Spiral Knights - Discussion for today's update

Discussion for today's update

16 replies [Last post]

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 13:25

Petater

- Surprised region lock wasn't removed by OOO last year when Game Cyber closed down their franchise of SK. I mean, I supposed back then Sega wanted more cash before selling back SK to the people they bought it from, which is why it's strange it wasn't done last year.

- Mac support "improved".... Uh still didn't fix the issue with not supporting native fullscreen and/or getting exclusive GPU access. It's been 2 months or so since they were told what API call they need to use in the open source LWJGL lib to enable such.

FYI to the developer who may or may not be reading this: Older LWJGL used to do exclusive GPU access, but then stopped in the 2.8.X versions due to a bug in LWJGL. LWJGL unfortunately was never fixed in their 2.X versions for this bug, and calling legacy fullscreen in it will simply place an overlay of SK over the Mac desktop rather than tell the window manager to not draw the desktop. The only way to grab exclusive access is to use native fullscreen on OS X, which SK does not do. As a result, SK runs like trash on mac still (well multiple reasons, but fixing this will alleviate one source). Due to a combination of multiple oversights within LWJGL and SK, SK gets page swapped even with free available VRAM causing stutter.

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 13:45

Abcdz

No need for 2

http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/115334

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 13:47

Petater

That thread is commenting about the reboot. This one has the appropriate title.

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 13:56

Bopp

As a result, SK runs like

As a result, SK runs like trash on mac still (well multiple reasons, but fixing this will alleviate one source).

I understand that you are talking about graphics performance and the windowing system, and I appreciate that you are trying to help the developers, but someone reading your comments might take them out of context.

I play SK on my 7-year-old iMac and my 3-year-old MacBook Air. They connect to the Internet over WiFi from a DSL modem. Nothing about this setup says "gaming powerhouse". And yet I can play SK on high-quality graphics settings, with smooth frame rates, pretty low lag, and few of the technical issues that many other players seem to have.

So it seems that SK works well on a Mac. But maybe I don't know what I'm missing.

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 13:57

John-Greycore

Grey Havens Staff

word passed along

Petater, your comments have been passed along, and some came back: "There's a big list and these LWJGL issues are a lot further down it. There are also some issues you don't know about."

We're a small crew and trying to balance a variety of priorities. We appreciate your notes, but slow progress doesn't mean no progress.

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 14:07

Petater

@Bopp

If you play long enough on mac or go to the start of vanaduke boss room, SK will spin half a CPU core in kernel blocking SK from running even with other CPU cores free as it's paging out heavily from VRAM, as it lacks exclusive GPU access and the state changes SK uses don't jive with deprecated OpenGL calls being used in a mondern desktop. This is with most VRAM being free.

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 14:06

Golden-Crusaderr

Maybe just maybe

Maybe just maybe some of your problems might be on your end Tater just saying

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 14:12

Petater

@Golden-Crusaderr

If you recall a certain edit someone did to do native fullscreen, you'd see why that was already ruled out.

@Bopp
I have a hard time believing you actually check for problems or play for more than one minute, as I don't recall you ever bringing up Steam overlay not working for an entire year on SK for El Captain exclusively. Something John-Greycore would be frustrated to find a lack thereof of reporting by end users, as it prevents steam money from being used.

In addition, this is also GPU driver dependent, which your iMac has a different model of, but this problem is affecting nvidia GPUs, on OS X.

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 14:17

Fangel

I mean, only the standalone mac installer was changed if I'm reading the announcement correctly. Steam and browser based may be different so be sure you're testing the standalone only there.

It mentions the "installer", not "mac support", as being improved. If the actual game had modifications to it too then it would be nice to have that cleared up.

---

When gamecyber shut down I assume the business contracts may still have been in effect, else SEGA just had no interest in the asian market after watching those within the old servers shut down. Granted, they may not have accounted that the reason people stopped playing is because they needed more people, but businesses usually have multiple layers of babble that prevents certain things from being done despite how simple they may be.

It's nice to see the slime key showing up in more places as well, as that'll make them available even when the casino isn't here. If the slime keys are still discounted by smitty however it'll remain better to just wait for it to come back, but people are impatient so it all works out in the end.

Also it's nice to see the shadow lair conversation fixed up. I sent that in the other day.
That being said, Clotho told me that the F2 bug reporting was bonkered up, so to submit a bug report from now on you'll want to use a support ticket and they'll pass on the information for you!

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 14:20

Bopp

response

I have a hard time believing you actually check for problems...

You are correct. I don't go out of my way to check for problems. I know mainly about problems that affect me directly, which are thankfully few.

...or play for more than one minute...

You're incorrect this time. I play for many minutes at a stretch.

...as I don't recall you ever bringing up Steam overlay not working for an entire year on SK for El Captain exclusively.

I don't play through Steam. My account is through www.spiralknights.com.

In addition, this is also GPU driver dependent, which your iMac has a different model of, but this problem is affecting nvidia GPUs, on OS X.

That I can certainly believe. Cheers.

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 14:28

#10

Petater

@bopp

Never tried steam funds for buying regular games? surprising to say the least.

@Fangel

I don't want theoreticals to be explained by you. That just alleviates actual facts from being checked. The fact is GameCyber closed theirs down last year in June forgoing their franchising of SK. Whether or not there actually was a contract still in effect is the unknown, except by GH staff.

The comment about mac support not being fixed was that it implied it was strange they'd tweak the part on Mac that was not experiencing game breaking bugs.

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 15:20

#11

Skiino

"Get windows"

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 15:46

#12

Fangel

...

I give theories because without an answer, your theory is as good as mine. I share my thoughts because keeping thoughts to yourself doesn't make for either conversation or getting answers.

Theories aren't just pulled out of no-where. They typically have some standing on their own. Things that make me believe it wasn't an immediate easy decision include: SEGA pushing OOO assets into the mobile market/away from Spiral Knights, eventual letting go of OOO from SEGA, asians asking for a server forever but only really getting a response from the first thread complaining about it on the forums since the crossover, etc.

I want answers as much as you, and once we have an official answer I'll stop theorizing about it. Until then Grey Havens can be fighting off alien slug people who have a severe misunderstanding of sarcasm but want to keep it secret, so they're only pushing out updates as they can.

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 15:54

#13

Petater

@Skiino

Or drop mac support.

@Fangel

This back and forth on guesses has gone on for too long regardless. I wish they'd tell us updates in advance that we can test for playability though. Case in point is the casino flopping for not really being casino-y in the first place. That's what the test server is for.... That and being able to say they're not going to (rightfully) release anything soon while actually showing they're doing something.

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 15:59

#14

Jessecho

Hm.

Wasn't the Casino being worked on by OOO, like, last Christmas or something?

The transfer to GH could be partly why it was so incomplete last time. (I enjoy it this time though) Makes me wonder why they didn't put it on the test server in its Lockbox-less state before making it go live.

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 16:19

#15

Petater

@John-Greycore

I don't mean to come off poorly here. It would be wise to be more visible in future updates via test server though. Putting something on test server does not give a mandate for release, but does squash SK ded threads.

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 16:35

#16

Fangel

mhmm

Again, I agree that transparency is nice. However, I'd rather everything be released and documented rather than each update previewed, tested, then released to ensure a specific outcome. You'll notice in the original wording of the casino the announcement read "the rewards can change at any time". They clearly wanted feedback on how to make a good casino, however when you are attempting to make a casino fun and fair it's better to do so when players have limited resources - IE, not the testing server.

Large scale updates, such as new boss missions, weapon overhauls (gunner update), or forging should be put onto the test server to test for gameplay bugs as they have rather large implications on the game. Heck, boss missions can be left off that list because surprises are always fun - imagine that the March of the Tortodrones event was out-of-the-blue like Apocrea instead of hinted for a while. It would've been huge amount of hype and happiness instead of the slightly lukewarm response it did get (however, everyone agreed that tortodrones being brought back was pretty great).

But yes, test server is good for stuff. I'd like to see it used more regularly for large-scale updates, but smaller scale items should get the Golden Slime Casino treatment - ie, release it then tweak it as needed. I'd rather be hyped and excited over something small than be done with over it by the time it releases.

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Discussion for today's update