Distant Worlds 2 - State of the Game and Update Roadmap

[ERutins]

As of March 28th, 2022 v1.0.2.8

Hello to everyone in the Distant Worlds 2 community,

First, Elliot and I would like to thank all of our customers for your patience and your support since Distant Worlds 2 was released. For those who have experienced serious issues, we apologize and especially appreciate your understanding as we work to resolve these.

(TLDR: We are prioritizing Critical Issues, Performance Issues and Gameplay issues in that order. We will be putting more time into testing beta updates before they go official to avoid introducing new save or other problems. We will be switching to a slower update schedule to make additional testing possible and to improve the stability of official updates going forward.)

It’s clear, in hindsight, that while we had over 300 testers and DW2 was in alpha and beta testing for a year, we did not have a large enough testing pool to catch all critical issues related to hardware configurations. It’s also clear that despite the best efforts of a lot of very good volunteer testers, we didn’t achieve the level of polish that many of you expected at release.

Since release, we have been working overtime to address those issues preventing gameplay for some customers, while also addressing other serious issues affecting a wider range of players. This has resulted in fourteen new updates in the two or so weeks since release. These updates have fixed many crashes, performance issues and gameplay issues for many players.

Unfortunately, not all the critical issues are resolved (though many have been) and the pace of the updates has also created some serious new issues from time to time, including some save file problems in 1.0.2.2 and 1.0.2.6 that should not have made it to a public release.

While the urgency of getting DW2 working for everyone has been driving us to investigate and iterate as quickly as possible, it’s clear that we can’t maintain the pace of an update every day or two and it’s also clear that in that rush we have not allowed time for enough testing between releases. This is going to change going forward as I’ll explain below.

Priority #1 - Issues Preventing Gameplay

Our first priority remains resolving critical issues preventing gameplay for some customers. The most common of these remain frequent crashes (especially in battle) or crashes on startup or black screens on startup. In addition, we have issues where some very high end GPUs are trying to run DW2 while remaining in some kind of power-saving mode, thus causing much worse than expected performance, or where dual GPU systems are trying to run DW2 on the integrated rather than dedicated GPU to some degree, causing slowdowns and crashes.

We are working on all of these and have brought in Matrix/Slitherine’s Technical Director to work together with Elliot on some of these issues, especially those which appear to be at a lower level than most of the game code.

The main challenge and delay in resolving these has been the great difficulty in reproducing them. We are proceeding in two main directions right now. :

First, we are re-engineering how DW2 creates and manages vertex buffers, which appear to be at the core of many of the issues, especially with AMD GPUs and their drivers. The first iteration of vertex buffer changes is in 1.0.2.8 and we hope this will help many customers.

Second, we are working to improve the low level GPU identification and selection code to make sure that on systems with dual GPUs DW2 is always running on the correct one and that very high end GPUs no longer try to take a nap while DW2 is running. We expect efforts in this area to reach the public within about a week after this roadmap is posted.

Priority #2 - Performance

Our second priority has been performance and while this remains a high priority, we have already made major performance improvements for many systems in the last two weeks and we hope that resolving the remaining low level GPU issues will resolve most of the remaining performance concerns, where systems are above our minimum specifications and playing a reasonable galaxy size and resolution for their hardware.

It’s important to note that we also have seen instances where customers are running maximum size 2000 star galaxies on minimum specification hardware, which will likely never result in good performance, but performance across the board has seen significant improvements and that will continue. We also plan in the future to add more guidance in galaxy setup as to which galaxy sizes are recommended for systems closer to the lower end of the hardware specification and which are suitable for systems at the higher end.

There are also some concerns on certain systems regarding performance in nebulas, with certain map overlays and with the research screen which will need additional work if the low level fixes do not resolve these on all systems. If needed, we will address these more specific performance concerns after the general performance issues are resolved.

Priority #3 - Gameplay

Our third priority has been addressing major gameplay concerns, such as some espionage balance issues, some diplomacy issues and most recently fleet and ship coordination issues. We will be continuing to fit these in as we can and we expect the immediate priorities in this area to be as follows:

1. Further fleet and ship behavior polish, especially relating to interactions with manual orders and fuel tankers. This should be coming in the first beta update this week and hopefully be finished in the next official update.

2. Improve quality of live for manual players with regard to multi-selection of ships and the available orders and automation settings

3. Additional guidance in the UI on the cost of low suitability colonization and support costs for existing and new colonies

4. Improve pathing issues related to nebula storms as well as home systems being generated within nebulas This should also improve pathfinding issues that could in rare cases result in ridiculous paths around the galaxy.

5. Improve auto-design at certain tech levels and ship hull levels for certain ships, especially small troop transports, colony ships and fuel tankers, to make sure they have the necessary ion defenses, speed and range for their missions.

6. Address rare issues with messaging that could cause rapidly repeating/looping messages especially relating to story events and threats like the Hive and Planet Destroyer. Also improve message handling, especially regarding attack notification messages in the late game.

7. Resolve issues relating to some cases where the wrong race is chosen suitability-wise for colonization or migration

8. Polish Espionage and Diplomacy further. Adjust the Espionage difficulties to the desired range and to investigate and fix reported issues with some higher end treaty types.

9. Investigate the reports of issues with either automated stock maintain levels or freighter and passenger ship construction for the Private Sector to ensure all is working as intended. Some progress on this may already have been made in the 1.0.2.8 update.

10. Adjust the corruption scaling to avoid the situation, especially at difficulty settings above Normal, where large colony income could decrease as the colony approached maximum population.

There are also other reported gameplay issues beyond these top 10 which we will also address as we go forward, this is by no means an exhaustive list, but there are our initial goals.

Finally, let me discuss the new update schedule. This week we are releasing 1.0.2.8 as an official update today. Going forward, we plan to release beta updates on Thursdays on Steam and GOG and official update on all stores on certain Tuesdays. That may shift to a once every two week schedule as the most critical issues are resolved. This will not slow down our development, but it will allow us more time to test each beta update and make sure that as much as humanly possible, we’re only taking steps forward and no more steps back.

For those customers still affected by critical issues after 1.0.2.8, we’re sorry we couldn’t get every critical issue resolved yet with our quick updates to date, but know that you remain our highest priority and we won’t stop until we make sure every system within our minimum specifications is able to play DW2 as it was intended.

Thank you again if you took the time to read all of this and for those who have been unhappy with how DW2 has worked on their systems, please check in at least at the end of each week going forward and try the newest update to let us know if things have improved for you.

Sincerely,

Erik Rutins and Elliot Gibbs
Matrix Games and CodeForce

[RedRapture]

Glad to help the dev team get this game going properly. With all the various systems out there, it would be ludicrous for us to believe all bugs would be tested for on all systems before release. The cost to do so would simply be too high.

Continuing from the previous topic, my settings button works on the laptop, so it must be something with my desktop's systems causing the crash there.

[WollieG]

Thank you for the dedication and the updates. Just want to mention here, that i still have major crashes and seems like memory issues. I have 16GB Corsair gaming ram. It happens a lot if i zoom in or out of systems, especially where main planet is with lots of ships. I am having random crashes just by moving on map and zooming in or out. Also if i just click on ship or planets. I have even had it in designing ships, then crashes and i lose everything i designed. I am basically saving every 10 seconds and that is no lie. I have GBs of save game files because of saving like this. Its crazy. The crashes are huge and happens many many many times and FRUSTRATES THE CRAP out of me. I cannot play like this. I am sick of the crashes and have to reload. The saving is killing me. I am really frustrated with these random crashes which happens almost every min. Not joking here, but this is madness trying to play like this. It seems worse now after all the patches as well. In the beginning before any patches i had very little crashes.
ps. Choosing games with less than 300 systems might even help a bit for now. Would be nice feature as well choosing 100 systems or even 50 for smaller games/quicker games.
Thanks anyway.

[placsie]

Thanks fellas for the excellent communication. When the major fires are out get some R&R, these last couple of weeks must've sucked.

[Lula O Honesto]

Nice to hear that. Nice work guys.

[Mark-R]

I really enjoyed DW Universe, over 1,000 hours over the various platforms. I am sure you will have an awesome game with DW2, when you get it to where it needs to be.

Thanks for all of your hard work and thank you for the road map.

[TheMac]

Thanks for working as hard as you have. I don't have any crashes on my high-end computer, though the issue preventing me from playing is the pirate bug, where you pay the pirate, have an agreement in place, and then a couple months later the pirate acts like they have never had a protection agreement with you and they start attacking you for no reason. Pirates are very powerful early game, and having a pirate faction "Angry" at you even when you agreed to pay them is game-breaking. You have no way to fight them off if you haven't even built any of the smallest military ships, and your economy is too weak to do so. It would be very nice if your team could add this bug to your list. Thanks!

[frankycl]

Originally posted by RedRapture:

Continuing from the previous topic, my settings button works on the laptop, so it must be something with my desktop's systems causing the crash there.

That's what I said - it's not always only the game that has issues (although this can be the case additionally).
Congrats that you found out that alone. :) - Would suggest to try a complete new start with a repaired or new WIN (and everything else that may be conected to hardware- and/or OS- issues). (I know it's a pain in the ass to to this, but sometimes it can solve many, many other issues, too. )

[Tina1039]

This is great! Thanks for the updates! I'm really looking forward to the future of this game, waiting a few months for a game that I can play for years is totally worth it.

[frankycl]

Originally posted by TheMac:

(...) though the issue preventing me from playing is the pirate bug, where you pay the pirate, have an agreement in place, and then a couple months later the pirate acts like they have never had a protection agreement with you and they start attacking you for no reason. (...)

Well, I could imagine that this isn't a real bug (at least I wouldn't consider it as such). - They are pirates (!) and therefore aren't / shouldn't be very trust-worthy - by design (if they should be simulated a bit realistically). Therfore I could imagine that this is something that is well intended.
Also: You could disable or weaken them in the settings of a new game - have you tried this already ? (For me it would only be a bug if what you wrote above is true for even the weakest setting of them ;-))
- But all of this is just my personal opinion / way to handle things, of course.

[frankycl]

Originally posted by placs:

Thanks fellas for the excellent communication. When the major fires are out get some R&R, these last couple of weeks must've sucked.

+1

[Sanding Glove Handjob]

You guys have done a phenomenal job the last couple weeks, my buddy was one struggling with starting the game (AMD gpu). He's playing now, performance is WAY better on the higher end machines after the updates.

[Shadak]

me again.
while the last versions where at least stable, but with a slow performance on my 3900X/6900XT when playing.
the new version 1.0.2.8 changes this. The game crahses on start up. every time...I sent two of theses crashes as bug report to AMD.

you really need to work on you QA...

[ERutins]

Originally posted by ๔รﻮ_Shadak:

me again.
while the last versions where at least stable, but with a slow performance on my 3900X/6900XT when playing.
the new version 1.0.2.8 changes this. The game crahses on start up. every time...I sent two of theses crashes as bug report to AMD.
you really need to work on you QA...

Do you have any logs in your /data/logs sub-folder which you could share with us please?

[Shadak]

Originally posted by ERutins:

Originally posted by ๔รﻮ_Shadak:

me again.
while the last versions where at least stable, but with a slow performance on my 3900X/6900XT when playing.
the new version 1.0.2.8 changes this. The game crahses on start up. every time...I sent two of theses crashes as bug report to AMD.
you really need to work on you QA...

Do you have any logs in your /data/logs sub-folder which you could share with us please?

Distant Worlds - Crash Dump - Version 1.0.2.8

21:13:00 28 March 2022


Xenko.Core.Serialization.Contents.ContentManagerException: Unexpected exception while loading asset [Environment/DW_Skybox/gen/Texture_1]. Reason: HRESULT: [0x887A0005], Module: [SharpDX.DXGI], ApiCode: [DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED/DeviceRemoved], Message: The GPU device instance has been suspended. Use GetDeviceRemovedReason to determine the appropriate action.
. Check inner-exception for details. ---> SharpDX.SharpDXException: HRESULT: [0x887A0005], Module: [SharpDX.DXGI], ApiCode: [DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED/DeviceRemoved], Message: The GPU device instance has been suspended. Use GetDeviceRemovedReason to determine the appropriate action.

at SharpDX.Result.CheckError()
at SharpDX.Direct3D11.Device.CreateTexture2D(Texture2DDescription& descRef, DataBox[] initialDataRef, Texture2D texture2DOut)
at Xenko.Graphics.Texture.InitializeFromImpl(DataBox[] dataBoxes)
at Xenko.Graphics.Texture.InitializeFrom(Texture parentTexture, TextureDescription description, TextureViewDescription viewDescription, DataBox[] textureDatas)
at Xenko.Graphics.Data.TextureContentSerializer.Serialize(ArchiveMode mode, SerializationStream stream, Texture texture, Boolean allowContentStreaming)
at Xenko.Core.Serialization.Contents.ContentManager.DeserializeObject(Queue`1 serializeOperations, Reference parentReference, String url, Type objType, Object obj, ContentManagerLoaderSettings settings)
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---
at Xenko.Core.Serialization.Contents.ContentManager.DeserializeObject(Queue`1 serializeOperations, Reference parentReference, String url, Type objType, Object obj, ContentManagerLoaderSettings settings)
at Xenko.Core.Serialization.Contents.ContentManager.DeserializeObject(String initialUrl, String newUrl, Type type, Object obj, ContentManagerLoaderSettings settings)
at Xenko.Core.Serialization.Contents.ContentManager.Load(Type type, String url, ContentManagerLoaderSettings settings)
at Xenko.Core.Serialization.Contents.ContentManager.Load[T](String url, ContentManagerLoaderSettings settings)
at DistantWorlds2.EffectHelper.CreateSkyboxLight(Color color, Single intensity, ContentManager content)
at DistantWorlds2.ScaledRenderer.UpdateBackgroundScene(GraphicsDevice graphics, Single timePassed, Double timeInSeconds)
at DistantWorlds2.ScaledRenderer.GenerateBackgroundScene(GraphicsDevice graphics, OrbType orbType, Race race, ShipRole baseRole, Boolean addColony, Random rnd)
at DistantWorlds2.ScaledRenderer.GenerateBackgroundScene(GraphicsDevice graphics)
at DistantWorlds2.ScaledRenderer.CheckGenerateMenuBackgroundScene(MenuRenderer preSceneRenderer, MenuRenderer postSceneRenderer)
at DistantWorlds2.DWGame.Update(GameTime gameTime)


Further info follows:

SharpDX.SharpDXException: HRESULT: [0x887A0005], Module: [SharpDX.DXGI], ApiCode: [DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED/DeviceRemoved], Message: The GPU device instance has been suspended. Use GetDeviceRemovedReason to determine the appropriate action.

at SharpDX.Result.CheckError()
at SharpDX.Direct3D11.Device.CreateTexture2D(Texture2DDescription& descRef, DataBox[] initialDataRef, Texture2D texture2DOut)
at Xenko.Graphics.Texture.InitializeFromImpl(DataBox[] dataBoxes)
at Xenko.Graphics.Texture.InitializeFrom(Texture parentTexture, TextureDescription description, TextureViewDescription viewDescription, DataBox[] textureDatas)
at Xenko.Graphics.Data.TextureContentSerializer.Serialize(ArchiveMode mode, SerializationStream stream, Texture texture, Boolean allowContentStreaming)
at Xenko.Core.Serialization.Contents.ContentManager.DeserializeObject(Queue`1 serializeOperations, Reference parentReference, String url, Type objType, Object obj, ContentManagerLoaderSettings settings)


--- COMPLETE ---

edit: while going through the session log I found this right before the exception happened:
28-03-2022 21-13-00.286: CRASH while getting vertices for mesh '#sensorLarge2' in model 'Ships/Mortalen/Mortalen_Small_Spaceport':

[Psycho 78]

Thank you, we know you're trying (or at least most of us do) and DW2 is already a great game and will be terrific once the bugs are squashed.

I'm curious, what sort of machines did you run for coding/testing DW2?