Development Update 1 - June

[LKx]

Or in more accurate words: the plan they had is disrupted because they have to invest more than planned in post-launch fixes, and they are currently seeing what adjustments to the plan need to be made.

I don't get why the community asks for updates if it cannot mentally cope with such simple, and honestly fairly logical, info.

I actually appreciate the honesty, and yes, what's they are actually telling us is that any plan they might have had, is on hold until they figure out how to fix this mess.
(It's just a bit annoying that they once again said they would be able to disclose something and they doubled back from it)

 

[MacIntoc]

these star systems don't exist in this amount - they are just algorithms

This is precisely the amazing work

 

[Adel]

If you haven't noticed: Odyssey re-introduced bugs which were already fixed in Horizons. Odyssey rolled back changes to Horizons (so people which don't even have Odyssey today are affected) in the time range of about a year. The work they have to do (if they want to do it right, and I have no doubts the devs which care want to do it right) is much bigger than a lot of people think it is.

What they gave us here, is honest information, but not all the info they have and theoretically could give. If they would tell us the internal list of known issues, or give a more detailed info about which parts they need to put development work in, a lot more players would probably just turn around and leave.

Well, about Odyssey re-introduced bugs i didn't know. But what i wanted to highlight is the fact that the system of the issue tracker is stupid: they ask us to vote for most common issues and left them for a year. During this time, they fix other bugs that are not in top10. For people like me who are intersted in megaship/installtion looting (because some items can only be found there), it make us angry to don't even have a "plan" or info about IF they will even look at it.
This way, i don't get the point of ddevelopping a tool like the issue tracker and don't use it correctly

 

[zimms]

43 pages? Looks like I'm a bit late to this.

Let me say that I absolutely appreciate the (re)introduction of monthly dev updates! It's just that the timing is a bit unfortunate and may be a little too late. These should have been a thing for the last couple of years when Odyssey was actually in development. As far as I know there are currently no plans to develop any new content.

Will the next 7-9 dev updates all say "Still working on console release, hopefully it will also improve performance for PC. No plans otherwise"?

So yeah, dev updates are a good thing, but currently not enough to turn the community's mood around I'm afraid.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Like I said, these planets and systems were never actually created - it would have taken them too long to do so. Even if they could do a 1000 systems in a second, it would take them more than 3 years - so don't tell me they have done it - they didn't.

That is just the weirdest take on deterministic procgen I have ever heard "Stellar Forge is not impressive because it is only algorithms" and "creating a deterministic seed is nothing, it is only real when it is unpacked". Okay.

 

[Winterdyne]

The plan is to take the time to make the Odyssey tech a strong foundation. They can't go further without it. So no plan until this. I think it's brave of them.

They've had three years and (allegedly) a hundred devs working on this. One might think that the foundation of the tech should have been done by this point. So a plan going onward isn't an unrealistic thing to expect. I think it's evasive of them, and I think there are underlying issues that they cannot make publicly known.

 

[Lysette]

That is just the weirdest take on deterministic procgen I have ever heard "Stellar Forge is not impressive because it is only algorithms" and "creating a deterministic seed is nothing, it is only real when it is unpacked". Okay.

I mean it in a different way - we work with complex adaptive systems and artificial life experiments - once we have the basic algorithms, any random seed used to feed these algorithms will create a different evolution of artificial lifeforms in their virtual universe. While the outcome is highly complex, the algorithms and virtual machine we are running it on is not a big effort coding-wise - it's just algorithms in the end. it could create multiple orders of magnitude more evolutions than there are particles in the visible universe - I can claim this, but it isn't an amazing effort really, as long as I'm not running these evolutions they don't exist - they are just algorithms. In this sense I said it.

 

[Ian Skippy]

They've had three years and (allegedly) a hundred devs working on this. One might think that the foundation of the tech should have been done by this point. So a plan going onward isn't an unrealistic thing to expect. I think it's evasive of them, and I think there are underlying issues that they cannot make publicly known.

Or, and consider this just for a minute: maybe things didn't go according to plan and they need more time. They have run into issues they didn't anticipate, they need to spend more resources fixing it than planned, so they have to adjust the plans for the future as a result. That things didn't go as anticipated seems like a fairly obvious fact, the rest is just the consequence of it.

Whether they 'should' have had anticipated this, done better or whatever is neither here nor there: the fact is things went worse than they planned, and now they have to adjust.

 

[Lysette]

Or, and consider this just for a minute: maybe things didn't go according to plan and they need more time. They have run into issues they didn't anticipate, they need to spend more resources fixing it than planned, so they have to adjust the plans for the future as a result. That things didn't go as anticipated seems like a fairly obvious fact, the rest is just the consequence of it.

Whether they 'should' have had anticipated this, done better or whatever is neither here nor there: the fact is things went worse than they planned, and now they have to adjust.

Why do you keep making excuses for them - they should never have released it - take the money despite them knowing they can't deliver what they promised. It would have been their duty to deliver, they failed and it is not even in a state where they can fix it in a timely manner at all. They are at fault here, don't make excuses for their terrible behavior.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Why do you keep making excuses for them - they should never have released it - take the money despite them knowing they can't deliver what they promised. It would have been their duty to deliver, they failed and it is not even in a state where they can fix it in a timely manner at all. They are at fault here, don't make excuses for their terrible behavior.

I am not making excuses for them. I am just pointing out facts: whatever they planned didn't go well (don't you agree?), they are now investing resources into fixing this mess (fact), which has a conseqence on their future plans (logical consequence).

That is regardless of what I think of this mess or FD's management.

 

[Lysette]

I am not making excuses for them. I am just pointing out facts: whatever they planned didn't go well (don't you agree?), they are now investing resources into fixing this mess (fact), which has a conseqence on their future plans (logical consequence).

That is regardless of what I think of this mess or FD's management.

ok fair enough - it came over as white knighting though - I am sorry to have misinterpreted your intend.

 

[Winterdyne]

What really sticks in my craw a bit is that it all feels very minimal work for what it's setting out to do.

For me Odyssey's biggest flaw (and I've played it for a good few weeks now, struggling through this and that) is that 'Everything Tastes Like Chicken':

1) Why can't we visit different areas in a station? Every single one has one of the same few concourse layouts. There is no real tie to Faction, Economy type. No flavour. Even if the concourse is kept the same, let us go off and visit an economy-based 'room' to give the place some flavour. The whole game is doing pretty much the same stuff in the same sort of places.

2) There's not nearly enough variety in settlements. Again, the architecture is the same pretty much everywhere. Each of the economy type settlements conforms to a very small number of obviously hand-developed layouts. Why no procgen (or if it is, why so few variants)?

And it's dry chicken:

3) As a shooter, it encourages cover mechanics. It's just not good at it, so rather than leaning out of cover and having things feel ducky/divey and feeling like you can take advantage of cover on one particular level, what you get to is picking combat missions on low G worlds so you can jump from inaccessible (to NPCs) roof to roof and pop'em from there.

4) The AI doesn't do what it's there for. Why don't Scavengers scan corpses they come across to get authorisation and then wander into buildings (branching patrol path routes)? The AI can and does open doors that it's authorised to (so it's obviously possible). It'd add flavour and help counteract the above roof sniping tactic of choice.

And it's the only thing on the menu:

5) Weapon variety is way too low, and stat differential on those weapons is way, way too high. Early on this makes combat pretty laborious (seems to balance out at about G3), but it also feels cheap.

6) It's way, way too grindy, and not in a good way to upgrade weapons (and it's basically a requirement that you do becaouse of the awful stat balancing). It's the worst of the engineering system from Horizons. I do like the mod mechanism though again, the mats grind for them might be better replaced with a more questy approach. It's... boring.

Anyway, with Patch 5 and forced isolation (thanks, schools not having masks in corridors!) I'm going to spend some time and put together a proper review. Just for my entertainment as much as anything else.

 

[MacIntoc]

They've had three years and (allegedly) a hundred devs working on this. One might think that the foundation of the tech should have been done by this point.

Yes but it's not. It's useless to claim that something is ok only because it should be.

So a plan going onward isn't an unrealistic thing to expect. I think it's evasive of them, and I think there are underlying issues that they cannot make publicly known.

They can't be any clearer. They understood that there were quite deep problems in their new technologies and they are working to understand the nature of these problems to fix them in a lasting way and allow them to make the game evolve again.
As long as they do not have a precise vision of the extent of the work to be done to have a healthy base, they will not be able to present a roadmap.

 

[Ian Skippy]

What really sticks in my craw a bit is that it all feels very minimal work for what it's setting out to do.

For me Odyssey's biggest flaw (and I've played it for a good few weeks now, struggling through this and that) is that 'Everything Tastes Like Chicken':

1) Why can't we visit different areas in a station? Every single one has one of the same few concourse layouts. There is no real tie to Faction, Economy type. No flavour. Even if the concourse is kept the same, let us go off and visit an economy-based 'room' to give the place some flavour. The whole game is doing pretty much the same stuff in the same sort of places.

2) There's not nearly enough variety in settlements. Again, the architecture is the same pretty much everywhere. Each of the economy type settlements conforms to a very small number of obviously hand-developed layouts. Why no procgen (or if it is, why so few variants)?

And it's dry chicken:

3) As a shooter, it encourages cover mechanics. It's just not good at it, so rather than leaning out of cover and having things feel ducky/divey and feeling like you can take advantage of cover on one particular level, what you get to is picking combat missions on low G worlds so you can jump from inaccessible (to NPCs) roof to roof and pop'em from there.

4) The AI doesn't do what it's there for. Why don't Scavengers scan corpses they come across to get authorisation and then wander into buildings (branching patrol path routes)? The AI can and does open doors that it's authorised to (so it's obviously possible). It'd add flavour and help counteract the above roof sniping tactic of choice.

And it's the only thing on the menu:

5) Weapon variety is way too low, and stat differential on those weapons is way, way too high. Early on this makes combat pretty laborious (seems to balance out at about G3), but it also feels cheap.

6) It's way, way too grindy, and not in a good way to upgrade weapons (and it's basically a requirement that you do becaouse of the awful stat balancing). It's the worst of the engineering system from Horizons. I do like the mod mechanism though again, the mats grind for them might be better replaced with a more questy approach. It's... boring.

Anyway, with Patch 5 and forced isolation (thanks, schools not having masks in corridors!) I'm going to spend some time and put together a proper review. Just for my entertainment as much as anything else.

It feels like there is just enough of everything to consider it good enough, and that if they had taken six months to add some cherries on top it would have been much better. Settlements are not structurually procgen at all, there are 28 handcrafted versions. Content is procgen (or rather; random) in that NPC location, loot and triggers/panels are in varying places. But yeah, its odd how little procgen this game has outside of Stellar Forge. :/

 

[Winterdyne]

Yes but it's not. It's useless to claim that something is ok only because it should be.


They can't be any clearer. They understood that there were quite deep problems in their new technologies and they are working to understand the nature of these problems to fix them in a lasting way and allow them to make the game evolve again.
As long as they do not have a precise vision of the extent of the work to be done to have a healthy base, they will not be able to present a roadmap.

This is not the stuff you do after a release.

This is the stuff you do in alpha.

They could at least be honest about it.

 

[MacIntoc]

This is not the stuff you do after a release.

This is the stuff you do in alpha.

They could at least be honest about it.

Did you expect them to Sepuku themselves ?

 

[Winterdyne]

Did you expect them to Sepuku themselves ?

No? Why the hyperbole?

But certainly rather than try to wrap their bug fixes as additions to a successful launch, they should be forthright enough to say 'this should not have launched like this, please bear in mind the product is under further development'. This hasn't been a deployment / user platform set of issues, there have been deep-rooted issues with the actual product.

And as such, I'd say we'd not be unreasonable to have some sort of idea what exactly they're working on - we've paid for it already.

The way things are; FDev have become CIG only without the development transparency and with an added bait and switch*. They've taken money in advance of viable product. They've stated the alpha we were shown was a 'slice' of Odyssey (it was pretty much the whole thing).

*: Let's be honest, we should be expecting physical multicrew to work properly. It's an advertised feature.

We may, or may not, get fixes and additional content before console launch.

They (@Arthur Tolmie ) explicitly told us that issues were being resolved, and at the end of the 'roadmap' we should be happy with what we've got. I'll reserve actual judgment on the product until I've played this release for a good few days.

 

[StevieG]

At the current time we do not have a workable solution. however, investigations will continue and we will keep you updated.

Always better to use however rather than BUT when bringing bad news.

 

[Red Anders]

Nope, I get the same FPS at 1080, I get the same FPS if I lower the graphics to potato level, I get the same FPS, regardless of how many times I delete and recreate my graphics file. This is with blur and bloom off (it's literally unplayable with them turned on, not to mention ugly), this is with SS and AA off or on, it really doesn't matter what I do, it's just abysmal. Horizons, in Ultra @ 1440, with AA on and SS to 1.0x runs at well over 60 FPS at all times.

There's something going on there then, seriously. I'm not remotely enough of a techy person to suggest what is causing your issue on a rig that's clearly superior to mine but I do hope you get to the bottom of it. This is what I'm playing with on the low-rent rig I mentioned.

 

[torloisk]

One question: Will there be further updates until console release or not?

Question still not answered.