Version 182.35
* implementing an experimental method to load the galaxy on jump, Should be a lot smoother, although you will actually see the stuff appear one by one.
* some minor performance improvements
* multiple crashes fixes.

Version 182.42
* The rate at which the asynchronous galaxy load happen is now variable on your graphic level (low quality has the slowest, very high at the highest), this should cause people to play on high, very high to not see it happen as much.
* projectiles are no longer being asynchronously loaded (before they wouldnt appear as fast as they were fired)
* added a much improved sob clipping code, Should greatly improve framerate if you dont see all the sobs in the gameview (zooming in should also improve framerate dramatically now).
* added the smallest meshes to the preload, should not impact the loading time at all (they really are small), but should improve the jump lag.
* tweaked the lagkiller so that the value wont go up as fast in the first few levels.

Version 182.49
* fixed Client will crash when relogging.

Version 182.73
* New Poseidon glow
* Adding next galaxy to the warp message.
* Added tab order support to the add item to tradebay dialog. (pressing tab will now cycle through the fields, not the ok button yet unfortunatly).
* Made it so visages of ships that are not in your sight (no floaty not targeted and out of screen) are loaded very slowly and in lower priority, so stuff close to you should appear faster.
* Major client optimizations all around by attaching the new clipping code to some sections that could use it.
* Fixed a disconnection cleanup issue that caused missions to not update correctly if you changed character.

Version 182.131
* fixed a bunch of crashes from the dmps sent by players.
* fixed a bug that caused the skill tab on stations to not reset properly.
* fixed some values that didnt reset correctly when undocking (station tab etc).
* vastly improved the tables speed (wont affect ship or base inventory much since those use other more efficient methods), but will every other tables existing (missions, skill list etc).
* attempt at fixing the crash some players get when jumping into specific gals (lavanite, first olympus instanced lvl etc).

Version 182.150
* fixed a bug introduced in 182.131 causing ship inventories to not work on release client.
* fixed (at least, im quite sure now), the tractor graphical glitch where it would make your screen "flash" the color of the tractor randomly.

Version 182.185
* added a check/error message if the exe is not in the correct directory (cannot find Content/Default)
* multiple performance improvement to the add vendible list (in preparation for the vendible improvement that will come with next patch) (vendible are items you add to tradebay on shops)
* fixed the tables bugs introduced in the last beta.

Version 182.294
* Changed the trade dialog tabs to be icons of their respective item type (combined with tooltip with the old text value in). No more scrolling in those tabs.
* fixed some client crashes.

Version 182.577
* Added an ingame performance profiler (disabled by default to not slowdown the game). If you experience sporadic render lags (jerkiness feeling in the fps), please send the result of /DP to dmpfile@starsonata.com, it should help me track and fix the source.
Use any of the profiler commands once to activate it for this play sessions.
** /DP will dump the current profiler data to the screen and to the .log file (the screen version is formated for a non true type font, so copy paste it in notepad or something to get it in a readable format
** /CP will reset the profiler data.
* fixed a crazy amounts of crashes
* improved the plasma particles clipping. It should reduce the lag caused by hundreds of particles in the galaxy down to 0 (unless your actually seeing all the particles).
* improved the async galaxy loading to be done partly in threads, reducing the initial lag when you see a new object for the first time in the play session (especially if you preload the textures).
* some small performance improvements in the gui rendering.
* a new compilation method for the public builds (beta/live), that should give a decent performance increase all around the board (10% performance increase in average in my tests).
* fixed the target box flickering.

Version 182.669
* fixed several clipping issues that caused some animations to not be done correctly.
* fixed a bug with the texture on some ship causing them to be "stretched" incorrectly on some sections
* performance improvement when displaying multiple floaties.
* fixed a bug that broke the lower poly version generation in the recent beta's.
* added more precision to the profiler in key elements (according to the data mailed by some players).
* fixed a bug introduced in the recent beta that caused some sobs to be wrongly sized randomly.
* multiple crashes fixes.

Version 182.744
* added some more profiler precision in the render phase.
* removed the tractor ring mesh, and redid the tractor particles to look better no mater the distance you tractor.
* fixed the tractor beam clipping to use similar code to the laser clipping (should always be visible if its in your screen);
* made it so tractored target are marked as "important", so that their position is updated at maximum precision even if its way out of your view.
* tooltips now appear and disapear faster.
* fixed a bug introduced in lastest beta that broke some engine graphics.

Version 182.857
* forcing VerticalScrollBar to always be visible in station trade tab.
* some fixes to /search
* fixed a bug with autopilot and no background rendering (autopilot didnt get as many idle, and as such, lost a lot of precisions. It will however, means that background client on autopilot will use a bit more cpu than background client not on autopilot.
* fixed a bug with tooltips getting stuck on tabcontrol (station trade tabs for instance).
* fixed a bug introduced in earlier beta, breaking most tooltips.
* removed the static text item description from the station trade tab, replaced it with a tooltip attached to the side of the station dialog (will be either left or right depending on where the dialog is and what else is on screen).
* enlarged the list for the station trade (essentially covering the zone previously used by the description.
* increased the max height for tooltip that should reduce (pretty much eliminate). the chances of requiring to actually scroll to read all of the description.
* fixed a cleanup bug in construction that caused old constructions to display in other bases.
* made it so only 1 .log is created now (starsonata.log is overwritten everytime you restart the game).
* added some new code to help tracking crashes sources when its enabled (type /dp once to enable it, although it can/will lower your fps).
* Reduced the font size for galaxy names in the galaxy map when it's in the 1x size.

Version 182.887
* Fixed the crash in specific galaxies like lavanite, absolution, fiery etc.
* Fixed crash when searching for a galaxy that doesnt exist.
* When the map position is updated (either following you, mission reveal or /search), the map will scroll to its destination instead of instantly showing it. Look a lot better and is less confusing

Version 182.956
* fixed the desync issue (i hope at least).
* improved the performance greatly when playing with no AA
* fixed multiple crashes.
* improved the behavior of the center button in the galaxy map.

Version 182.1278
* fixed a lag caused by secondary inventory not closing correctly (they kept getting updated and stuff).
* some crash fixes.
* new gui rendering code allowing it to be rendered at a slower pace than the gameview fps (also allowing it to be rendered over multiple frames instead of all at once), should have very little visible impact, but fps should be noticeably higher, especially for people with high latency gpu. Lag killer is also attached to it, essentially reducing the gui update speed to increase the fps of the gameview (will still update the gpu a minimum of 5times per second assuming your fps is higher than 5).
* fixed a slowdown in the code that convert numbers to locale adapted version. (like credits)


Please if there is any issue in the beta client that are not on live client, post them IN THIS THREAD.


This client feature an ingame profiler (will be added to live once patch happen), this profiler is made to help me understand/fix lags player may be experiencing. If you have a scenario causing you lag, you can be of great help in 4 simple steps.

1.prepare your scenario to create your lag.
2.type /cp then enter to reset/initialise the profiler
3.execute your scenario for about 1 minute, causing your unbearable lag etc.
4.type /dp then enter, a popup should appear with bunch of things written in it, click in it, ctrl-a to select all, ctrl-c to copy then paste it in a .txt or directly in the mail to dmpfile@starsonata.com .

if you can not control when your lag happen but its constant once its happen, wait for it to start then begin at step 2. If its only by spikes, try to track down whats causing the spike to happen, and then reproduce it a bunch of times as a scenario.


To install this update, use the "check for update" shortcut if you have the beta client installed.

Else go to this thread : viewtopic.php?f=116&t=51108 and download the beta installer, it will automaticly get the lastest beta installed for you.

-

Feel like explaining how the galaxy loading bit works in a bit more detail?

well, the current live client. do it all in 1 frame (which cause some serious lag spikes especially on slower harddrive/computers due to the fact its also during that time that it load the models/textures you never saw (preloading texture prevent the texture bit, but not the models).

In this beta version. Instead of doing them all in 1 frame. It does 1 per logic frame. Essentially barely impacting the fps, and giving a smoother feeling to the loading. You can see it very well in galaxies with a loads of sobs, like free market. Youll actually see everything appear one by one.

Is this option going to be toggle-able? I have a high-end system that doesn't have problems with that

on an high end system. your logic fps should be so high that you wont see it happen anyway. (even free market only has like 80 sobs or so), on an high end system, one would expect 300-400 logic fps, which would mean that free market would take less than 0.25sec to load.

Wouldn't it be faster to have all of the connecting gals data in RAM (RAM drive) and move the data into the video from RAM rather than the HD? Then update the RAM as the player moves thru the gal.

And on computers with HUGE amounts of free RAM move all of the game data into RAM.

yes it would be indeed faster to have it all in ram (preload textures actually do just that). Except, the models are not bound by ram but by quantity and complexity.

SS by design is a game without loading (i know there is currently one, but if all goes like planned, that loading will probably disapear).

To preload all the mesh (i did test it), were talking about an extra 1min 30 on my machine by loading them in 8 threads. On a lower end machine, i had to stop the test after 10mins of loading XD.

The thing is that, in average, you only need maybe 4-5% of all the meshes in a play session, but except for the very common ones (which i might preload, not sure if worth it or not yet), you cant really tell in advance which one youll need.


As for your suggestion about loading the adjencent gals. it would only make the problem worse. Due to the nature of direct3d and irrlicht. Doing stuff in a background thread is a very complicated and delicate thing. Many graphic card plain simply dont support it at all. The mesh loading is indeed done from the hdd to the ram, then as needed from the ram to the graphic card (as in, once its been loaded one from the hdd, it stays in the ram and does not need to be reloaded).

While yes, in a perfect world with infinite workforce and time, it would be possible to streamline it all to be done in a background thread on the gpu as you travel through gals depending on your distance to wormholes and shits like that. But in the sad reality we live in, We have very limited workforce able to work on it, even even less time to do so. What you are suggesting would imply a complete rewrite of a lot of the base structures and designs currently in place and is plain simply not really worth doing any time soon. (we are talking a 2-3months project to implement + most likely months/years of bug fixing heh).

new version. See first post for details.

no graphics for ambrosia drones weapons....with new beta client and it crashes when you relog

Version 182.73 is out.

See first post for details.

Version 182.131 is now available.

Version 182.150 is out (had a big bug to fix in 131 heh)

In version 182.150 I can no longer see the entire list of docked Ships. The last few are missing.

However, it seems that UZ is a lot less jerky for me in the beta client, so well done on that count.

indeed. i noticed the tables issues as well, currently working on that. Inventory and base inventory should be perfect. but i obviously messed up the other tables in the process heh.