State of the Beta????

[unmerged(25476)]

While I may not post as much as some I've been pretty involved in this project reading and commenting where I think my ideas might help. So far the results of this work has been fantastic. So many gameplay enhancements have resulted in a vastly improved game to date.

some of the bigger successes so far from my perspective...

Stability - despite a few bugs obviously still kicking around the stability has improved greatly over the last 6 months
Crusades- way better system than the vanilla game
AI - behavior - I don't think anyone wants to go to the old AI anymore.
events - huge improvement on the playability and role playing aspects in particular.

I think anyone involved in the beta would agree that we're making some excellent progress. but it appears things have kind of slowed down some... thats probably a good sign actually as more and more people are happy with the alterations and loose the passion to keep complaining. I for one am kind of getting confused as to where Mr. T and Johan are going next and where our feedback is most helpful to them as well as what is the status on the few still outstanding issues. Here's my take from the forums and stuff on where work still needs to be completed.


#1 Priority - "The Shiekdom of Praha Syndrome" - as it's come to be known. This is clearly the last and largest "issue" left to be tackled. This is the annoying tendancy for small muslim states, (and Chistian states for that matter) to focus on home provinces of enemies regardless of location and the subsequent creation of vassal states in logisitacly implausible locations. (Note I'm not saying historically implausible I think the muslim states should be able to conquer denmark but not just some independant shiek in the tigris valley with no logistic train back to his home base) There have been lots of suggestions on how to effect this but not much feedback from the "powers that be" on thier thinking of how to approach this... Any feedback would be nice so we can perhaps offer some constructive ideas on how the "solution" will affect gameplay.

#2 Priority - Spamming and resulting exploits from the Mobilization requests - In all fairness this was an added bug with the latest AI changes, but thats the beta process for you, so I'm not intending to sound like I'm complaining, but just adding it to the list on where I think the priority for tweaking lies in the grand scheme of things.

#3 Prioity - the elusive CTD bug - while this is an obviously frustrating and annoying problem for both players and programmers I have to applaud the tenacity and determination with which Johan and Mr. T have attacked this one. I have no doubt that if we keep on the current plan this one will get knocked out of the park... (just for info I havn't had a CTD for weeks now, other than one or two caused by weird succession chains, and those I can straigten out with the DIE cheat.)

#4 Prioity - Mongols? - or more accuratly the lack of them... it will be interesting to see how the latest AI alterations effect thier success.

#5 Priority - Cultural conversion events - Johan obviously still sees this as an issue and from comments in the forum there is some agreement. Although I don't care really what culture my provinces are and therefore havn't payed much attention to it.

#6 Prioity - other minor fixes and stuff - this is all the little stuff that's poping up.. the incorrect displays, misspelling etc... these are getting dealt with and so we just continue on.

One players perspective...

 

[unmerged(6777)]

I think anyone involved in the beta would agree that we're making some excellent progress. but it appears things have kind of slowed down some... thats probably a good sign actually as more and more people are happy with the alterations and loose the passion to keep complaining. I for one am kind of getting confused as to where Mr. T and Johan are going next and where our feedback is most helpful to them as well as what is the status on the few still outstanding issues. Here's my take from the forums and stuff on where work still needs to be completed.

There will very likely not be a patch this week since today is a Swedish holiday and many people (Johan included) have booked tomorrow off. I suspect that the closer we get to a finished 1.05 the "slower" the patches will be in terms of frequency. I'm not sure that this reflects a slow down as much as a drive towards stability. At some point we'll feel that most major changes that can be made have been made, and at that time we will be more interested in longer term results and tweaking rather than the frantic pace associated with feedback from major changes that you have seen in the past month or two.

#1 Priority - "The Shiekdom of Praha Syndrome" - as it's come to be known. This is clearly the last and largest "issue" left to be tackled. This is the annoying tendancy for small muslim states, (and Chistian states for that matter) to focus on home provinces of enemies regardless of location and the subsequent creation of vassal states in logisitacly implausible locations. (Note I'm not saying historically implausible I think the muslim states should be able to conquer denmark but not just some independant shiek in the tigris valley with no logistic train back to his home base) There have been lots of suggestions on how to effect this but not much feedback from the "powers that be" on thier thinking of how to approach this... Any feedback would be nice so we can perhaps offer some constructive ideas on how the "solution" will affect gameplay.

This is a major problem both for the players and from the development end of things. While there have been some excellent suggestions made by various people, the ones that make most sense (from a play standpoint) are the ones that would require far more coding time than is even remotely possible. Some of the changes that Johan made to the war AI last week should help somewhat (more defensive-oriented AI troop posturing, etc.) but I have some doubts that this will ever be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. This is particularly the case for those who wish strictly historic results/responses and feel that such considerations outweigh game design philosophy. I can state, with absolute certainty, that you will never convince Johan to make it possible for England/Denmark/Finland/etc. to declare war on the Fatimids and sail down there to conquer them without the Fatimids having the ability to do the same unto them. Yes it's ahistorical, but he will not code something that precludes this possiblility.

What can be done is to reduce the possibility of it happening and there are a variety of angles of approach being explored on a theoretical level at the moment. The first of these to actually enter a patch is the war AI change I mentioned above. More are planned (or at least being actively discussed) but for the time being I think it's something that will be a characteristic of play.

In the interim, posts that bemoan it have hit the "ad nausium" level for most of us in the development end of things. Since we've responded to the same complaints many times before it seems somewhat pointless to continue doing so. The lack of general response is mostly a case of it being not very beneficial from a time standpoint (i.e. I don't really want to spend 2-3 hours a day reposting things I've already posted just to respond to the latest flurry of redundancy). Yeah...that's porbably a shitty attitude but I'd rather be spending my time working on event scripts, tweaks, and so on.

#2 Priority - Spamming and resulting exploits from the Mobilization requests - In all fairness this was an added bug with the latest AI changes, but thats the beta process for you, so I'm not intending to sound like I'm complaining, but just adding it to the list on where I think the priority for tweaking lies in the grand scheme of things.

Yes. It's a new wrinkle and will need to be dealt with.

#3 Prioity - the elusive CTD bug - while this is an obviously frustrating and annoying problem for both players and programmers I have to applaud the tenacity and determination with which Johan and Mr. T have attacked this one. I have no doubt that if we keep on the current plan this one will get knocked out of the park... (just for info I havn't had a CTD for weeks now, other than one or two caused by weird succession chains, and those I can straigten out with the DIE cheat.)

Well, on this one we're getting there. I have had very few crashes recently and I'm pretty confident that it won't be much longer before we can pretty much eliminate anything that isn't a user-platform issue.

#4 Prioity - Mongols? - or more accuratly the lack of them... it will be interesting to see how the latest AI alterations effect thier success.

No one has provided much feedback on them lately -- most likely because the patch release rate has been such that a lot of people aren't playing late enough into a game to get much activity. I expect that this will need tweaking once the pace of patch release slows down and people start posting their experiences/observations again. Until then, I don't intend to make further changes to them based on my own whims so I'll need a reasonable volume of hard data before I address that area of concern again.

#5 Priority - Cultural conversion events - Johan obviously still sees this as an issue and from comments in the forum there is some agreement. Although I don't care really what culture my provinces are and therefore havn't payed much attention to it.

Very low on the overall scale. Johan doesn't see it as an issue with the present release (not do I, frankly) so the tweaking to event 9007 is more a placation measure than anything else. Changes or overhauls to the setup (beyond modest tweaking of Rich's rewrite of the event) are not going to happen. The same is true of changes to tier structure, kingdom/duchy/county setup, current dynastic setup, etc. People may have their own preferences and views about it, but that is the stuff of user mods and will not be further addressed in for the official 1.05.

#6 Prioity - other minor fixes and stuff - this is all the little stuff that's poping up.. the incorrect displays, misspelling etc... these are getting dealt with and so we just continue on.

One players perspective...

Yes. Text/spelling/grammar/etc. will be addressed at the end of the beta cycle once we have an event and feature freeze (no new events or featre changes) -- that way we will have a static game where there is no risk to version control. There might be minor tweaks to stuff after that, but in essence the patch will be nearly finnished when we embark on that part of things.

Added to the above...

Priority: Address and resolve Byzantine Empire situation -- particularly in 1066 scenario performance and behaviour.

Work is being done on this at present and more changes/additions/etc. are on the horizon.


Priority: Address and resolve Iberian situation

I think we're acutally nearing completion of this, barring any major exe changes that make it jump back onto our radar.

Priority: Enhance RPG aspects of courts, realms and dynasties.

That is the major area currently being focussed on at an event level and - to a somewhat lesser degree - at an exe level.

Priority: Realm volatility

There needs to be an enhanced threat level and degree of interaction within a realm -- particularly addressing vassal-liege relationships (and problems) as well as vassall-vassal relationships and how a king might interact with those. This has seen a little bit of work but will probably be addressed much more actively and aggressively once the RPG stuff has been more or less completed (many of the RPG-related changes are actually part of a larger plan that relates and will impact rather greatly on this area of priority).

 

[unmerged(25476)]

There will very likely not be a patch this week since today is a Swedish holiday and many people (Johan included) have booked tomorrow off. I suspect that the closer we get to a finished 1.05 the "slower" the patches will be in terms of frequency. I'm not sure that this reflects a slow down as much as a drive towards stability. At some point we'll feel that most major changes that can be made have been made, and at that time we will be more interested in longer term results and tweaking rather than the frantic pace associated with feedback from major changes that you have seen in the past month or two.

Opps sorry... I didn't make myself clear there, MrT. My statement was in no way ment to critizise or even comment on the speed at which Johan and you are putting stuff together or your posting of relys. I was just wanting to kind of get a general overview of where the process was and what the next steps were. I think you guys are going great and I actaully think slower release of beta patches is a good thing... allows for more time to see later game issues such as the mongols, (which your right we havn't had much feedback on). When I wrote my comment "Slow down" I was refering to the slowdown in commentary and feedback from the Public beta posters, which I take to be a good sign that more and more people are happy with the overall result, and meaning that visible progress is being made.

In the interim, posts that bemoan it have hit the "ad nausium" level for most of us in the development end of things. Since we've responded to the same complaints many times before it seems somewhat pointless to continue doing so. The lack of general response is mostly a case of it being not very beneficial from a time standpoint (i.e. I don't really want to spend 2-3 hours a day reposting things I've already posted just to respond to the latest flurry of redundancy). Yeah...that's porbably a shitty attitude but I'd rather be spending my time working on event scripts, tweaks, and so on.

:rofl: Yes by all means.. keep coding!!!

maybe as a suggestion to cut down on the spam a sticky post titles Shiekdom of Parha syndrome with a brief..(Very brief) summary of the different ideas being considered and more importantly the one that CANNOT be considers given resourse constraints would be helpful... that way we can debate and comment to our hearts content all in 1 spot and you can quicky sift through the drivel when your ready to tackle the issue.

 

[Zander]

#2 Priority - Spamming and resulting exploits from the Mobilization requests - In all fairness this was an added bug with the latest AI changes,

Actually, a related problem already existed with landless lieges, who will spam you with requests from the moment they lose their last province to the moment they die.
And has that been changed to default "decline" instead of "accept"? I don't remember seeing a note about it in the Beta readme.

 

[unmerged(6777)]

Ah...I see.

Well I would estimate at least another 3-4 weeks at least of general changes, fixes, updates, etc with maybe the end of this month being a loose target for things to begin settling in towards a viable release candidate. It mihgt take longer, of course. Then at that point we'd be looking at a feature and event freeze with only tweaking being done for a couple weeks, plus any text errors being corrected and also to get all the necessary translations done (German, French, Italian, Spanish, Swahili, Erdu, Aramaiic, etc.) and inserted. After that, another week or two of final lockdown where only critical errors would be addressed.

Any of these could be derailed if something is discovered that isn't anticipated and then the whole thing would be pushed back until it can be resolved*. It is also contingenet on just when Johan can spare us some coding time. There's a major show coming up in a week ro two (E3) that is likely to make him unavailable for CK stuff so it's kinda in the air a bit at present. I guess we'll all find out together.

So I guess if everything goes according to "plan" we might be looking at an official 1.05 sometime in June -- probably closer to the end of the month than the beginning of it -- but that would be an extremely rough guess and is in no way carved in stone.



*(That's why the "when will the patch be ready" questions are so hard to answer...even after that final freeze there could be something that suddenly springs up that sets the whole thing back another week or two or ten ).

 

[unmerged(6777)]

Actually, a related problem already existed with landless lieges, who will spam you with requests from the moment they lose their last province to the moment they die.
And has that been changed to default "decline" instead of "accept"? I don't remember seeing a note about it in the Beta readme.

Not that I am aware of, but I've also seen a few odd things happening that relates to this - particuarly a couple instances of unexpected (and illegal) vassal transer in non-coreligionist wars. That's very high onthe priority list at the moment.

 

[caknuck]

So I guess if everything goes according to "plan" we might be looking at an official 1.05 sometime in June -- probably closer to the end of the month than the beginning of it -- but that would be an extremely rough guess and is in no way carved in stone.

Will the "Official" patch mark the end of the public beta process?

 

[unmerged(6777)]

Will the "Official" patch mark the end of the public beta process?

Hard to say. I suppose that there's a possibility of further work being done by the beta team and the odd little bit of very-occasional Johan coding, but I would expect that 1.05 would be the last official patch and that any further changes would not be made for localization (i.e. installers created for each language version, etc.). Loosely, then, any further public beta work would be more along the lines of a semi-officially-sanctioned collective user-mod.

As you can imagine, Johan's time will be increasingly devoted (110%) to work on Diplomacy...not to mention possible other projects, a HoI2 1.3, maybe some misc Vicky or EU2 stuff, etc...

My own time will shift almost entirely to work on Diplomacy at some point in the fairly near future as well, although I will likely continue to chip in on a sporadic basis and might be able to return to more intensive work on it after Diplomacy has been released (assuming that something else hasn't cropped up in the interim).

I'm not certain what other betas will be up to, so some may continue to focus their efforts on CK. I guess we'll have to see what happens (and to what level).

Not the best answer, but that's about as specific as I can be.

 

[caknuck]

As you can imagine, Johan's time will be increasingly devoted (110%) to work on Diplomacy...not to mention possible other projects, a HoI2 1.3, maybe some misc Vicky or EU2 stuff, etc...

While we're on the subject...

Need any Alpha/Beta testers for Dip?

 

[Nikolai]

They will announce it in the Diplomacy forum when they need it. I guess there won't be any of it before late summer, IIRC how it was done with HoI2.

 

[unmerged(6777)]

While we're on the subject...

Need any Alpha/Beta testers for Dip?

Well we're not really on the subject, and as per usual that subject is closed. Alpha is by very specific invitation that is extended only to a select group of trusted, hard-working, long-term betas or people with exceptional expertise that is required and not otherwise available. If any betatesters are rquired for the project then a call for volunteers will be posted in the Diplomacy forum when the time is right.