Stranger HD now on Steam!

[Nate]

I've spotted two more minor-ish bugs.

When you're in the bounty store and trying to buy ammo, the currently selected ammo's icon is highlighted all the time; there's no difference when it's selected or unselected. That means it is difficult to know when to press right and left to change the number.

I spotted two ammo nests (one Stunks and the other Thudslug) in the junkyard that work fine when you first go past them, but if you backtrack and try to collect ammo from them later, nothing comes out. Not sure if that's a bug or some wierd gameplay thing that I'm not realising though. I can get screenshots to identify which ones I mean if you want them.

[Nate]

One more possible bug. I say 'possible' because it might been like this in the original game; I can't remember.

The music cuts in and out quite erratically. The most consistent situation in which I've noticed it is that it switches immediately on sucking up the last enemy in an area from 'Danger' music to 'Background Actiony' music without any fade or transition. It seems to happen some other times as well, such as when I'm in an area without enemies and the atmospheric music cuts out and restarts. Sometimes it happens when I quicksave as well.

[Nate]

I don't know what it is about my computer that I'm getting all the bugs, but here's two more.

The first might be related to the one I mentioned in the previous post. The sound of waterfalls (which appear a few times through the game) cuts in and out immediately. There is no gradual fading in and out; it's immediately deafeningly loud and stays that volume until I get a certain distance away, then it disappears.

Since I arrived in the dam, I can't load in-game. Going from the main menu on start works fine, but if I try to load from the pause menu it crashes.

[pupbenny]

That big one that means I, and alot of other people, can't play the game hasn't been fixed yet.

[Nate]

Which big one - crashing whilst loading? If you've got the same bug as me, you'll be able to load from the main menu. If you can't do that either, then it's a different bug.

[pupbenny]

Which big one - crashing whilst loading? If you've got the same bug as me, you'll be able to load from the main menu. If you can't do that either, then it's a different bug.

On my one it I press play and then it shows the Stranger's Wrath HD loading screen for about 2 seconds and then it goes black. It stays like that. I can hear the noises and everything and when I must be hovering my mouse over buttons it makes a noise like I am but I just can't see it.

[Wil]

When you're in the bounty store and trying to buy ammo, the currently selected ammo's icon is highlighted all the time; there's no difference when it's selected or unselected. That means it is difficult to know when to press right and left to change the number.

Could you explain in better detail what you mean by this. I'm not sure how the 'currently selected' ammo can be 'selected or unselected'.

I spotted two ammo nests (one Stunks and the other Thudslug) in the junkyard that work fine when you first go past them, but if you backtrack and try to collect ammo from them later, nothing comes out. Not sure if that's a bug or some wierd gameplay thing that I'm not realising though. I can get screenshots to identify which ones I mean if you want them.

Ammo nests aren't limitless resources. They can dry out if you tap them for long enough.

One more possible bug. I say 'possible' because it might been like this in the original game; I can't remember.

The music cuts in and out quite erratically. The most consistent situation in which I've noticed it is that it switches immediately on sucking up the last enemy in an area from 'Danger' music to 'Background Actiony' music without any fade or transition. It seems to happen some other times as well, such as when I'm in an area without enemies and the atmospheric music cuts out and restarts. Sometimes it happens when I quicksave as well.

Probably something to do with the audio system being ported from XACT to FMOD. FMOD can't do everything XACT could, so there have been a few compromises in dynamic...ness.

I don't know what it is about my computer that I'm getting all the bugs, but here's two more.

The first might be related to the one I mentioned in the previous post. The sound of waterfalls (which appear a few times through the game) cuts in and out immediately. There is no gradual fading in and out; it's immediately deafeningly loud and stays that volume until I get a certain distance away, then it disappears.

We'll look into it.

Since I arrived in the dam, I can't load in-game. Going from the main menu on start works fine, but if I try to load from the pause menu it crashes.

We'll look into it.

On my one it I press play and then it shows the Stranger's Wrath HD loading screen for about 2 seconds and then it goes black. It stays like that. I can hear the noises and everything and when I must be hovering my mouse over buttons it makes a noise like I am but I just can't see it.

Fixed - a bit. I don't understand the technical stuff behind this, but it's to do with 'uniforms'. Stranger HD uses 192 uniforms, but your hardware can't handle that many. OpenGL 2.1 must support at least 96 uniforms, but hardware manifacturers can include support for many more.

Therefore we have nVidia users with OGL 2.1 not having any problems because their hardware supports at least 192 uniforms. Intel chipsets tend to support the 96 bare minimum.

We've made some changes so that things like the game and menu now work no matter how many uniforms you have. However, skinned characters (Stranger, NPCs and I think ammo) use all 192 uniforms. If your hardware doesn't support that, there's not really anything we can do about it.

OpenGL 3.0 and greater supports enough uniforms as standard. If you can switch to OpenGL 3.0 and greater, do it, because Stranger's Wrath HD isn't the only game affected by this. OGL 2.1 is over 7 years old now.

[pupbenny]

Fixed - a bit. I don't understand the technical stuff behind this, but it's to do with 'uniforms'. Stranger HD uses 192 uniforms, but your hardware can't handle that many. OpenGL 2.1 must support at least 96 uniforms, but hardware manifacturers can include support for many more.

Therefore we have nVidia users with OGL 2.1 not having any problems because their hardware supports at least 192 uniforms. Intel chipsets tend to support the 96 bare minimum.

We've made some changes so that things like the game and menu now work no matter how many uniforms you have. However, skinned characters (Stranger, NPCs and I think ammo) use all 192 uniforms. If your hardware doesn't support that, there's not really anything we can do about it.

OpenGL 3.0 and greater supports enough uniforms as standard. If you can switch to OpenGL 3.0 and greater, do it, because Stranger's Wrath HD isn't the only game affected by this. OGL 2.1 is over 7 years old now.

Are you sure the menu's fixed? I just tried to play it and the menu still isn't coming up. Do I need to get an update or something?

[Wil]

We haven't put the update out yet.

[pupbenny]

We haven't put the update out yet.

Ah.

[Holy Sock]

I don't know if this is a bug but the quicksave feature wasn't working during the fight agains the two Gloktogi at the end of the game. I could only use the "Save Game" feature.

[Hulaabeo]

...I guess I can't play SW HD then. :/

[Wil]

I'm sure I told you, Hula, we were waiting until after Eurogamer to return to fixing SW HD. Try again after we've put the patch out.

[Hulaabeo]

I remember that.

You mentioned how Intel can only provide 96 uniforms whereas I require 192 or something to operate SWHD. P:

[Manco]

I thought I should report in with my experiences, since I finally got a decent experience playing this game.

The game runs pretty smoothly on an iMac via Boot Camp, firstly. Anti-aliasing makes everything chug but with that disabled I had no framerate issues.

What I did have an issue with was something that a lot of others complained about – Stranger’s sprinting is very erratic, and he stops or slows down frequently with no warning.

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the framerate may be related to this? I have Vsync enabled and a framerate cap of 100, if that has any bearing on it.

[OANST]

I always chuckle to myself when people try to convince me how much awesomeness I miss out on by not playing games on the pc.

[MeechMunchie]

Well duh. Everyone knows Macs are totally where it's at.

[Nate]

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the framerate may be related to this? I have Vsync enabled and a framerate cap of 100, if that has any bearing on it.

I reduced the framerate to 30 and it got a lot better.

Could you explain in better detail what you mean by this. I'm not sure how the 'currently selected' ammo can be 'selected or unselected'.

Fair enough. Reading it again, my last explanation really wasn't very good.



If you go in to one of the bounty stores, select ammo, scroll down to a specific ammo type and select it, the screen in the first picture pops up. (When I took that screenshot, I had already pressed down so that the 'BUY' button is selected)

Now, if I press up, it looks like the second screenshot. At this point I'm able to press right and left to change the number of Bolamites to buy. However, there's no visual indication that that is what you can do - there's no visual difference between those screenshots other than the fact that the 'BUY' button is no longer highlighted. Either the left and right buttons should glow or (and this is what I was trying to explain in my previous post), the green glow that you can see behind the Bolamite should only be there when you can change the quantity.

[Wil]

Ah yes, I found that myself. I don't think we're going to change that. For one, it would require new art, and for two, Glitcher isn't in the office again until after we're planning to put out the final patch.

[Nate]

Ah, kay. It's not a major bug; just a usability thing.

[Clannfear]

I reduced the framerate to 30 and it got a lot better.

Fair enough. Reading it again, my last explanation really wasn't very good.



If you go in to one of the bounty stores, select ammo, scroll down to a specific ammo type and select it, the screen in the first picture pops up. (When I took that screenshot, I had already pressed down so that the 'BUY' button is selected)

Now, if I press up, it looks like the second screenshot. At this point I'm able to press right and left to change the number of Bolamites to buy. However, there's no visual indication that that is what you can do - there's no visual difference between those screenshots other than the fact that the 'BUY' button is no longer highlighted. Either the left and right buttons should glow or (and this is what I was trying to explain in my previous post), the green glow that you can see behind the Bolamite should only be there when you can change the quantity.

Nate this is amazing 3D art! If you know what I mean Cross-eyed 3D.

[Manco]

So after finishing up the game I’ll run down a couple of bugs I ran into.

The first is another save bug – it seems for me that if I use the Save Game dialogue the Quicksave option ceases to function. The “Saving ...” icon never appears and no save file is generated. This fucked me over a couple times before I noticed it (had to redo several bounties).

For the cutscene where Stranger is talking to the Grubbs about the boat (just after getting through the Docks) none of Stranger’s dialogue played – the camera cut to Stranger standing silently for a couple seconds before moving back to the Grubbs’ dialogue. Which was a little funny, I guess, but still.

Shortly before that cutscene, Stranger stopped speaking entirely when hitting the Gamespeak button.

The running bug plagued me throughout the whole game, even after capping the framerate at 30. I think someone at JAW mentioned that was getting patched soon though?

Some of the pause menu interface weirded me out with how it handles option highlighting – a lot of the time it either doesn’t highlight a default option (which would make sense for a mouse but not for a gamepad) or doesn’t make it too clear where your highlight was going (go into the Save Game menu, select a save and then move the highlighter around, see how fast you lose track of it).

[Nate]

The running bug plagued me throughout the whole game, even after capping the framerate at 30. I think someone at JAW mentioned that was getting patched soon though?

Sadly, no:

Known problem. It's because many, many things in the game are hard coded to run at 30 FPS. If your framerate goes much above or below this, Stranger will stop moving properly. I have no idea what we can do about this that wouldn't take weeks of extra work.

Some of the pause menu interface weirded me out with how it handles option highlighting – a lot of the time it either doesn’t highlight a default option (which would make sense for a mouse but not for a gamepad) or doesn’t make it too clear where your highlight was going (go into the Save Game menu, select a save and then move the highlighter around, see how fast you lose track of it).

Wil sortof answered this here, except that it doesn't explain why some menus do have auto-highlighting:

Not a bug. Apparently if you want to have a menu that responds to both keyboard and mouse, you can't have an auto-selected option. This may be a limitation of the middleware Stranger uses for menus. Again, you'd need to ask Glitcher to be sure.

[Wil]

The running bug is fixed in the latest patch, at least on my machine I'm not having trouble with it anymore. I can't remember what the solution was...

To clarify on menus, Glitcher tried to remove all auto highlights but forgot some. He'd punch me in the face if I told him to redo them. We've already had to put him in a straightjacket to get him to do the Vita menus.

[Nate]

The running bug is fixed in the latest patch, at least on my machine I'm not having trouble with it anymore. I can't remember what the solution was...

Yay!

[pupbenny]

Is that update been up yet?

[Wil]

No. I'm going through language things that it has taken a couple of weeks to sort out.

[pupbenny]

No. I'm going through language things that it has taken a couple of weeks to sort out.

Ah, I was just making sure.

[Manco]

Aw heck I just noticed that I never unlocked the achievement for finishing the game on Normal. Instead I got the Easy achievement somehow?

[Bester]

Aw heck I just noticed that I never unlocked the achievement for finishing the game on Normal. Instead I got the Easy achievement somehow?

You think that is annoying?

I completed it on hard and bountied well over 250 alive and didn't get any achievements from that first Gloktigi battle or onwards.