Patch 4.7

[morness]

Hello and long time no see!

We have been looking into a variety of your concerns and with desyncs still affecting some players we wanted to start there. Desyncs have proven difficult to track down so we’ve improved the logging system to provide a wider range of information. This information is key for identifying and fixing these remaining issues.

So we need your help, please select yes on the popup when asked to upload your desync logs.

– details below!

We have also included some other gameplay improvements that will hopefully improve your overall gameplay experience.

Thank you for your ongoing support as we continue to move forward from here.

This discussion thread will be the main thread we monitor.

Improved Desync Logging:

The desync logging system has been improved and now logs additional details like player and game settings:

• When a player encounters a desync their logs will now include additional game and player state information which is critical in tracking down these problems.
  
• Sync logging parameters have also been exposed in a config file (Age2HD/desync-tracking.txt). If you’d like to alter your settings you can open the file in a standard text editor (like notepad) and follow the written instructions. When playing a multiplayer game all users will update their settings to match the host. This will ensure that everyone is running the same parameters.
  
• The data collected by these logs is now stored in memory rather than logging to a file (which endlessly grows during gameplay and is very slow). This approach also enables us to only collect the data for the frames in and around the time of the desync.
  
• If you encounter memory issues (by increasing the frames for example) the game will automatically reduce the number of frames recorded if memory has become scarce.
  
• When a player encounters a desync a file will be generated and saved in the logs folder (Age2HD/Logs). To manage space only the 10 most recent logs will be saved.
  
• This file will also be sent to the development team if you select yes on the pop-up when asked to upload their logs. We encourage all users to do this so we can work together in tracking these down

AI Improvements:

• AI Boar Lures now have better placement. Gathering should now be more efficient and AI hunters should die less frequently when using a Boar Lure.
  
• Boar luring villagers should now garrison sooner if they are at low health.
  
• sn-home-exploration-time function should now default to 300 (rather than -1)
  
• up-drop-resources function now should now work as expected.
  
• sn-gather-idle-soldiers-at-center function should now work as expected. When
  playing a King of the Hill game the AI should now try to take the center instead of using patrol orders.

General:

• Farms should no longer appear depleted before they’re empty. Villagers should now correctly gather every last morsel before the depleted sound effects plays.
  
• The Save Chapter button has returned! When playing a game with the record game option checked the Save Chapter option will appear in the menu list. The hotkey associated with this action is also functioning.
  
• File names within the game should now display special characters correctly when saving and loading (within the game menus).
  
• Unit outlines should now display correctly when villagers are obscured by buildings and objects.
  
• Water animations now correctly stop when the game is paused to give players a better visual indication that the game is correctly paused.

Other Updates:

• We are aware of the importance of MP Restore and are actively working towards a long term solution. Due to the complexity of this feature we want to ensure it is stable before pushing out a patch.
  
• We’ve recently moved to a new build making process to align with the latest Steam Updates so older patch builds will be unavailable until we can update them. Due to this new process we may not be able to resurrect all of the old builds (specifically the XP branch).
  
• Balance updates will also be coming with the next patch. Especially fans of extreme tower wars will need to expand their tactics in the future.