The final stretch

Battlescape
1

Only 3 days left. Well, almost 2 days now. We’re feeling the pressure, not gonna lie and I’ve barely slept for a week.

We’ve been over-provisionning servers far over what we think the realistic concurrent players count would be. Servers have never been tested in reality with a high population of players, so there’s a chance we might have to reduce the player cap at the start, until we tune or optimize the servers. We currently have 10+ servers ready to boot up at any time, but the number of servers online will only get started when previous servers are full or close to. We’ll be shutting down most of these servers past the launch peak.

On the development side, we’re obviously out of time for any major new feature. We’re focusing on testing, tweaking, stress-testing the servers and the web backend to the best of our abilities, and of course “polishing” and bug fixing all the existing stuff.

On the topic of bugs, I’ll be spending the entire thursday fixing bugs or doing small polish work. To that end, it would be helpful to get feedback on what small bugs or features you’d like to see fixed before the release. These could be just a setting missing or not working well, a small bug causing needless frustration or a small improvement that has never got a priority in the past months / years, or even a place you think a tooltip would be useful. If I have time I’ll make a small dialog with instructions about how to play the game, the objectives, the HUD etc…

We’ll also do a last HUD minor work pass ( implementing the new combat vs exploration mode ) and a couple of urgent default key bindings changes ( right-control for missiles for example ).

Oh, and before you mention it, the bug about the HUD indicators at non-standard field of view has been fixed already, will be available in the next build. Along with the new sounds.

12 Likes
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As you are asking for minor things:
There is an inconsistency between aiming for missiles and aiming for torps - for missiles you have to keep the crosshair on the lead indicator, but for torps you have to keep it on the ship - can be quite confusing. Should be lead indicator for both as for weapons.

As for the final stretch, some british dude once said words that might apply to the situation:

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But perhaps, it is the end of the beginning.

[EDIT] One MASSIVELY important hint for new players is how to use flares. Before you learn that, you are a free kill to missiles. [/Edit]

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Heya Flavien!

Dipping out and emerging from the frenzy for a bit!

In a way I am glad feedback has been low for the last two patches. I can only imagine the crazyness going on now.
A lot of times during the last two days I just smiled during my normal daily routine and thought “yep it’s going to happen, they made it”. Like “Fremdschämen” but the positive cousin of that word.
It seems like you are preparing well. Good decision to focus on server infrastructure.

The game is good enough to let people loose on it. There are some problems but some controversial and others not so easy to abolish.

The FOV thing was the first thing that came to mind. That’s a pretty annoying bug … kind of unplayable bug. Glad it is gone

I would suggest following … if technically possible.
The game still says “not responding” turning grey when alt tabbing while it is loading. If that is easy to fix, without the danger of loading not working correctly, that would be my suggestion.

On a more stretch note … maybe some more feedback and help concerning missiles and countermeasures. Feedback about missile status. One easy fix would be to make “Locked” more easily visible, bolder text or bigger. One suggestion was to have the “flash in out” animation not go fully transparent on one end of the animation. That would help a lot for visibility.
As for countermeasures, the warning and distance readout is rather small on my 4k screen … don’t know if it’s just for me. Adding a “push this button for countermeasures”, to that warning would maybe help new players. Most ships have plenty of flares even if they spam it too much. They will succeed to spoof one eventually and learn like this.

Ohhh … most importantly … release the patch with plenty of reserve time for fixes. A while ago I joked about a patch arriving too close to an event and, ironically, it happened and was even worse, delayed that event, that can’t happen this time. Put this higher on the priority list. I know it can be hard to give up on a thing one is working on but good enough is good enough.

New sounds … what? Typical Flavien suprises as always, even now.

I wish the greatest success.

It was a constant stream of hard work to get here and I think it already is more than warranted to be happy about what has been achieved. Marvelous.

Myself I will arrive a bit late after having munched a tasty steak, yum. Looking forward to get blown to bits by hundreds of space veterans.

Can’t wait to share stories at the final release party when 1.0 rolls around in the future.

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Please let us have a tickbox “always exploartion mode” in the game options.:pray:

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The patch should be coming tomorrow. There will be an additional day #1 ( technically right before the launch ) too, with mostly bug fixes + last minute improvements ( probably like the HUD stuff ).

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I should finally fix my windows to catch up, but it keeps breaking my dual boot :frowning:

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This may have been fixed already. But would lead to frustrations for players if it isn’t. I just noticed that in this 31st august stream by a Russian player, he gets confused as to why he got re-spawned in space unlike before at 47:55.


It seems that it was because the battle was lost as the factory appears white. But there is no message that tells him this and yet it gets chosen as the closest possible spawn after death.
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Two controller related things I can think off right now:

  1. The keybinding in-game options are still missing a ‘Invert’ checkbox per event. You need to edit the xml file right now for this.

  2. Some (All? need to recheck) of the axis on my Thrustmaster T.16000 don’t work past a certain threshold in the negative range since the last patch. I can only steer about half the way left before the input resets to zero. The other direction works just fine.

The automatic selection of the closest spawn point from your last location when you die could make it back please. :innocent:

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Oh yes I had forgotten about that one, exactly the kind of bug / issue I was hoping to be reminded for. Will definitely re-check it.

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Visual bug (low priority):
Ground station docking indicator attached to base of model:

screenshot256
screenshot256.jpg1920×1080 567 KB

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I have my game code to be sent to a friend’s house. He isn’t interested in playing the game.
I would like it sent to my home but getting it on a thumb drive I think would be acceptable.
On that count I kneed to know what size of thumb drive to get.

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I’m unable to reproduce this. Can you elaborate ? Any information on that issue would be welcome. Did you tweak the default config ? If so, please send me the file in C:\Users\XXX\Documents\I-Novae Studios\Infinity Battlescape\Profiles, thank you !

Also please let me know which axis causes the issue.

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I re-tested this just now and the controller works fine. I re-plugged it and re-did all axis assignments. I checked the inputs in joy.cpl and everything looks good to me atm. Sorry for the extra testing you had to do, that’s an odd one for sure. :flushed:

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Small thing, there’s some near clipping in the widest FOV off the interior cam for the interceptor when I “look” backwards, over my shoulder .

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No problem, while testing I fixed another issue related to key detection so it was not for nothing :slight_smile:

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If the old placeholder planet props for EA that you talked about like trees oceans clouds boulders and life along with exploration minigames don’t get added then NMS and SC will beat you and ibs will flop like a dead fish. If you build a desert they wont come.

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Time and money my friend. They don’t have the same financial backing as those two games.

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they are old placeholders, not about money they are just lazy and they will lose because of it.

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Any feedback on making auto-throttle the default for new players ?

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I played with AutoThrotle on and off frequently over the year and I would advise against it.

It think the default behaviour with optional override that returns to zero when you let go is more starter friendly to get to grips with the flight model.

Auto Throttle on has advantages but when using it one has to be aware of how to use it as well as be aware of manual override.

It also works less exoectenly when using an analog device for strafing rather then the keyboard. As the autothrottle can be set accidently big strafing sidewards as with an analog device you almost never manage to not introduce some forward strafing when touching it, and thus triggering the AutoThrottle to add your sideways strafing velocity as a new target speed.

Would like to hear other oppinions though. Never really discussed the feature beside when it released much

1 Like