Where are my bugfixes!? - Natural Selection 2

SystemSystem Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
edited September 2013 in NS2 General Discussion

imageWhere are my bugfixes!? - Natural Selection 2

A small development team walks up to the bar. One of the programmers says to the bartender: “I’ll take big new content, a tight deadline, and in depth technical changes.” The bartender looks at the programmer, and the team behind him. “Sir, you’ve had quite enough already.” At least that is what should happen, when Unknown Worlds sets about making game. In a more staid, rational world where the Unknown Worlds team worked according to established principles of game development, we would not do things like Reinforced. There are limits to how much code, business and art complexity a small team can handle in a limited time. The result of smashing against those limits is the set of bugs and …

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Comments

  • HughHugh Cameraman San Francisco, CA Join Date: 2010-04-18 Member: 71444NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts
    I hereby declare this comment thread open! And someone find me a bartender willing to give the UWE team service.
  • CCTEECCTEE Join Date: 2013-06-20 Member: 185634Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    Well, if one good thing comes out of this drama it should be Female EXO's.
    There's cars designed for females, so why not killing machine robots?
  • SammeySammey Join Date: 2012-06-14 Member: 153266Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    Thanks for the heads-up Hugh!
  • 1dominator11dominator1 Join Date: 2010-11-19 Member: 75011Members
    Its ok, we forgive you.
  • VetinariVetinari Join Date: 2013-07-23 Member: 186325Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver
    You know the community is gonna pin you down on thursday, right?

    :D
  • karandraskarandras Join Date: 2010-04-09 Member: 71231Members
    I'll be your bartender if one of you picks up the tab at the end of the night.
  • antd00dantd00d Join Date: 2013-03-04 Member: 183665Members
    You know the community is gonna pin you down on thursday, right?

    :D
    "It will probably arrive on Steam next Thursday." :P Probably. They didn't say it will happen.

  • xen32xen32 Join Date: 2012-10-18 Member: 162676Members, Reinforced - Supporter
    Ok, that sounds fair.
  • DecoDeco Join Date: 2010-04-10 Member: 71288Members, WC 2013 - Shadow
    UWE deserves more love.
    Thanks for the great game, guys!
    Jekt wrote: »
    Looking at the likes of LMG and pistol 'gun jam'. Structures that are green indicating they can be dropped but actually cannot. And beacons not effecting all players. Or players spawning in comm dropped life form eggs. First person spectator missing several ability animations and hit indicators. On/off building. Unresponsive commander menus that require a panel switch. Hotkeys for structures that are actually tool tips in disguise. Looking directly down or inside the CC on round restart. Minimal infestation looking like duct tape. General AI unit pathing and collision. I could go on.

    But the unintentional features are the best!

    Inability to cyst in early game.
    Exploits in every map.
    Low FPS and high ping players move ~2-3% faster (and can teleport if laggy enough).
    Clog physics objects are sometimes not destroyed between rounds, leaving an invisible clog.
    Crashes on map change (for many players).
    Spawning above the killzone in cave (pretty funny, actually).
    MACs decide to go on adventures between duties (often to a dead-end and back... curios things).
    + more

    Most reported... none fixed.

    Well, now they have a sponsorship from Fanta, they might get more bugs fixed!
    (Alien vision was inspired by Fanta, right?)
  • Warforce17Warforce17 Join Date: 2013-09-12 Member: 188154Members
    edited September 2013
    Looking forward to thursday. While I do not experience performance issues, many of my friends who I gifted the game to are, which makes it hard for them to get into the game.

    Warforce17
  • funkoolowfunkoolow Join Date: 2003-04-28 Member: 15917Members, WC 2013 - Supporter
  • zeepzeep Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3367Members
    edited September 2013
    Great to see you guys fixing performance! Much needed.

    After that, please unnerf Fade, tame Marine jumping (Marine jumps higher than a Skulk atm) and tone down the bright orange retina burning you're causing in Alien players eyes.
  • Martin7Martin7 Join Date: 2012-03-04 Member: 148108Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
    Take your time, keep up the good work and most important thing is that you won´t give up fixing the bugs.
  • moofreemoofree Join Date: 2005-01-10 Member: 34622Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Silver
    edited September 2013
    I haven't been playing NS2 recently (mostly due to the new-alien-vision-embargo, slight performance issues on my system, and skyrim), but just bought into the reinforced scheme.
    It'd be nice if we could get our constellation badges in NS2 too. :D

    The engine has come a long way from that first released build with the single player shooting course, and buggy everything. These are definitely not the worst builds y'all have put out :P
    Sounds like you're well on your way to ironing out the recent problems.
  • trinity.nstrinity.ns Join Date: 2008-12-07 Member: 65688Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    Thanks for the update! You're awesome!

    PS: Make sure Max sleeps at least a little bit, ok? :D
  • darkhunt333darkhunt333 Join Date: 2012-11-01 Member: 165414Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    I didn't see 64 bit. Another useless band-aid ? Iron grow a pair and toss those 32 bit plebs aside.
  • RoobubbaRoobubba Who you gonna call? Join Date: 2003-01-06 Member: 11930Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
    Bug fixing is great, and very welcome

    So would be adding in a less cluttered alien vision alternative, as well as an alien vision with NO outlines (cycle through say 4 vision options if you must have your awful normal alien vision in there as well).

    For the love of God let us see simply as aliens. FFS. There was nothing wrong with the old alien vision. Now we have ORANGE outlines on RED if the emergency lights are on. With 30fps in a late game fight, YOU TRY BITING THOSE JETPACKERS. Seriously. FIX IT.

    It's making comp play horrible.

    I've proven how much I love this game and want to support you guys, @Hugh, now please will you at least give your avid fans the tiniest sliver of respect by allowing us to play the game without being FORCED to have massive headaches induced every single game by the bloody horrible normal alien sight?
  • AchillesAchilles Join Date: 2013-04-20 Member: 184907Members
    Thanks for the news and updates! Always appreciated.

    Does anybody else think that they'll stick a few 'extras' in there that might not make the changelog? I swear every patch there are a few little things that do change but aren't mentioned. I've got my money on that strafe jump, but I guess they might be waiting a bit longer on mechanics to see how things balance out after a few solid weeks of play.

    At least they're tackling the larger problem first, though. Hopefully that will retain some players who've been having performance issues.
  • inveigleinveigle Join Date: 2004-01-07 Member: 25117Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Supporter
    Thank you for the update, looking forward to the changes.
  • cooliticcoolitic Right behind you Join Date: 2013-04-02 Member: 184609Members
    Exosuits appearing as female marines?

    Why do I feel like that was caused when trying to address memory issues?
  • SPAAAARTAAAASPAAAARTAAAA Join Date: 2013-08-28 Member: 187133Members
    Great words, UWE team!
  • shonanshonan Join Date: 2013-01-28 Member: 182562Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    Jekt wrote: »
    I know the glaring flaws with Reinforced will eventually be fixed, it's true that UWE does eventually fix the obvious problems.

    But what about the bugs that weren't introduced in Reinforced? The ones that have been in the game since release. Since early beta even. Since I started playing this game.

    Looking at the likes of LMG and pistol 'gun jam'. Structures that are green indicating they can be dropped but actually cannot. And beacons not effecting all players. Or players spawning in comm dropped life form eggs. First person spectator missing several ability animations and hit indicators. On/off building. Unresponsive commander menus that require a panel switch. Hotkeys for structures that are actually tool tips in disguise. Looking directly down or spawning trapped inside of the CC on round restart. Minimal infestation looking like duct tape. General AI unit pathing and collision. I could go on.

    It's bugs like these (and unfinished features), the ones that are just ignored and pushed back in the order of priorities for so long that people don't even bother to report them anymore that make me question the actual quality of the game.

    It would definitely be nice if some of the old bigger bugs would get fixed.
  • joohoo_n3djoohoo_n3d Join Date: 2012-10-30 Member: 164703Members, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Supporter
    i cant wait to start using my "kill em all..." taunt ingame!!
  • RedSwordRedSword Join Date: 2006-12-07 Member: 58947Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Supporter
    edited September 2013
    System wrote: »
    The fact is, we bit off more than we could chew – Hitting the Reinforcement deadline with the ambitious feature set we set for ourselves proved a little bit too much.

    I am disappointed by this. Since you own the game I feel like you could have postponed that update if you felt something was wrong...
  • joohoo_n3djoohoo_n3d Join Date: 2012-10-30 Member: 164703Members, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Supporter
    edited September 2013
    RedSword wrote: »
    I am disappointed by this. Since you own the game I feel like you could have postponed that update if you felt something was wrong...

    bugs are disappointing, i agree.

    BUT...every game has them and the reality of software development is that you can ONLY discover all the bugs when the software is released.

    Half-Life was released in 1998 and theyre still releasing patches for it.

    There will always be bugs. I'm glad they released sooner because that means they discover and fix bugs sooner :)

    keep up the great work UWE!
  • rantologyrantology Join Date: 2012-02-05 Member: 143750Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold
    RedSword wrote: »
    System wrote: »
    The fact is, we bit off more than we could chew – Hitting the Reinforcement deadline with the ambitious feature set we set for ourselves proved a little bit too much.

    I am disappointed by this. Since you own the game I feel like you could have postponed that update if you felt something was wrong...

    I don't think they could have though. I think Cory has mentioned a few times on these forums, the reason for the crazy deadline on the patch was because they were able to secure a steam promotion and free weekend, which cannot be postponed. It was a great publicity opportunity to promote the new update so they had to do it.
  • rantologyrantology Join Date: 2012-02-05 Member: 143750Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold
    Industry wrote: »
    rantology wrote: »
    RedSword wrote: »
    System wrote: »
    The fact is, we bit off more than we could chew – Hitting the Reinforcement deadline with the ambitious feature set we set for ourselves proved a little bit too much.

    I am disappointed by this. Since you own the game I feel like you could have postponed that update if you felt something was wrong...

    I don't think they could have though. I think Cory has mentioned a few times on these forums, the reason for the crazy deadline on the patch was because they were able to secure a steam promotion and free weekend, which cannot be postponed. It was a great publicity opportunity to promote the new update so they had to do it.

    Also PAX. They couldn't postpone PAX.

    Oh, yeah of course. I knew I missed something but couldn't remember what. :P
  • ritualsacrificeritualsacrifice Join Date: 2012-11-14 Member: 171148Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    Without ambition, without pushing the limits, without telling nay-sayers to sit down – There would be no NS2, and there would be no Unknown Worlds. We may be biased in our assessment, but it seems to us that such a situation would be less exciting for everyone, even someone who has to suffer crashes on the release of one of those ambitious builds.

    Seriously? Yeah, buggy patches are really fucking exciting. Just as exciting as opening a package only to find out that it's contents are broken. You've gotta be fucking kidding me with this shit.

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