Test server notes 2/24/2009

[Edward Edgemenace]

Sailing: Compass is unbearable. Now instead of three tiers of compass zoom, there are four...the "zoomed in" view is equivalent to yesterday's "zoomed out" view. Impossible now, to check crew member positions.

Sailing: broadsides missing at normal range more than 75% of the time.

Teleport: "You are already there!" is still preventing normal teleports. If released to open, will cause a major outcry - the programmers will have headaches for weeks and the tech support people will burn out from the complaints in 20 minutes.

Quest tracking MIGHT be fixed on compass, but it is too hard to tell.

MEMORY: 1.27 GB in under 5 minutes of play. (Only 1 GB available - the rest in swap.) Takes two or three pirates on OPEN to use that much memory...
EDIT: Big memory consumption seems to be from boarding/return to port/reboarding.

Lockups, of course, from exhausted memory. Also back to getting the loading screen error launching my own ship.

[akamystic]

Are we going forward in reverse here or what??

Report....Report....Report....Report....Report.... Report....Report....Report....Report....
Report....Report....Report....Report....Report.... Report....

[Poison elf]

I didn't see anything from what I could tell in a improvement, everything tweaked in the wrong direction.
Compass not tracking properly, ships on edge of radar, specially smaller ships, are not in range. Any ship spawning, not coming in on radar. Looks like lightning took a reduction from what I can tell. ( have to check some old pic's) Fury still reduced as before, less than lightning.

War galleon, lol already a waste, now absolutely a waste, won't hit the BROADSIDE of a barn. Galleon though doing just fine, if ships are actually in range.

Saw also the red target piggies on padres now.

Seems to be having a memory leak I agree, left a character in for a bit afk, and barely ended up able to log off.

Nothing looking to good in this one at all. Have to see if it settles down some, to see really whats going on.

edit: Side note to two posts down. I haven't opened the potc email account since way back when Max got all those spams, lol. Darn annoying now opening and closing all the windows without the ?.

[Sven Niscadae]

It looks like the one compass issue (with it looking all messed up) is sporadic. On test today, I didn't have any problems with my compass or quest arrows. Rackat and I didn't have the problem but Capt Greengene did. The quest Ray of Light star when sailing is slightly off. I mean, it doesn't appear "dead on" the target ship but slightly behind it. It makes the compass seem like it's showing an extra ship in the vicinity.

Regarding the compass issue you have at the top of the OP, yeah, I noticed that. Did send a report about that displeasure. Checkin g your crew member positions isn't impossible though. You can still zoom in while at the helm, pan the deck, and look for the crew icons. Sure at a glance, you can't see. Personally I think the outer most zoom where you can see all visible ships in your sight range is a bit much. If I'm concerned about stuff that's happening that far out, I'll look with my eyes. Also, the inner most zoom isn't even the old default zoom. I used to be able to hit ships (with broadsides) just inside the compass circle, now I have to wait until they get within half of the compass radius. I really don't see what the problem with the old compass zoom settings was.

I didn't seem to having a problem with broadsides on my regular sloop.

The "You're already there!" teleport issue will probably be annoying to most people but since they did make the modification, I'm sure D wants it to be that way. I sent feedback about that but doubt they'll do anything about it.

Memory-wise, at this moment after an hour of play, my pirates.exe is only using 710MB of memory for me. I'm on my laptop right now (2GB dual core [affinity set only on CPU0], 2GB memory, integrated Intel video using shared memory). My desktop is having issues so I can't play on it until I get a new case and power supply.

Did notice that they moved Devil's Anvil to the east a bit. You can actually make a straight shot from PR to Tortuga without trying. I like it. I actually kind of miss Cuba being farther away from PR than it is now. It seems too close.

[edit: LOL. Just launched from Tortuga, my compass was kind of whacked. It fixed itself after porting and relaunching]

[Edward Edgemenace]

Well, if they follow the pattern they did with Port Royal, they are probably preparing to release this tonight. Super bad move, IMHO. Again, I don't know what glitches they think they fixed by preventing valid teleports...no glitch I tested today was fixed.

I really wish there were better guidelines on what (and how) to report. Using the in-game feedback seems like a black hole. Using the HTML feedback page has me getting more potco-support spam than Maximvs. And all of their spam is nonsense...they don't include what I reported in their spam, so I have no idea which of the dozens of things reported that way, they botched.

Blisteringly stupid, that they flat-out reject reports that don't have log files (BS - I ALWAYS attach the log files and a screenie or two) even though their follow-on feedback page where you enter the description, makes me hunt them down manually. And the log files themselves are irrelevant to almost all glitch reports, anyhow. Nice that they then turn around and spam me with random "issue tracking numbers" with no description - no way to tie back reports by date when there are multiple reports every day...and who knows how long it was in their queue. My estimate is that they are about 7 days behind now...maybe? Sometimes?

Be even nicer, if the tracking numbers meant something...like, a public list of issues they currently are tracking. Well, I guess that still would do no good without a description. But it would be a baby-step in the right direction, maybe.

[salty]

Originally Posted by Edward Edgemenace

Sailing: Compass is unbearable. Now instead of three tiers of compass zoom, there are four...the "zoomed in" view is equivalent to yesterday's "zoomed out" view. Impossible now, to check crew member positions.

Sailing: broadsides missing at normal range more than 75% of the time.

Teleport: "You are already there!" is still preventing normal teleports. If released to open, will cause a major outcry - the programmers will have headaches for weeks and the tech support people will burn out from the complaints in 20 minutes.

Quest tracking MIGHT be fixed on compass, but it is too hard to tell.

MEMORY: 1.27 GB in under 5 minutes of play. (Only 1 GB available - the rest in swap.) Takes two or three pirates on OPEN to use that much memory...
EDIT: Big memory consumption seems to be from boarding/return to port/reboarding.

Lockups, of course, from exhausted memory. Also back to getting the loading screen error launching my own ship.

I have no clue what you just said could you like put it in dumb people words lol sorry

[Edward Edgemenace]

Originally Posted by salty

I have no clue what you just said could you like put it in dumb people words lol sorry

No. Sorry, but that was simple English. Here's a picture for ya though.



This was with compass zoomed all the way in. Please explain how that broadsides shot missed. (It did.) The target had finished its turn (which isn't supposed to give it 100% invulnerability, but does.)

First minute back on test, not looking good...

[jason davy]

Originally Posted by Edward Edgemenace

No.
`

Hahahahahahaha. Whewww. Whew. *wheezes*

Originally Posted by Edward Edgemenace

Well, if they follow the pattern they did with Port Royal, they are probably preparing to release this tonight.

If this happens, I will be taking an extended leave from the game.... had enough of that mess already.

[Edward Edgemenace]

After the PM update, broadsides hitting 40-70% of the time they should, but only when within 1/2 a compass width (zoomed all the way in.) Rackat noted that the cannoneer view seems to be accurate, but that view from the helm (and the compass) is off - which explains why the broadsides miss so much.