

 

It seems a plausible enough explanation, that loading times are lengthy due to number of objects in the scene. But, how do other games manage this without those kind of load times? It seems to me that ESO has many of those items sitting on the client side, but I could be wrong about that.

As it is, since areas are so small, it's really easy to get from region to region, thus endless loading screens. At least that's been my experience so far.

 

ESO is a custom engine built specifically for the game. Unity is a generic engine and has to have a lot of custom work done especially for what SotA is trying to accomplish. There are asynchronous operations that Unity provides but they are very poorly implemented, based on a post from Chris (they ended up writing their own). There's still a ton of work that Chris and team needs to do to tweak Unity so it works for SotA -- especially when we're all clamoring for thousands of objects in each home, with each town having upwards of a hundred homes, hundreds of players, NPCs, etc. Unity was simply not made for a game of this scope, at least out of the box. Chris has a lot of work cut out for him still.

 

So, given the information you're saying, is March 15 an achievable deadline? (or did they push it further down the road?) Sorry, I haven't been paying attention to these discussions.