A comment or two...

ProdigyXLProdigyXL Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 5376Members
in NS General Discussion
<div class="IPBDescription">Playtest much?</div>Before I being, I want to make it clear I really enjoy this mod.  In it's first release it is the most polished, and accomplished mod that we have seen in a long time.  Nevermind Half-Life, it is one of the great mods of our times.  However...

For all the amount of work, the tireless drudgery, and whatnot, I am still disapointed in one aspect.  I know everyone has mentioned the server side lag that has plagued the game, but I want to touch on one thing.  While some lag can be expected before it can be tweaked on a large scale, the amount we have been experienced is just silly.  I find it rediculous that of the year or more we have waited for this, the play testers failed to run a proper game over the internet in different play situations.  They should have done a wider beta test just prior to release to make sure they had lag issues taken care of.  I know there is a patch coming, and I'm happy that they are working on it so quickly, but I still am disapointed with the playtesting/beta testing for this mod.

Hopefully, after a few adjustmeants to the server stuff, everything will be peachy keen.  Congrats otherwise on a truely inspiring Mod.  Future mod developers should learn from your experiences, and this release as how to make an idea become such a kick ### reality.
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Comments

  • BillBill Join Date: 2002-08-08 Member: 1108Members
    Give the playtesters a little more credit, this game had VERY few bugs compared to basically every other mod released and many retail games.  

    It is, I imagine, an impossible feat to release a totally bug free game(I've never seen it done), especially when it's multiplayer and as complex and original as Natural-Selection is.  

    I don't know exactly how the bug got by them, maybe it has something to do with the fact there were 100 some playtesters and now there are over 1000 people constantly trying to play Natural-Selection.  It's a pretty big difference and it's obviously going to bring up circumstances never before seen in the game.
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  • Monkey_Lib_FrontMonkey_Lib_Front Join Date: 2002-05-02 Member: 567Members
    i think hes basically saying how did they miss the lag bug
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  • ProdigyXLProdigyXL Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 5376Members
    Exactly.  I downloaded this expecting bugs, issues, and all kinds of problems so I was ready for about anything.  I was pleasantly surprised though how there really aren't that many bugs.  Sure, the menu stays on your screen sometimes, but you can fix that if you go back and re-roll over it.  I expected there to be some lag here and there as with any new mod.  However this is just mind numbing.  I just can't fathom how they would of missed such a critical game error.  Besides that, they should be rewarded.  This is the best first release of any mod for any game, and they should feel proud.
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  • WaldorfWorldWideWaldorfWorldWide Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 4481Members
    yeah i agree, best mod ever, once the patch comes out, i won't be able to stop playing, even now with a 2000 ping, it's still fun, sentries are so stupid and can't hit me heheheheh <!--emo&:D--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'><!--endemo--> awesome job guys <!--emo&:p--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':p'><!--endemo-->

    <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/asrifle.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::asrifle::'><!--endemo-->   <!--emo&::gorge::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/pudgy.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::gorge::'><!--endemo-->
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  • ShadowDrgnShadowDrgn Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 2230Members
    Maybe all the playtesting servers were quad Xeon boxes with 4gb of ram.  <!--emo&;)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=';)'><!--endemo-->

    It is kinda strange how no one noticed this before.  Fortunately, if you just stick to 10 and 12 man servers, you should be able to find some lag free ones.
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  • XipeTotecXipeTotec Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 2270Members
    The lag issue only comes up on low end machines running games with lots of people.  If the playtesting was done on a decent machine with say 14 people max then it would never have come up.
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  • HikeebaHikeeba Join Date: 2002-10-03 Member: 1418Members
    What XipeTotec said.

    I'm guessing that they never played any massive games.  I always got the feeling they were usually doing things like 7v7 or smaller.  And if the server they used happened to have a fast CPU, it just wouldn't have shown up.
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  • GreedoGreedo Bounty Hunter Join Date: 2002-01-24 Member: 37Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
    Actually, we <i>didn't</i> miss this lag bug, or at least Flayra didn't.  He knew it was there, but he just decided it would be better to release now, instead of spending another week fixing it.  For the most part, if the server op isn't trying to run a 20 player server on a 600Mhz processor, the server lag isn't there.

    We did playtest on fast boxes, yes.  We didn't have the low end machines that some people are using to host servers now.  Our biggest games were generally around 12v12 or so, but the server we tested on is a fast machine.  If you join it now, you won't have any lag problems at all, which is probably one of the reasons why it's full practically 24/7.  65.120.118.134:27016

    Hell, if Flayra hadn't already known what he needed to do to fix the CPU utilization problems, it would probably be a lot longer of a wait for the patch than it will be now.



    <!--EDIT|Greedo386|Nov. 03 2002,00:50-->
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