Xbox 360 Prey Patch - Aug 2006

What should of been fixed IMO

1. Weapon Switch exploit
2. 1 second delay when shooting
3. Showing games already in progress in the ranked menu
4. Not putting you back to the menu when you didnt connect to a game.
5. Connection errors
6. And of course the lag

[Orochi Avlis]

Joes right the Doom 3 network structure is very solid and optmized but if you actually LOOK at the source code youd have a idea on massive and bandwith heavy any Doom 3 or for that matter ANY modern game is today. I wouldn't play 8-12 players unless the server has a solid 1mb upload.

Doom 3 used per-pixel hit detection, which uses sends out alot of info. Raven and id reverted back to hitboxes for Quake 4, hence the lower pings.

Prey sends out alot of info because of: (these are educated guesses. I could be wrong on a point or 2)
1) Portals. Open, close, who looking at it, firing through it etc etc. Tons of info there. These things aren't exactly simple doorways.
2) Spirit Walking. Where you hide a body, and then walking around in spirit mode. Server needs to keep track of both.
3) Gravity. There are levels with multiple type of gravity. I'm sure that the server has to keep track of the players shifting in and out of different gravity zones and adjust it.

[bummerman]

you might think about getting the pc version of the game.There are many servers with high upload ability just begging to fill up

[bummerman]

Originally Posted by Orochi Avlis

Doom 3 used per-pixel hit detection, which uses sends out alot of info. Raven and id reverted back to hitboxes for Quake 4, hence the lower pings.

Prey sends out alot of info because of: (these are educated guesses. I could be wrong on a point or 2)
1) Portals. Open, close, who looking at it, firing through it etc etc. Tons of info there. These things aren't exactly simple doorways.
2) Spirit Walking. Where you hide a body, and then walking around in spirit mode. Server needs to keep track of both.
3) Gravity. There are levels with multiple type of gravity. I'm sure that the server has to keep track of the players shifting in and out of different gravity zones and adjust it.

'The per pixel hit detection is a major factor in making Doom 3 a "cool" but undersupported MP game.Doom 3 has not lost player count over the last year
probably because more and more ppl have hardware and connections speeds that allow them to enjoy the game...Though Q4 has the Doom 3 engine, Prey has a lot more in common with Doom 3 than Q4 as far as feel and bandwidth requirements

i have also downloaded the patch for prey and i am still also having major lag issues even though they were meant to be fixed

but the lag has eased off a bit to semi playable standards

[Do Me Proper]

It'd be nice to have some staff come out and tell us now that the code is just too f@cked up to ever get a smooth running game. Blame it on the Doom 3 engine, I don't care, I'd rather have some definite feedback then having my connection blamed because other games run fine online.

This is just like the situation with the demo, I think all anyone wants is an honest explanation for what's going on, especially why the quit exploit hasn't been fixed as far as I can tell (sometimes it seems to work and sometimes it doesn't).

[DestiniesReqium]

Originally Posted by Do Me Proper

It'd be nice to have some staff come out and tell us now that the code is just too f@cked up to ever get a smooth running game. Blame it on the Doom 3 engine, I don't care, I'd rather have some definite feedback then having my connection blamed because other games run fine online.

This is just like the situation with the demo, I think all anyone wants is an honest explanation for what's going on, especially why the quit exploit hasn't been fixed as far as I can tell (sometimes it seems to work and sometimes it doesn't).

I agree. The quit early exploit thing never works for me. Everytime they quit it doesn't work. It's VERY annoying. I understand the LAG is bad, but even when I experience lag, I don't quit. But, if you do a 1 vs. 1 match and that person quits, you get ranked, it's ALWAYS been like that. Anymore than 2 people and someone quits, the match is just a "player match" after that.

[decay]

Another good thing is for crawler mode of fire to be remembered after you die and sniper zoom level to be remembered when you die.

I get sick of having to re adjust my sniper zoom every time i respawn.

[Gibbs]

Originally Posted by Do Me Proper

This is just like the situation with the demo, I think all anyone wants is an honest explanation for what's going on, especially why the quit exploit hasn't been fixed as far as I can tell (sometimes it seems to work and sometimes it doesn't).

so far it has never wokred for me anytime anyone quits...hooray player match!

[SuperSaiyan4]

Originally Posted by Joe Siegler

I never said that. I said slow or limited upload speeds. The issue is the host is sending out info to all the people connected to them. There is no central server for the game. YOU are the host. If your upload bandwith speed is insufficient, then you'll see that. I don't know how else it can be stated.



If you had any clue about the tech issues, you wouldn't be saying that. It's most definitely not BS. Might not be something you want to hear, but that doesn't make it BS.

Unreal Tournament doesnt lag nor does Unreal Championship, for me on Xbox Live Unreal Champ has never lagged, nor has PDZ even Halo 2 has been pretty stable until you get 16 players in the room with various connections but with 8 players it 85% of time problem free!

Good example is Street Fighter SNK 2 EO on the old Xbox that had serious lag issues with just 1 v 1...and dont even dare say that its because of my upload...

[Joe Siegler]

Unreal Tournament doesnt lag nor does Unreal Championship, for me on Xbox Live Unreal Champ has never lagged, nor has PDZ even Halo 2 has been pretty stable until you get 16 players in the room with various connections but with 8 players it 85% of time problem free!

They use a different codebase. This uses the Doom 3 code as a base. That's not exactly the best comparison. Compare it to other Doom 3 based games.

[decay]

I dont understand why they even bothered with a multiplayer mode in prey when they knew the doom 3 engine was crap for it

[Do Me Proper]

Could we get a response from Venom? I really just want to know now why the quit exploit isn't fixed, I can understand the lag still being there, but ranked games should count towards your rank as I see it.

[bummerman]

I'm starting to get the feeling that perhaps Mprey would have been best left to the PC domain. Servers there,do a lot better with the lag issue. Many players who don't know a thing about bandwidth probably are trying to play or serve via a dsl lite connection with sister Sue,on the same network watching a music video in the next room

[Orochi Avlis]

Originally Posted by decay

I dont understand why they even bothered with a multiplayer mode in prey when they knew the doom 3 engine was crap for it

It's not exactly crap, but then if they axed MP, people would complain about a lack of one.

[DestiniesReqium]

Prey online is really starting to make me very mad. I just played like 7 matches and every single one of them someone quit. Hmmm but yet no rank up like I previously said, this IS crap. The patch said it was supose to fix it, but it's not....

[bummerman]

hey,play for the love of the game, not for some phony Microsoft reward; you've been sold a lot of x-box 360 baloney

[bummerman]

Originally Posted by Optical Vortex

What should of been fixed IMO

1. Weapon Switch exploit
2. 1 second delay when shooting
3. Showing games already in progress in the ranked menu
4. Not putting you back to the menu when you didnt connect to a game.
   
5. And of course the lag

what you mean,one second delay when shooting....they didn't fix the no delay weapon switch? Not much of a patch[*]Connection errors

[Do Me Proper]

Originally Posted by bummerman

hey,play for the love of the game, not for some phony Microsoft reward; you've been sold a lot of x-box 360 baloney

I play for love of the game, but I like to move up in the leaderboards too, and the least that could have been done in the patch was to fix this one GLARING error in the code.

After getting d!cked around like this you can be almost certain that I won't be paying for any dc. Sorry guys, I was a fan when I thought the patch would, well...patch up the game.

[DestiniesReqium]

Originally Posted by bummerman

hey,play for the love of the game, not for some phony Microsoft reward; you've been sold a lot of x-box 360 baloney

Um, no lol. I believe your talking about gamerpoints, which I am not. Microsoft didn't put leaderboards into Prey. I have every one of Prey's achievements, so gamerpoints is far from that. Now what I am complaining about is not being able to rank up. You say play for the love of the game, what do you think I'm doing? I love playing RANKED games, where as I should RANK up . Besides I don't get "sold" easly on this so called "baloney." I like trying to earn achievement points and ranking up in a game and that IS playing for the love of the game. But love can go just so far, when the game was suposed to of been "patched for lag and quitters."

[DestiniesReqium]

Originally Posted by bummerman

what you mean,one second delay when shooting....they didn't fix the no delay weapon switch? Not much of a patch[*]Connection errors

Oh and... the one second delay in shooting. Shoot at a wall/floor/ceiling and watch when the bullet or acid hits the wall/floor/ceiling, it's delayed.

[bummerman]

Originally Posted by DestiniesReqium

Oh and... the one second delay in shooting. Shoot at a wall/floor/ceiling and watch when the bullet or acid hits the wall/floor/ceiling, it's delayed.

that's supposed to be there!!!You want an immediate hit,you use the lightning gun

[DestiniesReqium]

Originally Posted by bummerman

that's supposed to be there!!!You want an immediate hit,you use the lightning gun

What? The host doesn't have a second delay . Plus why would there be a second delay in a shot? lol Makes no sence.

Also, you can get right up NEXT to a wall and shoot at it, a second or two later you see it lol.

[bummerman]

that'sLAG!!!! tHAT IS MAINLY AN X-BOX ISSUE .pc IS FINE`

[DestiniesReqium]

Originally Posted by bummerman

that'sLAG!!!! tHAT IS MAINLY AN X-BOX ISSUE .pc IS FINE`

Wow caps almighty lol. I was going to actually say about it being lag, but apparently forgot to add that part in. But if we had a patch that worked maybe it wouldn't be like that? Hmmmm.

But you DID say it was supose to be like that haha.

[Attallal]

It's the game engine these guys used that causes the lag. Quake4 on 360 uses basically the same game engine and it has uber lag problems. I know........you guys enhanced the engine to add more lag. Throw in the fact that they also don't provide servers for 360. The support for this game on 360 stinks. Prey 2 will not be getting my money.

[bummerman]

Originally Posted by DestiniesReqium

Wow caps almighty lol. I was going to actually say about it being lag, but apparently forgot to add that part in. But if we had a patch that worked maybe it wouldn't be like that? Hmmmm.

But you DID say it was supose to be like that haha.

'I thought you were referring to the acid not immediately splatting the wall when you fired as well as the zoomed spawnning weapon,haha....and I agree, given the fact that these are all "listen servers" on home computers ,it may have been a bit irresponsible to include a MP cause of the bandwidth requirements

[Joe Siegler]

Originally Posted by Gibbs

exactly what do you mean by the "quit out of ranked match early exploit fix" because when I play if someone quits I still don't get rank for it and this is after the patch.

Heard back from Venom on this:

Hi Joe,

Sorry for the late reply ive been out of the office. In ranked matches if the host quits, everyone writes the stats they currently have but with the host's set to zero. Be aware that it can take upto 5 minutes for the stats to appear on the leaderboards as the arbitration server needs to wait for all results(which will never appear as the host has quit) or the timeout (which is 5 minutes), after which the leaderboards will be updated.

[decay]

What about the lag thats still there? You are basically saying nothing can be done so why would you guys expect us to pay for mp maps when the MP itself is laggy and the community is dying?

[Haanz]

Some people like to play LAN.

I'm trading in my copy of Prey 360 now, but (unless they do actually charge for PC multiplayer content) I might get the extra maps and the PC version, for LAN parties.

Maybe. If they're good.

[Luke]

Originally Posted by decay

What about the lag thats still there? You are basically saying nothing can be done so why would you guys expect us to pay for mp maps when the MP itself is laggy and the community is dying?

You are being far from understanding in this issue mate. I dont think it can be explained any clearer. Prey on the 360 does not have and dedicated servers and as far as I know there are no plans to have any initiated. For this reason, every game you see running on X-Box live is being hosted by another gamer such as yourself. As a result it puts an amazing strain on the upload bandwidth of that person. The average upload speeds for the UK are 256kb/s which is very low and im told that it's not much better on average in the states. Due to the heavy complexity of the Doom 3 engine and net code this means that only a limited amount of players can be entered into a game before packets are lost between players. A recent study shows that for every player in a game that has this issue, uses up around 60kb/s of the hosts upload bandwidth (excluding the host player) and this can double during high activity on screen. As a result if a game is hosted on a 256kb/s upload stream only an average of 4 players is reasonable. ISP's are in the process of updating their services with the 10meg revolution as they are calling it and as such upload rates are going to rise. In the coming months you may find the problem will fix it's self.
Otherwise stop sucking your thumb, crying in the corner and get a job.

Thank you and good night.

[wadsy]

Originally Posted by Attallal

It's the game engine these guys used that causes the lag. Quake4 on 360 uses basically the same game engine and it has uber lag problems. I know........you guys enhanced the engine to add more lag. Throw in the fact that they also don't provide servers for 360. The support for this game on 360 stinks. Prey 2 will not be getting my money.

hear hear. WID wasnt followed through for pray lets hope duke nukem forever atleast gets WIDP (when it Done properly)

[tommygun]

and the patch did nothing remember that!!!!

this just ended the patch for street fighter actually fixed the quitting problem lol a 2d game works better then a next gen game lol

[Joe Siegler]

Originally Posted by tommygun

and the patch did nothing remember that!!!!

That is fud, and not true. The patch does a lot, and has made games smoother. I think the problem is people are expecing it to be smooth as silk like glass as if all the players are playing on the same machine, and since it isn't like that - IT SUCKS, 3DR SUCKS, VENOM SUCKS - YOU ALL SUCK.

The technical reasons have been stated above; if you don't want to believe that, then there's little else to say, as they're the truth.

[tommygun]

the truth is who ever made the online part sucks
this is by far the worst online game ever and its because of lag
we dont expect it to be like silk we expect to beable to play

[Attallal]

Pffffffft............Is exactly how I feel about this game. Note to the developers of this game............PAY ATTENTION. The next time you decide to make a game that's BANDWIDTH INTENSIVE as you guys like to call it. Provide servers for people to play on 360. Most people DO NOT HAVE THE UPLOAD REQUIRED TO HOST IN THIS GAME. Don't give me any excuses about how it's not economically viable. I also hear that you guys are going to charge for new maps? Is this true? You want me to pay for new maps to lag on?

[Luke]

Um you should be shouting at 2K for the servers.

[bummerman]

or Venom?

[Luke]

Not really. 2K as the publishers have to support it. They however do not. I think you underestimate the cost to create one or several dedicated servers. Without 2K's support Venom would be pumping in a LOT of money.

[VenomSteve]

Originally Posted by Luke

Not really. 2K as the publishers have to support it. They however do not. I think you underestimate the cost to create one or several dedicated servers. Without 2K's support Venom would be pumping in a LOT of money.

Venom are Take2, they are fully owned by them...