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Xandra

Game Settings Overhaul, Plz, And The "first 5H Program"

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Hi,

 

This I had to read on my GV char recently (CA-Help chat):

 

[18:43:03] <XYZ> Hello? I am having some trouble. I turned down all graphics and it is still laggy as all hell, I can't do anything. My first time playing btw. Running Mac 10.8.4 with 12GB RAM and 2.66 GHz Intel Core

and then, after me asking for gfx chip:

18:56:55] <XYZ> Having great difficulty trying to type, it's typing 1 letter every 5 seconds, Graphics Card ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB

 

Right. It's the common problem new players in the tutorial seem to have. This wasn't the first time I (or the few brave GV CA's) answered such, it comes again, over and over.

 

Obviously during installation/ first run the "Compatibility" settings aren't set correctly. Adding to this, the whole "Settings" area in the client loader is a hopelessly outdated mess of poorly named, rarely described (in the pop-ups) options, where it's a game of chance to find approbate settings. Often it's more intuitive to manually edit the "gamesettings.txt" ...

 

Suggestion is, according to the "first 5 hours" project, to make a full overhaul of the game settings. Throw out what's obsolete, organize what's left, and add a working help system to it.

 

This is what new players are confronted with at first, they just need to get the game running - any other work will be in vain if they drop because they cannot get their settings working!

 

Solution of the above quoted problem:

 

[18:56:36] <Me> you might to go into the settings tab of the client loader, then to "Compatibility". The first 4 at the top are for AMD and Intel - set to "disabled" anything you don't have

[18:58:07] <Me> Set GLSL shader to "core", the other 3 to "disabled" . save and try again

 

responded with:

[19:05:03] <XYZ> Working now, thanks a lot if you are still there!! :D

 

So easy! Why cannot such been done on installation/ first run? Why isn't some work done finally to pimp this hopelessly outdated "settings"?

 

Remark: I have a char on GV still, and I do my best to support the great CA's there. Quite often new players have problems, and no CA is on line. How this? Isn't this the most important minutes in the life of a potential new Wurminan? Shouldn't there be at least nearly 24/7 presence of CA's there?

 

Have fun!

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+1 on the house.


This is a good point. Going to keep this in mind for others having issues.


There is a wiki page about the settings, but it is a bit stale and not really informative enough to get going.

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+1 Very good point


 


I have a character in the tutorial to help when I see there are a lot of players on GV, some of them have problems getting the game to run smoothly.


I heard that setting GLSL shaders to "disabled" and leaving the other 3 as "core" could help with performance problems using Macs or Intel GPUs so that is what I advise them to try.


That's the opposite of what you are suggesting and yet people report that helps too :wacko:


 


wiki says



"GLSL shader support Used for certain ATI workarounds. If this option is disabled, reflections will not work."

 

Not enough information to help people with Macs or Intel GPU's with problems.

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Remark: I have a char on GV still, and I do my best to support the great CA's there. Quite often new players have problems, and no CA is on line. How this? Isn't this the most important minutes in the life of a potential new Wurminan? Shouldn't there be at least nearly 24/7 presence of CA's there?

We have a global chat channel allowing people to talk across servers, why do we still have one CA channel per server and not a global CA channel? It would make the CAs' work a lot easier.

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I made a statement in another thread referencing Anarchy Online's staff presence and high informative "nooby island" as a perfect concept. AO's staff presence on their nooby island was 24/7 run by paid staff and community volunteers, mostly volunteers though.


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+1


And while we are at it, most games have simplicific options that give you 'low, medium, high' settings and advanced setting option to tweak them. Why don't we have more than one default settings to help this?


 


No reason to have CA to be separated servers either... maybe even hook CA to irc or something. I would not mind helping freedom channels even that I no longer play on freedom kingdom.


Edited by rosedragon

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+1

And while we are at it, most games have simplicific options that give you 'low, medium, high' settings and advanced setting option to tweak them. Why don't we have more than one default settings to help this?

 

 

 

That would be a good start, I think.

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+1 I'm all for making settings easier to configure/understand.


 


 




We have a global chat channel allowing people to talk across servers, why do we still have one CA channel per server and not a global CA channel? It would make the CAs' work a lot easier.




 




No reason to have CA to be separated servers either... maybe even hook CA to irc or something. I would not mind helping freedom channels even that I no longer play on freedom kingdom.




 


Too many questions being asked at once and too much chatter.


Global CA channel would be a very terrible idea really.


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We currently have Community Assistants on the tutorial server along with the original players that are still there from GV days.


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Too many questions being asked at once and too much chatter.

Global CA channel would be a very terrible idea really.

 

I don't see the problem (at the moment). I am sure most of the questions across the 8 servers with CA's are exactly the same, it would be more efficient to have one global CA for the Freedom clusters.

The CA channel can be quiet for hours as it is now.

Having said that, I don't know how it would work if Rolf decided to advertise some and we got a huge influx of new players at once. I know that EvE has a global help channel, and the text scrolls faster than any human can follow.

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Hi,

 

I think the CA availability is an important point, but it's a bit off topic here. (and yes, I'm guilty here, too)

 

As I have learned there's some officials that are present in CA Help even if not shining up in the CA Help Member list, and if really nobody "official" is there, there's still the few remaining GV natives. Improving the Help system for brand new players is essential, but beyond the scope of this thread.

 

What's topic here is the game settings, the way they are represented, and, especially, the way they are set at "first start". Ideas:

  • It's no rocket science to determine what GPU is available by the new user. Set the approbate values accordingly!
    Having the new player to find out what GPU it has, and having to adjust her settings, is evil! Set them to a "save mode" according to the GPU, and tell them that they might have a better experience fiddling with 'em options. And clearly telling them where to find, and how to do!
    .
  • The options settings are an age old mess, grown over the years, some have a mouseover hint, others not, but it's obviously not cared of in ages. Rework this mess!
    Every entry should have an understandable mouseover explanation, and a meaningful default value.
    .
  • "Graphic Quality Sets" are what ppl expect these days. "Minimum, low, medium, high, ultra" at least.
    .
  • Dividing the settings in a "normal view" (for the masses) and an "expert view" (for the brave of heart) is also good commons.

Discussion?

 

Have a good time!

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Hi,


 




Xandra for president !




 


You not really like to have me for president - I'm autocratic, ruthless, selfish, authoritarian and all other sorts of nasty things else - I'm your nightmare, basically.


 


/end OT


 


Have a good time!


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