Yarlen Yarlen

Sins Beta 4 Technical Feedback - *POST HERE*

▼

Sins Beta 4 Technical Feedback - *POST HERE*

And so it begins....again.

from Sins Forums

This thread is for technical feedback for Sins of a Solar Empire Beta 4. 

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 4 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=166574

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

Thanks!

206,189 views 269 replies
Reply #101 from Sins Forums Top

really? d'oh. then I suppose it IS quite a critical bug.
End of quote


Yeah

I really don't like relying on the autosave leading up as far as it needs too...
Reply #102 from Sins Forums Top


really? d'oh. then I suppose it IS quite a critical bug.


Yeah

I really don't like relying on the autosave leading up as far as it needs too...
End of quote


I checked it, you are absolutely right, the replay from a saved game only goes from the time you loaded until the time you saved.

so, fixing replay saving functionality should done fairly quickly.
TouchTasks - Access tasks with ease on Windows touchscreens.
Reply #103 from Sins Forums Top

so, fixing replay saving functionality should done fairly quickly.
End of quote


With our luck, Kryo is going to pop in and say "this was fixed internally already, nubzors!!!!!"
Reply #104 from Sins Forums Top
He might do it anyway just for the sake of calling you nubzors!!!!!
Reply #105 from Sins Forums Top
Eet mentioned this in IRC a few days back and I decided to do some testing since I've had something similar:

In Hold Position/Local Area attack stances, giving ships an order to bomb a planet instead gives a move order to the planet if they are outside of bombing range. If they are in bombing range, the normal attack order is given.

This isn't a huge issue but if the ships are in hold/local area stances you essentially have to give two commands to make sure they bomb the planet, since with a normal move order they can fly off and pick other targets

Reply #106 from Sins Forums Top
Usually I don't quote my own posts, but:

Odd bug/AI behavior:

In a MP game I just played, I showed my ships to jump as a group to an ice planet from an asteroid. They flew upwards a considerable distance on the Z-axis at around the center of the grav well, and then jumped towards the ice. In the process, the group got scattered around all over the ice planet's grav well, a few ships ended up on a completely opposite side, and others were thrown about along one of the edges.
End of quote


This just happened again in another game. I can provide another replay if you guys need it, but it's much longer this time
Reply #107 from Sins Forums Top
High unit counts that aren't really that high cause some massive lag, even when not being viewed. I'm guessing it's that wonderful empire tree? Dual 3.2ghz xeons, 2gigs of ram, 800mhz fsb and a bottleneck of a 7800gs should mean I'm throttled by polygons instead of processor related things like unit tracking. It craps out really bad around 200 units.
Reply #108 from Sins Forums Top
Not sure if this has been covered already or not but I have been having problems downloading sins. I have had the game on my computer since beta three came out and have enjoyed playing it. I recently tried to join a multiplayer game, only to find that my latency was so high that the game wouldn't start for me. After this occurred, I had a friend of mine who is an electronics engineer come over and test my network. His tests showed that my network was working perfectly and that my max download speed should be about 600kb/s. This test was done using the speedtest at http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ using the Seattle server. After seeing that it wasn't a network problem, I went on the sins forums to see if I could find any similar situations. When I didn't find anything I chose to remove sins and reinstall it. That was two days ago, and I have been trying to download sins since then. It keeps saying that my connection has timed out, which was weird considering my network is working perfectly and I can still play games like World of Warcraft just fine. Any help you could provide would be appreciated.
Reply #109 from Sins Forums Top
Try switching your download server from US-1 to US-2 in Stardock Central (Tools -> Settings -> Internet). If that doesn't work, please contact [email protected] for help.
Reply #110 from Sins Forums Top
Thank you for your prompt response. I had already tried the solution you had suggested and it had no effect on my downloading. My downloads have also started getting stuck at random points in the download. After waiting for about an hour to see if Stardock just wasn't updating, i found that Stardock central was actually frozen, and I had to use Ctrl+Alt+Del to shut it down. I have tried restarting the download many times since then, and it keeps getting frozen earlier and earlier in the process. The part it gets stuck on is called sin.sdc.
Reply #111 from Sins Forums Top
Two oddities / problems:

Auto scouting appears to have changed to pick unknown planets based purely on physical distance from current planet, this is better than the old system (where ships would go across half the map to find a new planet when there was one right next door) but is highly bugged under certain circumstances -- such as the unknown planet being chosen, while closest physically, has a phase-gate connection line that requires the scout to go across half the map despite there being another, equally close planet with a direct phase line connection!

Second, phase lines heading through grav wells need to either not happen, or be visually distinguished.
Reply #112 from Sins Forums Top
Second, phase lines heading through grav wells need to either not happen, or be visually distinguished.
End of quote


Maybe just 'light up' the shortest phase lane path leading to the planet your mouse is hovering over. That way you'd be able to tell what goes where
Reply #113 from Sins Forums Top

Second, phase lines heading through grav wells need to either not happen, or be visually distinguished.


Maybe just 'light up' the shortest phase lane path leading to the planet your mouse is hovering over. That way you'd be able to tell what goes where
End of quote


Problem is when you think the phase lane ENDS at that planet, and doesn't.

Edit: I have two synch errors -- who should I mail the generated error log to?
Reply #114 from Sins Forums Top

Thank you for your prompt response. I had already tried the solution you had suggested and it had no effect on my downloading. My downloads have also started getting stuck at random points in the download. After waiting for about an hour to see if Stardock just wasn't updating, i found that Stardock central was actually frozen, and I had to use Ctrl+Alt+Del to shut it down. I have tried restarting the download many times since then, and it keeps getting frozen earlier and earlier in the process. The part it gets stuck on is called sin.sdc.
End of quote

Hmm, yes, please open up a support ticket with us. Sounds like something is definitely not happy.

Reply #115 from Sins Forums Top

Problem is when you think the phase lane ENDS at that planet, and doesn't.

Edit: I have two synch errors -- who should I mail the generated error log to?
End of quote

[email protected]

Reply #116 from Sins Forums Top
Dragon and Hobo and I ran into some major issues when our host was dropped.

Another host was selected, but Dragon and I both experienced weird UI errors - essentially, our credits/crystal/metal amounts were complete and utter lies (the diplomacy screen ones seemed accurate, but not the ones in the regular UI) - and things were just weird. I'd put in an order for some 750 research, and the amount indicated in your UI would drop by a thousand (even if it only said I had say 500 in there, it would go to -500) Also, we queued up ships during the startup phase, and they refused to build (but I could build other ships of that type, it would just tick down to 1), and cancelling the build order would fail, it would just tick back to one. So that was ship support we could never get back.

I have a savegame of this if you would like to see it. As a side note, Hobo didn't have any bugs, and all three of us players were TEC.
Reply #117 from Sins Forums Top

Problem is when you think the phase lane ENDS at that planet, and doesn't.

Edit: I have two synch errors -- who should I mail the generated error log to?


[email protected]


End of quote


Sent... and next time, I need to look at the size of the files, 5 MB .txts my rear end!
Reply #118 from Sins Forums Top
We reloaded a MP save game, where I had previously dropped, I was loaded back in and could control the empire, but the AI was operating my ships and money simultaneously!

Serious bug, but I must say pretty cool as far as bugs go.
Reply #119 from Sins Forums Top

We reloaded a MP save game, where I had previously dropped, I was loaded back in and could control the empire, but the AI was operating my ships and money simultaneously!

Serious bug, but I must say pretty cool as far as bugs go.
End of quote


I sent in the save where this occurred. He also reported that one of his planets had been cleared of pirates, but some kind of pirate-based debuff remained.

Edit:

Also mentioned was a possible exploit of the new system -- ships stationed in the far "bottom" of a grav well had the ability to jump out from there, possibly allowing ships to jump to any system from one location.
Reply #120 from Sins Forums Top
Reloaded (after saving half way through) games have odd color switches between players... oddly this doesnt show in the replay.
Reply #121 from Sins Forums Top
Reloaded (after saving half way through) games have odd color switches between players... oddly this doesnt show in the replay.
End of quote


Someone mentioned this before, I think. Something about colors being assigned to players as they join the game room, not as they were in the save game.
Reply #122 from Sins Forums Top
the colors chosen in the save game remain the same, but they appear to be shuffled to some extent

for me there was a 2 person switch, yellow for red, the other two had their colors same as always.
Reply #123 from Sins Forums Top
bug : capship bug , cap ship i tried to phase out of grav well , instead decided to fly out of grav well. This was planet to sun.
Reply #124 from Sins Forums Top
Vasari voice overs may be a temporary placeholder, but pirate raid warnings need to be made distinct from incoming enemy fleets! Between that and going easy against someone who called himself a nub (and wasn't) I just lost a game that could have been fun. Instead, I was running around trying to not get killed because the voice warnings were of NO USE WHATSOEVER!

Also, my ships got bugged and dropped out of phase space and into normal space on several occasions -- that bug is highly annoying, especially since it turned them invisible. Another bug was that my ships went "up" to jump out of a grav well, and ended up scattered on the other end of the jump... leading to a horrific defeat for me.
Reply #125 from Sins Forums Top
I'm sorry about that Ron. Having been trounced in less than an hour by Iri, I thought I was crap at the game. I guess I've graduated from noobdom, although it wasn't a walk in the park either. Would you like another game with no holding back perhaps, so you can get revenge? I think the first pirate attack was due to you building an early trade post.

I agree the pirate warning should be more pronounced. Maybe even flashing the screen a few times, as it's a pretty important event and should cause a fierce bounty bidding.