Spiral Knights - Environment testing?

Environment testing?

4 replies [Last post]

Sun, 11/20/2011 - 04:42

Taketh

Hey, has this game been tested by you guys on a bunch of different environments like Windows 7 home edition for one? I have lost count on the number of people that have tried installing this game and it just doesnt work, my guess is 5 out of 8 people couldnt get the thing to work which is pretty poor.

Most people are non-technical and not willing to spend that long trying to fix a game, the friend that was willing is still having problems with the game (white screen now) and i am embarrassed to ask her to try again as its the third or fourth time trying.

Has the game been tested?

Sun, 11/20/2011 - 08:51

Juances

You don't see too many people

You don't see too many people like you around. Doesn't that tell you something?

I have 3 different PCs -Win xp, Win 7 Home and Win7 Ultimate- both work without problems. Also you don't have to be an expert to understand what are the tehcnical problems and how to fix them- wich in most cases come from a bad PC configuration, like bad drivers,etc not the game itself-

Sun, 11/20/2011 - 10:08

Dogrock

I've run this game

I've run this game successfully on three different Win 7 (two Home and one Pro), two different Vista and one Ubuntu setup all without a hitch. I've been poking at this game for well over a year now and the vast majority of problems come from out of date drivers. Though, as Juances said, you don't have to be a tech whiz to perform tasks like keeping your computer up to date. If you can remember to take your car in for a oil change you can remember to update your drivers.

If you're helping your friend with this game, why not ask here first instead of struggling with it? There's a few helpful people who've seen just about everything that could cause the game to go wonky and could likely help set things straight in a handful of posts.

Sun, 11/20/2011 - 15:26

Taketh

Maybe it has been an unlucky

Maybe it has been an unlucky streak, but i am stating what i have noticed. About 5 out of 8 of the people i come across are having problems with this game. The game isnt that graphic intensive, ive seen the specs of their computers and they should be capable of playing the game. It seems weird that games like "NFSU 2" can run without a hitch yet this game requires you to apparently update graphics drivers....

I will try and talk to the people who are having problems with the games to liaise with u guys but i doubt it will be anytime soon.

Sun, 11/20/2011 - 17:09

Starlinvf

To answer your first

To answer your first question, yes, they do testing with OSX, WinXP, Vista and might now include Win7. I'm not sure how they do Linux testing, but I've never heard of it having issues that wasn't a direct problem with Java. Specific tiers of the Windows OS are irrelevant since the only difference is extra features. The core OS is exactly the same for each generation.

The game runs on OpenGL, and support for it in graphics drivers are usually clunky unless iD releases a big title (Quake, Doom, Rage, etc, all done in OpenGL). When that happens, they tune the drivers to run the game better, and other OGL titles can reap the benefits. Need for Speed on the other hand is built on DirectX, which gets constant improvements in driver development due to its wide spread use, and orders of magnitude more feedback to help guide it.

But one big mistake I've seen made frequently is assuming Intel Graphics is good enough because of the amount of VRAM allocated to it. This is actually a lot more complicated then people are aware of. While some of the more recent versions are able to run the game (a bit unreliably), the critical factor in making this work is having the latest drivers directly from Intel's site. This is usually a problem since the Windows bundled drivers are absolutely ancient, and rarely complete by the time they are submitted. Since Windows (OS) doesn't actively seek updates from the vendors, and vendors rarely submit driver updates to Microsoft once an OS is launched, its up to the user to keep those up to date...... which 90% isn't even aware they need to.

SK also has a 2-fold issue with software support. The game is written in Java, which lets it run on any OS that has a working version of Java. While granting multi-platform support, its also at the mercy of the Java software written for the OS, and how the drivers interact with THAT. Mac users can attest to this with the almost illogical issues the game has with Mac's version Java, that literally cleared up the new Lion OSX.

Since the game doesn't run native in the OS, and the lack of understanding on the system requirements creates a perfect storm for non-techie users, who don't/can't do regular maintenance to a computer.

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Environment testing?