3.1 is live

Vavrik

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I hate to say this... but it feels like I've gone though 100 minor revisions. I'm bored with this game (maybe I should make a youtube video of me dancing in the bar with my new shoes and shirt I purchased, cause that is about what I feel this game has delivered so far), and it has not even made it out of alpha. I tried to play it about 6 months ago... just can't get into it any more. Am I going to liquidate my fleet? NEVER! I'll take this good or bad investment to the grave, but I am not buying anything else until I feel better about it.
Something tells me I would rather not see that video ... but I certainly understand how you feel. there really isn't a lot to do, and it feels like they're delivering new ships in lieu of stability, game play mechanics for those same ships, and game content. It's kind of backed them into a corner with especially the older backers who are running out of patience.

But I'm not concerned with it being alpha. I've kind of always known this was a 10 year project, and I'm just hoping CIG survives until then. I'm happy that they've divided the tasks up into chunks that they can deliver every 3 months. But I'm watching for slippage. They need to hold themselves to that published timeline, especially in terms of the stability, and the game play mechanics for current ships. Most of them right now, are nothing more than flying bricks, or like the Reclaimer, a flying mountain.

I took kind of the same approach too, not buying new ships. I really want this game to succeed though, simply because if it does, it raises the bar on game software. You can already see the impact on other games. So what I did instead of buying ships, which I don't think is sustainable anyway, is to start a developer subscription. Instead of paying a couple hundred dollars every so often for a ship I can't use, or fly that's just going to contribute to the negative feelings and worry, I pay 10 bucks/month.

The other thing is, the level of game play right now is minimal, and it's hard not to get bored. That's OK for me, I've done software test and validation before. It's mind-numbing work, but it's often necessary to ensure that complex software works properly. I look at it that way because if I don't, then I'm playing a game - and that game is mind-numblingly boring. You can only visit Arccorp to pick your nose so many times before you start to feel the brain cells die.
 

Bambooza

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I took kind of the same approach too, not buying new ships. I really want this game to succeed though, simply because if it does, it raises the bar on game software. You can already see the impact on other games. So what I did instead of buying ships, which I don't think is sustainable anyway, is to start a developer subscription. Instead of paying a couple hundred dollars every so often for a ship I can't use, or fly that's just going to contribute to the negative feelings and worry, I pay 10 bucks/month.

The other thing is, the level of game play right now is minimal, and it's hard not to get bored. That's OK for me, I've done software test and validation before. It's mind-numbing work, but it's often necessary to ensure that complex software works properly. I look at it that way because if I don't, then I'm playing a game - and that game is mind-numblingly boring. You can only visit Arccorp to pick your nose so many times before you start to feel the brain cells die.

Which is why I am glad there is QA department that I can send my work to. But you are right that at the moment while they implement all of the engine enhancements and start implementing the base for them to build the main game features on the game itself is rather bland.

I do like your idea of the developer subscription.
 

Lorddarthvik

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Round 2 of the 3.1.1 update is ready. Or it's the precursor to either another rollback, or a very slow weekend.
I gave it a quick look and so far it's rather bad. Fps is way down into the 10s, and constant hitching/spikes so mostly unplayable. It might have fixed some crashes, but I got nowhere under 5 minutes of playing with such low fps, so I gave for the moment. Will check back later, maybe I get a better server or sumthing
 

Lorddarthvik

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Yeah so far, so good. I'm getting an extra 4 or 5 FPS too.
How in the world are you getting more fps than before??? I'm getting way less, although when I'm off Ollisar, I'm getting a more consistent 25-30fps than before, although when near planets I got way way more for shorter periods. Overall everythings gotten worse for me.

Also a stupid little window keeps popping up that says I should free up at least 8GB memory before continuing of the 16gig available, as I only have 3gigs free. OFC I only have 3gigs ffs, SC is eating up 11gigs when in the PU!!! It's quiet annoying as it just crashes the game and it's absolutley pointless.

I gave it another go, crashed out on load, crashed out on ship select console, crashed with some 400001 code or sumthing, than finally loaded in to PU. Accepted a delivery mission, went to Deymar with my Aurora which didn't crash the game this time. Crashed into planet due to insane hichting near planet (which is mentioned as fixed both on RTV and in patch notes I think). Landed, picked up box, than I tried to load it onto the top of the ladder as usual. It doesn't work anymore. Box either jumps or simply falls through the ship. After like 5 tries to place it inside the ship, it fell through everything and was 8K km away in like 3 seconds, so I just gave up and quit. This is by far the worst state the game has been in since 3.0, for me at least.

This whole rushed 3.1 is a joke really. It's getting worse day by day. I don't think anything is getting tested like this (the underlying core system is still way too incomplete for that), apart from the new ships, which frankly, need zero actual player testing until Beta... I'm really hoping that 3.2 will bring the promised core performance and stability updates. That would show some real progress finally.
 
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Vavrik

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How in the world are you getting more fps than before??? I'm getting way less, although when I'm off Ollisar, I'm getting a more consistent 25-30fps than before, although when near planets I got way way more for shorter periods. Overall everythings gotten worse for me.

Also a stupid little window keeps popping up that says I should free up at least 8GB memory before continuing of the 16gig available, as I only have 3gigs free. OFC I only have 3gigs ffs, SC is eating up 11gigs when in the PU!!! It's quiet annoying as it just crashes the game and it's absolutley pointless.

I gave it another go, crashed out on load, crashed out on ship select console, crashed with some 400001 code or sumthing, than finally loaded in to PU. Accepted a delivery mission, went to Deymar with my Aurora which didn't crash the game this time. Crashed into planet due to insane hichting near planet (which is mentioned as fixed both on RTV and in patch notes I think). Landed, picked up box, than I tried to load it onto the top of the ladder as usual. It doesn't work anymore. Box either jumps or simply falls through the ship. After like 5 tries to place it inside the ship, it fell through everything and was 8K km away in like 3 seconds, so I just gave up and quit. This is by far the worst state the game has been in since 3.0, for me at least.

This whole rushed 3.1 is a joke really. It's getting worse day by day. I don't think anything is getting tested like this (the underlying core system is still way too incomplete for that), apart from the new ships, which frankly, need zero actual player testing until Beta... I'm really hoping that 3.2 will bring the promised core performance and stability updates. That would show some real progress finally.
I liked your post, not your experience. My experience with 3.1 has not been great either, just not as bad as what you describe. I crash about every hour, sometimes less. But it takes a little time to do each mission or cargo run, and I frequently forget and end up with CTD in the middle of doing something. I'm not sure why I'm getting the framerate I am. I didn't do anything different this time. It's nothing to write home about. I'm getting 20-25 usually right now, except around PO where it tends to get a little bursty. Last week I was lucky to get 15-20.

One of the things you said was you experienced hitching near a planet (moon) and crashed into the surface. That is one of the symptoms of synchronous thread blocking that I talked about in another post in the TLDR; bit,

https://testsquadron.com/threads/the-roadmap.13228/

and why I say the biggest thing they need to fix in 3.2 is the performance optimizations - especially those that have to do with this hitching stuff. The root cause of your crash on ship select is likely the same kind of issue.

I have also 16 Gb RAM, but I've never seen a window that pops up saying to free up ram. That sounds like something else is requesting RAM, not Star Citizen. That itself could cause ram issues. I found that with 16 Gb, I need to make sure no other programs are running in the background when running Star Citizen. I can't even use Discord properly, and be in Star Citizen.
 

Pug76

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Tried the Newish 3.1.1 ATRP ( After The Rollback Patch :ghost:) .

Managed to fly my Aurora to the drug lab on Yela , score some drugs and get to grim hex without crashing , after 2 attempts and a log out an in I sold my ill gotten gains for a whole 891 cr profit ..........wow..:ok_hand:
 

Lorddarthvik

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I liked your post, not your experience. My experience with 3.1 has not been great either, just not as bad as what you describe. I crash about every hour, sometimes less. But it takes a little time to do each mission or cargo run, and I frequently forget and end up with CTD in the middle of doing something. I'm not sure why I'm getting the framerate I am. I didn't do anything different this time. It's nothing to write home about. I'm getting 20-25 usually right now, except around PO where it tends to get a little bursty. Last week I was lucky to get 15-20.

One of the things you said was you experienced hitching near a planet (moon) and crashed into the surface. That is one of the symptoms of synchronous thread blocking that I talked about in another post in the TLDR; bit,

https://testsquadron.com/threads/the-roadmap.13228/

and why I say the biggest thing they need to fix in 3.2 is the performance optimizations - especially those that have to do with this hitching stuff. The root cause of your crash on ship select is likely the same kind of issue.

I have also 16 Gb RAM, but I've never seen a window that pops up saying to free up ram. That sounds like something else is requesting RAM, not Star Citizen. That itself could cause ram issues. I found that with 16 Gb, I need to make sure no other programs are running in the background when running Star Citizen. I can't even use Discord properly, and be in Star Citizen.
Well, that's good to know that this threading issue might be solved or improved at least soon.

Today I managed to complete a delivery run finally! Went from ollisar to cellin to yela and back home to ollisar. Fps wa in the 20s at best, and constant hitching as usual. I managed to place the box inside my 300i by putting it on the trailing end of the wing first near the engine (placing it on the side of the engine above the wing to be exact), getting into the ship, walking out over the wing, and picking it up from there. I placed it inside the ship and it stayed there as it should. It took a lot of tries and like 10 minutes at least, but it worked.
I'm fine with the game crashing, that is to be expected, I'm not okay with supposed improvements taking things back to worse. But that's just how programming works I guess.
I couldn't get the ram warning popup this time, but it was definitely SC doing it, not another app, I did check that when it happened. Ofc I try to kill everything else before playing SC, it does help, but it's still funny how SC was complaining about itself taking up too much ram lol
 

Vavrik

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Well, that's good to know that this threading issue might be solved or improved at least soon.

Today I managed to complete a delivery run finally! Went from ollisar to cellin to yela and back home to ollisar. Fps wa in the 20s at best, and constant hitching as usual. I managed to place the box inside my 300i by putting it on the trailing end of the wing first near the engine (placing it on the side of the engine above the wing to be exact), getting into the ship, walking out over the wing, and picking it up from there. I placed it inside the ship and it stayed there as it should. It took a lot of tries and like 10 minutes at least, but it worked.
I'm fine with the game crashing, that is to be expected, I'm not okay with supposed improvements taking things back to worse. But that's just how programming works I guess.
I couldn't get the ram warning popup this time, but it was definitely SC doing it, not another app, I did check that when it happened. Ofc I try to kill everything else before playing SC, it does help, but it's still funny how SC was complaining about itself taking up too much ram lol
I'm thinking you need a bigger ship, something you can do some trading with. You can make a whole, what, 275 credits? something like that, on a single successful trip with Hydrogen Gas in a Freelancer. Assuming you don't crash. I actually log out and back in after each trade run, no more than 2 stops, usually 1, then back to a station where I can log out and back in. It would be great, but that takes almost as long as the entire trade run. 15 minutes minimum. It's a PITA.

Some newer hardware is on it's way, I can't pay for it until May though so gotta wait.
 
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Vavrik

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For what it's worth, I got that "you need to free up at least 8GB of memory" window this morning. That is an OS message by the way, but it's caused by running Star Citizen, and the OS is trying to fit the game into available memory. What it's telling you is, "I can't fit that in memory without using virtual memory"

When that happens under the conditions I got it this morning, it is a good indication that the minimum system requirements are actually incorrect. I highlighted the bit that is leading to this. I'd also look long and hard at my hard disk, checking for corruption of the virtual memory file, and consider an SSD if you don't have one now. An SSD can be between 32 and 128 times faster than a regular spinning HD.

* Windows 7 (64bit) with Service Pack 1, Windows 8 (64bit), Windows 10 - Anniversary Update (64bit)
* DirectX 11 Graphics Card with 2GB RAM (4GB strongly recommended)
* Quad Core CPU
* 16GB+ RAM -Probably should be 24 GB minimum, 32 Gb + recommended
* SSD strongly recommended
 
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Lorddarthvik

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For what it's worth, I got that "you need to free up at least 8GB of memory" window this morning. That is an OS message by the way, but it's caused by running Star Citizen, and the OS is trying to fit the game into available memory. What it's telling you is, "I can't fit that in memory without using virtual memory"

When that happens under the conditions I got it this morning, it is a good indication that the minimum system requirements are actually incorrect. I highlighted the bit that is leading to this. I'd also look long and hard at my hard disk, checking for corruption of the virtual memory file, and consider an SSD if you don't have one now. An SSD can be between 32 and 128 times faster than a regular spinning HD.

* Windows 7 (64bit) with Service Pack 1, Windows 8 (64bit), Windows 10 - Anniversary Update (64bit)
* DirectX 11 Graphics Card with 2GB RAM (4GB strongly recommended)
* Quad Core CPU
* 16GB+ RAM -Probably should be 24 GB minimum, 32 Gb + recommended
* SSD strongly recommended
Last time this message popped for me I was doing stuff beforehand, and it hasn't happened since. I'm running Windows from an ssd and SC from a separate ssd, and I got my page files set to the ssd with plenty of space left (50+ gigs) at all times. I only got sata3, no m.2, but that should be plenty fast enough. I'll wipe/re-set the page file, see if that helps.
I've gone through all the recommended stuff to improve performance and stability before 3.0, and some actually helped. Like disabling windows 10 gaming overlay! For some reason, that seems to be the cause of the Aurora startup crash on my machine lol.
I think the minimum requirements is kinda silly at the moment as I see reports from all kind of systems struggling, or running SC fine when they shouldn't. It's way too early for that.
I can't afford a new pc for a while yet, so I was thinking of upgrading to a 6core 12thread i7 if my board supports such a thing, as it would be beneficial to my work load (lots of 3d cpu rendering). Upgrading to 32gigs of ram would be nice for SC, but it's insanely expensive and I don't work with that level of complexity so it would be the less benefit in my work flow.

Oh, and yeah I could use a freelancer, it's just too damn expensive. Also I have the philosophy of buying the least amount of ships so they remain as a goal to achieve, when the game goes live. That is why I wouldn't mind if rec ships would work in the pu. Or at all...
 

Lorddarthvik

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I did some maintenance on the wife's machine. Enabled rapid mode on the system ssd, killed of hibernation file on C, did a performance optimization on the ssd, and reset the page file to C as its the only properly working ssd in that machine. It has windows and SC on it. It's a simple.machine for playing overwatch and wow, with just a 3xxx i5, 8gigs of ram, and a 750ti.
Started up SC,clicked enter universe, crash to black screen. Okay then. I set the resolution to 720p and low settings to see if that helps, but I had my doubts due to the ram being so low. Even had the ram warning pop up before starting sc.
So I loaded up the game, clicked load into ollisar... waiting. . Waiting...
Oh hey, I can see the ceiling in my cabin, cool.
The usual stuttering after just waking up is present, let's see how "smooth" it can get on such a crappie machine...
Push H to get up...

No way!! It's buttery smooth! This is running at at least 40+ fps with almost no stuttering!!! What the literal fffaaack??!?! How is this even possible??

I turned up the resolution to full HD and very high settings, ofc it started stuttering and slowed down a bit, but it was still holding higher fps inside and around ollisar than my way higher spec pc! Flown around a bit, landed at ollisar, and after 15minutes in, it crashed to desktop, but properly this time, with the sc crash reporter popping up and doing its job.

I'll try to rerun this test with the lower settings again tonight, and with fps counter turned on. I wanna see some real numbers, but felt itwaaay smoother than ever, even with like 10players running around.

EDIT:
Added pictures of second test run. Still crashing every 5-15mins, and framerates are down a bit, but consistently high compared to PC specs. It hits 30+fps a lot more than not, but the hitching drops the avarage values in the screeshots way down.
ScreenShot0000.jpg

ScreenShot0001.jpg
 
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