Make sure releases are playable and fix the current release

[Jolly Roger]

I understand now releases are going to take longer.

Can the Starmade team please work on fixing the current release quickly? It is difficult to convince others to play the game when it crashes every 5 minutes.

I would also like to suggest making sure releases are playable from here on out. It's worse to have an unplayable game than to wait for a release that takes a bit longer.

 

[Crusade]

Alpha game is alpha. The game will go through phases of instability.
Longer release times are good, as it does mean more stable releases (hopefully).
If your game is crashing, please provide logs. I left my client running for about 36 hours by accident with no crashing.

 

[kulbolen]

Alpha game is alpha. The game will go through phases of instability.

after years of development and over 2 years of steam early access, i dont think many players in any gaming community consider this level of instability acceptable. yes, alpha is alpha... but the game is EXTREMELY unstable when trying to do anything advertised in the games description. crashing every 5 minutes is not even an exaggeration in many cases.

it used to have pretty decent steam reviews but its recent review category is the dreaded "mixed" rating. most of the negative reviews ive looked at involve some form of "game crashes all the time" or "game is clunky and impossible to learn, with features that dont work like they should." even most of the positive rating mention massive lag and crashing, bugs, broken features... they just downplay them or love the shipbuilding so much they look past them.

its really hard to get friends or community interested in the game for long when the first time they play the game breaks every few minutes or just doesnt do most of what its supposed to. i imagine this new release cycle and focus on bugfixing should help...

fwiw ill probably stick around because i cant find the kind of shipbuilding this game allows anywhere else.

 

[NightFury76]

It's impossible to play on live servers without your stuff randomly deleting.

 

[NaStral]

1000 times yes! The "game is alpha" excuse is old, tired and simply does not address the reality of a game that is under the constant gaze of the public eye. If this game was being developed with the more traditional model of alpha being closed to the public, the above sentiment would make more sense. This is simply not the case. Every public release should be 100% functional and if that means not adding features in exchange for tightening up the core playability then so be it.

 

[MrGrey1]

Running my own home server 24/7 with a once/day reboot and my client is on 12-18 hrs a day and haven't crashed in so long I can't remember the last, (other then loading screwy blueprints in the catalog manager.)... there are many variables in the computing world, don't be too quick to point fingers, especially without something solid to back it up such as logs and basic, essential information for troubleshooting ie: OS, system specs, graphics driver versions... whatever your crash issue is, it certainly is not a problem for everyone. You ain't gonna get it resolved if you just go waaa!, (dumb luck excluded.) I think you know as well as I do that the Schine team will do their best to resolve problems as quickly as they can, after all it is their bread n' butter you're talking about, but be proactive and help them to help you. Everyone here wants this game to succeed.
Phabricator

Bug free software is a unicorn farting rainbows.

 

[kulbolen]

its well documented and well known; if youre running a mp server and not crashing; you have an inactive erver without much going on.

your anecdotal evidence is completely dwarfed by everyone elses.

 

[MrGrey1]

Probably true... but anecdotal evidence is also all the OP delivered.

 

[nightrune]

I understand now releases are going to take longer.

Can the Starmade team please work on fixing the current release quickly? It is difficult to convince others to play the game when it crashes every 5 minutes.

I would also like to suggest making sure releases are playable from here on out. It's worse to have an unplayable game than to wait for a release that takes a bit longer.

If you are crashing every 5 mins, please feel free to start a thread in support or create a bug report with steps to reproduce please. It's the best way to really help the game, and it is really appreciated.

 

[Shaker]

Come back in 2 years whens its in early beta

 

[Crusade]

The alpha excuse is old, yes. But it is still valid. The game is not in the gaze of the public eye, active players are decreasing and this is entirely intentional. Schine is aware the game is unstable, and thus rarely do advertising.

Again, alpha game is alpha. If you're not happy with the stability, honestly, put SM on the backburner and play a more stable game. SM will get more stable, but on Schines schedule, not the players.

 

[DukeofRealms]

I understand now releases are going to take longer.

Can the Starmade team please work on fixing the current release quickly? It is difficult to convince others to play the game when it crashes every 5 minutes.

I would also like to suggest making sure releases are playable from here on out. It's worse to have an unplayable game than to wait for a release that takes a bit longer.

This goes for anyone who has posted in this thread, if you haven't already, please read our news post on the subject: StarMade News - StarMade Dev Update: Spring Cleaning

In that post, you'll notice we've announced a release cycle change. As was mentioned there, the reason for this change is so we are able to do the following:

• Put out more stable releases (practically free from major game breaking bugs, some will always slip through, but we won't release with known major issues).
• Every release is aimed to have "fewer bugs than the last", what this means is that every release cycle should have fewer bugs in the Phabricator bug tracker queue than the last.
• Speed up development, a big slowdown in development from the last release cycle schedule was that we were constantly hotfixing our releases. Hotfixes would eat into the next release cycle's dev time, giving us even less time to develop and test. The new system will allow us to take things at our own pace. Although there will be fewer releases, they'll likely be bigger and certainly more stable. The number of releases does not indicate how fast development is going; fewer releases doesn't mean we're slowing down, it should, in fact, mean we're speeding up.
• Allow us to work on larger releases. 2 weeks isn't enough for a significant gameplay addition, so often we'd have to extend the release cycle anyway. The way we've set our new schedule should allow us to easily work on large features and allow us to push through to the next gameplay addition even when a previous release is still in pre-release status.

Our main focus is still feature work (and will always be feature work in alpha), getting to beta is our main priority. However, we will be aiming to have more stable releases, without completely draining development time.

Our new release schedule is documented here: Release . It's still being worked on, so changes will be made.

Basically, the system goes like this: Feature Development -> Fix bugs in new features -> Fix existing bugs (fewer bugs than the last release) -> Pre-release (Release Candidate) -> Fix new bugs affecting pre-release (focus on release blockers, major and high priority bugs) -> Release

There are no defined times for releasing, only parameters that need to be met for a pre-release to qualify as a release. These parameters have not been defined yet. However, they will be something along the lines of:

• All bugs with a priority over high have been fixed.
• Pre-release news post has been made. Call for testing locally and on our test servers.
• Call for participating server owners to test pre-release versions on a mirror copy.
• Testing team approval.
• Less documented bugs on Phabricator than the last.
• X days since a high priority bug or higher has been reported.

The Pre-Release cycle would be run until all parameters had been met, as follows:

Pre-release (Release Candidate) -> Fix new bugs affecting pre-release (focus on release blockers, major and high priority bugs) -> Repeat until no more high priority or higher bug reports -> All parameters met -> Release

During this cycle, next release work has started. Most pre-release work will be done in the testing/QA phase, so development will be free to push ahead until high priority bugs are found again or if the documented bug count is higher than the last release.

Ideally, we'd be releasing dev build news posts every week or two with details on what's new, this will of course help with public testing. Perhaps we'd schedule a dev blog for every two weeks, to talk about our plans, current development in a general sense. We'd have the same amount or more news posts, just fewer releases.

 

[Shaker]

DukeofRealms i dont think he bothered to read the devblogs in full, as they have answered his questions.

This just just another junk thread like the 100 power threads popping up

 

[splatthecat]

Fortnightly releases was great but unsustainable. Quality was being compromised and that has hurt the game.

Fortnightly Dev Blog would be a great way to engage with the player base and encourage people to test the live version. If there was an easier way of having dual installations that was accessible via the launcher rather than having two separate installations it would help with this?

I said in another post some time ago that a bug fixing round wad needed and this seems to have been agreed upon. Yes, new features are lovely and gameplay improvements are vital to the core game but not at the detriment of everything else.

Sometimes, working on a single aspect can help bring in both new or improved features, like fleets, shipyards, manufacturing or whatever. Yes, it can knock something else out but allocating resources to counter these and as above, making it easier to switch from the release version and the development version could add dozens of extra play testers. Have a dev version forum that players could discuss what they find, etc. You could have instant feedback and surely that connot but help?

 

[DukeofRealms]

Can the Starmade team please work on fixing the current release quickly? It is difficult to convince others to play the game when it crashes every 5 minutes.

We're working as fast as we can, for the past few weeks bug fixing has been our sole priority. Development is putting out bug fixes faster than testing can go through them. I'm not sure how many bugs have been worked on, but we're currently working on eliminating all High, Urgent and Release Blocker bugs currently documented in Phabricator. Lots of work is going into bug fixing and Phabricator clean up.

crashing every 5 minutes is not even an exaggeration in many cases.

This is not normal at all, if you are experiencing this, you should contact support.

it used to have pretty decent steam reviews but its recent review category is the dreaded "mixed" rating

For the first half of the year, January till June, StarMade sales and reviews are at their lowest. At our peak this year, we went to an overall of 76% positive ratings. We're sitting at 74%, right now, which is what we were sitting at this time last year. Bear in mind; the Steam review system drastically changed late last year, key activation reviews no longer counted (a significant portion of our users). The same time last year, even though it had the same review percentage, is actually, much, much lower. So we're doing very well at the moment. Last year, when Steam reviews changed, our lowest overall percentage was 66%, we've managed to gain 8 points since then, even without advertisements. So I'm quite happy, we do expect our overall rating to drop until July, and we do expect to see a drop in player count until the second half of the year begins.

Every public release should be 100% functional and if that means not adding features in exchange for tightening up the core playability then so be it.

In alpha (which is what we're in), features take priority over everything else. We will not make it to beta if we focus on making perfect releases. We can get rid of serious issues, and have a more stable game at every release, which is what we aim to do with our new release cycle. However, some bugs are going to be delayed until beta. There's no way around it. If you're not comfortable with playing a game that's incomplete and will have issues, I suggest rejoining in late beta or release. We are currently shooting for a beta release; we're putting plans in and have a general goal for when we want to hit beta.

If there was an easier way of having dual installations that was accessible via the launcher rather than having two separate installations it would help with this?

We've been working on multiple installs for the past few months

I said in another post some time ago that a bug fixing round wad needed and this seems to have been agreed upon. Yes, new features are lovely and gameplay improvements are vital to the core game but not at the detriment of everything else.

New features take priority over everything else until beta. Our release schedule is structured in a way, so this is still the case but allows more stable releases.

 

[splatthecat]

We've been working on multiple installs for the past few months

Now that would be amazing! I would like to try out the dev builds more, especially if it helps to improve the stability of releases. I also play on a server that has stalled updating to about 2-3 releases ago so to play on this means downgrading and then upgrading again afterwards.

Two or maybe three selectable game versions would be nice, even if it is an Alpha only feature? While you're at it can we have selectable player profiles with different names, skins and properties? Thanks

 

[NeonSturm]

New 1000 times yes! The "game is alpha" excuse is old, tired and simply does not address the reality of a game that is under the constant gaze of the public eye. If this game was being developed with the more traditional model of alpha being closed to the public, the above sentiment would make more sense. This is simply not the case. Every public release should be 100% functional and if that means not adding features in exchange for tightening up the core playability then so be it.

In alpha (which is what we're in), features take priority over everything else. We will not make it to beta if we focus on making perfect releases. We can get rid of serious issues, and have a more stable game at every release, which is what we aim to do with our new release cycle. However, some bugs are going to be delayed until beta. There's no way around it. If you're not comfortable with playing a game that's incomplete and will have issues, I suggest rejoining in late beta or release. We are currently shooting for a beta release; we're putting plans in and have a general goal for when we want to hit beta.

That is ok, as long as you do not demand money from early-supporters or advertise a non-working version as "current stable", which makes servers update and essentially bans these.
Also I would include players as supporters as long as they spend time into feedback, as long as this is encouraged for them to do so. (EDIT: They provide CC to explore/have fun)

As of this, even answering forum posts or providing suggestions as a perspective for other players would be a supporter which is banned becaue the stable-version isn't playable.

I do not have a problem with a game not being 100% working, or not working for one release-cycle about a month for a minority.
But it is a problem for those who invested time into SM if they have to play a version which is worse than a previous one because the servers are lead to use this version.

 

[Batavium]

I left my client running for about 36 hours by accident with no crashing.

The game currently has two major problems. Entity pressure from cores. And interaction from players with others or the stuff around them.

How many players did you have on your client? I can have the game run for days to if i just play it myself.

Schine needs to setup a Free for all play as you like server and first hand see what goes on. Such servers are by far the most popular. Get 30+ players on a Schine server and experiences the hardship.

Running my own home server 24/7 with a once/day reboot and my client is on 12-18 hrs a day and haven't crashed in so long I can't remember the last, (other then loading screwy blueprints in the catalog manager.)... there are many variables in the computing world, don't be too quick to point fingers, especially without something solid to back it up such as logs and basic, essential information for troubleshooting ie: OS, system specs, graphics driver versions... whatever your crash issue is, it certainly is not a problem for everyone

On small servers read low player count servers. Most of the issues are hidden. The game runs fairly well and when ever there is a hickup the server pretty much brute forces it. Though if you luck out with the NPC you might get a little taste of core entity pressure.


The game works best if everyone just sits in there own sector and just builds or hangs out at Home Base. Funny enough that is what most do. Like those extreme fat people who can no longer do anything but lay in bed. As soon as they undock and start visiting other people things turn for the worse. And ultimately that is what you want to do in a Multi player environment interact with other people.


I have tried repeatedly to get save default settings adopted to the game. The fact that this is not done bewilders me extremely. Any admin that knows how the underlining system in StarMade works can change these settings freely. But the reality is that most are clueless about it or expect the game to run on the default settings. With the argument this is how Schema set up the game so this is how it should run. Which is complete nonsense in game where every single thing can be altered and tweaked.


Make the default settings tier to low values. Add a default build restriction to the game. This will not hinder people. If they ask what goes on just point out where and how to alter the settings. I did this countless times on this forum! People should not need any advanced knowledge of StarMade in order to host the game!


GameConfig.xml

<ShipLimits> <Mass>50000.0</Mass> <Blocks>100000</Blocks> </ShipLimits>

Server.cfg

PROTECT_STARTING_SECTOR = true //Protects the starting sector

This is a no brainer. Who's bright idea was it to set this to false on default.

CONCURRENT_SIMULATION = 60 //How many simulation groups may be in the universe simultaniously (performance)

SIMULATION_SPAWN_DELAY = 600 //How much seconds between simulation spawn ticks

DEFAULT_BLUEPRINT_ENEMY_USE = false //Default option for blueprints not in catalog yet

Set this to false! As soon as even one person uploads a blueprint the trouble starts!

USE_STARMADE_AUTHENTICATION = true //allow star-made.org authentication
REQUIRE_STARMADE_AUTHENTICATION = true //require star-made.org authentication (USE_STARMADE_AUTHENTICATION must be true)

Forced Authentication may result in problems on single player. Add a third option specific to Multi Player servers and enable it by default.

I know single player is the same as multi player it is just a server that is not online but running a multi player server without Authentication is beyond ridiculous.

SECTOR_AUTOSAVE_SEC = 600 //Time interval in secs the server will autosave (-1 for never)

MAX_CLIENTS = 20 //Max number of clients allowed on this server

There is no point on filling a server all the way to breaking point with people. You need server CPU/RAM headroom for the inter actions these people will engage in.

PLANET_SIZE_MEAN = 50.0 //Planet size mean (normal gaussian distribution) (min 50)
PLANET_SIZE_DEVIATION = 0.0 //Planet size standard deviation. Note: normal gaussian distribution graph scaled horizontally by 1/3 (min 0)

MISSILE_DEFENSE_FRIENDLY_FIRE = false //can shoot down own or missiles from own faction

This is by default on true. Why would you ever want your own anti missile turrets to shoot down the missiles you fire on an enemy.

MAX_SIMULTANEOUS_EXPLOSIONS = 4 //the more the faster explosions at the same time are executed (costs in total about 20MB RAM each and of course CPU because it's all threaded) (10 is default for a medium powered singleplayer)

 

[KaRe]

I can run Starmade perfectly fine. Single player or multiplayer. Only time it bugs out are when multiple planets are right next to each other, people are creating intentional lag, a busy server has been up for more than 12 hours, or way too many entities are in a single area, which eventually fixes itself.

 

[kulbolen]

We're working as fast as we can, for the past few weeks bug fixing has been our sole priority. Development is putting out bug fixes faster than testing can go through them. I'm not sure how many bugs have been worked on, but we're currently working on eliminating all High, Urgent and Release Blocker bugs currently documented in Phabricator. Lots of work is going into bug fixing and Phabricator clean up.

this is encouraging news.

This is not normal at all, if you are experiencing this, you should contact support.

will do. although it seems a bit out of place to me to do this instead of the server admin/owner.

I left my client running for about 36 hours by accident with no crashing.

so you werent...doing anything...

The alpha excuse is old, yes. But it is still valid. The game is not in the gaze of the public eye, active players are decreasing and this is entirely intentional.

“We already extensively involve the community in the development of the game. Pre-steam release we were roughly at 300,000 people registered on our account system"

Schine is aware the game is unstable, and thus rarely do advertising.

“We have had stable versions of the game and server since 2014."

SM will get more stable, but on Schines schedule, not the players.

"Game performance and scalability is our underlining priority.”

hat is ok, as long as you do not demand money from early-supporters or advertise a non-working version as "current stable", which makes servers update and essentially bans these.
Also I would include players as supporters as long as they spend time into feedback, as long as this is encouraged for them to do so.

“This system will favour those who have purchased and showed their support in the early stages of the game.”

"We are using Early Access to give the players the possibility to play the game, as well as giving them the opportunity to be a contributing factor in the game's development. We are a small independent company, and this will help us to develop the game further, through player feedback and funding."

all qouted portions are from starmade advertising. on a site that sells the game for money.