Rebirth Summary

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Markoguey (10)

Posted 10 years ago.

i really do not know why people like the highway system, even leaving aside the silly mini game. The fact is that the highway system allowed the developer to drop everything in a really small radius around stations, with 90% of space being completely empty and having nothing in it.

This removed all point of exploration from the game, and any sense of exploration, all you did was scan to pick up loot containers. Quite simply, everything about the game is simplified over x2/x3, with Egosoft removing significant game elements, which resulted in a watered down game experience. Even the improvements like ship crews & officers, had no real depth, you basically hire a NPC and issue one simple command to get him or her to do there thing. - aiden

If it was done properly there would be areas of space to explore and get into trouble if you got off the highways early. It opens the game up and makes it that much larger... again if done right.

Unfortunately Egosoft just made Highways the same as gates and added a mini-game instead of a loading screen.

- BarrenEarth

Yep the exploration part is spot on, it's one of the main features I loved about Roguey's X3 mod, he made every sector seemingly worth the effort to explore and is something alot of players enjoy about games.

It is one thing to ditch gates and replace with another means of sector travel, but they just copied a method used In another space game... To me this just shows a lack of imagination In a genre of endless possibilities.

jm7111

Rookiguey (4)

Posted 10 years ago.

Fully agree with BarrenEarth. Thank you for the well-timed summary.

I believe that the "Think" element of the game's motto is almost completely absent in the implementation and I doubt if it was ever present in the developer's mind.
Not to mention the fact that in the current phase we are actually dealing with a Beta.01 - or even worse - version, for which, Egosoft is using us, the gamers, in order to bring it to a decent, playable form.

BarrenEarth

BarrenEarth avatar

Proguey (12)

Posted 10 years ago.

http://roguey.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1081

It is funny, this poll by Roguey is similar to the pre-release will you buy it poll... but Roguey locked this new one to registered users, and look at the numbers.

You don't think Egosoft or their fanboys were coming to your site before with IP changers and manipulating the previous poll do ya?! Nah... just coincidence Poke

jm7111

Rookiguey (4)

Posted 10 years ago.

@BarrenEarth
Concerning the current status and verdict for X-Rebirth, this summary of reviews gives a very good indication for that
http://steamcommunity.com/app/2870/discussions/0/648811852715079441/

After reaching 100+ hours on this game and reading quite a lot of comments on Steam and Egosoft forums, I do have the following questions (and sorry beforehand for my not so good English)

1. Even after fixing all the bugs, do you think that it is possible for this game to reach or even exceed (as advertised) the depth of previous X-games ??

- if I understand well, you indicate that this is rather difficult code-wise, if not impossible due to the Xbox orientation (I have very limited coding experience, and certainly not on games).

2. In parallel, it is almost clear that Egosoft intentionally removed a lot of previous X-games features trying to make the game 'easier' and thus targeting broader player categories (i.e. 12 year-olds with this silly box searching and 'looting' inside stations and the mini-games - by the way, this seems to be the new way for implementing "Think"). So, is Egosoft actually willing to do it ??

- but on the other hand, the current status is definitely driving existing X-gamers away, judging from all the bitter comments in the forums... Of course many of us were already deceived and trapped into pre-ordering and buying the game, so partially not a big problem there for Egosoft money-wise, except for their reputation.

3. Do you think that even if they wanted to, can they really deliver ??

- and I am asking this because of my understanding based on previous X-games that a lot of the features implemented there came from modders and were picked up by Egosoft. Or is this potential already hidden somewhere in the game and not revealed yet ???

PS. Many thanks to NetHawk for his excellent and comprehensive comments

Maverick

Fightguey (6)

Posted 10 years ago.

There's a lot of interesting comments here and I am unable to add much to them...

I like a lot of people were really looking forward to getting my hands on the game, so My Wife got it for me for Christmas... Well that was a good thing, cause by the time I got it, some of the glitches had been fixed... well sort of!!! but I gave it a go, and managed to get 100+ hours on it... then along comes Patch 1.22.. and now it is unplayable.. slow jerky movement, and crashes everytime I enter one of the highways! I feel like my Avatar! so like most of us.. I was deeply disappointed, and it seems to me that Egosoft, despite their apology, just seem to be passing the buck, and like other comments here... I am not convinced that we will see a decent playable version for some time to come..

My initial feeling on what I've seen of the game so far is:

I like the main interactive concept, but it seems long winded with all the menu stuff..

I hate the mini game business... whats that about?

Some of the graphics seem dated, but Modders seem to have made improvements.

so there is not a lot of plus points for me.

Like BarrenEarth, I would score this game 2/10, maybe a little more on the concept, but its the playability that kills it for me.

The highest score I've seen on any of the reviews I have read is 2.8, think that speaks for it's self.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
Stephen Hawking

SpiritOfDeath

SpiritOfDeath avatar

Skillguey (7)

Posted 10 years ago.

I would actually be impressed if it turned out that Egosoft were using an Xbox emulator for our PC's. Such an emulator (to my knowledge) hasn't appeared yet, and the next gen consoles have already been released.

Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! *falls over*

don't look at me D:

BarrenEarth

BarrenEarth avatar

Proguey (12)

Posted 10 years ago.

Wouldn't be impressed, would be enraged

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 10 years ago.

Well I wouldnt of thought it was emulated. Developers usually have;

- game-files (ie. all the models, textures etc.),
- scripting/high-level code (type / xml files etc.),
- then .dlls and .exe to interface all the game-files/script code. dlls usually have the game functions.

Of what ive heard, the XML is being parsed in a slow way, reducing the over-all frame-rate. Some guys in the official forums where doing some digging here. lithast post (on the next page) is rather interesting;

Ok, more stuff here. The xmlCleanupThreads call is not their code, it looks like an open source library for xml parsing called libxml2.

http://www.xmlsoft.org/

The API documentation for the call in question is available here:
http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/php/share/gtk-doc/html/libxml2/libxml2-threads.html

It does look like it uses mutex internally...

Now I'm really curious what they are doing with XML that is taking 12 times as long as the D3D calls and requires multiple threads..

The second most expensive call is related to loading XML into a DOM and manipulating it. What on earth would be continuously creating and cleaning up XML parsers and DOM's?

http://www.xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-SAX2.html#xmlSAX2GetPublicId
- lithast

Basically saying the XML files are taking 12 times longer to run, than even the DirectX3D calls (ie. drawing the game onto the screen). Usually that is the most taxing thing. Even if they were using a slow XML loader, then why not parse the XML into something the game can use faster. Funny thing, I do this on my site - as I know the XML is slower (so I convert it to HTML and save it).

Arawn ship-page (/xrebirth/ships/arawn/)
- non-cached: This page loaded in 0.66348 seconds.
- cached ver: This page loaded in 0.00179 seconds (x370 faster).

If this is correct, there could be a massive jump in fps. However all this is based on pure guess work, but would explain a bit.

BarrenEarth

BarrenEarth avatar

Proguey (12)

Posted 10 years ago.

http://www.juryrigsoftware.com/

You can see here too a quote from Bernd about his use of a memory manager to find memory leaks.

This game is broken on very many different levels.

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 10 years ago.

Oh, how did you know about that Barren? I had a quick look and saw nothing on the official forums.

BarrenEarth

BarrenEarth avatar

Proguey (12)

Posted 10 years ago.

Oh, how did you know about that Barren? I had a quick look and saw nothing on the official forums.
- Roguey

I happened to see Elephant in the credits under licenses used... it perked my interest because the only thing that company does well is find massive memory leaks in large databases.

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 10 years ago.

ah, I see now - right near the bottom. thanks for letting me know Smile

BarrenEarth

BarrenEarth avatar

Proguey (12)

Posted 10 years ago.

ah, I see now - right near the bottom. thanks for letting me know
- Roguey

Funny, because I found it and posted then read your post above... in the Sleepy analysis guess what we see running in the child calls... Elephant Memory Leak Detection lol

So you can take credit for finding it big guy!

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 10 years ago.

lol, I didnt look too deeply into those Sleepy analyses pic; just at the XML / D3D calls. But youre right; looking more closer I can see Elephant::cMemoryM. So I gather from the Sleepy analysis that Elephant must be running all the time? putting even more load on the CPU, than the slow XML calls.

Maverick

Fightguey (6)

Posted 10 years ago.

http://www.juryrigsoftware.com/

This game is broken on very many different levels.
- BarrenEarth

Never was there a truer statment... I've given up with it, Been looking in on the egosoft forum and all they seem to be doing is releasing beta patches, tried the first one and it made things worse, and it seems that all the recent beta patches are causing further problems, according to the threads I'm reading on there about them,.. I cant see this game ever getting fixed, I have to say, I'm suprised at the level of commitment the public are putting into the testing of the beta's in the hope of it doing some good.. or maybe I just give up too easily... LOL

It looks like there is no one out there with anything good to say about Rebirth, such a shame.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
Stephen Hawking

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