Update 312 Now Live on Steam! - Natural Selection 2
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Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Update 312 Now Live on Steam! - Natural Selection 2
The Halloween event and free weekend went great, but it was not without its issues. Luckily we were able to resolve the issues without needing to do a steam update...
Comments
Negative statement:
Serverbrowser:
- For me, with fibre, its filling up really slow the servers..
- and its horrible, that it is still so jiggly, that the order of the servers is constantly changing .... so without the Filter where I type in a name.. I couldn't even join the server I want to because when I try to klick on Server #1... suddenly #2 pops out under my mouse and I join Server #2...
If there were a "cancel" button it would help, that the Serverbrowser is standing still and not refreshing... so I can join the server I want to......
We can't do anything about it without your help, because we didn't see performance issues during our internal testing.
@IronHorse is there a thread you could link to that explains the process behind recording a plog?
Here are the instructions on how to gather data on your performance problems, for UWE to review.
Type "p_logall" without quotes in the console (~ key) whenever you want to begin recording in game (don't do this until you at least spawn in a round)
then you can type p_endlog to end it /or just wait for the round to end/ or map to change/ or just quit the game and it will end automatically. Try to keep it more than 5 minutes and less than 30 if possible. (File size reasons)
Then navigate to your hidden folder
c:/users/YOU/appdata/roaming/natural selection 2/
And you will find your file, something *.plog
Zip it/ compress it.
Upload it to somewhere on the internet
Make a thread in the tech support forums, and put a link to your .plog file there.
This will give UWE a frame by frame analysis of what is going on, so for best results try to pick a time when you can best reproduce your lowest performance that you said you get.
Include your techsupport.zip file with this compressed plog.
Even having some of your guys' techsupport zip files would help, to see if theres any commonality. Right now there's nothing to go on but 3 people saying its worse.
@IronHorse
Sorry, i dont have the time and effort to do any kind of logging into this game anymore.. it just a hopeless case when the logs are getting ignored and the performance is getting worse by each and single patch..
Only thing i liked in this patch was the Orange lights (my own preference tbh)
I dont know, maybe the players in the playtesting isnt used to play with 140+ fps in this game, or they just playing on 60hz screens.. Cause NO WAY didnt anybody notice the fps drops.. especially in bigger fights and certain rooms...
When you do the playtesting... and i've actually seen one it just feels like people are playing a "public" game and not actually "testing" anything at all.. This is after speaking with casual and more non-casual players
When you do these kind of playtesting, do you actually kill hives? And having like a 5v6 or 6v6 fights with entities?
Either do it properly, or don't do it at all... we all understand the financial aspect, but cmon... At this point I'd be glad if the PDT was dispersed and replaced by CDT... maybe it's too late for that too since most contributing players left.
Regarding the current FPS issues (i actually noticed increased performance, +5fps for me), you can't expect your players to do the playtesting for you. This has recurred on these forums several times, but you still don't get it:
When we launch a 4 year old game to spend our weekly ~6hour freetime, we don't want to waste it on generating reports for you guys. Nothing personal, it's just that time is a valuable commodity for everyone. And no, sending back reports is not making the game better on the long term.
We ARE at the long term now, and the game has stagnated. Can we just please settle at a bug-free version and leave it there, so the ~200 players left can at least enjoy some weekend bashing?
Playtesters aren't exactly falling out of the sky. We are lucky to have 12 players be able to test fixes and bug hunt for an hour and a half, then play 2 rounds to see if there's any showstoppers.
If one of those twelve testers aren't impacted by a performance drop because they are like you or me and their hardware/software combo is not producing any issue - Then we don't know that it exists, let alone what's causing it.
If you have a better idea on how to find issues that affect a specific group or select individuals besides having a varied hardware range of testers, by all means please suggest.
Lastly, while I appreciate people sharing their issues in here, the amount of time it took you to do so could have been spent helping others like yourself by providing data that we need.
Just a few weeks ago some users were having huge fps issues and reporting it in our tech support forums.. it turned out it was a crap nvidia driver.
I also don't know of anyone's plogs who have been ignored. Just two weeks ago a bug that affected everyone's fps was found because of users providing them in our discord.
This may happen much more than some of you realize. Even ceasing development of Ns2 would not solve everyone's technical support issues.
Will 64-bits NS2 alleviate that or not?
There is not. You may not feel ready but it is time to learn. Maybe try the Dungeon gaming less than 1800 hive skill server.
Thanks for the replay and the advice. I will try this server.
I've applied for linux playtesting 3 times using the google forms... noone felt like contacting me. Later on, when I was having regular crashes and wrote about it here, I was told I should've volunteered on discord. I wrote in general chat, noone bothered to contact me yet again.
Mine may be some rare example, but from my point of view the devs aren't really trying THAT hard if they passed on a niche player of the niche players (linux).
I'm an app dev so I know how hard it is to push out a bug-free software and that user feedback is invaluable - not to mention software environment issues. But what I've seen about public playtests is just pub play, with minimal to no objectives. When we do tests, we have a checklist to go through. We know what parts of the code we've changed and more-or-less know what errors that can cause.
I don't see the infrastructure at UWE to live up to their aspirations (speaking about NS2). I don't care if its financial, human or technological reason... the bottom line is that the game is being meddled with constantly with an undermanned staff, and the results are not so convincing.
Sure, it could be much worse, I don't mean to shittalk on the devs (I cant emphasize that enough), but it's a far cry from optimal...
Not even going into all the other issues with your post, I just wanted to point out how that reads...
I dont see how my puzzlement over a linux playtester being neglected while the forum is riddled with linux error reports is flawed.
My point was that it's a niche game, and in that small group there's also a niche, linux playeres. But I guess you interpreted it as personal boasting, which doesnt read well on you particularly.
No, to me it sounded like "if the devs aren't interested in the niche of a niche of all players, clearly they aren't trying very hard", which just sounds insulting. Plus I thought by "niche of a niche" you mean "linux players" as the first niche and "has an issue" as the second.
When public playtests occur, it's ONLY for warm bodies to play some typical rounds precisely to see if there are any issues that the 12 to 24 other hardware/software combos did not suffer from.
The public does not sit through the boring, tedious, and necessary testing portion that occur every single PT.
You're never going to see the showstoppers we see, or deal with a broken build, so long as its a public PT.
As for your linux woes : I will concede that is an area that is not receiving any attention because there aren't really any linux devs on board anymore. It's a real shame, and I feel bad for a lot of users. Some have no issues, but others can barely play. But to be fair that's not the same as saying everyone who submits a plog is getting ignored.
Remember when christmas and new years happen mid way through a relatively large update that can be seen on the trello? ah, holiday times.
Looking at the NS2 trello doing tab, it seems UWE is tackling some bigger projects at the moment.
https://trello.com/c/JY6tVEOZ/326-build-system-64bit-builds
https://trello.com/c/El3GphDt/310-64-bit-build
https://trello.com/c/mmok4DbY/313-directx-11-improvements-fixes
https://trello.com/c/6DsPFVB5/98-texture-optimization
https://trello.com/c/gBDDiKvu/325-steamworks-match-seeding
https://trello.com/c/0d25UH5t/294-play-now-matchmaking-hybrid
https://trello.com/c/g3pyx1bK/301-post-round-stats-progression-ui
... and more.
Nothing in the doing tab looks like it can be done quickly. It looks like the next patch/s might be really good.
But but but we could be getting inconsequential number changes in the meantime!