Repurchased this to try the new stuff. Got as far as getting the blueprints to the terrain manipulator, but the game now runs far worse than it did 2 years ago. I guess my video card can’t handle the extra graphical improvements, and the engine isn’t particularly optimized
I’d normally be ok with playing with lower settings but I’m getting sub-20 framerates and for a game where the biggest part of the appeal are the visuals it feels like missing the point.
Oh well, see you again after I upgrade my video card, Norman
This was in the original game, too (well, in the update where they added bases). Basically the freighter is a mobile base you can summon at will, although you can’t quite build everything you can in a planetary base. You can also store multiple ships in it (although I never tried that) and I think you can pilot them directly in this new version and also use them for warps as they have longer jump range (this may have been added in a later update of the original game).
I know when I get a new computer, it’ll have a capture card in it. In the meantime, I’ll look at the viability of using the GeForce capture capabilities, I know there’s some sort of software included in their suite that apparently allows for some sort of video capture that doesn’t cost me a gig a minute, but I’ve never fooled with it. This is the ideal sort of ‘zone out and enjoy a meandering experience’ game though, isn’t it? I’m super super busy until the end of the weekend, but then maybe I’ll start slapping up some unedited Norman video sessions if it works out!
(Also I’ve been keeping an eye on this and it’s getting closer to done but that’s off-topic)
Yeah, daggerfall unity looks pretty interesting. And about the GeForce thing: yeah it’s pretty great. They ironed out all the kinks and it’s working perfectly now. I use it exclusively. Whenever I want to record something. It’s sooo much faster than all the other capture software (I used OBS before. It had trouble recognizing certain games). So much so, that I don’t even feel any performance drops. It’s also really easy to use. You’ve got options but not overwhelmingly so. I’d say try it out!
Yes, my understanding is that modern cards have a hardware encoder so it’s a negligible hit and obviates basically any bespoke solution. Nice and safe to leave on the last-five-minutes mode like the console game DVR, too.
I always had performance issues with OBS, even using hardware encoding. It got really annoying at times and not even always with the games you’d expect, the graphical beasts. Plus, I sometimes had problems like my mouse cursor disappearing in a strategy game and crap like that. I mean, I liked OBS but it’s really no comparison, now that I’ve made the switch to Nvidia’s solution
My refund was rejected because it exceeded the max. playtime as it was counting my playtime at launch as well.
Since I’m stuck with the game I might as well play it a bit more at lower settings.
This time I reloaded my old save. I appreciate how the game makes an effort to re-tutorialize you in the new features, but that’s not 100% smooth.
I never got the base building tutorial but I tried anyway. I claimed a nice spot in a pardise planet. In the trailers I saw the player building whole rooms but I can only build wooden floors and walls one by one? And they take a lot of resources so building even a mid size room requires you to stop to harvest stuff every 5 or 6 planks. Then you get the attention of the sentinels which only adds to the time it takes to finish a building.
Anyway, I saved a freighter from a ship assault, so the captain gave the ship to me as a reward. This may be my favorite aspect so far. Managing fleets and sending them on expeditions. I hope you can get resources from expeditions and stuff.
This game is one of those games. You know the ones. The ones where you have to restart the whole game just to change screen resolution. So infuriating! I played around with the settings and feel like I now have the best compromise between good graphics and good performance. At 1440p nonetheless. It’s rare that I can run a game like this at that resolution so I wouldn’t say it’s badly optimized. I mean, it’s not Doom 2016 on Vulkan but it’s okay.
I had a pretty cool start. The tutorials are good but the game is now super hand-holdy. What I like about Subnautica - to bring it up again - is that it completely relies on you to figure stuff out. That means you can explore to your heart’s content right from the get go.
Some annoying stuff is still in this. The bad menus, the mining tool overheat trick, where you just let go for an instant and then continue mining and the entire heat evaporates right away, the limited sprint,… I really need an infinite sprint mod. You can’t fucking enjoy exploration at all without it.
My two planets were pretty okay. Nothing spectacular, really, but I’ll give the game some more time.
One thing that’s funny is that even though this game is so massive, it never feels that big when you’re on a planet. Just… the scenery, it always looks confined. I don’t know why that is.
In outer space that’s of course different and you can really get a feel for how far apart everything is.
I agree that the game is now better, much better, but it’s not a revolution like FFXIV:ARR or Rainbow Six Siege went through. Maybe that’s in the cards for 2.0 though, if they take it that far
Well, I’ve been playing a lot of Witcher 3 and mad Max which, granted are from 2015 but I get stable 30+ fps with those. Also, Quake Champions, which has dynamic resolution scaling, I assume. I don’t expect Hello Games engine to implement dynamic scaling, but it would certainly be nice. I remember the game didn’t run as bad for me at launch, before they added the volumetric clouds and all those rendering improvements…
Anyway, so I played quite a bit more. Turns out the reason you only have 4 components to build bases is because you need something called a Blueprint analyzer that old saves just plain don’t get (I guess it’s part of the tutorial sequence). Apparently Hello Games knows about the issue and will patch it because it basically means you are locked out of 99% of base building features if you are using a pre-next save.
Now, I need to figure out how to get the ground vehicles. Especially the huge mining tractor one I bet that will come in handy to haul materials for eventual base building
Was playing on survival but my save bugged out and broke my base quests and I’m gonna restart on normal because this shit is fucking tedious and the menus are absolute horseshit why do you need to use three different buttons as confirms for three different things when they’re all just there in the same fucking menu idgi
There are times when this game is really awfully pretty and I’m excited to Hang Out In Space but there are some design decisions present that can only read to me as actively hateful
For Instance: you can outrun pirates, but if you so much as breathe on a sentinel ship in space they will never stop following you until you fly inside a random frigate or get to a planet… without your pulse engines
Also: stuff in storage or on your freighter cannot be used for crafting, I guess? Even if yr on base/freighter? Whyyyyy
Basically every time this game makes me interact w/ a menu I want to kill it
Yeah it’s not clear to me why I can send stuff to my freighter without any extra upgrades from a planet but I can’t sell from it to the terminal in a trade outpost…
I think the Sentinels are meant to be hatefully annoying, but they do really hamper the fun. Even in planets where I’m told the sentinel presence is “minimal” you can’t go mining for two minutes before you get a sentinel up in your grill. If they are so concerned with protecting resources, they should go for Big Freighter, not a single dude mining some ore by his lonesome…
Yeah, the game is fraught with that sort of shit. Like there’s enough little things that I literally got tired just now thinking about typing them all up, so I might be taking a nap shortly.
I guess I’ll just share two things. One is when you go to take off on a planet, right? You have a waypoint on the planet that’s too far to run to. Then you get up in the air, and you turn your fucking battleship into position, centered on the waypoint. “Hold ‘E’ to Tag”, the game proudly exclaims, and then you hold E and YOUR SHIP FUCKING LANDS AGAIN BECAUSE E INITIATES THE LANDING SEQUENCE, suck it you just wasted 25% of your launch fuel.
The second thing: so far, I’ve died twice in this game. Once was before I moved ten steps, because I got irradiated to death while trying to figure out how the fuck to go to first-person mode, which is abysmal enough. The second time was just now, because I just obtained (via alien interaction) a new sick-ass 20+ slot multitool that came with a plasma launcher. I hadn’t played with it yet, because I can’t make unstable plasma yet anyways, but it came with a full clip. Well, I fly down to a trade outpost on a planet to turn in a side quest, and go to the trade terminal to check out the deals. Underwhelmed, I start right-clicking to exit the terminal, and then I’m fucking dead instantly because it turns out RIGHT-CLICK ALSO SHOOTS PLASMA EVEN IN MINING TOOL MODE SO I GRENADED MY OWN GOD-DAMN JAW WHILE TRYING TO FUCKING SHOP
These are all minor gripes, but there really are a lot of them. UI/controls griping aside, my biggest complaint is that sentinels are just there to get the fuck in the way and I have no idea why they have to exist, every time I find something interesting the game turns into Interplanetary Don’t Wake Daddy. (I typed this last paragraph before reading your response Iacus, good to know I’m not the only one)
Cobalt pro-tip: cobalt can be a pain in the ass to find, especially when you’re on a planet that doesn’t have natural cobalt deposits for you to terrain-mine. Most of the time, you’re going to find it in underground caves out of little stalagmites. Since finding caves isn’t always easy, do a scan and look around for Humming Eggs (yellow icon with three vertical white line inside). They’re usually underground, which means you can probably find some cobalt while you’re down there.
Re: Let’s Play recordings, I can’t really commit to it right now, I have enough things going on that I can’t guarantee any sort of quantity or consistency of uploads. Which is par for the course with me, I know. I DO think, though, once I know the game better, I might do a hardcore run, which I absolutely -would- record. Although the plasma launcher incident in the post above sort of makes me want to rethink the whole thing. Maybe I just won’t get a plasma launcher.