There's a school of thought that it's better to have fewer but bigger updates to software. I tend to be in that school of thought.
But as a developer, we really enjoy sharing what we do with our customers as quickly as humanly possible.
For example, in v1.02, if you're using it right now, you hopefully noticed that we were able to vastly improve the per turn times over v1.01 and earlier. We thought that a big deal (we came up with a different algorithm for finding units more efficiently which, late game, is a big deal). v1.02 also starts out using a lot less memory due to dynamic memory caching, a technique we have been working on for awhile but wasn't expected to be ready until v1.1 but actually got done early so we included that.
Right now, for v1.03, we're working on a new way of storing compressed textures and clearing the texture cache (right now, we cache textures for the entire game session which gives a slight performance improvement but over the course of the game can eat up a lot of memory). We're doing this because we know how many users like really big maps and we'd like to pave the way to larger sized maps eventually.
So anyway, are these regular updates annoying you? Would you prefer if we slowed down and had fewer, bigger updates?
Thanks!
I know I don't spam these e-mails to you. But I wouldn't complain if you set up private builds for those that want them smaller and more frequently
noone has to update if they don't want to?
I want to. daily even if needed.
for what it's worth, i'm still getting frequent crashes, especially when loading a save file. I've been playing since 1.0 and i've not noticed any change in processing times between turns. however the game does seem to run at a higher framerate than it used to. Aside from CTDs, the second most common crash is when the game hangs endlessly while processing between turns, it occasionally seems to stop doing anything, and the next turn just doesn't start
I get an occasional error message popping up when i hit end turn, it just says "Out of memory". However the game seems to continue just fine, other than a longer-than-usual processng time between those two turns
In my case at least, i'd say the game is less stable now, than it was in v1.0
everyone's hardware is different though, it may well be an unexpected interaction with something on my end.
As to the regularity of updates, no it's far from annoying. Computers naturally gravitate towards more communication, not less. Frequent updates become more and more tolerable over time, (not that they were much of a nuisance to me anyway) and in my case since i have steam, the frequency of updates is largely irrelevant as the updating process is done in the background without pestering me. i just start up one morning and find the version number incremented, and some bugs gone.
Right now at least, the game is in a state, both technically and balance wise, where frequent updates are needed and desireable. In a few months time perhaps people will expect you to slow down, but cross that bridge when you come to it.
I prefer the more rapid updates: these days waiting isn't benefitting folks.
My suggestion is to let those folks know they can happily not update until 1.1 if they wish fewer updates. They have the option to wait.
The only downside of rapid releasing, is that it makes me reluctant to look at mods, but mods will always be there- and the mod I want (a real base game merged mod of fixes/improvements) hasn't been made yet. Civ IV my favorite mod was the WolfShanze mod (for the base game)- for that reason.
FE converted to a mod of that type would sure be interesting. Guess that would be more of a total conversion than mod, but still sounds very interesting.
And for the record, I really like the current patch speed. I'll take them as fast as possible as long as there are meaningful updates. And by that I mean either a significant bug/balance fix or ANY performance improvement.
Thanks for the post Frogboy. I immediately noticed the speed-up in your code. Thanks especially for the description of what was included in the update.
I like the quick updates because that gives us a chance to evaluate the updates more closely in order to give feedback.
p.s., I'm still holding out for someday being able to govern from the 'Govern' screen. When I'm in the Govern screen I feel a bit like I'm watching an operation behind a glass window - look but don't touch.
Keep the updates coming fast & furious.
So either these are impatient children who don't realize how easy, fast, and painless updating this game is (I LOVE that I can finally play a wonderful, brand new PC game which doesn't force Steam down our throats without any alternative in order to do updates by the way, so thank you for that) -- Or, they're game reviewers who must play for a set number of hours and review only most up-to-date version of the game, or else they keep having to start over whenever an update is released.
Regardless of their reasons, I firmly believe this is your typical case of the loudest, most careless, extremely slim minority. If someone truly cares about the quality of this game (just as with any other product somebody purchases and already sees value in), then I can't imagine anyone not wanting it to be at its best, as soon as possible, even if updates are as much as few times a week. For some games updating can be a chore to say the least; this is not the case with FE either, in fact it's a breeze.
I still had some crashes in 1.01 due to the game's memory issues consistently after 3 or so hours of play, similarly to many others. As long as the big problems continue being addressed and improved upon, what more can I ask for? Thanks again.
Small weekly or bi-weekly updates would be great imo.
Gives the players something to constantly look forward to and helps keep each game you start fresh.
first, great jobs getting updates out so far. imho, as long as we have a way to roll back a update in case, and just in case, it turns out to be a bad one, i'm perfectly fine with the current frequency.
That's gratitude for you, eh? Never mind that it fixes The Most Annoying Thing or The Most Buggy Thing, if the patch isn't big enough people seem to think it's Underwhelming Patch Of The Century or that fast releases delay the eventual major patch.
Truth is, not every major patch can fix every problem, either because the fix doesn't work under certain circumstances, or because the real problem is something else. So yes, it is important to get important fixes out there... to make sure they actually do what was intended.
People may criticise that approach for being essentially a second beta, but there are some things that you don't notice until regular play reveals it.
The negative voices always shout the loudest, but are rarely the most numerous
please keep updating at the current frequency or better.
harpo
I haven't had any performance issues on my 3 years old gaming PC, so that part of the updates doesn't personally matter to me.
BUT I think it's awesome that annoying bugs and obvious balance issues get addressed so quickly. I found it very annoying with Civ 4 and even more 5 that they'd take so long (sometimes) to finish an update. Great job YOU GUYS are doing.
Pathetic fishing attempt though!
+ from me for quick updates!
As long as they don't break the game, or introduce even bigger bugs, I'm all for the frequent updates!
I not only love the updates. As a Steam user, I love how they happen automatically without my needing to do anything at all. "Oh, look, another gift from Stardock!"
I have bragged about it to some of my game playing friends. Touting my software supplier as superior to their software provider is a childish and geeky thing to do, but very satisfying.
When software is new, there tends to be more bugs, balance issues, tweaks and enhancements needed than later in the lifecycle. As a software developer, I expect to make more frequent releases early on, and as the software becomes more stable, the frequency drops off.
The rate at which you are releasing updates is just fine with me.
Frequent smaller updates are the way to go imho. They allow to quickly patch up the hot issues, yet are small enough that the introduction of new bugs is limited. Ten .0X hotfixes are better than one .X update.
More rapid updates of a few items, while working longterm on others, makes sense to me.
I did notice the improvements in speed. The game's significantly faster, now, and that's very apparent on large maps. Thanks.
my opinion only is that you release as soon as the changelog is published
I know how exciting it to discuss the fixes the'll get fixed with the release, but I can't play knowing a certain bug exist (e.g. savegame bug) and it kept me from playing knowing it'll be fixed until the release...
I know the solution is simple ... not read the forum ... trying, but failing miserably at that
keep em coming
I enjoy the updates and the changelogs, more is almost always better... although the premature changelogs are a bit of a tease, held just out of reach by the clear veil of time.
To me, 1.00 was the game I had dreamed of when Elemental was first mentioned. I have nothing but praise for you and the whole team, every single one. Congratulations. I look forward to seeing more of your ideas made reality in following projects. Carefully crafted, balanced and then set free. I know many good ideas were put to one side or hidden deep in the code to produce the crisp and more focussed world as it is (thinking dynasties here, that could be reintroduced or applied to a game like galciv3). The design goals you've followed only makes me more curious as to how things will change, most of those ideas obviously aren't essential because the game is good as is. But then, how much of an improvement was Twilight of the Arnor for having asteroids, unique tech trees and super abilities? I can picture lots of possibilities, but what are you and the team planning? Have to wait and see.
Balance and fixes, memory and optimisation all help someone like me. Thank you so much for them. I'm often using an older computer with annoyingly intermittent internet access, I look forward to the changes that will eventually let me play on larger maps and hopefully use the unit design screen without it getting angry at me. (loading all the textures, including those that my shoddy integrated graphics card doesn't like (surcoats?, eyes!? and the spellbook background all for some reason annoy my computer))
Anyway, I thought you were fishing for praise mentioning getting negative emails... so... Well done and thank you. Keep updating!
Current update speed is good so long as it is efficient for Stardock (frequent releases can cause too much time needing to be spent testing, or alternatively frequent new bugs making it out to the wild).
Performance optimisations are welcome. However my main concern is still fixing the bugs and UI problems in the game, along with continuing to enhance the AI to provide a more dynamic challenge (but without all the apparently unintentional cheating it has been doing due to bugs).
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