Demigod beta 3A is a pretty big step up from beta 3.  Unfortunately, the biggest problem with upgrading from beta 3 is that the “check for updates” API wasn’t in Beta 3.  So what would happen to beta 3 users is that it just wouldn’t log them into the game which just looks like a bug.

Beta 3A has a lot of balancing, performance, and connectivity improvements.

Here are some of the key issues we found.

BUGS

BUG #1: Stuck looking at “waiting for other players” forever

There’s quite a few cases where connecting to the game results in someone crashing or getting booted. This is problematic for two reasons. First, that shouldn’t happen. Second, even if it does happen it shouldn’t cause all the other players connected to be stuck looking at “waiting for other players” forever.

BUG #2: Victory/Defeat hangs/super slow

For whatever reason, the end game is super slow. That is, when someone wins, it just brings the game to a crawl. The more players, the more of a crawl there is.

BUG #3: Lag is other people

It seems like your settings in multiplayer affect other people. It doesn’t make sense but for whatever reason, me having my uber-settings is slowing other people down even though my machine can easily handle it.

BUG #4: Unreproduceable problem on certain nVidia cards.

This one is driving us crazy. A handful of people with nVidia cards are experiencing extremely slow (>5fps) performance. We’ve put together identical configs and we’ve never been able to reproduce it.  If you experience this, let us know and we’ll work 1 on 1 with you to find it.

BUG #5: Memory leak

There is a memory leak at the various menus.

BUG #6: NAT negotiation

So that people understand this issue: Demigod is PEER to PEER.  It needs it to reduce latency. Most games are client server (i.e. somebody hosts a game and people join and that person is the “server”). That’s a big deal because most people know someone who “can’t host games because of their router”.  Well in Demigod, everyone is the host effectively (because it’s peer to peer).  The guy who can’t host say Company of Heroes games or can’t host Sins of a Solar Empire games wouldn’t even be able to play Demigod online because they have to be able to be the host too in peer to peer.

So Impulse Reactor has been developed to solve this issue and it works pretty well (amazingly well actually). But it has to work in 95% of cases or it’ll be a pain.  Beta 3A gets us pretty far down the path but not far enough. It’s still not ideal.  We’ll be continuing to improve this as we get to general availability. IF you are someone who has trouble connecting, hang out on #demigod (see the Impulse chat area in community).

BUG #7: AI dumbness

AI needs more love.

BUG #8: Path Finding

There are still cases where your Demigod gets stuck and won’t fight anymore. It’s getting better but it still happens. Minions are particularly bad about this.

BUG #9: The Pantheon…

Right now, it’s virtually impossible to get more than 2 human players into a pantheon game.  It just isn’t working fully.

BUG #10: Default video settings not ideal

By default, the shadow fidelity and graphics fidelity are set to high. They shouldn’t be. By default they should be set to low. Technical users who care about graphics will know to boost it and non-technical users won’t care.

BUG #11: SLI is really slow on some machines with AA on.

BALANCE

Balance is better but the game is in a state where even 2 expert players won’t just beat another player but they will make the other team wish they had never been born. Me and Tandis can go into a game and make it so that the other side barely gets to play thanks to stun and a few other items.

Here are some items that I think are problematic:

 
General minions are way way too wimpy.  These minions should have at least 2X base as many HP as they currently have.

Other Balance Tweaks:

• Destroying towers should give much more gold than they currently.
• Destroying fortresses doubly so. There should be a lot more material reward from destroying towers since that helps mark the progression of the game and can help move things along.

Demigod Beta 3A quick video.

Beta 3B should be out this week (fingers crossed).