1B Reactions

from Elemental Forums

Thankfully, Beta 1B has arrived. I love a ton of what has been added, nearly all of it. This'll be a quick pro/con listing. When I don't have classes, I'll add more.

Pros

More resources +

More buildings +

Research items ++

Random Map generation +

Cons

Crashing has drastically increased --

City building is all kinds of broke --

Camera occasionally does weird things -

 

I've noticed several things with the new Beta, most of it good. The only downside is that it does crash, much more often. I crash most often in the research screen when researching higher level subjects. But I have crashed by skipping the intro also. I haven't seen if it still crashes when I die (as it did in the previous Beta).

There are some strange hickups with city building, which saddens me, since this is the feature I most want to play with, but is often the one that works the least often. When building a city, level 1 must be spent completely on houses, anything else, and it will not level up. Likewise, destroying tiles doesn't allow you to build, which is weird. the glitch seems to be that the population goes over the cap, and then it's stuck and cannot go farther.

I love all the new resources, especially the way they are randomized. Sometimes I will build a city with two shards, a bee hive, and a relatively close iron mine, and feel I lucked out. But then I'll find a location that would offer lumber, multiple farms, a shard, some iron, and a dock. They are generally spread out well enough so that you are encouraged the build cities logically, instead of spamming them. However, since I cannot tell how big cities can get, I am fairly limited at present.

I look forward to the next update, that will hopefully minimize the crashing. xD

6,054 views 20 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

If you want it to minimize the crashing then I hope your posting debug files about some of your crashes!

 

This is normal for a beta. Some patches are better some are worse for stability. If it was that easy to make bug free they wouldn't need betas!

 

I do have a problem with the camera deciding to just slide, but I'm still trying to figure out more about when it happens and what is causing it. If been able to get out of it by selecting my sovereign from his portrait (not by clicking on his map marker) before but only sometimes. Advancing turns also sometimes seems to stop it.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Camera Weirdness has been narrowed down (go to right side of screen to activate autopan, left click and drag off, release, still panning). 

The current fix is to re-rollowver the right side of the screen. The official fix will be in the next build ;)

TouchTasks - Access tasks with ease on Windows touchscreens.
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 2
The current fix is to re-rollowver the right side of the screen. The official fix will be in the next build
End of BoogieBac's quote

That fix hasn't worked for me but I'll try it again next game to be sure.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I had that issue in Windowed mode. My fix was to just keep trying to move in the other direction at the same force you were moving and hope it stopped. Fixed for me, my sister couldn't ever get it fixed though.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Rishkith, reply 1
If you want it to minimize the crashing then I hope your posting debug files about some of your crashes!

 

This is normal for a beta. Some patches are better some are worse for stability. If it was that easy to make bug free they wouldn't need betas!

 

I do have a problem with the camera deciding to just slide, but I'm still trying to figure out more about when it happens and what is causing it. If been able to get out of it by selecting my sovereign from his portrait (not by clicking on his map marker) before but only sometimes. Advancing turns also sometimes seems to stop it.
End of Rishkith's quote

Where are those files to post? I am rather sad it doesn't auto-send out bug reports. :(

Frogboy, glad to hear about the fix coming, :D

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Crashes could be minimized by running the game in windowed mode. It worked for me unless I dont click anything in splash screen. ;)

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Constant crashes and slow research speed make testing gameplay very hard ... I played 3 times and I crashed after 150+ turns .. not enough to even start researching units.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting stupored, reply 8



Quoting Einlanzerous,
reply 5

Where are those files to post? I am rather sad it doesn't auto-send out bug reports.


 

https://forums.elementalgame.com/364285

That thread will have all the info on reporting bugs.
End of stupored's quote

Thank you, I've started posting them. Esepcially since today it's crashing much more often for some reason. I've crashed three times in the last five minutes.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

I got a reasonably stable game in today (it seems more stable on my laptop than my desktop for some odd reason) and I couldn't get a city to level up for the life of me.  I had cities with farm +4 mansions, 8 mansions, farm on wheat +4 mansions, lumber mill +4 mansions and none of them would ever level up.  Has anyone gotten a city to level up?

I've also got an issue I've mentioned in another thread where all units (including Sov and all enemies) have a move of 1.  This makes things rather slow (but does mean I'm not noticing the research slowdown as much).  The default scout unit is not available either.  It is happening on both my desktop and laptop.  Are others having this problem or is it just me?    I wasn't sure if I should make a new bug report or not.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Sure. 4 mansions, 2 hovels and a farm are enough to push to lvl 3 (which is the max for beta). First lvlup should happen on its own, second needs enough housing for 50 people, third requiers another 50 people and a foodsource (farm, appiary or caravans). Quite possibly you also have to be in the black financialy, can't say for sure though, I generally avoid falling into the red. Generaly 'city details' screen will show you what's required to level up and how long will it take.

And yeah, everything on your side has one move now. Hunting spiders is a real pain. But you can make a scout in the unit designer ( a staff + scout kit IIRC ).

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 2
Camera Weirdness has been narrowed down (go to right side of screen to activate autopan, left click and drag off, release, still panning). 

The current fix is to re-rollowver the right side of the screen. The official fix will be in the next build
End of BoogieBac's quote

Got this bug again and the fix didn't work. What did work was to go into city building screen and then out of it.

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

Quick question... I see people posting 0.255 bugs. How come I have 0.25 then?

 

Edit: I checked for updates 10 times and nothing, I posted this question and update 0.255 pops up. Typical. ;)

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

 

I've noticed this most recent build is  heavily pounding the CPU usage.  I have a dual_core cpu and Elemental32.exe is always using 52% or higher.   This seems extremely high for being a cloth map only version.   Perhaps Stardock can let us know if this is intended by design OR if it's a bug.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting NTJedi, reply 14
 

I've noticed this most recent build is  heavily pounding the CPU usage.  I have a dual_core cpu and Elemental32.exe is always using 52% or higher.   This seems extremely high for being a cloth map only version.   Perhaps Stardock can let us know if this is intended by design OR if it's a bug.
End of NTJedi's quote

They're lying to us, it's a conspiracy. The full 3D Engine is there and running in the background, they just dissabled it!!

lol j/k...obviously. That would be messed up if it was true though lol

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

It could be on re-draw-as-fast-as-you-can, in which case it could be drawing a single white triangle to the screen and still peg one core.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting NTJedi, reply 14
 

I've noticed this most recent build is  heavily pounding the CPU usage.  I have a dual_core cpu and Elemental32.exe is always using 52% or higher.   This seems extremely high for being a cloth map only version.   Perhaps Stardock can let us know if this is intended by design OR if it's a bug.
End of NTJedi's quote

 

After your post i checked my CPU usage and it is 85-100% 8C   Please don't tell me I won't be able to play elemental on my computer :( (AMD64 3GHz/3GB RAM/ATI HD3850 512MB) ;(

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

It's BETA! They are designing this game to run on a huge variety of computers. Hell, Frogboy said he wants Elemental to be able to play on Netbooks. Right now there's memory leaks, bugs, and a probably just poorly optimized code that's making the performance, well, crappy. It's what the beta is for so give them good information so they can make it better.

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

Netbooks? Oh my gosh. Finally, a highly-optimized Stardock game! Man, if more games could play on lower-end machines my sister and I could finally play online with each other. Right now we've been going via LAN because there are only 4 machines in the house capable of running them and neither of them her laptop which is the most important.

 

Myles, can you cite that Frogboy quote please?

Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

This is a quote about it from https://forums.elementalgame.com/356722.

 

Q: Are the screen shots we see indicative of the final quality?

A: NO! The engine we've developed is still being enhanced. For instance, in the screen shot above, the shadows aren't in yet. There are still a lot of features left to be put in visually.  That said, one of our primary objectives with Elemental is to have a game that has unprecedented flexibility in terms of the systems it can play on: Netbooks all the way up to 64-bit Core I7s with monster video cards.

 

It's not the only place I've seen him mention it, but it's the first I found.