No more purty colors PLEASE UNTIL.......!

[Netfytr]

You get the bugs ironed out. The same old bugs that have been here forever. What I want to hear about is what is being done about each one. I know this will get flagged for flaming, but it isnt. We should be able to discuss this on these forums and get answers about them. Spawn bug...still here. CTD.....still here. Lag.......still here. These are valid issues. I would like to hear these addressed. ????RATS, your response please. Your comments..

[madrebel]

every mmo has ctds. every program has bugs. youre asking crs to have a perfect program when those don't exist. they fix major known reproducable ctds all the time just look in the dev forum.

define lag. crs can't do much about internet latency. are you talking infantry lag around corners etc? kfs1 has been working on an improved update system that may improve this that hopefully makes it into 1.34.

[Netfytr]

Im just saying we all know what the long standing issues are. I would like to see them addressed. Cant fix them? ok just tell us so we can quit asking. Can fix them? ok tell us which ones are being worked on and the progress made.

[madrebel]

if they find a bug, they fix it. the fact that more bugs crop up when enw things are added should tell you something ... crs is incompetent? i hope that isn't what you're thinking because it isn't true. the truth is adding new code almost always means new bugs.

go look at any mmo's support forums and you'll see ww2ol really isn't that unique. every game ahs bugs every dev team fixes them as they find them.

[Netfytr]

These arent new at all. Whatever they are why not 1-list them, 2- discuss them, 3- get input from CRS on them. I dont think that is too much to ask. I do not think CRS is incompetent, quite the opposite. I would just like the veil of silence on this taboo subject lifted, you know "transparency". No flames just helpful discussion.

[madrebel]

ctd could be caused by any number of things. if they fix one and then another crops up because something new introduced it you can't say it is the same thing or that crs isn't fixing bugs even though the end result is the same.

[jwilly]

You want CRS to allocate an ongoing amount of developer time explaining to you and each other customer with questions what they're doing and planning to do, when they instead could spend the same developer time on actual development?

Heh. Somehow I don't think that's how small-team product development works.

They already inform us of what they're doing much better than any of their competitors. IMO, that's plenty.

And yeah, including "lag" on your list of why-haven't-they-fixed-this items for a globally played game is maybe not ideal.

MM does pay attention to questions asked here, and sometimes answers are provided on the website. My impression is that most often to be addressed in this way the question has to be specific, technically incisive, and practically answerable.

[speed68]

These arent new at all. Whatever they are why not 1-list them' date=' 2- discuss them, 3- get input from CRS on them. I dont think that is too much to ask. I do not think CRS is incompetent, quite the opposite. I would just like the veil of silence on this taboo subject lifted, you know "transparency". No flames just helpful discussion.[/quote']

Uhmm, their software (CRS's) is THEIR SOFTWARE, and you are just a user of it, you have no claims of NEED TO KNOW, as YOU do not own it, therefor they don't have to tell you ANYTHING about it.

Just be glad they bother to tell you anything at all.....

[optik]

You want CRS to allocate an ongoing amount of developer time explaining to you and each other customer with questions what they're doing and planning to do, when they instead could spend the same developer time on actual development?

Heh. Somehow I don't think that's how small-team product development works.

But spending this precious dev time on christmas trees is cool?

[madrebel]

But spending this precious dev time on christmas trees is cool?

i'm sure they spent at least 50 days worth of man hours on this.

[cerpin]

i'm sure they spent at least 50 days worth of man hours on this.

Didn't you know? Artists=coders=community support staff. If they do one thing that means they can't do anything else at all

[obear71]

Developing a game like this means you have various staff with skill sets dedicated to a particular task. There is no point what so ever asking them to stop making things 'pretty' because of some various bugs.

The whole development cycle cannot and will not grind to a halt while the team focus on certain bugs, to do so would mean half the dev team sitting around doing nothing as it is not part of there job to tackle the bugs.

So what they do is continue the dev schedule as normal keeping all the guys busy while at the same time trying to focus on each bug as they do so. IF a bug is going to reside in a certain area of the game that would require a major overhaul to tackle and the current dev schedule does not require a visit to that area, but in 2 development runs later you are planning on overhauling that exact system to do something cool and funky, its crazy talk to do anything but wait until you visit it.

Not to mention you could take 200 players from here and each would give you a different list of what they need fixed as a priority. For example you talk of infantry lag yet i don't suffer from this at all. So is it a bug? is it your local area net connection? your PC?

The idea is you report the bugs in the bug forums or via email. If allot of other people report the same issues it will be flagged as important and added to the list. After that you just have to wait it out. they will visit each issue asap in a fashion that will not de-rail the dev cycle.

It can't be any other way, not for CRS and not for any other dev company. The only bugs that will have the team dropping everything for is a global bug affecting the vast majority of people that completely stops them playing the game at all.

Business is business, you make sure you keep the train rolling.

[romzburg]

But spending this precious dev time on christmas trees is cool?

Speedtree does the tree stuff, CRS just changes a filename for one of the trees already in use, and, voila!, Christmas Trees.

Lighten up, Francis.

____________________

motormouth:

Much as Romzy's posting style can give me headaches (and the fact that he's "NEVAR WRONG!!"), that post pretty much nails it on the head.

sgtchief:

romz you['re] my damn hero

sydney:

Ya know, at first Romsburg, you rubbed me the wrong way and I wasn't a fan. But over the past 12 months, you have really grown on me. You're precise, well spoken and although you are sometimes a little harsh, you are most often correct and in proper context with your responses.

irelandeb:

indeed he's one of the few voices of common sense on these forums

jw:

If you're going to argue with Romz, do your homework before you post. He gets it, and you can't teach common sense, you have to be born with it.

pete, linc & julie:

I can't say [any]thing else [than] that the ban was justified considering that you have an 'impressive' TOS history....

owilde:

The only thing worse than being talked about is *not* being talked about.

[Netfytr]

Blah Blah Blah, no matter what your boring explanations are its as simple as this. Bugs are counterproductive and important to not have( as little as possible). Doesnt look like you read previous comments. Bugs, fix? yes or no. Game survival = noobs coming into and staying with the game, and more coming. bugs = noobs leaving game, that simple. I can understand a bug or two, but bugs that have been around for a long time.....no

[DOC]

Not understanding why is no insurance against being disappointed. In fact it is the reverse, it ensures you will be dissappointed.

We communicate to the best of our ability what is going on and what we are doing. We successfully run one of the most complex MMO's in existance with the smallest development team in the business. We don't waste any time doing anything that isn't very high on the must do list.

The business of doing this kind of thing is often not fully realized by the end user. That's ok, it's normal for a fan to feel they can tell an NFL quarterback how to play the game better, it happens all the time (usually on Monday morning) but it doesn't change anything.

If you have a specific and reproducable bug that you can define and help us to pin down, that hasn't been ticketed by previous analysis (which you can find in this forum) then by all means give us your report and any testing results you have and we'll include that in our on-going bug eradication process; and you will be helping to solve the problem.

PS: bugs do not have a specific time frame of exictance. they exist until they are found and fixed. Some are easily found and just as easily fixed. Some are easily found but prove almost impossible to fix. Some are almost impossible to find and are easy to fix when they are found. The worst are almost impossible to find, and when they are found, take forever to eliminate.

There is no guarrentee ahead of time which of the above definitions any bug will fall under. They are what they are. If they can confound experienced developers with decades of understanding it's no suprise that they will frustrate the end user with almost no real experience of what lies behind them.

[mauserk]

Not understanding why is no insurance against being disappointed. In fact it is the reverse, it ensures you will be dissappointed.

We communicate to the best of our ability what is going on and what we are doing. We successfully run one of the most complex MMO's in existance with the smallest development team in the business. We don't waste any time doing anything that isn't very high on the must do list.

The business of doing this kind of thing is often not fully realized by the end user. That's ok, it's normal for a fan to feel they can tell an NFL quarterback how to play the game better, it happens all the time (usually on Monday morning) but it doesn't change anything.

If you have a specific and reproducable bug that you can define and help us to pin down, that hasn't been ticketed by previous analysis (which you can find in this forum) then by all means give us your report and any testing results you have and we'll include that in our on-going bug eradication process; and you will be helping to solve the problem.

PS: bugs do not have a specific time frame of exictance. they exist until they are found and fixed. Some are easily found and just as easily fixed. Some are easily found but prove almost impossible to fix. Some are almost impossible to find and are easy to fix when they are found. The worst are almost impossible to find, and when they are found, take forever to eliminate.

There is no guarrentee ahead of time which of the above definitions any bug will fall under. They are what they are. If they can confound experienced developers with decades of understanding it's no suprise that they will frustrate the end user with almost no real experience of what lies behind them.

got the mission pending bug 3-4 times in a row the other day. I dont even care anymore

[AHWULF]

The current big issues are

(1) Sound, which is brand new in 1.33, causes about 60% of the CTDs in 1.33.0. Being fixed. There does seem to be some issue still with certain sound devices not being chosen when they should be found.

(2) MrP is better in 1.33.0 but it's not fixed and requires a bunch of new host code Oli is working on - basically the existing architecture from back in 1999 needs to be replaced. It's not a trivial thing to do. But the root cause is perfectly understood.

(3) Concussion bug is gone

(4) FPS slowdown in 1.33 is understood and is being changed at the moment to rid the CPU bound problem.

(5) Out of memory is gone

(6) Opengl driver issues (esp NVIDIA) are ongoing problems, I have a plan for one issue during gameplay; the loading problem which kills the app is still unknown as we can't duplicate it yet. Video driver issues are a pain in the butt. Everyone game developer hates video drivers.

(7) CTHL is finally understood and a one letter fix might eliminate this completely; however it's one of those things you can't know until a lot of people are playing. (2) changes may impact this as well.

BTW I absolutely hate the word lag, it's overused and under-defined. Consistent low FPS in certain places and spiky FPS in certain places is what I think you mean. (4) is caused by the new infantry and is CPU related and has nothing to do with settings or video cards. Spiky FPS when flying is likely also the new infantry. Existing spikiness when approaching a new town is understood also but the fix for that is a lot of new code. So today you may see both at once.

THere will always be bugs. There will generally be fixes but when is never assured. Even WOW has serious issues with all their hundreds of coders and QA people (I think one expansion shipped with the AI backwards which killed 100s of players on spawning, I think I read somewhere). We have 3 coders, plus one intern and me.

The F16 (which I briefly worked on in my first job) once had a bug where under certain maneuvers causes the instruments to filp upside down (ie it said you were going up when you were going down) and killed a bunch of pilots before they figured out the problem. At least no one dies in BE :-)

[bigrow]

Thanks ahwulf, very informative.

BTW I absolutely hate the word lag, it's overused and under-defined. Consistent low FPS in certain places and spiky FPS in certain places is what I think you mean.

I generally put this kind of lag down to PC limitations(or issues like #4 above). Whether the person complaining has their settings too high for their hardware, or simply their hardware is not up to scratch.

The other kind of lag, as far as i can tell, has little to do with FPS. I think the reasonable among us can accept that we will always get around 0.5-1 seconds of delay between, for example, someone else firing their weapon and the other person seeing that on their screen. The complaints in this department arise when the lag time can be as much as 2-3 seconds since 1.31. Am i right in thinking that this is what KFS1 is working on?

[AHWULF]

Thats the "lag" i think I like the name better for. There will always be delay over the internet. Oli is working on stuff to make the internal turnaround time much faster as well as get important updates to you quicker. It hard stuff because it has to work 100% correctly. But it will make things better for sure. Remember the original architecture was more for modem based play so using fewer bits was important.

[Netfytr]

Doc, and others, thanks for the input. To get an answer from you guys is fantastic, really appreciated. Keep up the good work. I look forward to the progress.

[GOPHUR]

You get the bugs ironed out. The same old bugs that have been here forever. What I want to hear about is what is being done about each one. I know this will get flagged for flaming' date=' but it isnt. We should be able to discuss this on these forums and get answers about them. Spawn bug...still here. CTD.....still here. Lag.......still here. These are valid issues. I would like to hear these addressed. ????RATS, your response please. Your comments..[/quote']

If you'd like a status report on bugs please list the ones you are interested in and I can reply. Otherwise this is just a rant.

[Netfytr]

one that is really irritating is the spawn bug, where you click to spawn in and it doesnt work you have to go back and pick a unit again. Is bad after already having to wait for the spawn timer. And of course the results pending bug, which makes you have to re log. Thats 2 good ones to start with. I also get crash to desktop occasionally, usually after a violent death, which when this happens and you try to log back in you get the red lockouts and have to relog a second time. We can start with these thanks.

[GOPHUR]

The reservation issue is one I hate. More to the point I hate how the AAR flow works.

We're currently working on a new host that has a persistent map/mission host connection so we can do things like not have you despawn to the UI to respawn and instead just have you select a vehicle to respawn as and you'll have up to date AAR in your Map HUD anytime you want.

I wanted to get rid of the auto reserve issue before that but there's less need now that a better solution is on the horizon.

This will also kill all MRP bugs.

This MAY also kill the CTD>relaunch>persona locked issue which I can assure is my #! pet peeve. If I thought kicking someone's *** would have gotten that fixed by now I'd have one broken old Louisville Slugger here in the office.

So hopefully later this year you'll get to pick some new bugs to focus on and so can we.

[Netfytr]

Good enough for me . Thank you for your time