Gripes with SE5 ver 1.17

Agreed on a lot of stuff.

3) Dig into the data files. You can make your own classes in there (ShipTypes.txt)

5) This problem never existed for me. Then again, I've never selected a ship in a fleet before - if I need to tell it to do something different, I remove it from the fleet first

7) There is a known memory leak. Easy solution: quit and reload every 5 or so turns. Ship movement is also known to be inefficiently algorithm'd.

Nothing wrong with being hesitant of course - first versions of a game that isn't made with vast amounts of manpower and time are likely to have bugs in them, especially if the main programmer does this outside of his main job. This is what I'd call a Doujin game, and with something as complex as SE V, it needs all the help it can get to arrive at good quality faster.

7) There is a known memory leak. Easy solution: quit and reload every 5 or so turns. Ship movement is also known to be inefficiently algorithm'd.

omg... every 5 turns?

I think I have a problem like this, my ships still recieve orders but I dont think the game knows it. For example if I have a fleet of ships with different movespeeds and the fleet moves its maximum, the game tells me I have ships without orders at the end of the turn. Even though the ships with leftover movement points cannot move because they are in a fleet. On the ship display screen these same ships have orders :/

>>>

The ink of the scholar is worth a thousand times more than the blood of a martyr.

I've gotten away with every 10 turns myself, but yeah, saving, shutting down, and restarting does help.

I don't have all that fancy a system and I did abour 112 turns last night without any problem... oh well :/
BTW a lot of the slowdowns tend to happen if you tab out a lot and is common to DX programs...

Could you post your system specs, including processor make? Could be interesting.

I have a three year old recycled 2 gig Athlon with a Radion 2500 and a gig of RAM and I can pretty much run SEV now for as long as I like though as I do things like run the real player program in the background I do tend as a mater of course to save and log out every hour or so to and load another program as I have noticed when I was still playing the demo that SEV does not like being tabbed out of, the same is true of Starfury. The turns do go through faster and slower cycles and get gradually slower over time I presume that this is due to AI wars.

The other night I ran a custom game to test out the Tarsus AI and the game ran without issue for 9 hours at which point I had finished the game.

It seems to run fine for me, for hours at a time. My PC is a stately XP2500 with 1gig RAM and a 9800pro 128mb gpu.

I have 1 GB of Ram, and a 9800Pro, 128 MB... yet I slow down after 5-10 turns usually.

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Give me atmopshperic manipulation cannons, or give me death!

I don't know how helpful this will be, but I am only running 1.8g athlon1 gig ram ati radeon x1300, and my system slows down during large amounts of movement unless I go to system display and turn off the movement lines, then I don't have much problems running the game at all.. also in options have ship movement very high, and moving doesn't seem to slow down at all...

Hope it helps

That means... not only does the algorithm re-calculate the ship path each hex, it re-draws that line as well??? Yes... this would make a huge difference - was wondering why SE IV and before didn't have this much slow down despite "ship movement very high"...

-my "Ministers are more sinister than Ministers... But who cares?"

There is a valid point here: On the rare times I run full screen, I am able to get more turns in before it the weirdness starts. If I minimize (same as alt-tabbing) at any point, it seems to get less stable more quickly. There have been a couple of times where I've been at turn 4 or 5, and minimized and came back, and during the computer turns it crashed - from within 1.17.

As a result of the obnoxious turn times, I now run almost exclusively in windowed mode, and I can definitely say that it requires restarting more often than in full screen (as long as I don't minimize in full screen).

I PREFER full screen, because at 1920x1200 the view port of combat is very nice - lot's of space, can see everything going on - I just can't walk away from my machine for 5 to 20 minutes after a minute or two of use all the time!

I can see where you're coming from. 2-3 weeks of bugs have been annoying. Overall, though, I'm enjoying the game --1.17 is quirky but basically stable, and I figure it's money well spent.

I'm sorry you're sufficiently annoyed to get into arguments about whether folks should be enjoying the game (bugs and all) or not. With luck you'll find better.

All the best.

Wisdom from HHGttG(small spoilers but I think noone will mind),written in 30 foot tall flaming letters:

"we are sorry for the inconvenience"

If that doesn't console you, "So long and thanks for all the fish!"

I'm with Cdnawacs on this one.

Psieye, you really don't believe that this game will be in shape in just a few months, do you? As fine a game as SEIV is, it is still not complete! After five years! I'm still waiting for it to be finalized; for that matter I'm still waiting for Windows 95 to be finalized!

It is the nature of the computer industry to not only not deliver a finished product, but to never finish it at all. Few of us have the guts to say it, but this mindset is not just totally unacceptable but truly disgusting.

I don't even have the game yet. (As you suggest, I'm reading up on it.) I expect it as an Xmas present. There's a good chance I will send it back for a refund.

Heck, I personally view this less as a game and more as a toolset with which to express myself with. Again, that's my view and it won't be shared by everyone, so your discontent is valid.

Note as well, the half-life of any computer game is at best three years, possibly four.

I still treasure a good number of board games over a quarter-century old: vis. Victory Games' Vietnam, ASL. I can see a number of others that will long outlive my current computer and the games on it -- Paths of Glory, OCS, Wilderness War.

Maybe we'll actually start getting good, finished computer games when the microchip stops developing.

Don't send it back.

After 4 years of playin', defendin', and Moddin' MoO3, any 4X TBS game published needs support from the genre of ppl that play them. The markering ppl for the consoles want the world to believe that 4X TBS Space game are DEAD. But we're "Not Dead Yet! Jim!"

Yes it's a right royal pain to come across a bug. But hasn't this product's Developer had a history of correcting and maintaining it's product? We got 1 Official Patch from the makers/publishers of MoO3, ONE! Yet the game has remained. And so has the core fan base.

There will always be dissappointments with new Gaming Products. And many times the dissappointments are based upon not understanding the *function* of how the game works.

I've noticed the "X Number ships with no Orders" at the end of each turn. At first I searched out every ship. Then I realized that Fleets on Stand By and Patrol were the ships being listed as No Orders. So I ignore it till I've had more time to find out how to filter my display info better.

I've only started playin' this game last week. So it's new and has lots of "nooks and crannies" to discover and sort out.

Don't throw the game away cause you don't have a full understanding of how it works yet. And yes there WILL be BUGS. Computer science is not perfected nor is the gaming industry. Relax abit and just have fun with it.

JosEPh

"Old and slow.....Watch out!"

JosEPh, I agree. 4X games are tremendously complex and there is a big difference between not knowing how to use the product and a buggy product. I was a regular player of SEIV in multi-player mode and enjoyed it immensely, but I was always aware of its bugs. As I said, not all of them were fixed. After five years of bug fixes, not all of them were fixed! Are there so few of us that see something wrong with this picture?

Don't worry, I will give it a good honest try, but I'm not hopeful. Just too many serious bugs out there.

Cdnawacs, I understand your frustration. The problem that Fyron alludes to is my pet peeve (game CTD when not run in window or 1024 x 768 mode, encompassing almost every make of video card), and I have been on Aaron every couple of weeks, just so it doesn't get lost. But MM's game development does run a little different than most, and I have slowly come to the conclusion the all the major bugs will eventually be addressed.

Yes the game was rushed out, and SF can be blamed for that (watch the video on this website). They bought MM and wanted to see a return on their investment, after all, SF is a business with investors, employees and the like that have to get paid somehow. But there is one bright spot, Aaron.

MM is not just a way for him to make money, it's a passion to make the game he has always wanted to, and therein lies the key. He will make this game work! Long after other game publishers have pissed off their devs to the point where they just walk away from a project (unusually by saying, "You can support this game, but we won't pay for the support."), Aaron will still be here supporting SEV because it's "his baby".

I realize that this is probably not what you, or many other folks expect of a game company, and there are some growing pains still being learned here (if SF hadn't pushed so hard to make the release date, they probably would have had better reviews and sales), but this is their business model for the time being, and since we don't have a dead shark yet, I'm willing to work with it.

I would suggest that if there are bugs that you see that are not being addressed (which does happen), that you send them, the way to recreate them, and your system specs to "mailto:se5@malfador.com" and they will be addressed.

Sincerely,
Kahn

I'm not in disagreement over wanting a Good Bug Free Product. So do I! But I've come to learn that we won't get it without Much patience.

If we hang in there together we get another step closer. MoO3 taught me that. And you did still enjoy this game though didn't you GK? That's what really counts in the long haul isn't it?

JosEPh
"Old and slow.....Watch out!"

If it still doesn't work after five years ... I would have binned it after one and never come back. Too many games, too little time.

You have got to worry about a developer that can't get a product fixed in five years. The only reason they can get away with it is that games consumers just don't care. If it was a car, they'd be in court and paying out money after the first year. I don't see any difference and it does actualyl annoy me that people have such low expectations when it comes to software that they "accept" this kind of quality.

SE-IV and SE-V are essentially the same strategic and economic model as the Starfire boardgame from the 1980s (starfiredesign.com), I'd just play that instead. I don't play SE-V at all anymore, and won't until it actually works. Yes, I have 1.17. Yes, you can learn to avoid some of it and work around some of the bugs. Why should I? WTH did I pay for?

I suspect you won't be sending it back, unless you just don't like the game.

All arguing about releasing too early aside, it is my belief that with the latest patch (and perhaps Kwok's Balance Mod), this game is now "shippable". One could reasonably disagree with that statement on the basis of the AI. That is perhaps the biggest remaining issue, however I bought this game to play against other humans. It may be that the latest version of the BM or another mod, with the pending post-1.17 patch, has an almost worthy AI.

My $.02 regarding the release of this game: MM is small time (with a limited budget, I would guess), this is a small, niche market, and SE5 is quite deep and complex, which doesn't make complete testing an easy task. Combine those things, and I don't see it as being reasonable to expect the game to truly be ready for prime time upon release. MM has a game on their hands that is too small to warrant big investment on the part of a publisher, yet too big to NOT have a publisher, which brings with it the worst of both worlds.

This is why I didn't get the game until 1.17 was available, as I have a wife and 4 kids, and did not have time to be part of the "find the bugs the beta testers didn't" brigade.

I don't fault the disappointment of those who bought the game on day one with higher expectations than I have. When all is said and done, though, my $40 will be well spent. Already I find myself impatient when I have to wait for my online opponents, because I'm anxious to play the next turn. That bodes well.

Years ago, when I decided I wanted to play MOO2 online, I paid the $20 one-time fee for a Kali membership, which at the time was the only viable option. Many refused to do this, citing it was a rip off to have to pay to play multiplayer. Meanwhile, I got probably thousands of hours of entertainment from that $20. That's what I call "bang for the buck".

I suspect SE5 will be similar.

"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

Few developers and almost no publishers would keep working on any game as long as Aaron has on SE IV. If anything, SE IV itself probably delayed SE V more than anything else did.

"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

Heh. Yeah, I thought there was something familiar about the SE engine... That's right, I remember having a lot of fun with Starfire. Much cleaner than Star Fleet Battles.

Splitting hairs aren't we? They bought all the intellectual property assets, not just SEV. Read: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8808
Sincerely,
Kahn

The reason not all of SEIV's bugs were fixed is because Aaron didn't even know there were any (check the chatlog! ) -- no one bothered to report them, or something
_______________________
There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Rilbur wrote:

The reason not all of SEIV's bugs were fixed is because Aaron didn't even know there were any (check the chatlog! ) -- no one bothered to report them, or something :D

You mean to say Aaron didn't know about the pathing problems in strategic combat or how poorly the ministers worked? These existed from day one and I heard innumerable comments about both. Why didn't Aaron? I know he occasionally looked in on the forums.

I believe he concentrated on even more serious problems and left these "annoyances" because they weren't cost/time effective to fix. Reasonable, but that still left the game unfinished.

Quick question but I think to the point

Why if you are so unhappy with SEIV have you bought SEV and have even before you have tried SEV appeared on this forum to comment on its issues? Remember that the Demo is no longer representative of the game being two nearly three patches behind at this point

I would just leave papa kim to stew now, he seems to have a bee in his bonnet and is trolling for a lame war.

Yes not every minor issue in SEIV was fixed, but name a game that has every problem fixed... any game it doesn't have to be a computer game has problems since the dawn of time.

Aaron thinks it's important enough to correct interviewers who ask about it:

http://firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=11601

I have more faith in what Aaron himself says than what some PR flack wrote in a press release.

"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

Grandpa Kim wrote:

Rilbur wrote:

The reason not all of SEIV's bugs were fixed is because Aaron didn't even know there were any (check the chatlog! ) -- no one bothered to report them, or something :D

You mean to say Aaron didn't know about the pathing problems in strategic combat or how poorly the ministers worked? These existed from day one and I heard innumerable comments about both. Why didn't Aaron? I know he occasionally looked in on the forums.

I believe he concentrated on even more serious problems and left these "annoyances" because they weren't cost/time effective to fix. Reasonable, but that still left the game unfinished.

Poor minister behavoir isn't a bug, even if it is unfortunate.

As far as pathing issues go, I never really noticed any unless your talking about the stuff where an enemy vessel is sitting on top of your target waypoint, which was wierd.
_______________________
There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Thank you for making my point more succinctly than I did. You could add 90% of all computer programs to list too.

And, yes, I will continue to belabor the point that the computer industry has done a shoddy job since the invention of GUI. It baffles me why so many people simply accept this. (Of course, IT professionals have a vested interest in the status quo so I don't expect their support.)

When (if?) I get the game, I will give it a good go. Often problems are overblown in the forums as well as occasionally understated. I will see for myself and decide from there.

Rilbur wrote:

The reason not all of SEIV's bugs were fixed is because Aaron didn't even know there were any (check the chatlog! ) -- no one bothered to report them, or something

Oh, they were reported...