NS beta 155 first impressions

T.T.H.

I just played around with beta 155 for like 2 hours and want to share some feedback (ordered by my-humble-opinion-priority, most important ones most first):

<b>F1</b>
If there is a big "press F! to give us feedback" in me main menu screen, well, it should actually do something when I press F1.

<b>connectivity</b>
Get your connection problems fixed. I read some <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/forums/index.php?showtopic=111496" target="_blank">troubleshooting guide</a>, I disabled Steam ingame overlays, I made some settings the the router but I could not even connect to the server I created locally ingame with "Create". Regarding online servers it works, sometimes, with a wild mix of "can't establish connection", "server full", hickup, endlesswait, crash'n'burn and so on. Sometimes I had the feeling that after one connection attempt failed no following one would ever succeed so I restarted the game frequently. After being finally ingame somewhen there is the "connection problems detected..." flashing up all he time at the beginning and later in the game sometime somewhen somehow I get disconnected - I can still walk around but can not interact anymore. Only way out is the task manager then.

<b>FPS</b>
I thought I have a decent PC - seems not so. As soon as gameplay gets some action FPS begins to drop. I won't post my PC specs as it should be kinda obvious that for others it ain't that great, too.

<b>rage against the machine</b>
When I leave the buying menu of the armory my character automatically fires some rounds right into the armory. Personally I don't think the equipment it gave me was so bad that I had to shoot the poor thing.

<b>marine commander action feedback</b>
When I do something as marine commander I'd wish to get some cleared feedback whether my action succeeded or failed, e.x. after trying to build something (plenty clicking involved) the MAC goes to the position but does nothing. Setting this "new unit rally point" of the "set sentry target" actions have very tiny feedback whether it worked.

<b>sentry firing arc</b>
- the firing arc should be displayed visually in some way (Alien Swarm does a very good job there)
- it should be possible to set the sentry firing arc while building the sentry
- setting a new firing arc (turning the sentry) should not take aaaaaaaaaaages
- setting a new firing arc should have better feedback whether it worked (Alien Swarm once again does a very good job there)

<b><i>conclusion</i></b>
It looks very promising but in it's current state it can get very frustrating. What I hated most was getting on a server (needed dozens of attempts) and after being on a server getting disconnected randomly without obvious reason. Anyway, I'll keep an eye on the progress.

Snougar

Welcome to the forum! :)

This is a pretty fair summary of 155.

I have the same experiences with joining games. But I find it easier to setup a server, join it and wait for others to join (I think most of the joining issues are server side, so the more servers running, probably the higher chance of connecting? Also a fair few people who failed to connect to other servers said they connected instantly to mine with no issues **confused**)

With your FPS, have you tried playing with shadows disabled? (r_shadows false). I usually play with this and it gives me a 5-8fps boost. Also "r_flash false" can give a huge boost, but it will disable large parts of the GUI (I only use it for alien).

Hopefully Beta 156 on Monday (fingers crossed) will fix a lot of the server side crashes.

Also nice write up! :)

WhiteZero

<!--quoteo(post=1808023:date=Nov 21 2010, 09:06 AM:name=T.T.H.)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (T.T.H. @ Nov 21 2010, 09:06 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1808023"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b>F1</b>
If there is a big "press F! to give us feedback" in me main menu screen, well, it should actually do something when I press F1.

<b>connectivity</b>
Get your connection problems fixed. I read some <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/forums/index.php?showtopic=111496" target="_blank">troubleshooting guide</a>, <b>I disabled Steam ingame overlays</b><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Think you answered your own problem there.

Mr. Epic

<!--quoteo(post=1808023:date=Nov 21 2010, 09:06 AM:name=T.T.H.)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (T.T.H. @ Nov 21 2010, 09:06 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1808023"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I just played around with beta 155 for like 2 hours and want to share some feedback (ordered by my-humble-opinion-priority, most important ones most first):

<b>F1</b>
If there is a big "press F! to give us feedback" in me main menu screen, well, it should actually do something when I press F1.

<b>connectivity</b>
Get your connection problems fixed. I read some <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/forums/index.php?showtopic=111496" target="_blank">troubleshooting guide</a>, I disabled Steam ingame overlays, I made some settings the the router but I could not even connect to the server I created locally ingame with "Create". Regarding online servers it works, sometimes, with a wild mix of "can't establish connection", "server full", hickup, endlesswait, crash'n'burn and so on. Sometimes I had the feeling that after one connection attempt failed no following one would ever succeed so I restarted the game frequently. After being finally ingame somewhen there is the "connection problems detected..." flashing up all he time at the beginning and later in the game sometime somewhen somehow I get disconnected - I can still walk around but can not interact anymore. Only way out is the task manager then.

<b>FPS</b>
I thought I have a decent PC - seems not so. As soon as gameplay gets some action FPS begins to drop. I won't post my PC specs as it should be kinda obvious that for others it ain't that great, too.

<b>rage against the machine</b>
When I leave the buying menu of the armory my character automatically fires some rounds right into the armory. Personally I don't think the equipment it gave me was so bad that I had to shoot the poor thing.

<b>marine commander action feedback</b>
When I do something as marine commander I'd wish to get some cleared feedback whether my action succeeded or failed, e.x. after trying to build something (plenty clicking involved) the MAC goes to the position but does nothing. Setting this "new unit rally point" of the "set sentry target" actions have very tiny feedback whether it worked.

<b>sentry firing arc</b>
- the firing arc should be displayed visually in some way (Alien Swarm does a very good job there)
- it should be possible to set the sentry firing arc while building the sentry
- setting a new firing arc (turning the sentry) should not take aaaaaaaaaaages
- setting a new firing arc should have better feedback whether it worked (Alien Swarm once again does a very good job there)

<b><i>conclusion</i></b>
It looks very promising but in it's current state it can get very frustrating. What I hated most was getting on a server (needed dozens of attempts) and after being on a server getting disconnected randomly without obvious reason. Anyway, I'll keep an eye on the progress.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->


As others said before, the F1 key not working is because you disabled the steam overlay. The f1 key loads up the steam overlay browser and automatically directs it to the feedback site, so since you disabled it nothing will happen.

Connectivity wise, opening ports won't make a difference as a player. There are some issues with servers misreporting player counts and there seems to be a bug that if you fail to connect once it will make it more difficult to connect to other servers later. I would say that for build 155, probably until the next patch gets published, the best way to get into a game is a start the game up and only try to connect to servers with fewer than 6 players. When the numbers are low it likely means the server was restarted recently and thus it won't have the misreported numbers. Also, if you fail to connect a bunch (not the "full" error, but the "failed to establish connection") just quit the game and reload it. Eventually you will get into a server, and if its a fresh one it will be fun for a while.

FPS kind of depends on a few things, the biggest impact is the texture memory usage. If you have 512 or under you MUST set to awful setting, and even then you really need a 512 to prevent issues. Medium needs ~700-800 and high setting needs more than 1GB. The other big hit comes when shadows are enabled. If you disable shadows using the "r_shadows 0" command in the console, you should gain a lot of frames. You can re-enable shadows with the counter-intuitive "r_shadows". So, try to minimize the graphics parts for right now and see if everything else is up to the challenge. If it runs well when the graphics are junk, it means that there is lots of room for improvement on your machine as the game becomes more optimized.

Armory buying is kind of funny because you expect a click to exit the menu but it doesn't right now. The thing to do is just backup, you don't' need to click anything to exit. I bet this will be corrected in a future patch, its a pretty simple case that if the menu is up don't fire the weapon.

Audible/visual feedback of some sort will be in there at some point, iirc the com interface is going to have a makeover because it is still using the flash version. When they upgrade it, and as more features get put in, these will probably be there as well.

Sentry wise, it would be nice to have some sort of visual to indicate the arc. Perhaps a laser sight that dots a line on both sides? Maybe a com-only overlay? I bet when gameplay becomes the remaining priority this will be addressed in some way.

Conclusion- yes, it is very promising. As alpha testers we saw a lot of the visual elements but the gameplay was not really possible because the interactivity just wasn't there. It was a difficult disconnect, which is part of the reason so many people showed concern in that thread "ns not ready for beta". Having such an awesome concept, and knowing how good it would/could/will be, but with such an underwhelming ability to show this off was a well founded concern. With these recent patches, however, the interactivity is now becoming (and under some conditions is) quite possible. Those visual elements that before were disjointed models or concepts are beginning to work fluidly, and at the rate they have been able to make the game playable the beta should be really fun in the near future.

Kouji_San

Nice first post, I was expecting a flametroll. But what you say is indeed a fair review of the 155 build. Some reading material you might like as well:

Max speaks (build155 vs build156 next one)
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2010/11/ns2_closed_beta_status" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2010...sed_beta_status</a>