View Full Version : Creative Assembly Is the patch approved by the beta-testers?
MagyarKhans Cham
11-07-2002, 20:44
I ma wondering how this patch is "welcomed" by teh beta-testers. Just being curious.
Erado San
11-07-2002, 22:49
Of course it is:
- The improvements to SP are obvious.
- Some crashes, in particular on XP are fixed.
- MP instablity solved to some extent. Just make sure you don't play SP or anything else before going online. Start up MTW and go online. It's not perfect, but has improved.
We welcomed the patch from the start and are happy to see that most of our comments we made during testing have been addressed by CA.
Dionysus9
11-08-2002, 00:19
Quote Originally posted by Erado San:
Of course it is:
- The improvements to SP are obvious.
- Some crashes, in particular on XP are fixed.
- MP instablity solved to some extent. Just make sure you don't play SP or anything else before going online. Start up MTW and go online. It's not perfect, but has improved.
We welcomed the patch from the start and are happy to see that most of our comments we made during testing have been addressed by CA.[/QUOTE]
As a beta tester, I'd have to disagree that MP stability has been improved, on my computer it hasnt. But otherwise, I suppose the patch is a success.
Nevermind that the only thing I ever wanted was increased MP stability.... oh well, I guess there is always the expansion...
I am always wondering.. compare to other online games whose market is mainly the SP, how unstable are them on MP? Is CA's MP below, on par, or better than the market median?
Just curious as I have only play STW/MTW these past 2 years (except NWN which I dont go online).
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tootee the goldfish,
headmaster of Shogun-Academy (http://shogun-academy.tripod.com)
loyal roach of Clan S.G. (http://thesilvergazwa.tripod.com)
'Pa Si Buay Chao! Si Liao Ka Song!'
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dont belong here, but toote
wc3 around 300 games and never droped by the game or the server!!!!
just by connection....
k
tootee,
Total War isn't like other internet games. If I loose data packets while playing an FPS like Half-Life, my screen will freeze but I will eventually get resynced to the server if the transmission problem clears itself up. This isn't possible with Total War because the battle is playing out on every machine in the game. Suppose I'm playing you and you command your general to move, but I don't get that command from you because of a momentary interruption of data transmission. Your general will move on your machine, but not on my machine. The battle state will diverge between our machines and we'll be out of sync on the next check which is probably made every few seconds. There is no way to recover because positional information is not being sent between the machines since the game would be unplayably slow if all that positional battle information had to go from the host to the joiner. Total War is inherently more unstable than most internet games, and there is nothing anybody can do about it.
Maintaining connection to the matchmaking server should work as well as other games. I'm not experiencing disconnects except when returning from hosting a game. That shouldn't be happening. Other people are apparently still getting spontaneous disconnects from the GameSpy server. That shouldn't be happening either, but is that a game problem, server problem, internet connectivity problem or machine problem? Some people are getting CTD. I don't. Is that a game problem, operating system problem, directX problem, driver problem or hardware problem?
[This message has been edited by Puzz3D (edited 11-07-2002).]
Erado San
11-08-2002, 02:48
That's right, Puzz, you put the finger on the sore spot.
That's why not only the speed of the connections is important, but most of all the stability of the connection. Any router in between you and the other players that has a hickup and needs to reset can easily create a 1 second delay, which can be fatal. And with the game played on every single computer, so no possible resync, that means end of game for you.
I haven't mentioned this before, but I would check with Ad Aware if you have spyware running. The regular internet traffic that some spyware can generate might also be a possible problem.
And, don't play SP before you go online. I don't know what the reason is, but I find MTW is more stable online when you go straight into MP after starting the game.
Dionysus9
11-08-2002, 03:23
The strange thing is that my disconnect problems are not occurring in game. They are occuring pre-game or post-game, during the handshake process (i.e. lobby to host screen, host screen to battle-map, battle-map to results screen, results screen to lobby). They are not occurring during the actual combat itself, where I could see a delay would cause serious problems.
I am not very fluent in transfer protocols or programming, so I am at a loss to say what or why these disconns are happening.
MagyarKhans Cham
11-08-2002, 03:26
The actual game is stable for our Khan, but the seconds before it and after it, or when starting to host are dangerous moments.
I have a suspicion that if you don't exit a battle in a "normal" way, you can have trouble hosting your next game and possibly joining your next game. I don't actually know what constitutes a "normal" exit, but after I host a game that won't start or the host crashes or esc's on me, I logout and restart MTW. If the exit seems "normal" with all players leaving before the host quits, I just relog to refresh the screen without restarting the game. Twice since installing the patch I've gotten the "incorrect details" when I tried to logon after a "bad" exit from a battle. The fix for that was to restart MTW. I also got kicked off the server once yesterday when trying to host after a "bad" exit from a previous hosting attempt. As I recall, I restarted MTW and was ok hosting after that. It just gives me the impression that the game can be left in some incorrectly initialized state if you don't exit from a battle in a certain way or sequence. When I host I wait before going to the summary screen to give all the joiners time to leave. Also, I don't think joiners can get to the summary screen if the host quits before them.
[This message has been edited by Puzz3D (edited 11-07-2002).]
Dionysus9
11-08-2002, 05:01
Well, I noticed this pre-patch and I don't know if its changed:
After a couple of hosts (3/4) I will start having problems hosting soon after a game has finished. If I sit and chat in the lobby for 5 minutes or so and then try to host, I have less problems. It seems there is some sort of buffer that needs to get emptied or something. I dunno. I guess these quirks are just something we will have to live with.
Well, for what limited time and input beta testers had, i think the patch has done remarkably well, especially from a SP perspective. The SP game is now well honed, competitive and very nicely balanced (give or take a few personal tweaks http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif).
For MP it's too early to tell and it's far more complicated to gauge its success or failure than for SP. A lot depends upon each individual's setup as much as their opponent's amongst other things.
I've rarely had too many probs online, but then maybe i'm just one of the lucky ones. It would certainly seem that a lot of useful additions have been made, but like Puzz and Erado have said it's not so simple to make it work online...
Sir Frog d'Ancre
11-08-2002, 06:07
Hi guys,
Since the 06/11/02 i use the patch, i just had one crash while loading a 4v4 battle (red bar page). I played about 15 games during 2 long connections in MP.
So this is so far a tremendous improvement, the game is almost as playable as STW, cause the situation was really dramatic for me with connection before the patch.
Now i do feel that we are at the same stage after first patch of Shogun. There should be some more flexibility with stats as that was done for n°2 Shogun patch (i could be wrong).
The game is still the best for me, but i admit that i faught several battles since patch, which left me with the feeling that when someone has spotted unlogical balance and use it, it can creates logical unbalanced battles.
Let some expert players express their serious suggestions for balance improvements, constructive suggestion should be considered by Gil i'm sure.
Thx again to Gil for this good work.
C U All, Frog.
HopAlongBunny
11-08-2002, 09:17
I ma wondering how this patch is "welcomed" by teh beta-testers. Just being curious
Since patch is unofficial, I would assume WE are the beta-testers http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif
We will be beta tester if our opinions and suggestions are entaintained and effected to some extent.
And thanks guys for the technical explanation.
So Froggy.. thats mean we gonna fight more often then http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif Cya online!
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tootee the goldfish,
headmaster of Shogun-Academy (http://shogun-academy.tripod.com)
loyal roach of Clan S.G. (http://thesilvergazwa.tripod.com)
'Pa Si Buay Chao! Si Liao Ka Song!'
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[This message has been edited by tootee (edited 11-08-2002).]
GilJaysmith
11-08-2002, 16:12
Quote Originally posted by tootee:
We will be beta tester if our opinions and suggestions are entaintained and effected to some extent.
[/QUOTE]
Your feedback won't affect the official release, which will be just the same as this unofficial version.
Can everyone please stop using the word 'beta' when discussing the patch features? It's building the wrong impression in your minds. It was an accidental release of the actual patch, missing only some documentation. I sympathise with the invidious position which Activision technical support has been put in, but if they're telling you it's a beta patch then ignore them, it's the real deal, just slipped out a little early. It's not like the Doom 3 situation.
Gil ~ CA
MagyarKhans Cham
11-08-2002, 16:38
pay us with a brilliant patch and we stop mentioning the beta patch. and this betapatch brought already joy to the most of us cuz the succesfull gameratio increased from 5 games/5 hours to about 15 games/5 hours
the patch has bought a lot of joy to many people for stability reasons, which is good news indeed http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif. However, some of the features listed have, unfortunately, not been fixed completely.
I am new to this beta test group, so i can ask who was involved in the process?, did these people spot whether these flaws were present also in their own experience http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif?
thnx - barry
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previously BarryNoDachi - KenchiBND
Clan Kenchikuka (http://www.totalwar.org/kenchikuka)
GilJaysmith
11-08-2002, 23:36
Quote Originally posted by Puzz3D:
If I loose data packets while playing an FPS like Half-Life, my screen will freeze but I will eventually get resynced to the server if the transmission problem clears itself up. This isn't possible with Total War because the battle is playing out on every machine in the game.[/QUOTE]
I'd like to clarify this explanation a little (I hope!)...
Everyone's game has to advance in sync, this is true. The way we do that is for everyone's machine to repeatedly send its newest orders and timesignals until they're acknowledged by the arrival of a packet from the host to say "you can do the next frame". The host is the only machine which issues these packets. All the clients will only perform a frame when they get this packet; it contains any orders any player has issued, so they all happen at the same time-point in the battle. The clients then repeatedly tell the server that they've done *that* frame, and once the server has received this guarantee from every machine, it starts to repeatedly broadcast the packet for the *next* frame.
There are some more details in there, but basically, it's pretty reliable and tolerates variations in network performance and machine speed. The much bigger potential for instability and desynchronisation lies within the complexity of the game, rather than the network code.
Gil ~ CA
MagyarKhans Cham
11-09-2002, 00:17
so question is as well
will teh real patch adress the things that aint adressed in the beta patch?
- foyer handling still not up to date
- replayoption still stuck
- logfile still stuck
- still lockups and disconnections
Konnichiwa,
will teh real patch adress the things that aint adressed in the beta patch?
It was stated very clearly by Giljaysmith, programmer of CA, that the patch accidentely 'published' by Activision is technically the same as the official patch. Clearly put: it is the official patch without documentation.
TosaInu
The Guild Administrator.
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