pjknibbs wrote:ezra-r wrote:
* Create a New engine from scratch (don't use old one) or use another from the reliable existing ones (Infinity?) that may be known for stability and performance (whichever costs less to egosoft).
Exactly what isn't stable about the existing X3 engine? In addition, most of the "existing reliable" engines you're talking about are not really designed for space sims, assuming that's what Egosoft will produce next (and I hasten to add that I don't know either way).
You just opened the pandora box.
Let me mention a few:
1. X3 engine is not updated enough to cope with its massive amount of content. It is constantly reading/writing disk and it's not capable to handle a sufficient amount of memory to relieve this, thus the failed attempt to relief this enabling the >2Gb mem flag (which it has been proven to not work right). This is more noticeable after playing for a while, which is strange because the game seems to handle very well at first.
2. The same reason after playing for hours the game slows down or becomes a dog, fps decrease, fighting can become next to impossible due to MASSIVE stutter. Why? Noone, not even egosoft knows. (so much for a reliable engine,right?). Why Elena's Fortune, Aladna Hill and some other sectors have great fps at start and after a while you better not visit them?
3. The fact that since release, these previous two points haven't been fully fixed and egosoft staff focus on fixing content issues rather than these critical engine issues.
4. The constant fight with codecs and the perfect windows/driver install (check tech-support), unheard of in any of the other games I ever played (i have played many...many). I have had certain issues with other games, but the whole tech support forum is a master lesson of how to have the ultra perfect codec install. Why this game needs this and all others I ever played don't? A mistery to me.
5. In certain scenarios AI ships throttle to Zero, and your huge mighty invasion becomes the biggest letdown ever. (I had that scenario, provided a save, no answer...).
6. AI that won't ever be able to maintain formation, that crash repeatedly with big objects or with you in that formation, incapable of decent dogfighting and real collition avoidance.
7. Game can't handle some of its weapon definitions (like pbe's with slow the game as hell, Shockwave Phase Generators, etc.) that slow the game down to a very not-enjoyable experience at times. FLAK effect which has a bug that has been "fixed" disabling it, etc..
8. I think I could be re-editing and adding to this list endlessly.
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I could also mention the whole mess with game ship and other element stats since release, and the whole mess that still the game (statswise) is after so many fixes (many contributed by players), or the mess of mixing xtended stuff with x3:r, plus the comeback of many fixed previous bugs, although that's not an engine problem that indicates even the egosoft staff can not reliable modify the game without a very high risk of screwing something in the process, which indicates something wrong, not with the ego staff, but probably with the way the engine is handled and how they can create content in it (this is my personal hypothesis of course, I admit Im clueless).
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Just to clarify:
It is normal that no games are perfect after release, it is normal that all of them have "some" critical bug that needs fixing and it is annoying as hell, still you will be able to play it more or less correctly with a normal performance, maybe an occasional CTD.
It is not normal it hasn't been fixed many months later and still it seems like ego doesn't have a clue where the problem may be.
Since egosoft staff is probably great and they offer the best support I have ever seen in action I just can assume there is something wrong with the engine or they lack numbers to do any decent fixing, although this is just a personal hypothesis like I said earlier, what I really care about is they fix the outstanding issue with the game performance and slowdown over time and remove the stutter as much as possible to make it a playable/enjoyable game all the time, not just when you start a new game (and even then it stutters a little bit at times).