jtoddcoleman

No, our investors and partners weren't consulted on this, and there are no contractual obligations or monetary triggers behind it. I made the call to push GR and Infected up to Live because it's a better experience for new players in almost every way -- as you would expect from 9+ months of development. Client performance is far better, as you suggest (we're seeing an increase of +20 for most players, and even up to +50 fps for some), but every other game system is better as well. Lighting is improved. Seasons now change the appearance of the world. AI is better. The user interface has been significantly overhauled. The powers system has 9+ months of bug fixing and polish. There is a mountain of new features and content.

Propping to Live now also spreads out two different risks that were previously tied together (launching such a large build AND launching a new type of Campaign) so that we can tackle issues that arise in one or the other without fighting a...

If you want to continue playing Dregs, then stay on Test.

Live was so out of date (almost a year) that it needed to be updated.

Todd

The version that running on Live was from last July (!), so there is value in refreshing the environment and getting God's Reach and Infected in front of new players for that reason alone. Both the Dregs and the new player experience will be added to this version once they stabilize to a point where we feel comfortable; at a minimum there are some campaign scoring issues that we need to iron out.

We're working on both of the above as we speak. and yes, they will both be added to the alpha environment prior to beta.

Beta, for us, will trigger when we feel comfortable enough with the build to begin inviting in the registered crowfall.com players (360k or so) in waves.

Todd

All backers have access now. We'll start to invite registered players in waves once we announce beta.

Todd

We're trying to decide that... It's certainly in a much better shape than what is currently on live, but we won't be able to start inviting beta folks until at least the first section of the NPE (new player experience) is ready. That's cooking right now internally.

yes, we are working on that right now

Hey folks,

Quick note -- we're not making a huge deal out of this, but with this latest patch we are officially ticking the version from pre-alpha to alpha. The game has been in development (and in 24x7 testing) for a few years, now, and frankly we probably should have called it 'alpha' some time ago. We'll do an announcement this morning, but we are electing not to do an official press release, because we feel like the distinction between 'pre-alpha' and 'alpha' doesn't mean much to the audience at large... Internal designations vary so much between teams and projects that frankly, it doesn't mean much until you start to invite in the public en masse. That's beta and that's when it gets real.

Beta is what we are all focused on right now. We have some solid momentum going now on fps improvements (huge strides in the most recent build, as you can all attest!) and we're rapidly narrowing in on final elements that we need for launch.

...

I'll pass that along to our engineers, I know one of the initiatives they are still working on is character loading optimization.

Todd

Aha, this is helpful because I can leverage my previous post to answer! See my note above about branches -- the patch notes were erroneously generated to include some fixes that were in branches not included in this particular merge.

Todd

Let's talk about that.

Internally, we cut new builds all day, every day. There isn't just "one version" of the game internally; we have different groups working on different builds (like right now we have a "culling version" and "new player experience version" and "fix powers" version) and these are all duplicates (branches) of the game that different teams work on independently and we can bringing them up separately and testing them in separate environments.

You have to have separate development tracks because otherwise when someone is doing open-heart surgery on one system, every

...it's a great question, we tend to not give too much direction because (1) we need help with coverage on all the things, and (2) you guys aren't employees, so we hate to ask for things that feel like "task assignment".

that said, in this particular case, a lot of what we've been focused on are performance issues. so any help with trying out the new culling system, and finding particular areas or situations that cause fps drops (other than the obvious, like "a ton of players using powers in the game area") would be greatly appreciated.

Todd

Hey folks,

We put a new version up on Test last night -- this has a number of performance improvements, and a few known issues that we should probably highlight.

the Good

- First, we found a few improvements in the rendering pipeline. This should give a frame rate boost on all machines.

- Grass cards have been improved to look better (no razor edges along the bottom) AND to perform better. You can see the difference by turning your settings back to "Basic" ... but frankly, the overall performance improvement to this system means that you might as well run in Medium or higher.

- We added a new culling system to help performance as well. "Culling" is a way of removing items and effects from the scene to improve framerate -- and, in theory, you shouldn't notice anything but increased performance if we are removing the right things. (again, that's in theory).

- We fixed the framerate stut...

This is really helpful, I will pass it over to the engineer who is looking at hitching right now.

When was this footage taken?

Thanks

Todd

I went ahead and fast tracked this one, so we'll have the option available for you to turn it off in your settings screen in the next(?*) update to Test.

Todd

* or the one after...? I know that the work has done and has been sent to QA for testing, but not exactly sure when that version will go out. Should be very soon.

Hey folks,

Another quick check in on 5.110 "War of the Gods" development; we've been running Siege tests internally and we're knocking down bugs at a pretty rapid pace; as of this moment there are about a dozen issues remaining that we'd like to resolve before we put a Dregs campaign in front of you.

In the meantime, we appreciate all the help you guys have given us on finding and reproducing bugs with powers, crafting, interface and everything else. We have a testing team that works around the clock (literally) to find and document issues but they can't provide the kind of coverage that comes from having a few thousands players in the game and playing.

In preparation for Dregs testing, please make sure you have your Guild properly set up on crowfall.com, as the Test environment pulls guild data from the live website. We don't plan on doing a wipe, so whatever progress you've made so far will be there when the first test Camp...

Yeah, I know. It's frustrating. It's frustrating for us, too.

Here's the deal: we have a build, and it hung at the 99.99% bar. There is one issue that has proven to be incredibly elusive, and it's causing a massive lag on the server. Overall, the game feels pretty good. We're still working through power-related bugs -- all the underlying system changes we made this milestone have caused a crop of them, but frankly that's expected and we're working them through at a good clip -- but I'd be OK with putting those in front of you. Overall, I think combat is in a much better shape than 5.100, even with these new issues.

But the server performance issue is a killer. Any kind of reasonable player load (and I have reason to suspect we'll hit that) causes this problem to emerge, and it makes the game unplayable. Which would be even more frustrating.

As to "when", the truth is, we don't know. We have top men working on it. ("Top. Men."...

Hey folks,

Unfortunately, as the title says, today is not the day that 5.110 goes to Test.

We hoped it would be. We wanted it to be. We pushed really hard to make it the day.

This was a crazy week. On Tuesday, Gordon and I decided to institute a mandatory work-from-home policy for the entire team. That meant a quick scramble to get everyone equipped with machines and webcams and microphones and, in some cases, even desks at home. We started sending people home in waves. By Friday, the entire team was up and running in sixty different locations, with access to slack and email and source code and bug tracking and server monitoring and everything else. This morning we were even able to do company stand-ups like normal, only via webcam. so, really, not like normal at all.

In spite of that, we made a valiant run to get you a build, because we know you guys are chomping at the bit to test 5.110 (and believe me, we are, to...

As I said, this is a valid problem and one that we will have to solve before launch.

Todd

You'll be able to craft better gear across the entire progression of the game and, on top of that, still have exclusivity over the best gear in the game. Your gear will be far more durable, have better stats, and the item effects will be bespoke.

Todd

Agreed, we can't chase every rabbit down every rabbit hole. And we aren't. We don't make these decisions blindly; we can look at the data we collect . We can look through the logs and see how far players get into the experience, and what state they are in when they stop playing. We can also then reach out to them and ask them for reasons why they quit -- which is important qualitative data to add on top of the quantitative because often people don't "quit", they were just logging in to check our progress and intend to come back when the game is more complete. I also read these forums and social media for at least 2-3 hours a day, to get feedback from you guys. We don't make changes in a vacuum, even if it appears that way from the outside.

To reiterate my previous post: we can tell from the data that there is a significant issue in the gameplay loop where players find they cannot move forward, and they quit. While a thriving player economy will (hopefully) al...