Where we’re at as we enter the weekend

By Frogboy on April 25, 2009 2:23:28 AM from

The big update we were working on to get up this week went down to the wire which was a new NAT facilitator that made joining games extremely fast and extremely robust.

Since we’re doing some of this on the fly, we obviously didn’t get to stress test scale. And so what works great for say 50 people testing things out fell apart when a few thousand people jumped on.

We had considered that possibility so we had an alternative, more conservative build already wound up and flipped the switch on that. But the result is that the progress for those having connectivity issues in MP was not as far as we had hoped.

Gas Powered Games and Stardock are taking the weekend off to try to recharge a little bit. There is high confidence on both teams that those people having problems connecting will see their problems resolved shortly.

Like those of you running into those kinds of issues, I get frustrated at this kind of thing. Tonight was particularly tough since it was working so well.

We appreciate your patience and on behalf of everyone at Stardock and GPG, have a good weekend and you have our dedication.

Hopefully next week we can start talking about additional Demigods.

In the meantime, I hate to have to recommend a third party program but Game Ranger does work pretty well as long as you’re playing other people with the legitimate version: www.gameranger.com.

+912 Karma | 85 Replies

DELETED

Quoting Unknown924,

reply 25

Im sorry, download is 40$, retail is 50$. What good **** are you smoking and where can i get some?
$40 is the normal price for the retail edition, it is the collector's edtion that is around $50

If you payed $50 American for the normal edition, then you got ripped off.

Official price statement here.

Stardock announced today that its much anticipated PC real-time action strategy game, Demigod is now available for purchase at most retail outlets in North America as well as available worldwide digitally via Impulse at the same price ($39.95) no matter where the person is located.

You are correct. Sorry, mis-remembered the price page when i downloaded.

WoW: Totally f***ed for two weeks on most servers.

And that was only on release; it took them months / years to finish upgrading their infrastructure to the necessary point and get realms divided properly so you didn't have 5K people waiting lines on some servers. (I can not tell you how often my server, Dalaran, had ridiculous degrees of trouble because of too many people... ./grumble)

Edit:

Also, just to give some people some vastly needed perspective (and just because I've wnated to publically say 'wow' for a while now)... I'm not going to tell you to learn to code, that's absurd. But sit down and 'write' a game 'rulebook' as if it were from a computer. Write down rules and derive equations for every action necessary.

Let's take a (VERY) simplistic RPG I'm working on at the moment for school.

For one character I need to track...

HP, MP, STR, DEX, END, INT, WLP (Willpower), CHR, and a list of skills. Then I need to keep track of any gear. Then I need to keep track of how that gear effects the above stats. And we might as well include a list for 'effects' (buffs and debuffs) and how that effects stats. And I need to derive values from those things for stuff like attack and defense ratings.

Then imagine having to keep track of two characters involved in combat.

Then there is the 'trivial' task of saving data to the HD when the game is 'over'. There is the 'trivial' task of loading data from the HD for things rather than hard-coding the entire game. Etc. Etc. Etc.

The reason games are buggy is because there is a god damned lot of code going in there, and the interractions are incredibly complex. Site unseen, I'm betting you that Demigod represents of 10K lines of original code (not counting re-used STL and graphics code that they got from other people). Minimal. So if I, or some of the other forum-goers, seem a trifle upset when you bash SD or GPG... think that some of us are looking at it from that perspective. I'm shocked that this game works at all, much as I frequently wonder at the everyday miracle known as an operating system.

No worries for me, I don't care about multiplayer action till I master the single player game. I'm learning the game fast, wish I hadn't stopped beta testing now.

Demigod? I thought this was about Sins? Maybe I havent found out about them in the game?

Quoting Ron Lugge,

reply 3

WoW: Totally f***ed for two weeks on most servers.

And that was only on release; it took them months / years to finish upgrading their infrastructure to the necessary point and get realms divided properly so you didn't have 5K people waiting lines on some servers. (I can not tell you how often my server, Dalaran, had ridiculous degrees of trouble because of too many people... ./grumble)

Edit:

Also, just to give some people some vastly needed perspective (and just because I've wnated to publically say 'wow' for a while now)... I'm not going to tell you to learn to code, that's absurd. But sit down and 'write' a game 'rulebook' as if it were from a computer. Write down rules and derive equations for every action necessary.

Let's take a (VERY) simplistic RPG I'm working on at the moment for school.

For one character I need to track...

HP, MP, STR, DEX, END, INT, WLP (Willpower), CHR, and a list of skills. Then I need to keep track of any gear. Then I need to keep track of how that gear effects the above stats. And we might as well include a list for 'effects' (buffs and debuffs) and how that effects stats. And I need to derive values from those things for stuff like attack and defense ratings.

Then imagine having to keep track of two characters involved in combat.

Then there is the 'trivial' task of saving data to the HD when the game is 'over'. There is the 'trivial' task of loading data from the HD for things rather than hard-coding the entire game. Etc. Etc. Etc.

The reason games are buggy is because there is a god damned lot of code going in there, and the interractions are incredibly complex. Site unseen, I'm betting you that Demigod represents of 10K lines of original code (not counting re-used STL and graphics code that they got from other people). Minimal. So if I, or some of the other forum-goers, seem a trifle upset when you bash SD or GPG... think that some of us are looking at it from that perspective. I'm shocked that this game works at all, much as I frequently wonder at the everyday miracle known as an operating system.

Unfortunately, holding GPG and SD to that low of standards means you have to hold all games to that low of standards, and no one is accountable for the quality of their game because it's so difficult to make that everyone should be happy it works even a little bit.

You do realize that these updates we've been releasing haven't been "bug fixes".

These MP centric games are more akin to putting together a vast IT project. It's like making a website that works great when you have a few hundred people on it but completely explodes when you have thousands. That's basically where we're at.

As the publisher, Stardock takes its commitment to its customers very seriously. We are well known for releasing solid games right on release. With Demigod, we believed it was very solid - and it is very solid. The MP match making, however, completely fell apart when exposed to lots of users with lots of different types of Internet connections.

What really aggravates things is that in other games, people are used to playing 1 on 1 or maybe 2 on 2 but in Demigod, the expectation is to play 4 on 4 or 5 on 5 and that is a scenario that is proving very difficult.

Ironically, if Demigod had been released as a game with 1 on 1 games or 2 on 2 games I suspect there would be relatively few complaints.

Wonderful way to completely mis-read my comment. (A situation I'lla dmit I'm probably at fault for)

I was aiming at those that said the Demigod team sucked / were completely incompetent because there were a few small flaws here and there (and code wise, they are very small flaws). Yes, those flaws have a large effect, but the teams involved are working on them as fast as they can. Look at the scope of the project and it becomes instantly apparent (to me) why the solutions aren't any faster.

I think a lot of the griping has to do with the fact that Demigod really is a great game, but the multiplayer is just a tad shaky right now. If DG was simply a bad game, people would uninstall it, shelve it, and end of story. Myself, I can play up to 2v2 with no problem (since every skirmish right now seems to be 2v2 ) 3v3+ gets iffy, and I've stopped trying for the moment after getting the 'desync of death' message a few times. I may be chomping at the bit, but I can live with 2v2 and single player skirmish for the moment. After all, having seen all of the love GalCiv2 got (and is still due to get) I have no doubt things will get sorted out ASAP (emphasis on the 'P')

Just out of interest, what is gameranger and how does it work? Is it like xfire or something similar?

Omg, they are here as well... Wait, what am I surprised about, they're everywhere these days... Blizard fanbois incoming, everyone get your flamethrower and regroup!

Jokes aside, Blizes are living on hype, It's just players who make the hype for them, that's it, end of "Blizard is special" theory.

Frankly, best their game I know is Lost Vikings. Yes, I played D1, D2, WC2, WC3, and You-know-what. (I'm not big on SC though...)

They all have more flaws than an average person cares to remember.

You want a "working game on day 1"? Not untill you get yourself a timetraveling device.

Anyway, may I ask where have you seen one?

Dont tell me "Blizard did that", they didn't. Sure they do support their games, but they never rolled-out a day 1 miracle. And don't even get me started on the effectiveness of their support, sure they work hard, but result of their work is so-so.

---------------------------------------------

I don't know why various devs keep makeing that mistake and not learnig form others, but they do... You see, currently nearly every DG player got his issues with the game, and as I recon most of them have major issues. For them, any mention of new content atm (other than "No new content till it shines") is a spit in the face. I dunno about wheres hows and whens of it I just saw players reactions to such things many times already, and it's not even close to being neutral, let alone positive.

I belive SD can sort out their mess, I doupt GPG can. And I'm sure they'd never do if that was just them working on demigod (I saw DS, I saw it's expansion, I saw DS2, saw DS2-BW... Progress? Wot's dat? And don't even get me started on SS). What I fear the most - there's gonna be no playerbase by the time DG outclasses DotA. (In common oppinion that is, I'm not a DotA fan, not even DotA player).

I talked to a number of "Illegal players", taking aside those who'd pirate their food if that was an option, most of them think this game is not worth buying as it is now , "maybe some heroes and a number of patches later" was an average reply. Sad really, I'd like to see this game flourish.

Still that makes a point clear - Starforce is not what helps aginst piracy, qualitiy IS.

To make a long story short - once connectivity is not an issue, don't forget there are other issues.

The Forums Are Now Closed!

The content will remain as a historical reference, thank you.

Where we’re at as we enter the weekend