next »

[MinusDriver]

In general the game is just hard to play. It's really all over the place. I see my opponent one place and the next moment we are feet from each other. Sometimes I'm taking hits and don't even know it. I just wish game play was much smoother in general. Makes it hard to play.

I'm so GLAD you added music back to front page though and all the other stuff you did in the last upload looks good. I can tell lots of stuff was added.

[godatplay]

I'm sorry your experience isn't better.  Do you know what your ping is in general?

Having the enemy jump around is related directly to network performance.  In order to prevent people from hacking the game, the server stores the positions of the dinos.  So when your enemy seems to teleport around, that means the message sent to you updating the dino's new position took a long time to get there.  If you have a bad connection, this can happen.

So if your ping is high, that is a sign you might have a bad connection, or at least an inconsistent one.

[MinusDriver]

I avg. around 36-48 ping on a shared T1 connection at work. I use Vista Ultimate Quad Core 4GIG RAM dual 512 video cards 

Before this update I didn't experience same lag issues I am now. Something Chris P (K Staff) mentioned in chat yesterday got me thinking. Is all the data after a game ends destroyed before next one starts? I ask because I noticed a performance getting worse and worse game after game.

[godatplay]

Hmm, yeah you seem to have a good connection and good computer even.  Part of it is likely Vista, but I have certainly had problems with the game getting worse over time, too.  We'll look into it.

[cpasley]

Does your work have a strict firewall?

[godatplay]

About the dino jumping all over thing, one thing we're working on today is improving network performance, which will improve performance of the game in general, too.  So MD, you should have a better time once we get this fix in.

[CCM333]

Why is it that every time there is a major update like this there is massive lag and game crashing and all these other similar issues?

[godatplay]

I think it's clear that the sound ended up creating a tipping point for a lot of people.  Flash has very poor performance compared to just about any other PC-related game platform, so basically any time we add something new, it makes the game slower.  In this case, it was sound.

Then we have spend time making the game run faster.  To us, we've been updating things steadily the whole time.  We don't really see it as this being that major of an update compared to everything else.  It's just more noticable because it's content-related.  So now we're back to performance stuff, which means it's more behind the scenes.  I suppose that'll make it seem like a "down time" to many, but we'll keep updating the build and it'll get better over time.

And the world keeps spinnin'.

[MinusDriver]

Torncanvas sorry if comes off like we are complaining. It's really not just trying share helpful feedback about things we notice. I love the game and its come a long way. Cheers 

[godatplay]

I know you guys aren't complaining, don't worry.  I think it was a sincere question, so I gave a sincere answer.  It's a valid question.  Why does that happen?  It frustrates us as much as you guys.  It gets more complicated when things seem to work fine for us, but then not for others.  But that's why you guys are so helpful and mean so much to us. And we really appreciate your feedback about everything.  Keep it coming!

[CCM333]

I think it's clear that the sound ended up creating a tipping point for a lot of people.  Flash has very poor performance compared to just about any other PC-related game platform, so basically any time we add something new, it makes the game slower.  In this case, it was sound.

Then we have spend time making the game run faster.  To us, we've been updating things steadily the whole time.  We don't really see it as this being that major of an update compared to everything else.  It's just more noticable because it's content-related.  So now we're back to performance stuff, which means it's more behind the scenes.  I suppose that'll make it seem like a "down time" to many, but we'll keep updating the build and it'll get better over time.

And the world keeps spinnin'.

I know you guys aren't complaining, don't worry.  I think it was a sincere question, so I gave a sincere answer.  It's a valid question.  Why does that happen?  It frustrates us as much as you guys.  It gets more complicated when things seem to work fine for us, but then not for others.  But that's why you guys are so helpful and mean so much to us. And we really appreciate your feedback about everything.  Keep it coming!

Sorry if I sounded complain-y, I really was just wondering. Now a follow up question:
How do you make all the lag go away? Because you can't start cutting game code away to make it smaller and faster...

[godatplay]

I know you were just wondering, don't worry.  It didn't sound like you guys were complaining.  You just want to know what's going on.

Regarding lag, it really depends on what type of lag you're talking about.  Right now we know that there are a couple smaller performance optimizations that we can do to make the game run better.  So we're working on those.  In addition, Mike was able to determine that some of the network traffic we were sending from the server to the client wasn't needed.  So he and Joe are working on that right now.  That means we'll be able to reduce the network traffic by quite a lot.  That should make it seem like there's less lag, when really it means there will be less traffic overall.  As a consequence, Mike said there will be less information for the client to read from the server, which will improve performance in Flash, too.

So in the end, we're hoping that there will be less "lag" of both types:  that people will have a higher FPS and that there will be less jittery, unresponsive-type behavior.

[CCM333]

So in the end, we're hoping that there will be less "lag" of both types:  that people will have a higher FPS and that there will be less jittery, unresponsive-type behavior.

YAY