HAY GUYS THE NEW VERSION IS OUT

[Slylandro]

Is this bugfest worth the frustration? Starting to feel like I'm spending more restarting the game and waiting on Dr. Watson than playing it.

Doing bussiness with storekeepers requires a mandatory save since about a 1/4 of the time moving things around in the inventory triggers a crash.

Weird reincarnation of Jactus complete with dialogue at the remains of dead body encounter.

Freeze when starting combat with Salje.

And some other charming little glitches and crashes.

I don't get the glitch with Salje, although everything else you mention seems familiar. Am I the only one who ends up with underwear-only characters after one of my main characters die?

 

[chaedwards]

I got that as well. And then the game autosaved, meaning I couldn't go back and try the combat again. Frustrating.

 

[LCJr.]

Am I the only one who ends up with underwear-only characters after one of my main characters die?

No you're not the only one. I got that too. The game wasn't just deleting the equipment but the info on the character screen too. The tabs for the "paper doll", skills and spells would still be there but the actual screens would be totally blank.

 

[Crawfish]

Two questions:

1. Is there a version of Prelude to Darkness that lists as v1.7 in-game? The only version I've been able to find comes up as v1.5 on all the in-game screens. The filename, however, was PreludeInstall17.exe.

2. I've been trying to run the game using a higher resolution than 800x600. Regardless of what resolutions and settings I've tried, I always encounter graphical errors on anything above 800x600.

The graphical errors include missing buttons, equipped inventory items not aligning to the inventory slots, and blinking tracers that persist until the game is exited that appear at the sides of the interface bar at the bottom of the screen.

(i.e. The bottom area with the main command buttons is centered horizontally, but there is empty black space to either side and anytime the mouse is moved over that area it leaves blinking white footprints that never go away).

Has anyone met with success trying to run Prelude to Darkness at a resolution above 800x600? Any pointers or suggestions as to how I might be able to get this to work?

Much thanks.

 

[Frau Bishop]

Hey, NL, where did you say you found the new version? :wink:

 

[Naked_Lunch]

Don't kill the messenger, mang.

 

[Jason]

NL made it himself using just Paint and Vim. Quite an accomplishment, really.

 

[Frau Bishop]

Don't kill the messenger, mang.

Oh well.
But some poking with a dirty stick should be allowed, just for fun's sake.

 

[Slylandro]

I tested out my theory from earlier tonight, and it seems to address the memory leaks. For anyone who is suffering from memory leak problems (eg freezing and/or crashing after a certain period of game time) like me, what I found is that saving and then immediately reloading from a save every once in a while (for me 10 minutes) seems to significantly decrease the number of glitches. Occasionally something does come up still, but it's a clean and quick crash. I've actually started to get deeper into the game, it seems very good, bugs and interface aside.

 

[Human Shield]

Why isn't the main site updated?

 

[Elwro]

Because no stable, bug-free version of the game is available?
But yeah, they should at least write "for a free beta-test go to RPGCodex" or sth.

 

[Azael]

It's taking forever for me to use XP to upgrade skills. After clicking 'Yes' (which is an unnecessary hassle as it is) for every single point increase, there's a delay of several seconds before anything happens, even longer if it happens to break one of the barriers that give you an attribute bonus. It's a pain in the ass and means that I have a ton of unspent XP just because I can't be arsed to sit through the process of using them all for every character.

On the plus side, the game is a lot more stable for me now.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

fter clicking 'Yes' (which is an unnecessary hassle as it is)

You can turn it off via the options menu.

 

[Atrokkus]

Is this version THAT buggy?

I mean, really, is it playable?

 

[Naked_Lunch]

It's playable if you don't mind some bugs. For me, it's about as buggy as Arcanum, unpatched but for some it really seems like hell. God loves me.

 

[CP]

Hi all.

Apologies on behalf of Zero Sum for disappearing off of the face of the earth. First of all, I would like to thank Naked Lunch for staying on me about getting the re-release out. Without his persistance it would have taken a lot longer (believe it or not haha). That said, I thought we were going to round up a few people and test it before posting on it. I really have to take the blame because I have not been very good at following up... but this should explain some of the bugs. We have done literally NO testing on this version.

Quite frankly, Prelude will always have bugs. It also likes some computers better than others (ahem.. i have invisible characters on my lap top at work haha). Believe me when I say we've killed ourselves trying to fix things up, but it was built a long time ago and I'm just not sure how much we're going to be able to fix certain issues. So, unfortunately, people who download the game simply must accept that there will be some issues. If the bugs are not that bad on your computer and/or you can tolerate the ones you have, I think Prelude has a lot to offer. If the game is too buggy for you, we apologize.

We are happy to continue plugging away at it, but I almost feel as if we should keep bug reporting separate... I'd be happy to set up a blog or something.

I'm going to go through and respond to a buncha postings. I look forward to reading your posts... and anyone can feel free to message me. I'll always respond.

Thanks!


CP
President, Area Designer (The Barrier Fortress, Jerrock)
ZSS

 

[Azael]

You can turn it off via the options menu.

Thanks, I still get the delays, but they seem to be shorter. It would have been a lot smoother if they'd gone for a solution with +/- buttons and an OK button to confirm all changes instead.

Now I'm having a potentially game stopping problem, I can't seem to switch to certain areas (as in entering caves, sewers, etc.) without the game crashing. It's not very consistent as some areas work just fine (Barrier sewers for example) while others don't work at all (Malpia's cave, River Dragon lair, Ancient ruins, etc.). Pisses me off due to missed XP and loot as well as potentially meaning that I can't finish the game. Any tips, or should I start a new game and hope for the best?

 

[sheek]

Hi CP.

What's happening to Zero-Sum now? Are you guys still active and are you going to make more CRPGs?

 

[CP]

Mine doesn't freeze but it crashed 2-3 times (the random encounter "dead body" has crashed my game twice).

You can thank my genious scripting skills for this. This can be fixed with a bit of testing no problemo.

It's living up to its name LOL. Pretty much all I'm seeing are stonewalls and darkness. No people, scenery, grass, etc. textures are showing.

Are you sure that you haven't accidentally scrolled the camera away from the party? Perhaps they're in a building... you can see other walls for all buildings when you're inside (another known bug). Long shot, but worth asking.

whoever voiced the intro did a good voice for the job - the pacing seemed unnatural, but it was one of the better voiceovers I've bothered to listen to. Did they get $1 bazillion an hr and 17% of all profits like all the other shit mongers get?

Ryan McCarthy is responsible for the voice over... though the pace was dictated more by Mat... I think. Anyway, we had a lot of fun with this.

Playing it on my laptop with an intel 82855 graphics chip, the characters bodies aren't being drawn, resulting in a rather spooky starting sequence where disembodied swords and helmets enter the watcher's study. I rolled back to the earliest drivers on intel's site, but no joy - anyone any tips?

Yep, this happens with me too. This is a bug I feel strongly can be fixed with testing.

am very appreciative of the time and effort put in so far. I also understand that to expect suppport is just greedy, but it does seem a shame, after such a long wait, to be unable to play the game.

Much appreciated... I wish we had time to give more support. But we'll keep plugging away.

My cursor zips around at lightspeed on the screen, but scrolling is painfully slow. And so is clicking any buttons, because it takes a good 4-5 seconds to home in on them with the ungodly scroll.

Something else I think can be fixed with a bit of testing.

Is there some place we should be sending bug descriptions for the game?

I'll have to work on this and get back to you. As I mentioned, I would prefer not to use codex as buglist... this was not a version taht was meant to be released.

Hmmm I found a solution (sort of) to my problem. In case anyone else is experiencing random freezes every 20 minutes or so in Prelude of Darkness (particularly when you've walked a great distance or just started a battle), it seems all you have to do is just save the game (for example to Slot A) and then immediately reload from that every now and then. I've been doing that today once every 10 minutes and the game's running fine. Maybe it's just luck; I'll see if this keeps up. If it doesn't work, I guess the worst case scenario is that I quit the game once every 10 minutes pre-emptively. It takes almost no time to load on my system anyway. I think whoever suggested that there were memory leaks nailed the problem.

This actually makes a lot of sense. I never saw that many crashes. But the longer I played without restarting, the higher the chances of a crash.

Two questions:

1. Is there a version of Prelude to Darkness that lists as v1.7 in-game? The only version I've been able to find comes up as v1.5 on all the in-game screens. The filename, however, was PreludeInstall17.exe.

2. I've been trying to run the game using a higher resolution than 800x600. Regardless of what resolutions and settings I've tried, I always encounter graphical errors on anything above 800x600.

The graphical errors include missing buttons, equipped inventory items not aligning to the inventory slots, and blinking tracers that persist until the game is exited that appear at the sides of the interface bar at the bottom of the screen.

(i.e. The bottom area with the main command buttons is centered horizontally, but there is empty black space to either side and anytime the mouse is moved over that area it leaves blinking white footprints that never go away).

Has anyone met with success trying to run Prelude to Darkness at a resolution above 800x600? Any pointers or suggestions as to how I might be able to get this to work?

Much thanks.

If you have the time, we should try to work on this one with Mat.

Why isn't the main site updated?

Just updated... but still needs a few changes

Because no stable, bug-free version of the game is available?
But yeah, they should at least write "for a free beta-test go to RPGCodex" or sth.

That was the idea with this version.

Thanks, I still get the delays, but they seem to be shorter. It would have been a lot smoother if they'd gone for a solution with +/- buttons and an OK button to confirm all changes instead.

Now I'm having a potentially game stopping problem, I can't seem to switch to certain areas (as in entering caves, sewers, etc.) without the game crashing. It's not very consistent as some areas work just fine (Barrier sewers for example) while others don't work at all (Malpia's cave, River Dragon lair, Ancient ruins, etc.). Pisses me off due to missed XP and loot as well as potentially meaning that I can't finish the game. Any tips, or should I start a new game and hope for the best?

As I've mentioned... this version was not meant to be released. This is the first we're seeing of these bugs and I'm fairly certain this one can be fixed with a bit of help from our codex friends. At this point I'm thinking it might be a good idea to take the link down while testing still needs to be done.

Hi CP.

What's happening to Zero-Sum now? Are you guys still active and are you going to make more CRPGs?

It really depends on the response we get by releasing the game as freeware. We are all doing well in our respective fields, but if rpg'ers like the ideas behind the Prelude and would like to see more ... well then we'll start working on it.

We've grown a lot since we started work on Prelude (almost 10 yrs ago) and have a ton of great ideas and infinitely better technical skills. With the pre-beta version that is up now, it seems pretty tough to get any non-bug related feedback. I'm hoping to keep bugs separate in order to get a solid version up and running with a known list of bugs for people to avoid ASAP.



CP

 

[sheek]

Another thing, have you seen this thread?

http://rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=12938

I tried using an old exe and got the same results as Inin. If you could fix this bug by releasing the 1.6 exe file that would be great.

 

[Azael]

I just wanted to add that even though I get crashes and annoyances, this is still a lot better CRPG than any mainstream one I've played in the past few years. With some more polish it would be great, period.

 

[Wulfgar]

1. Is there a version of Prelude to Darkness that lists as v1.7 in-game? The only version I've been able to find comes up as v1.5 on all the in-game screens. The filename, however, was PreludeInstall17.exe.

I've got this one...

I played it for about two hours (it makes a good first impression so far) and had only one CTD, occuring when I turned the view. I stopped clicking but the view kept turning for a while, pretty fast - and suddenly the CTD saved me from barfing all over the keyboard. Good crash.

...and this one too.

Also, the game crashes every 10-15 minutes. I'll try the "Sylandro fix".

 

[thathmew]

Like CP said, this version wasn't really slated for public consumption. Still, I'm glad to have some people hammering on it.

Although I've cleaned up the graphics code a lot, there's still many issues with running outside of 800x600, so no, that's not really possible in the current version. Hopefully the next, but who knows?

It sounds like I managed to add a memory leak in there somewhere. Doh. Shouldn't be hard to track down now that I know its there. Anyhow know if you have to actually be _doing_ stuff for it to occur, or can I just, say, park my characters in kellen and watch it happen?

I'm trying to get a machine to dupe the disappearing characters on my end, once I do y that should be easily resolved.

I just got back from showing Caesar IV at E3 (thus the lack of presence here), and I have to travel to Texas later this week for my sister's graduation and then there's a bunch more deadlines for Caesar IV coming up. So progress may be slow. Sorry, y'all. I'll do what I can. Hard to keep up with it all in my less than copius spare time.

If you get a crash or other severe issue that repro's from a savegame, I'd love to have it zipped and sent over to me. Currently best to send to thathmew at gmail. Anything that repro's easily tends to be a quick fix...

peace,
-mat

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

YOu guys would of so had a player like myself if oyu had made the game win 2000 compatible like 3 years ago when I was really interested. Now I just masturbate to games with good graphics and scream REx during the middle of the night.



Middle of the Night....

 

[LCJr.]

LCJr. wrote:
It's living up to its name LOL. Pretty much all I'm seeing are stonewalls and darkness. No people, scenery, grass, etc. textures are showing.


Are you sure that you haven't accidentally scrolled the camera away from the party? Perhaps they're in a building... you can see other walls for all buildings when you're inside (another known bug). Long shot, but worth asking.

Positive it's a driver issue. Videocard is a MSI(GeForce4 clone) MX440 AGP. Nvidia Forceware 81.98 winXP2K drivers were a trainwreck, invisible characters and scenery graphics, purple bushes, etc. Worked fine with MSI's 45.32 XP(date 9/23/03).