I recently reinstalled Zero-K on a new computer, and I noticed quite a few issues that newcomers may experience, souring their opinion of the game right off the bat. I demoed my concerns in this video: This video highights the following bugs: * Incorrect resolution with "Duplicated Screen" display setting * GUI elements whited-out occasionally, possibly by display change or full-screen change * Default widgets disabling when default GUI preset is selected * A couple Fullscreen/Borderless/Windowed bugs
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Did you encounter the installation bug where it says something like "error directory not found, and zerok was not installed" (even though it was installed)?
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The other lulzish and sad thing is that there is an issue with stability of downloads(zk, maps) unresolved for like 5 years... Nebs can't download anything, and can't join - there are lots of advices like "go rejoin the room", "go close/open lobby", "shoot in your leg(or head if you don't want to suffer)" Nobody cares it seems. Rage. Despair. Uninstall. "Why there are so few nebs?..." Most have not passed the quest of "fix it by yourself" - sometimes a holy ritual dance required to make ZKL work P.S. pls kill develobster who changed the forum font, my eyes are bleeding
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First 2 things are engine bugs. Radial menu in theory should be disabled on install. As far as I know it is kept only due to many old players using it due to familiarity with the hotkeys.
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There are like hundreds of exactly these 'problem chains', where because you use a feature like duplicate screens it creates this long cascade of problems where you have to go into menus and widget things and reset to defaults and all sorts of things new players wouldn't even know how to do.
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I just freshly reinstalled ZK on linux, but since I dont use ZKlobby maybe its not present. Thing is mousewheel zoom is inverted at least on most other things it works differently and while zk from ingame has thousands of settings I couldnt fix from ingame only negative zoom rate in engine settings file fixed it. And one more minor thing was that if I changed camera to COFC then zoom wasnt inverted anymore. But again maybe this is just wrong engineconfig file by default. PS I remember this inverted zoom thing haunt me from start like when I tried spring on other games and I seen plenty of people to complain about it, dunno why its default like that. PS I like this font. Tasty.
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Yeah current engine default springsettings are awful. It's not just the engine though - ZK widget defaults need to be changed as well. [Spoiler]Some of the many Springsettings changes needed: GroundDetail should be 70-80 by default (currently 60*) [?]MiddleClickScrollSpeed should be -0.005 by default (currently 0.01*) [?]MouseDragScrollThreshold should be 0 by default (currently 0.3*) [?]OverheadScrollSpeed should be 20-30 by default (currently 10*) [?]* according to https://springrts.com/wiki/Springsettings.cfgSome of the many ZK widget changes needed: Disable SmoothScroll (this should happen at the same time the MouseDragScrollThreshold springsetting is changed) [?]Enable digit display in Mex Placement Handler [?]
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quote:
Did you encounter the installation bug where it says something like "error directory not found, and zerok was not installed" (even though it was installed)? |
I know what bug you are talking about, but I did not encounter it this time. The only issue I had with installation was that it tried to install a .NET Framework, but I already had it installed on my system, so it said there was an error since it was already installed. I know that it doesn't mean Zero-K installation failed, but it left a bad taste to see the word "Error" or "Failure" when installing the game. quote:
Radial menu in theory should be disabled on install. As far as I know it is kept only due to many old players using it due to familiarity with the hotkeys. |
I didn't know that. I always liked the radial menu because the hotkeys are easy to reach and it's clear where I am in the menu.
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Thank you for following the TestingSchedule. The results have been added to the TestingSchedule.
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Defaults not being the actual defaults is an issue regardless. Though on the borderless thing I'd say that a not-fullsized borderless window should be a thing (I played Mass Effect 2 and 3 this way) and if it wanted to be borderless fullscreen it would say "borderless fullscreen". (Still it shouldn't be stuck in the upper left corner, when AFAIK there's no way to move it after application launch) Also should resizing window in windowed mode by dragging the borders even be possible? It just seems like it'd cause trouble with accidentally resizing without meaning to. There was a relative docking widget that would fix the incorrect GUI window placement after upsizing resolution, but IIRC it had other bizzare bugs that I no longer recall.
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Thanks for this, we need more of these videos. Firstly, I don't mean to downplay the issue, but most of the bugs follow from ZKL not working with the duplicate screen option (it must have detected the wrong resolution). So I don't expect to encounter this incarnation of the bug in the future. As I see it the gesture menu bug is that gesture menu is still enabled by default. It is enabled because I did not think I had enabled the political capital required to disable it. The presets disables widgets in case you have messed something up by enabling some random widget. The full list is here: quote:
widgetHandler:DisableWidget("Chili Chat 2.2")
widgetHandler:DisableWidget("Chili Deluxe Player List - Alpha 2.02")
widgetHandler:DisableWidget("Chili FactoryBar")
widgetHandler:DisableWidget("Chili FactoryPanel")
widgetHandler:DisableWidget("Chili Gesture Menu")
widgetHandler:DisableWidget("Chili Chat Bubbles")
widgetHandler:DisableWidget("Chili Keyboard Menu")
widgetHandler:DisableWidget("Chili Radial Build Menu")
widgetHandler:DisableWidget("Chili Resource Bars Classic")
widgetHandler:DisableWidget("Chili Economy Panel with Balance Bar") |
Presets is also possibly a way to deal with some of the issues with variable and bugged screen resolution. We could apply the default preset whenever screen resolution changes (even if it changes between launches). As always, there would be an option to disable this. To me the most worrying bug is the white UI panels. Can you reliably reproduce the bug? Did toggling the skins work? I would like to know because then we could automatically toggle UI skins on the first few runs of a new install, as a workaround.    [pikts]wolas if you don't use ZKL then you will get the default settings for Spring. These settings fail in a few places, such as inverted zoom.
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Thanks for taking the time to document these issues, and to demonstrate them so clearly with your video.
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quote:
To me the most worrying bug is the white UI panels. Can you reliably reproduce the bug? |
I can reliably reproduce this bug the first way demonstrated in the video. That is: 1. Install Zero-K 2. Open the Lobby 3. Start a match with "Duplicate screens" setting 4. Exit match and change to "Show only one screen" setting 5. Start a second match. I was not expecting to see the bug appear a second time, and I cannot reproduce it reliably. However, it seems to happen after changing between Fullscreen/Borderless/Windowed. And it only happens once for me. I could probably try to further isolate the second case if necessary. Also, regarding the blown-up resolution bug shown, it can **kind of** be fixed by first starting the game in windowed mode, and then quitting and starting again in borderless or fullscreen. It won't be blown up anymore. However, this is still a problem for borderless because it doesn't fill the whole screen. Instead, there is a sliver of desktop to the right and bottom of the borderless window. 
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The white panels seems like Chili skin images not being loaded, although why this would happen and why a few elements are apparently unaffected I don't know.
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I have added a way to make the UI reset to the default whenever there are screen resolution changes. https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/commit/0615541f132eb7f304ca9c127ec5b7ad31650817
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and things like: map downloads occasionally unreasonably slow each time the game updates, windows thinks the window is not responding during loading and tries to close it maps sometimes fail to download at all, leaving a person in a room without a map while other players have it(can't remember off the top of my head which) even looking at the game funny causes it to desync, which may not be immediately apparent but eventually leads to an unsatisfying game where the only option is to start over.
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quote:
each time the game updates, windows thinks the window is not responding during loading and tries to close it |
This can be changed by settings, go into your springsettings.cfg and set "LoadingMT = 1". I hope this is the default for new installs. quote:
maps sometimes fail to download at all, leaving a person in a room without a map while other players have it(can't remember off the top of my head which) |
Use WeblobbyWhile still being the official lobby, Zero-K Lobby hasn't been maintained lately. quote:
even looking at the game funny causes it to desync, which may not be immediately apparent but eventually leads to an unsatisfying game where the only option is to start over. |
    GoogleFrog please limit testing dev engines to certain time intervals and if possible do most of the testing where small games are played that don't take long. Is it really needed to run dev engine all the time? Many desyncs aren't even reported because none of the players is actually interested in testing.   PowerGuy not much you can do about it. Because the community is so small we all have to help in testing new engines. Make sure to upload [Infolog] and demo after a desynced match.
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The act of changing between engines is much more painful than actually using any particular engine. In my experience trying to switch to an engine receives a lot of resistance whereas people might not even notice that they are using a new engine if it has been that way all day. So it is advantageous to run one engine all the time. As for desyncs, I think that all the desyncs I am aware of are fixed.
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@KingRaptor, if I were to run a program in a (non-fullscreen) window, I would expect to be able to resize it on-the-fly. (That's why it's called a "window"!) Also, why would you want to run it in a (non-fulscreen) borderless window if not to be able to change its size?
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