Second Test, Different From The First

Just a very quick post to explain why there isn't an entirely different post here today...

It's because I spent the time when I should have been writing it playing Stars Reach instead. Well, I say "playing". It was mostly trying to get into the game and then writing bug reports. The exact opposite of the first test, in fact.

I only knew the test was on at all because of a comment someone left on the last post (Thank-you, Anonymous!) I didn't see it until 6.30 PM, by which time the server had been up for half an hour. I logged in straight away and made a new character, which took about ten seconds. I had to do that because the old ones had all been wiped.

Unlike the previous test, when I had no issues getting in, this time the game crashed repeatedly on the very first screen. Other people were reporting similar issues and there were a few suggested fixes on Discord but none of them worked for me so after about half a dozen tries I uninstalled the game and reinstalled it on an SSD to see if that might help.

It did, a bit. Now the game could get past the initial loading screen but it still crashed before I could get into the world. But I persisted and on the third or fourth try I got in!

I'd been making new characters for each attempt, just in case it might have been something to do with either the specific character I was trying to play or even the race/gender combos. I mean, it's pre-alpha - it could be anything. As a result, which character I ended up with felt a little like playing musical chairs and the winner was a Human Female.

I took to her right away, which was good because it seems we might actually get to keep the same characters for the next test. I think Raph said they'd like to see a little more persistence in the world so they can observe how it's changed by players over time. We'll see, I guess.

By then there was about an hour left and I was determined to get some crafting mats and make something. Anything, pretty much. I'll defuse any potential suspense right now and say no, that didn't happen. I made nothing. Again.

I did manage to find the space portal almost immediately and blast myself into orbit to go looking for ore. I realise now, again from the comment I linked earlier, that there's ore and metal on the planetary surface but it's definitely easier to find it in space if you're in a hurry. It's everywhere there.

Of course, I'd forgotten to swap out my Terraformer before I shot myself into space but luckily some helpful person had built a camp on a nearby asteroid so I was able to change tools there. I found some iron and manganese and blasted away until my hopper was full and I was just thinking about what to do with it when some space monster attacked me for absolutely NO REASON!

Mindful of the advice about dropping your stuff when you die, I didn't try to defend myself. I jetted away, spining wildly, and made for the portal back to the planet below. I hammered "F" with the creature still spitting poison at me, expecting to die at any moment, but after a few goes and a lot of swearing the portal fired and sent me home. 

Or to desktop, anyway, because the client crashed. It took another couple of tries to get back in but I reappeared on solid ground, still with all my stuff. Which would have been fine if I hadn't then encountered my first real bug.

I went to someone's camp to see if I could make anything yet. I couldn't. Didn't have the right mats and also han't earned enough XP to buy new recipes. At that point I thought I might as well make my own camp so I swapped tools and started to put down the big, yellow ghost-rectangle that marks your claim, when I had a change of mind and decided to go do some surveying instead.

Only I couldn't let go of the camp marker. It just hung on my cursor, whatever I did. Couldn't put it down to claim a camp, couldn't swap to any other tool, couldn't do anything but wave it around like a giant, yellow fly-swatter.

In the end I stopped trying, wrote and submitted a bug report, then logged out, hoping I would be able to log back in without any more problems. 

That didn't go as well as I hoped.

This time, the game hung at the loading screen but didn't crash. It just sat there, doing nothing. Much more weirdly, after a while all the in-game sounds started to play. I could tell from what I was hearing that it was relaying activity from where I logged out. There'd been a bunch of people shooting stuff there and it was the same gun sounds, sometimes fading away or stopping, then starting up again as they slaughtered whatever it was they were after.

I wrote another bug report for that, closed the client, then logged in yet again. This time I got straight in and everything was working fine. By then there was about twenty minutes of the test left so I decided I'd carry on with the surveying. 

I'd done about a dozen points when Beryl the dog came charging in, jumping up at me and barking. I know when I'm beaten. I surveyed a couple more points, fending her off with my free hand, jumped off a small cliff to shake some owldeer that were chasing me, found a flat, safe spot and logged out for the final time.

All in all it was a chaotic but very entertaining session, at least when it wasn't frustrating and annoying. Pretty much what you expect from an alpha (Sorry, pre-alpha.) I was quite pleased that at least I'd been able to send a couple of bug reports this time and Raph mentioned in chat that the crash reports from my multiple failed attempts would be welcome.

If we do get to keep the same characters next time there's an EU-hours test, I'll make a concerted effort to get a bit further with the crafting. Not that I know what I want to make but I'd like to be able to say I made something!

Also, it could have been worse. I saw in chat that Wilhelm got turned into a pillar! But I expect he'll tell us all about that himself...