Life in the Demigod lane

By Frogboy on May 2, 2009 12:43:45 PM from

Last night we got the update out. The change log can be found on Impulse (right click and view the change log). Lots of improvements.

We ultimately marked it as a beta because we ran out of time and couldn't integrate the updated connection code which meant that the existing connection DLL had to be included which has a launch bug that causes an occasional crash when combined with this new build.

Anywyay, we had been hoping to surprise people by having the update include the Proxy server update. But it too wasn't quite ready. We had pushed until Friday to try to surprise everyone but we didn't want to go a second weekend without showing some substantial improvements for those people who have been having difficiulties.

We're going to have an update probably on Monday to move the beta from release.

The problem with betas, as some of you no doubt have noticed, is that you split the multiplayer community and that can make the skirmish and pantheon games a lot less fun because you end up with a lot fewer 3 on 3 human games. So we have to do these sparingly.

Now, that said, I want to address a nmber of points in one place that keep coming up online:

Comment 1: "Stardock is overstating Demigod difficulties, to get coverage, the game works fine for me"

First, yes, while the game works fine for most people. There are a significant number of people who are having problems connecting through the built in multiplayer match making. While I may seem to focus a lot on those issues, in the long run, this is a game that will live and die on its ability to sustain a MP community and it is important that people know that we are taking their issues seriously.

Comment 2: "The multiplayer match making is totally buggy, how could they release it like this???"

So at the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the people who are having trouble getting into games with the built in match making. I share your frustration. But Stardock was in no rush to release Demigod. Demigod was done as far as we were concerned.

Now, as the publisher, it's our responsibility to make sure problems in anything we release are addressed. But we haven't been fixing "bugs". We have been getting a crash course in P2P scaleability (or lack there of).

Should Demigod have had a big huge open MP beta? Yea, in hindsight, yes. If we had a time machine, we would do that. But we've released games that have MP before (Sins of a Solar Empire, The Political Machine, The Corporate Machine, and OS/2 games before that). The difference here is the difference between MP-centric and a game that's mostly played SP that has MP.

And how does that difference translate? Well, in Sins, you might (and Sins players can attest to this) a game that tops out with 200 people playing online at once versus a game that has 1000 people in games online and another 8000 people who are online in the process of looking for games. And as many people have said, it works decently overall.

There are programs like Game Ranger that largely take care of the match making for people who want to use that while we migrate towards a system where we host the games for players but it's not something that's easily done overnight.

PC game expectations have come a long way over the past several years. Leaders in our industry like Blizzard have raised the bar with things like Battle.net and our friends at Relic have created RelicOnline which works very well. And of course there is GameSpy Arcade which has evolved over a period of years.

We appreciate the patience of those who are having difficulties. I can assure you that Gas Powered Games and Stardock are working inhuman hours to solve their problems as quickly as possible (70 to 90 hours last week for instance per person involved). But these hours aren't about "finishing" a game. The game shipped finished. It's the scale of things that we were (clearly) unprepared for. We can't change the past, we can only take things from where they are now.

A lot of progress has been made internally. In less than 2 weeks, we've taken a game that is a peer-to-peer game and developed an infrastructure from scratch to make it so that the publisher's servers will be handling potentially 100% of the network traffic for all games played throughout the world. This was not contemplated prior to release but we are commited to making sure that MP is bullet proof even if it takes longer than we all wish.

We're working on it even now.

+912 Karma | 77 Replies

There's no changelog in view history or anywhere on impulse that I can see.

Quoting comanoodle,

reply 13

Almost none, if not completely none, mentioned my points (I have not seen one). They are all rambling about connectivity.

Let me see if I understand this, and feel free to quote me and correct me if I'm wrong.

The game works for you (yay!) and as such your actually able to focus on several large and frustrating bugs that have been discovered in the game. Your also able to focus some of your attention of features you'd like to see implemented that as current are not in the game.
The game doesn't work for quite a few people. It's not that it works but it could be better, it's not that it kind of works and Stardock are polishing - the game simply doesn't work for quite a few people.

Your concern isn't with the fact that people, like yourself, purchased this game however, unlike yourself, it doesn't function for them and Stardock are currently dedicating their efforts to make sure it works, but rather as someone who's game works your complaining that Stardock are not fixing your perceived problems and lack of features.

You created a post that contained information that has been posted at least a dozen times and instead of creating some constructive critism of the game you simply decided to insult the makers of the game, their product, complain that they were trying to fix the game for people who were currently unable to play at all instead of address your bugs and generally come off as another asshole with an internet connection, and your now wondering why that post deleted?

Not the sharpest tool in the shed, are you?

It should be in the context menu when you right click on the game. Anyways, it says:

Demigod BETA 1.00[b].061
------------------------

Please note that after updating to the beta, you will only be able to play
with other beta users. Games hosted by users with the current release
version of Demigod will not be visible.

- Reworked the saving and restoring of achievements to differentiate
between online and offline.
- Added tournament ID to each achievement when posting achievements.
- Reduced the width of of the header in the disconnect dialog to accommidate text.
- Resolved issue where players who report network issues with other people were causing
the disconnect dialog to remain up after problem was solved
- Fixed a crash that occurred during skirmish games.
- Fixed citadel upgrade bug/exploit where users could click quickly to buy more than
they could afford.
- Resolved issue where one person disconnecting or lagging would cause the networking
to disconnect and spawn multiple games. This applies to all matchmaking setups
(LAN, Skirmish, Pantheon, Custom)
- Introduces a cumulative tolerance timer of 30 seconds for each player, allowing
slower connections better opportunities to stay connected.
- Added dialog for players that lets them know who is having a connection problem, and
displays their cumulative timer. This dialog is not interactive, merely informative.

Quoting Kitkun,

reply 3

It should be in the context menu when you right click on the game. Anyways, it says:
Demigod BETA 1.00[b].061
------------------------

Please note that after updating to the beta, you will only be able to play
with other beta users. Games hosted by users with the current release
version of Demigod will not be visible.

- Reworked the saving and restoring of achievements to differentiate
between online and offline.
- Added tournament ID to each achievement when posting achievements.
- Reduced the width of of the header in the disconnect dialog to accommidate text.
- Resolved issue where players who report network issues with other people were causing
the disconnect dialog to remain up after problem was solved
- Fixed a crash that occurred during skirmish games.
- Fixed citadel upgrade bug/exploit where users could click quickly to buy more than
they could afford.
- Resolved issue where one person disconnecting or lagging would cause the networking
to disconnect and spawn multiple games. This applies to all matchmaking setups
(LAN, Skirmish, Pantheon, Custom)
- Introduces a cumulative tolerance timer of 30 seconds for each player, allowing
slower connections better opportunities to stay connected.
- Added dialog for players that lets them know who is having a connection problem, and
displays their cumulative timer. This dialog is not interactive, merely informative.

Thanks...my demigod version simply says V1.00 ...has for quite a while...and under view history shows a bunch of troubleshooting tips etc...none of that.

nice to see progress!

Thanks...my demigod version simply says V1.00 ...has for quite a while...and under view history shows a bunch of troubleshooting tips etc...none of that.

Oh? Might not show them if you don't have show pre-release versions selected in the Orb menu. (Upper left)

Quoting Connatic,

reply 22

Should we give them a spanking? You are just stating the obvious now, we all know and understand that very well. But this is what we got. If you don't like it you can get your money back. They have been giving us daily updates on how they are improving this game from it's dismal launch. It's impressed me so I'm sticking with it.

There is no reason to get all flaming hot about this. Most of the crash bugs will probably be fixed with the patch on monday. The rest are minor and I'm pretty sure are in GPG's court.

The first big "No No" when posting on a forming, is to making another thread about why your previous thread/post got locked/deleted. You should be mature about it and PM the mod.

"Should we give them a spanking"... oh, you're funny!

First, Stardock has been giving us daily updates on the progress of the connection issues, and nothing else. That is, the other issues (aside from Favor, which turns out to be on Stardock's side) haven't gotten any attention in update threads like this one.

The first big "No No" when managing a forum for your company is to delete a post which did not break any rule. The problem you are STILL missing is that they deleted my post *and* chose to ignore everything I said in this thread's OP. Since there was no reason to delete it (unless you find a list of game bugs inflammatory) and none of those issues were addressed by Frogboy in this thread, which is supposed to be the response to everything in that thread, the only conclusion one can reach is that it was flat out PR censorship.

If there was a legitimate reason for its deletion (mind you, a reason was not given, it simply vanished), then I would have PMed. Or maybe not, because there's no point hoping for a response anyway. I've already PMed Frogboy about another matter (back when I still held Stardock to high standards, on a much friendlier tone) weeks ago, and have yet to receive any kind of response.

Are you too blind to see what I'm talking about? There is very much a reason to get flaming hot about this.

Take a look about it from this point of view (inverted everything):

Let's assume Stardock or GPG are giving daily updates about the issues *I* mentioned, and saying nothing about the connection issues. You see a thread complaining about the connection issues, and everyone misunderstands, thinking it's talking about the issues already addressed by Stardock (the game bugs). The OP is flamed for raising the same concerns over and over. Sharing the same point of view as that thread's OP, you make a post detailing the issues you believe the OP was talking about, hoping to clarify it to everyone who flamed the OP.

You refresh the thread to find it locked by Frogboy, linking to another thread claiming he responded there. You scroll up to see what people have said since you last refreshed, and are surprised to see your post gone. You think "Huh? Why? Well, whatever. I should check the other thread by Frogboy."

Full of hope, you check the other thread, but you find that NONE of the issues you raised have been addressed, and yet the other thread was locked while your post was deleted. You, along with almost everyone else who witnessed what happened, are infuriated by what Frogboy did.

Everyone else are unable to see what is so infuriating about what just happened. They are, for some reason, maintaining the "it'll be okay" state of mind, despite the post detailing the concerns deleted, the thread in which it was locked, and the official response to it having not mentioned even a single of those concerns.

Quoting ZehDon,

reply 2

Let me see if I understand this, and feel free to quote me and correct me if I'm wrong.

The game works for you (yay!) and as such your actually able to focus on several large and frustrating bugs that have been discovered in the game. Your also able to focus some of your attention of features you'd like to see implemented that as current are not in the game.
The game doesn't work for quite a few people. It's not that it works but it could be better, it's not that it kind of works and Stardock are polishing - the game simply doesn't work for quite a few people.

Your concern isn't with the fact that people, like yourself, purchased this game however, unlike yourself, it doesn't function for them and Stardock are currently dedicating their efforts to make sure it works, but rather as someone who's game works your complaining that Stardock are not fixing your perceived problems and lack of features.

You created a post that contained information that has been posted at least a dozen times and instead of creating some constructive critism of the game you simply decided to insult the makers of the game, their product, complain that they were trying to fix the game for people who were currently unable to play at all instead of address your bugs and generally come off as another asshole with an internet connection, and your now wondering why that post deleted?

Not the sharpest tool in the shed, are you?

There you go, I'm correcting you: the issues I have mentioned (apart from Favor, which turns out to be on Stardock's end) are things that GPG should be working on. GAME ISSUES.

Stardock has mentioned, many times, that they are working on the networking code. GPG does not work on the networking code. See what I'm getting at? Two different teams, two different sets of issues, and only one of these sets of issues is receiving updates and apparently attention.

There is nothing Stardock can do to alleviate any of the concerns I mentioned, other than tell GPG to get on it. They might be on it, but it certainly doesn't seem so because since release, all of the fixes and changes have been on Stardock's end. There have been no threads indicating GPG is doing anything to alleviate the issues they *can* fix.

You would know this if you had bothered to read any of my posts in this thread. Or maybe if you paid attention, you would have noticed that Frogboy mentioned several times that GPG is taking care of the game itself, and Stardock is taking care of networking. There's even a diagram in one of his posts!

There is no priority issue here, because GPG is almost entirely unaffected by the fact Stardock is making changes to the net code. They can work on both the concerns I raised, AND the networking, at the same time, without losing any efficiency!

Did you see who posted that thread? That was NOT my thread. I posted a reply, which was deleted. The OP was rude, but again, he was frustrated at having the other issues ignored, despite the team which is supposed to work on them being completely separate from the connection issues team.

It's like you would say the work on Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare 2 is delaying work on Starcraft 2, because Activision and Blizzard are working together. Obviously, that's not the case, because while they're working together, they are not one team.

The only conclusion I can reach from all of this bashing is all of you who can't see my point have not been following the updates closely. If you would, you would know:

GPG has hardly ever been mentioned.
Stardock is in charge of the net code and distribution, nothing else.
GPG is in charge of everything Stardock isn't in charge of.
Stardock and GPG are two different teams, composed of different people (surprise there...)
There have been no official mentions of the concerns I raised in that thread.

Also, I feel that Frogboy should reply to this. He posted in this thread even after this argument began, and completely ignored it. Now's the time, Frogboy.

Sorry for the triple post, but the forum does not seem to like it when posts get too long, and I felt they should be visually separated.

look Daddy a Troll, can i keep it? please,please,please i promise to feed it and not let it loose on the internet!

lol @ comanoodle

comanoodle, although you are right to complain about a deleted post without any reason given or explanation afterwards, I still think you're blowing things out of proportion in relation to the issues you mention.

For one, you assume its as easy as you say, that stardock is taking care of connectivity and GPG of other stuff, but this is not true. As you can read from Frogboy's updates, GPG is also coming up with new builds in relation to the connectivity stuff.

As I said in a reply to your original post with the issues, I think you overlook the fact that some of them might very well be related to the connectivity issues, for one the Favor thing is. But mostly they are connected in the sense that connectivity is logically the highest priority for Stardock and GPG. As soon as that is all worked out, they can properly pay attention to the in game issues when games actually work.

I think its just a matter of having patience here for a bit.

the issue in this post by him is not that stardock does one thing and GPG another , the issue that comanoodle wants taken up is how he can say that the game was shipped completed when several bugs which has nothing to do with connections was aknowledged in beta and ignored.

Perhaps he's not missing it... perhaps he just plain doesn't believe you. I've hung around SD forums for a very, very long time, and the behaviour your describing is completely out of character. Lock a thread that's gotten out of hand, sure, delete a post that's complete junk and doesn't belong in the database, occasionally (they sure have a lighter hand with both of those than I would!), but deleting a valid post? Never seen it, and I just don't believe you. The alternative explanation of it getting swallowed by the forum, that I believe. I have seen it happen, had it happen to me.

Well this beta patch seems to have made things worse for me then they already were. First try game crashed. Second try friend couldn't connect. Third try Game kept saying it was full when it only was 2/7 and when i finally did get in and alt tabbed i got a fatal error. Fourth try well i couldn't even log in, said my password was invalid.

Okay, so i tried changing my password/username in community > Account > Login and i still can't log into it.

Ouch, you're worse off than I am; I've just been unable to play at all for the last few patches.

I just looked at comanoodle's posts (I can see anything that's hidden or deleted) and I found nothing that was hidden or deleted. It's just plain not there.

EVERY game out there has features (or more accurately features people feel a game should have) that some % of the public will claim are "bugs".

Demigod not bundling Voice over IP, for instance, is not a bug. Someone thinking that one Demigod is more powerful than another is not a bug. Google Desktop on Windows XP blocking some users from launching the game is not a bug in Demigod (it's actually a bug in Google Desktop and they're working on it).

I look through the forums a great deal and I certainly don't see a lot of discussion of "bugs".

Incidentally, the favor point / favor item thing wasn't a "bug" on release but rather an issue created by having to move Demigod servers to a whole new set to get away from the warez users who were overwhelming the initial launch servers and the server it was sending that data to was the old one but the one it was reading from is the new one. We've done a lot to work around that in a short amount of time.

But for the record, Demigod shipped with no class 0 or class 1 "bugs" (i.e. critical or serious). I'm not saying Demigod is somehow perfect. No game is. But I'm not personally aware of anything that most people would consider serious in Demigod beyond network-related issues.

Hopefully a lot will give you a second chance from all the hard work that has been done

Quoting comanoodle,

reply 13

You are totally missing the point. There is no conspiracy, probably just some PR. Very rude PR.

It doesn't really matter that my post was deleted - there's also the part where he said there's a response here, yet none of the points I raised were addressed here.

Quoting Kitkun,
reply 11

The mere fact my post was deleted shows that they do not want to acknowledge this.And the dozens of other posts that haven't been deleted?

Almost none, if not completely none mentioned my points (I have not seen one). They are all rambling about connectivity.

When you portray yourself as a petulant, crying baby in an otherwise mature community forum, you deserve whatever censorship comes your way.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 17

I look through the forums a great deal and I certainly don't see a lot of discussion of "bugs".

I'm not personally aware of anything that most people would consider serious in Demigod beyond network-related issues.

Please, take a look here (the first post and the last): https://forums.demigodthegame.com/348135/page/3

That's a compilation of bugs, some of them. The first part of the post (and the last post, my post) goes about bugs, the rest is about suggestions of balance.

Also here, with the whole thread about one nasty bug (that is also in the link above): https://forums.demigodthegame.com/349553/page/1/

Kinda hard to miss them...I agree that they are not very serious bugs (maybe with the exception of the demigods unresponsiveness), but they do exist and need to be fixed.

I don't think comanoodle is trolling, but I think you guys are baiting him a lot more than is responsible and he's doing a pretty good job of not rising to it.

I'm glad frogboy responded and as per usual I can't find anything to disagree with in his comment.

I do note however he doesn't address the skill bug or the pathing bugs directly at all, but I guess you'd have to assume that they're not class 0 or 1 (those two classes are usually reserved for bugs that reliably prevent the game from running) so it's a class 2 at highest, possibly even a class 3.

Now that doesn't mean they're not annoying as crap, but they're not nearly as severe as they are annoying, if there was something severe in there then you'd almost always want it fixed first.

Directly for you comanoodle, I think you should consider the possibility that your post wasn't deleted, but was lost due to some technical glitch. Sure raise the issue and push your points that's what the forum is for, but you can probably stop insisting on the deletion line, you've been heard now.

Quoting Kitkun,

reply 25

Quoting Plavski,
reply 23
"The change log can be found on Impulse (right click and view the change log). "

That doesn't work and hasn't since beta.Actually, it's View History, and has always worked. At least, when there is actually a change log posted.

Maybe true for you, but not for all. For me, being able to view the change log has not worked regularly. Never had this issue with SOASE.

For the record : My post and entire thread ( 2-3 pages ) "Postpone release date" from beta ( around March 20 ) was deleted.

I didn't make a big deal out of it as I consider that post and others as feedback, advice maybe. Take it or leave it as you will. But the deletion could be interpreted, well, non-flatteringly.

Another post after the release, that I posted in General, and where I claimed the game was released inadequate, was moved to "Demigod Ideas". Then again, maybe every thought is an idea

Regarding bugs : Many are connection and server-calls related. But it could be said a tighter QA should have cleaned up the no-launch and alt-tab issues and maybe others - didn't go through all of the tech support sub-forum. However if these were the only issues maybe it wouldn't be severe. Depends on percentage.

Cheers : )

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 17

I just looked at comanoodle's posts (I can see anything that's hidden or deleted) and I found nothing that was hidden or deleted. It's just plain not there.

So the post was there for several hours, and then when the thread was locked, it magically disappeared? The odds of this happening are very, very small. Despite what you said, I'm still very skeptical. Since you claim the post was not deleted, please check the quote of that post in this thread and comment on these issues (fair enough if you don't want to comment about the missing features, but at least comment about the bugs).

My main concern is while GPG may be working with you guys on the connectivity issues, my impression (from YOUR posts) is that Stardock is doing the vast majority of the work. What's keeping GPG from working on the game bugs?

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 17

EVERY game out there has features (or more accurately features people feel a game should have) that some % of the public will claim are "bugs".

Demigod not bundling Voice over IP, for instance, is not a bug. Someone thinking that one Demigod is more powerful than another is not a bug. Google Desktop on Windows XP blocking some users from launching the game is not a bug in Demigod (it's actually a bug in Google Desktop and they're working on it).

That's why my post had two sections: bugs and "features which people believe should have been there before release". These are game-breaking bugs (missing the last hit because of the "stuck" bug, for example). There's also the alt-tab crashes which happen very often. I assume crashes are "critical" (prevents you from starting the game), and game-breaking bugs are "serious" (interrupts game play).

I quoted my (deleted) post in this thread, read the rest of my posts in this thread.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 17

I look through the forums a great deal and I certainly don't see a lot of discussion of "bugs".

That was my point. Everyone is talking about the connectivity issues and not the real bugs.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 17

And that is why I edited my post to indicate that I don't count Favor as one of the bugs that should be getting fixed at the same time as the connectivity issues - because the people taking care of stat tracking/connectivity are the same... but there is no excuse for the rest

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 17

Really? Did you miss everyone complaining about their DG getting stuck until they give it a move order? Is that not a serious bug?

Quoting KenoLFD,

reply 19

When you portray yourself as a petulant, crying baby in an otherwise mature community forum, you deserve whatever censorship comes your way.

Sorry, I did not portray myself "as a petulant, crying baby". That's just your distortion of reality.

I posted two lists bugs and features which people believe should have been implemented. There was no crying, nor complaining - the purpose of my post was to clarify to the people in that thread, who were bashing the OP for complaining about connectivity, that he in fact not talking about the connecitivity issues. I only posted here because my post miraculously disappeared at the same time the thread was locked.

Anyway, everyone calling me a troll and saying nothing else... you're not giving real replies, so isn't what you're doing trolling? Since I'm actually having a discussion (albeit from an opposing point of view), it's not trolling - it's arguing. People nowadays are so quick to call other people trolls when the other side doesn't think exactly the same. Sigh.

Quoting TheTrav,

reply 21

That would normally be my immediate assumption, but considering the controversial nature of the post (it suggests the game was released unfinished, and gives examples as what led me to this belief), the fact it disappeared at the same time the thread was locked and Frogboy posted... makes it highly unlikely that it was a glitch.

Just think about it. What are the odds of all of that happening, and then a glitch happens to my post of all the other posts in the thread? The odds probably aspire to zero.

Thank you for the level-headed post. They are few and far between on these forums.

Quoting comanoodle,

reply 24

Just think about it. What are the odds of all of that happening, and then a glitch happens to my post of all the other posts in the thread? The odds probably aspire to zero.

The odds are slim, but probably not as slim as you think they are... I'm a programmer, I see crazy stuff happen on computers all the time, considering the volume going through this forum I think it'd be odd if you DIDN'T see something weird happen at least once a month.

The Forums Are Now Closed!

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

Life in the Demigod lane