I did send out an email about this to get more knowledgeable people than myself to look at this. I wish I had more news for you, but that's all I have at this time.
I did send out an email about this to get more knowledgeable people than myself to look at this. I wish I had more news for you, but that's all I have at this time.
Yaaayyyyy a dev acknowledged the problem
Thanks Frost! I appreciate it that you let us know you are trying to find something out for us. I did say give the devs a few more days to reply in a earlier post,cause they coulda been busy or something and i was right
Please keep us up to date with anything you find out
LLAP \\//_
=/\=
I believe God created the universe, because he knew we wanted to explore. So, he made us a playground...
I did send out an email about this to get more knowledgeable people than myself to look at this. I wish I had more news for you, but that's all I have at this time.
The easiest way to keep most of the player base happy is doing what you have done
you acknowledged it and sent it to the people or devs that work in that area
i wish more devs were like you also since i'm nosy now what is your area in the game as far as the work and what not?
Terrible bug. Should be made a priority, if at all possible. Future content can w8, this will kill the game if left to it self. If this can not be fixed... well we just out of luck, and may as well start packing. However, game is awesome! Even if u cant fix this, maybe you just dont have the same skill, as game original coders, no shame in admitting that, at least maybe u can patch the problem somethat ? That would satisfy at least a little.
The easiest way to keep most of the player base happy is doing what you have done
you acknowledged it and sent it to the people or devs that work in that area
i wish more devs were like you also since i'm nosy now what is your area in the game as far as the work and what not?
Thanks for dropping in, frost! It is much appreciated.
I'm not sure if this occurs with others, but I've noticed that when I rotate the camera to face *away* from the enemy I'm firing at, the weapons fire usually reappears.
For instance --
Firing at Crystalline Entity (the most frequent offender, from what I've seen, but it happens elsewhere too). My weapons fire is invisible. I rotate the camera to face my ship, and I can see the weapons fire, particularly if I zoom close to my own ship.
Yeah, I get it too, and it doesn't matter how fast or slow, new or old the computer I'm on is.
It seems to be that it really depends how many items there are for the engine to render at a given time. The more there are, the less it will render- beams, cannons will stop being rendered first (but strangely, the shadows cast by cannon shots will still render), warp soup (warp plasma, theta radiation, yellowstone TRIBBLE, regent TRIBBLE, scimitar clouds) will go next, while stuff like anomalies (gravwell and tykens), and *anything with a title above its head* will stay.
So for example, normal torps will stop rendering pretty much immediately if there are too many objects 'onscreen', but high yield targetable torps will never stop rendering. I'm pretty sure it's some kind of engine resources thing or something like that- but obviously I'm not a dev so I couldn't be sure.
Could they not make it so that the game prioritizes your own effects before those of other players? They fixed an issue similar to this with the invisible Borg torpedo a long time ago. I understand what everyone is repeatedly saying about the fact that the engine can only render so many things at the same time. I don't need to see every single special ability that every player is using.
The game can handle a ton of stuff on the screen. The reason this issue is more pronounced is because more players are running instances like CE more often. I'm not asking for a massive game engine upgrade. Just a tweaking of how the game priorities what to display and what to ignore.
As I understand things, this is an issue with our core game engine that we are aware of and are trying to figure out the best way to fix the issue. Ultimately, there is a finite limit to how many things the game can draw at any time and when that limit is exceeded, things stop getting drawn.
The difficulty, I expect, is in getting the system to always show the player's stuff, yet also not fail to draw things like that tricobalt device that was fired at you from maximum range. Additionally, since this is the core engine, any changes also need to be compatible with Neverwinter and Champions as well as STO.
Combined, we're left with an issue that will just take a good bit of time to get fixed.
As I understand things, this is an issue with our core game engine that we are aware of and are trying to figure out the best way to fix the issue. Ultimately, there is a finite limit to how many things the game can draw at any time and when that limit is exceeded, things stop getting drawn.
No idea what would be required for it, but the suggestion was to limit identical weapons fire, to 1. If you have 8 Phaser Beam Arrays, all aligned in the weapons arc against the target, they should fire 8 times as strong, but only 1 phaser beam. Only rarely did we see ships in Star Trek fire multiple beams. And only under special circumstances, such as "Fire at Will" or "Zero Elevation" as it was known in Star Trek Nemesis.
You wouldn't lose the damage dealt. It would only be a visual change from having multiple beams firing, to single beams (but at higher damage dealt, again visually).
Might this be one (first step) course of action to solving the disappearing weapons bug? Which incidentally, I assume is related to the STF Borg "Invisible torpedoes".
Could they not make it so that the game prioritizes your own effects before those of other players? They fixed an issue similar to this with the invisible Borg torpedo a long time ago. I understand what everyone is repeatedly saying about the fact that the engine can only render so many things at the same time. I don't need to see every single special ability that every player is using.
The game can handle a ton of stuff on the screen. The reason this issue is more pronounced is because more players are running instances like CE more often. I'm not asking for a massive game engine upgrade. Just a tweaking of how the game priorities what to display and what to ignore.
the problem with that tho, is it will wreck the gaming experience and the immersion.
I would prefer it done properly, and not in some second rate way
I believe God created the universe, because he knew we wanted to explore. So, he made us a playground...
I've seen this before on computer games and even on the PS2. The problem: the special visual effects engine is too weak to support the # of active effects. So they simply don't show all at once.
This is really bad in CE, loads of beams and cannon shots= cannot see any special effects until camera is pointed away from everyone else.
I say just do a massive overhaul, implement a new graphics engine that can handle the game.
I mean, surely pwe/cryptic make more then enough money from all their games to do just this.
It might mean we be with out a game to play for a day or 2, but the end result would well an truly be worth it and pwe/cryptic would make that money back in no time at all and us players would be stoked because nothing has been compromised to get effects back and graphics will be outstanding, and everyone is happy.
This engine might be ok for neverwinter or something, but obviously it is pushing the boundaries with sto.
I'll back the idea of a new engine and overhaul 100%. I can live without STO for a few days if need be
I believe God created the universe, because he knew we wanted to explore. So, he made us a playground...
I say just do a massive overhaul, implement a new graphics engine that can handle the game.
I mean, surely pwe/cryptic make more then enough money from all their games to do just this.
It might mean we be with out a game to play for a day or 2, but the end result would well an truly be worth it and pwe/cryptic would make that money back in no time at all and us players would be stoked because nothing has been compromised to get effects back and graphics will be outstanding, and everyone is happy.
This engine might be ok for neverwinter or something, but obviously it is pushing the boundaries with sto.
I'll back the idea of a new engine and overhaul 100%. I can live without STO for a few days if need be
Severs wouldn't have to be down long; the special effects engine operates locally. So any change will be in form of a patch.
Severs wouldn't have to be down long; the special effects engine operates locally. So any change will be in form of a patch.
Well, thats good news .
But i was referring to if they wanted to actually upgrade the entire engine to something more modern. Not just the special effects part of it.
I believe God created the universe, because he knew we wanted to explore. So, he made us a playground...
As I understand things, this is an issue with our core game engine that we are aware of and are trying to figure out the best way to fix the issue. Ultimately, there is a finite limit to how many things the game can draw at any time and when that limit is exceeded, things stop getting drawn.
The difficulty, I expect, is in getting the system to always show the player's stuff, yet also not fail to draw things like that tricobalt device that was fired at you from maximum range. Additionally, since this is the core engine, any changes also need to be compatible with Neverwinter and Champions as well as STO.
Combined, we're left with an issue that will just take a good bit of time to get fixed.
which is why almost every review of this game not on a cryptic butt kissing site (ie, massively and any of the podcasts) says that the engine is one of the things that makes this game suffer.. this to me is a pretty massive bug.. not only have I spent money on/in this game, but I spend the extra money to make my rig be able to play this game at maximum, but, oh waite, it doesn't matter, the cryptic engine will still get in the way..
I also love hearing excuse after excuse after excuse for why something is done poorly in game.. god I wish I could work in a field like this where I could do a sub par job, and only feel the need to make an excuse.. honestly, this has been an ongoing problem for some time now.. it obviously has not really been addressed.
what kind of world would this be, if everytime anyone ever hit a road bump, they just shugged their shoulders and said oh well like cryptic does.. lol..
oh, and about needing it to work on champions, I mean, we wouldn't want to TRIBBLE of the ten remaining players there would we... lol...
As I understand things, this is an issue with our core game engine that we are aware of and are trying to figure out the best way to fix the issue. Ultimately, there is a finite limit to how many things the game can draw at any time and when that limit is exceeded, things stop getting drawn.
The difficulty, I expect, is in getting the system to always show the player's stuff, yet also not fail to draw things like that tricobalt device that was fired at you from maximum range. Additionally, since this is the core engine, any changes also need to be compatible with Neverwinter and Champions as well as STO.
Combined, we're left with an issue that will just take a good bit of time to get fixed.
Would it be possible to, idk, rather than stop rendering objects entirely, provide the option to lower the graphics (or render things that consume lots of resources in a lower graphics mode)?
So if the game detects that it's got way more objexts on screen than it can render (the CE itself, the actual physical space snowflake, is a huge resources hog, which is why we see the issue there constantly), that it does a popup that goes "Would you like to lower the rendering complexity?' and if you clicked yes, it would stop rendering low priority stuff- like engine trails, shadows, and ship running lights, and then also change things to lower poly versions of themselves so as to free up resoures. So maybe your ship and all the ships nearby would stay the same, but shuttles would change into flying shuttle shaped bricks, torpedoes wouldn't be quite as fancy- that sort of thing.
Still a lot of work to do, mind you, but I could see it taking less time to to do than 'total engine overhaul'.
Would it be possible to, idk, rather than stop rendering objects entirely, provide the option to lower the graphics (or render things that consume lots of resources in a lower graphics mode)?
So if the game detects that it's got way more objexts on screen than it can render (the CE itself, the actual physical space snowflake, is a huge resources hog, which is why we see the issue there constantly), that it does a popup that goes "Would you like to lower the rendering complexity?' and if you clicked yes, it would stop rendering low priority stuff- like engine trails, shadows, and ship running lights, and then also change things to lower poly versions of themselves so as to free up resoures. So maybe your ship and all the ships nearby would stay the same, but shuttles would change into flying shuttle shaped bricks, torpedoes wouldn't be quite as fancy- that sort of thing.
Still a lot of work to do, mind you, but I could see it taking less time to to do than 'total engine overhaul'.
so, you want to kill the immersion for a second rate solution that will probably just re-appear again when Delta Rising launches, rather than a properly fixed solution? They make more than enough money to do an overhaul and implement a better engine instead of trying to just band-aid problems that will only bust again later on down the track
That would be like saying, "my car has a broken power steering hose, mechanic says it will cost $100 to fix it", but i dont fix it properly, instead, i go and put duct tape around the break which will cost $2 but will break again a week later :rolleyes:
I believe God created the universe, because he knew we wanted to explore. So, he made us a playground...
The difficulty, I expect, is in getting the system to always show the player's stuff, yet also not fail to draw things like that tricobalt device that was fired at you from maximum range.
Erm... it has the same importance to be able to see our weapon graphics but our fellow players graphics as well.. or we could just destroy the team-up instances for good. I honestly cant accept this solution, its a cheap way to fix things that will probably appear a couple of months later. It is as well an asthetic problem, i play (as well as a lot of people) the game cuz i like to see ALL the weapons firing in space, specailly the ones that my enemy is firing at me. Imagine a romulan enemy that is firing high yield plasmas at you.. you cant see em.. and suddenly.. boom!. This is an example. And similar circunstances will occur against other enemies.. as i said, this is not a solution not for a long shot..
But im glad that finally it seems that this game-breaking but is getting a bit of attention at last.
It is as well an asthetic problem, i play (as well as a lot of people) the game cuz i like to see ALL the weapons firing in space, specailly the ones that my enemy is firing at me.
Yeah, i would have to agree. Seeing some of the comments here to actually get rid of other players firing weapons, is an option i do not like, nor will i support it. It will kill the immersion, and it will look as terrible as it does now.
It needs to be fixed properly so it looks as good as it did before S9 launch.
I also second that, that it is finally getting attention
I believe God created the universe, because he knew we wanted to explore. So, he made us a playground...
As I understand things, this is an issue with our core game engine that we are aware of and are trying to figure out the best way to fix the issue. Ultimately, there is a finite limit to how many things the game can draw at any time and when that limit is exceeded, things stop getting drawn.
The difficulty, I expect, is in getting the system to always show the player's stuff, yet also not fail to draw things like that tricobalt device that was fired at you from maximum range. Additionally, since this is the core engine, any changes also need to be compatible with Neverwinter and Champions as well as STO.
Combined, we're left with an issue that will just take a good bit of time to get fixed.
Frost,
Firstly, my wholehearted thanks for giving us a straight up answer to our graphics issues. While not a really big surprise, it will hopefully alleviate any more stress on the players side as to what to do to fix the issue.
Secondly, thanks for being brave enough to come out and admit it is a limitation in the game engine. This will (already has) started some flames regarding Cryptics' dropping the ball so to speak with the graphics engine.
When you speak of "a good bit of time to get fixed", do you have any idea when it will be? Perhaps with the release of Expansion 2? This is still some time off, and it would be a shame to not have the engine 'up to snuff' when all this new shininess releases. The engine in its' current state has at least for me (***looks around here and multiple other threads).... for me and many others has taken the luster off both S9 and 9.5.
I strongly believe this is the most important update that needs to be made to this game. I will repeat here what I said before... this is a video game, video needs to be a priority.
Again thanks Frost, and please keep us updated as things develop.
I going to have to update it, now that Cryptic has taken the first step and admitted they have a problem... hopefully it will result in a full recovery... of our missing graphics. :cool:
I going to have to update it, now that Cryptic has taken the first step and admitted they have a problem... hopefully it will result in a full recovery... of our missing graphics. :cool:
no problem
Yes, full recovery is better than a half recovery, of which some people are saying. If there is a such thing as a half recovery lol.
I believe God created the universe, because he knew we wanted to explore. So, he made us a playground...
Hm, to me, the issue is nonexistant if one chooses less FX detail in the graphics options.
shouldnt have to do that tho if your machine can handle max settings. Mine can, and im not lowering it, already tried it, and looks as terrible
why dont we just go back to the 80's era graphics then? Because thats what you and some others are basically saying, roll back the graphics so they look terrible all over the game
I believe God created the universe, because he knew we wanted to explore. So, he made us a playground...
Just found this thread, Cryptic acknowledgement of the graphics problems (weapons, FPS). It's good we know for definite along with Smirk's post that they are aware.
Hope and faith guys.
If you've come to the forums to complain about the AFK system, it's known to be bugged at the moment.
Comments
Let me second Shailats' thanks to you Frost.
Please don't forget about us....
Yaaayyyyy a dev acknowledged the problem
Thanks Frost! I appreciate it that you let us know you are trying to find something out for us. I did say give the devs a few more days to reply in a earlier post,cause they coulda been busy or something and i was right
Please keep us up to date with anything you find out
LLAP \\//_
=/\=
The easiest way to keep most of the player base happy is doing what you have done
you acknowledged it and sent it to the people or devs that work in that area
i wish more devs were like you
I'm on the QA team.
Thanks for dropping in, frost! It is much appreciated.
I'm not sure if this occurs with others, but I've noticed that when I rotate the camera to face *away* from the enemy I'm firing at, the weapons fire usually reappears.
For instance --
Firing at Crystalline Entity (the most frequent offender, from what I've seen, but it happens elsewhere too). My weapons fire is invisible. I rotate the camera to face my ship, and I can see the weapons fire, particularly if I zoom close to my own ship.
It seems to be that it really depends how many items there are for the engine to render at a given time. The more there are, the less it will render- beams, cannons will stop being rendered first (but strangely, the shadows cast by cannon shots will still render), warp soup (warp plasma, theta radiation, yellowstone TRIBBLE, regent TRIBBLE, scimitar clouds) will go next, while stuff like anomalies (gravwell and tykens), and *anything with a title above its head* will stay.
So for example, normal torps will stop rendering pretty much immediately if there are too many objects 'onscreen', but high yield targetable torps will never stop rendering. I'm pretty sure it's some kind of engine resources thing or something like that- but obviously I'm not a dev so I couldn't be sure.
The game can handle a ton of stuff on the screen. The reason this issue is more pronounced is because more players are running instances like CE more often. I'm not asking for a massive game engine upgrade. Just a tweaking of how the game priorities what to display and what to ignore.
The difficulty, I expect, is in getting the system to always show the player's stuff, yet also not fail to draw things like that tricobalt device that was fired at you from maximum range. Additionally, since this is the core engine, any changes also need to be compatible with Neverwinter and Champions as well as STO.
Combined, we're left with an issue that will just take a good bit of time to get fixed.
A suggestion popped up in adjudicatorhawk's Space Metagame changes thread.
No idea what would be required for it, but the suggestion was to limit identical weapons fire, to 1. If you have 8 Phaser Beam Arrays, all aligned in the weapons arc against the target, they should fire 8 times as strong, but only 1 phaser beam. Only rarely did we see ships in Star Trek fire multiple beams. And only under special circumstances, such as "Fire at Will" or "Zero Elevation" as it was known in Star Trek Nemesis.
You wouldn't lose the damage dealt. It would only be a visual change from having multiple beams firing, to single beams (but at higher damage dealt, again visually).
Might this be one (first step) course of action to solving the disappearing weapons bug? Which incidentally, I assume is related to the STF Borg "Invisible torpedoes".
the problem with that tho, is it will wreck the gaming experience and the immersion.
I would prefer it done properly, and not in some second rate way
This is really bad in CE, loads of beams and cannon shots= cannot see any special effects until camera is pointed away from everyone else.
I mean, surely pwe/cryptic make more then enough money from all their games to do just this.
It might mean we be with out a game to play for a day or 2, but the end result would well an truly be worth it and pwe/cryptic would make that money back in no time at all and us players would be stoked because nothing has been compromised to get effects back and graphics will be outstanding, and everyone is happy.
This engine might be ok for neverwinter or something, but obviously it is pushing the boundaries with sto.
I'll back the idea of a new engine and overhaul 100%. I can live without STO for a few days if need be
Severs wouldn't have to be down long; the special effects engine operates locally. So any change will be in form of a patch.
Well, thats good news
But i was referring to if they wanted to actually upgrade the entire engine to something more modern. Not just the special effects part of it.
which is why almost every review of this game not on a cryptic butt kissing site (ie, massively and any of the podcasts) says that the engine is one of the things that makes this game suffer.. this to me is a pretty massive bug.. not only have I spent money on/in this game, but I spend the extra money to make my rig be able to play this game at maximum, but, oh waite, it doesn't matter, the cryptic engine will still get in the way..
I also love hearing excuse after excuse after excuse for why something is done poorly in game.. god I wish I could work in a field like this where I could do a sub par job, and only feel the need to make an excuse.. honestly, this has been an ongoing problem for some time now.. it obviously has not really been addressed.
what kind of world would this be, if everytime anyone ever hit a road bump, they just shugged their shoulders and said oh well like cryptic does.. lol..
oh, and about needing it to work on champions, I mean, we wouldn't want to TRIBBLE of the ten remaining players there would we... lol...
Would it be possible to, idk, rather than stop rendering objects entirely, provide the option to lower the graphics (or render things that consume lots of resources in a lower graphics mode)?
So if the game detects that it's got way more objexts on screen than it can render (the CE itself, the actual physical space snowflake, is a huge resources hog, which is why we see the issue there constantly), that it does a popup that goes "Would you like to lower the rendering complexity?' and if you clicked yes, it would stop rendering low priority stuff- like engine trails, shadows, and ship running lights, and then also change things to lower poly versions of themselves so as to free up resoures. So maybe your ship and all the ships nearby would stay the same, but shuttles would change into flying shuttle shaped bricks, torpedoes wouldn't be quite as fancy- that sort of thing.
Still a lot of work to do, mind you, but I could see it taking less time to to do than 'total engine overhaul'.
so, you want to kill the immersion for a second rate solution that will probably just re-appear again when Delta Rising launches, rather than a properly fixed solution? They make more than enough money to do an overhaul and implement a better engine instead of trying to just band-aid problems that will only bust again later on down the track
That would be like saying, "my car has a broken power steering hose, mechanic says it will cost $100 to fix it", but i dont fix it properly, instead, i go and put duct tape around the break which will cost $2 but will break again a week later :rolleyes:
Erm... it has the same importance to be able to see our weapon graphics but our fellow players graphics as well.. or we could just destroy the team-up instances for good. I honestly cant accept this solution, its a cheap way to fix things that will probably appear a couple of months later. It is as well an asthetic problem, i play (as well as a lot of people) the game cuz i like to see ALL the weapons firing in space, specailly the ones that my enemy is firing at me. Imagine a romulan enemy that is firing high yield plasmas at you.. you cant see em.. and suddenly.. boom!. This is an example. And similar circunstances will occur against other enemies.. as i said, this is not a solution not for a long shot..
But im glad that finally it seems that this game-breaking but is getting a bit of attention at last.
Yeah, i would have to agree. Seeing some of the comments here to actually get rid of other players firing weapons, is an option i do not like, nor will i support it. It will kill the immersion, and it will look as terrible as it does now.
It needs to be fixed properly so it looks as good as it did before S9 launch.
I also second that, that it is finally getting attention
Frost,
Firstly, my wholehearted thanks for giving us a straight up answer to our graphics issues. While not a really big surprise, it will hopefully alleviate any more stress on the players side as to what to do to fix the issue.
Secondly, thanks for being brave enough to come out and admit it is a limitation in the game engine. This will (already has) started some flames regarding Cryptics' dropping the ball so to speak with the graphics engine.
When you speak of "a good bit of time to get fixed", do you have any idea when it will be? Perhaps with the release of Expansion 2? This is still some time off, and it would be a shame to not have the engine 'up to snuff' when all this new shininess releases. The engine in its' current state has at least for me (***looks around here and multiple other threads).... for me and many others has taken the luster off both S9 and 9.5.
I strongly believe this is the most important update that needs to be made to this game. I will repeat here what I said before... this is a video game, video needs to be a priority.
Again thanks Frost, and please keep us updated as things develop.
like your signature lol
Thanks Craig!
I going to have to update it, now that Cryptic has taken the first step and admitted they have a problem... hopefully it will result in a full recovery... of our missing graphics. :cool:
no problem
Yes, full recovery is better than a half recovery, of which some people are saying. If there is a such thing as a half recovery lol.
shouldnt have to do that tho if your machine can handle max settings. Mine can, and im not lowering it, already tried it, and looks as terrible
why dont we just go back to the 80's era graphics then? Because thats what you and some others are basically saying, roll back the graphics so they look terrible all over the game
Hope and faith guys.