A game of survival, trade and exploration in the universe of Fallen London
Turning radius needs to not depend on frame rate
zwol
Posts: 40
1/11/2015
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Some time ago someone observed that your ship's turning radius appears to depend only on the frame rate. I had been playing SS only on my laptop, whose graphics chip is not terribly impressive (it's a five-year-old Macbook Pro; I don't recall exactly what it has); yesterday I wanted to try a fresh character for Diamond without losing my existing save, so I installed the game on my desktop. Now that doesn't have a terribly impressive graphics card either (again, about five years old and I don't remember exactly what it has) but it does have more GPU grunt than the laptop.
On my laptop, the ship turns very, very slowly, and I had always assumed that was intentional, and I recall complaining here some time ago about how it's difficult to get out of Van Horn Harbor or Port Cecil without hitting the far side of the bay unless you cut the engines immediately after undocking. It also meant that "sail backward and plink" was the only viable combat strategy for things that can't be snuck up on and killed in one hit.
On the desktop, the ship turns on a dime. I can go to forward speed '2' immediately after undocking at Van Horn and still make the turn without running aground. I haven't gotten good at it yet, but I can also see that combat will be much easier and more sophisticated strategies will be viable. It's such a dramatic difference that I suspect poor frame rate may be the #1 cause of people having trouble with the new combat. (I note that several people have said they can't turn fast enough to keep up with the zee monsters.)
This is a serious, serious bug. The simulation clock should not depend in any way on the frame rate, and your ship's performance in particular should depend only on in-universe characteristics of the ship.
N.B. Van Horn should still be changed so you undock facing open water. 
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xKiv
Posts: 846
1/11/2015
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How about measuring how much time passes between screen refreshes, and adjusting based on that. The game obviously already does that for movement speed - otherwise computers with worse turn rate would also have slower forward movement, and there would be no "can't make a turn because there's no room for it" difficulties. Everything would just be slower.
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https://www.fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/xKiv - a witchful, percussive, dangermous and shadowry scholar of coexplodence, hopsidirean, and walker of fallen kitties.
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+1
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Mac
Posts: 18
2/13/2015
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Hey folks! Thanks for all the feedback regarding this issue. The short (and positive) answer is that this was a problem, some of code was Time based some was not which meant that your Turn speed would vary depending on frame rate. However there is now a fix that will be released with the next update.
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Unity Developer | Failbetter Games
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SouthSea Rutherby
Posts: 224
2/13/2015
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Mac wrote:
Hey folks! Thanks for all the feedback regarding this issue. The short (and positive) answer is that this was a problem, some of code was Time based some was not which meant that your Turn speed would vary depending on frame rate. However there is now a fix that will be released with the next update.
I am actually quite thrilled with the responsiveness and openness of the development team in this. Bugs and system issues will always be an issue in any new project but so far Failbetter has dealt with these issues beautifully and they've really made me a believer in the company.
Thanks again, fellows.
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Now the proud captain of Mr. Eaten's Revenge
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