Pyrochaos
01-08-2010, 06:34 PM
Hi everybody,
I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents about this as I saw a lot of flak thrown at us and this is one of the sites I visit every day, I wanted to react:
No save-games in demo - I admit that was a mistake. The original reasoning was that we couldn't provide compatibility between the demo savegames and the full game and therefore it was deactivated. I'd like to rectify that, but I dont' want to bother QA at this point until they've done with the patch testing.
Patches - all I can say is that the bloody things have been there since November, but the process of getting them released is just really slow. The problem is that they need to test it against every single version, which due to the advent of online distribution has risen to over 40. Doesn't help you, doesn't help us, and we're just biting our nails out of sheer frustration while we're waiting.
Save-game location - if I'm not mistaking, the location comes from some specification document we got, which is also why you'll see some other games put it there. I actually agree that it's not an ideal place, but nobody stood still during development and reflected on it.
Windows 7 - the game was developed while Windows 7 wasn't out yet and we checked it on beta versions. The one thing that's really important is that the DX9 drivers are installed on Windows 7 (they are not included).
Game tanking - it's actually doing quite well. It's been charting in most territories, with top 3 positions taken in both Russia and Germany and entered at 6 on Steam in the US.
Securom - Larian's official attitude on copy protection is that it's a waste of time, but unfortunately publishers don't agree with that view. We learnt our lesson with Beyond Divinity which is why we stripped the copy protection for that in the form of a patch, and the remastered Divinity versions don't have any copy protection (at least none that we put on it). Still, for a copy protection system, we aren't seeing a lot of issues with Securom.
DivDiv remaster - the digital distribution versions have been updated to handle the issues that were reported.
On another note, I think it really sucks that some people have issues with the game, considering the insane amount of time and resources spent on QA. PC wise it's just impossible to cover all bases and we only shipped when no reproducible game breaking or blocking bugs were signalled by at least 4 companies involved in the QA process. On PC a lot of the issues we are seeing are OS/HW/Driver related or "some piece of software installed" related. We're fixing everything we manage to reproduce, but of course, it doesn't help that those patches aren't out yet. I know that doesn't help for the people who are encountering issues, but we really are pushing as hard as we can for getting them out there.
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9510&page=3 (http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9510&page=3)
Patch will contain:
Hi all,
I just wanted to give you the update on the next patch. The US release contains a number of fixes and improvements, based upon your feedback, and the new patch has been derived from that. It's currently in QA but as the game is pretty big and they need to test it against all the different language versions and both platforms, it might still take a bit of time before it's released, but we're trying to get it done as soon as possible. To give you an idea of what the new patch contains, here's a small (but not finite) list:
-New targetting system
-No more getting stuck on dynamic objects
-More hints on the map
-Weapons now hit multiple enemies if they are standing within the arc the weapon makes
-No more delays between skills and attacks i.e. the avatar reacts much faster in combat
-A bunch of fixes and other improvements
We'll keep you posted on when it clears QA.
There's also a demo in the works which should be clearing pretty soon too.
Apologies for the time it's taking, but nowadays it takes longer to test something than to actually implement it, but I really hope it'll be released soon.
Cheers
Lar
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=394638#Post394638
I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents about this as I saw a lot of flak thrown at us and this is one of the sites I visit every day, I wanted to react:
No save-games in demo - I admit that was a mistake. The original reasoning was that we couldn't provide compatibility between the demo savegames and the full game and therefore it was deactivated. I'd like to rectify that, but I dont' want to bother QA at this point until they've done with the patch testing.
Patches - all I can say is that the bloody things have been there since November, but the process of getting them released is just really slow. The problem is that they need to test it against every single version, which due to the advent of online distribution has risen to over 40. Doesn't help you, doesn't help us, and we're just biting our nails out of sheer frustration while we're waiting.
Save-game location - if I'm not mistaking, the location comes from some specification document we got, which is also why you'll see some other games put it there. I actually agree that it's not an ideal place, but nobody stood still during development and reflected on it.
Windows 7 - the game was developed while Windows 7 wasn't out yet and we checked it on beta versions. The one thing that's really important is that the DX9 drivers are installed on Windows 7 (they are not included).
Game tanking - it's actually doing quite well. It's been charting in most territories, with top 3 positions taken in both Russia and Germany and entered at 6 on Steam in the US.
Securom - Larian's official attitude on copy protection is that it's a waste of time, but unfortunately publishers don't agree with that view. We learnt our lesson with Beyond Divinity which is why we stripped the copy protection for that in the form of a patch, and the remastered Divinity versions don't have any copy protection (at least none that we put on it). Still, for a copy protection system, we aren't seeing a lot of issues with Securom.
DivDiv remaster - the digital distribution versions have been updated to handle the issues that were reported.
On another note, I think it really sucks that some people have issues with the game, considering the insane amount of time and resources spent on QA. PC wise it's just impossible to cover all bases and we only shipped when no reproducible game breaking or blocking bugs were signalled by at least 4 companies involved in the QA process. On PC a lot of the issues we are seeing are OS/HW/Driver related or "some piece of software installed" related. We're fixing everything we manage to reproduce, but of course, it doesn't help that those patches aren't out yet. I know that doesn't help for the people who are encountering issues, but we really are pushing as hard as we can for getting them out there.
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9510&page=3 (http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9510&page=3)
Patch will contain:
Hi all,
I just wanted to give you the update on the next patch. The US release contains a number of fixes and improvements, based upon your feedback, and the new patch has been derived from that. It's currently in QA but as the game is pretty big and they need to test it against all the different language versions and both platforms, it might still take a bit of time before it's released, but we're trying to get it done as soon as possible. To give you an idea of what the new patch contains, here's a small (but not finite) list:
-New targetting system
-No more getting stuck on dynamic objects
-More hints on the map
-Weapons now hit multiple enemies if they are standing within the arc the weapon makes
-No more delays between skills and attacks i.e. the avatar reacts much faster in combat
-A bunch of fixes and other improvements
We'll keep you posted on when it clears QA.
There's also a demo in the works which should be clearing pretty soon too.
Apologies for the time it's taking, but nowadays it takes longer to test something than to actually implement it, but I really hope it'll be released soon.
Cheers
Lar
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=394638#Post394638