Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[G-Flex]

I've bug reported it, but the savegame I posted hasn't even been downloaded.

So obviously it's not being looked at, and I can't play the game even to test out features and report because I can't get to the point the game even introduces the features.

So yea, I'm pissed right now, and I think it's perfectly legitimate to post about such issues, alpha or not.

Keep in mind how much other stuff Toady has to work on. He also gets, what, a couple hundred emails a day, and has been dealing with website and forum issues. I hate to say "eh, he'll get around to it" but that's sort of inevitable sometimes. The bug tracker is full of stuff right now, and it's not as if Toady hasn't been working on them.

Also, I would recommend uploading to the Dwarf Fortress File Depot next time, instead of having to deal with RapidShare.

[DarkDragon]

As i stated in my other thread, my time is limited, and I can't be arsed to create new accounts at every little website.

Rapidshare is easy, I click a few links, post a link, done. No registering for accounts and opening my email for registration details and having to remember ANOTHER password and shit.

And yea, I understand toady is busy, but it is frustrating seeing everyone else being able to play the game just fine barring the few minor bugs that Toady IS addressing, but yet I have a crash that prevents me from getting to even the first ambush.

[G-Flex]

"The few minor bugs"? All the ones I've seen are pretty major, including a fairly large handful of crashes.

[DarkDragon]

I'm talking about the stuff just for this next release. Oh and I don't know, maybe my view of what is major or minor is skewed a little bit when I can't experience any of the bugs due to unplayability that no one will even acknowledge, since it seems to be only happening to me.

[G-Flex]

I understand your frustration, but you can't expect him to necessarily fix every obscure crash bug before moving on to anything else.

[DarkDragon]

I understand your frustration, but you can't expect him to necessarily fix every obscure crash bug before moving on to anything else.

No, but I have every right to post about it to up the visibility of the issue. And when I have no way to play the game all I have to say about it will be negative.

But yet whenever I, or someone else makes a post complaining about something, there are a hundred people taking up pitchforks to burn out the naysayers because, obviously, Toady will have his feelings hurt and will never continue making the game if people post a little negative feedback.

It's silly and short sighted. Excusing every problem with the game as "it's an alpha" doesn't excuse the bugs. They have to be fixed eventually, and the forum and the bug tracker are here for a reason. To discuss the game, good things and bad.

[G-Flex]

I'm not saying it's bad to post about that, but there's a difference between making a negative post and what sounds like you complaining that your specific demands aren't being met before any others, or sounding unnecessarily hostile or impatient about it. I know a lot of people here make up stupid excuses for all kinds of things, and I'm trying not to myself, but still, we all knew this release would be unstable, and Toady's dealing with so much crap right now (including a lot of stuff that hardly has to do with programming the game to begin with) that you can't expect him to get to your particular crash bug less than a week after posting about it, especially with so many others hanging around.


Also, does it happen to every fortress of yours, or just that one save? You could always just try another fortress.

[DarkDragon]

Nope, I've had 3 saves that have the issue.

And as to whatever you might think about the tone of my posts, at least I'm not flaming Toady in any way. All I'm saying is that there are serious issues that need to be worked out, and it's not just my issues. I'm pretty sure my issue is military related, and military is one of the things that seem to be getting ignored with the 2 (or is it 3? I forget) patches we've had now to this release. I know he'll get to it, but it's frustrating to see change logs without any indication that Toady is working on the broken military.

[G-Flex]

Have you looked at the changelog on the bug list? Several of the fixes thus far have been military-related, and some of those have been crashes.

[beorn080]

Nope, I've had 3 saves that have the issue.

And as to whatever you might think about the tone of my posts, at least I'm not flaming Toady in any way. All I'm saying is that there are serious issues that need to be worked out, and it's not just my issues. I'm pretty sure my issue is military related, and military is one of the things that seem to be getting ignored with the 2 (or is it 3? I forget) patches we've had now to this release. I know he'll get to it, but it's frustrating to see change logs without any indication that Toady is working on the broken military.

Personally, I've had maybe one or two crashes so far. As I couldn't repeat any of them, it didn't bother me.

As for frustrating, go play 40d. Actually, go play one of the old 2d versions. If you don't like the version, go play an older one. I'm liking DF2010. It brought back the, IMHO, sorely missed and needed underground features that made 2dDF unique. Which isn't to say the previous 3d versions were bad, merely predictable.

[MaDeR Levap]

What a discussion!

My take: You are barking at wrong tree. Some people there presented case as buggy fast release versus slow but more playable release.

Wrong.

DF is so buggy exactly because it was so long after last release. Single programmer can in day create ten times more bugs than he discover. And Toady worked on 0.31 about one and half year. Strata upon strata of bugs... It is wonder DF is playable at all.

If he would decided on shorter release cycle, he would kill two birds with one stone: less bugs and less annoyed (because of long wait) fans. Of course now it is too late, time to deal with results of this decision. I sincerely hope that Today in future will choose wisely mode of release.

TL;DR; meh.

[Calhoun]

I wish I could test more of the bugs and report, but unfortunately one of the bugs is preventing me from playing.

After hitting year 2 I get constant crashes that render the game unplayable. It must just be me because everyone else seems to be able to have a successful fort (up to the point it gets killed by some uber mega beast), but mine just crash themselves to death after the second year.

I've bug reported it, but the savegame I posted hasn't even been downloaded.

So obviously it's not being looked at, and I can't play the game even to test out features and report because I can't get to the point the game even introduces the features.

So yea, I'm pissed right now, and I think it's perfectly legitimate to post about such issues, alpha or not.

Without people pointing out the flaws they will never get fixed. And this guys post (and mine) are not that inflammatory. And frankly, I'm sick and tired of people hopping to the defense of the game whenever someone posts a somewhat negative comment. Without negative feedback things do not improve, they just grow stale, so STFU unless someone is actually being a complete jerk and not just venting their concerns about the game and the issues it has.

We have the bugtracker for reporting bugs. Submit a ticket, and you will be processed. Toady is just (heh) One person.  He can only do so much, so fast.

Nothing the OP describes is to me, a problem. Only those that are bugs. The new military screen is a bit complex, but it's not that difficult. It's fully mouse-enabled, so navigating it isn't the issue. I can work with it just fine, the only probelms are some bugs where things don't do as i say. These are BUGS. Which we all knew would be there.

When he says "improvements to the world generator don't make this game better." I personally don't know what the hell he's talking about. The underground? The wonkiness with Temperatures?

If it's the new underground, I couldn't be more suprised. The underground is nothing short of Epic, in my opinion.

The Wonkiness with the temperatures is, A bug, and fixable. (I belive it's already fixed, for the next release.)

Nothing the OP, or anyone else for that matter has said about the new features, strikes me as a design problem.

To me, they are all just Buggy features. AWESOME feature's at that, just a bit funky, wth all the bugs.

Bugs that will be fixed.

To visualize it. 40d was a Caterpillar that went into a cocoon for 1.5 or so years. Now it's burst open. There's a beautiful butterfly(New version) comin' out. But it's having a bit of trouble against parts of of the cocoon, which are getting in the way of the true beauty of it. (The Bugs).

[Asmodeous]

The military system is hard to use.  The combat system is giving nonsensical results in relatively straightforward experiments.  The concern is not that there are bugs; I remember the sleeping-dwarf bug from the first 3D release.  Things like that were obviously going to be fixed inside a few weeks, it was just a matter of noticing them.  In this case, it isn't that it's an oversight, it's that it's been deliberately coded a certain way, and that certain way doesn't necessarily work very well.  There's a limit to how much fundamental behavior can be directed by bugs of the "oops I missed that" nature as opposed to "oops this whole thing was a bad idea and doesn't work".

tbh, I find that the interface is very intuitive and easily navigated. However I also find that it doesn't work at all. You set it up the way it is supposed to work, and the dwarves fuck off and do whatever they want to anyway. Then this leads people to believe that the system is really hard to use, because they are required to jump through dozens of hoops to make what they want to have happen actually happen.

So then we're lead to an impasse. What exactly in it is broken? Is it the interface itself? Is it the dwarves? Is it how the AI handles the orders given?

I honestly don't consider that the military menus are bad design. I also don't think they're overly complicated. I think that they appear to be incredibly overcomplicated and nonsensical because they aren't working properly, and I feel that is evidenced by your very mention of not being able to make it do straight-forward things.

I am led to believe that it is just... broken. A feature that is definitely working in the right direction, but needs some major work.

Some things it needs:

1. Dwarves to understand what the hell the orders you give mean, and actually follow them. Not just dick off and do whatever they want. Like grab random armor, etc.

2. A "paper doll" of sorts. I can assign a sword and a shield, but if the dwarf doesn't understand he's supposed to put the shield in his hand, he might wander off with two swords instead. Let me design the uniforms better.

3. The ability to from the game save states and uniforms. It's irritating to have to recreate all the alert states and uniforms every freaking game. Let me save them inside the game. I realize that I can likely edit a file somewhere and buh-bam, but not having basic "save these settings" features in a game is unacceptable.

[lucusLoC]

you could just do what i do, watch the dev log and bug tracker to see whats been fixed and wait for the fixes you want.

i picked up the new version of df, but found the combat and other bugs to be too annoying to have fun. the potential is there, i can see it, its just that the bugs get in the way.

so right now i watch the dev log and read the forums and wait for the next patch. once df is all nice and stable and all the major retardedness is fixed ill pick the game up again. yeah it sux that others are having fun with the game while i am not, but i just can't handle the crashes and broken combat, and they can. ill let them go through the pain of bug tracking, and they have my appreciation for doing it.

the whole issue is that this is a one man show. this means that we, as fans, need to have a whole lot more patience and understanding. Toady is going to take care of things that he see as most important, and that means the big things and the easy things are the first to get fixed.

sorry to say this but a strange crash that only affects one user is probably going to be way down the line. and while it is true that you have a right to complain about it don't act surprised when you receive a negative reaction from people who understand that Toady is prioritizing work.

my suggestions to you are: try changing the run directory, try updating drivers, try running it on a VM, try reinstalling your OS. failing all that get a different comp to run it on. i know not all of those are practical or feasible, but they are pretty much your only options.

Toady is working hard, and the bug tracker shows this. he already said now that the main save compat break is done he was going to have a much quicker release cycle like he had before, but bugs will always be an issue. patience is the only solution.

[Ghavrel]

As i stated in my other thread, my time is limited, and I can't be arsed to create new accounts at every little website.

I've spent some time pondering how to say this politely.

You are posting on a forum that centers on a video game which is about spending inordinate amounts of time establishing and micromanaging a subterranean fortress inhabited by magical creatures.

I'm sorry, but your post actually made me laugh. How on earth can you seriously complain about wasting your precious time while posting on this forum?