Spiral Knights - Polaris

Polaris

15 replies [Last post]

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 15:41

Zkpc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gyGSEQY29g

why do people use polaris in lockdown? the hate for its use as an obnoxious, hindering status-inflicting gun is well known enough for innocence to generally be ignored as the reason. is there that much desire to frustrate and anger our opponents in our LD community? if polaris was not used lockdown would be more pleasant for everybody, but with polaris only the selfish user wins.

if i am angering you in lockdown it is probably not intentional. if you dont like my valiance, strategically use some other weapon. dont spam that miserable excuse of a weapon against me since you will not help anybody but yourself.

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 17:01

Retequizzle

a knight need not have courage; just valiance

valiance is life

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 18:03

Ill-Fate-Ill

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 21:19

Extra-Salty

Salt tastes gr8

Seems like a very good weapon choice because of all its advantages. It can cover a wide area, push opponents, and inflict Shock. I don't believe people use it solely for the sake of making the opposing team angry. If you don't like Polaris, maybe you can strategically use another weapon to counter it.

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 21:45

Skeptics

^And this is why we don't make ragethreads.

Sorry Zk, but he's right. Not a lot of people enjoying valiance either. It's fast, annoying, and it's a big bullet.
Polaris is just another add to the 'reasons why Lockdown does not make me happy' thread.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 10:46

Dutch-Oven

I have polaris in most of my gunner loadouts simply because it's too useful not to have. I really enjoy using it sparingly, mixing in with my other guns to create a diversion or block off an enemy route. Of course I'm guilty of overusing it as well but I try my best not to.

The most fun and rewarding way I found to use polaris is to just let off one bullet during a fight and watch your opponent run into it while he's busy dodging all your other bullets. Unlike just spamming the thing, hitting someone with just one bullet takes some skill.

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 15:57

Son-Of-Hades

i use polaris cuz its OPness

i use polaris cuz its OPness is fun to abuse

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 17:14

Skeptics

When the f did we break

When the f did we break Hades? He's been going full retard for months now

Sat, 06/07/2014 - 01:15

Bleyken

Learn to dodge.

Sat, 06/07/2014 - 08:08

Feyi-Feyi

'Learn to dodge' is the worst reasoning ever.

I can dodge polaris all day, but that still doesn't mean it is a fun environment to play in, nor does it make it a less broken gun.

Tue, 06/10/2014 - 05:15

#10

Achys

The polaris not in use

The polaris not in use frequently but just by players who do want to ruining a party.

Dutch play very well with because it knows how use it, is not spamming such as some players.

Tue, 06/10/2014 - 06:12

#11

Oroseira

"valiance is life" yes indeed.

I actually have to agree with Retequizzle; I find the blaster line more fun to use over the pulsar line.

Tue, 06/10/2014 - 09:10

#12

Petater

Lag Bomb: the gun

I avoid Polaris because apparently my gpu driver lags on it and it's notorious for being the don't touch me gun. When you run at a solid 60 fps then a Polaris comes along and knocks it down to 20, it kinda gets annoying fast. Mist bombs in LD do that too. Valiance and the Antigua line guns don't have this issue.

Tue, 06/10/2014 - 12:56

#13

Retequizzle

^ might be an issue with java itself and not necessarily the gpu; even though you're a self-professed computer whiz, have you considered reading up on thrill's RAM allocation thread and done any of those steps to remedy the slowdown?

only reason i ask is because even with a lower-end GPU considering what's available a year after i made my computer purchase, i don't find lag to be an issue with mist bombs or polaris, so it's interesting to hear that others do

Tue, 06/10/2014 - 14:07

#14

Petater

It depends on whether the driver caches stuff or not and if it's a unified memory system (VRAM is actually your system ram, just shared). If I run an OpenGL debugger during these stalls, you can see sk just constantly busy wait spins in a texture reupload sequence. Being that I like to play on a laptop with the gpu sharing main ram, the texture uploads stall the CPU itself when it accesses ram. Thank you multiplexing. Most triple A games retain a texture sheet on the gpu so these textures can be optimized, rather than reupload frames of a texture over and over. The computer can run crysis, yet sk lags. It depends highly on the OpenGL programming, and more often than not sk just reuploads the entire state rather than do slight modifications.

Forgot to mention, but my jvm ignores those Xmm and Xms settings applied for startup ram limits. I could use 64 bit java, buuuuuut seeing how spiral knights crashes on startup for java 7 and java 8 on mac, I doubt I can use the 64 java available. Yes really, install java 8 without previously having apple java installed. Watch how fast sk fails to boot on a retina mac. OOO unsupported macs without realizing it. Before someone says "oh but it works here on mac or nah it's your install"... I tested and reinstalled from scratch on a zeroed out HDD multiple times a blank copy of OS X, finding out at what part sk stops working. It only works if you install apple java 1.6 at some point, which is no longer supported. Installing oracle java 7 or 8 with apple java will boot sk, but only because command line java runs apple java still. Applets in this case will not work on Mac OS X though. Installing oracle java 7 or 8 without installing java 6 ever will cause sk to not run either on desktop or via an applet. Also if you install the java 8 JDK on mac that'll overwrite the default java 6. Basically OOO has been too lazy to update sk to work on java 7 or 8 on macs for the past year, and anyone with a mac running sk is doing so because underneath the java installs there's still the outdated and insecure apple java running.

Tl;DR if OOO really does care, maybe they should like.. Support the platforms they say they support? Honestly I think it's because there's not enough developers at OOO working on sk anymore and they don't even have a mac to run sufficient tests on. The May 21st patch added new bugs for mac users even. Copy paste now is broken if you release the c or v before control (c or v get "stuck"). Also on mac the system display size is not changed, even if you change resolution in game. This means if I set my desktop to a low resolution and sk to a high resolution, the sk resolution will be rescaled down rather than sk update the system display size. This leads to tiny blurry everything. If I set the desktop to a high res and sk to a low res, the mouse pointer will be tiny and sk will still run inefficiently due to an unnecessary upscale.

Tue, 06/10/2014 - 14:44

#15

Feyi-Feyi

This. ^

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