Sins Beta 2 - Technical Feedback - *Post Here*

In the command card, I am able to click multiple adjacent buttons at the same time by clicking between them.

hi stratteggi,

what do you mean by command card exactly?

I suffered a crash a long time into the game after repeated uses of Flak Burst by 2 Kols. I'm unsure if they were the direct cause of the crash. Will try to get a SmartException of it.

(edit: Alright! The post actually went through. The secret is only using one paragraph. :])

Tutorial Problem:

First tutorial (basic gameplay I think). It tells you to move your ships to the "end of the Phase Line" or something like that. It is pretty ambiguous. I took that to mean "to the next planet." When I got there I was attacked by pirates. After defeating them I had to jump back to the home planet to get the tutorial to advance. It then told me to go to the next planet (where I had already been) and tells me to defeat all the pirates...

Problem is that I already killed them all so the tutorial won't advance.

yep yep, been reported already , slacker.....

Hi,

While I know my laptops 1.73 GHz and 504 MB are under specs, I have only just had one crash. I have no save or reason that I noticed, but I received a mini dump error message. The message itself I dont remember, but it asked to have me send the problem to the programmers, so hopefully that helps (and its not some virus now spamming my money across Asia). In any event, the crash was the only thing able to pull me away from a 3 hour game, so if nothing else I can thank the crash for sleep. In other words, wonderful new gameplay!

Great stuff Nick! Glad to hear it runs on your machine despite it being below specs!!! Minidump files are EXTREMELY useful to us for tracking down crashes - thanks for sending it

Tutorial advancement problem is fixed for next patch as well

Ship trails are missing.

For the tradeship it is known. But i can also report, they are missing on, Seige frigat and light frigat.

Dunno if other ships are missing it, as i havent gone that far into the game hehe

psugar, by command card I mean the buttons in the bottom right of the UI, I can click up to four of them at once.

You're late on that one Multianna. We knew that yesterday!  That's what you get for sleeping and not hanging out on IRC.

LOL, i need my beauty sleep

"beauty"

I can't set rally points to other systems, I tried both a light factory and a cap ship factory, neither work, I hear the sound, but no marker, but if I set a point in the same system, I hear the sound and the marker is displayed, I have tested again, I placed a rally point marker to the next system, the ship was built and went to the edge of the gravity well, to the trade lane, but it didn't phase jump and just sat there, and the marker was there as well,

why do it when i press my 3rd button (wheel mouse button) it automaticaly puts me on desktop window? just wanted to share this maybe you guys have the same problem as well?

not have that problem, do you have any mouse software running? if so could it be overriding the game? if its a default driver, then very odd indeed

i do have something like intelle mouse 6.2 or something. but you know the scrol up and down wheel? its that button when you press it downward it boots you out the game and put you at your desktop but the game is still fine it just that you need to reselct the game. the reason why i brought this up is that i tried to use the 3rd wheel button to focus on ships but i guesse it don't work with it.

but this is nothing major like a bug i would think not so i'd be fine not to add another button my *buttons to memorize list*   

you have it enabled in the control pannel of windows itself.

go to start>>control pannel>> mouse

look for an option to disable that feature of the middle mouse wheel.

I encounter a wierd issue the first time I loaded Sins up. About 4-5 times before the opening movie would play the game would minimize and open up Adobe Designer, and then it would load fine after I closed them.

The game keeps freezing graphically but continues to run. The sound is still going and the voice that advertises messages still goes but on screen everything stops. So far I have found a way out of it, I do the 'alt+tab" thing and go to the desktop and then go back to the game and everything that was frozen now jumps to were it actually is. It is annoying when it happens during battles especially. I can hear shots being fired and explosions but not until I do the alt+tab combo do I know what exactly happened. It did it a little bit with only one star, I was trying it out with 4 stars and 20 planets and it is doing it almost every 4 minutes. It runs fine between the graphical freezes. And on the one star game it unfroze graphically by itself after a few seconds, and only did that once in a very long while.

Is there some sort of error logging file? I looked and couldn't find one, or I don't know what it is if there is one. Is smart exception supposed to be logging stuff for it? Because it isn't.

-The Medium Resources picture doesnt have the crates lit up like the other two do.
-Other players can still offer Intelligence Pacts without cease-fire. EIther this is a bug, or the "Our ally has further proposals" voicecomm should be changed for it.
-Perchirons move to close to eachother while jump aligning.
-Voice alerts should make a distinction between one ship incoming and a fleet.



Uglycow, run dxdiag and upload that file.. it might help figure out the problem.

I do have the latest version of DirectX9.0(whatever) from the Microsoft Website installed on my computer as some games I have will not run on DX10; including this one. Here is the print out of my dxdiag file.

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 6/22/2007, 19:32:48
Machine name: XD-PC
Operating System: Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6000) (6000.vista_rtm.061101-2205)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: HP-Pavilion
System Model: RT641AA-ABA a1720n
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz (2 CPUs), ~1.9GHz
Memory: 3070MB RAM
Page File: 947MB used, 5377MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 10
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 6.00.6000.16386 32bit Unicode

------------
DxDiag Notes
------------
Display Tab 1: No problems found.
Sound Tab 1: The file ctaud2k.sys is not digitally signed, which means that it has not been tested by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL). You may be able to get a WHQL logo'd driver from the hardware manufacturer.
Sound Tab 2: The file ctaud2k.sys is not digitally signed, which means that it has not been tested by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL). You may be able to get a WHQL logo'd driver from the hardware manufacturer.
Input Tab: No problems found.

--------------------
DirectX Debug Levels
--------------------
Direct3D: 0/4 (retail)
DirectDraw: 0/4 (retail)
DirectInput: 0/5 (retail)
DirectMusic: 0/5 (retail)
DirectPlay: 0/9 (retail)
DirectSound: 0/5 (retail)
DirectShow: 0/6 (retail)

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 7600 GS
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0392&SUBSYS_033E196E&REV_A1
Display Memory: 744 MB
Dedicated Memory: 248 MB
Shared Memory: 495 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Generic Non-PnP Monitor
Driver Name: nvd3dum.dll,nvwgf2um.dll
Driver Version: 7.15.0011.5818 (English)
DDI Version: 9Ex
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 4/12/2007 17:07:00, 4669440 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp:
Device Identifier: {D7B71E3E-40D2-11CF-646C-352301C2CA35}
Vendor ID: 0x10DE
Device ID: 0x0392
SubSys ID: 0x033E196E
Revision ID: 0x00A1
Revision ID: 0x00A1

EDIT by Blair: I have copied the directX information that posted after this here onto a debug file as it was quite long We are looking into this.

I've noticed some issues with 0.70[b].013, mostly while playing the tutorials:

1) I cannot select multiple units in the main window using mouse dragging if I start dragging from within a unit's boundary box.

2) In the tutorials, when a part of the GUI is box-highlighted, the highlighted portion remains if I enter a different screen such as the research or diplomacy screen.
This does not affect gameplay but does make the game screen look dirty.

3) When queueing LEV duties via clicking on a planet that has more than one LEV, only one of the LEVs does everything, leaving the other LEVs idle, thus resulting in massive inefficiency. Would be nice if the AI would automatically utilize LEVs efficiently (i.e. if there's two LEVs and two jobs to do, one could do one, the other could do the other. It would also be nice if the AI would choose the closest LEV to do the appropriate job - In other words, if I were to build a defence platform on the east side and a factory on the west side, with an LEV on each side respectively, I would obviously expect the LEV on the appropriate side to build the appropriate structure).
My current workaround to this right now is to MANUALLY select the LEVs to delegate tasks (which is the reason why one of my suggestions in the gameplay feedback exists, which is to have some sort of discrepancy between 'fight-capable ships' and LEVs in the empire window).

4) When multiple units are selected, tabbing between them works but SHIFT-tabbing does NOT work.

5) When developing a planet, the hotkey to return to the main options in the bottom right bar is A instead of G.

6) The fleetcap increase hotkey in the planet development section is labelled as A instead of R. Pressing R does NOT work and pressing A also does NOT work as it brings me back to the main building options.

My right alt and ctrl keys don't seem to do anything, even though I know the keyboard isn't broken.

Game won't end if pirates wipe out the opposing AI.

I started a logistics upgrade and then queued a structure. The LEV went over and started the "building" animation (the spark things) right away (before the upgrade was complete). But it did stay at 0% until the logistics upgrade was completed so just the little animation is broke, not the whole system. I saved the game at that point so I can send it to you if you would like.