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A little worried about some of the articles coming out...

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A little worried about some of the articles coming out...

from Elemental Forums

I know these forums are inhabited by even the most hardened of Stardock fans, and i am one too. But if you love something you can't be blind to criticize it. Already we have a thread saying don't complain so I know how this thread will turn out but i'm really hoping for an actual dialogue that won't be met with rampant fanboyism.

 

Anyway I just read this article and while I know there is a zero day patch coming, i'm a little worried about exactly HOW much they fixed in such a short amount of time. It seems like there are a lot of bugs/typos/mistakes and I think as a paying customer it's okay to say this.

A note from Frogboy on this

Hi guys, 

Let me add some points here:

1. Tom Chick is one of the top gaming journalists in the industry.  He's not just some guy.

2. He is reviewing the gold version (he is NOT playing the day 0 version). I.e. He is NOT playing a beta.

3. While I would quibble with some of the content (yes, we multiply bonuses. We multiplied them in Entrepreneur, we multiplied them in GalCiv, and we multiply them in Elemental and have throughout the beta).

4. I agree with Tom that the Hiergamenon page should make it more clear that those bonuses are being multiplied and that there is a text bug in the description of Educated that was since addressed.

5. The math system under the hood does work as designed, even in the gold version. It's not buggy but I think Tom brings up a valid point that the way it is explained to the player needs work (I think Tom would also agree it's light years ahead of how we "explained" the math in GalCiv II which was, essentially we didn't).

6. This isn't a review, it's a diary.  Please read Tom's other works.  It doesn't mean he hates the game. He is pointing things out that he thinks can be improved in the game and we can all benefit from it.

 

 

 

Anyway here is the article and some snippets:

 

http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/08/elemental_in_a_world_of_dragon.php

 

I'm trying to like Elemental. I really am. But the version I have now, and the version you're probably going to get to start playing tomorrow if you pre-ordered, is in pretty sad shape. A patch should be available by Monday. I hope it's a big patch.

My problem isn't just the way Elemental assumes you know things you would have no way of knowing, or the amateurish mistakes in the interface, or the crashes, or how alt-tabbing kills the game, or the way the Farming Guild increases metal production by 100%, or that I didn't get the leather armor I was promised when I researched it, or even this picture of the dreaded Umberdroth Pack, which either has cloaking technology or is so skinny it can hide behind a palm tree.

Elemental_GD_01_palms.jpg

Actually, maybe the Umberdroth Pack is the palm trees. I suppose there's no reason you can't have a tropical ent.

All those things are frustrating enough. But I'm a bit worried that I simply can't trust the game to do what it says it's doing.


All I ask is for you guys to just read this and not to flip out on me for criticizing or worrying about the game or wondering exactly HOW much this zero-day patch is going to fix.

elemental
291,867 views 145 replies
Reply #101 from Elemental Forums Top

Simply put all i have to say about bugs is this. I've gotten about 12 games in the last few monthes..I know quite acouple mostly a year old+ though and for a deal.

 

Out of those 3 wouldn't play due to bugs with the openings interface etc. 4 wouldn't alttab correctly. 3 more had graphical issues despite me having a brand new video card and 4 gigs of ram they still had slow downs and problems...and finally 2 played right.

 

 

Elemental Plays fine it has some bugs but all great games like this do...Does anyone even remember MoM when it first came out? or other good games They always start with some severe bugs and spelling issues...it shows the team wasn't utterly robotic and actually had fun and made the game and did their job right not just sat there with a spellchecker as they wrote the descriptions. Besides they were pumping out new betas weekly...So honestly don't be so rough on the team.

Reply #102 from Elemental Forums Top

To be fair, 90% of the alt-tab problems tend to be Windows rather than whatever you're running. Another quality "feature" by Microsoft.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #103 from Stardock Forums Top

Well like I said in the other thread, I found his review or early diary post to be interesting. It's not typical to see math addressed in a review, at least not from what I have experienced. I never saw a reason to insult the guy or try and claim he couldn't grasp math. I don't think the community gets any benefit from going after people that are critical of this game, especially since now we know who this gentleman is and the math thing is just a minsunderstanding Stardock will try to make clearer for players.

Reply #104 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Archonsod, reply 103
To be fair, 90% of the alt-tab problems tend to be Windows rather than whatever you're running. Another quality "feature" by Microsoft.

? I almost never have problems alt-tabbing, and in the rare cases when i do it's always consistant to the program I'm running and not a randomly created windows error.

Reply #105 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 72
Just to follow-up, let me say that I agree with most of Tom's facts.

We DO, intentionally, multiply bonuses. If I could get away with it, I'd have bonuses provide exponential bonuses.  The idea is for improvements and such to provide a bigger bang.

The numbers, in the game do work fine, even in the gold version. The UI just needs to be much MUCH better about conveying how this stuff works for those who want to dig into the numbers via the Hiergamenon.

If there's anywhere that it's written in words instead of "+25%", you could say something like "increases CURRENT production by 25%". The one word makes it clearer that it's taking the existing value and increasing that, rather then the base value (ie: multiplicatively).

 

Another option is to create a "mechanics" entry in the Hiergamenon and explain it there.

Reply #106 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Archonsod, reply 103
To be fair, 90% of the alt-tab problems tend to be Windows rather than whatever you're running. Another quality "feature" by Microsoft.

nope.

Reply #107 from Elemental Forums Top

Looking over the article again it does appear that there is still an unexplained math error. What nobody has addressed is the fact that the +88% is being applied twice. So he's still receiving twice as much research as he is supposed to.

Reply #108 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting niteshade6, reply 108
Looking over the article again it does appear that there is still an unexplained math error. What nobody has addressed is the fact that the +88% is being applied twice. So he's still receiving twice as much research as he is supposed to.

That is exactly what I was coming here to ask. In all the forum posts I have read here and elsewhere no one answers that.

Reply #109 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting LeeOO, reply 109



Quoting niteshade6,
reply 108
Looking over the article again it does appear that there is still an unexplained math error. What nobody has addressed is the fact that the +88% is being applied twice. So he's still receiving twice as much research as he is supposed to.


That is exactly what I was coming here to ask. In all the forum posts I have read hear and elsewhere no one answers that.

I don't think the extra +50% is clear either right, or I guess its an extra +40% since he was expecting +10%.

Reply #110 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting niteshade6, reply 105

? I almost never have problems alt-tabbing, and in the rare cases when i do it's always consistant to the program I'm running and not a randomly created windows error.

It's the way Windows handles resources rather than an actual error. But saying that I'm used to Unix, so it might be perfectly sensible and sane from a Microsoft standpoint. In general I think of Windows code in the same way I think of the Necronomicon; it's full of things man was not meant to know and meddling with it is never a good thing to do.

Reply #111 from Elemental Forums Top

Wow really? Its one thing to like a company and the games they have made in the past (which I do in Stardock's case), but attributing spelling issues, misplaced description/artwork to "the human touch"? Thats just absurd. I'm not one to get hung up over typo's or grammatical errors, hell Kings bounty and Space Rangers 2 had their fair share of both, but by no means are they a novelty or a sign of special craftsmanship.

They probably got the descriptions from Random House as a text or csv file which was then parsed into the game with minimal human effort. Since this happened during the last few weeks of development with several other bigger issues needing the developers attention, nobody bothered proofing the text. What I dont understand is why people feel compelled to justify every flaw as an amazing thing.

Also Games *dont* ctd when alt tabbing. At least ones without bugs don't. In elemental's case, this has been happening since Beta 3 (which is when I picked the beta up). I'm right now tabbed out of a Civ 4 (Rise of Man) gigantic map which I've been playing over the past 2 weeks. I haven't exited out of Civ 4 over the period, I just let it run in the background while doing other things. Developers cant test for all hardware combinations and some bugs are expected, however it isnt too much to expect developers to fix a problem persistent in every iteration for the past 2-3 months.

Dont you tab out when you take screenshots of the game for the AAR Brad?

Reply #112 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Archonsod, reply 111

It's the way Windows handles resources rather than an actual error. But saying that I'm used to Unix, so it might be perfectly sensible and sane from a Microsoft standpoint. In general I think of Windows code in the same way I think of the Necronomicon; it's full of things man was not meant to know and meddling with it is never a good thing to do.

You have no idea what you're talking about - so stop talking. How do you think SC2 manages to alt-tab perfectly well while older, less resource intensive applications cannot? A roll of the dice?

Reply #113 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Archonsod, reply 111
 In general I think of Windows code in the same way I think of the Necronomicon ; it's full of things man was not meant to know and meddling with it is never a good thing to do.

Which reminds us of a deep and dark Johnny Depp movie : the one with the Delomelanicon book.

 


Reply #114 from Elemental Forums Top

Alt-tabbing working properly is a pretty big issue. I usually have the particular game I'm playing minimized through the entire day without ever restarting it between gaming sessions. Sometimes I even have more than one game open at a time. Not being able to alt-tab is a major inconvenience, unless the game starts up in like a second or two (and loads a game similarly fast).

Reply #115 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Archonsod, reply 103
To be fair, 90% of the alt-tab problems tend to be Windows rather than whatever you're running. Another quality "feature" by Microsoft.

 

The only alt-tab "problem" that is consistently a Windows issue is the "alt" key sticking and requiring you to poke at it a couple times to remind windows the key is no longer depressed issue, and it's spotty, at best. A DX plane blowing up when it's trying to rebuild it is rarely a Windows issue.

Reply #116 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting TheProgress, reply 113

You have no idea what you're talking about - so stop talking. How do you think SC2 manages to alt-tab perfectly well while older, less resource intensive applications cannot? A roll of the dice?

Hmm, let me think ... could it be perhaps that different coders all use different code to do things? Nah, evidently there is only one true code, and SC2 is the one that does it.

 

 

Reply #117 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting TheProgress, reply 113

You have no idea what you're talking about - so stop talking. How do you think SC2 manages to alt-tab perfectly well while older, less resource intensive applications cannot? A roll of the dice?
Um, what? I don't know if he's right or not, because I don't know much about coding except in general, but I do know that your understanding of it is flawed. The fault here probably lies on more than one set of shoulders. I'm thinking that there are certain things that can be used in building a program that will cause it to crash when alt+tabbed in windows, and there are certain reasons within the Windows OS that makes this happen. An OS could be built such that these things would not cause a crash, and a program could be built such that it did not utilize these things. Ideally, both OS and program would be built in that manner, but in practice coders like to make things work easily, and will take shortcuts - and it could be that there's significant benefits to doing what they do.

Regardless, this is entirely unrelated to the resources required by a program.

Reply #118 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Archonsod, reply 117

Hmm, let me think ... could it be perhaps that different coders all use different code to do things? Nah, evidently there is only one true code, and SC2 is the one that does it.
 

Actually yes. Amazingly, some things (like direct x) have be initialized and released in certain ways to avoid causing problems.

 

Quoting Cruxador, reply 118

Quoting TheProgress, reply 113
You have no idea what you're talking about - so stop talking. How do you think SC2 manages to alt-tab perfectly well while older, less resource intensive applications cannot? A roll of the dice?Um, what? I don't know if he's right or not, because I don't know much about coding except in general, but I do know that your understanding of it is flawed. The fault here probably lies on more than one set of shoulders. I'm thinking that there are certain things that can be used in building a program that will cause it to crash when alt+tabbed in windows, and there are certain reasons within the Windows OS that makes this happen. An OS could be built such that these things would not cause a crash, and a program could be built such that it did not utilize these things. Ideally, both OS and program would be built in that manner, but in practice coders like to make things work easily, and will take shortcuts - and it could be that there's significant benefits to doing what they do.
Regardless, this is entirely unrelated to the resources required by a program.

I agree that we are getting off topic (sorry OP, etc). You start off your by saying you have no idea (generally) about what you're talking about. Well I do: I've worked with the win32 API as well as Direct X. Ideally yes, the OS and all its extensions would work in harmony providing an amazingly quick and robust platform. Sadly Microsoft is a corporation that needs to make a profit and cares less about holding the hands of developers.

Reply #119 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Archonsod, reply 117

Quoting TheProgress, reply 113
You have no idea what you're talking about - so stop talking. How do you think SC2 manages to alt-tab perfectly well while older, less resource intensive applications cannot? A roll of the dice?
Hmm, let me think ... could it be perhaps that different coders all use different code to do things? Nah, evidently there is only one true code, and SC2 is the one that does it.

 

Alt+tab is standard Windows functionality, and if a program CTDs while attempting to do it, it's a bug. Period. There's no wiggle room on this. Crashes are NEVER proper behaviour for software.

Reply #120 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Tridus, reply 120

Quoting Archonsod, reply 117
Quoting TheProgress, reply 113
You have no idea what you're talking about - so stop talking. How do you think SC2 manages to alt-tab perfectly well while older, less resource intensive applications cannot? A roll of the dice?
Hmm, let me think ... could it be perhaps that different coders all use different code to do things? Nah, evidently there is only one true code, and SC2 is the one that does it.

 

Alt+tab is standard Windows functionality, and if a program CTDs while attempting to do it, it's a bug. Period. There's no wiggle room on this. Crashes are NEVER proper behaviour for software.

Which software?

The Game? The OS? Or the Video Driver that triggered it?

Reply #121 from Elemental Forums Top

It's easy to say alt-tabbing ending in a crash is unacceptable however we are not seeing the whole picture. There are deadlines, work is done by priority, and shit happens. They could have spent time working on that bug but at the cost of something else. That something else could have been a pretty important feature or more serious defect. If they had to weight fixing a memory crash verse alt-tab crash given the time left, its obvious which one they would work on. I'm sure if they had the luxury of unlimited time, they would fix them all.

Reply #122 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting TheProgress, reply 119

I've worked with the win32 API as well as Direct X. Ideally yes, the OS and all its extensions would work in harmony providing an amazingly quick and robust platform. Sadly Microsoft is a corporation that needs to make a profit and cares less about holding the hands of developers.

Which is what I was saying all along. Yes, it should be possible to code an app so that alt + tab doesn't crash. Unfortunately, Microsoft's documentation tends to be somewhat spotty, if not directly contradictory, and looking at how Windows deals with things like resource allocation is, from a Unix based perspective, somewhat unintuitive.

Reply #123 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 121

Which software?

The Game? The OS? Or the Video Driver that triggered it?

Probably all of them, at some point or another. But it doesn't matter a whole lot in the end, since you can only control one of them yourself and have to ask the other two to fix their stuff (and then work around it if they don't).

Dealing with bugs caused by Microsoft is pretty much a routine part of the week for me, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter whose fault it is to the users, and I just need to work around it.

Reply #124 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Nesrie, reply 110



Quoting LeeOO,
reply 109



Quoting niteshade6,
reply 108
Looking over the article again it does appear that there is still an unexplained math error. What nobody has addressed is the fact that the +88% is being applied twice. So he's still receiving twice as much research as he is supposed to.


That is exactly what I was coming here to ask. In all the forum posts I have read hear and elsewhere no one answers that.



I don't think the extra +50% is clear either right, or I guess its an extra +40% since he was expecting +10%.

Well I think Frogboy responded to that although he was a bit unclear. But he made it sound like that it an error in the description and that it was  supposed to be +50% all along (an awfully strong kingdom bonus though I don't know what it's competing against). But nobody addressed the whole double dipping of research modifiers at all, which seems like a pretty major and obvious flaw.

Reply #125 from Elemental Forums Top

Lol common, at this rate if the x64-ati bug wasnt fixed(god I hope its really fixed), it'd be ati and microsofts fault too. Isolated cases could be a result of bad drivers/os settings etc, but when a significant number of users have experienced the same issue since the earlier beta's how can you pin it on microsoft, ati, nvidia or dx? Especially when most other game in the world running in the same environment have no issues tabbing out?

Not to mention it'll just hurt the game in the long run when reviewers tab out only to crash. Stability bugs leave a very very strong first impression.