Natural Selection 2 News Update - Build 233 is now live on Steam!

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Comments

  • puzlpuzl The Old Firm Join Date: 2003-02-26 Member: 14029Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
    edited December 2012
    Because adding comments to code submissions is hard.....

    SwiftSpear.. we're not talking about in-line comments here, or autogenerated API documentation.. but when you commit code to source control you just tag on 3-5 words to describe the broad scope of the checkin.

    My solution is simple: if you forget a patchnote for release X, then you are responsible for generating patchnotes for release X+1.

    Laziness will then disappear from the equation.
  • VonDoomVonDoom Knee deep in the latency Join Date: 2009-10-08 Member: 68989Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    VERTICE WELD TOOL! WOOHOO!

    Its great that you have started to improve the editor tools, it will make map making become even more fun and much less time consuming : D
  • LofungLofung Join Date: 2004-08-21 Member: 30757Members
    so the performance on machines is still random?
  • RebelRebel Join Date: 2003-04-10 Member: 15371Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Subnautica Playtester
    edited December 2012
    <!--quoteo(post=2043328:date=Dec 11 2012, 02:59 AM:name=coldsmoke)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (coldsmoke @ Dec 11 2012, 02:59 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043328"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm not liking this trend of not disclosing everything they change in the patchnotes, it's pretty insulting to the community that's helped them so much.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    That's pretty insulting to the Devs tbh, stuff gets left out of the patch notes not because they are trying to hide anything just because they forgot to add it on, also doesn't help that things are changed and commited by guys off site (nearly all of the mapping is handled by people out of the office) and they are working so hard of fixing and improving things they periodically forget to add it to the patch notes.



    EDIT - Seems Cory answered this much nicer already. :P
  • RebelRebel Join Date: 2003-04-10 Member: 15371Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Subnautica Playtester
    edited December 2012
    <!--quoteo(post=2043509:date=Dec 11 2012, 11:16 AM:name=Mr.Greedy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Mr.Greedy @ Dec 11 2012, 11:16 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043509"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I cant understand that. How do u guys know what u ever have changed? There must be tons of things now in this game u have simply forget. Thats a selfmaded error source. A thoroughly documentation is so important for every bigger project.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    <!--quoteo(post=2043531:date=Dec 11 2012, 12:09 PM:name=puzl)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (puzl @ Dec 11 2012, 12:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043531"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Because adding comments to code submissions is hard.....

    SwiftSpear.. we're not talking about in-line comments here, or autogenerated API documentation.. but when you commit code to source control you just tag on 3-5 words to describe the broad scope of the checkin.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->


    There are full logs from the bug tracker and the code checkins and built commits but they are not really in prose and certainly not suitable for posting in a news / forum thread so one of the Dev's or Hugh has to compile all of that into something they can post, there are cracks and things slip through, personally I prefer to see that time spent working on the game and not detailing specifically that 3 lines of code got amended in some obscure routine that might impact 1 game in 250 or something. ;)
  • puzlpuzl The Old Firm Join Date: 2003-02-26 Member: 14029Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
    edited December 2012
    I'm sorry, but if there are full logs in the bug tracker and and 'built commits' [sic] then where exactly are these alleged cracks for changes to fall through?

    UWE refuse to amend changelogs after the fact AND changes get ommited. There exists no authoritative change history for NS2 anywhere.

    Think about how bad a situation that is.

    Nobody can point to a reliable list of changes for this game and say "See this is the evolution of this feature through beta and into release" with reasonable certainty.



    For example: <a href="http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Version_history" target="_blank">http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Version_history</a>
  • BacillusBacillus Join Date: 2006-11-02 Member: 58241Members
    While the youtube comments seem to disagree, I really appreciate the slightly more serious and formal approach on the video part. While there certainly are people who are fans of the NS2HD way of doing things, I think the core content should focus on getting the information across clearly - which is done nicely on this one.

    The less formal approach is fine on some videos of course, but I don't think it works well on the more important announcements. Little things like this make a big difference if you want people to stick with a game that hasn't quite reached its full potential yet.
  • frallan123frallan123 Join Date: 2012-05-12 Member: 151962Members
    I have from 60-120fps in combat on a 20slot server without overclocking my CPU so for me its a bit better than before but the problem is that this game have poor GPU performance. My GPU load under combat in marine base as alien when everyone ran in was around 49% it means it only uses 50% of the my GPU which if it were at 100% the FPS will be much better.
  • ZekZek Join Date: 2002-11-10 Member: 7962Members, NS1 Playtester, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited December 2012
    I can understand mistakes being made once in a while with commit logs. I can understand the occasional weird things like a note in the patch referring to a change to something that was only ever in testing. But I am puzzled that UWE won't acknowledge how serious a problem they have with this stuff, even going so far as to say outright that it's okay and will not change. Consistently, every single patch, changes are forgotten. That includes major balance changes. As a developer myself, it's never ever okay for me to make changes that go live to customers while forgetting to document them. If I did that once I would get scolded, consistently and I would probably be fired.

    My suggestion to you guys is to include a User Perceivable Changes note in every single commit log, without exception ever. Use that to build the changelogs. Worst case scenario a commit log can look like this:

    "Refactored methods X and Y.

    UPC: None."

    Make sure everybody does this, and say something if a dev forgets it. Then just read through every commit while the patch is being processed and add up all the UPC notes. If the problem is that a bunch of changes are going into each commit and the dev forgets about some of them... That's just bad version control usage, don't make such large commits and always review what code changes are going in before you click OK.
  • kk20kk20 Join Date: 2012-10-30 Member: 164592Members
    <!--quoteo(post=2043509:date=Dec 11 2012, 11:16 AM:name=Mr.Greedy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Mr.Greedy @ Dec 11 2012, 11:16 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043509"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I cant understand that. How do u guys know what u ever have changed? There must be tons of things now in this game u have simply forget. Thats a selfmaded error source. A thoroughly documentation is so important for every bigger project.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    My team get reprimanded if they dont add notes when they check back in. Then it is simply a case of generate notes from the build. It should be an automated procedure.
  • bHackbHack Join Date: 2010-03-23 Member: 71059Members
    Any update on servers being able to run on linux please? soon? please?
  • ZaggyZaggy NullPointerException The Netherlands Join Date: 2003-12-10 Member: 24214Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Onos, Subnautica Playtester
    <!--quoteo(post=2043584:date=Dec 11 2012, 04:04 PM:name=bHack)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (bHack @ Dec 11 2012, 04:04 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043584"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Any update on servers being able to run on linux please? soon? please?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    What he said, any ETA?
  • SgtBarlowSgtBarlow Level Designer Join Date: 2003-11-13 Member: 22749Members, NS2 Developer
    edited December 2012
    Every single one of our team members post check-in notes with every single commit with TAGS. Problem is our team is international and we rely on wonky internet's to capture and store all the commits. There are times outages around the globe stop some notes from being logged, even the commit server its self goes down now and then.
    Also some notes have gone more so missing recently because of changes to the commit formatting to try and give us some sort of filtering options as well as parsing errors as a result of resolving issues in development of cross platform communication between systems that provide our teams with the info they need to do their jobs.

    Some of our Build Commit lists are up-to 7 pages long for each build version full of things not at all relevant to the player base.
    For someone to sit there and go manually through every single message to collect and categorise all the changes is a bad allocation of what little time everyone has, we have always used a filter script to try and capture relevant changes but it has never been 100% for various reasons, We are trying to cater for the development team, the Play testers and the public change logs.
    The solution to this simple idea is not an easy one.

    Any assumption (with no knowledgeable information of our internal affairs) that we are not actively trying to resolve our internal issues with patch notes is a poor one. It makes me sad :(

    <img src="http://ns2.unitedworlds.co.uk/images/svn.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
  • bHackbHack Join Date: 2010-03-23 Member: 71059Members
    edited December 2012
    <!--quoteo(post=2043588:date=Dec 11 2012, 03:12 PM:name=SgtBarlow)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SgtBarlow @ Dec 11 2012, 03:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043588"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    Sooo, you saying that there is no 'manager' in charge of distributing the work flow to devs and updates reported back?

    Task1: fix the issues with ... [Assigned to: Dev X]
    Task2: work on optimization within the ... classes/some other file structures (Assigned to: Dev Y]
    ...

    Oh well, not a big deal for me though.

    <b>Want the answer for the <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=125839&st=100&p=2043584&#entry2043584" target="_blank">linux question</a> asap please with ETA :></b>

    Also, please re-work/re-optimize cysts. They are the main source of HUGE fps drops at the moment. And YOU(uwe) know that, but don't do anything about it (publicly yet).
    Cysts and infestation is fun and awesome feature, but something has to be sacrificed - game feature or game performance. Playerbase would always pick game perf. over feature... And I believe devs should worry about their game performance more than the features of their game.
    Please invest more manpower into that.
  • elodeaelodea Editlodea Join Date: 2009-06-20 Member: 67877Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited December 2012
    <!--QuoteBegin-sgtbarlow+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (sgtbarlow)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    "maxmcguire
    added basic first person spectator framework"

    =D
  • bHackbHack Join Date: 2010-03-23 Member: 71059Members
    <!--quoteo(post=2043603:date=Dec 11 2012, 03:26 PM:name=elodea)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (elodea @ Dec 11 2012, 03:26 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043603"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><!--QuoteBegin-sgtbarlow+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (sgtbarlow)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
    "maxmcguire
    added basic first person spectator framework"<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    =D
    <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    It was done intentionally =)
  • SgtBarlowSgtBarlow Level Designer Join Date: 2003-11-13 Member: 22749Members, NS2 Developer
    <!--quoteo(post=2043602:date=Dec 11 2012, 03:24 PM:name=bHack)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (bHack @ Dec 11 2012, 03:24 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043602"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Task1: fix the issues with ... [Assigned to: Dev X]
    Task2: work on optimization within the ... classes/some other file structures (Assigned to: Dev Y]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    No, this is and was an incredibly slow work flow process and requires a a substantial amount of time to do, We have a mostly automated system that delivers work tasks very effectively, each Dev knows what are they area they are working on as assigned and works on their own list of tasks receptively unless a meeting says otherwise, everyone functions without interruption and without tripping over each others feet.
    They work from a feed that has pre defined severity levels and they take on the tasks that are relevant to them, The feed is powered by the testers who get their info from their own tests, Get Satisfaction, these forums and other sources.
  • naXynaXy Join Date: 2008-07-12 Member: 64618Members
    cysts are fine, when you are in doubt just spam cysts and crash the server&people's client. Better than losing.
  • Ellen RipleyEllen Ripley Join Date: 2012-11-06 Member: 167803Members
    I'm getting massive performance drops in this update. Can't even go near an exosuit without dropping to 5-6 fps, and this is with everything but texture quality set to off or low. I don't know what you guys did, but it's unplayable for me.
  • BacillusBacillus Join Date: 2006-11-02 Member: 58241Members
    edited December 2012
    <!--quoteo(post=2043588:date=Dec 11 2012, 04:12 PM:name=SgtBarlow)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SgtBarlow @ Dec 11 2012, 04:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043588"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Any assumption (with no knowledgeable information of our internal affairs) that we are not actively trying to resolve our internal issues with patch notes is a poor one. It makes me sad :(<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    It's a lot about what gets shown to the outisde world. What kind of conclusion are people supposed to draw if for example the map changes get left out from the changelog? Apparently there are some in this version, at least according to the qnet talk.
  • ZekZek Join Date: 2002-11-10 Member: 7962Members, NS1 Playtester, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited December 2012
    I'm not trying to dictate you guys' development process, I'm simply saying that changes constantly slipping through the cracks is an urgent problem that is worth spending some additional time to address. Commit logs being completely missing from the SVN repo in particular is incredibly serious! If improving the changelog process means delaying the patch release a bit, so be it. In the beta this was accepted as a quirk of UWE's fast-iteration development process, but making substantial undocumented changes to people's live copies of the game is unacceptable IMO. It was discouraging to see Cory's official response to this that effectively dismisses the problem by saying "...but things get missed and will continue to be missed."
  • SgtBarlowSgtBarlow Level Designer Join Date: 2003-11-13 Member: 22749Members, NS2 Developer
    My point is why make assumptions in the first place, instead if you notice something and want to know what's going on, why not just ask?
    For me I personally hate assumptions, It's a disease of the entire world that causes nothing but arguments, complications, war and death all avoidable by asking a simple question to find fact..

    I don't think what Cory said is wrong at all, there are flaws in everything everyone does in anything, Our main issue is battling against internet outages where messages get lost and also getting lost in transitions when making improvements to fix obvious issues.

    That is what is happening and I am doing what I can to minimize the loss of information but there is a lot of data and different kinds of data going through the same channels and what should have been a simple task is proving to be a spaghetti nightmare for stupid reasons and its annoying the hell at of me so far, so yes patch notes are.. patchy.... for this reason for the time being and no, due to the current state of change in transition with internal tools, delaying a patch for this would make absolutely no difference to the fact that patch notes are missing, unless the entire dev team just stops working on the game till its resolved but its not completely resolvable due to the nature of the dev process we have that cannot be changed...
  • bHackbHack Join Date: 2010-03-23 Member: 71059Members
    <!--quoteo(post=2043619:date=Dec 11 2012, 03:49 PM:name=SgtBarlow)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SgtBarlow @ Dec 11 2012, 03:49 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043619"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->No, this is and was an incredibly slow work flow process and requires a a substantial amount of time to do, We have a mostly automated system that delivers work tasks very effectively, each Dev knows what are they area they are working on as assigned and works on their own list of tasks receptively unless a meeting says otherwise, everyone functions without interruption and without tripping over each others feet.
    They work from a feed that has pre defined severity levels and they take on the tasks that are relevant to them, The feed is powered by the testers who get their info from their own tests, Get Satisfaction, these forums and other sources.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    Yeah, it's called task queue and severity level assigned to them. There SHOULD and there is someone behind it doing a basic queue management... You don't lave all of it for AI, don't you... And how is that even possible when you say you rely on tester's feedback, etc...
    Anyway, it's your busyness how you run it.

    Answer for the <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=125839&view=findpost&p=2043584" target="_blank">linux question</a> please?
  • lwflwf Join Date: 2006-11-03 Member: 58311Members, Constellation
    The game is definitely hazy even without those options enabled.

    I don't know if this is new but I noticed some effects, specifically the rays from tech points are not drawn as they expected, as demonstrated in the screenshots. Maybe the source needs to be visible for it to function or it was optimized a bit too much. Also notice how the overall contrast is terrible though it's far from the haziest area even on that map alone.

    <a href="http://imgur.com/a/qSyLy" target="_blank">http://imgur.com/a/qSyLy</a>
  • eXaeXa Join Date: 2007-09-22 Member: 62400Members
    <!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The Command Structure health will no longer be displayed for enemy structures when they spawn in a nearby room.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    \o/
  • Squeal_Like_A_PigSqueal_Like_A_Pig Janitor Join Date: 2002-01-25 Member: 66Members, Super Administrators, NS1 Playtester, NS2 Developer, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Developer
    <!--quoteo(post=2043510:date=Dec 11 2012, 11:16 AM:name=Soylent_green)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Soylent_green @ Dec 11 2012, 11:16 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043510"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->...and smoothing groups for level-geometry that isn't a model.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    Edge smoothing is actually being worked on right now.
    <!--quoteo(post=2043518:date=Dec 11 2012, 11:30 AM:name=Swiftspear)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Swiftspear @ Dec 11 2012, 11:30 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043518"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Being lazy with documentation is pretty common for many of the newer agile development processes that are being followed these days<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    It is not laziness. Everything we spend time on comes at a cost. Parsing through all of the many checkins, making sure not a single thing has slipped through the cracks, compiling them in a way that the public can make sense of, takes a significant amount of time...time away from development on the game. Sgt. Barlow has been explaining some of the issues that cause some checkins to go missing. The patchnotes, for example, have a hard time dealing with, say, an optimization that has been worked on over a period of several patches, with many different changes made and tested, then reverted again.

    In general, the amount of changes that are missing from this recent changelist is pretty small, and their impact on the game not very noticeable, so it should not be blown out of proportion. We are actively trying to improve the situation, however, but all of the changes and improvements that we make to the process will mean more time spent on patchnotes and less time on development.

    --Cory
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Join Date: 2003-11-28 Member: 23688
    <!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Edge smoothing is actually being worked on right now.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    +1
  • MurphyIdiotMurphyIdiot NS2 programmer Join Date: 2008-04-17 Member: 64095Members, Super Administrators, NS2 Developer, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts, Future Perfect Developer
    <!--quoteo(post=2043563:date=Dec 11 2012, 06:22 AM:name=Zek)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Zek @ Dec 11 2012, 06:22 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043563"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If I did that once I would get scolded, consistently and I would probably be fired.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    This got me thinking. Perhaps we could create a system where the community can vote who gets to remain on the island. Every patch, the developer with the least votes is fired from UWE. And everyone learns the valuable lesson of how important it is to document changes such as the Marine Commander drop weapons icon being changed from the Weapons Level 1 graphic to the Shotgun graphic.

    We could Stream it on twitch too.

    <!--quoteo(post=2043584:date=Dec 11 2012, 07:04 AM:name=bHack)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (bHack @ Dec 11 2012, 07:04 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043584"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Any update on servers being able to run on linux please? soon? please?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    It is being worked on. No ETA. You can all keep asking about it but that is going to be the answer :D
  • Salraine_ChiSalraine_Chi Join Date: 2011-07-03 Member: 107669Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    Unplayable for me. Even in the ready room I am struggling to get a decent frame rate. 232 was very smooth for me.

    Fog/haze is terrible. I always took it off during the beta by changing the LUA file but its just downgraded the graphics for me and may even be contributing to the frame rate drop. the option to disable is needed at least.

    My PC is no slouch and this is the worst NS2 has ran for me for a long time. Im out till 234.

    PC specs in case it helps.

    Intel Quad i7 @ 3.0
    6 Gig Ram
    GTX 670
    Win 7 Home

    Sal
  • PoNeHPoNeH Join Date: 2006-12-01 Member: 58801Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester
    I can also attest to the fact that 233 is significantly inferior to 232 in terms of FPS. Especially in crowded areas. 232 was doable for me, but this new build is a huge steps backwards.
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