Messages

61

Dev App Testing / Re: Tools, Stamina, and Ramming Damage

« on: February 13, 2015, 09:00:13 am »

This thread is not about the worth of stamina as a feature.  You have multiple threads for those opinions already.

This thread is about the fact that skill modifications to thrust or drag were claimed to reduce ramming damage.  The effects of pilot stamina and moonshine/kerosene (and engine buffing, for that matter) share a great deal of code, so the bug report is relevant regardless of if or when we decide to release stamina.

62

Dev App Testing / Tools, Stamina, and Ramming Damage

« on: February 11, 2015, 05:13:40 pm »

During the last round of public testing, a few of you asserted something strange: that using pilot stamina and/or moonshine during a ram *reduced* the damage dealt.  This is definitely not intended behavior.

After doing some isolated testing, it's also not something I've been able to reproduce.  My simple test case was flying a pyramidion with AI disabled against another AI-disabled pyramidion, ships starting 500 meters apart and at a dead stop. 

Under these circumstances, damage dealt to both ships' armor is about the same, and rises appropriately with additional acceleration.  After all multipliers are taken into account, the results were:

• Basic ram - ~160
• Moonshine ram - ~240
• Stamina ram - ~210
• Moonshine+stamina ram - ~260

(Moonshine was used only for brief periods towards the end of the charge to ensure it was on during the impact, I wouldn't doubt you could get more damage if you timed your use of it more optimally)

My numbers are taken directly from server logs, which of course you can't see.  But if you're finding situations where you feel that using these thrust-increasing/drag-reducing tools causes you to deal/take LESS ramming damage, something may be bugged and I would like to know exactly what you're doing to get this result.

63

General Discussion / Re: Will Guns of Icarus Unity 5?

« on: February 10, 2015, 09:45:28 am »

Yes, I know what a draw call is.  It was the "extra" that threw me; I would have just said "draw calls are cheaper."

In any case: the supposedly lowered cost of draw calls in the newer APIs is indeed an exciting possibility.

EDIT: Generally speaking, framerate in Guns is bound by fillrate/overdraw in the worst cases.  That's why you see drops when you have a faceful of smoke/clouds/fire/explosions.

Mantle is not likely, since it's AMD-hardware specific and we have one (part-time) graphics programmer (me, on top of everything else I do.)  If Unity integrates DX12, that would be nice.

64

News and Announcements / Re: Server maintenance today (Feb 9th, 2015)

« on: February 09, 2015, 12:32:29 pm »

Well, that was pleasantly simple and straightforward.  Servers are back up now.

65

News and Announcements / Re: Server maintenance today (Feb 9th, 2015)

« on: February 09, 2015, 12:15:20 pm »

Hey now, it's all for the greater good.

Servers are down and maintenance has begun.

66

General Discussion / Re: Will Guns of Icarus Unity 5?

« on: February 09, 2015, 11:05:37 am »

What on earth do you mean by "extra draw calls"?

Switching over to the DX11 renderer has been a side project of mine for a long time, since it should theoretically improve performance in addition to giving us some new options.  There are relatively few and minor issues with it at this point, so that may just happen in a future patch (nothing will magically look better when this is released, mind you.)

67

News and Announcements / Server maintenance today (Feb 9th, 2015)

« on: February 09, 2015, 10:58:43 am »

We'll be taking the servers down for some quick but required maintenance around noon Eastern (that's 5PM UTC.)  Should be an hour at most, sorry for the inconvenience.

68

Q&A / Re: Killing and destroying

« on: February 02, 2015, 06:29:18 pm »

The terminology used by the announcer, I believe the achievement text should be consistent with this:

Kill: reduce a ship's hull integrity to 0, resulting in the ship being replaced with a rain of debris
Destroy: reduce any part's health to 0, resulting in that part having no effect until it is rebuilt

69

Q&A / Re: Medium or Heavy: Which is it?

« on: January 29, 2015, 10:25:25 am »

No, the official stance is that we have "light" and "heavy" weapons, any reference to "medium" in the game text is a bug.

70

The Lounge / Re: Free keys on steam

« on: January 09, 2015, 10:04:23 am »

Keys can come from 4-packs or from buying the game on third-party sites we give them to.

EDIT: However, there is no way to validate that a given key has not already been used.  So I'd recommend against trading for keys with individuals you do not trust completely.

71

Release Notes / 1.3.9 Hotfix 1

« on: December 23, 2014, 03:39:07 pm »

A client patch has just been released, fixing a few issues with the initial 1.3.9 release.  The new update is 1.3.9 (455)

- Fixed black commendation icon
- Fixed broken ornament textures on the Galleon
- Fixed broken clan editing UI
- Fixed animation bug that could cause repair animation to play while on the helm
- Fixed darker control point UI in King of the Hill and Crazy King modes
- Fixed missing tooltip for badges on progression screen

72

Dev App Testing / Re: Dev App 1.3.9 (433)

« on: December 23, 2014, 10:09:33 am »

"-popupwindow" only affects Windowed mode.  Fullscreen mode is exclusive fullscreen no matter what.

There appears to be another Unity bug of some kind at work, as well: if you switch from fullscreen to windowed mode, the game window remains on top.  You can work around this by simply quitting and relaunching the game; if it starts in windowed mode, there's no problem.

73

Release Notes / Re: Version 1.3.9 Release Notes

« on: December 22, 2014, 10:37:51 am »

Since patch I have some troubles switching windows...

If by "switching windows" you mean "alt+tab while in fullscreen", it is regrettable but unavoidable that returning to exclusive fullscreen brought back the old issues with switching and minimizing the game window.  If this is something you need to do, use -popupwindow.

For the "-popupwindow" launch option to have any effect, you also need to change the game to Windowed mode in the in-game options.  The only way to get a fullscreen window at the moment is to combine Windowed mode, -popupwindow, and setting game resolution equal to screen resolution.

I'd love to be able to provide all of these as options in the in-game menu but I'm forced to dance around limitations of the Unity3D engine in this case.

74

Dev App Testing / Re: Dev App 1.3.9 (433)

« on: December 18, 2014, 09:27:58 pm »

Unfortunately, no.  It's Valve's requirement, regardless of whether or not your items are actually being sold.

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Dev App Testing / Re: Dev App 1.3.9 (432)

« on: December 18, 2014, 03:28:13 pm »

Build 433: Lots of little things have been fixed, including wind physics and the helm camera issue mentioned above.

Also, and probably more exciting, this is your first opportunity to see items from the Workshop in-game.  Everyone will be granted two new "goggles" and a handful of decals on login.