We’re putting into place some fixes for issues that have been brought to our attention since launch. We are really grateful for all the help you have provided in the past to get these updates to a stable state before we unleash them on the player base,and we’ve got another opportunity for you to help out with testing the MAGELLAN update!
Note and note well: this build is UNSTABLE and may well screw up your save games. Only opt in if you are ok with it messing up your saves!
All that being said, if you’re interested in helping us out, here are the details for joining the new development branch:
Go to Sunless Sea in your Steam library, right click on it and go to ‘Properties’[/li][li]Go to the ‘Betas’ tab and enter the access code ‘absinthegreen’[/li][li]Select the Testing branch from the dropdown above[/li][li]Restart Steam.
You can opt out of this branch at any time by going back into the ‘Betas’ tab and switching of testing.
This update is looking to fix:
The horn bug that meant some players could only toot once should be fixed[/li][li]The OSX resolution issue experienced by players with non-standard or high resolutions will no longer cause the options menu to break[/li][li]Spawning should now be more reliable, so you shouldn’t experience infinite spawning zee-beasts[/li][li]Ramming behavior has been improved, so you should no longer be able to prevent zee-beasts from being able to attack you by hiding behind them[/li][li]When you exit the game halfway through a storylet chain, loading up the game should resume you at the point you were initially at now[/li][li]A fix for some tutorial errors people were experiencing
As ever, if you have a chance, we’d appreciate all bug reports from this branch to sunlesssea@failbettergames.com, letting us know that you experienced the issue while playing on the testing branch.
I’m afraid not, opting into this branch requires a Steam version of the game.
However, don’t worry, once the patch has been tested, we will roll it out to Steam, GOG and Humble Bundle versions of the game, so you won’t miss fixes or content.
Could people let us know if you have switched over to this branch? We’d like to get a sense of how many people are currently playing on it. We haven’t had that many support tickets from this branch, which either means not many people are on it, or it’s fixed every problem and is working as we’d hoped.
Installing it now! I’ll report anything I bump into. Bug-wise, I mean - if I bump into Rowena’s Rocks on the way out of London again, I’ll keep it to myself.
The turning issue should be resolved in this patch, yes. In addition to this, we’ve put in a number of performance improvements that should improve the frame rate, though we are still working on this further as we speak.
I’m not using it, but surely steam has reports/dashboards/some kind of interface which will tell you how many people have opted into the beta?
I’ll install it this weekend if you still need testers.
Yeah, I was really surprised when I found out that Steam Doesn’t give you information on that sort of stuff. For future patches, what we might do is set a Stat for Sunless Sea that’s set to 1 when you use a build we put on that branch, so we can see when people are on it. Seems odd that this isn’t information that is readily available though, eh?
Yep! That’s just madness! They’re such data nerds over at valve.
If there’s no easy way to track that using steam, maybe set up an internal tracker of some kind instead - have the game dial home with the version number and hashed user (so you know how many individual people are using it vs, just it being started up) I guess, along with other interesting data to help you understand how people are playing.
Hmmm, after having installed the beta-branch, I can find no improvement in the framerate, the stuttering remains, but at least the insane amount of zee-beasts are gone, that kept spawning.
It is strange, that the stuttering remains completely bound to the ticking fuel supply.
The current build on the testing branch does have a few performance improvements, but we hadn’t identified the main cause of this issue until quite recently. We’re currently working on the fix and it will be rolled out to the testing branch once it is done. I’ll put a post in here to let everyone know when that is live.
Glad to hear that the spawning zee-beasts issue has been resolved. That had been a very tricky problem for us to diagnose, as we were unable to reproduce the issue on our machines.
I’ve been using the testing branch for the past few days without issues. Horn is definitely working now, thanks! The stutter mentioned, I might be seeing when sailing along (world flow stops for a frame or so) but I thought that was more my machine. I can take a closer look at framerates with fraps.
cheers- Scott
Actually, here’s something: every now and then, I go to attack another ship, but while the firing solution is being worked out, the ship suddenly zips off to nearly off my screen leaving a full wake of expanding rings… sometimes they will zip twice and disappear. Everything else seems to be animating normally (gauges, my ships motion, zee monsters, etc). edited by milw on 2/21/2015
That certainly sounds odd. Could I possibly get you to submit a support ticket to support@failbettergames.com with details on what you were fighting, where etc. If you could attach your save file as well, that’d be great.
Be sure to mention you were on the testing branch.
Thanks for all your help everyone, it’s very much appreciated!
We think we’ve hit a breakthrough with this today! We’re going to do some testing around it this afternoon and, should nothing go wrong, release it into this branch later today.
UPDATE: Unfortunately, it looks like we’re going to have to hold back on the framerate fix. We are very, very close to a solution, but at present there are just a few too many edge cases that are causing errors. We are going to iron these out, give the fix the time it needs to make sure it’s stable, then we will release it in a follow-up patch. edited by Liam Welton on 2/24/2015
Could you let me know if the testing branch uses the same story files as the live game? It’ll affect my work on the wiki if they’re different, so I’d like to know in advance. That way, I won’t be updating stuff that’s not actually live.
edit: if you don’t mind sharing the details, is it related to the in-game clock for generating random event probability? I figured it might be due to too many checks every tick. edited by SporksAreGoodForYou on 2/24/2015
You play a version of the game with a different version number to the one you were last playing with. At this point, the stories are updated based on the content inside the new game software file.
You update the stories from in-game using the ‘Get new stories’ button. This gets the latest stories from our servers. This will always be the most up-to-date version of the content.
Step 1 was introduced to prevent people getting stuck with old stories but new software, which could cause issues. If you ensure that you have clicked ‘Get new stories’, you should always have the most up to date content.
Regarding the random event probability, the cause of the framerate freeze is sort of related to frequency, but more directly related to the number of qualities your character possesses. We check periodically to see what new stories you qualify for, based on your qualities. When you start the game, this is based on a list of about 2-3 dozen qualities, which it cycles through to establish if they are at an appropriate level. As you continue playing, this list grows longer.
While in Early Access, we never knowingly had anyone experience any issues with this. It could have been that it wasn’t correctly diagnosed by us, but another factor is we had much less content, and people were reaching mid-to-late game less frequently with their characters, so they just weren’t encountering this problem. This is why we’re only really getting a sense of the issue now after release.
We have a robust solution to this problem now, because it’s such a central part of the game and there are a lot of edge cases, we really want to make sure it’s safe and well tested before releasing the fix.
Thanks again for all your help testing this people, it’s really appreciated. Once again, if you’re experiencing any issues, let us know by dropping us an email to sunlesssea@failbettergames.com with details.
We have now roll out the patch that was live on this testing branch, so please feel free to switch off this branch. Full patch notes can be found here: http://www.failbettergames.com/blemmigan-update/
Thank you for all your support! We will be in touch when the framerate fixes are in a stable enough position to be tested and invite anyone interested in testing for us to sign up for the branch again.