Alpha Client Feedback

[Nosferatus]

There should be no lag because there is no ongoing client-server communication. Can you describe what exactly you experience as lag?

Perhaps its not connection lag, but rather lag/delay caused by my own hardware.

Basically everything freezes for some seconds with perhaps one or two second intervals.
In between the freezes, the mouse moves very delayed and slowly.
When clicking on dismiss after the connection failed error, it takes about 3 seconds for the game to respond.

James you don't seem to have this problem right? you also dont get a connection error?

I am playing on windows xp with an acer aspire 5715z

[James]

James you don't seem to have this problem right? you also dont get a connection error?

I am playing on windows xp with an acer aspire 5715z

No, all quite smooth for me on my MacBook Pro... (which I somehow managed to convince my wife I was allowed to get :) )

[Tom]

Hardware requirements should not be high, but I haven't done any optimisation. Is that an integrated graphics chip? Can you try to start the game with low graphics settings?

Keys: Space toggles zoom and the cursor keys move you around. Also, I'm uploading a new client right now, please download and use that. Download links will be updated in five minutes or so.

[Tom]

Turns out the new menu I added (which contains the quit and back to menu buttons) doesn't work. Oops. Fixed it, so the next build will be better.

Note the changed action method. You click on the map first now. To gather something from the forest - click on the forest.

[James]

I'm thinking perhaps there should be a warning somewhere that if you don't get food your family will starve to death at the next turn... As all but one family have died on day 6 due to starvation... Oops.

[Tom]

Yes, there should be warnings, I agree. Right now there is no status display for the family, I intend to add that back in.

[James]

At the moment it's also a bit confusing if you log in before a turn has run - if you click on anything, your entire family is listed as idle, making you (well, me anyway) try to think if I've actually done the actions for the turn or not.

Also, a status of 'dead' would be useful once they've died :)

The footprints are great to see (especially when they're nowhere near my family!)

[Tom]

At the moment it's also a bit confusing if you log in before a turn has run - if you click on anything, your entire family is listed as idle, making you (well, me anyway) try to think if I've actually done the actions for the turn or not.

That is strange, actions should show up. I'll check.

[Tom]

Build 8 has been uploaded, fixing a bundle of bugs and improving the UI, sounds and many other parts.

Also, if you still haven't signed up for the two open games, make sure you do now, because I will start them very soon. Just would like to have one or two more players in them.

[Nosferatus]

its still unplayable on my machine, what ever i try.
I no longer get the connection error but the 'lag' is still there.
The music plays fine but the graphics and the mouse cursor freeze every one or two seconds.

[Tom]

its still unplayable on my machine, what ever i try.
I no longer get the connection error but the 'lag' is still there.
The music plays fine but the graphics and the mouse cursor freeze every one or two seconds.

Try to hold ALT while the program loads, it should open the options screen. There set resolution low and quality to the lowest and check what happens.

[James]

Clicking 'hide' on the chat window no longer hides the window... The buttons appear again, but are behind the chat window and cannot be selected, meaning a restart of game to return to the menu or such.

[Nosferatus]

Try to hold ALT while the program loads, it should open the options screen. There set resolution low and quality to the lowest and check what happens.

It gets less when i play windowed and on minimal resolution, but its still lagged and the graphics also become to blury at that resolution.
I recently updated grapics drivers.
Its running on the intel integrated graphics chip.

[Tom]

Clicking 'hide' on the chat window no longer hides the window... The buttons appear again, but are behind the chat window and cannot be selected, meaning a restart of game to return to the menu or such.

Yes, I found that and fixed it already, but don't want to build a new client for this one fix.

[Tom]

It gets less when i play windowed and on minimal resolution, but its still lagged and the graphics also become to blury at that resolution.
I recently updated grapics drivers.
Its running on the intel integrated graphics chip.

It might be that the graphics chip is simply too low. I'm not big in this field, is this an old machine or something? The game appears to run ok on my MacBook Air which also uses an integrated graphics chip. I will do some more testing on it.