Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

A single berserk reached us yesterday, after having come all the way over the mountains from the city of Willow, fourteen hundred miles away. He delivered to Alric a single package the size of a man's fist, wrapped in rags, and refuses to talk with anyone about events in the West.
punkUser
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Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

After several months of public beta, and several years of development, Myth II 1.8 is finally released. Additionally, Jon God has released his gigantic detail texture pack that covers 476 different maps!

To grab both, read the change log, etc. head over to: http://www.projectmagma.net/

For a video summary of some of the new features, check out the Myth II 1.8 Promo Video.

switch
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by switch »

Hey, allright! I'll dl this.


adrenaline
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by adrenaline »

Sweet... been looking forward to the dtex pack. Good job finalizing 1.8 too.

GodzFire
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by GodzFire »

Milk Man wrote:Wow he even dtexed maps I'd completely forgotten... like Parking Wars
Heh Parking Wars was my request. I helped Datax test it back in the day when he was making it.

Renwood
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Renwood »

WOOO! Great work! I have been waiting for this for....3 years!

I hope people start to adopt 1.8 in large numbers soon, as the Myth HD Total Conversion is made to work with the optimized features in 1.8

Also be great to jump on the new Metaserver GateOfStorms and get some goings going!

This wouldn't happen to include a new damage type in fear would it?
Ooga always said with just 1 more DMG type, he could make all kinds or super spiffie shit happen.

Nice work guys! Really looking forward to playing with this!

-Renwood

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by adrenaline »

So uhhhh 1.8 is pretty much unplayable for me. When I pan around a map it's super choppy... tried OpenGL, DirectX, Direct3D... all the same. Reverted back to 1.7.2... sigh.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

adrenaline wrote:So uhhhh 1.8 is pretty much unplayable for me. When I pan around a map it's super choppy... tried OpenGL, DirectX, Direct3D... all the same. Reverted back to 1.7.2... sigh.
Was it like that in public beta? Can you post your system specs, myth log and make sure you have updated your graphics drivers?

Also please try checking/unchecking "Use Multiple Processors / Cores" in preferences. Also double-check that all the rest of the settings are the same between 1.7.2 and 1.8. Note that you can still run the 1.7.2 EXE with 1.8 installed... it will have just renamed it to "Myth II old.exe" or similar.

adrenaline
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by adrenaline »

can you provide instructions on how to do each of those things? i am not a tech geek lol. and yes i tried unchecking that thing. made no diff. and ya, the public beta was like that too, if memory serves.

punkUser
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

adrenaline wrote:and ya, the public beta was like that too, if memory serves.
Why didn't you report it then? Perhaps I missed it but I don't recall seeing it.

So first, please post your Myth log. Run 1.8, start a map, etc. where it's jittery then quit out. Go to your Myth 2 directory and find "myth_log.txt" and please attach it to the forum here (or make a post at the tain forums). From there I can see what sort of graphics card you have an can point you where to get updated drivers, etc.

But yeah, please double check all the settings between 1.8 and 1.7.2 as well just to make sure they are the same. Especially "Vsync" and similar.

adrenaline
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by adrenaline »

Well... I tried something else... turns out it's the detail textures that make it choppy :( My apologies! here's my myth log anyways...

2013-05-30 21:45:13
Myth II Build 422 running under Modern Windows 6.010000 ----------------------------------------------
Loading poweruser.txt... not found.
DEBUG: Updating monolithic tag cache:
Initial count: 146
Number removed: 0
Number added: 1
New count: 147
DEBUG: Adding 12 monolithic tags:
small install
medium install
large install
international small install
international large install
Patch 1.2
Patch 1.3
Patch 1.4
Patch 1.5
MariusNet
Patch 1.8 Interface
Magma - Detail Texture Megapack
Scanning for software devices...
Found 1 to use
Scanning for Direct3D devices...
Found 1 to use
Scanning for DirectX 11 devices...
Found adapter: NVIDIA Quadro FX 1700
Found 1 to use
Scanning for 3Dfx devices...
Found 0 to use
Scanning for OpenGL devices...
Found 1 to use
Quadro FX 1700/PCIe/SSE2 | NVIDIA Corporation | OpenGL 3.3
Initializing sound with DirectSound...
Initialized for DirectSound3D using COM
DirectSound initialized successfully.
Warning: Unable to find cutscene 'prologue'.
Establishing connection with metaserver at myth.mariusnet.com:6321...
Connected.
Running DirectX 11 at 1920 x 1080 (VSync ON)
Starting mesh "Gimble in the Wabe" with 1 plugin...
Myth HD Total Conversion v1
Using 1.8.0 gameplay...
Quitting networked game...
Running DirectX 11 at 1920 x 1080 (VSync ON)
Starting mesh "Gimble in the Wabe" with 1 plugin...
Myth HD Total Conversion v1
Using 1.8.0 gameplay...
Quitting networked game...

punkUser
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

Were detail textures choppy on 1.7.2 as well? That seems odd.

In terms up updating your drivers, go to one of the following links depending on if you have windows 64-bit or 32-bit:
32-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-not ... river.html
64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-not ... river.html
Download and install that driver and see if it improves performance at all.

Also, what is your texture cache size set to? I notice you're playing the HD tagset... note that that's significantly more heavy on system resources and texture memory than regular Myth. If you could try with just regular myth and let me know if it's still choppy after the driver update that would be great.

It might be tight, but I think your graphics card should be able to run detail textures more smoothly than you are reporting. Try using OpenGL or DirectX and disabling v-sync and anisotropic filtering but leave detail textures on. Load a game and press "delete"and let me know what sorts of FPS you're getting. Use F11 to toggle dtex on/off and let me know the FPS in each case.

adrenaline
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by adrenaline »

have not tried the dtex on 1.7.2 yet. I have myth installed on 2 separate partitions... I installed 1.8 on the one I never use, which happened to have the HD set thing. I tried it on the other partition without the HD set thing and it was the same. Either way, it's the texture pack that's doing it.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Dantski »

Yeah I installed 1.8 and the DTex together and found the camera scroll to be really... unsmooth I'd call it. Like Adren I've turned DTex on/off and its definitely the problem. Chaning from DX11 to opengl helped a bit but its still much better to play with DTex off.

Currently set texture cache to 512MB (which was the default), what should I be setting it to? Haven't tried playing with the Vsync or other options yet.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

Dantski wrote:Yeah I installed 1.8 and the DTex together and found the camera scroll to be really... unsmooth I'd call it. Like Adren I've turned DTex on/off and its definitely the problem.
Dtex definitely incurs some overhead and low end GPUs will not be able to handle it well. Extended zoom will also tax a system more than regular zoom levels. That said, try updating drivers and fiddling with the settings as I described and you may be able to get it running acceptably.
Dantski wrote: Currently set texture cache to 512MB (which was the default), what should I be setting it to?
Usually the best setting is somewhere a bit less than your video memory - say 3/4. It depends on a lot of different factors though, so definitely mess around with it a little if you're having issues.

Anyways let me know if you want help to try and get detail textures running better (try what I suggested first) but if you're happy without them then all good :) Would still be interested to hear what sorts of FPS numbers you're getting (with vsync off) with detail textures though just for our reference. We did some more work in 1.8 to make them a bit faster than 1.7.2 so we'd definitely like to hear where we're at with your systems now.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Dantski »

Strange just loaded up willow creek and it was perfectly smooth and running at 60 fps. It was the same using OpenGL as well which was a lot worse when I tried it yesterday. My drivers were already up to date.

Not sure what to attribute this to, I haven't changed anything in myth settings or my PC display settings since...

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

Can you turn off vsync in options and press delete and let me know what the FPS is on willow or when you are getting stutter?

dac
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by dac »

dont forget async processes running in the background, especially if you have integrated graphics.

ive had antivirus start scanning before and its made everything run like crap. that all stopped when i got a dedicated graphics card.

heh you shoulda seen skyrim on it, the opening cutscene took an hour to run, it was frame by frame!

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Dantski »

PunkUser wrote:Can you turn off vsync in options and press delete and let me know what the FPS is on willow
Around 440 FPS when zoomed out to the max (when playing) on willow with vsync off.

I'll try to play 1-2 games tonight if there's any happening and see if theres any issues since it was a problem when I played online and not had it in my offline tests.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

Dantski wrote: Around 440 FPS when zoomed out to the max (when playing) on willow with vsync off.
Huh, yeah you should be able to run dtex no problem with that level of performance... try it tonight with vsync off and see what happens, but it should be fine.

Asmodian
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Asmodian »

I finally broke down and dled 1.8 despite hearing many complaints from testers that made me not want to dl it.

My conclusion, it is the worst Myth 2 patch ever made. First game I go in the movement and flow of the game is completely different, it feels like I'm playing some newer version of TFL. Last time I checked I clicked on the button to open myth 2 and not Myth TFL so stop changing the damn game. If you want a new game similar to myth 2 go make your own game.

2nd WHY DID YOU CHANGE THE TRADE BOX? People complained about this in beta and despite the several complaints you guys still kept it the same in the final version which goes to show that you are not making changes in the best interest of the community but for your personal wants.

Any trust I had for magma is gone and I will not be dling and of your future patches.

PS: I wouldn't be surprised if you guys messed up stuff in the past like path finding on auto clicks.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by NewMutator »

Asmo wrote:I finally broke down and dled 1.8 despite hearing many complaints from testers that made me not want to dl it.

My conclusion, it is the worst Myth 2 patch ever made. First game I go in the movement and flow of the game is completely different, it feels like I'm playing some newer version of TFL. Last time I checked I clicked on the button to open myth 2 and not Myth TFL so stop changing the damn game. If you want a new game similar to myth 2 go make your own game.
LOL!

punkUser
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

I'm gonna assume Asmo's post is some brilliant trolling/sarcasm and not respond to it, because it is sort of hilarious on a number of levels and I don't want to ruin that even if he thinks he's being serious :)

GodzFire
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by GodzFire »

That's about as balls-stupid as that dumbass Falcon's 'review' of JG's DTex Pack:
Very good however I like detail textures turned off, helps focus more on killing. Good addition to the myth aesthetics.

Melekor
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Melekor »

Asmo wrote:the movement and flow of the game is completely different
I think you might be noticing the effect of motion interpolation here. You can turn that off in prefs if you don't like it.
Asmo wrote:it feels like I'm playing some newer version of TFL
So, let me get this straight, you are saying that myth 2 feels like a newer version of .. myth 1? :P
Asmo wrote:2nd WHY DID YOU CHANGE THE TRADE BOX? People complained about this in beta and despite the several complaints you guys still kept it the same in the final version which goes to show that you are not making changes in the best interest of the community but for your personal wants.
The box was in the middle of the screen in the first beta. In the second beta, it was moved to the top because of complaints about it blocking the view. After that there were no further complaints about it until your post just now. What is the problem you are having with the current version?
Asmo wrote:PS: I wouldn't be surprised if you guys messed up stuff in the past like path finding on auto clicks.
You don't say! I wouldn't be surprised if we messed up stuff in the past either.

punkUser
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

melekor wrote: The box was in the middle of the screen in the first beta. In the second beta, it was moved to the top because of complaints about it blocking the view. After that there were no further complaints about it until your post just now. What is the problem you are having with the current version?
Ok since you bothered to respond, I'll reiterate two other things too... 1) it was changed as part of making the status bar scalable to arbitrary window sizes/resolutions and 2) if you press F6 during PT, it's basically how it was before, just centered instead of left-aligned, but folks have specifically commented that they like being able to see the map info from the status bar during planning time (difficulty, mode, etc).

GodzFire
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by GodzFire »

Assmo's just a troll, don't feed him. It's the only thing that gives his life worth.

wwo
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by wwo »

Just want to relate a couple of things that have happened. Comment or clarification is welcome but not necessary.

#1 I had terrible screen lag with the beta. Tried all sorts of settings other than renderer. Nothing worked. 1.8 Final is fine, though. Haven't tried dtex's yet.

#2 Running the old.exe used to do just fine, but installing 1.8 made my 1.7.2 claim that myth didnt have enough memory. For some reason, I have a collection of all the exes and pasted in a new 1.7.2 exe and it worked.

punkUser
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

wwo wrote: #1 I had terrible screen lag with the beta. Tried all sorts of settings other than renderer. Nothing worked. 1.8 Final is fine, though. Haven't tried dtex's yet.
Not totally sure. If you do run into poor performance with or without dtex, please post your Myth log, the settings you are using and what sort of FPS you are getting. There may be minor modifications to settings that can be made to make it work better.
wwo wrote: #2 Running the old.exe used to do just fine, but installing 1.8 made my 1.7.2 claim that myth didnt have enough memory. For some reason, I have a collection of all the exes and pasted in a new 1.7.2 exe and it worked.
Hmm I have a vague memory if this being some really old issue in Myth on modern operating systems... so maybe the old.exe in there was not actually 1.7.2 for some reason (maybe the patcher didn't over-write a previous one that you had in there - not sure what it's behavior is)? In any case yeah just using the other EXE should work fine. We made some effort to make sure that is the case by putting the legacy MariusNet patch in plugins/ even though 1.8 uses the new-style server patches.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by adrenaline »

Ordered a new graphics card... should clear up any problems i'm having.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

Sweet, yeah let us know if you have any further issues, but I doubt you will on anything new.

Renwood
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Renwood »

I looked up NVIDIA Quadro FX 1700

It looks very good, made for mid range mobile graphic workstations for graphic designers and auto CAD.
It even has 512 MB dedicated memory. Since you can play the Myth HD Total Conversion v1 no problem, it certainly has enough power to play the Dtexs smoothly. I wonder what the issue is that is causing this slowness with Dtex. I have had around 3 people recently tell me Detex slows them down. Seems like some optimization issues somewhere.


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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by par73 »

this is probably not a new mention, but

PG starts don't rotate on 2team pg. wtf

punkUser
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

Yeah the team/start randomness is terrible and mostly broken in Myth... I will look at fixing/improving it for 1.8.1 (or whatever next release).

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by wwo »

punkUser wrote:Yeah the team/start randomness is terrible and mostly broken in Myth... I will look at fixing/improving it for 1.8.1 (or whatever next release).
Any clue why it's so much worse than pre 1.8? It very much fucks up 1v1s.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

I haven't been able to track down changes in 1.8, no. I took a look at a pile of consecutive maps that all chose the same starts and they did have independent random seeds... it's just that the RNG that it uses for starts/teams is really terrible, but that hasn't changed since pre-1.3 when, judging by the code, Bungie made it random at all (looks like before that they just cycled in a pattern).

Certainly there was nothing intentional, and none of the surrounding code has been touched. It's never impossible that something was affected by some other change, but it still *seems* to be operating in the same flow as 1.7.2, but that flow is really bad.

So I dunno. Best thing to do is to just rewrite it for 1.8.1 I think.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

Update: after looking through a whole pile of films from the GoS games (coming in handy already :)) I've narrowed down the start randomness problem and come up with reliable reproduction steps. Have to consult with the other devs, but it should be fairly straightforward to track down where things are going wrong from here and fix it.

Also wanted to mention that there's a myrk attack speed bug that I've also tracked down to the change that caused it, but again it wasn't my change so I'll need to sync up with the other devs on the proper fix. This one is pretty serious though as it affects gameplay, so I expect this means we'll need to release a patch that fixes these two issues shortly.

Thanks for reporting.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Myrd »

And that's what happens when most people don't bother to try the public betas we release specifically to find bugs like these...

Giant Killer General
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Giant Killer General »

yea i'm not going to blame the myth community on this one. most of us did try the 1.8 public beta but there were things broken with it that prevented us from wanting to test it any further. there is only so much time we are going to be willing to put into trying out broken shit before we go back to the old stable build so we can have our fun without being inconvenienced. i think that is certainly completely reasonable.

i started using 1.8 again after the broken shit was fixed. now we found some more broken shit. certainly this should be completely understood as the natural progression of things.

it isn't really our job to be beta testing guinea pigs. none of us are professional beta testers. some of us do our part to try and help out because we do appreciate the changes being done. at the same time, these changes are an inconvenience on everyone's gaming time when they are broken. has there ever been a big final release patch that didn't require another release or two to fix it? no. also consider the miniscule size of our community already. as devs, you all should at least understand that this is a very normal and natural part of software development.

not to say myrd's comment is the only thing at fault here, but as a myth dev you would expect he would understand the nature of this progression. and since I am trying to calm people down on myth from bitching so quickly about broken shit too, a comment like that from a dev is only going to fan the fires further. so let's all suck it up and stop pointing fingers, we all in this shit together. have a little bit of patience, mnet is down anyway so we wouldn't be playing anyway if it wasn't for the work punk has done. clearly there is some long-term benefit to be had from these short-term inconveniences.

in conclusion, magma might bitch at the community for not finding the shit fast enough, and the myth community will certainly bitch plenty about shit that is broken. both sides need to stop bitching. im sure you guys no doubt understand the importance and urgency of a broken gameplay mechanic and will no doubt fix it in a reasonable time frame. let's start having a bit more trust in both sides here.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

Myrd wrote:And that's what happens when most people don't bother to try the public betas we release specifically to find bugs like these...
The backwards compatibility in gameplay versions is a double-edged sword... I imagine very few 1.8-gameplay games were played until the GoS metaserver indirectly forced that.

And yeah GKG I agree that there's not much point in laying blame here; let's just be glad it got found before MWC and get it fixed ASAP.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Giant Killer General »

yea that really is exactly it too punk, that's like 99% of it right there. we never really did true beta testing because trying to find a game where everyone had 1.8 was barely possible. so really this is the first real beta testing being done anyway. so that makes it even more understandable.

you may even want to consider not allowing backward compatibility for public betas on future big patches so they can be properly tested. might even encourage people to try out the public beta briefly if a host is requiring it. also it will allow players who do want to help out with some beta testing, to actually be able to do it. using the public beta build should be specifically for beta testing and beta testers. not giving the beta testers the proper tools to do what they want to do by mixing it in with the old builds like that, imo. give people some incentive to actually do the beta testing. when people want to beta test, they can beta test, when people want to just play the game, they can just play the game. keep it separate.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Myrd »

Giant Killer General wrote: you may even want to consider not allowing backward compatibility for public betas on future big patches so they can be properly tested. might even encourage people to try out the public beta briefly if a host is requiring it. also it will allow players who do want to help out with some beta testing, to actually be able to do it. using the public beta build should be specifically for beta testing and beta testers. not giving the beta testers the proper tools to do what they want to do by mixing it in with the old builds like that, imo. give people some incentive to actually do the beta testing. when people want to beta test, they can beta test, when people want to just play the game, they can just play the game. keep it separate.
We've tried that before. What would happen is when we release a public beta, each player would go get it, log in and see that all games are red and everyone is still on the previous version. He'd then quit and relaunch the previous version, so he could join some games. Rinse and repeat for every subsequent player. The result is no one is testing the new version.

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

Giant Killer General wrote: you may even want to consider not allowing backward compatibility for public betas on future big patches so they can be properly tested.
Right so the test builds that we play with internally are not compatible with any other versions. There has been talk of just making those test builds public during the development cycle since we basically give access to anyone who wants it anyways. Not sure that would necessarily get people using them more, but at least there would be the possibility for keen folks.
Giant Killer General wrote: not giving the beta testers the proper tools to do what they want to do by mixing it in with the old builds like that, imo.
So that's part of the reason why we added the "Allow Old Clients" host option in 1.8. So if you want to ensure that you're actually playing the gameplay of the version you're testing/playing, simply uncheck that box and only players on the same version will be allowed to join. That should be sufficient, no?

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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Giant Killer General »

i mean really we are talking about really simple bugs that could have easily been caught earlier if there was some pure 1.8 games. testing with backward compatibility really isn't doing anything. its giving you the false impression of proper testing. yes, allowing old clients is a nice option, but then people are just going to always allow the backward compatibility and nothing meaningful is going to get done. i am curious how something so obvious like a huge myrkridia bug wasn't caught in just the internal private beta testing. had they played any map with myrkridia on it, they should have noticed it. if not, then they need some more seasoned players who have a better understanding and eye for things like that.

i think the best solution here is to find people that actually want to beta test, and let them organize some proper beta-testing. leave the people that obviously don't want beta test alone. keep them separate, mixing them together like this is causing a half-assed job, inconveniencing everyone, and that's why everyone is getting so irritated.

whoever is in your internal beta testing team isn't doing enough. i would have helped in this regard but i was never given an invite. you should be recruiting people. start bugs and myrk bugs could have been caught very very easily, I think it was I that pushed both of these things to punkuser's attention. how many games are you even playing internally before releasing publicly?

punkUser
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by punkUser »

Giant Killer General wrote: whoever is in your internal beta testing team isn't doing enough.
There are a good number of people, but there's lots to test. Of the current folks who are "active" testers, there is certainly a bias towards coop testing definitely though, which will tend to miss stuff like myrk. That said, there's not much we can do about that since people choose how "active" they are in testing themselves. We'd be thrilled to have more active competitive folks involved with testing.

Now reg multiplayer was definitely not *untested*, but as we saw from the last few days (even with tons of games happening, it took a little bit for folks to find it), it actually does take a little time to even find something that is retrospectively obvious. It's surprisingly easy to miss if you don't end up in situations where you're watching for it specifically. I think the biggest failure on our part was not anticipating and specifically testing some of the edge cases of the relevant change, but in our defense, that code is extremely hairy and the way it affects myrks is still not entirely understood...
Giant Killer General wrote: i would have helped in this regard but i was never given an invite. you should be recruiting people. start bugs and myrk bugs could have been caught very very easily.
Certainly, we basically let anyone be a tester who wants to, but lots of people only test very specific things or infrequently. The pubic betas are meant to catch these sorts of obvious issues, but as we discussed, not enough people were specifically using that opportunity to test. I'm not sure how to solve that problem, as even getting games of KOTM (which requires 1.8 gameplay of course) was like pulling teeth for those two months.

Anyways definitely something to keep the discussion open about. Hopefully it's something we can improve in the future, but TBH I doubt we'll ever get it perfect. Best we can do is just be responsive and fix major issues quickly when they come up, whether it's called a "beta" or not.

Giant Killer General
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Giant Killer General »

the way you improve it is instead of using the public beta as your public announcement for testing, make that public announcement for the private testing. enlist the entire community, try to organize a date and time, and let them try to organize it too. these should be organized events, you only need a few of these events and it would probably already be many times better than what you are doing right now. find the people that are trying to help you out, and want to align their efforts with your cause. you aren't doing that well enough.

yea the problem is magma is traditionally co-op players with little understanding of reg myth play, when actually you need reg myth players more than anything. magma is showing its bias in who is private testing with that right there. test for what you want to be testing for. if you want to test co-op, get co-op testers. obviously that isn't really what we should be testing, so that is a vastly incorrect mindset right there.

at least let me know when you want to actually test some shit and I obviously will help. Obviously I did that this time too, but it was with the public test first instead of with the internal stuff. and that would have been better so that i could have hooked up with someone else on the test team for some pure testing, instead of this backward compatibility crap. think of how many problems and how soon I have brought to your attention. there are other people out there who could be better utilized in this regard as well.

NewMutator
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by NewMutator »

Then they should request access to the tester forum. Obviously one solution that Magma is considering (see above) is making it all public. The problem with that, from what I understand, is it invites meaningless feedback and complaints from people not sympathetic to the trial and error process that coding entails. I, for one, think making testing public would be good after the adjustment issues are ironed out (making sure everyone has access to and understands the standards for proper feedback).

I don't think Magma actively recruits testers (they are too busy tinkering; my guess is they prefer that to PR) but I don't know the extent to which beta testing is a secret to the community. I've tried to promote new features through my youtube content, but I guess I could have helped by giving explicit instructions for how to get involved.

Anyway, I think Magma has gotten the impression over the years that a good chunk of the community accuse them of changing things wantonly or straight up ruining Myth, so it's understandable to me if they've not reached out on a larger scale.

Giant Killer General
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Giant Killer General »

punk and i decided we will just take care of this in the future on our own then. we will try to organize things with anyone who wants to help, but ultimately i am pretty sure like 1-2 hours of testing with just the 2 of us that we can find most of the really critical shit, since that is mostly what ended up happening with this release anyway without even really trying.

Renwood
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Re: Myth II 1.8.0 and Dtex Megapack Released

Post by Renwood »

Not matter how much internal testing gets done, you will never find as many bugs as the public will when they get their hands on it.
Playing multiplayer games from all different genres for over 15 years has taught me that.

That being said, having official "Testing nights" or times would be a really great idea. Every game should have tests with the maximum amount of players per game supported at some point. Or the dev team/testing team is not reaching out enough to the public. On other non myth related games I have been involved on, there was a position of the "Alpha Tester Lead" He would organize times and people and certain maps or areas of focus each testing session.

I was more then happy when I worked with magma to help find fixes for specific bugs before public release. There are countless, and in fact infinite configurations of hardware and operating systems in addition to the myth content to be tested in game. So testing for everything is pretty hard ~8^)

I myself even noticed myrks attacking slower before, but I was playing edited maps at the time, and I thought the myrks on these maps had been edited by their creators. Whoops.
I also was testing for tons of HD related things and that took up a lot of time as well.
Anyway, Alpha Test Lead, Do it! ;)

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