Sacred 2

[rekator]

Oooh, didn't know it had that kind of potential. Looks like I'm gonna pick it up after all then.

Jump in! With my wife we got a attachement to this game, in the same way than diablo 2, due to the local two coop (many games forgot this…), but less for the rest.

@Shifty: the Bugs you got is for online and offline play, or just online?
Don't have them on local, the position is right on the map, but yesterday when I'm want to try a online play… I got a don't find server! So can't test… Perhaps they found the "Solution" for the online Bugs!

 

[T.B.]

Thanks for this and the other answers, T.B. It's really cool to hear about these things. So you actually went for the SPU GPU assist, and I like the idea of making your own Direct3D renderer which you then power by SPU and GPU combined.

I'm glad you're interested.
The entire thing was very educational. I've been mostly an OpenGL guy before and implementing D3D was quite cool. That part is PPU only and - at least in the scenes I measured - lighter on the CPU than the XDK implementation. (which is unfair towards Microsoft's guys, as I had their performance as a refrence to beat)
Using the SPUs to help the GPU can get pretty entertaining, by the way. You can have the full range of synchronization types between three totally different xPUs. Great stuff.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Jump in! With my wife we got a attachement to this game...

That's where these games excel. I think it's a shocking oversight of games companies to ignore this genre. Prior to Wii and Guitar Hero type games, it was BGDA and its ilk more than most who got female non-gamers gaiming with their fellas.

@Shifty: the Bugs you got is for online and offline play, or just online?

Well, the network bugs, crashing out, are online. Everything else is online and offline, but I'm mostly playing online. That probably makes things a lot more unreliable. There's more scope for positioning and synchronising errors. Regards the positioning on the map, I did some tests (offline). Most of the time it's accurate (except when the map isn't! Found an Orc village that's not mapped properly) but very occasionally the character seems to move just when I enter/leave the map, so the alignment is changed. That causes the problems.

The entire thing was very educational. I've been mostly an OpenGL guy before and implementing D3D was quite cool. That part is PPU only and - at least in the scenes I measured - lighter on the CPU than the XDK implementation. (which is unfair towards Microsoft's guys, as I had their performance as a refrence to beat)

So you created a PS3 DX driver?!

There's no such thing as a five minute bug. Maybe you can identify a bug in five minutes, but then you have to fix it, build it yourself, test it yourself, get it code reviewed, checked-in, have a build submitted to QA, let QA smoke it, etc., etc. For an engineer, I don't think you can really look at any task as taking less than three hours

Okay, I understand that. Bugs can take an age to track, and something like last night's 'sheep flying over the swamp' bug would be low priority. Surely though some of these bugs should have shown up when the developers were coding, right? And got fixed then and there? eg. The health bar effect seems backwards to me. It's something I've done often enough, either had 'alpha = time' when I need 'alpha = 1-time', or 'alpha = 1-alpha'. The end result is when you take damage, the segment of damage disappears, fades into view, and then vanishes. Assuming this is a bug and not an odd design choice, wouldn't whoever wrote that bit of code go "oops, I've got the alpha back to front" and make the fix? The pressure at that company, to have developers creating code but not be able to correct a minor niggle, must have been pretty oppressive!

 

[T.B.]

So you created a PS3 DX driver?!

Well, not a driver.
I put a D3D ontop of libgcm. Saved me from having to rewrite tens of thousands of lines of (changing!) renderer code. Turned out really well, but I admit it was a bit of a gamble.

 

[rekator]

but very occasionally the character seems to move just when I enter/leave the map, so the alignment is changed. That causes the problems.

We got also this, sometime the character walk alone… He's Alive!!!
Other big problem is the no pause game when we push the xbox button for chatting, not useful because most the time you're attack by some Kobolds or others, so to respond you need to go to a save place.

 

[liolio]

Sorry Rekator, I've been pretty slow to answer your invitation
I would be pretty pleased to play with you and your wife the point is that so far I'm still an live silver user. Actually I suck pretty much and I can't justify the expense in regard to the game I'm currently owning. That may change if I get my hand on games calling on less competitive game play in the future.
And I suffer from a pretty bad internet access and it makes things worse (the bandwidth is not that bad but I encounter quiet some "micro cut"... ).
Anyway I won't fail to contact you if I jump in at some point. Actually I may try soon as playing with my wife is nice but she is not willing to play that many games (I don't play that muc hand I end playing geometry wars 2 a lot she 's crazy about it)

 

[corduroygt]

I just bought this game for the PS3, and it immediately updated itself to 1.01. Is this the same version with all the bugs that were mentioned, or were you talking about 1.00?
Thanks, for all the help, the game looks awesome, but I think i see tearing, and frame rate is pretty bad.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yep. 1.01 (I thought it was 1.02 actually).

 

[rekator]

No problem Liolio!
And I'm understood the "problem" with Xboxlive… when you're two (or more) gamertags who appreciate to play online…
Damn why MS don't made a family gold subscription! (Simply 'cause they don't think of that).

You can find gold annual cart for around 35-40 € on the net (don't have the good address on the hand but I'm can find it).
And for games to playing with your wife… try Halo 3 (if you're like it), my wife like it at the point that it's her that want to play it online after a trial during the Xtival, so we're jump in, And we known a lot of girls who like to playing Halo 3 but no over FPS… Strange when you're knowing that these girls don't known Halo 3 before they're playing it.

 

[DrJay24]

PS3 patch is out, for NA.

New Features
• Support for downloadable content has been added
• Trading between two players on the same console is now possible
• Added the 'Find me' option to the leaderboard

Bugfixes
• A rare crash was located and fixed
• AI related problems during the final boss encounter were fixed
• The fourth player joining a multiplayer session now correctly gains the 'Group Hug' achievement
• Player characters sometimes were not able to move after teleporting with a mount. This has been fixed.

Additonal Changes
• Improved player character responsiveness when using ranged weapons
• Improved player character responsiveness when using the Temple Guardians weapon arm
• Mounts will now appear along with the hero when joining a multiplayer session
• Medium potions will now drop for players of level 40 and above, major potions for players of level 80 and above
• Spiders using their web attack no longer cause graphical errors
• Some minor issues with voice chat and the block list have been fixed
• Some graphical issues with the world map have been corrected
• The inventory list will no longer scroll downwards when opened using the radial menu
• Action buttons are no longer shown when opening the radial menu and using the 'Static HUD' graphics option
• It is no longer possible to talk to friendly animals and hirelings
• It is no longer possible to talk to town NPCs in Spanish, Italian an Polish versions of 'Sacred 2 - Fallen Angel' since no localized voice data is available for these languages
• Players are now informed correctly when a controller is disconnected during gameplay

 

[I.S.T.]

So, if you live in Poland, Italy and Spain, your copy just got gimped?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The town NPCs just babble. It's just environmental audio. Don't understand why they have to remove it though.

 

[rekator]

The town NPCs just babble. It's just environmental audio. Don't understand why they have to remove it though.

Well, on the 360 sometime some of them speak to you when you press LB or when you station close to them, it's general speach like "how do you do?" or "When I' m older, I want to be a hero like you" etc…
Shifty this patch seem to improve range weapons have you test this?

 

[Arwin]

So, if you live in Poland, Italy and Spain, your copy just got gimped?

I wonder if the discs hold most of the localisation - if they do, they should still be able to switch their game to English for instance and play everything. I doubt they removed it for a reason - probably talking to NPCs just didn't work now in those languages anyway.

Anyway, it's great that the PS3 got a fix after all. If one of you would be so kind as to report back if this fixes most of the issues you've had? Then I can start recommending this game to more people here and put it on my own list for future purchase as well.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

This patch has been out in Europe for ages! This is the version of the game I've been reporting on. There was a notable improvement in the Temple Guardian control. Other than that, not many of the problems encountered got fixed. I'd even say ranged weapons seem a little flakier. I certainly noticed more occassions where attacking with a bow, the character would shoot one baddy who was rushing to attack, and then switch to attack someone else off screen leaving the baddy to maul them. Deliberately targeting a specific enemy is hard. This may have been in effect prior to the patch but I was playing a mage at that point so don't know. I'll also add, again unconfirmed through testing, it seems as though the mages fireballs tracked less effectively. I remember when I first added the skill point, shooting 2 fireballs they'd both track to the same target, whereas after the patch (?) one would fly straight, off to one side of the enemy and hitting nothing. Don't know if that was patch related or not.

@ Reaktor - Yes, they talk. There's a pseudo conversation system it seems, where phrases are strung together to make a sort of conversation. It's not too bad as far as these systems go. That's what I meant by babble.

 

[Arwin]

Ah ok, I wasn't aware of that!

 

[rekator]

All right Shifty I don't really understood if "babble"was for NPC around the hero or specific NPC you choice.
For targeting specific enemy, we push on the button of the range or melee weapon, or magic weapon we want and puh the left stick in the direction of this enemy. This don't work?
If you only push A or O for exemple and don't indicate a direction the system seem to shoot one time all the enemies than shoot multi-time one enemy…

 

[Shifty Geezer]

All right Shifty I don't really understood if "babble"was for NPC around the hero or specific NPC you choice.
For targeting specific enemy, we push on the button of the range or melee weapon, or magic weapon we want and puh the left stick in the direction of this enemy. This don't work?
If you only push A or O for exemple and don't indicate a direction the system seem to shoot one time all the enemies than shoot multi-time one enemy…

When you hold down the shoot button, the character starts firing in the direction you are facing. If there's an enemy, they'll auto-lock. Once locked onto an enemy, your character will follow them shooting. You cannot move or change direction while firing. You cannot select a new target deliberately without releasing the firing button and changing the way you are facing. However the game can change targets for you to seemingly random enemies.

I had multishot on the Square button. I'd shoot multiple arrows and then keep firing until it recharged. Once you get rings of +regen, you can shoot multishot constantly. Due to the limited targeting, the multishot isn't ideal though (although it's stupidly effective even though good bows are impossible to find or buy!). The shots fire in an arc of, I dunno, 90 degrees in front of the Dryad. So if there are three werewolves approaching and I shoot the middle one, the extra arrows would hit those either side too. However the game tends to target one on the end of a group, meaning some wasted arrows.

Compare this to arcade loot-and-level games like BGDA and CON that were designed with a console in mind. You stand on the spot while shooting and can change direction to shoot wherever you want, sometimes with a targeting line. Thus you can shoot at a mage in the distance even if something comes closer to attack you. Sacred 2 is designed for a mouse, and the solution for consoles just isn't terribly effective.

 

[DrJay24]

This patch has been out in Europe for ages!

Ya, I think the 360 WW and PS3 EU were all patched, only NA PS3 was left for some reason.

 

[T.B.]

Just a quick heads-up:

The new owner of the Sacred IP has posted some information, but it's in German so I thought I'd give you the important points:

-No addon for consoles.
-No more patches for PC.
-Possibly more console patches.
-No more DLC.

...and for the sake of completeness, someone get interviewed.