Question for players who use Unity.

Ever since the dissaster move to Unity, I havent logged in, simply cause i play games to have fun, not to be anoyed. Since then I have seen litle progress mentioned here, in fact last update is allready allmost a month ago. I have the idea that the people who do play this game now are all on the old client, cant see how this is playable on Unity.
So I have a question to people who do play on Unity... Is the game playable?
Does it have any use to try to log in again, or will it be just an extra dissapointment as its still completely messed up?

I know the BB's claim it is playable, but sadly they lost all credibility with me with the stupid move to Unity while they and the game where totally not ready for it, so I simply dont believe them any more. The fact allmost a whole month went on without any progress or fixes makes me doubt if its worth to even try...

So what is your opinion?

Would love to come back and play this game wich has been such a big part of my life last 10 years, but I just dont want to be dissapointed again....

Hi Dutch, we do miss you ;)
I play on unity, it is just about playable for routine stuff, but nothing like it was before the switch. There have been small improvements, which if your just stubborn and do yoga you can put up with. Honestly, whilst I appreciate someone at BB is trying, progress is so slow and there is so much to fix, and the game is still hemorrhaging players, or like you they are just staying away till the game is back to something like it was.
I'm probably going to put my island back to sleep now the `event' is over and only log in again when the next update is done , but again I don't think it will be enough to come back and play `properly' . Sorry I can not be more upbeat DD, those on test may have better news ...

I tried several browsers and Opera GX outperforms everything for me, goes from virtually unplayable in Chrome to tolerably playable in GX, still nowhere near original flash tho

I have no serious problems - haven't for a while - when the game was busy during the Event there were a few hiccups - but before & since, connectivity has been slower than it used to be but nothing serious and I don't get thrown off unless I leave the game for a while with no activity. There are all the minor irritations that haven't been corrected yet but I barely notice those now. I did try the Client again but went back to Unity as the improvement was negligible. I play daily more or less as I used to: explorers in & out, buffing, 1 adventure of my own & 1 LS.
I think there are more players like me but we are the silent ones?
I play on Chrome.

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Originally Posted by DutchDuty

I know the BB's claim it is playable, but sadly they lost all credibility with me with the stupid move to Unity while they and the game where totally not ready for it, so I simply dont believe them any more. The fact allmost a whole month went on without any progress or fixes makes me doubt if its worth to even try...

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Hello DutchDuty.

The last update was indeed almost a month ago (31.08.2021) and included some critical & bug fixes before the event started.

We didn't have any updates during the event, but that doesn't mean the Dev Team wasn't working. At that time, we had two updates on the test server (13/09/2021 and 24/09/2021). Soon the update will be rolled out to our Live servers and all the details will be available.

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Originally Posted by BB_Trafffer

Hello DutchDuty.

The last update was indeed almost a month ago (31.08.2021) and included some critical & bug fixes before the event started.

We didn't have any updates during the event, but that doesn't mean the Dev Team wasn't working. At that time, we had two updates on the test server (13/09/2021 and 24/09/2021). Soon the update will be rolled out to our Live servers and all the details will be available.

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I have been on test server since both these updates and can report that the game there is still as messed up as on live servers. Whatever they claim to have 'fixed' is merely tinkering with the edges doing nothing about actual loading times, constant zone refreshing, being able to confidently play adventures, being able to sensibly send out explorers and geologists. Is becoming a joke, just isn't funny.

Hi buddy. I play on unity but mostly i just login in do some daily little works and log out for all day. I play allot in event and i have to say its not worth it. Its to slow, to much bugs, wrong icons, wrong generals, zone refresh all time and it frezes over time. I lost some items and resources by bugs and repetive quest that you solve and then zone refresh happens and you get it back just to realize you already finish him but the game needed to load again :D

But game is a game and you know why we play it. I dont recomend to play it as it only kill your mood and will to play it, its frustrating but i recommend you to login every day for daily rewards and little tasks ( aka preparation for event ).


Sorry for my bad english but i have to say that this communication with the developers and they not understaning how game works and how to program it dint come yesterday its here for littery years and years so dont bother to much what they say and promise because you know why :D

I am playing on Unity. Well, *playing* is not quite the right word. I am maintaining my island, doing the bare minimum, on Unity. Am glad to be actually able to log in at all, after a month of the dreaded hammer man. But I have not attempted to play any adventures yet, because it is so painfully slow and cumbersome. The recent anniversary event made the problem a million times worse, because whenever the game flashes "you have a new quest!" that seems to be the thing that slows it down the most. And gives it hiccups. I'll be clicking things, upgrading or whatever, and suddenly the game freezes... a few mins later there's a Zone Refreshed! notice in the top right hand corner, and everything that I just did in the last few minutes seems to be gone. Ie: collectibles are back when I just collected them, etc.. However, wait a while longer and things are magically put back to right. It's frustrating as all heck, but I can't play on the old client because I can't figure out how to do it. So I persevere, hoping for a miracle.

I'm another one on bare island maintenance with unity/Firefox. Getting the same pain with the Quest Book as it pings out "New Quest" notifications seemingly at random, and interrupts whatever you're trying to do. Also openning the Quest Book seems to freeze the game and trigger a Zone Refresh. Although Zone Refreshes also seem to happen at random and kill what you're trying to do.. e.g. send out 3 explorers; get a Zone Refresh; resend the same 3 explorers; get another Zone Refresh etc.

Interestingly I played some of the event on a laptop I use for video processing (Lenovo P50) and it was much more responsive. Less lag/refreshes/freezes/graphic issues. So if you have a powerul machine, you may get a better experience, although its ridiculous you need such a powerful macine to run what is, basically, a flash game.

I play on Unity using laptop and Edge, I find for me, this is the best browser.

It is a pain and has so many bugs I am sure BB has no clue how many Bugs there are, its littered with them. The game is playable for me with alot of patience, yes exploders switch around when sending out and same with geologists. Island takes 10/15 minutes to load so off I go to make a cup of tea ... zone refreshes allover the place and even the odd memory error, plus the odd game responsive.

I rarely play adventures now unless its YGGs only so generals dont get mixed up. Chat windows jump allover the place when doing adv and you never know which one you end up posting in.

We can only guess why they did the crazy thing of moving from client to Unity and BB will never tell us, it must be down to money as its a car crash of a switch to Unity, as well as BB would have known about that.

Halloween event is going to be a nightmare to play with current game full of bugs and I can see loads not bothering.

Its been over a month since last maintenance fix and that was another car crash, strange the zone refresh, memory leak, generals jumping etc etc (list is endless) and I am not holding my breath for any of the above being fixed at all.... so for me its playable with alot of patience.

Unity isn't that bad if you have a decent machine. There was progress in the first month. The big fix they did in the first month was the click-through.. can't think of the word for it. The one where you clicked with your mouse on a dialog and then something underneath got the focus, when it shouldn't have. That was fixed pretty quickly, definitely in the first month.

There are a few drawbacks.

1) If you are on a hi res monitor (I'm 3456 x 2160 on a 15" display) everything is too small even at max UI scaling. Also at max UI scaling (200%) some features are unavailable (e.g. "trade" menu option when clicking on friend in friends list).
2) Gen context switches. Gens who lose focus during battles can't be retreated. Gen context switches when another gen gets focus, which makes sending the correct gen difficult. What that means is, things like, you have to wait for everyone to finish moving before you send another wave.
3) There are UI issues where buffs/gens appear greyed out in star but can still be used.
4) Gens/buffs occasionally will show the incorrect icon in star. I'm sure I don't have 4200 General Tremble Beards that mouseover reads, Gift basket.
5) UI issues with buildings showing upgradeable when they are not
6) Deposit icons/text missing until you mouseover them.
7) Don't even try to look at production values for a particular building. Crazy numbers.
8) Many string interpolation bugs.
9) Performance lags the flash client.

That's the worst of it.. don't seem to have much of a problem other than those big ones. In short, it's definitely playable, but not quite as much fun.

I have a high end machine and don't consider it playable so it depends on your definitions and levels of acceptance. \

Stuff doesn;t always load completely or takes forever to load and compared to the previous client this is around 25% of the quality/playability level of the client

If you have an older machine or the "wrong" setup running it is at like 5%

There have been improvements and BB has been quick to point em out but in all reality:: This should never have been released in the first place- it is an epic fail which they are not willing to explain and seem to hope it goes away while pointing out the "successes" in improving this complete garbage which is now improved to a level of a complete mess. Hopefully before next event it gets improved to the level of it is a mess but we working on it

And yes - lets not forget 1/3 of the game is broken/dead in Unity as the PVP modus doesn't work with no eta on it (BTW for all of u who wonder: it still works in the old client- which shows it is a unity programming/migration issue and not a backoffice server issue)

I think the island loading time is moot - there is a very long island loading time using Unity, but I have the same long loading times using the client - it's just hidden behind an unresponsive loading screen.

The Unity version definitely seems to work better in Internet Explorer. I'm a mac user and I've been using Parallels (windows emulator) since the move to the official client - even in emulation the island scrolling is fast and smooth. The most irritating aspects of the unity version are 1) a considerable delay between each mouse click which slows game play down massively and 2) the constant zone refreshes which remove the focus on what you're doing (i.e. buffing, typing in chat, selecting buildings or generals etc.. pretty much all the key elements of gameplay) you end up doing things several times over. Unity version is 'almost' playable but not quite.

I found a total clearance of emails made a difference in the early versions of Unity - I suspect a cull of 'dead' accounts in the friendlist might help too

Thanks to all who reacted.
It is as i feared not yet the time to come back.
Glad to hear BB is still working on improvements, sad to hear the improvement dont make a big difference.
I will keep checking, and i might be back in the future with the same question, to see how the situation then is.
The reactions where helpfull for me, and i hope also for all those others waiting till the game is playable again, before they will come back.

Greetings all from DD.

I find that it has got slightly better compared to when we got switched to unity. But it is still slow, with frequent freezes. It certainly takes a very, very long time to load. And frequently the screen updates are slow and blocky.

I have a decent machine and connection speed, but I still get that click-through regularly, where I click something but something underneath the dialogue box gets the focus. That's how I lost a bronze-producing mine that I'd snoozed to preserve it.
Plus if I click on a building or something, it will often bring up the dialogue box for another thing that my mouse had passed over several seconds ago on the other side of my island.

And I still get the incorrect icon in the star menu.
Plus I also frequently get the wrong information when I hover over something in the star menu - for example, if I hover over an adventure, it will tell me it's a buff or something else in the menu that the mouse had passed over earlier.

I can access the quest menu after the island has all loaded. But then later on when it says I have a new quest, it's completely unresponsive - despite the arrow insisting I should click quests, but annoyingly failing to respond when I do!

Everything is still slow, and it often still takes several clicks to actually do anything like sending an explorer out.

Oh, and trade seems to be weird.

I risked doing a few adventures during the last event (simple ones, and single-person ones because I have nobody to play the co-op ones with). These started off being frustrating and tedious, with me having to switch back and forth between the adventure and my home island to get results of attacks, but it's a bit better now.

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Originally Posted by lordloocan

I have been on test server since both these updates and can report that the game there is still as messed up as on live servers. Whatever they claim to have 'fixed' is merely tinkering with the edges doing nothing about actual loading times, constant zone refreshing, being able to confidently play adventures, being able to sensibly send out explorers and geologists. Is becoming a joke, just isn't funny.

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I could not even log on to test, loading stopped with a zone error.

That there is no improvement despite BB saying numerous fixes have been done is dissapointing but expected. That is the same bullshit they have been giving us since the first Unity test.

Maybe I just should give up now.

The giant softwaregame of chicken

Once enough have left, they can always say market circumstances forced em into terminating the franshise. Ofc the market circumstances are totally dictated by their decisions re unity and the doodoo show they made of that implementation

I'm playing on Unity. I have a reasonably good machine and a fast internet connection. The old client was good for me (better than the previous online flash actually), but I haven't felt an overwhelming need to go back to it since the move to Unity.

The game is playable for me, but of course could be better. Loading is a bit slow, but I can live with it- maybe a couple of minutes until everything has appeared and settled down. I do get Zone refreshes but not so many that it really makes it unplayable.

The biggest annoyance is of course the generals shifting focus every time one of them builds or comes home. I've learned to kind of live with it and I am doing Advs, but I've paid a price in lost MM along the way.

Other irritations include (in no particular order):-
Can't scroll out far enough when moving/attacking over a long distance
Most production buildings no longer show a time to finish current production, so tricky to buff just before completion (eg Token Mint and Bookbinder tribute)
Sometimes an Adv will go into a state where battles never finish - have to go home and back to clear them, or log out and back in to stop it happening for a while
No green lights on players for online status
No trade tab while on Adv islands
Quest book is jumpy and at times very lagged
Explorers and geos... need pauses between clicks to ensure they have registered
Having to scroll to collect every reward in emails - this would be easy to solve by removing the pointless three lines of text above the reward icons. The first line is just a repeat of the subject line above it and the other two don't say anything actually useful (like which explorer brought it for example - would like to have that available BELOW the reward icons)
Newly found deposits of resources, Iron, coal, gold etc not visible
Excelsior sometimes displays a map fragment icon instead of the venture it is supposed to be showing - always happens with One Step Ahead or Lost City. You do get the venture but you have to check in Adv window to see which one it was.
I'm sure there are others.... these are just what I thought of while writing

Having said all - I am still enjoying the game after many years of playing and I do hope it continues, even if fixes for these things do take time.

one of the issues is the way unity decides to process stuff on island-

so the more stuff u have in prov house, oil mills, harbour, adventure bookmaker, trees etc, the more the game struggles. I have a lot of all of em, and a lot are running production.

Not running em would impact game (like not making arrows etc) so that kinda limits options

hi is it possible to return to old client , as a constant daily player for over 8 years this is the closest i have come to leaving completely unable to cope with constant freezing and zone refreshing and cant play adventures at all because of lagging

I know a number of players who login on Chrome using Unity in order to do the collectibles - will let you work out why....and then swap over to the old client. The fact that they swap says it all really.

people like playing with the small finger yes

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Originally Posted by donallen

hi is it possible to return to old client , as a constant daily player for over 8 years this is the closest i have come to leaving completely unable to cope with constant freezing and zone refreshing and cant play adventures at all because of lagging

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yes

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Originally Posted by Qualan

one of the issues is the way unity decides to process stuff on island-

so the more stuff u have in prov house, oil mills, harbour, adventure bookmaker, trees etc, the more the game struggles. I have a lot of all of em, and a lot are running production.

Not running em would impact game (like not making arrows etc) so that kinda limits options

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This is interesting comment. How do you know the drag is caused by these? Did you empty them all and performance improved?

It is a suggestion made by BB as well to reduce lag even to the point of demolishing and rebuilding and managing production

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Originally Posted by Qualan

It is a suggestion made by BB as well to reduce lag even to the point of demolishing and rebuilding and managing production

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I'm pretty sure that if I demolish everything I have on the island the game will suddenly be flying like an eagle ............ are you sure that BB recommended demolishing stuff? :)

Here is the link

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Originally Posted by BB_Trafffer

Dear Settlers,

Please note that there is a solution for a known "Out of Memory" error, which can be used as a temporary solution.

Laboratories, oil mills and harbors can generate an error (out of memory) when many productions are active at the same time, as soon as you want to select these buildings. It is then no longer possible to end or order the productions.

A simple solution is, of course, to let these buildings rest - i.e. 'do not click on the buildings' - and let the productions expire.
If you still want to revise your productions or want to avoid the inaccuracy mentioned, you can demolish all buildings of the same type from your island. It is not enough to demolish only one building of the type, but all the same buildings must be removed. These buildings go into the star menu and can be re-placed from there. The raw materials of the productions also go back into the star, so there are no losses. Please note: Due to the delay, the "sending back" of the building and the raw materials may take some time and is not always immediately visible.

After successful demolition, you can place the buildings on your island again, but be careful not to start too many productions at the same time.

IMPORTANT: Please note pop-ups and information banners if applicable, only buildings without "upgrades" can return without losses. If you remove buildings with level upgrades, these upgrades will be reset and we will not be able to provide support. This temporary solution should therefore only be used with caution.

We are of course still working on a solution to the basic problem, but you may be able to improve some inconveniences on your own.

Many thanks to the settlers who have shared this solution with everyone.

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Ah, thanks ............. but that is "out of memory" problem. How does that relate to other issues?

In desperation for the game to run more smoothly, I demolished my ghost lantern, christmas trees and balloon house - all the things that give gifts either daily or weekly, in order to help with the incessant quest book jumpiness. This has worked a bit, it took a further week or so for the quests to drop off completely, but the ghost lantern quests still appear even though the ghost lantern is now in my star.