INTZ BETA Topic - Update 25th March

[S0L]

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Update 25th March
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OK, new version now live. This should address the crashiness related to the character select screen. Found out why it happened, addressed it and removed the previous caching solution.

Let's see if the stability improves for everyone :)

If it does, we'll hopefully be then able to push this one Live...

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S0L
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(Old posts below...!)

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Update 22nd March
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Here we go then... Small update but fixes some issues we've seen...

1. Launcher Crashes - Should hopefully be a thing of the past, but give it a crack...
2. 4 player split-screen - Fixed a weird bug where it would die on the character select screen...

And some other misc tucks and tweaks. See if you can spot them :P

All being well this is the last of the Beta updates for now, if it looks fine (and SEGA are testing this internally too) we'll get this Live and let Adrian get back to some much required normal hours. I owe him a pile of beer for all the late nights and weekends!

***********IMPORTANT!***********

For now in the BETA build avoid playing Time Attack. You'll notice your PB's have been reset ... This is so when we push this live to everyone and wipe the boards, you can write times to the leaderboard. Otherwise you'd have to beat your PB before it would let you.

The PB are still there, but archived. If you want to play Time Attack, go back to the Live Branch, else when when we push this live, you'll have to beat any PB you set AGAIN to be able to post times...!

You have been warned!

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S0L
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Evening!

We're about to push a new version of the game with the INTZ replacement render active and in-place.

*IMPORTANT*

If you are currently on the BETA branch, but don't want to be involved in checking this out and everything is running fine for you, we suggest you switch back to the 'Live' default branch *RIGHT NOW*.

Whilst we don't believe we've broken anything in the game, we also can't promise as this has had only minimal progression testing...!

As always you can opt out anytime you like if you do want to be involved :P

As a reminder - this is how you switch branch...

1. Go to the Steam Library Page.
2. Find game in the list!
3. Right click on the game, and choose 'Properties' from the context menu.
4. Click on the BETAS tab.
5. Choose the 'Beta - Beta' branch.
6. It'll want a password. The password is now 'NoINTZ'. (If the password is unrecognised, you may need to restart Steam).
7. Click close to exit the Properties page...
8. Watch the game update...!
9. Play game as normal :)

Note as before you can opt out of the Beta at any time. Follow the above steps and choose the 'NONE - Opt out of all Betas' option instead of the Beta Branch at Step 5. This *will* require Steam to download different files...!

We'll be pushing the INTZ update out shortly... This is you early warning to leave the Beta Branch if you don't want to take part!

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S0L
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====================
Update 28th Feb (2:37AM!)
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Ok then, here we go.

We've just pushed the initial INTZ alternate render to the Beta branch. You may need to relaunch Steam for this to be picked up...

First things first... *THERE ARE KNOWN GRAPHICAL ISSUES REMAINING*

We know about...

1. General shadow weirdness...
2. SSAO (or Screen-space Ambient Occlusion) will go mad in places (leaves weird hall of mirrors trails)....
3. Bloom craziness (super shiney objects, especially on Race of Ages and Sky Sanctuary)
4. Assorted other weird effects...

But... it should now render the majority of the world, character, objects and more correctly on cards that don't support INTZ. This should be automatically detected.

If you card does support INTZ, you shouldn't see anything different. Fingers crossed!

You can however force the renderer to not use INTZ by using the command line -NoINTZ. If nothing else you get to see how the other half live!

We'll continue with the known issues just as soon as Adrian gets enough sleep to be able to function correctly. This is his second day in a row with a 6AM start and one that has ended with a 3AM finish. He has literally worked all the hours available to get it this far.

Imagine porting a Dreamcast game to the Saturn and you may have some idea of how much effort this has involved. He's edited over 1000 shaders to get this far - and there are more still to go...

What do we want to know...

A: If you have a Radeon HD 3xxx or 4xxx series card, can you know see more than just the sky?
B: If you have a GeForce 7800 card, is this also true?
C: Do any tracks, arenas, characters, islands or weapons fail to render?
D: If your card does support INTZ, are there any serious differences from the Live Branch.

What we don't need to be told...

E: Any of the visual weirdnesses mentioned at the start! We know, we're fixing them :P
F: Minor visual weirdnesses...!
G: Anything that we don't already know happens on the Live Branch...!

That's it, give it a whirl, hopefully we're almost there with this one...

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S0L
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Update 7th March
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...we've not forgot about you :)

So... If you're on the BETA branch, we're just pushing a new version live. This should hopefully clear up many of the reported issues in this thread - but especially...

1. Mad crazy glowy bloomy things...
2. Insane SSAO hall of mirrors...
3. Weird crashy Arena issues...
4. Bonkers flashing post effects...

Plus...! (PLUS!) we've added a proper option to quit for Touch screen devices on the Main menu, put in a fix for the 'Trick Buffering' and 'Stunt Spamming' and some other tucks and tweaks.

We're not quite there on the shadows for no-INTZ cards, but it should be a whole heap better.

I should give a massive 'thankyou' for every who's been patient and waited, whilst also doing the same for Adrian who has worked tirelessly to rewrite shaders, rebuild assets and more both in his days, evenings and weekends.

All I have to do is write up the odd update and go 'Is it done yet? Can we push a build to Beta tonight?' every 20 minutes :)

Please grab this and give it ago, again, this should automatically fire on noINTZ cards - but you can still force the renderer on cards that do support INTZ with the -NoINTZ command line...!

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S0L
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Update 15th March
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OK... I'll keep this relatively brief...!

We've pushed a new update to BETA which should hopefully once and for all solve the noINTZ card render issues.

Adrian has worked tirelessly on this and has pulled off the impossible. It should now be extremely hard to tell the difference as to if you have INTZ support or not. We think it's done, let's see what you think!

We've also added VAC support. I mention this now as if you're VAC banned, the game will prevent you playing online and taking part in Time Attack. If you choose to cheat... Don't come and complain to us if you get VAC banned! There are no appeals! We've had many requests for this and Valve are aware of the known exploits. You have been warned...

There are some other tucks and tweaks, but we'll see if you notice :P

In the meantime, sorry for the wait. We'd still like players to try out on both INTZ and noINTZ cards. SEGA will also be testing this come the morning, if it's all good, we'll be pushing it live to the main branch in the next few days.

And now... to bed...

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S0L
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Update 22nd March
==============

Here we go then... Small update but fixes some issues we've seen...

1. Launcher Crashes - Should hopefully be a thing of the past, but give it a crack...
2. 4 player split-screen - Fixed a weird bug where it would die on the character select screen...

And some other misc tucks and tweaks. See if you can spot them :P

All being well this is the last of the Beta updates for now, if it looks fine (and SEGA are testing this internally too) we'll get this Live and let Adrian get back to some much required normal hours. I owe him a pile of beer for all the late nights and weekends!

***********IMPORTANT!***********

For now in the BETA build avoid playing Time Attack. You'll notice your PB's have been reset ... This is so when we push this live to everyone and wipe the boards, you can write times to the leaderboard. Otherwise you'd have to beat your PB before it would let you.

The PB are still there, but archived. If you want to play Time Attack, go back to the Live Branch, else when when we push this live, you'll have to beat any PB you set AGAIN to be able to post times...!

You have been warned!

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S0L
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[IceBlade]

Does the alternate renderer only fire on cards with no INTZ support, or does the new texture format replace the originals entirely? If so, would there be any potential differences that are worth testing for users with INTZ supported cards?

[S0L]

We'll have a command line switch to force the game into NoINTZ mode if you want to see it on hardware that does support it, but if you have INTZ it should play as normal.

I'm not against some folk trying it even if they've not had an issue, but I want to say upfront that odd things might happen. By all means get involved, but if it explodes on you, don't say you weren't warned :)

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S0L
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[[f2EZc] CarsonOfficial]

I recommend we all move to this so we can prevent anyone with recent hardware having any issues that that our friends with oldr hardware can play. I believe it is important that that we test it too before it goes live.

Thanks,
Rob

[[f2EZc] CarsonOfficial]

I have just finished a couple of races on the Beta, no issues noticed on recent hardware.

Windows 7 x64
GTX 570 Latest Drivers

[mandobardanjusik]

Hey S0l, I got a normal setup, but I will give it a go as a baseline standard to make sure nothing in the fixes accidently affected us

[SoarSpeedTalks]

S0L, will the game automatically update shortly tonight with the INTZ beta? It didn't happen for me when I changed from Live Branch to Beta Branch after entering the new password in the game's properties.

[S0L]

It'll update automatically...

...but there is going to be a delay. Adrian has been fighting an issue with the new repackaged compiled shaders all day, and we've got to rebuild all the data to get it working. That takes close to 5 hours...

As he's been at this since 6AM this morning - and we're now just about at midnight here - I've told him to call it a night. The data will rebuild automatically whilst he gets some well earned sleep and if all is well, we can push it live early tomorrow.

Apologies about this, we really did want to get this live tonight, but we would also like to push a version live that doesn't crash as soon as you try and pick a track too :(

No-one is keener than us to get this sorted, so we'll be back on it first thing tomorrow morning.

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S0L
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[mandobardanjusik]

ok then, but I wont be able to get on till late tomorrow sadly, but just hada couple good races so I am not complaining..... though I never seem to catch anybody talkative anymore.... or its a that something is up for my mic setup

[B_CANSIN]

Hmm mmh Ok than lets wait I hope it fixs today.

[Kymedorf]

Meh, the game didn't update for me after choosing Beta - Beta and writing correct password even after restarting Steam.

[SoarSpeedTalks]

Karemedes lähetti viestin:

Meh, the game didn't update for me after choosing Beta - Beta and writing correct password even after restarting Steam.

Karemedes, the game will automatically update eventually when they finish rebuilding the data after packaging the compiled shaders and is ready to release it when complete, like S0L said.

[.]

I did steps 1 to 7 ! The steps 8 and 9 will be made automaticcaly ? If yes, I'll wait !

[.]

But what this will change ? Because I've noticed three problems:

-The All-Stars moves music stops when the player pass though a transform gate.
-Pudding's car has green smoke when transforming only when someone else play as her.
-I have problem with pixels presents on the waves created by boats, on shadows and on reflections.

[Kymedorf]

Oi, is this going to be released today? I really hoped to play it on a computer instead of the laptop, and I wonder if today is "really" the day, or if there's another delay.

[B_CANSIN]

Sonic Advance Vs Waiting.mp3 oh god O_o When this gona release today or week or more???????????
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uWrZoDqo7M