Is the Patch Process Dead, and Other Thoughts...

Not sure if MM owns the francise rights now. He may still be able to do patches though. I always thought the endless series of patches was indicative of poor planning, coding, and testing. Bringing others on board and making good use of experienced playtesters would be a great idea. If there is to be a SE6, and if it will be the last, then involving as many people as possible would be an awesome gesture to the dedicated fanbase. (Just dreaming I guess. The more people involved, the more disagreements there would be. We'd never get past the design doc)

To me, the most disappointing thing about SE V is that it seems like all the lessons that were learned in developing and debugging the earlier versions of the game, like SE III and SE IV, were completely forgotten. A lot of work (years really) went into making those games playable and along comes SE V and it starts out with the most basic of bugs and the stupidest AI ever created (well, ok, maybe MOO3 was worse, but you get my point).
If there is an SE VI, you can bet we will all be spending another year or more installing patches to fix really sophisticated bugs, like the AI not putting weapons on troops and fighters again.

All of which made me wonder about the whole playtesting process. If they accepted me when I volunteered most of this would not have happened.

(I wonder if the non-disclosure agreement prevented people from resigning in disgust and denouncing everyone involved if the playtesters were ignored)

That's not the case.

The main factor was that the game is too complex for a single programmer/data file designer to complete in the time frame that was set out. Unfortunately that meant an incomplete game was released. It would have been preferable to have delayed the game for another 6 months, but I guess that wasn't an option.

I do not believe that v1.74 is the last patch.

I do not believe that a SE:VI will suffer the same fate.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

I though SEIII had the bast AI the problem is the stuff you can you in SEV makes the core of SEIII look horrible if they make an SEVI I hope they start with SEV's ai and make and wokr up

I though SEIII had the bast AI the problem is the stuff you can you in SEV makes the core of SEIII look horrible if they make an SEVI I hope they start with SEV's ai and make and wokr up

After the 1.74 patch my game is unplayable. It crashes after twenty or so turns. This is clearly something induced by the last patch or two. I have re-installed the game and re-downloaded the patches etc. I cannot play it at all. This was one of my favorite games of all time, at least at the SEIV level. SEV has been a mess from start to present. Now all I can to is periodically scan this site to see if there is another patch which might repair the current bugs.
How can anyone expect this franchise to continue?
hammersinger

The only fate I see for VI is a no sale if V is left broke, and I don't see that happening.

Why?

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See my PBW game stories on http://users.pandora.be/banzaiboy/sevpbw/.

SE5 contained a lot of foundation work:
- Formula evaluation for data files
- Scripting language
- New combat engine
- New graphic engine

These are all elements that could be carried over to SE6, with much less effort than was required for their use in SE5. Expected benefits might include more time for interface design and game play, which would result in a much more polished released.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Captain Kwok - From your lips . . .

So what are you saying, 6 would be a fixed 5. I'd hope that the game engines would be the main update.
If I remember right, most of the later patches for 4 were for interface.

No SE5 Deluxe or Gold?

It seems to me that if SE5 is not fixed then the whole franchise is dead. Who would buy any of it? Well, maybe SE4, yea. So what? I have played SE4 fanatically through all of the revisions and given my old copies to family saying "Play this game! It's great!" etc. Not with SE5. Nothing with SE5. Sadly, there has been a huge effort on the part of a well-intended community to develop mods and shipsets and all sorts of stuff. Unless the game engine is fixed this will all turn bitter.
The ball is in the Malfadore court. Sink or swim.
best,
hammersinger

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

I hardly see any bugs in the game but a few here and there.

Hell, look at Civilization 4. Huge budget, huge brand recognition, huge sales. You'd think they'd bother to make the game engine render properly on both Nvidia and ATI systems before they released the game, right? Instead, they put out a game that couldn't even run on many systems with ATI cards, and took about 6 months to finally put out a working solution (the first patches didn't really help in many cases). If we can't even expect multi-million dollar projects to put out stable games, what hope is there for much smaller teams?

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

I think most people here are railing against MM because they really, really wanted SEV to be a successful sequel to SEIV, and in most of the ways that count, graphics aside, it wasn't (isn't). Those of us who thrive on turn based strategy games don't have a lot of choices these days and the SE series is one of our best hopes. That's why we want so much for it. The problem is that asking your fan based to buy in to a 'new and improved' that isn't is one of the best ways to disappear from the market, regardless of the reasons. The frustration is that SEV had so much potential, and by the time that the long, long list of game killing bugs got worked out (a year later) all but the truly faithful had fled the scene. This bodes ill for the future of SE, and without SE a lot of us will be searching the 'click fest' saturated market for something to play.

I'm afraid I don't see the same problems with SE V that seem to be reported here. I'll agree that the AI is not too bright but I have met few AI's in any strategy game that are worth much without giving them large material bonuses. The improvements from the BM mod allow the AI to put up a decent fight for at least a while though they still tend to get too passive as the game wears on.

It doesn't help that you will find few actual AI experts working in computer game design. Building an AI that is both challenging and compact enough to run on the average PC without severely impacting performance is no easy task.

All things being equal I can't complain too much about the AI performance. I think given enough time and prodigious use of trial and error the modders out there might be able to tweak the AI to offer a serious challenge.

My main complaint is that the UI is way too clunky given the scope of the game. Research is fairly streamlined but fleet and planetary management, construction and colonization can be awkward at best and downright painful at worst.

"Don't Panic"

Here is the game-killer:
"Access Violation at address 100F36A..."
This causes a crash to desktop every time. I happens about every twenty or thirty turns. My system is standard. I re-installed the game from the distribution disk. I downloaded a new copy of the 1.74 patch. the game will not play. I have encountered this Access Violation bug every time I have attempted to play the game. I think it is new with 1.74. Others have noted this in earlier patch-versions.
As long as this game cannot play the franchise is dead. It is that simple. Some people seem to be reporting here that they do not see this bug. That probably makes it worse as an intermittent bug is much more difficult to fix.
ragards,
hammersinger

In my mind 1.74 is much much improved when it comes to the important things like;

- "access violation" (I've gotten this once since 1.74 and like all the time after a number of turns earlier)
- Random empires being created which were player controlled?
- SPEED! (maybe this was already in 1.71 or something) but you no longer have to wait > 10-20 minutes at end of turns

So, 1.74 is much, much MUCH better than previous patches. The game is somewhat playable at least and I think they can afford waiting to make another _good_ patch.

Given that the last patch was almost 5 months ago, I'd say the process is most probably dead.

It's not dead. MM has indicated a willingness to put out another patch given the current bug list that was submitted a short while ago.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Agreed, although a month may not be enough. I preordered long before release based on reputation and my addiction to SEIV. Next time I will wait for actual reviews see what others think. I was hot on Civ Colonization until I read all the forum posts. I won't be buying that one anytime soon either. Maybe never.

I came here just to check if anything had happened in the last few months to make SE V anything other than a piece of junk. This is the one thread I've read. And it seems the answer is no.

One of the keys of being a one person or small development team is that you have to be aware of your limitations and plan within them. That would seem to be the obvious point where SE V crashed and burned.

If MM wants the excuse of being a small shop, then they should charge a small price for the game. I don't care who sells it, if its a distributor or if its a direct sell over the internet. But when I pay full price for a game, I expect quality. If he wants to have the game out there as low-priced shareware or as freeware, then you can expect less.

To me, it looks like he cashed in and took our money to the bank. For that reason alone, its very, very doubtful I'd ever give anyone any more money for something called SE VI.

I'm afraid if I get started on the subject of patches then I could wind up getting booted off of the forum...

SEV patch process appears dead

SEV is pretty much dead and still broken in many aspects

This forum is dead except for the most hardcore players.

Conclusion... SEVI is DOA simply because MM has scared everybody off with a bad product.

The chance of me (and a lot of other people) buying SEVI is slim to none.

This is from someone that still plays SEIV alot.

I've has SEV since the day it came out. I've DL every patch. I've played bal mod, unnamed mod and several other I can't even remember anymore.

This game was broke the day it came out and still is. IMO

OK, now that I said all that I expect to get totally slapped around by the few that still love this game. I'll hope for one more patch and see what happens but expectations are low and if I have to wait another 5/6 months, this will probably be uninstalled by then. Its been wasting HD space long enough. Atleast then I won't have to keep coming back to look for patches because i won't care.

I've mostly lurked in this forum and the other for years but been a loyal fan of the SE series. I know many of you as an avid fans knows the characters in their favorite series. I've purchased everything MM has published trying to support the small guy, including that fluff dungeon game used to drum up some cash.

I've downloaded the patches, and the mods, but still cannot run a game to completion - my system locks up when battles get to 40 or so ships and 200+ fighters & drones... just when it is staring to get interesting. And the UI is inferior to SEIV's.

I have to admit, I'm pretty wary of MM products now. There is little chance I'd ever buy an SEVI if SEV stays unplayable.

Steve

I have noticed issues when a battle has over 200 fighters or troops. But.... That is because the CPU loading is the same regardless of the size of the unit, so 200 fighters are the same loading as 200 dreadnoughts.

Don't turn the move indicators and range circles on and you will have better luck. Strategic also makes life much better which if your playing simultaneous turns is the only option anyway.

Other than that, which is straight overloading issues and I can get that in most games I play, I haven't had any significant issues since the latest patch.

I wouldn't lay everything at MM's feet. I personally feel as though the playtesters have betrayed all of us.

Ooops. Playtesting is another subject I should avoid.

It might not be dead, but it sounds to me like it doesn't have long to live. "indicated a willingness"? I'm very disappointed. Aaron should be going like gangbusters to fix the broken product that has his name on it, not announcing new projects with the onus of SE:V hanging over them.

I first heard about SE:V on the GalCiv2 forums at a time when GalCiv's limitations were really starting to annoy me. I downloaded and played the 100 turn SE:V demo and I was hooked, here was a game with depth and variety, detail and intricacy. I bought SE:V at a retail store (Babbage's) the day it was released.

I put up with the bugs and the unimplemented features because the game had so much potential. I was encouraged by the regular patch releases and the reputation of support for SE:IV. I understood the game was rushed out the door too early. I appreciated the "one-man shop" nature of the company. I was patient.

Now there is a new game in the works. I didn't like the sound of that, but I can understand the need to go off and do something else for a while, to clear the cobwebs from the mind. But the phrase "indicated a willingness" sounds like a death knell, a half-hearted effort at something before moving on. Kwok, if this isn't what you meant, please clarify.

I know I'm not going to be buying any more Malfador games until SE:V gets into better shape: fewer bugs and more of the "unimplemented features" actually implemented. I have the feeling I'm about to get burned by Aaron Hall on SE:V, and I won't make the same mistake twice.

SE4 was supported over several years and received a couple of patches when other MM games were in development (such as Dungeon Odyssey, Star Fury, SE5) so just because a new title is in the works doesn't mean SE5 will no longer be supported.

"Willingness" is just the word I happened to use and not something I got from MM. I just suspected that most of the known bugs hadn't worked their way to MM (particularly those with demonstrable savegames) in the last few months which is why I think we haven't seen much action on the patch front. Recently, a compiled list of bugs/UI requests were sent to MM, so I'm hoping to see some progress in the upcoming weeks.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Overly ambitious ideas, playtesting, poor implimentaion, it doesn't really matter. The end product refects back to MM more than anyone else.
I hope it continues to get patched and fixed.

I'm looking forward to see what MM can do with this new "Conquer the World" game. One thing for sure though is I won't preorder again. I'll wait and see.

I for one would LOVE an SEVI!!!!!!!!! This is the greatest damn series of games ever IMO. I have easily logged more hours with these games then any others combined...

I pray each night for an SEVI....

SEV is a wonderful game to this day with no small thanks in part to Capt Kwok!

javasligner

"Willingness" did come off somewhat odd. Maybe SF wants him to develop other games, not my business but great if they do. I think you've gone above and beyond the call in your support for SEV with your mods and unceasing efforts for the game. I don't agree with the UI "biggest bang for the buck" choices as it may leave alot out. Is that true for the bug list too?

However; MM is very frustrating. I understand he's probably very busy but he's got this nice official forum and several unofficial ones such as SE.net. It doesn't take very long to peruse the main threads. Maybe once in a while (once a month?), make an acknowledgement. No excuses should be made for someone else. No communication at all makes people wonder if anyone cares or if the game is dead. I can understand if he doesn't want to read the forums but he shouldn't expect many sales even on new games.

I really like the SE series and SEV and I'm probably being overly harsh and opening up a can of worms, but I really believe MM should be more in touch with the fanbase. At least a little bit and not thru intermediaries. Just my opinion.

The list I sent off to MM had about 25 described bugs (of which I considered 8 to be critical) and about 20 UI/gameplay suggestions plus another dozen or so script function requests. I neglected Alliances at this time as I haven't had an opportunity to thoroughly experiment and identify/demonstrate the bugs. I suspect there's only a few serious bugs with Alliances that are making them useless overall.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

There is only bugs in the game that are bugging me right now is a suppy bug and the Alliance bugs other then that the game is good as far as I know.

Carrier bug

When carriers loaded with fighters battle after the battle all the fighters forget what suppys they have and take more from the carrier (50 fighters that can hold up to 900 suppys each adds up to 45000 suppys lost in every battle) which can make a carrier need more suppys after a battle or two no matter how big or small the battle was.

I'm not sure how you came under this impression. There's no bug submission/reporting via any other SE site. As I have always stated, it's generally much more effective to e-mail MM, , with bug reports then just posting about them. Alternatively, you could use this site's bug reporting feature, which apparently fires off an e-mail alerting about the item.

Posting about bugs is ok and you can see who else is experiencing a bug, but ultimately it's much less effective then communicating them directly to MM. I find the same thing with bugs reported for the Balance Mod in the BM forum versus direct e-mails. Savegame attachments make a big difference too.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

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

Kwok, thanks for taking the time to respond; I'm more at ease now.

Personally I think SEV is great! We've all been playing it now for what something like 2-3 years... what other game is like that. lay person modding is cool.

and to those having problems with game crashing bugs.... maybe it's your system. there are so many people who are playing games all the way through.

edit: oh and Happy Halloween!

SEV, more than a feeling.

So, little question to assess the state of the game, did he fix fighters launching in combat with random amounts of ordnance yet ? I haven't played in a while.

The patch lists that followed make both of them look bad. I don't know how many of those items should have been caught at the start. If I were a playtester and thought I wasn't being listened to I would have resigned and announced my resignation here (if the non-disclosure allowed). Too many playtesters would appear to have compromised their integrity over the excitement of being part of the project.

Playing the game for almost two years and its never crashed on me.

Its not the play testers fault, I expect there were simply too many things to know where to start. They laid the bugs at MMs door and it was up to MM to fix it.

Aaron presumably decided to press ahead in time honoured SE fashion by releasing a game that plays with bugs and then working on it.

I can live with that but I am kind of scared at the idea that bug fixing has slowed to a crawl when there is apparently much stuff that still needs fixing.

MM and SF could learn from the way Kerberos handled Sword of the Stars & BoB & AMoC btw. That is my current 4X and though I love the potential in SE5...

It strikes me that if SE6 is a real possibility then Aaron really needs to train a team to work on it by acquainting them with SE5 and getting some help straightening it out. No man is an island and the idea of a one man band handling development on a game this intricate and with a 3D engine is just unrealistic.

I think the real problem is pride, lack of motivation or skill in professional interpersonal communication & possible isolationist tendancy in MM.

OK?

Incorporating elements of the Balance Mod (and a few other player mods) into stock SE6 would be a great first step to a better product.

Following along with the earlier discussion, I completely agree that "more men on the job" would have fixed many issues long ago. Further, as was also mentioned before, the sales from this product at its current state are likely near zero. Yet, there is still a devoted and talented group of moders, testers and players out there who would love to participate in fixing the remaining bugs given half the chance. INMHO, the solution to the problem is obvious - turn SE into an open source project! Everyone interested will be brought on board, bugs will get fixed, new ideas infused and payment by donation will rejuvenate the dried up revenue stream since people will be more willing to pay for something that works and something they took part in. This model has already been proven to work in other popular gaming projects so will surely be successful here.

@Tron: Yes, mate: probably the only way to keep the franchise alive is going open source (or something close to it). I would not even mind if only assorted individuals would get access to the full source. One could even imagine a setup where only parts of the source are handled out.
Consider: with currently only ONE developer (Aaron) working on the code even 4-10 part time (hobby) coders are a tremendous increase in manpower.

I would not mind if I would be required to buy SE6 even if I contributed quite a lot of code..

As a side note: going open source (even partly) would of course leave the door wide open for potential pirating: BUT the number of players is possibly not much larger than the average traffic on these boards, so there is not much to loose any more..

If Aaron is thinking of retiring the series he could do the last version of SE with everyone's input. He would then be the producer and lead programmer. The end result could be awesome and would be a great thank-you to the fans.

As always, these things are governed by the business case. I haven't a clue about the profitability of the SE franchise, but keeping it a one man setup (plus some never mentioned designers and testers and whatnot) may be the only viable business model. Bit of a chicken and egg problem I imagine: would it sell more if there were more people working on it to deliver quality products or do you need to sell enough before you can scale up the team?

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See my PBW game stories on http://users.pandora.be/banzaiboy/sevpbw/.

Since turn based strategy is more or less niche segment in computer gaming today doing as a freelancer in this business is quite possibly no easy bread. Nevertheless I still think that an innovative business concept - meaning tight incorporation of the fan base even on code level - might provide enough drive to the series to sustain a SEVI and even SEVII.

As a side note: I never expected Aaron to make his living on SE alone. I might be wrong but I suspect that he does other freelance programming besides game's, too.

I was thinking more along the line of volunteer work rather than paid work on SE. Kind of like what modders are already doing.

No one has announced that SE franchise will close... or not?

Fuer Grissa Ost Drauka

Just an FYI. A patch is in the works - but I don't know about the timeframe or any specific details yet.

The bugs I emphasized were the launched unit supply and Alliance ones, so here's hoping they get addressed first.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Thanks Capt!

be nice if they fixed the movement bugs, I made a report when it first came out but another one is here just to make the point

http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/6206

I havent played SE5 since then until now in the hope that everything would get fixed. Its been a long time and it isnt nearly fixed.

Sorry but I am just so disappointed because that seems a particularly critical kind of bug to me.

By the way what are the Alliance bugs? I know of a few, but I like to know what the others are.

I think there has been more critical bugs, if the bugs you want fixed have not been fixed yet.

Well the only Alliance bug that comes to mind is that you can't change it. Say you create an alliance between 2 empires. Well after that you can't add anymore emmbers, you can't change the conditions, and neither can leave. As far as I know.

It gets worse if neutrals are involved.

Now I remember. You have a treaty that doesn't allow new members without a vote, or something, and you have an AI member. It will then invite lots of other AI that are suddenly in the alliance. Try pointing out that a vote is supposed to be necessary and it'll say "Sorry, I didn't read that part". That is, you know, if it could read or reply in such a manner

Yes, that royally screwed one of my PBWs. A neutral invited in three players who just happened to be fighting. One minute we were blowing up fleets, the next we were buddies sharing tech and everything else. Very frustrating.

The main Alliance bugs I know of is that only the proposing player can vote one an item before it closes and that you can add a player to an alliance without their authorization.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

I believe that's the one that screwed me in the PBW. Alliances have been banned in the game.

one Alliance bug that has been fixed is that you can make treaties when you are a part of a alliance.

Is that in 1.74 already or upcoming?

1.74 in BM and I not sure about the unmoded game yet.

I cant help feeling re OP that the patch process has obviously been dropped for other projects. I imagine that it was one of those "cant see the woods for the trees" situations and MM needed to work on something else for a while. But playing this game through at the moment there are some glaring bugs like the movement bugs, that I cannot stand and hate the thought that these will remain indefinitely.

Thing is, there is nothing we can do, we are helpless, MM has us over a barrel. This is the only game of its kind so we have no alternatives and we have already paid our money. The only thing we can do is try to soft soap MM into giving us the game we paid for. Which is pretty much and exercise in patience. I think its about time they gave SE5 the priority for a while and got it running nicely.

I certainly wont be buying any more MM products if this one doesn't work properly.

Other projects pay the bills, patches do not. That's the priority list in a nutshell.

Soon or later the new patch will come out. We must have some patience...

Well I hope you are wrong too Faithful, and Vince come to that. IMHO not fixing bugs is a bad way to sell games. It reduces the uptake of a published game and of future games. In fact a good patch is a news worthy item and makes its way around BB like this one starting new threads and making publicity and attracting new players. So I think you can make a case that patching is a worthwhile way of selling games. Certainly EA model v Blizzard I think we know who is winning.

I heard from MM today. He is currently working on the next patch for SE5. No time frame yet.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod