Norm Koger's Distant Guns: Russo-Japanese War sets sail

[Grouchy]

Happened 2 times now and since the purchase 1 day ago.
Both times torpedoboats/destroyer divisions at the start of a campaign battle against single aux cruisers far out of gunnery range. The divisions start to manouvring and then shortly followed by the "manouvring to avoid a collision" message only those times followed by a....boink.

[DuckofTindalos]

Guess they failed to maneuver out of it.

[pad152]

Still playing with the demo, my interface problems where solved by deleting the DG.cfg file, there is something in the video settings my card/driver didn't like. Funny that it would effect my mouse? I like the ship combat but still wish for more control over ships, the player needs more things do, like control of torpedo attacks and some input/control over damage control on ships. Once you set your ship or division to free fire the only things you control are to set/change course and speed.

Sorry to hear a about the poor campaign. Without the campaign there is just not a whole lot to do in the game. I get the feeling this game was designed and play-tested by historians, not gamers.

[Vyshka]

I ended up spending most of the weekend switching out my mail/web server with a newer system so I didn't get
a chance to play around more. From what I have read many people have been having issues in the campaign. From
what I understand this was one of the last pieces added to the game by Norm, and it obviously needs some more
work to get the bugs ironed out.

[pad152]

Campaign Issues - if anybody is having issues with the campaign you may want to post on the Distant Guns forum http://www.strategyzoneonline.com/forum ... .php?f=245. Norm himself has said he is debugging the campaign may contact some players who are having issues.

[BlackVoid]

In its current state this game is a mess. The campaign is broken, the interface is inconsistent and confusing.

I bought DG 2 days ago. Tried to play the campaign, but it ends up in frustration most of the time It is buggy and the interface is very confusing. It is much WORSE THAN WITP. Witp has a clean and easy-to grasp interface. Some things require too many mouse clicks, but it works and it is logical.
I have been trying to launch a mine-laying mission in DG without any success.
Camera controls in tactical battles are also hard to manage. It is simple enough, but it is way too sensitive and not intuitive enough. Since I had trouble with the campaign I launched a historical mission. At night, the enemy force was already close, in 30 seconds my lead ship was sinking. Hmmm. not too much fun. So I decided to load a random battle. In this the japanese simply ran away => no battle.

The campaign game is not playable in multiplayer which is a big disappointment (to me at least). Witp still remains the best naval game around.

I advise people to wait some before buying..... Hopefully the game will be patched up soon., it has a lot of promise but even more problems.

[DuckofTindalos]

It really is too bad, the state this game is in...[8|]

[Grouchy]

I hope Norm will life up to his fame and patch it. Sadly at this moment the game has stability issues, a campaign not working and graphical glitches.

On the plus side the battles are fun with lots of details. Looking at the logs there is a lot going on under the hood. If the above issues are solved and the UI will be improved then it will be a great navalsim.

[DuckofTindalos]

I like the battles, but I'm really disappointed that the campaign isn't working properly. This is what I basically bought the game for, and I don't really feel like starting one, when I can read here how badly it works...

[Tankerace]

I took the plunge last night and bought it. I really don't have time to play it with WPO's super patch, but I knew (even if it was a bad game) I would buy it, and I wanted to pay $65 versus $90.

What little I did play of it, I already encountered an issue, with my rig I can turn the graphics full up, but the ships movement is jerky. I had to disable one of my dual core's CPUs to get the ships to move smoothly. At all times the frame rate was in the 80s-100s.

I tried the campaign as the Russians, starting with the Port Arthur attack. While the game is beautiful to look at, it took me a while to figure out how to get ships to turn to a different course. While Fighting Steel was buggier than all get out, the interface was easier to figure out.

As to historical results....  Port Arthur, in retrospect, was a failure, but at least the Japanese got out unscathed.  In my game, the Armored Cruiser Novik, Protected Cruiser Pallada were both sunk quickly by torpedos, and two or three other ships each took a torpedo, but did not sink. The Battleship Tsaeravitch took one or two torpedos, and foundered after about half an hour.

As to Japanese damage, four destroyers were damaged, seven were sunk. One ran on to a friendly torpedo and blew up, three (either damaged or not, I don't know) ran aground and sank, and three were sunk by gunfire once I got the Squadron underway.

I think the game is fun, but I feel that with the condition the AI is in, plus if the campaign is as buggy as people say, I am afraid that it was released somewhat to early.

While I don't want to criticize, when looking at the manual there are only two beta testers who did not design something in the game. If anything, WPO taught me that when you work on the game, you tend to get blinded to obvious problems. God knows the WPO Beta team pointed out a ton of stupid "Duh" mistakes. I would be willing to bet that if DG had a bigger beta team, or at least five people NOT in connection to developing the game, it would be less buggy.

Still, I do have faith it will all be resolved. A patch was put out yesterday, and I'm sure there is more to come.

[DuckofTindalos]

Anybody know what the new patch fixed? I can't find any documentation for it...

[BlackVoid]

The battles are quite good, thats true. My first post was a bit too negative - shows my frustration with the campaign at the time of posting.

It could turn into a very good game - I hope it will and I did not just waste $60....

[pad152]

Anybody know what the new patch fixed?

There was nothing added to the release notes for the demo, but it seemed to fixed a couple of graphic issues, (I no longer see two of the Russian ships starting below water when the game starts when playing Japan, I also see more shells flying through the air).

Norm posted this morning (http://www.strategyzoneonline.com/forum ... hp?t=43714), he is still fixing the campaign.

I'm still holding out on this one, waiting to see what gets fixed and to see what if anything gets added.

[DuckofTindalos]

I'll also wait for the campaign to be fixed before writing off my $60 as a bad investment...

[BlackVoid]

I recommend people to WAIT before purchasing. This is one of the buggiest releases I have ever seen.

[vertical]

Apparently a Direct X update has fixed the CTD problem a few were having.  I have the game and enjoy it very much.  I wouldn't call it bug ridden anymore, I think it's in a perfectly enjoyable condition as is now.

vertical

[pad152]

I recommend people to WAIT before purchasing. This is one of the buggiest releases I have ever seen.

No, No you got it all wrong, the problems are Microsoft development tools, wrong version of DX9.0c, AMD processors, motherboard, and your Bios!.[:-]

I hear if you re-built your computer configured just to run this game, everything will work as designed.[8|]

[DuckofTindalos]

Oooh, sarcasmy...

[pad152]

Storm Eagle released a new version of the DG demo the other day, so I asked on the DG forum if I re-download the new version would I get another 30 trys. Explaining that the 30 day demo is really 30 game starts that get used up if you change your video settings/restart or trying to get the daily patches.

Jim Rose says your 30 days/games starts are up, do you expect your games for free, WTF? I was trying to give the demo another try (after a dozen patches) and this is what you get! I expect working demos for free, and I'll be dammed if I'll pay $60 for being a beta tester. What do they want, to start charging people for their demo? [&:]

[Hentzau]

ORIGINAL: pad152

Jim Rose says your 30 days/games starts are up, do you expect your games for free, WTF? I was trying to give the demo another try (after a dozen patches) and this is what you get! I expect working demos for free, and I'll be dammed if I'll pay $60 for being a beta tester. What do they want, to start charging people for their demo? [&:]

I agree totally, but then I wasn't going to buy it anyway because of the activation scheme.