game works fine for me.
HTMLPhoton
7
Posts
A member registered May 19, 2020
Recent community posts
"This is a trivial problem to solve. The game already does it when it downloads a new world in the background to the cache."
"Likewise, an update check and/or an update does not need to stop other things. I can have multiple web pages loading in multiple tabs; several files being transferred via FTP; several shell sessions, both local and remote; and so on. It is called "multitasking""
But that's not what it means to update a game while it's running. A docter can perform a heart transplant on other people, but that doesn't mean he can do it on himself. A webpage that is loading doesn't need to run the parts that are loading. A map being downloaded in the background doesn't need to be interacted in any other way other than the download process itself.
Sure, yes, it's theoretically possible. If that's the point you are making, then sure. My point is that it's just not practical. It requires a complete redesign to save a few minutes. there's bigger fish to fry.
"How often do updates actually happen? It could be minutes between update releases, or many months. In the meantime, it is forcing the player to wait every time they want to play the game, exactly as in my case, the game kept crashing and needing me to start it again. Imagine if operating systems did this: "Your computer is booting. Please wait while it checks for an update before proceeding. Go grab some coffee while you wait...""
I'm sorry but that happened to me many times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Update. And it's not just windows, MacOS also does this: https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201541 , and so does raspberry pi: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/raspbian/updating.md If these large companies can't solve this issue, how do you expect a small indie game to?
"Same with regards to making a pull request; Pay me for it. I make a living by doing contract programming and consulting. The ZK team may do what they do without compensation. They make that choice because they are free to do so. Likewise, I am free to make my own choice to refuse to do so without compensation."
By that logic, pay the Devs if you want them to fix the update system."You are trying to impose upon me that my opinion about the way ZK does things is invalid, and that I should accept it."
I am just trying to explain to you that these issues are not as simple as you might think. And that if you do want to fix them, you don't go shouting about how the game sucks because of them, you come up to the devs with a detailed proposal on how to fix them.
Notice how I never said you were in the wrong for complaining about frequent ccrashes. If the game is truely crashing on load multiple times then there certainly is a solvable, and impactful issue
"You are trying to tell me that I should not post my comments in the comment section"
Please quote where I said that, so that I can be more friendly next time :)
"Sometimes they do not. In my experience, ZK is the only one that seems to force "every time" in order to avoid "some times"."
If you want, I can make a list of all the games I know of that force you to update them before playing.
Also, desyncs are not "sometimes". they are "every time". If you are running an outdated version it's not about will you desync but rather when - does it happen on game load or 5 minutes into the game?
Desyncs are also for all practical purposes as bad as a crash. That unit you are commanding on your screen may have never been built on everybody else's screen since that raider that you thought you killed near the start of the game didn't die on everybody else's, and went on to kill your factory. and it all happen just because a balance change tweaked the hp of a third unit by 5%. You might as well have crashed and are now just playing in another room.
"What I do NOT do is become defensive about negative feedback and tell them that they are wrong to feel that way."
"My background and education includes international communications and conflict resolution"
Ok, here's an example of a negative feedback:
"You are clearly not doing your job as somebody who studied conflict resolution as there are still arguments between people"
You're gonna tell me on how it's not practical or possible for you to solve that? right?
let's say you don't. then prove your works by doing it.
Let's say you do. you've just became defensive about negative feedback.
It's alright to explain to people who are making negative feedback on how their idea for improvement / problem identified is not practical to solve. I don't study conflict resolution, I don't know what conflicts are easy to resolve and what conflicts are near-impossible to resolve. And this issue of time spent updating falls under the near-impossible to resolve category.
The reason the update stop you from doing anything else is because there's not much else you can do with an outdated version, and less so with an updating version.
There's a reason you can't edit a file while it is opened. And the same reason applies for why you can't update a game while it is running. I would like you to name any game that can run while being updated, and last I checked, minecraft can't. The game can download maps and mods while running because those maps/mods don't need to be opened while they are downloading.
I am just trying to explain to you how these "leaking taps" are not really a problem in the first place.
if you have a better way of doing things, please do make a pull request at https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/pulls
The force auto-update is there to prevent desyncs. which is a MUCH bigger can of worms. I have not had any issues with the game randomly stopping, through I am playing the game on windows so it may be a system-based bug.
Most other indie games would just downright stop you from joining any servers unless you redownloaded the game again. would you prefer re-downloading the 2.2gig game every update?
about the whole login thing, I do not understand why you are this pissed at a text box that you can close with a single button.