Rome II

[Nefaro]

Ahh, I see.  It's a Beta.

Patch 1.5 will enter public BETA testing today. It will not automatically update your game at this time, you can download it should you wish to participate in the BETA test by following the instructions below:

Patch 1.5 Contains one fix:
- Should improve Campaign Map frame rate in the majority of cases for those people with high-end graphics cards combined with mid-range CPUs. Those people who have noted high frame rates in battle but single-figure frame rates during Campaign Map play should see a notable increase in performance.
EDIT: In order for these changes to come into effect you must start a new campaign.

They probably just did what Radious accomplished with his graphics mod - removed the clouds and extra fps-killing effects from the campaign map.

RAWR?

[undercovergeek]

AFAIK you need to have ticked 'apply beta' which isnt a default setting in steam to receive the patch if this is what has been sent out

[Sir Slash]

"Start a new campaign"? ::) I'm out.

[Gusington]

Yeah I'm not doing that either. I would get the Radious mod first. I do have some slow FPS on the campaign map because of the birds, clouds, etc.

[undercovergeek]

havent started a campaign yet - phew, still stuck on the mods

theres the close combat mod that will combine with the one martok is using or the Radious one

[Sir Slash]

Can anyone post a link to the mods for R2TW? Especially the Radious mods. I can't seem to find them anywhere.

[undercovergeek]

Can anyone post a link to the mods for R2TW? Especially the Radious mods. I can't seem to find them anywhere.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?619112-TWR2-Index-of-Released-Mods-%28Last-Update-10-Sep-2013%29

just for you  :-*

[Sir Slash]

Thank you Geek. I managed to follow the breadcrumbs and finally found them myself. Is their one you especially like?

[RooksBailey]

New statement from CA:

Hi everyone,

We've just put up a hotfix that significantly improves campaign map frame-rate on a variety of hardware combinations that were getting frame rates less than 15 fps. It took us until Monday to get a case of this happening in the studio, but it was a very simple fix, so we've decided to put it out as a single issue patch. This bug was introduced very late in the process, but we absolutely should have found and fixed it before release.

This release has obviously not gone as planned for some people, and I want to apologise to everyone out there who had issues with the game, whether they were hardware issues or disappointment in the performance of game features. We obviously don't plan to release a game with any bugs, performance and AI issues. How this has happened is something we're beginning to post mortem in detail now.

Fortunately, the same tech that gave us the rope to work on the game right up to release lets us keep working on it after it's out, and the flaws in the game are mostly just bugs, not structural defects. We can and will get the game to where we wanted it to be for everyone.

The top priority is stability and performance – both frame rates in battle and campaign, and end of turn times and loading times. Then gameplay spoilers – AI flaws and exploits, balancing tweaks and the level of challenge on higher difficulties. Then minor bugs, lesser features that really didn't pan out, UI improvements, and longer term adjustments to features and systems that could be better. Because there are a lot of us working in parallel there will be a mixture of different priority fixes in each patch. Much of this work would be part of the usual planned improvements we would make to our games post-launch anyway, but we are aware that they have now taken on extra significance and importance.

We have a major improvement to end of turn times in the pipeline, along with around 100 fixes in the next patch. We have another 100 or so fixes already being tested for the patch after that. At this point the limiting factor on getting issues fixed in patches is not our ability to fix issues, it's our ability to test them and guarantee that we don't repeat past mistakes by putting a patch out that breaks something new. We'll also be putting each patch up as a beta you can opt in to before releasing it. It's our aim to continue patching more or less weekly until all the bugs are dealt with.

Then we can start the kind of dialogue we always want to be having with the community – which new features you like, which you don't like, which deleted features from previous games you really miss and so on. That's a good conversation to be having, and since it's our intention not to fall in to the trap of just re-skinning the previous game each time, it's one that hopefully you'll be having for years to come.

Lastly, I'm hoping we can fundamentally treat our releases differently in the future. Long open betas are the way things are going, and while that model hasn't been compatible with the way Total War has been built to date, that could be the way forward.

Mike Simpson
Creative Director
Creative Assembly

"That's a good conversation to be having, and since it's our intention not to fall in to the trap of just re-skinning the previous game each time, it's one that hopefully you'll be having for years to come."

I don't know what that means.  :D  The second half of the sentence seems to be a non sequitur. 

[MengJiao]

New statement from CA:

Hi everyone,

We've just put up a hotfix that significantly improves campaign map frame-rate on a variety of hardware combinations that were getting frame rates less than 15 fps. It took us until Monday to get a case of this happening in the studio, but it was a very simple fix, so we've decided to put it out as a single issue patch. This bug was introduced very late in the process, but we absolutely should have found and fixed it before release.

This release has obviously not gone as planned for some people, and I want to apologise to everyone out there who had issues with the game, whether they were hardware issues or disappointment in the performance of game features. We obviously don't plan to release a game with any bugs, performance and AI issues. How this has happened is something we're beginning to post mortem in detail now.

Fortunately, the same tech that gave us the rope to work on the game right up to release lets us keep working on it after it's out, and the flaws in the game are mostly just bugs, not structural defects. We can and will get the game to where we wanted it to be for everyone.

The top priority is stability and performance – both frame rates in battle and campaign, and end of turn times and loading times. Then gameplay spoilers – AI flaws and exploits, balancing tweaks and the level of challenge on higher difficulties. Then minor bugs, lesser features that really didn't pan out, UI improvements, and longer term adjustments to features and systems that could be better. Because there are a lot of us working in parallel there will be a mixture of different priority fixes in each patch. Much of this work would be part of the usual planned improvements we would make to our games post-launch anyway, but we are aware that they have now taken on extra significance and importance.

We have a major improvement to end of turn times in the pipeline, along with around 100 fixes in the next patch. We have another 100 or so fixes already being tested for the patch after that. At this point the limiting factor on getting issues fixed in patches is not our ability to fix issues, it's our ability to test them and guarantee that we don't repeat past mistakes by putting a patch out that breaks something new. We'll also be putting each patch up as a beta you can opt in to before releasing it. It's our aim to continue patching more or less weekly until all the bugs are dealt with.

Then we can start the kind of dialogue we always want to be having with the community – which new features you like, which you don't like, which deleted features from previous games you really miss and so on. That's a good conversation to be having, and since it's our intention not to fall in to the trap of just re-skinning the previous game each time, it's one that hopefully you'll be having for years to come.

Lastly, I'm hoping we can fundamentally treat our releases differently in the future. Long open betas are the way things are going, and while that model hasn't been compatible with the way Total War has been built to date, that could be the way forward.

Mike Simpson
Creative Director
Creative Assembly

"That's a good conversation to be having, and since it's our intention not to fall in to the trap of just re-skinning the previous game each time, it's one that hopefully you'll be having for years to come."

I don't know what that means.  :D  The second half of the sentence seems to be a non sequitur.

  It's a bit illogical (ie they want to make the games different so tell them how to do that -- ie not reskinning, but making significant changes -- so there's kind of a excessive reliance on avoiding a hypothetical regime of reskinning), but not a total non sequitur, it seems to me.

   What is odd (and in fact a twisted temporal non sequitur if nothing else) is the imaginary reskinnings in an imaginary trap.  What's trap-like about it if they perhaps all-too-clearly see it right now?

   I think why it sounds (and is) so twisted is that it is a round-about way of saying that even if the game is problematic, at least it has a certain number of innovations and thus avoids the imaginary trap of imaginary future reskinnings.  And the implication is: so give the developers a break and just tell them some things you'd like to see.

[RooksBailey]

It's a bit illogical (ie they want to make the games different so tell them how to do that -- ie not reskinning, but making significant changes -- so there's kind of a excessive reliance on avoiding a hypothetical regime of reskinning), but not a total non sequitur, it seems to me.

   What is odd (and in fact a twisted temporal non sequitur if nothing else) is the imaginary reskinnings in an imaginary trap.  What's trap-like about it if they perhaps all-too-clearly see it right now?

   I think why it sounds (and is) so twisted is that it is a round-about way of saying that even if the game is problematic, at least it has a certain number of innovations and thus avoids the imaginary trap of imaginary future reskinnings.  And the implication is: so give the developers a break and just tell them some things you'd like to see.

It is a mostly good letter, but that one paragraph seems to have needed a bit more editing.   :)  Reading between the lines, it seems like they wanted to hold out the promise of eventually adjusting the gameplay to suit the players, without actually committing themselves to anything more than a conversation on it.  LOL!

[Nefaro]

It's good that they are admitting that they have work to do before the game is fixed.  Hopefully the initial tendency towards denial is done and they can get down to business working out the kinks now that some acknowledgement is taking hold.

The core of the game is good and it can all be fixed.  Let's hope they do so before moving on to a bunch of DLC.

[mikeck]

I am happy to see them beta testing their patches(although they failed to listen to all the people telling them about the red skies on the last one). CA had a nasty habit of releasing patches on Friday that screw up the game for the weekend

[Bison]

The patch, which I assume they made official because I'm not signed up for the beta, that updated my game today did amazing things for the strategic map fps.  I do wish you could scroll the map or look at other data while the AI processes it's turn.  The length the game processes I don't really find excessive, but having to stare at the same spot on the map for a few minutes is annoying.

[Gusington]

Yeah the campaign map movement is much better on my game tonight too. Noticed it quickly.