FRE's and synch bugs

[Erinyes]

I have to ask a final question. Why are there so many fatal errors for many, and why are there so many synch bugs? And why have there been no utilities included in patches to address them in some way?

About 1 FRE per hour is average for me. Sometimes its a little worse, sometimes its a little better. And not a clue why. I'd love to send in reports why, but I've never had any indication why, just an unexpected view of my desktop. I know not everyone suffers from this, but I have yet to see anything from Reakktor to address those who do.

Generally, when I try to log in, it takes me about 5 or 6 times on average. I get into the game world, but my health is 50, my stamina is 80, I have no psi, I can turn, I can hear and speak but I can't move, and I see 'synchronizing'. I wouldn't mind fre's that much, but combined with this bug, its intolerable.


I can handle being a middle of the road player. I can tolerate some lag and ingame bugs that affect outcome of battles. But ffs, how can I handle bugs that don't allow me to play at all? How can I handle a game where the dev's address balance, features, and content, but not pure functionality?

Sorry for the rant, but I've really been worn down lately. I come home, just itching to play the game. It takes me 5-10 min's just to log in sometimes. I get logged in, and after a short time, I crash. I try to recover from the crash, sometimes its good, and I get right back in. Other times it takes another 5-10 mins, and I eventually log into my belt and dead body.

I've tried diffrent os's from 98 to xp. I've tried different hardware, including mobo's, processors(AMD and Intel), video cards, sound cards, memory, and modems. My connection is rock solid. I've also tried numerous drivers for said hardware.

I couldn't give a shit less about power armor, genrep's, content, or game balance. Why has the work on actual game stability been almost nil?

[AlphaGremlin]

Originally posted by Erinyes
Why has the work on actual game stability been almost nil?
It is so easy to say things like that. Not to flame or anything, but you appear to have no concept of just how hard it is to track down bugs, especially the ones that plague Neocron.
I have never created a game of the size and complexity as Neocron, but of the ones I have, it sometimes took me weeks to track down one simple memory leak. Multiply the complexity of the game by 50x, and still only have one person working on it, who is also working on producing DoY and (hopefully) implementing the millions of ideas in here, we should be thankful for the fixes we have had.
Do you remember how bad it was before the zoning code was re-written? There's a bug-fix right there.

[MjukisDjur]

We all know that "if we knew what was wrong we should have fixed it" but I have played for about 8 months now and the FRE:s come up as often as when I started playing this game. Of course, zoning was slighty improved but I feel that we all wondering if they shouldn't put just a tiny bit of more work on it. More staff for KK, they do a great work but the task is too big for them...

[Erinyes]

Originally posted by AlphaGremlin
It is so easy to say things like that. Not to flame or anything, but you appear to have no concept of just how hard it is to track down bugs, especially the ones that plague Neocron.
I have never created a game of the size and complexity as Neocron, but of the ones I have, it sometimes took me weeks to track down one simple memory leak. Multiply the complexity of the game by 50x, and still only have one person working on it, who is also working on producing DoY and (hopefully) implementing the millions of ideas in here, we should be thankful for the fixes we have had.
Do you remember how bad it was before the zoning code was re-written? There's a bug-fix right there.

Its also easy to say that programs are black boxes that no one but the devs have a clue about. No, I can't write a game, I have very little programming skills. I also couldn't build a car from raw materials. Neither will negate my ability to be able to constructively criticize programs or cars as to their operation and reliability, nor general precepts in their creation, maintenance, or upgrades.

I also remember when a bug fix was put in for zoning. It wasn't much of a fix, instead of ending up in the edge of a zone, you end up at the middle, at least in my experience. This bug pales in comparison to synching and fre bugs. Zoning bugs were mostly an annoyance, as the program still ran. Doing or not doing something resulting in me seeing my desktop with not so much as a fare thee well, or logging in and seeing the gameworld but not being able to do anything and therefore being exposed to attack goes beyond annoyance to lack of fuctionality. Tell me, as a programmer, which would you fix first: The penalty of running your program at a reduced level on occasion, or the penalty to not run at all on occasion? Yes, that question is semi-loaded, since the zoning bug may have been semiobvious, whereas fre's are not, but I find it hard to be very thankful.

I don't believe that my monthly fee gives me license to ask for the world and to be able to do anything that I want. I don't, however think that its unreasonable that a chunk of that goes towards fixing basic functionality. Doy, power armors, content are great but they only sink the hook deeper into those that already liking the game, and maybe keep others on the line. But many who aren't already hooked spit the bait out whilst saying its not worth getting kicked to the desktop for nothing.

I'd just like to see some diagnostics introduced. Instead of the fre dialog box that I occasionaly get instead of seeing a generic mouse pointer in the middle of the screen, I'd like to see something like "fre due to ...." Something us beta testers can report. About the best I can do now is tell reakktor that I crashed a bunch, and(I think) the last logged error.