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==== Working: Connected Bug ====
:Those symptoms usually mean that you can't get a stable connection to our main server. The game can make a connection, but then there's too much packet loss to transmit anything, and the connection breaks. The game keeps retrying though, and eventually one of the unstable connections manages to generate some invalid data before hanging up. (That's what the 256 error is, a corrupted game packet. It's generally a symptom of the same problem as the constant disconnect/reconnects.)
:Typically this means there's a hardware problem with your internet connection. If you have 100% reliable connection to the rest of the internet, then it could be a routing problem between your ISP and our ISP, which we can talk to our ISP about fixing... but if your internet is generally flaky, the game is probably never going to be usable for you, I'm sorry to say.
:We'd usually recommend reinstalling the game at this point, to rule out version problems or corrupted downloads, but you've already done that. Please try the verifier in the launcher, though: run the launcher, click "Options..." instead of the Login button, then press "Validate Installation". If you still have problems after that, I would really suspect it's not a software problem at all. (If it was a problem with your firewall, you wouldn't get any connection at all.)
:(Edit: were you the person that sent in your log file via email? I remember seeing a log about a similar situation, but the log file just described problems keeping a connection to the server; it didn't have anything more specific.)
:: 3/24/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1168-Getting-Disconnected&p=9382#post9382
==== Bug Reports ====
:Thanks for reporting it! But we still appreciate reports from other players too to help us gauge the importance of a bug. We have several thousands open bugs at any given time. (Every MMO does, including fully-launched ones.) Many are tiny issues, while others are a big deal... but figuring out which is which in a hurry isn't easy. We're a tiny team and we have no full time QA people, so we rely on player input to help us gauge priority.
:We do eventually work through all the bugs -- as long-time players can hopefully attest! Sometimes it can take a very long time, though. For something like a data bug in a mining recipe, those bugs would probably sit in the DB until we do an update that focuses on surveying, and then we'd hit all the relevant bugs at once.
:However, there's a way for bugs to move "up the queue": if we hear from a lot of players about a certain bug, we realize it's pissing players off, and we try to get to those quickly.
:So if a bug pisses you off, please report it in-game, even if you're sure other people have already reported it.
:: 3/22/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1215-Surveying-mining-bug-in-quot-Kur-Mountains-Simple-metal-motherlode-quot&p=9290#post9290
==== Roadmap, Serbule ====
:Optimizing Serbule is definitely a high priority, and we've got some framerate improvements ready for the next game update (which will be next week, probably). But it's a complex problem with a lot of different parts, and we'll have to iterate and improve over several months to get things settled. This next update will give a noticeable FPS boost to everyone by fixing some problems in the Serbule scene itself, but there are other issues that need to be worked on.
:One issue is that our monster-movement subservers seem to become unstable when there's more than 300 people on a single map. That happened during the "poetry" player event on Sunday for the first time. Those sub-servers are designed to crash and restart cleanly, and they did so, but whenever one crashes, players in the area experience noticeable lag (and can also have weird monster behavior, such as monsters "skating" around). That lag lasts until the subserver restarts, usually less than a minute later. The Serbule sub-server crashed five or six times during the few hours around the poetry event, so that's pretty annoying.
:I'm still looking into why the subserver crashed this weekend, and fixing it will probably take iterative improvements and testing. But in the short term we'll set up dual physics sub-servers for Serbule so that they can share the work and fail-over if one crashes. That configuration hasn't been tested before but we'll set it up this week and see how it behaves this weekend when populations are highest. And, of course we'll work on fixing the underlying crash problems!
:We also need to optimize a lot of things, from LODs to animation-visibility ranges. There's a lot of work to do. But most of it isn't unknown work -- it's just a lot of work we need to do. So we will!
:Just to be clear: it should definitely be possible to have hundreds of people on the Serbule map, but having hundreds of players ON-SCREEN is always going to be expensive. I doubt it will ever be possible to have 150+ people in town without having significant framerate drops in town. Our character-customization hooks are pretty deep (for instance, every piece of armor can be dyed separately on three layers in any of hundreds of colors), so rendering players will always be somewhat expensive. However, the "OptimizeMeshes" special optimization feature is especially useful when there's tons of players on-screen, and I encourage people to test it out! (Check the patch notes for details.) We have plans to improve that further. And as we fix other problems with CPU-bottlenecks, the pressure will ease a bit.
:But part of the long-term fix is to push players to spread out more. If there's 1000 people online, they should be distributed across multiple cities, not all standing in Serbule square! To that end we've been working on making Rahu more useful as a high-level city, and we'll keep working on that in future updates, too. And we'll have to experiment with systems or content that will help player-run "events" like the poetry event succeed.
:So to sum up: we'll be trying something this weekend to address the sudden FPS spikes that happen when the physics sub-server crashes. The update next week will have some FPS improvements. And the updates after that will continue to improve things. We use an iterative approach, so it's not feasible to give an exact timeline of when Serbule will be "optimized", but it will improve noticeably in steps.
:: 3/21/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1191-PG-Beta-Development-Roadmap-(Serb)&p=9240#post9240
==== AH is Broken ====
:<eye roll> yes, it will NEVER EVER get that rework. Now that we're in beta, obviously everything is finished, so don't expect any more skill revisions! Except, like, in every single patch for the rest of beta.
:We'll get there. There are lots of things to do, but Animal Handling hasn't been forgotten. The next update has fixes for ability UI problems. We're also looking at damage output. As for making your pet be a tank, that will happen eventually, but there's lots of other balance stuff that has to happen first. There will never be one magic rework of the skill. It will happen iteratively over many updates.
:: 3/20/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?622-Animal-Handling-unplayable-(because-)&p=9221#post9221
==== Uniform Questing and Main Story ====
:So there's hundreds of quests and tons of NPCs with their own things going on. There will be lots of player choices like druidism, vampirism, plenty more, that will alter your character's story. In short, you can go do whatever you want.
:Yes, there's the beginning of a "main story" quest. I'm not sure if you're pissed because you want LESS story quests ("please take out these quests because they offend me") or MORE ("please add 1000000 unique story quests and only let each player do one"). Either way, that's not happening. Yes, there will be a "main story" quest. It has branches and choices and it differs by race, but it does exist. If you hate it, you won't be pressured into doing it. There are no major skills locked to it or whatever. Like everything else in the game, doing the storyline is a choice.
:For the record, I'm REALLY not moved by the argument that "everybody can't be the chosen one." Players aren't "chosen ones" here. But you have a shared history (you went to the same school for a while). Of course you have a shared history. What else would even make sense? You obviously aren't average townsfolk, or even average adventurers. You're fireball-throwing master swordsmen with pet bears for fuck's sake, you tower over the NPCs with your prowess and you can literally kill thousands of enemies without dying. You're badasses, and you have a badass history, and while the game won't define all of that, you deserve for the game to at least TRY to pay off on a little bit of your history, not just stick its head in the sand and go "I guess I don't know where all these thousands of immortal lightning wizards came from. Something in the water I guess lol." That's stupid. So I'll do the best I can. And if you don't like it, it's fine, you can skip all of it.
:Anyway, if the very existence of those quests is a deal breaker for you, and you've played less than two hours on Steam, you can get a refund and I encourage you to do so.
:: 3/17/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1174-Plot-questing-is-linear-uniform-will-this-change-before-launch&p=9080#post9080
==== Resource Nodes ====
: I do feel this is kinder to new players in newbie areas, and we already use this idea in some places where it won't hamper other people (for instance, you can autopsy anything you kill... you'll just screw it up if you aren't good enough). And I might use it for low-level resources, but it doesn't really scale to high level items.
: Just as an example: suppose you completely ignore mining all through the game, and now you're in Rahu and you see a bunch of level 60 mining nodes. You've got lots of fighting skill, so you go killing monsters and using those mining nodes. But you get nothing from those nodes -- you just waste them, since you don't have any skill. You might get 1 or 2 points of Mining XP from it, but not enough XP to level you quickly. So in the mean time you are basically just unintentionally griefing people who DO have the necessary skill. And unless you want to pointlessly use a million level 60 nodes, you'll still have to go back to an earlier zone and raise the skill the right way. So it's just... pointless. And frustrating in its own way.
: But for the low-level tiers of resources, those concerns aren't very important, so we might use the technique there in the future.
:: 3/16/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1166-Suggestion-%93you-can%92t-pick-up-this-xxx-as-you-have-not-the-proper-level-in-quot&p=9039#post9039
==== Art Improvements ====
:We don't yet know the full scope of what we'll be able to do in terms of major art changes. To some extent it really does boil down to how well we do on Steam, and it's a bit early to tell. (And I don't want to jinx it.) But the first thing on our list, and the thing I'm most confident will happen, is animation improvements. In fact that work began shortly before the Steam launch.
:Before we start trying to improve specific animation problems, first we have a big hurdle: a major code rewrite. We're remaking our animation system to better support fluid animation transitions and animation blending. This will fix a lot of the weirdness that happens in combat -- or, at least, it will give us the ability to iteratively improve animations by adjusting weighting and positioning in ways that we simply can't do right now with our old (5 year old!) animation system. That code overhaul is underway now, but as it's partially outsourced I don't have a timeline -- I expect it'll be ready soon, but these major code overhauls always take longer than I think they will, so we'll see.
:We'll also be replacing some of the "problematic" animations that are live now. Some of them will change in conjunction with the code overhaul, but most will be replaced iteratively.
:We've also begun fleshing out our animation list, adding missing ones that we didn't have budget for in the past. I've just ordered a batch of animations from our animator Vincent, and I expect those will show up in a month or so. This first new batch of animations includes combat animations for two skills: hammer (right now, hammer uses sword animations and it's kinda disappointing-looking) and off-hand knife (right now, knife can only be in the main hand due to animation limitations). We'll order more animations after that, although we'll need to go slowly at first while we work out the kinks in the new code system.
:We also have some plans underway for new armor shaders and, eventually, new skins, faces, etc., but that's further down the line. I'd also like to replace some of the monster models that are currently using store-bought Asset Store models. But that work will have to wait until after the new animation system is done.
:So we have lots of plans, but as usual I can't give much of a time line -- it's really hard to predict when all the pieces will line up. When stuff is ready to go, we'll get it live! In the mean time, we'll continue with our other work including new dungeons, new outdoor areas, new skills, some major skill overhauls, and major revamps to existing areas. Expect a game update every 2-3 weeks on average, the same pace as during alpha.
:Not much else to say right now, except thanks for playing and backing us, and I'm excited to show you some of the stuff we've got in development!
:: 3/16/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1156-Question-about-improved-visuals&p=8998#post8998
==== Icon Changes ====
:Yeah, the icon changes are part of a continuous process to replace the ancient prototype icons. We don't usually bother to mention those as they fall under "miscellaneous art tweaks" type stuff, although this time around there were more changed icons than usual.
:RE: purple sugar and other weirdness: a few of those old icons were shared by multiple items and we didn't notice, so when we made the icon better represent one thing, it represents the other thing worse. We'll break them off into their own icon and fix them... unless of course it turns out to be more fun leaving them un-fixed.
:: 3/12/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1143-Update-Discussion-March-12-2018&p=8846#post8846
==== Asheron's Call ====
:Thank you for the kind words! But I should clarify that I wasn't on the development team for AC until after it launched. In fact, I had a similar experience to you. I was in my 20s working as a programmer, but not in games. I was playing EverQuest with friends and we would spend all lunch every day complaining about the game. Then we found Asheron's Call, and it instantly changed my career trajectory. I suddenly realized I needed to be involved in making these worlds! So I applied to Turbine and almost immediately flew off to Boston.
:So my actual first work on Asheron's Call was with their monthly updates after the game had launched, and with the Dark Majesty expansion in 2001. After that I was taken off to work on AC2, and I could only help out with AC a bit on the weekends.
:My wife Sandra (well, she's my wife now... not back then) is probably more deserving of accolades, as she worked on AC1 for a lot longer. She loves the game more than anything -- in fact when she was required to switch over to work on AC2, she quit the company because she wasn't interested in the new game... and then Turbine changed their mind and hired her back to work on AC1 some more. Sandra kept working on the game's updates for years and eventually became the producer for the game. So it's safe to say it was a huge influence on her, too.
:We've both thought a lot about what made Asheron's Call special. And while this game is very different from that one, I do hope a bit of that magic can be found in Project: Gorgon.
:: 3/8/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1135-Eric-Heimburg-thank-you-SO-MUCH!&p=8782#post8782
==== Rahu ====
:We have a few more important crafting NPCs to add to Rahu (for not-yet-released craft skills) which should flesh out the storage. As for connectivity, I expect the next outdoor area will be connected to the west side of Rahu and that will help with its utility. It just takes time to get there!
:: 3/5/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1127-Rahu&p=8727#post8727
==== Map Fog and Completion ====
:The current max-completion percentages are just temporary -- they're based on the idea you can reach every fog square, which of course is impossible, especially in dungeons. Instead of trying to figure out exactly which squares players can reach, we're letting players figure it out for us. In a month or two we'll examine all player data and find the "real" max-completion percentages, and set them so that it's possible to reach 100% in each map.
:: 2/28/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1120-Fog-and-exploration&p=8647#post8647
==== Redeem Command ====
:I'd been planning to use the package-redemption system (In other words, the /redeem command, but with a UI instead of making you type commands.) So you'd have several packages to choose from each month and could pick the one you want, when you want.
:I worry that using a special "pay currency" sends weird messages to players who are used to "pay shops" being full of overpowered gear, so I wanted to avoid that. I also want to be able to offer different items at different times, so bundles seem like the way to go. But I'm sure there are other ways to reach those goals and I'm not married to any particular implementation yet!
:: 2/26/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1107-What-features-is-the-VIP-status-planned-to-have&p=8577#post8577
==== Leveling Speed ====
:I do think some level ranges in some skills are too slow right now. But we'll get there. One thing to keep in mind is that when I see a curve that's too slow, I don't think "this curve needs to be fixed", I think "we could hook another game system here to let players accelerate this curve." So while there will definitely be tweaks to earned XP, there will also be new skills and things to speed up slow spots. Finding those slow spots in advancement is very useful when I'm trying to integrate new game mechanics.
:(As a designer, I wouldn't use that rule of thumb for other games -- it's just the way this particular game works!)
:: 2/24/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1105-Nice-conclusion-to-the-Massively-Op-CMA-series&p=8542#post8542
==== Game Engine and Server ====
:The game uses Unity for the client graphics, but the server is our custom Gorgon Engine, which is written in Java. The game world can support up to 1500 concurrent players max (but the game's content will be designed to fit 1000 people comfortably). If we have more than 1000 concurrent players on a server for sustained amount of time we can set up new game servers.
:During the Indiegogo campaign we had 250 concurrent players without major issue (except there weren't nearly enough monsters to go around at the time), and the engine could easily have handled more. So I'm not too worried about short-term influx from Steam.
:Optimizing framerates in large-world games is always hard and Unity doesn't give magic bullets for fixing framerate problems. It always takes tons of engineering work to get framerates high. And that's a large part of what we'll be doing during beta.
:Other MMOs in Unity have the same problem for the same reason: it's hard. And Unity appeals to a lot of inexperienced developers. If the devs haven't worked on MMOs before, they may not have realized what they were getting into until it's too late. But we've done this work before for other MMOs and I'm confident in our ability to get good framerates -- it just takes a lot of iteration.
:Edited to add: we made our own server engine specifically because Unity's networking code and server system sucks for MMOs. (And the available off-the-shelf extension packages suck too.) That's another reason other indie MMOs run into trouble: if the developers think they can use a cheap networking package for an MMO, they will likely run into problems with high player counts. No commercial networking system I've seen is good enough for an MMO yet, so I had to write my own. In fact we're letting a few other indie MMO teams use our server engine, because there just aren't good alternatives.
:: 2/24/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1108-Max-Player-On-1-Server-And-FPS-Issue&p=8535#post8535
==== VIP Status ====
:We'll be talking about that soon, but I can't give specifics yet since we're still discussing what's in it internally. I'm working hard to find ways to make it appealing without significantly impacting day-to-day gameplay. In general, it consists of slots -- item-transfer slots, character slots, horse slots, and so on.
:Anything in a VIP package can be considered "really unfair" from somebody's point of view, so I'm sure there'll some be people who hate it, but I really don't think it'll be seen as a huge deal to most players. We definitely don't expect players to "need" it for anything. It's a luxury.
:Ah, yes, I'd forgotten about that from the KS page. It's outdated -- I don't think we're going to do a special currency, instead we're currently talking about giving VIPs a special "gift basket" each month with items like special dyes and appearance skins -- but that post gives the general idea.
:: 2/24/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1107-What-features-is-the-VIP-status-planned-to-have&p=8531#post8531
==== Dev Question: Renaming Vulnerable ====
:As you may know, monsters can sometimes "go vulnerable". The word "vulnerable" flashes over their head along with an icon and a particle. For the next few seconds, the monster is "vulnerable" and there are abilities and mods that do extra things to vulnerable targets.
:When I'm looking at what changes are needed to combat, this mechanism stands out as being especially hard to figure out. It's actually super simple -- it's either on or off -- but players don't figure it out, sometimes even after playing for many hours.
:We can add pop-up hints and stuff, but I think part of the problem is the name "vulnerable". It's very generic. "Vulnerable" can mean lots of things, such as being weak to a specific damage type. Players see "Vulnerable" over the monsters' head and go "huh, that's good... I guess." They see that abilities do extra damage "to vulnerable targets" but that doesn't really click with the word "Vulnerable" over monsters' heads.
:So I'm thinking of renaming it to something else. Right now I like "Off-Guard". You'll see "Off-Guard" pop up over monsters, and you'll see some abilities do more damage to Off-Guard targets, and I think that'll be a little easier to figure out. But before I go changing the text in a thousand places I figured I'd see if you have other suggestions!
:: 2/21/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1103-Dev-Question-Renaming-quot-Vulnerable-quot&p=8461#post8461
==== Linux UI Scale Bug ====
:I've been trying to think of what could cause that but I don't have any good ideas. Unity does have problems with some linux video drivers reporting the wrong scale. I don't know whether Unity or the video driver is at fault, but sometimes Unity's GUI thinks the screen is the wrong size. (Some people reported that the UI grows infinitely big ... same issue. It's fixed by using a different driver.) However, the nvidia driver is the one I'd recommend, and you're already using that.
:So I don't have any good leads on what could cause that. I would first try using the "safe mode" setting in the launcher (or just deleting your GorgonConfig.txt) to make sure it's not a corrupted or invalid configuration. If that doesn't work, it could be that the driver is improperly configured after an update, so you might try reinstalling it. But really, those are just guesses.
:: 2/20/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?927-Project-Gorgon-Experimental-Linux-Launcher&p=8408#post8408
==== Package Delivery Timeline ====
:No package features will be rolled out in the next month or so. The plan is for pledge rewards to be rolled out during beta -- after the game is on Steam but before it leaves "Steam early access". The features will be rolled out when they're ready in regular game updates. There's no exact timeline. Some features, such as player titles, are close to completion and I expect they'll arrive in a few months. Others, such as housing, aren't even started yet.
:Since we haven't finished coding them, I should also include this disclaimer: it's possible that certain pledge-reward features may not be available until the game officially goes live, for logistical reasons.
:For pledge rewards that include VIP time, we'll give you some control over when that VIP time starts -- either during beta or when the game leaves early access.
:: 2/19/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1072-Dev-Blog-How-Will-the-Upcoming-Steam-Integration-Work&p=8396#post8396
==== Anagoge Rework ====
:To help put worries at ease, I want to mention that quite a few items on the island are actually "instanced" for each player. There's always a sword in that first backpack, and the amethyst bag is always there (in one of two places) for every player. There's always two spoons hidden around, two bottles, five mushrooms, a few other things. (Plus however many other "non-instanced" items spawn on the island.) These instanced things are only visible to the player -- other players can run right through them.
:So no matter how many players are there, it's always possible to complete the basic tasks and leave the island. We don't have the ability to instance entire areas, the engine just can't do that. But we do use this sort of pseudo-instancing in places that might be crowded.
:: 2/16/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1088-Anagoge-Island-Rework-for-Steam-Release&p=8342#post8342
==== Working Beta and Changes ====
:Silvonis was reminding people that the game will change during beta. This will be a working beta, not a PR beta. Lots of big games these days use the word "beta" to mean "free play time," and you can expect very few changes during those betas. But we will be working very hard on the game design so a lot of things will change.
:We do sometimes need to dramatically redesign skills, and basically reset them as a consequence. That's only happened a couple times during the game's long development time, so I expect it'd only happen once or twice during beta. But I don't know for sure. That's not even related to the "partial wipe". That's just something that might happen as we work on balance.
:Much more likely than actually "wiping" a skill is changing it to the point where it's unrecognizable. I've talked about changing Battle Chemistry very dramatically by breaking it into two skills, and that still may happen. So what you currently call Battle Chemistry may not be the parts of the skill you love; they may be moved to a new skill. And if that happens, you'd need to level up that new skill to get it back. Other skills may get reworked in similar fashion.
:And I can pretty much guarantee that your favorite abilities will change their stats, gear mods will be revamped multiple times, monsters' relative power will go up and down as we try to bring this very complex game into a basic sort of balance. (It'll never be perfectly balanced, as that would be impossible and also super boring. But it will be a lot more balanced than it is now.)
:---
:Let me put it another way. If, during beta, we realize something needs to be changed, we will NEVER say, "no, we can't make that change -- it's beta! Too late! The players' current characters would be impacted too much!" No. It's beta, meaning that it's the perfect time to make critical changes. So please expect them.
:Also expect that we'll do our best, given the circumstances of each individual change, to lessen the impact of those changes. For instance, when skills have changed really dramatically in the past, we've given players free gear transmutations for a week to help get them back into fighting form. Or when an item is changed too heavily for the auto-updater to automatically rebuild the item, it becomes "legacy gear", which means it keeps working in its now-imbalanced state for 30 days to give you time to find a replacement. That sort of thing isn't always practical or called for, but we'll do what we can to keep beta players happy and engaged.
:But yeah, changes. Tons of changes. Often uncomfortable nerfs. That's to be expected during beta. And if you don't want to deal with that, and want to wait until the game launches, that's entirely understandable.
:: 2/16/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1072-Dev-Blog-How-Will-the-Upcoming-Steam-Integration-Work&p=8325#post8325
==== No Guild Wipe ====
:no, we aren't wiping guilds. We're wiping items to make the launch economy work better. Deleting guilds doesn't impact the economy so it'd just be dickish for no benefit.
:Yes, of course skills earned during beta will be kept. Again, we're wiping items, not skills.
:And yep, there will be more levels added during beta, that's what I meant by extending the game.
:We aren't wiping items NOW, because that the game isn't balanced yet and many of the economic features aren't implemented.
:Item wipe isn't a punishment. "Why not punish us now and get it over with?" is really the heart of your question, and the answer is: it's not being done as a punishment. It's an attempt to make the game economy work better after the game mechanics are fleshed out and balanced. It's not finished yet, so if we wiped things now we'd just have to wipe again at launch.
:I know you have lots of questions, probably more that haven't been asked yet, and I'm happy to answer them. But please start from the idea that we're trying to be kind. I'm extremely grateful for the people who've taken the time to play this very-unfinished game over the years and I want to do right by them. That's why I don't want to wipe prematurely or over-aggressively. I'm going to be as surgical as possible about WHEN and WHAT we wipe because wiping stuff sucks: most people feel like it's wasting their time, making them repeat things they've already done and don't want to do again. But we can't avoid wipes entirely, so we'll make it as minimal as we can.
:: 2/14/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1072-Dev-Blog-How-Will-the-Upcoming-Steam-Integration-Work&p=8274#post8274
==== Gorgon Shop Stop? ====
:'''Will you still be able to buy the packages on the Gorgon Store after the Steam release? Will you be able to continue donating after Steam release, as well?'''
:We don't have any reason to stop accepting donations, but at some point soon we need to stop accepting new purchases of the more expensive Gorgon Shop packages. I'm not sure the exact cutoff date. Probably right about the same time the two-week transition period ends.
:I also wanted to mention that this is not to create artificial scarcity (the game is only going to beta, not launching, so why stop offering pre-launch bundles?). It's just for pragmatic reasons: the more expensive rewards involve a lot of hand-done bits, so it's best to do the work all at once, or as close to that as possible.
:As an example, the packages that include a custom in-game title involve editing permanent data files for the game, and then carefully connecting that engine data to your in-game account after the next game-update. There's a lot of places where errors can creep in, so it's sanest to collect all the titles and do them at once, so we can test and debug better. (Plus another pass for scragglers and bugs we don't find in the first pass.)
:But we may be able to offer other pre-launch packages with nice rewards that don't involve as much customization work on our parts. We haven't talked about that yet though.
:'''Will multiple gorgon accounts need multiple steam accounts and how easy or difficult will it be on steam to change from one account to another ?'''
:Yes, each mule would need its own license of the game. And unfortunately it's a little bit slower to cross-account mule under Steam. You can't switch Steam accounts while the game is running, so you'd have to shut down the game, then switch accounts in Steam, then re-launch the game.
:So personally I would hold off on buying extra copies of the game for mules. We're busy thinking about ways that the VIP package can make muling easier (for instance, by giving your account more character slots and a bigger shared-account-storage box). I think the VIP plan will be the easiest way to be a pack-rat in the future.
:'''what sort of influx are you guys expecting and wha adjustments to the world are being made to be able to handle it (spawn rates, etc)'''
:It's hard to predict, really, but I'm expecting a modest influx that hopefully gets bigger over time.
:Back during the indiegogo campaign we had about 250% more players online than we do now. And while the game was still playable, the newbie experience was extremely cramped. That led to the complete rewrite of the newbie experience (the "newbie cave" became the "newbie island") and the addition of Serbule Hills as another low-level zone. So given that I'm not expecting a huge tidal wave of players on day one, I think we'll be fine now, and when we find new level ranges where things feel cramped, we can add new content during our regular updates.
:As a backup, we have the ability to change outdoor spawn rates very easily, so if we get a surprise rush of players we'll speed up spawns with a quick reboot of the server.
:: 2/12/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1072-Dev-Blog-How-Will-the-Upcoming-Steam-Integration-Work&p=8235#post8235
==== Gazluk Lag 2 ====
:I think we've tracked down the problem with Gazluk. It's due to issues with the new 2017.2 version of Unity; they screwed up their physics engine again. The problem can cause lag in all areas, but is most noticeable in Gazluk because it's the largest area with the most monsters. We're working on a fix for the next update!
:: 2/3/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1049-Update-Discussion-January-27-2018&p=8165#post8165
==== Gazluk Lag ====
:If this update caused you to have dramatically reduced framerate in Gazluk, it may be because of the new map. The new Gazluk map image isn't any bigger than the new maps in other areas, but Gazluk itself uses a lot more memory, and perhaps the map has put your video card past what it can do without constant memory-paging. That's just a hypothesis... but if that proves to be a problem for a lot of people we'll figure out a fix.
:To test this idea, please try turning off the minimap and map, and seeing if performance improves in Gazluk!
:: 2/1/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1049-Update-Discussion-January-27-2018&p=8145#post8145
==== Cursor Stuck Center of Screen ====
:Thanks for the video! Stuck in the dead center ... yeah, that's definitely caused by mouselook mode not stopping correctly when you let go of the right mouse button. Did this start with the most recent update (on Friday) or was it happening before that?
:To fix, you should be able to just right-click and pan the camera a bit. By explicitly going into mouselook mode and letting go, it should fix the mouse state. But I don't know what could cause that. There must be something unique about how he's playing, like chording the mouse keys by accident or something. If anybody has insight into how to reproduce that, I'd appreciate it!
:: 1/31/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1056-Bug-Cursor-Stuck&p=8128#post8128
==== EQ Assist Idea ====
:I'm sorry, I still feel like I'm missing something... what does the /assist command do that the key bindings don't let you do already?
:I really don't think "everybody in the group should now make a macro with my name using /assist" counts as an easy-to-use tool. Most players don't even know about critical (IMO) commands like /isearch, so I'm wrapping those commands in UI features. Although we'll add more slash-commands over time for people that like them, the golden age of that kind of stuff is long over. We need to make the game intuitive without needing to type commands or make macros. So I'd really like to understand when binding a /assist macro would be more useful than binding the assist-like command that already exists in the game. Or did I miss your point?
:(I grouped a lot in in EQ2 (early days post-launch was great grouping, though it's mostly a solo game now) and I've based lots of the commands and targeting logic on that game. I don't think we ever had /assist in EQ2, or if we did, I never used it.)
:: 1/25/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1041-assist&p=8021#post8021
==== Alpha Test Title ====
:Actually, the title turned off a few days ago. We expected to be on Steam in early January and once we're on steam we'll be in beta instead of alpha. But Steam is still a little ways away so I'll adjust the date on the alpha title in tomorrow's update.
:: 1/17/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1017-Alpha-Tester-Title&p=7852#post7852
==== Release Reset ====
:First, a reminder that the item-reset happens when we leave steam early access, and that's a year away. (And that's being kind of optimistic.) So I wouldn't worry too much about it personally.