Slitherine

Hello All!

Welcome to the first Armageddon beta. This version is still a little bit early, but we wanted to kick off the testing, so that we still have time to react on your feedback! New features and assets are being added every day, so expect frequent updates pushing the game forward.

For now, we are interested in the "first impression" high-level feedback. We will dive into gameplay specifics next week, and I'll explain in detail what to look out for.

Here is a rough list of questions:

- Does the game install on your machine?
- Does it run on your machine, are there any crashes/serious bugs?
- Is the performance good, or is the game too slow/sluggish? Is the scrolling/zooming smooth or jumpy?
- Are there any UI layout issues on your screen?
- What do you think about the UI and controls in general? Do you like the current layout of the main screen (with tactical map), or would you prefer "UI at the bottom" layout as used in many games?
- What do you think about the way the briefings are presented, is it good or any issues there?
- Strategic map and minimap - are they ok or how they can be improved?
etc.

Please note that combat animations are still largely missing or temporary, but this will be hopefully fixed in the next update. No need to report issues in this department. Some map markers are also temporary.

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Since the tutorial and info tooltips are non-existent yet, here are quick notes on controls:
- Select units with left mouse button, give orders with left buttons as well.
- End turn button is above the map, a big button containing "Turn X/Y" string
- Game menu button is in top-left corner, you can also use Esc.
- UI panels top to bottom: minimap, selected unit panel, hover unit panel, buttons.
- Buttons to the left of minimap: unit list, reserve list, killed units list (not implemented), strategic map
- Buttons in the big button block, top to bottom, left to right:
next unit, prev unit, purchase
undo move, rest, sleep
supply, switch transport
upgrade, replacements, disband

Hello Alex, nice work! Some quick first impressions (OS is Win7 64-bit).

Rudankort wrote:Here is a rough list of questions:

- Does the game install on your machine?

Yes, no problems, I installed in on a different drive (E:) without trouble.

- Does it run on your machine, are there any crashes/serious bugs?

Pressing some of the UI buttons induces crashes to desktop (purchase/upgrade buttons, I just saw nikivdd's posts with identical issue).

- Is the performance good, or is the game too slow/sluggish? Is the scrolling/zooming smooth or jumpy?

Performance seems OK so far, but I have trouble with scrolling. I just played the first tutorial mission, and sometimes the screen wouldn't scroll. After some experimenting I have induced it succesfully, I'll try to describe what happens:

I can move the cursor as fast as I want when hitting the top/bottom or right edges to scroll, but the left gives trouble. When I want to scroll to the left, and I move my cursor towards the screen edge, the cursor sometimes stops a small distance away from the screen edge (distance variable, sometimes a few pixels away and somtimes the width of the cursor) and freezes for a short while, and the screen won't scroll. After a moment (a few seconds) the cursor becomes responsive again and I can make a new attempt at scrolling to the left.

Here is what seems to trigger it: moving the cursor rapidly towards the left edge. I have a mouse with adjustable dpi (Logitech G500), and I like my cursors fast. When I started to move the cursor more slowly towards the edge, it didn't seem to happen anymore.

FYI: I use a dual monitor setup, my secondary is to the left, I'm not sure if it would matter but I thought I'd mention it.

- Are there any UI layout issues on your screen?

Yes, part of the UI is outside the screen in the opening screen, campaign selection, load game, etc. but not during gameplay. See attached screenshots, if you look at the bottom of the pictures you'll see some buttons half outside the screen.

Resolution is 1280x1024, screenshots have been resized and cropped (my secondary screen + desktop is visible otherwise).

Hi, I just installed and hope to get some proper testing in on Monday evening.

But one very first impression regarding the FONT:

It looks as if the lowest pixel line of every character is cut off, but letters like "g" are displayed correctly while abcd somehow have a very thin lower line.
Maybe that is just the font and intentional, but it looks quite strange. GeForce 770, 1920x1080 Display, Nvidia driver 344.11. Windows 8.1 64 bit.

I like the style of the UI and the menu very much. Looks as if some animations and sounds are not yet in.

^ Update: Text seems fine now, cannot reproduce the odd behavior atm.

So, I managed to put in a few hours playing single scenarios, so some extra feedback so far:

Performance:
Performance becomes sluggish in late levels, when there is a lot of terrain/units visible on-screen scrolling is sluggish and jerky, and the scrolling issue I reported (when scrolling to the left it has to be done moving the the cursor really slowly) becomes much worse. Still, all movement by units is just as fast as always. I have a very old PC, so I'm not that bothered, but the differences on the same map is very noticable depending on how much is in view.

Briefings
Text is very clear and very readable (formatting/spelling aside), and the briefings are very quick and easy to navigate once you know you need to click to continue. The highlighting of the dialogue tree works fine, although it isn't immediately clear that a dialogue box can contain several questions. Oh, and you can't go back, some impatient/forgetful readers might find that annoying. So as it is now, some nitpicking suggestions:

The faces are displayed at the extreme edges/corners of the screen, it would be better to have them some distance away from the edges, even if the dialogue would be off-centre.

As it is now, the dialogue starts at the very top and expanding dialogue boxes are added underneath, only starting to scroll when it won't fit anymore. Maybe start with the first text box nearer to the centre of the screen and when a new box is added underneath just let it scroll a bit more/earlier, basically use larger margins. Also, it would be nice to be able to scroll back to the beginning, this would be especially nice in case big blocks of text are added to the dialogue.

Extreme nitpicking: It might help for people going through it for the first time to make it clear that you need to 'click to continue' and to have some visual cue to know when there are multiple choicesto prevent having to move the cursor over the text to see how many options there are. If that is impossible, perhaps an extra 'Ok' prompt after you click on one of the questions? I don't think it is necessary but on a first impression some people might not like accidently selecting a piece of dialogue and continuing before realising there were several options.

UI: maps
I use a rather coarse resolution (1280x1024), but so far the map layout is good, I actually did not use the strategic map, I just viewed the minimap and zoomed in/out on the main map when needed with the scroll button. Oddly, I often checked on the minimap instead of the main map to see if there were enemy units in sight or any unmoved friendly units.

The overlay for movement is good: subtle but clear to see.
Spotting radius (fog of war) is easy to see on desert/ash terrain but poorly on for example the jungle and major river hexes, not enough contrast.
It is also not obvious (visually) how far a unit can shoot. I found myself constantly checking the unit stat line and mentally counting hexes to find the correct placement.

UI: layout
I like everything on the right as it is now, because it keeps the playing screen a bit square so when I have a unit selected I don't have to scroll up/down all the time to see where to move it.

The middle section is OK, the selected unit panel is clear although the lines of stats are a bit close together when compared to the large space reserved for the unit names. Often these names are near duplicates anyway, maybe only display the unit type all the time and put the unit name (eg '2nd Steel Legion') in the hover unit panel? An example of my suggestion would be when a unit is selected, the unit name is visible in the hover unit panel next to or underneath the unit icon but when hovering over another unit only the unit types are displayed as it is now. This might save some space to allow the stat lines to be made larger. At the same time, maybe the row of 10 identical (morale?) icons could be move about a bit to create more vertical room.

I'll see if I can photoshop something later to show what I mean.

I'm not sure the block of buttons on the bottom right is laid out logically, it would depend on how recognisable the icons are as well. Since some are placeholders it is hard to judge, but, for example, I think some reshuffling some buttons might help, for example putting the previous/next unit buttons in the same row.

Hi Thomas!

Excellent feedback, exactly what we need at this point. 5:4 creen display ratios are not common these days, and so we missed these UI issues. Will be fixed! And it is very interesting to note that even on a "most square screen" from all moderan displays you still prefer UI on the right.

You've mentioned that your PC is rather old, could you please give us specs. Amount of memory, type of hard drive, processor? Also, can you give some specific scenarios where you experience performance problems, so that we can check them directly? Is scrolling sluggish all the time, or only on a "first pass" over the map? Do you see any HDD activity when scrolling becomes sluggish?

Your scrolling problem shounds concerning. I have a few questions.
- Is this problem related in any way to zoom level, or it is equally bad on all zoom levels?
- You have a two-monitor configuration, with secondary monitor on the left. Does this mean that the mouse goes to the left monitor when you move it to the left in game view?
- Will the problem resolve itself if you disable second monitor (of course if it is convenient to perform such a test)?

Briefings: we are aware about rendering problems (symbols are being cut a little bit, some symbols missing like '). But apart from these, are there many spelling/grammaer errors? Do you think we need to go through another proof-reading cycle?

Button block layout is not final, as we are still playing around with buttons. The row of 10 identical icons is experience. Here we have 10 "stars", compared to 5 in Panzer Corps.

Longasc wrote:^ Update: Text seems fine now, cannot reproduce the odd behavior atm.

I actually also notice this problem from time to time, so we'll check it out.

Hello Alex, I hope I have some good news, and also something weird. I found a workaround for the performance issues, and I'll explain in more detail, but first the summary:

Scrolling issue: disabling secondary display solves issue.

Performance trouble: Microsoft Security Essentials thinks red Space Marines need to be constantly monitored. No joke, see below.

Rudankort wrote:5:4 creen display ratios are not common these days, and so we missed these UI issues. Will be fixed! And it is very interesting to note that even on a "most square screen" from all moderan displays you still prefer UI on the right.

Yeah, I'm weird, I still have about five 22" Iiyama CRT's that refuse to die and I use the low resolution because I run a couple of old software programs. I don't need to heat my computer/work room in the winter as well, I can just boot my other dual-screen PC.

Briefings: we are aware about rendering problems (symbols are being cut a little bit, some symbols missing like '). But apart from these, are there many spelling/grammaer errors? Do you think we need to go through another proof-reading cycle?

Aha! That missing ' explains most things, thanks for mentioning. Is the - also missing? I noted this sentence from the first briefing for the tutorial:

You will soon realize ours is not to question why, Commander especially a lower ranking juve officer The sentence runs rather strangely after the comma, and it seems there is an - missing.

The only real critisism is that the text sometimes could use a paragraph, like Yarrick's first briefing.

You've mentioned that your PC is rather old, could you please give us specs. Amount of memory, type of hard drive, processor? Also, can you give some specific scenarios where you experience performance problems, so that we can check them directly? Is scrolling sluggish all the time, or only on a "first pass" over the map? Do you see any HDD activity when scrolling becomes sluggish?

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0Ghz on an Intel DP35DP Mobo with 6 Gb of DDR2 RAM.
GPU: Radeon HD4850 512Mb
Asus Xonar DG sound card (with UNi drivers, because the factory drivers are not very good)

HDD: four drives, everything SATA.
C: is an 120Gb SSD (OCZ) with Win7 64b and not much else (boots very fast).
E: is an 320Gb 7200rpm (Samsung) drive where all my games are and were WH40K is installed.
F:, G: are for work and backup.

When I run a larger map the PC CPU and RAM are not maxed out when the stuttering happens. Reported 4786Mb memory available.

Your scrolling problem shounds concerning. I have a few questions.
- Is this problem related in any way to zoom level, or it is equally bad on all zoom levels?
- You have a two-monitor configuration, with secondary monitor on the left. Does this mean that the mouse goes to the left monitor when you move it to the left in game view?
- Will the problem resolve itself if you disable second monitor (of course if it is convenient to perform such a test)?

- No difference.

- When moving the cursor to the left it did in fact escape out of WH40K and into my extended desktop on the other screen. So while the WH40K cursor stopped near the edge of the primary display, the regular Windows mousepointer appeared on the secondary and could be moved around on the secondary display. I hadn’t noticed before due to a program being open on there (to type any errors I might encounter .)

- To be sure I disconnected the secondary screen, and the erratic behavior at the left edge is gone.



OK, the performance issue: I assume it is normal that the first time a unit appears onscreen there is a very small stutter (the "first pass" you describe), and this is only noticeable when you scroll quickly over a group of units that are all displayed for the first time. So far so good, but something weird happens when any red Space Marines are in view.

I started systematically testing, and so far the stuttering only happens when any red Space Marine (BA = Blood Angels) units were on screen. Imperial Guard or Orks, so far no trouble, but when I scroll over a group of Space Marines the movement stutters and the pointer becomes laggy (I tested mostly on Helsreach and Tempestora missions). Even after 10 passes it barely improves, so I started my resource monitor, and recorded the weirdness.

Screenshot 1: When I scroll around Imperial Guard units, everything is smooth after the first pass, and CPU/RAM/HD use are stable.

Screenshot 2: Then I scroll over the Space Marines and record screenshot2, notice the CPU graph suddenly reacting very strangely. MsMpEng.exe starts acting up and the CPU use of ArmageddonGame.exe drops back, at the same time HD activity increases (I have extra screenshots of this if you want).

Screenshot 3: As long as there are Space Marines in view this state becomes stable, I let it sit for more than a minute, it still stuttered a bit and the mousepointer was laggy.

When I scroll back and the Space Marines are no longer in view, the CPU use reverts back to screenshot 1, when there are no more Space Marines displayed (I made an additional screenshot what happens when they leave view). The map size doesn't matter.

Things I tried:
Running the executable directly without the game launcher: no difference.
Running the executable as an administrator: no difference.

Adding the executable to the list of excluded processes in MSE: bingo, everything is scrolling smoothly, no more issue.

So MSE is involved somehow, but why only with Blood Angels? I'll post the other three screens in the next post, to get the full picture.

Screenshot 4: here is what happens when I scroll back and the Space Marines leave view, notice the CPU load distribution reacting in reverse.

Screenshot 5 and 6: the HDD activity before the Space Marines come into view and then just after, it's easy to spot.

I can confirm the MSMPEng issue as above.

There's also a noticeable change in the jerkiness/lagginess of the scrolling when you go from Imperial units to Marine units.