Build 42

[tarbomb]

Hit detection seems to be based on the center of the enemy, rather than the entire size of the enemy itself; i.e. a shot won't register as a hit unless it hits the center of an enemy. This is extremely annoying when using the Wildfire's narrow shotgun.

[Jufda]

Health bars are great. They don't seem to increase lag or cause any performance problems for me. The enemies with high hp have weird-looking hp bars though. The black stripes that should divide the green areas of health aren't scaled, it seems. This leads to lots of black with a few green stripes. Colouring or making the high health bars thicker may be solution.
Drill + Delta: i.imgur.com/vq0YOgF.png
Watchtower: imgur.com/6TaJYwd

Tank choosing pop-up still lacks statistics.

[hypevosa]

I would like to suggest we have at least 3 different levels of pips instead of 2. Rather than just orange for massive health and green for tiny health, have a yellow pip for medium health enemies and players, this way there's not so many black bars all the time. for some tanks and enemies.

[amitp]

Suggestion for an "Interact" hotkey, as an alternative to "wait for activation":

1. If over a prism, pick it up (instead of waiting).
2. If over a socket, deposit shards (instead of waiting).

Back when the game was mouse-only it made sense to have to wait to activate these, but now we have keys so let's have a key for this.

[hypevosa]

Agreed

[pfiffel]

Wildfire triggers:
My favorite tank just got more interesting! Imo they still need some work though:
Aiming the narrow shotgun is a bit hard and a well-placed one's damage output as a result is a bit underwhelming, but it's definitely more interesting and fun to use.
On my end, the shield restoring part of the Dimentional Shift often gets rendered useless by lag. When I use it, enemies are still shooting at me for a little while and shields won't get restored.
The two buffing triggers are great, but I think Plasma Injection should be swapped with the Dimentional Shift, since most tanks have their shield restoring triggers on 4, too (I'm also very used to it from the old triggers).
Fury triggers:
Very appropriate, fun to use. +1 To buffing the mine.

HP bars are awesome, they also don't seem to influence my FPS a lot. It would be even better if the players' and allied ones had a different color, that would also help healers a ton (I've been playing some Corsair recently, hard to make out which bars are allied).
Making these the default bar for players would also fix the issue of shields obscuring the other bar, which I've pretty much been ignoring now. +1 To turning them on by default.

Region tooltips are very useful. I would love more information about regions in the GUI somewhere: all the current buffs and debuffs combined.

Preserving HP and cooldowns on tank change finally fixes the exploit, but also depleting shields is a bit annoying - usually when I switch tanks, I want to TP to the action immediately afterwards. Now I have to wait for them to restore first or risk getting instantly smashed. I think they should just be preserved too (get the total percentage of current shields and distribute them to new shields).

Edit: Big +1 to Amit, accidentally depositing shards or picking up lenses is becoming a problem.

[cryophile]

I've been having huge performance issues all the time.
I've tried in both Firefox and Chrome, but both are causing me a number of problems.
I have a terrible framerate most of the time, regularly dropping down to 1-2 FPS. This is during even casual firefights. I haven't actually progressed in the game for nearly a week because I'll die every few minutes.

The zoom keys are also horribly unresponsive on the mouse. I find I need to roll the wheel 5+ times for it to even start adjusting, and then it just stops and I need to keep doing it. I need to zoom on the keyboard now.

Sometimes my tank will just decide to move or turn on its own. I won't be touching the mouse or keyboard, and it decides to either spin in circles, or lurch forward and not stop. I can't count how many times this has killed me now. My controls will also stick when I am trying to move around.

[pfiffel]

Glitch that happened earlier:
Game screen froze, but I could still hear sounds and popups for collecting stuff still showed up above the frozen stage, so the game was still continuing. I will try to get more information next time it happens.

Something weird that happened just now:
I received VP for someone else leveling up a city I never even invested in:

Not a big issue since I would've received them anyway at some point, but still strange.
It seems like it happens when any city on the map reaches a new level.

[zub]

Client randomly fails to connect to the game successfully, manifestations differs slightly.

i.imgur.com/9P0jzf2.png After death.
i.imgur.com/23nA5J0.png After I logged on, couldn't talk in chat.
i.imgur.com/bR2Ohwx.png After I logged on, could talk in chat.

i.imgur.com/aipHkgk.png Connected successfully, but fps were stuck at 1/3 of my usual value after logging in.

None of those issues is permanent, I am usually able to play after restart or two.

[osx]

Mar 15, 2013 10:56:32 GMT -5 zub said:

Client randomly fails to connect to the game successfully, manifestations differs slightly.

i.imgur.com/9P0jzf2.png After death.
i.imgur.com/23nA5J0.png After I logged on, couldn't talk in chat.
i.imgur.com/bR2Ohwx.png After I logged on, could talk in chat.

i.imgur.com/aipHkgk.png Connected successfully, but fps were stuck at 1/3 of my usual value after logging in.

None of those issues is permanent, I am usually able to play after restart or two.

To add to this, if you press 'z' or 'esc' right as you're taking the final death blow, your screen will freeze in whatever city you're in. If you try to relog, you'll get what zub mentioned (and you will have died).

[rob]

Mar 15, 2013 10:56:32 GMT -5 zub said:

Client randomly fails to connect to the game successfully, manifestations differs slightly.

I'm getting these too from my home machine.

[deltaorbit]

i wish i got the code already

[rob]

An initial investigation shows that at least some of these effects are from the server not being able to handle more than 4 or 5 players. I'll work on some optimizations.

[tarbomb]

Mar 15, 2013 11:16:28 GMT -5 osx said:

To add to this, if you press 'z' or 'esc' right as you're taking the final death blow, your screen will freeze in whatever city you're in. If you try to relog, you'll get what zub mentioned (and you will have died).

Reposting this video from the build 41 thread, since it demonstrates this phenomenon. It's fairly easy to duplicate if you're dealing with lots of lag.

I started spamming ESC at around 1:50.



Edit: since I seemed to have ninja-ed Rob by a few seconds: this test was conducted with 3 people on the server (Hypevosa, zxcv, and I), so it might not be directly correlated with server overload; client lag seems to be the issue in my situation.

[sven]

Performance Issues

• I couldn't handle 3 or more Drill Stations on one screen, same with two or more deltas. Once I ran into them and get into combat the screen froze either I lagged off or died. I noticed that going into a delta with a group of users was overwhelming with amount of projectile going all at once.
  
• After logging in, I've encounter myself in a stuck position few times. I can't move or go anywhere but the chat is still assessable. If anyone experience the same, an alternative method instead of refreshing through browser is by typing "/tutorial" (If chat works) then type "/leave" to restore playable state. Sample
  

Bug Reports

• Going into tutorial causes HP reduction with HP bars on? Yet no penalties are transfer when /leave as it seems. Either way follow bit of tutorial will fully restore. Oddity
  
• There's a blank line seen after typing /help. Sample
  
• Shields are thicken with no transparency when switching certain tanks. It could be problematic if someone chose to leave HP bars off, thus relying on default hp bar that intercepts with the shield interface. Shielded Collage
  
  
  Common Combination
  

  Switch	to Shielded Tank (x)
  Valkyrie	Silver
  Peacekeeper	Silver
  Trailblazer	Silver

  
  
  X matches to Corsair, Mustang, Hurricane, Hercules, Spectre, Avenger, Wolverine, Phantom, Hornet, and Fury.
  
  
  Complex Pattern
  

  Switch	to Shielded Tank (X)
  Silver	Scorpion
  Corsair	Scorpion
  Mustang	Scorpion
  Hurricane	Scorpion
  Spectre	Scorpion
  Avenger	Scorpion
  Wolverine	Scorpion
  Phantom	Scorpion
  Valkyrie	Scorpion
  Peacekeeper	Scorpion
  Hornet	Scorpion
  Trailblazer	Scorpion

  
  
  X matches up to Predator, Pegasus, Wildfire, and Viking.
  
  
  Only Mix
  

  Switch	to Shielded Tank (x)
  Spectre	Cobra
  Phantom	Cobra
  Valkyrie	Cobra
  Peacekeeper	Cobra
  Hornet	Cobra
  Trailblazer	Cobra

  
  
  
  Also
  

  Switch	to Shielded Tank (x)
  Peacekeeper	Valkyrie
  Trailblazer	Valkyrie

  
  
  Peacekeeper and Trailblazer shields are the only tanks not affected by this bug.
  
  
• A minor setback by not allowing to drive through interface popup.
  
  - It can be possible through Augments, Craft Crystal, and Tank Select.
  
  - Just by clicking on the teleport button while these menu are up and then be able to move away.
  

Healing Gripe
I had no issues with the performance of HP bars, they're wonderful addition! It's just the colors of the player's HP bar are remotely similar to couple of minions that it's hard to tell with the clash of green bars to see who's who in group battles. Blue or which differs from the enemies are great indication of coordination.