Questions

[CRourke]

First off, so far I'm very impressed. The graphics have some rough spots, the physics are occasionally bizarre, lag/stutters are common, but the most important ingredient is present. The game is fun. It's like a tank sim distilled to the basic essence. Bare bones tactics of move and fire.

First question: Is this a bandwidth hog? I ask because I noticed the occasional lags got dramatically worse when I added a 2nd machine/player on the same DSL connection. There was occasional bizarre lockups were the tank appears to sink turret deep in the ground, but the most common by far was the dreaded spins. All of the sudden, frame rate drop and your tanks starts to turn merry circles, dancing its way across the field of battle. Very frustrating.

Second Q: Well, this is more of a comment then a question. There is a dire need for some play details in the quickstart guide. The .pdf is just too much information for the average player, but the basic mechanics/interface of the game are too complex to pick up by doing. Two paragraphs explaining W,A,S,D,E,G,=,- and the mouse, and a paragraph explaining flanking shots ought to do it. Yes, I realize many can easily figure this sort of stuff out on their own, but I'm sure the dev's would like this beta to win over as many customers as possible, as well as test the product out.

In that same vein, I'd love to see immediate text feedback on rounds fired. No, its not realistic. And no, its not something I'd generally choose to play with. But it keeps new people from getting discouraged when they put 20 rounds down range and get no result. I introduced a friend to dropteam today.. aside from the lag issues, he was immediately frustrated by no knowing if his rounds were even hitting.

I hope none of this comes across as criticism. I really am excited about the DT, both in its current beta form, and in its potential.

Chris

[ClaytoniousRex]

Thanks for your comments (and compliments), Chris!

Is this a bandwidth hog?

No, unless you're starting to uncover a flaw we haven't seen yet. It's using on average about 23kbps per client, though this can definitely go up with lots of folks using voice chat. This is a trivial volume of traffic on the client (downstream) end. Rune played with 3 machines on wireless connections through a single router without trouble - a pretty awful case. This makes your increased lag with a second player very interesting. Do you know how repeatable it is? For example, have you had time yet to try it on different servers with and without the second player? Would love to hear more details about that.

There was occasional bizarre lockups were the tank appears to sink turret deep in the ground, but the most common by far was the dreaded spins.

Yes, that is definitely classic lag! What is your ping to the server like? Does it happen on all servers? Where are you located geographically? One of the biggest problems with this first phase of the public test is that all of our servers are in the southwest USA.

There is a dire need for some play details in the quickstart guide.

Point taken. I would also add a quick summary of using the tac display (space bar) to your list above. We'll beef the quickstart up.

immediate text feedback on rounds fired

Yes, we've been bouncing that one around for some time now. We've even been thinking of a much more interesting, more graphical feature than simple text (kind of a pop-up, but unintrusive, penetration diagram). At any rate, you're right that it would help (especially with ... uh ... "certain" types of players).

[Marco Bergman]

Originally posted by CRourke:

The graphics have some rough spots

Could you provide detail on these, please?

[Iceman[USA]]

I'll throw that in. In some spots, the game almost seems to 'misdraw' the graphic. For example, as the map first loads, the ground textures seem to flash purple for a split second before rendering correctly.

Really, once the map loads though, I don't notice much misdrawing, ect.

[CRourke]

Marco,

its just the occasional odd looking texture. Honestly its the sort of thing I noticed most when I first trying to figure out the game... once game play gets going, its less of a factor. Mostly I'd say the graphics are in the realm of what you'd expect from a game from a small dev team thats being developed for 3 platforms. Functional, but not draw dropping. Perhaps I'm not taking into account the extra processor load view distance adds. In any case, I'd choose the fuctionality of an extended view distance over eye candy any day.

Claytonius,

I'll try and reproduce it.. located in virginia, seeing pings of 100-200, one system wired, 2nd was wireless, just making min sys specs.

The improved feedback would be great. And the neat thing about choosing a sci-fi setting is the lack of grognards to grumble about realism. "Obviously in the future all tanks will be equipped with a balistic analysis sensors that can, in a low EW environment, provide instant feedback".

Which reminds me of another question. Is the reduced ambient/tank sound in the behind camera view intentional? It seems a little disconcerting.

BTW, I absolutely love all the thought that has gone into the weapons. Ion Beams that ablate rather than penetrate is a perfect example. It makes the weapon tactically interesting, and provides backstory to make it believeable. This sort of creation of consistant and well thought out rules for the nature of the world is what will attract grogs and demi-grogs (those who aren't quite AS fanatic).

Well, enough jawing, time to play.

Chris

[CRourke]

A correction.. I realized I didn't have full graphics on previous. Now they, especially for a tank game, quite gorgeous. Wonderful rolling terrain, beautiful vehicles. Own vehicle shadow is a little bizarre, I expect its abstracted due to high vehicle polygon count. Base/Structure textures still look so-so, possibly because they have busy textures layed on rather simple shapes to keep polygon count down.

Three further suggestions to help the noobs:

1) changing keys is confusing. Include and default to a MyKeys profile along with DefaultKeys that will be editable from the get go.

2) Quitting isn't intuitive.. that little x in the upper left is hard to locate.

3) The capability of dropships is very neat. The tactical implications are staggering. The potential to confuse and disorient a new player trying to come to grips with basic armor tactics is unavoidable. This is compounded by having defense objectives centered in the map. Perhaps putting the objectives (and their air defense umbrella) on a map edge would help simplify introductory scenarios (or, alternately, extending the umbrella so an entire side of the map is covered). Which reminds me, explaining dropships and air defense also needs to go in the quick guide. My first three lives were spent hurtling to earth on fire.

BTW, the ATGM smoke trails are fantastic.

Back to war.

Chris