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Sins Beta 3 - Technical Feedback *POST HERE*

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Sins Beta 3 - Technical Feedback *POST HERE*

from Sins Forums

This thread is for technical feedback for Sins of a Solar Empire Beta 3. 

Please reply to this post if you'd like to make: a bug report, let us know about a compatibility issue, graphics issues, performance reports, etc. (i.e., technical stuff).

Before making a report, please be aware that the minimum system requirements for Beta 3 are:

  • Windows XP SP2 / Vista
  • 1.8 GHz Processor
  • 512 MB RAM (1 GB RAM for Vista)
  • 128 MB 3D DirectX Video Card
  • DirectX 9.0c
  • LAN or Broadband Internet Connection for Multiplayer

IMPORTANT:  When making a post about a bug, be certain to include - your system specs, a description of the bug you encountered, what you were doing when the bug occurred (how to reproduce it), and if it was reproducible or not.  We won't be able to make changes to the game without detailed information.

If you encounter a crash, Sins should automatically generate a minidump file. Please send the generated exception and a DirectX diag report to support(at)ironcladgames(dot)com along with a detailed description as outlined above. Minidump files are located in (please note these directories are hidden by Windows):

XP: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire
Vista: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\

If you'd like to give us some non-technical feedback, please post it here:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/index.aspx?AID=163062

By keeping this information in one place, it will go a long way towards us making Sins a better game!

Thanks!

215,823 views 272 replies
Reply #126 from Sins Forums Top
Ah, ok then the Scouts are buged
Reply #127 from Sins Forums Top
RemielX:

What happens if you use the zoom keys (V and B)? same problem?

All:

combat and notification sounds disappearing in MP and from saved games is fixed for next patch, as is the scout sub-light bug. Must... not... have... any.. more.. sublight bugs!
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #128 from Sins Forums Top
FYI:

tried a lan game (invited a friend and let him use my old desktop pc). one minor problem that occured was that the first time we tried I wanted to create a game and the game stopped. it didn't crash, I could still use my mouse, but there was no reaction and I also could not kill the game itself to I had to shut down the whole computer.

my guess is that it may have been my firewall, it has done this with other games in multiplayer as well. we tried a second time, I killed the fw and it worked just fine. I use zonealarm btw, its notorious for doing this I believe.

we did get one lag at the very end of the game, but that worked out, so as far as local games are concerned it seems to be doing fine.

my old VGN S3XP even managed to host the small map 4 player game though it did slow down a bit at times.

more time tomorrow, will likely be online for some games. what are details for the irc I keep hearing of btw?
Reply #129 from Sins Forums Top
RemielX:

What happens if you use the zoom keys (V and B)? same problem?



V and B appear to work correctly. I only see this behavior with the mouse wheel.
Reply #130 from Sins Forums Top
pirates seem to not be able to kill structures that are 0% complete and get stuck there quite annoying

was right clicking orders for a group of capships i had, it was switching the attack stance between "hold position" "mixed" and "mixed"

http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/3904/kodiakslb5.jpg

two problems with this one: A) could you make ships that go to rally points form SOME kind of formation? and B) does that look like 136 ships to you?

http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/865/sunbugoj7.jpg

is it just me, or is the sun REALLY icky in that one?

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/3405/tradeshipbugqy2.jpg

pretty self explanatory
Reply #131 from Sins Forums Top
Hi,

Just wanted to post that I had a second save game corruption/crash issue. Identical to the one I've posted previously in this thread (reply #120) but with a different saved game entirely. I'm assuming its the same error, with pretty much the same details, so I won't email the dump file or the saved game file unless you folks at Ironclad specifically want it.

On another note, I had an error where I had my fleet set to grouped jumping, and yet one of my flak frigates jumped anyway and the rest of the fleet wouldn't jump because one of my bomber squadrons appeared to be "stuck" and was not docking to its mother ship.
Reply #132 from Sins Forums Top

was right clicking orders for a group of capships i had, it was switching the attack stance between "hold position" "mixed" and "mixed"


You had a Sova in that fleet, and you'd accidentally selected one of that Sova's launched missile satellites. Said satellite can't be anything other than hold position, so...
Reply #133 from Sins Forums Top
While playing Sins in windowed mode, the only way the camera scrolls is when the mouse button is on the window border on the sides/bottom, and a very tiny area below the header on top. If you move the mouse off the window at your usual rate of moving the mouse, it won't 'register' the scroll, you pretty much have to let it pause at the border and then keep moving it.

But this is a tricky one, on one hand you don't want it scrolling every which way each time you move the mouse off the window, but the current way is a bit frustrating because the window borders are small and you need to hit just the right spot for it to start scrolling.

Maybe make the areas that trigger scrolling just a little larger? And the sensitivity could probably stay the same so that people can move off the window and not trigger the scrolling. What I usually do is play windowed and stretch the window to take up the whole screen, so it's almost as if I'm playing full-screen but don't need to worry about alt-tabs for doing stuff on the second monitor.

As a side track, would it be possible to make it so when you select windowed mode, it creates a window of the resolution you have set in the options? Right now it just creates a generic window, so you have to stretch it every time. Not a big issue though, obviously.
Reply #134 from Sins Forums Top
RemielX: if V and B are working properly, the game is having trouble getting input from your mouse. Do you have that problem when scrolling in a web-browser? any apps running that might be changing the mouse input?

Annatar: in the user.setting file, you can change the autostrafe area size, so it will be easier to trigger edge-of-screen-scrolling. It is set quite small by default because we expect the majority of people to play in fullscreen mode.
Reply #135 from Sins Forums Top
Thank you, will try that
Reply #136 from Sins Forums Top
Not sure if already stated. Not sure if game play or technical.

The empire tree on the left. Currently when my mouse is over the tree the main game window will not zoom in or out. Good. But the tree will also not scroll up or down (like in a web browser). In larger scale games I have to close detailed (open directory) views and then drag the scroll box or click the up and down arrow to move the trees.

In addition, would it be possible to move grouped fleets off the left side. Move to right side or just under the top info bar. I like to group fleets and am always having to scroll up the entire tree to expand the grouped fleet tree.

(There is probably a keyboard shortcut for this )

Speaking of keyboard shortcuts, it would be great to see that configuration window made larger, with categories, etc. Probably part of the final product and not BETA, I am sure.




Reply #137 from Sins Forums Top
Not sure if it has been mentionned...

I'm playing a single player game (medium size, medium difficulty) and have been watching the bounties for a while. From what I observed, bounties do not decrease or if yes, they decrease at a very slow rate, really slower than in BETA 2 in fact. In BETA 2, the bounties were resetting to 0 quite often (after pirate attacks).

In my game, the bounties are (after 2 hours of play):
Opponent 1: 2250
Opponent 2: 3090
Me: 2000

I explored the area and found the Pirate base (filled with ships... a lot!). Before finding their base, in 2 hours, I never encountered a pirate ship. So, I fear that the pirates aren't active at all. Maybe it's a bug, maybe its a wanted gameplay behavior, I don't know, but I posted it here.

Also, I saw some messages like "bounty has increased by -120...". Increased by -120? I presume you mean "decreased".
Reply #138 from Sins Forums Top

Random planets? A few times i've gotten one planet that was suppose to be actually be ice be arid, and one arid planet actually be ice.

Has anyone else encounted this?


sometimes the colony ship gets stuck at a planet its trying to colonize but thinks the planet is hostile.

Is it possible that it was an arctic or volcanic planet and you didn't have the research to colonize these?

Reply #139 from Sins Forums Top

I keep getting a wierd crash.

whenever I try to play multiplayer over the internet, right when the game starts, I get a sync, and the sins crashes.

this happen a few times, I got a mini-dump for it, I think I sent it in....

it is realy wierd, and getting on my nerves, givin I want to play online.

We probably already looked at the minidump and fixed it for the patch, but just incase:

Did you change your skyboxes? Do you have anything modded? Is there anything else in your Sins directories?

Ah, ok then the Scouts are buged

Not anymore.

 more time tomorrow, will likely be online for some games. what are details for the irc I keep hearing of btw?

irc.stardock.com, join channel #sins.

Is there anyway that will soon be developed to have more people be able to host bceause unless certain people are online no one can play!

Coming in the patch (along with lag fixes, crash fixes and more).

Reply #140 from Sins Forums Top


 more time tomorrow, will likely be online for some games. what are details for the irc I keep hearing of btw?



irc.stardock.com, join channel #sins.




found it in some other thread and got it to run, but thanks anyway. looking forward to the patch.
Reply #141 from Sins Forums Top
I've got an exploit: If you select a planet you don't currently have vision of, you can see its infrastructure health, tax income, and culture rate at the bottom of the screen. This even works for planets you haven't explored yet.
Reply #142 from Sins Forums Top
RemielX: if V and B are working properly, the game is having trouble getting input from your mouse. Do you have that problem when scrolling in a web-browser? any apps running that might be changing the mouse input?


All other apps in the system are working fine.

I had Microsoft's iPoint 6.1 installed (the drivers that came with the mouse). Looks like it installs an upper filter driver on the mouse stack (point32k.sys). Uninstalling the filter fixed the problem.

I took a look at the WM_MOUSEWHEEL messages going to your app; it looks like your message handler was being sent values < WHEEL_DELTA as the size of the wheel scrolls. If you are gathering your mouse input via this message, read http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/07/54615.aspx and make sure you are handling and accumulating these values correctly.

If you are instead using DirectInput to gather mouse data (you are importing dinput, so I assume you're using it), then the same applies. Make sure your input handling code can accept and accumulate values < WHEEL_DELTA.
Reply #143 from Stardock Forums Top
Display of current resources (credits, metal, crystal) should be floor()ed before display. Right now it seems to be rounded, and it's possible in the early game (when income rates are low) to have the screen showing 55 metal, and yet still be unable to build a Cobalt light frigate.
Reply #144 from Stardock Forums Top
When new frigates are spawned from an ability (e.g. the Sova's Missile Turret), they should inherit the current target of the spawning ship.
Reply #145 from Sins Forums Top
I had a window which looked like the one where you drop lagging players, yet which said "cancel server migration". I kept the window for about 20 seconds, when nothing happened I clicked the only available option and it continued but I got messages that every player had left the game.

what exactly would that mean and did I do something wrong?
Reply #146 from Sins Forums Top
RemielX:

That's fantastic info... thanks! I suspected that there was some kind of mouse input problem but hadn't had anybody confirm it. Looking into it now!
Reply #147 from Sins Forums Top
Ok, after checking around with the online mode a bit i have a few suggestions:

-Whisper function (/name or by clicking on a name) to send a message to one player only
-Being able to check and talk in the lobby channels while in the ready room or in the join game room (to invite people, continue talking while the game fills up)
-Player statistics (maybe, this can be good and bad, maybe let the user enable if he wants to show his stats)
Reply #148 from Sins Forums Top

Ok, after checking around with the online mode a bit i have a few suggestions:

-Whisper function (/name or by clicking on a name) to send a message to one player only
-Being able to check and talk in the lobby channels while in the ready room or in the join game room (to invite people, continue talking while the game fills up)
-Player statistics (maybe, this can be good and bad, maybe let the user enable if he wants to show his stats)

1.Whispering to specific players or allies/enemies is available by entering chat mode and hitting tab.

2. Coming in a future version of ICO.

3. Coming in a future version of ICO.

Reply #149 from Sins Forums Top
I had a window which looked like the one where you drop lagging players, yet which said "cancel server migration". I kept the window for about 20 seconds, when nothing happened I clicked the only available option and it continued but I got messages that every player had left the game.

what exactly would that mean and did I do something wrong?

This means the original host left and it was trying to set up a new one. Since most people probably don't have their port forwarding set up correctly, it was unable to migrate the host.

Reply #150 from Sins Forums Top

1.Whispering to specific players or allies/enemies is available by entering chat mode and hitting tab.




I meant in the lobby ^^;
That its possible ingame i know, but it would also be nice for the lobby without having to join a private room.