[Feedback] Change Log 28/09/2022

[BB_Trafffer]

Please feel free to leave your thoughts and comments on the Change log 28/09/2022

The original post can be found here (https://forum.thesettlersonline.com/threads/39065).

Happy commenting!
BB_Trafffer

[noxidjkram]

Looks like a nice focused set of improvements.

[DorotheusII]

I find it interesting but worrying that you are making changes which will increase the server load which will result in more lag at our end, in the name of simplifying things.

Maybe you guys should try now and again to see what things look like out in the field instead of looking at it from your comfortable air conditioned office. Surely you can stretch the budget enough for one of the developers to have a mid range laptop for such field tests.

[laskunk]

Once again twiddle about with stuff that is working instead of fixing things that are not like chat lights difficult to tell when others are online when chat lights keep turning on and off which affects every player. Maybe fix the population buffs that don't work that affect some players that need to use them. Let's see what this upgrade breaks this time as you introduce unnecessary stuff and manage to get something that does work not to. How about fixing the jump to global every time you start or travel to an adv?

[Nogbad]

"Upgrade to the Unity platform", what a wonderfully vague statement. Reverting to Flash could qualify that statement,for all its faults it's still light years ahead of Unity.
We are still wrestling with bugswe reported from the Test environment 2 Christmases ago but the reports have mysteriously vanished so from some of your previous posts, (like the one about locked out players from the most recent dev diary), you now seem completely unaware of these issues that we have wrestled with daily.
Just look at the event just gone,how many hours per day do you think we have spare? Up tohalf an hour to load island, same again to visit friend to buff Festival Hall, then have to load two "mini-advs" every other quest, there's 2 hours gone before you've even done anything! And that's assuming one of those didn't freeze forcing you to reboot the game and lose another 30 mins.
Doro is quite correct in his post above, you are completely detached from the real world experience, let the devs try playing the game on an average machine from a home internet connection and watch the overtime claims come rolling in.
Skunky also makes a very good point, randomly "fixing" things that weren't even broken, or a mild irritance compared to the big stuff, again seemingly a symptom of you losing bug reports. Just send out a load of explorers and watch the popups that hang for ages when you collect from them, nearly every resource, map or buff from the higherend of resources are "unidentified item", no wonder everything hangs or displays placeholders, the database is a trainwreck.
Unity is still "not fit for purpose", you should have stuck with the client until/if it ever becomes playable, but in 2 years it's no closer now than it was then, the original devs wrote the entire game from scratch in a shorter time!

[Cheetah2_777]

Ok, so new bidding thing, you can bid on items (buildings) that you have no place for on island?
And you need gems to bid? Will there be a minimum bid price on those items?
How often do the items change? If someone buys an item 2 minutes after it is listed, will the rest of the players stare at an empty bidding thing for x hours?
Soo many questions.....

[Iris2506]

The bidding tab is removed from the game/testserver untill it's working proper/better.

[Kebabtomte]

This update might fix officers tab so it starts remember what is written there, dont know why that tab differs from the other tabs that remembers what is written.

[needtoplay]

Nothing to do with the update, but could you please remove all the moving stars or whatever they are, when collecting all the items from Explorers in Mail. It is so annoying having to wait for them to disappear before collecting the next items from the next explorer when you have 100 plus Explorers.

[Nogbad]

Disabling the firework buff would be very useful, nothing slows down loading a friend's island anywhere near as much if they have that active, often so bad that it will freeze the game in endless "zone refresh" loops and force a reboot.

[lordloocan]

I looked on test at the auction house and tbh every time I looked there was nothing on offer. I don't mean nothing I wanted, simply nothing at all. If they want to introduce this to the game - and it can be good - they ought to look at what [removed] does. There you have an auction house in which you can sell items to gain tokens which you can then use to buy items. You get 6 at fixed price each day as well as a running auction with a timer and once that auction is complete the next one immediately starts. This allows players to sell what has become junk to them whilst looking for other items.

[MuffinMule]

I looked on test at the auction house and tbh every time I looked there was nothing on offer. I don't mean nothing I wanted, simply nothing at all. If they want to introduce this to the game - and it can be good - they ought to look at what [removed] does. There you have an auction house in which you can sell items to gain tokens which you can then use to buy items. You get 6 at fixed price each day as well as a running auction with a timer and once that auction is complete the next one immediately starts. This allows players to sell what has become junk to them whilst looking for other items.

I don't understand why they're doing things like this when the fundamentals of the game are still so broken.
Surely getting the game mechanics working properly again are far more important than yet another kludge that will probably bring more problems.
Have they forgotten the widespread fraud when last players were able to trade for rare items and gem voucher codes?
This looks like another page from the Truss playbook, blurting out an idea as it springs into their head, before rational thought or sage advice can point out that it won't work, or will be disastrous if implemented.

[Cheetah2_777]

Disabling the firework buff would be very useful, nothing slows down loading a friend's island anywhere near as much if they have that active, often so bad that it will freeze the game in endless "zone refresh" loops and force a reboot.

No problem with fireworks here.

[sparkz]

Surely getting the game mechanics working properly again are far more important than yet another kludge that will probably bring more problems.

Fixing fundamental issues requires time and effort spent on analysis and implementation, and, for performance issues specifically, potentially multiple iterations of it.

What they do instead (considering they have proven multiple times over past 2 years they have no intention of actually investing money in this game anymore) is features that require minimal investment just to pretend someone is working on the game. Which is why you have numerous changes like some text adjustments noone even complained about.

Ironically enough the ones that are to blame are the players, because in this day and age gaming companies make it blatantly obvious they dont intend to provide any level of service higher than the bare minimum thats acceptable by the community, and that sunks lower and lower each year.

I myself am still surprised the game didnt die completely when they switched working AIR client to Unity version that did not work for majority of people interested and then straight up lied theres no coming back to the client (which was promptly proven false by players). But I guess if you folks like it anyway then go ahead and enjoy it.

[BB_Trafffer]

I looked on test at the auction house and tbh every time I looked there was nothing on offer.

The auction hall was removed from the update until further improvements to the feature are finished.



Fixing fundamental issues requires time and effort spent on analysis and implementation, and, for performance issues specifically, potentially multiple iterations of it.


This is exactly what we said in our community update, and the updates that were rolled out this year made a huge difference in terms of game performance. Additionally, many major bugs have been resolved.



What they do instead (considering they have proven multiple times over past 2 years they have no intention of actually investing money in this game anymore) is features that require minimal investment just to pretend someone is working on the game. Which is why you have numerous changes like some text adjustments noone even complained about.

Ironically enough the ones that are to blame are the players, because in this day and age gaming companies make it blatantly obvious they dont intend to provide any level of service higher than the bare minimum thats acceptable by the community, and that sunks lower and lower each year.

I myself am still surprised the game didnt die completely when they switched working AIR client to Unity version that did not work for majority of people interested and then straight up lied theres no coming back to the client (which was promptly proven false by players). But I guess if you folks like it anyway then go ahead and enjoy it.

Do you really think that re-writing the game from Flash to Unity, and a complete re-make of our Support system is a "pretending" action?

You can also look at the number of bug fixes we did during this year alone.

Tomorrow's update will bring another Unity update and performance optimization.

[damien762]

almost a year since the last community update : )

[Harlequin_1963]

Do you really think that re-writing the game from Flash to Unity, and a complete re-make of our Support system is a "pretending" action?

You can also look at the number of bug fixes we did during this year alone.

Tomorrow's update will bring another Unity update and performance optimization.

I thought you got two outside firms to rewrite the code for you, are you now saying it was done inhouse ?
Your support system binned support calls after 48 hours of inactivity meaning it was futile to send a support message at the weekend, are you saying that is now fixed ?
You have bugs that have been here since i started playing this game, and you have bugs showing every time the game launches, many of which have the solution for fixing them in the dev console that any user can activate in their web browser.

[The_Sarmatian]

My worry about the change is... Refresh of Trade Office every 5 seconds? Every 5 seconds? Will it increase lag or decrease it? We will see, I guess.

[sparkz]

[COLOR="royalblue"]Do you really think that re-writing the game from Flash to Unity, and a complete re-make of our Support system is a "pretending" action?

Yep.

From where Im standing, rewriting the actual internals must have been done prior to Unity release considering that you had shipped a -somewhat- working version of the game. It might have been bugged but it was functionaly complete, and this was almost 2 years ago.

Additionaly :

- I dont buy the issues with fixing the bugs emerging when rewriting considering that internal logic must have been pretty simple, given the game has zero complexity (unlike ie. any game that has a 3D engine)
- rewriting internal logic should not require redevelopment, only porting from one language to another
- given the above I would expect fixing any emerging bugs would have been as simple as falling back to original working code and simply porting the exact same thing to new language.

This is not complex, has nothing in it that would make it time consuming, and as previously mentioned was even done by a 3rd party. So almost the entire work you have to show for the past 2 years is copy pasted events with barely any additions, and even that you fail to deliver without introducing bugs when copying.

[Nogbad]

No problem with fireworks here.

You using the client Cheets?
The performance differences are immense compared tothe Unity port, which really should not be the case this far down the line. The memory overheads alone bring the game to a dead halt, not surprising when it is still holding in memory your own island, the island of the last person you visited, and the last adventure map, andthat's where the zone refreshes (and the fatal javascipt errors) kick in as your own computer tries to sift through these with frequent server calls to determine what should really appear on screen.
Unfortunately security protocols on this computer won't allow Sirris's implementation of the client to run, otherwise I'd be using it all the time, but I'm stuck with the near unplayable Unity client, so pretty much treading water ingame hoping by some miracle BB get it right.
The Unity client should have stayed on the Test server, and we should have been playing via client until such time as the Unity client becomes playable, and the bug reporting should have stayed there too, as BB seemto treat our bug reports as bad PR and they appear to have been removed/hidden from view, so no wonder none of the major issues are being addressed, even though they've been reported since Day 1 of the Unity implementation on Test.
My heart sank last night when the 2 buffs I started in PH showed a completion time of 582 days! :(

[Kotugo]

This is exactly what we said in our community update, and the updates that were rolled out this year made a huge difference in terms of game performance. Additionally, many major bugs have been resolved.


Putting in the update news that generic performance updates/bug fixes have been applied does not translate to them actually appearing in the game.

The game still takes ages to load, it still freezes constantly due to zone refreshes, clicking on stuff still selects random other stuff you did not click on, generals still jump around making multi attacks unreliable. The performance degrades rapidly so the game is smooth for a few minutes after loading and then starts lagging soon after. All the graphics are still messed up unless you fix the scaling to 1 (which is not the default for me at least). You can't zoom out anywhere near enough anymore making some of the bigger adventures annoying to do. Out of memory errors still cause random crashes.

What exactly has been fixed or had its performance improved? I am sure I am not the only one that sees this in every update and just views it as a lie.

The *only* fix I have seen is that people can actually visit my island now to apply buffs, it might still require them to relog 1-2 times but at least they get there in the end so I no longer need to require buffers to be running the unofficial client (to save themselves from wasting 30+minutes trying).

[Cheetah2_777]

I gotta say: the new trade looks terrible:
The icons are bloated.

https://i.imgur.com/D6RnpCa.png

Starmenu icon omni refill vs omni refill in trade menu refill icon shows this even clearer:
https://i.imgur.com/FJHG7PC.png

Still cannot select by offer or cost. So it is messy!

https://i.imgur.com/BjbAQtx.png

https://i.imgur.com/OqJ87qS.png

Why all of a sudden oil between the coins.....?
Why the different values of sunflowers then fish, horseshoes and then.... sunflowers again!

https://i.imgur.com/wgzQxbB.png

What does the button with the v do if it is greyed out all the time?

https://i.imgur.com/dG3mDox.png

I sold 1. Why does it say 4 x ?

BUG: When selling something the search field does not work......

[Kalingha]

on every browser I try, I get debug error

[DorotheusII]

I gotta say: the new trade looks terrible:
The icons are bloated.

https://i.imgur.com/D6RnpCa.png

Starmenu icon omni refill vs omni refill in trade menu refill icon shows this even clearer:
https://i.imgur.com/FJHG7PC.png

Still cannot select by offer or cost. So it is messy!

https://i.imgur.com/BjbAQtx.png

https://i.imgur.com/OqJ87qS.png

Why all of a sudden oil between the coins.....?
Why the different values of sunflowers then fish, horseshoes and then.... sunflowers again!

https://i.imgur.com/wgzQxbB.png

What does the button with the v do if it is greyed out all the time?

https://i.imgur.com/dG3mDox.png

I sold 1. Why does it say 4 x ?

BUG: When selling something the search field does not work......

It appears that the default order is by time, oldest at the top, newest at the bottom.

[SkinFlynt]

Adventures for trade in new TO all seem to be showing as 'Traitors' when hovered over with the cursor. At least most of the time - sometimes the offer side appears as the item from the line above, or below eg., fish, gold. etc. This is happening for me and also my wife on another computer.

[Harlequin_1963]

Game fails to load:

abort("both async and sync fetching of the wasm failed") at Error at jsStackTrace (https://ubistatic-a.akamaihd.net/0018/live/debug/unity/SWMMO/Build/7f01e5d49315f98112baef31950a1270.js:3:20111) at stackTrace (https://ubistatic-a.akamaihd.net/0018/live/debug/unity/SWMMO/Build/7f01e5d49315f98112baef31950a1270.js:3:20393) at abort (https://ubistatic-a.akamaihd.net/0018/live/debug/unity/SWMMO/Build/7f01e5d49315f98112baef31950a1270.js:3:992) at getBinary (https://ubistatic-a.akamaihd.net/0018/live/debug/unity/SWMMO/Build/7f01e5d49315f98112baef31950a1270.js:3:16934) at https://ubistatic-a.akamaihd.net/0018/live/debug/unity/SWMMO/Build/7f01e5d49315f98112baef31950a1270.js:3:17316

OK

[Wu-L]

Game fails to load:

abort("both async and sync fetching of the wasm failed") at Error at jsStackTrace (https://ubistatic-a.akamaihd.net/0018/live/debug/unity/SWMMO/Build/7f01e5d49315f98112baef31950a1270.js:3:20111) at stackTrace (https://ubistatic-a.akamaihd.net/0018/live/debug/unity/SWMMO/Build/7f01e5d49315f98112baef31950a1270.js:3:20393) at abort (https://ubistatic-a.akamaihd.net/0018/live/debug/unity/SWMMO/Build/7f01e5d49315f98112baef31950a1270.js:3:992) at getBinary (https://ubistatic-a.akamaihd.net/0018/live/debug/unity/SWMMO/Build/7f01e5d49315f98112baef31950a1270.js:3:16934) at https://ubistatic-a.akamaihd.net/0018/live/debug/unity/SWMMO/Build/7f01e5d49315f98112baef31950a1270.js:3:17316

OK

gotta try a few times :p it's just BB

[Harlequin_1963]

gotta try a few times :p it's just BB

5 times now

game loads island , then crashes back to the guy with hammer and orange
loading line

[Kalingha]

https://forum.thesettlersonline.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=7601&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1664362587same here: in all browsers and PC & Laptop I get debug error message. Deleted Unity cache but still same as described above

any help? Pls?

[pauantbro]

Same ....downloaded 1.3 version but no joy.. deleted...will check forum later and download and try again uuuh

[capsule19]

game won't load for me

[faivq]

About the Trade Office:
- "The 'Ends' column now shows the remaining time of the offer expiration and updates every 5 seconds in real-time" :
Every frequent refresh is a user-unfriendly decision!
- And the columns still cannot be sorted.

[The_Sarmatian]

I am using the "fast loading" workaround, but game loads now faster then flash version ever did. I noticed an issue, after making a purchase in Trade Office. History did not show it for some reason. So few people trading now, browsing is not an issue. I remember the time there was 50/70 pages with offers, so old system was optimized for very different workload. I noticed, you cannot sort offers from lower to highest now, but so few people trading these days. Good update! Very well done.

[The_Sarmatian]

game won't load for me

You need to clear your old unity database.
https://forum.thesettlersonline.com/threads/38770-How-to-clear-Unity-Web-Cache
Try it.


game won't load for me

You need to clear your old unity database. Maybe even hard reload page, which differs from browser to browser. Clearing unity database and clearing cache, should fix it for you. Just give it a longer time to load up, the first time, as new unity database is constructed by your GPU or even more if entire work is done by CPU. Here is the link:
https://forum.thesettlersonline.com/threads/38770-How-to-clear-Unity-Web-Cache

[Cheetah2_777]

Game does seem to load faster. Jay!

[Teardrop46]

so the buying works ie. type in an item and those items show up.

The selling Does NOT work anymore. type in an item get to second letter and everything you own disappears. So you have to search your entire store list for each item you want to sell :(

This all worked fine before this fix

[capsule19]

You need to clear your old unity database. Maybe even hard reload page, which differs from browser to browser. Clearing unity database and clearing cache, should fix it for you. Just give it a longer time to load up, the first time, as new unity database is constructed by your GPU or even more if entire work is done by CPU. Here is the link:
https://forum.thesettlersonline.com/threads/38770-How-to-clear-Unity-Web-Cache

I tried it but the game still can't load up,it stucks at loading page.

[oooh]

now. blind people can see offers in TO :)

[tastino]

WHAT IS THIS?

https://prnt.sc/ipRdob3uujSO

[lordloocan]

WHAT IS THIS?

https://prnt.sc/ipRdob3uujSO

Got that too when click on island

[Qualan]

that window pops up when unity isnt fully loaded - it happened before the update as well

[MeneerHepatica]

Why can't we get back the old way of the trade window? The way it now shows the trades is for me not logical at all. (for me)
I want to see trade with the same resources next to eachother. So i can compare the offers. And see which is more interesting for me.
They way the trade window is now only gives the option to have it selected on time when offers ends.

Yeah i guess with search option it would be possible.

In old trade we could select how the offers where showns. Alphatical for example.

[Cheetah2_777]

For everyone that has a problem loading the game:
Try a different browser, just to see if it works in there?

[Teardrop46]

that has been popping up for months .

[First_Lord]

BB_Trafffer, do you call that tested TO update? hope you have some balls and you handed in your resignation.

[MuffinMule]

Well, first the good news, a tentative congratulations for seemingly sorting out the loading times problem after 18 months of hell.
If it sticks, it will be the first significant improvement since you ditched Flash and inflicted Unity upon us.
But, as we've come to expect, it's another case of "1 step forward - many steps back". :(
The Trade Office is now even worse than before, with outsize icons screwing up the formatting, every adventure listed is now "Traitors" and indistinct icons now make clicking on a trade a real lottery. The categories are still showing nonsense totals with neighbouring categories leaking into each others', and we still cannot sort the trades by any classification. In fact, selecting the "items I cannot afford" now lists every item, despite what filters go before it.
Now we come tothe worst bit, you have turned the "Achievements" window, which was previously working, into a mess of incomprehensible nonsense. It shows the total of General Achievements as fully completed, despite there being many more yet to complete. Impossible as just the level achievements alone cannot possibly have been completed if you're under Level 80.
The individual achievements themselves are all "unknown ID" now, so no chance of finding out what you need to dofor the quest. The awards are showing the wrong text for items, so a picture of gems now shows the text "coins".
What an utterly, untested shambles. Instead of sorting out the obvious basic mechanics like making sure all objects in the game are identified in the database, you tinker at the edges even more, which just generates even more knock-on bugs and breaks the stuff that was actually working.
Two wasted years of haphazard "fixes" that generally break more gameplay than was fixed, and features nobody asked for seeming to take precedence over essential functionality that is stopping us from playing our game.
After 30 years involvement with The Settlers, I'm ashamed of the game and you should be too.

[Qualan]

well we are on rinse and repeat now :P

[BB_Trafffer]

In today's game update, we have deployed the additional fixes below:

ADDITIONAL CHANGES & IMPROVEMENTS
Buildings: Fixed an issue that caused the stack selection in production buildings to no longer respond after putting something into production
Keybinds: Restored WASD controls functionality
UI: The search function in the trade office works again
UI: Adventures in the trade office now show the correct tooltip
UI: Fixed the loca issues in the star menu filter menu and achievement window

[Edy214]

Hehe, It wasn't so success because now maintenance already.

[Harlequin1963]

https://imgur.com/iRi4fk9 Traffer says this displays with no need to click "https://imgur.com/iRi4fk9" is the code that isn't working


https://prnt.sc/T-6rAwfGPVGg



lots of

f46d1676969f857195e01e62445c0903.js:1 GET https://ubistatic-a.akamaihd.net/0018/live/GFX_HASHED/amfpacker/e22a4f0840268c259b9bc0c4736ea96e05621dee.bin net::ERR_HTTP2_PROTOCOL_ERROR 200


info about the error @ https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58215104/whats-the-neterr-http2-protocol-error-about

## fixed this for you ~BB_Trafffer
https://i.imgur.com/iRi4fk9.png

[King_Jarmo]

These updates have once again broke the excelsior - animation stops and can't see what i got. Also i can only use it once since it kinda "greys out" after use. Only option is to refresh.

Second bug i have noticed is that after gathering colony yield, i can't move around on my island anymore - again refresh helps..

[Kalingha]

same here. Could not load game in Chrome, Edge, Opera after maintenance due to the Debug Error (as shown) and now it affects Firefox as well! Cannot load the game at all anymore!! Any help?
Please

Resetting FF helped but still chromium debug errors and excelsior

since yesterday game won't even load in Firefox & Waterfox anymore. Always same debug error message while loading. Any help? https://forum.thesettlersonline.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=7601&d=1664362587

[Cheetah2_777]

same here. Could not load game in Chrome, Edge, Opera after maintenance due to the Debug Error (as shown) and now it affects Firefox as well! Cannot load the game at all anymore!! Any help?
Please

Resetting FF helped but still chromium debug errors and excelsior

since yesterday game won't even load in Firefox & Waterfox anymore. Always same debug error message while loading. Any help? https://forum.thesettlersonline.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=7601&d=1664362587

any plugins blocking scrips or so?

[faivq]

This update broke The Excelsior - after the doing one throw, it freezes - all command buttons /the arrows for selecting number of crystals, etc./ stay gray and useless.