Issues so far

from Elemental Forums

Please disregard original post (scratched out). My replies contain the most up to date info. I will also try to clean this up a bit more and include a summary.

I love the game and I'm having a lot of fun playing it, but it has been a bit unstable.This is all based on 1.01... downloading 1.05 now...If any of this is still relevant
Here's a whole bunch of crash files:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1673790/Elemental_bug/Elemental_bug.zip
I have tried a variety of different video settings, decreased resolution, tried windowed, etc. All issues remain & still appear frequently.
* Game crashes after playing a while
* Performance degrades after playing a while
* Towns appear to randomly switch factions (name and color changes, but otherwise unchanged)
* Occasional white screen/fog when loading tactical battles that doesn't disappear making it impossible for player to command units
* Occasionally sounds cut out
There are a few more bugs that occasionally appear but those above are the most annoying.
* Game crashes when trying to load or start new game after playing a while -- FIXED! as of 1.01

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition - Service Pack 3
Intel Core 2 Quad CPU @ 2.40GHz
EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Intel Motherboard
2.00GB of RAM
EVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB Video Card

All drivers have been updated to the latest (video: 258.96)

As of 4:00 PM CST 8/31 My complete list of bugs & issues I've posted so far for 1.06:

* Crashes, especially late game (regardless of video options). Performance is especially bad on higher resolutions.

* Custom race appearance color options - names and descriptions don't match in the custom race creator

* End turn bug/auto explore bug - I finally had the failure to end turn bug happen to me, but it appears it was caused by auto exploring ships getting stuck on the rocks. manually redirecting ship seemed to solve this one. (Edit: this is not entirely accurate as there is another end turn bug which is inexplicable and unresolvable)

* Ending a turn/transitioning into a new one is horribly slow late game and frequently causes crashes

      - other crashes usually come when loading a saved game after playing for a while

* Sound effects bug is still here. randomly cuts out doesn't come back

* Game occasionally displays wrong picture or wrong name for characters in the details card, on the UI, and sometimes on the 3D map

     - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1673790/Elemental_bug/106/Elemental_1282846017.jpg

* Towns appear to randomly switch factions (name and color changes, but otherwise unchanged)

* when there are a lot of units in a battle, some start out on the enemy side of the map. some start out stacked on the same tile

* Occasionally can't click anything on the battlefield (at all) during battles

* had trouble clicking on units during battles. sometimes when selecting them, but mostly when trying to attack them.

* when building single use buildings the game occasionally lets you place more than one, like you might with houses

* game crashed when I took a town that had a lot of things linked to it (including a dragon roost). May want to look at this save - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1673790/Elemental_bug/106/AutoSave.EleSav - game crashes every time I take the town of Reloyil (the one linked to the dragon roost - closest red city). Take the town of Reloyil and then end the turn. Has repeatedly crashed, even after reloading/restarting the game and taking this town.

* Correction: My end turn bug was different from that posted by others - a pathing issue with my auto exploring ship. In my last game I had the actual end turn bug where my end turn button was inexplicably greyed out and I could not end my turn.

* Allies & neutral factions spamming me to attack factions I'd rather not (they tell me to attack the same faction every turn, despite declining..every turn).

* If you hit the back button while creating a game using a custom faction, it sends you back to the custom faction creator.

* There is something seriously wrong with the hit chance/damage output during tactical battles - especially if the enemy has any armor whatsoever. Granted I may not fully understand all the stats and how they affect battles, it can't be right that my longbowman cost 40 gold a pop and then miss all their shots. Having similar problems casting spells, etc. that other users have reported - low to no damage.

* Can't click on a resource tile if there is a NPC or an army in that square - really annoying if a NPC decides to camp a square you want to build on.

* Groups are healing down instead of up. If you have a group of soldiers that has taken damage, you lose more as they heal until all you have left is one.

* As a kingdom, the mint is showing up as a palace on the 3D map. That is, it is clearly different from the picture that is shown on the info card and looks identical to my palace.

* It seems that units occasionally counterattack before your unit attacks during tactical battles. I don't know if this actually affected the outcome, but it was something I noticed.

* At least one typo in the campaign. I'll have to go back to give you the exact quote, but I believe it was up at Carrodus' fort and it was a there that should have been a their.

* Overall, tactical battles need to be rethought/balanced. The attacking force can completely decimate the defenders before they get to do anything, especially if the attacker has a number of casters. There are also the hit/miss issues I mentioned earlier.

* The spy/vigilant minion is way overpowered, especially early on in the game when most of your heroes don't have more than ten hitpoints.

* In tactical battles I keep accidentally moving units to a different square when I try to right click to attack. This may sound like a personal problem, but it seems like it is happening too easily, like, if you click anywhere near the edge of the square containing an enemy it thinks you want to click the adjacent square. A lot of this may or may not have to do with camera angles and terrain.

* Tactical battles have a number of animation issues. For instance, fireballs do not always appear. There is also a weird glitch where even after an animation has concluded, the player cannot do anything for several seconds.

* This may not be a bug per se, but is there a way to load up and edit a custom sovereign? I have only seen an option to delete one. This one's not a big deal, but it is a little annoying to have spent some time getting most of his appearance right, then load up the game and find out his cloak is the wrong color or that his butt sticks through it because of the aggressive pose you chose.. and you have no choice but to delete him and recreate him from scratch to fix it. Obviously, as far as the cloak, I can just buy him a different one in game, etc., but there should still be an option to edit a (existing) custom sovereign. If this is possible I missed it somehow. A feature to rotate the character in the sovereign creation and troop design windows would also be a helpful addition.

Added 10:07 PM CST 8/31

* Game sometimes skips over movement animations during tactical battles.

Seems to happen most often with enemy units when I hit "end turn" during tactical battles, but I have seen my guys do it too. Instead of showing a movement animation as a unit moves/runs/gallops, etc. from one location to the next, the game just jumps from one tile to the next or a couple tiles away. Bears can't teleport.

* I've also gotten the direct x error when alt-tabbing back and forth a few times, but I know it has already been mentioned elsewhere.

4,454 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

This is all based on 1.01... downloading 1.05 now
...If any of this is still relevant

Here's a whole bunch of crash files:
End of quote

There was one single crash issue in 1.01 that was causing most of the reported crashes (now solved), so please let us know how you get on with 1.05.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

1.05 seemed pretty stable (at least at low resolution). Playing 1.06 now and the crashes are back. 3D map is still horribly laggy when there is a lot of stuff on it. Playing on high resolution is even worse.

Uploading new crash files. Don't be fooled by the folder name - a couple of these may be from 1.05, but most should be from 1.06:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1673790/Elemental_bug/106.zip

Issues that are definitely still happening with 1.06:

* Crashes, especially late game (regardless of video options). Performance is especially bad on higher resolutions.

* Custom race appearance color options - names and descriptions don't match in the custom race creator

* End turn bug/auto explore bug - I finally had the failure to end turn bug happen to me, but it appears it was caused by auto exploring ships getting stuck on the rocks. manually redirecting ship seemed to solve this one.

* Ending a turn/transitioning into a new one is horribly slow late game and frequently causes crashes

      - other crashes usually come when loading a saved game after playing for a while

* Sound effects bug is still here. randomly cuts out doesn't come back

* Game occasionally displays wrong picture or wrong name for characters in the details card, on the UI, and sometimes on the 3D map

     - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1673790/Elemental_bug/106/Elemental_1282846017.jpg

* Towns appear to randomly switch factions (name and color changes, but otherwise unchanged)

* when there are a lot of units in a battle, some start out on the enemy side of the map. some start out stacked on the same tile

* when building single use buildings the game occasionally lets you place more than one, like you might with houses

* game crashed when I took a town that had a lot of things linked to it (including a dragon roost). May want to look at this save - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1673790/Elemental_bug/106/AutoSave.EleSav - game crashes every time I take the town of Reloyil (the one linked to the dragon roost - closest red city). Take the town of Reloyil and then end the turn. Has repeatedly crashed, even after reloading/restarting the game and taking this town.

 

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Problems from 1.05 that I cannot confirm are still present in 1.06:

* Particle effects stop working (i think this one was fixed)

* Occasionally can't click anything on the battlefield (at all) during battles

* had trouble clicking on units during battles. sometimes when selecting them, but mostly when trying to attack them.

* had issues with the dynasty tree displaying wrong pictures. had at least one instance where a child stacked behind one of the parents

 

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Problems that have been fixed (as far as I can tell):

* Fog bug in tactical battles is gone.

Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Updating with a few more bugs and one correction.

Correction: My end turn bug was different from that posted by others - a pathing issue with my auto exploring ship. In my last game I had the actual end turn bug where my end turn button was inexplicably greyed out and I could not end my turn.

 

New/other bugs:

* Allies spamming me to attack factions I'd rather not (they tell me to attack the same faction every turn, despite declining..every turn).

* If you hit the back button while creating a game using a custom faction, it sends you back to the custom faction creator.

* There is something seriously wrong with the hit chance/damage output during tactical battles - especially if the enemy has any armor whatsoever. Granted I may not fully understand all the stats and how they affect battles, it can't be right that my longbowman cost 40 gold a pop and then miss all their shots. Having similar problems casting spells, etc. that other users have reported - low to no damage.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I agree with the last problem mentioned. If an enemy has a defense any significant fraction of my attack (say my attack is four times their defense) I either miss or inflict really low damage half the time. This becomes very annoying with spells, especially if my guy is a total intelligence hero (or someone I actively try to make a spellcaster) This is something I would also like clarified or dealt with.

 

Thanks for listening : D

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

A few more bugs:

* Can't click on a resource tile if there is a NPC or an army in that square - really annoying if a NPC decides to camp a square you want to build on.

* Groups are healing down instead of up. If you have a group of soldiers that has taken damage, you lose more as they heal until all you have left is one.

* As a kingdom, the mint is showing up as a palace on the 3D map. That is, it is clearly different from the picture that is shown on the info card and looks identical to my palace.

* It seems that units occasionally counterattack before your unit attacks during tactical battles. I don't know if this actually affected the outcome, but it was something I noticed.

* At least one typo in the campaign. I'll have to go back to give you the exact quote, but I believe it was up at Carrodus' fort and it was a there that should have been a their.

* Overall, tactical battles need to be rethought/balanced. The attacking force can rape/completely decimate the defenders before they get to do anything, especially if the attacker has a number of casters. There are also the hit/miss issues I mentioned earlier.

* The spy/vigilant minion is way overpowered, especially early on in the game when most of your heroes don't have more than ten hitpoints.

* In tactical battles I keep accidentally moving units to a different square when I try to right click to attack. This may sound like a personal problem, but it seems like it is happening too easily, like, if you click anywhere near the edge of the square containing an enemy it thinks you want to click the adjacent square. A lot of this may or may not have to do with camera angles and terrain.

* Tactical battles have a number of animation issues. For instance, fireballs do not always appear. There is also a weird glitch where even after an animation has concluded, the player cannot do anything for several seconds.

* This may not be a bug per se, but is there a way to load up and edit a custom sovereign? I have only seen an option to delete one. This one's not a big deal, but it is a little annoying to have spent some time getting most of his appearance right, then load up the game and find out his cloak is the wrong color or that his butt sticks through it because of the aggressive pose you chose.. and you have no choice but to delete him and recreate him from scratch to fix it. Obviously, as far as the cloak, I can just buy him a different one in game, etc., but there should still be an option to edit a (existing) custom sovereign. If this is possible I missed it somehow. A feature to rotate the character in the sovereign creation and troop design windows would also be a helpful addition.

 

** On another note, I just started reading the Hiergamenon, the printed book that came with the Limited Edition, and I noticed a number typos/grammar mistakes. I suppose it is too late to do anything about this now, but please try to do better the next time. Things like: "In these days was Periden was home to thousands..." were especially frustrating.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

ooh. Here's another one I keep forgetting to write down:

* Game sometimes skips over movement animations during tactical battles.

Seems to happen most often with enemy units when I hit "end turn" during tactical battles, but I have seen my guys do it too. Instead of showing a movement animation as a unit moves/runs/gallops, etc. from one location to the next, the game just jumps from one tile to the next or a couple tiles away. Bears can't teleport.

* I've also gotten the direct x error when alt-tabbing back and forth a few times, but I know it has already been mentioned elsewhere.