Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Discussions about the latest news in the Might and Magic community.
User avatar
Kalah
Retired Admin
Retired Admin
Posts: 20078
Joined: 24 Nov 2005

Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Unread postby Kalah » 10 May 2013, 21:46

If you would like to take a look at the original page visit this link:
https://www.celestialheavens.com/1368181702
In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Goodwill.

User avatar
Kalah
Retired Admin
Retired Admin
Posts: 20078
Joined: 24 Nov 2005

Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Unread postby Kalah » 10 May 2013, 21:46

Any tips you guys come up with can be entered here and I will relay them directly to the dev team.
In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Goodwill.

User avatar
astral76minor
Assassin
Assassin
Posts: 252
Joined: 12 Jun 2006
Location: There I am

Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Unread postby astral76minor » 11 May 2013, 03:29

Autosave helped. Putting the game on an SSD made it faster. It still blacks outs and stops the program every now and then. This happened with the original H6. I do know that these issues will receive better care than H5 did. So, in a way, we have progress until that final patch....

ywhtptgtfo
Hunter
Hunter
Posts: 528
Joined: 06 Jan 2006

Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Unread postby ywhtptgtfo » 11 May 2013, 16:38

ToweringamishPlumber, this is why a strong QA department is required. Ubisoft is a very big company and should have the facility to provide proper QA (even for its outsourced developers). Unfortunately, it doesn't think it is very important which is why we have all these issues with Heroes 6.



Do note that these types of hardware settings issues, while tricky to deal with, are not impossible obstacles to overcome in delivering a quality product. Many companies had been successful with delivering stable products with vastly higher computational and graphical complexity and yet did not suffer the type of epic failure Ubisoft and its partner studios faced.

User avatar
hellegennes
Succubus
Succubus
Posts: 843
Joined: 04 May 2009

Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Unread postby hellegennes » 11 May 2013, 17:01

Heroes 6 had so many problems mainly because of two things:



a) it's a game which does not require a lot of processing power hence there are a lot of people playing it on older PCs, with a vastly greater range of hardware combinations and low-end equipment. The fact that it's a type of game for older audiences doesn't help either. People stop upgrading their PCs that often after a certain age.



And b) is that the game was developed by three separate companies (initial release, patches, expansion) which is a programmer's nightmare. No matter how good the documentation is, it's extremelly hard to debug another team's 2 million lines of code.

User avatar
astral76minor
Assassin
Assassin
Posts: 252
Joined: 12 Jun 2006
Location: There I am

Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Unread postby astral76minor » 11 May 2013, 20:31

Not one single glitch. Played the 1st campaign for Shadow of Darkness. Lost the game when I got trapped by another dungeon hero at the end. Again, not one problem. Going to try with Raelag this time.



@hellegennes

The leading problem with bugs is computer hardware instability, and almost 90% of the time is the software. There are millions of situations. My reason why? Some people just have old computers. Do not expect to run Heroes 6 that great with a single core processor. Even dual cores are sluggish. Perhaps the biggest solution: Build your own computer. Do not buy a retail built computer! Now choose all the parts with finesse and build it!



I think retail computers sold at popular stores are the problem. Too much cheap hardware and software on those damn things. Better parts, better software, less bugs.

User avatar
Wurtzel
Scout
Scout
Posts: 155
Joined: 06 Jan 2006
Location: Perth Australia

Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Unread postby Wurtzel » 12 May 2013, 00:29

I did have problem with the black screen before combat, reinstalled my graphics driver and game runs beautifully now...
I THINK SO THEREFORE I AM

ywhtptgtfo
Hunter
Hunter
Posts: 528
Joined: 06 Jan 2006

Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Unread postby ywhtptgtfo » 12 May 2013, 02:54

hellegennes,
Shades of Darkness did not introduce anything that is very fundamentally new. Basically, they added a new faction with some invisibility skill as well as some 10 maps. Unless there is something seriously wrong with the engine design, the development of the expansion should not involve fundamental changes to the game engine. But yet, there are numerous game-breaking bugs they could not catch or fix prior to the release.
But of course, the biggest culprit of all is Ubisoft with its awful ideas of switching developers three times (starting with Nival, whose final installment was quite stable), its failure in properly supporting them, its abysmal support/community management, and its insistence to stick with Uplay when Steam is several million times better than it.

User avatar
hellegennes
Succubus
Succubus
Posts: 843
Joined: 04 May 2009

Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Unread postby hellegennes » 12 May 2013, 06:47

@ywhtptgtfo:
It doesn't matter if they introduced a lot of new material. Even adding one line of code in a program that already has 2 million lines of code may introduce new bugs. And I'm being literal, here. A program is not like a book, with its individual pages and words behaving like separate entities. A program is more like a network of interconnected things and adding new ones or altering relationships between others may introduce new problems in the mix. Note that the complexity of a turn-based strategy game is staggering compared to adventures, simulators and shooters. Even most RPGs are more linear than a TBS game.
Now, considering they not only added new material but also debugged a lot of the existing code, too, it's no surprise that some new bugs appeared. I, for one, am experiencing no problems whatsoever, and I am not the only one. In fact, said problems seem to only appear on certain hardware configurations, something which is difficult to debug.

User avatar
Kalah
Retired Admin
Retired Admin
Posts: 20078
Joined: 24 Nov 2005

Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Unread postby Kalah » 12 May 2013, 10:45

@Wurtzel: Thanks, I have passed on the message.
In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Goodwill.

ywhtptgtfo
Hunter
Hunter
Posts: 528
Joined: 06 Jan 2006

Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Unread postby ywhtptgtfo » 12 May 2013, 16:21

hellegennes,
A program is indeed not a book, but if a program is well-designed, it would've been at least somewhat modular. In our case, the gemstone of this expansion is the new faction, which for the most part should not involve any engine-level changes whatsoever. However, it cannot be ruled out that BlackHole wrote a ****ty engine and hardcoded everything.
Commenting on the complexity of TBS strategy game is irrelevant because Heroes 6 is, by far, not the most complex game out there. And that complexity would have much more to do with developing a good A.I. than not creating black screens/freezes/crashes.
You can be an apologist for Heroes 6 + expansion for all you want, but there are tonnes of successful games released out there are much more stable and much more complex.

User avatar
astral76minor
Assassin
Assassin
Posts: 252
Joined: 12 Jun 2006
Location: There I am

Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Unread postby astral76minor » 12 May 2013, 21:14

@ all
Encountered plenty of black screens and all of them had to do with starting a battle. This is the glitch I get and the only one.
Anyone out there have a similar issue?

User avatar
Kalah
Retired Admin
Retired Admin
Posts: 20078
Joined: 24 Nov 2005

Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Unread postby Kalah » 12 May 2013, 22:57

Can you describe the issue more thoroughly? Also, read the news post and create those reports. I can relay them to the dev team.
In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Goodwill.

User avatar
astral76minor
Assassin
Assassin
Posts: 252
Joined: 12 Jun 2006
Location: There I am

Help the H6 devs fix SoD bugs!

Unread postby astral76minor » 15 May 2013, 21:07

@ Kalah
It appears that they fixed many glitches. Today, there was an email from Ubisoft to all consumers who bought Shades of Darkness. It said to restart the game and the problems will be fixed. And to be real cool, they included a 30% off coupon on anything at UbiShop. I noticed that the glitch I had went away, but we can never know 100% if they fixed it all. They certainly are trying better than they did with H5!


Return to “News”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 13 guests