Wave Scanner Bug: how to live with it until it's fixed

[smiths121]

First - I'm glad it's been fixed.

Though, this mishap has made me seriously doubt the amount of manpower and resources FDev has allocated for development of ED. Apparently as it seems they do not have enough resources to fix this very simple problem so they had to just leave it there for literally months. If they don't have adequate resources to fix a darned scanner, then how are they going to bring space legs and ELW landings into existence?

Watching that PAX Q&A stream has shaken my belief in FDev even further - I understand that he's by no means FDev's official spokesperson in terms of development plans, but seriously, ~80% of what he said could be pretty much wrapped up as 'we'll see' or 'not planned yet'.

Nearly every single feature that were promised in season 2 were either put back or have been implemented in an extremely toned down manner. I think it's quite obvious that situation's changed a lot in their studio somewhere along their development road map, and they somehow went from 'yes, that feature is on the list and we are 100% eager to make that happen' mentality to 'Maybe we'll see that feature few years later - I dunno - if we manage to implement that'. That drastic change in level of confidence and determination has really left me worried, probably more than I should be.

... Maybe the '10 year plan' never actually existed and the patch 2.0 would be the last major expansion we'll ever going to see.

They made a change in 2.2.3 ad in again 2.3, which appears to hae fixed the issue.

Just curiously how do you knw it was a simple thing, as you state in your post? Normally if I or one of my 2 team needed 2 goes at fixing a problem, there was actually more than one cause of the sympton and it was not easy to to find. So my experience in problem resolution would suggest the problem was not simple, which is counter to youe kowledge on the bug.

I think my faith would be shaken in a supplier if there was a simple thing to resolve and they sat there doing nothing for 6 months, with lots of people telling them there was a problem. I mean they must either have no resource or are sitting there laughing at us. However I would not descrinbe something as simple, in a forum post if I did not anything of the problem domain. It genuinly make a post sound over whining and diminishes your post.

I think your point is, concern with the level of resource and given the number of people affected a fix in 2.2.3 should have been forthcoming.

Just curiously wheremany man years have been commiited to a specification already (2.4 and 3.0) with laterfeatures being speced and prepared for now), how would you expect Sandy to respond to 80% of questions that are not in the spec, or questions that would leak spec beyond 2.3 which Fd do not do? Again I m am pretty sure Sandy did not try to anwer 114 questions ina negative way just to annoy you, ubt I could be wrong.

Can you sum up how you would answer the question "When will NPC crewmen be coming?". Now in your list this is "not planned yet". As the specification for the feature in theDDF was automated or NPC crew have same effects, so all they need todo is render a pg crewman and interaction for th crewman for no beneift in gameplay, how you would answer this, given they have no plas to this?

I think you has good point you managed to destroy through distorting with noise and whining. I know where you are coming from I hate Telepresence!

Simon

 

[CMDR Pugwash]

The issue with the ghost signals is that it's only the visual that isn't working. If you get one, and don't see the visual, you can still use the sound to locate the direction and the distance to the signal. Typically when you do this, the visual will eventually come back, but in very rare instances it won't, but you can still find the "ghost signals".

So in other words, the ghosts aren't actually ghosts and non-items, they are in fact there and you can in fact locate them by sound still. Best to use the http://www.wavescanner.net/ to hear the sounds to you recognize what you want to collect and then if the visual gets ghosted, just use this to know what signal is what and aim for that by sound.

Like everyone else, this annoyed the hell out of me until I just one day followed the sound instead and ta-da...

Thats a very useful site, thanks.

 

[Armia]

They made a change in 2.2.3 ad in again 2.3, which appears to hae fixed the issue.

Just curiously how do you knw it was a simple thing, as you state in your post? Normally if I or one of my 2 team needed 2 goes at fixing a problem, there was actually more than one cause of the sympton and it was not easy to to find. So my experience in problem resolution would suggest the problem was not simple, which is counter to youe kowledge on the bug.

I assumed that the problem would have been rather unsophisticated in nature because it was FDev themselves' attempt to 'fix'(or improve, whatever) the scanner which had caused the bug to begin with.
The fix could have been as simple as reverting the wave scanner back to the last known working version, until they figure out what they have done wrong.
But what did they do? Nothing, for like five whole months.

That's what the problem is: they left the problematic part of their code not within their beta build but the live version of the client which people pay real money to play with, whilst knowing they could revert the changes they'd done to it until they find a permanent fix.

I mean, I get it, mistakes happen, Mkay, I make mistakes too at my RL workplace, but what I would normally do when I realize I'd messed up with something - would be to try and fix it, not leave it there wide open so everyone in my team can come and laugh at my stupidity.


Also - for the record - calling people 'whining' also diminishes your point, and I happen to love telepresence multicrew.

 

[nanite2000]

I assumed

That's usually where misunderstanding occurs.

that the problem would have been rather unsophisticated in nature because it was FDev themselves' attempt to 'fix'(or improve, whatever) the scanner which had caused the bug to begin with.

That's not quite correct. The scanner was not fixed because there was nothing to fix, but it was improved. It was modified in 2.2 to accommodate new wave types due to the addition of geological features (like fumeroles, geysers, and fungal life) on planet surfaces. The 'old' scanner display did not have space or logic for these new scan types, so it had to be modified to include them.

The fix could have been as simple as reverting the wave scanner back to the last known working version, until they figure out what they have done wrong.

That may not have been possible, or at least extremely difficult. Settings aside the potential complexity in reverting code to an earlier version, reverting back would have meant that the geological features would not show up on the scanner, thereby further enraging the gaming community.

But what did they do? Nothing, for like five whole months.

That's what the problem is: they left the problematic part of their code not within their beta build but the live version of the client which people pay real money to play with, whilst knowing they could revert the changes they'd done to it until they find a permanent fix.

Not so. Just because you didn't see any output doesn't mean nothing was done. And clearly something was done as it's fixed in 2.3.

Bugs take time to investigate and fix. Some serious ones warrant a patch which means additional time, testing, and complexity (further pushing other development items back). I (personally) didn't consider this bug to be serious enough to potentially hold up development of new features. If it meant making the devs lives a bit simpler so they can focus on other features, I can totally understand why FDev would have decided to simply roll it up as a fix in the next release.

Like I said in an earlier post - a workaround existed, and it wasn't really game-breaking. I've been using it in it's 'broken' state since it was released in 2.2, and have spent many hours on planet surfaces. I think only about 2-3% of the time was I unable to find a signal source (as long as I used the audio workaround to locate it).

Personally, I think FDev made the right decision here.

 

[khaos526]

Yes, if you can't hear very well, or have other noises around that are inhibiting you from following the sounds, then you will have issues with the ghosting. I turn down everything else when I'm using the SRV so I can just follow the sounds and locate the objects when the wave scanner visual goes into the ghost mode.

As I mentioned earlier, once you're close to the object, and turn towards it, the visual scanner usually will start to display it again.

Again, the objects all exists and you CAN find them, it just takes a bit of practice when the visual fails...

 

[Susanna]

For me, it's easier. The audio component of the scanner doesn't seem to be affected by the ongoing bugs. Even if the audio is bugged to some degree, it's nowhere near as bad as the visual scanner. My solution: listen, don't look. I may not be able to discern the difference between meteorites and outcrops, but at least I don't waste time on the really common junk.

Sadly, my hearing is very poor so this is not really an option for me as the scanner sounds are not distinct enough for me (especially over other in-game noises, which I have the audio all but off for and the scanner at 100%!)... 25% in my left ear and less than 50% in my right. So I need that scanner to work as it should with visual directions...

 

[IndigoWyrd]

So that's what people mean when they say it's broken.. and I just thought that was how it worked... so I can't say I've really noticed.

I have noticed that your ship hasn't pinged the scanner, either audio or visual in a while, but I can live with that.

Personally, i'd love to see the "fish finder" more useful, such as differentiating different signals in color - red, blue, green, yellow, white as well as having differing audio signals. That would make it far more useful IMO.

 

[Dirtbird]

So that's what people mean when they say it's broken.. and I just thought that was how it worked... so I can't say I've really noticed.

I'm with you on this one. I did wonder what this bug was but now I know. I don't think it'll change how I use the scanner though.

 

[Scarmax]

That's a bug?? Well, shoot. I've never actually had any problems finding stuff with the scanner with the way it currently works, but if they can make it work better, great.