Alpha Test Feedback Sept 5th 2015

Join us at www.ageofascent.com for a 30 min playtest Saturday, 5th Sep, 2015 at 3pm Central US, 4pm East US, 8pm UTC/GMT, 9pm UK (Desktop browser, mouse and keyboard)

Scores

http://player.ageofascent.com/Home/Scores/2015-09-05/

Release Notes

  • Fix for HDPI screens and resolutions
  • Mouse flight (Pointer Lock) now works for MS Edge on Win10 insder builds >= 10532
  • New server-end technologies have been deployed for increased smoothness and faster networking experience
  • In honour of New Horizons’ successful mission, Pluto & Charon adorn this test!
  • Free-for-All (FFA) - all ships are hostile
  • Everyone is on Dual Pulse Cannon weapon-type
  • Next playtest after this one will be in four weeks (October 3rd)

If you want to know the bigger picture and where we are heading don’t forget to check out: About Age of Ascent

Thank you all for joining us on this journey!

Great test today, everything ran perfectly, no crashes or performance issues. Thanks, I had a lot of fun.

I was really able to pick out the new people this round. Massive increase in kill count.

No hax.

When I ran away from a perfectly timed 1 health left situation, and then choose to stay back and admire the beauty, I noticed a graphics glitch.

On the carrier, parts of the surface switched from its own color, to the color of the pixels behind it.

IAMGEEKEYEY how you do it will always be a mystery to me!

Anyway just 3 things i noticed:

  1. When people used their boosters there seemed to be a little lag and then they jumped forward. Not sure if anyone else saw that but it was quite annoying seeing as i thought they slowed down not sped up!
  2. When i first joined the only things that loaded were the players, the bullets and the space stations/ battleships(i think they are that at least)
  3. Had some weird texture/lighting things with the space stations/ battleships not sure what that was about but nothing too mayor!

For the rest enjoyed myself!

47-0 is quite something!

yvw Ubluntu! And yes, even on my very lowend laptop I was pleased with the performance. Network latency much improved - and server processing times came down substantially. Hurrah and Huzzah!

Strangely, I have a feeling that was intentional - though TC can confirm. I think he was trying out reflectivity in WebGL, and so the surface of the carrier, up close, is set to reflective (so you see the starmap).

Afterburners will change to have an acceleration curve as one of their parameters, which should smooth out this artifact.

Yeah, the starmap and the planets are quite hefty img files, so they can take a bit of time to come in. In the full game, this will be pre-loaded and cached in advance of rendering.

Was that the same reflectivity thing IAMAGEEKYEY noticed?

Many thanks everyone - we got a ton of very useful server telemetry from that test.

SC

I noticed that as well but I only saw it a couple of times, usually when I was quite close to someone. Other than that the game ran smoothly and my ping and fps were stable throughout the test.

I had a lot of fun and cant wait for the next one.

I’m going to geuss it was, however i am blaming my own computer its not necessarily the best one around. However if IAMGEEKYEY also said it i am guessing it might be a bigger problem(well i mean its not really too big of a problem i guess)?

Lol just realised im 4th :smiley:

46-5 is also pretty awesome. One of these days you or IAMAGEEKYEY should video it so we can all learn your tactics! :smile:

If it’s the reflectivity thing (TC can confirm whether that was switched on or not; I didn’t notice, sadly) then no, it’s not a problem at all. But we can probably do better with hybridising the surface material between matte and gloss, so it looks more clearly like a reflection and the underlying material looks more solid. Of course, very highly reflective ship surfaces could also function in a visual ‘stealth’ capacity as well; one of the reasons we have been testing it out.

SC

Like the sound of this. However would it not be simpler to make them sort of ‘invisible’?

I was thinking about that during the test and I’ll see what I can manage for the next test.

Yeah I’ll find a screen recorder and record next time. Maybe I will set up a whole typed out presentation on my tactics.

Perhaps, but highly reflective is a more likely scenario from a science/tech/cost point of view.

True invisibility would involve bending light around the ship, and that would require a gravitational well of such magnitude that the ship would be spottable from light-years away on any gravidar.

Now you can simulate invisibility by coating an entire ship with (eg) LCD materials and cameras etc to project images of what’s on the other side… but that would only function when viewed from a specific viewpoint (much like those people who paint themselves to look like the background - it only works from a specific camera viewpoint).

That would be… well… ‘Awesome’ :wink:

That, too, would be ‘YEY’ :smile:

Many thanks, guys,

SC

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Turns out if you are using Windows 10 there is a way to record the screen that comes built in through the Xbox app. Here is an article that explains it better than I can: http://betanews.com/2015/07/19/windows-10-secret-screen-recording-tool/
Will record the next play test and put it on Youtube.

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One more thing i forgot to add!

When the bots spawned, they were all shooting at this 1 area, me being me flew right into it but was disappointed to see i took no damage. Will bots soon be able to actually hurt us or will it always be they can’t damage us?

Camtasia was recently on steam and that is the screen recorder I use. Very easy to use.
Really wish I could have jumped in this one!

Lucky kill shot on @Spp :wink:

https://vine.co/v/etZuIxYMX5O

Must have decided since I kept missing to fly into my cross hairs…

And a view from afar:

https://vine.co/v/etZvr57VWVV

Goes to show my maneuvering needs work :stuck_out_tongue: @GM_thundercat
However nice shooting when i moved around, goes to show it wasn’t expected i guess

I downloaded windows 10, so I could do this. It, is, horrible, in every way. Even if it didn’t bug as much as it could possibly bug, or lag as much as it could possibly lag, it wouldn’t be a improvement. Anyway, I’m having trouble finding a good screen recorder that doesn’t download malware. Any ideas anyone?

The built in XBOX app should do it? Short cut key: Win + Alt + R