MattScott

Hi all, Apologies for the outages last night. Our hosting provider for Jericho is doing some extensive site upgrades that include a number of features we should benefit from. This work was originally scheduled for April, and has been pushed out multiple times. We missed communicating this to you guys due to numerous rescheduling notices, but the maintenance time window ended at 15:00 UTC. My team will keep an eye on servers to see if there are any more outages. Apologies for the lack of notice. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, Patch notes are up for tomorrow's patch. We have a couple optimizations for RIOT, but the majority of bigger fixes are still being implemented. We want to see how these changes affect things. https://www.gamersfirst.com/apb/patch-notes The team is still testing changes such as: - Sound in the district - Improved player messaging - Lowering the minimum player threshold - Reworking the end stage - Possibly removing respawns in the end stage - Increasing the protection time of the Hazmat suit gained when respawning Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, We are way overdue to show off screenshots, so I have decided this update is going to be a bit different. To start, I’m going to give a brief update of where we are on PC and console, and then (for better or worse) I’m going to let SPCT post some screenshots that they chose from the current build. All previously shown Engine Upgrade shots were real, but they were done under highly controlled conditions. No HUDS. Fly throughs. Etc. Today's post is an attempt to lift the curtain today and give a genuine look at where we really are. For PC, everything is now done except for migrating Unreal package content. To give specifics, there are 1498 packages used in the game: 919 regular packages 537 map packages including dynamic layers to action districts for events and missions So far we have converted about ~84% of them, with the following packages remaining to be completed: 212 regular packages 24 map packages EDIT: Corrected after someone pointed out my bad math. That leaves 249 packages to migrate, but these are all somewhat more difficult. Some of them wont be migrated because G1 or LO already made changes that weren't ever in 3.0. This includes reworked Financial and Waterfront textures and geometry. Some of the packages are for User Interfaces. These are tricky because we have a chunk of UIs in 3.5 already that have been glued up for console. And we have new UIs in 3.0 for the trading system and other areas. Anything we migrate from 3.0 will step on aspects of the 3.5 screens and work will need to be redone. I'll have a better sense of this effort once we get a little further. Some of the remaining packages have changes in both 3.5 and 3.0 and those will need to be hand merged. Again, I'll have a better sense of this effort once we get a little further. We still have plenty of bugs and crashes that need to be fixed, but we now have all the code, systems, and server work completed. Performance Benchmarking Performance testing of the Engine Upgrade is very important. Not many people would trade better looking graphics for worse performance. In APB's case, there are currently disk-based stutters and bad support for multiple CPU or GPU cores. One of our primary goals with the Engine Upgrade is to fully utilize modern hardware. DISCLAIMER: It is important to point out that the Engine Upgrade has an entirely different rendering pipeline - some good and some bad. Many players have seen what the console builds look like, and the performance on those devices is terrible. The starting point of the Engine Upgrade was these exact console versions just running on PC, so there has been a lot of work to do since we started. Unfortunately most of the work is very specialized and cannot be done by a huge team without tripping over each other. We have kept as many people dedicated to the upgrade as possible, but this work is filled with rabbit holes and pitfalls. Sometimes areas that appear simple to optimize end up using global data that touches many other areas of the code. I want to thank @SKay for all of his hard work leading the benchmarking effort to help us gauge progress in these areas. To make sure the test runs were valid, they had to be able to easily reproduceable as well as being able to give a proportionate representation of what a user might see during their time in APB. The game environments vary from claustrophobic to wide open, and the benchmarks needed to account for both. In the end, he chose a short car drive that would force the game to move quickly through as many different areas as possible under consistent conditions. The main goals of the benchmark are to insure that: The 3.5 performance would at least reach the same speeds (on average) as LIVE The main issues (stutters, low 1%' and .1% frame rates) were at least looked at and/or addressed New visual upgrades or changes didn't affect the overall experience The route above shows the benchmark run that was used in all cases. The test run as outlined above has open areas and enclosed areas in a single run that could be repeatedly reproduced for apples-to-apples comparisons to help identify progress with the Engine Upgrade. Starting at Darryl Kent, we take a left out and stay on the road passing right of Suji. Taking the next right and keeping the City Council building to our left, we take a right at the crossroads outside of Violet Prentiss and Wilson LeBoyce, following the road as it sweeps towards Javez and passing him on the right. We hold that road and turn right when it meets the river, coming back to end in front of Darryl Kent. Stats were captured with MSI Afterburner using RivaTuner Statistics Server running on Ultra settings 4K resolution. Here are the benchmark results: To explain the numbers for the graph: Max FPS is the highest framerate detected during the test. This in conjunction with the other metrics can determine if the game is able to push good framerates on the current hardware. Avg FPS is the average of all the frames that were taken during a run. This is used as a base metric to compare the other metrics in this list with. Min FPS is the lowest framerate detected. This is not necessarily the lowest framerate outright, rather the lowest framerate that could be normally detected through normal gameplay. 1% FPS is the average of the lowest 1% of frames that were taken during a run. This metric, when compared to the average, is used to determine if the PC is struggling to run the game, or if the game is struggling to drive a consistent frame rate. .1% FPS is the average of the lowest .1% of frames that were taken during a run. This metric is used to detect for stutters or freezes (if any) NOTE: The benchmarks do not included the non Multi Threaded renderer results. The state of the renderer was bad enough when we started that it was clearly well below LIVE and not acceptable. Here is a quick summary of our development timeline on the Engine Upgrade: May 2018, we chose to focus on infrastructure which took us a couple months to clear the cobwebs End of July I posted my first update on the Engine Upgrade with details around bringing on more devs for the Unification project November we rebuilt the Music Editor for 3.5 and the majority of external libraries had been upgraded just to get the build running Early February we had finally sorted out a number of crash bugs that allowed SPCT to get their first play tests on 3.5 March we had realized how bad the renderer was and had implemented most of Multi Threaded rendering And here is a walk through of the results working up from the bottom: The bottom shows our LIVE comparison which was taken in the March / April time frame. The first set of results above the bottom was from the initial Multi Threaded renderer implementation back in April. These results were very encouraging, however in-game lighting was completely broken in this build, so the results were skewed higher than any other build that had lighting working correctly. 806538 shows what the initial finished implementation of Multi Threaded rendering from May. This was our first good look at performance, but it revealed several areas in the renderer that needed work - mostly in the Culling and Level of Detail systems. Culling is what decides which elements on screen to render and which to ignore. Level of Detail (LOD) determines if we can show a lower resolution model based on distance. 809566 shows some early Culling work from late May, but the routine had severe graphical issues with objects not getting rendered properly. 810873 shows our current build that is rendering properly with Culling and LOD fixes. EDIT: We are not done with the lighting or post processing. I should have made that clear. We are waiting for the content packages to get migrated and then we plan on doing a fairly big pass to adjust the look and feel. EDIT: @rooq spent the time to edit down this video showing the current state of the game. I look forward to doing comparisons against this as we finalize lighting and post processing. For console, we have a 2nd round of bugs to fix. The initial builds did not pass QA (quality assurance). Several crash bugs were found, so we couldn’t submit to Microsoft or Sony. However many have already been fixed. XB1 is being tested internally, and it may be ready to resubmit. PS4 has a couple more crash bugs left. And now onto the screenshots. Each SPCT member is going to start by posting a single screenshot. Feel free to request areas / content you’d like to see, but just so we don't make this thread too long I've limited them to 3 shots total. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, Lots of posts / updates planned for today, but I don't want to forget to update the Customer Support status. As of today, there are 913 total tickets (unsolved) which continues to come down week by week. This is our first time significantly under 1000 total tickets in a very long while. And there are 662 total tickets that have not been touched (contacted), which is down from last week. Today we are answering tickets from May 24th, which means we are now at a 27 day response time. If your ticket is older than May 24th, and we have not reached out, then I recommend updating your ticket and asking for status. (NOTE: Updated the stats as of the actual End of Day Friday) Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, First, many many (many many) players have asked why we "wasted" time doing RIOT, and I think that's a valid question. The mechanics for RIOT were specifically designed to give my team a chance to learn how the inner workings of APB fit together. I felt that we could implement this mode without taking a lot of dev resources, we could keep our focus on the Engine Upgrade, and that the experience would give us an excellent sandbox to make mistakes. If we messed up RIOT, we could simply set it aside with no lasting damage. If we mess up the main game, then it becomes much more difficult to fix. The design for RIOT also included a number of underlying systems that we need. Some of them are focused on design elements such as cleaning up the district blocks or tracking new aspects of play. Other systems focused on replacing Joker Mystery Boxes. It's clear that legislation will eventually make these illegal, so we need new ways of building value that our players can spend money on. Next, here are some interesting stats for the first week: - RIOT was played 4x more on Citadel than on Jericho due to low population issues starting the mode - Fight Club ran 2.2x more matches than RIOT during the same week on Jericho, but 92%+ of accounts playing FC also played RIOT - Fight Club ran 1.2x more matches than RIOT during the same week on Citadel, but we saw 1.5x more accounts in RIOT than FC - ~40% of the active player base during the week played RIOT at least once We are spending a lot of time going through all the feedback here on the forums to see what is feasible. There have been lots of great suggestions. There are clear issues with the mode, and the team is working on a relatively light weight pass of tweaks and fixes to make it more fun. Areas that need work are: The end-game, Sound, and respawns. Right now, the big decision I need to make is whether to: (1) take the mode down until it has seen major work or (2) add some more tiers along with another reward that will enable players to continue grinding Joker Tickets while we make changes. I'm not interested in clinging to or defending something that isn't working, but I still see some value in the mode itself - just perhaps not in the original way we intended. EDIT: I have two more updates planned, but ended up in meetings for the rest of the day, so I'll do those next week. We are not moving forward with any Battle Pass or Seasonal content till the kinks are worked out. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, It's been far too long since my last update, so I thought I would take a moment to walk through where we are at. Let's start with April and May - both very bad months for Fallen Earth. First, our data center migration caused lots of unscheduled downtime as we attempted to repair damaged databases. That issue led to the loss of data, which I am personally very sorry for. Second, in May we had an issue get out of hand that involved a number of FE GMs. We made some mistakes on our end, and they made mistakes on their end. I'm not looking to rehash what happened, and frankly I wish things had gone down differently. Unfortunately that situation escalated into several bans and a lot of toxicity on the Unofficial Fallen Earth Discord. I can appreciate how upset some members of the community were, and that they were working on incomplete information. I work hard to generally be available to players, but that doesn't mean I need to subject myself to the level of harassment present on that server. One final point before I move onto the update itself. Several members of the FE community have been vocal about their negative opinions of Little Orbit. However, I would encourage you to question their statements based on the following facts: - The game wasn't making enough money to pay for itself when we bought it, and it still doesn't on a regular monthly basis - I had every reason to shutdown the servers in May after the horrible problems in moving them, and I didn't - Instead, we spent many extra hours at enormous expense to fix things and doing our best to keep the game online The only thing that will turn around this game is actual progress. Fixing the servers. Updating the client. Adding new content. If these vocal members of the community want to discuss things, I am always available here, but there is zero benefit to lying about the progress of the game. With that out of the way, here is where we are: Client port Up until May, our focus had been to work on the porting the client. As I have stated before, the client-side 3D engine for the game created back in 2009 is completely proprietary. We started the porting process by migrating all of the art assets into Unity. This was complete a couple months ago. The Unity project now supports all the textures, buildings, props, characters, armor, and animations. The terrain in the game is a completely different system, so that doesn't work yet, and for clarity, none of the actual logic for moving around and interacting in the game client has been migrated. Server port In May it became clear that the FE servers are not in great shape. As I have mentioned before, it takes over 1 hour simply to reboot them. They require special build servers to compile, and a long dead version of Linux to run. With that in mind, we switched the plan in May to focus on porting the backend. This is getting 100% of our focus right now. Back in December I posted this update: That post attempted to break down the code in a way that we could use to provide benchmarks. Unfortunately there are no sexy screenshots that I can post showing off server work, but I can try to add more detail to help describe our progress. That original post described the 1.65MM of lines of code in the common libraries and in the server backend. The common libraries break into two categories: (1) server-side Game Engine code and (2) other libraries. At this point we have ported ALL of the other libraries, which means we have churned through more than 200K lines of code in a relatively short amount of time. To give further context, the game's back end is made up of 4 different database servers, 10 databases (some duplicated on each database server), and 19 unique services (many of which have multiple instances running). In total there are over 100 service instances that all coordinate to make the game work. Our initial target in May was to re-write the LoginServer service - 1 of the 19 unique services of the game. We chose it because it didn't touch any of the Game Engine code, and we felt we could port it in a way that would maintain 100% compatibility with the other legacy services. This will allow us to slowly replace each service as it is ready, so that players can start to see the benefits of the upgrade. The new code is 64-bit, can run on modern Operating Systems, and can take advantage of newer processor architectures. I am excited to report that we finished work on the LoginServer last night. There are some dependencies on a couple other services, so we haven't been able to test it yet, but that should start next week. We have started work on the MasterLoginServer now, and work on the remaining services should go a bit faster now that all of the other libraries are finished. However we are leaving the main GameServer for last since that will require porting over all the server-side game code. I know a lot of this sounds like mumbo jumbo. I wish I could fast forward time and get through this process a lot quicker, but it took years for Icarus to create their engine and more time to create Fallen Earth on top of that. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, You can always email support@gamersfirst.com to open a ticket. Make sure to explain your situation and call out that you are trying to get into Fallen Earth. Thanks, Matt

This is absolutely not the case. We are dealing with a networking issue related to a new DDoS protection system that has gone a bit haywire. The team hopes to have the connectivity and latency issues resolved soon. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We are looking at this issue now. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, We continue to make excellent progress. As of today, there are 1,088 total tickets (unsolved) which is significantly down from last week. And there are 719 total tickets that have not been touched (contacted), which is down by more than 300 tickets from last week. I think it is important to note that we are now clear of a lot of tickets entered during the end of April and beginning of May due to the messy network data center move. Today we are answering tickets from May 10th, which means we are now at a 34 day response time. If your ticket is older than May 10th, and we have not reached out, then I recommend updating your ticket and asking for status. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We are currently experiencing a network outage for both Jericho and Citadel. The networking team has contacted our provider for more information and resolution. The issue lasted for about 20 minutes and should be cleared up now. Thanks, Matt

This is correct. However there is a bug that sometimes ends the match early. We are working on a patch.

Hi all, Per the OP’s request, I am locking this thread. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We have a thread ready to go for feedback. The team wanted to nail down the fixes already in the works, so we can help focus the discussion. We’ll activate the RIOT feedback thread tomorrow. Thanks, Matt

You make some great points. This patch was the largest thing we have attempted since we took over, and we just missed those. I agree that it's a shame that we didn't socialize the Premium and Objective text changes which were made for the community.

No. While I also liked the idea of eliminating the P2W complaints, this isn't the way to do that. We have a number of things coming for regular mission play, but it's very important that we preserve how the main game plays.

Hi all, The first item is a bug. I have posted on the issue here: Thanks, Matt

Hi all, I have posted on this issue here: Thanks, Matt

Hi there, I have posted about this issue here: Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, Just a quick note to say that yesterday's patch accidentally included the ability for players to drop their weapons when dying across all districts. Essentially we created a new flag for this feature that is a core part of RIOT, but that flag wasn't turned off on the other district types. This was not intended, and will be removed on the next patch. For those players that like this feature, I think the context of my decision is important. This topic was discussed a lot with the SPCT, and in the end I agreed with the position that choosing a strategic loadout is a fundamental part of APB, as it forces players to choose wisely and lean into specific play styles. The addition of dropped weapons trivialize some of those choices, and has the potential to reinforce gameplay we don't want to see. However now that we've seen this can actually happen, do you guys want this feature left on for Fight Club? Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We are working with our provider on this issue. Thanks, Matt

The plan is to migrate mail as well. This is one of the reasons we can't bring across the items one to one. Illegal mods will be removed before items are migrated to Nekrova.

For the time being, we aren't going to be publishing any dates until we can get better at hitting them.

Hi all, Many players have been requesting the list of new permanent Joker Store items. For context, we currently feel that Joker Tickets don't have a lot of value. The plan is to slowly rollout waves of items to the Joker Store, so players can get them without spending G1C on ARMAS. This is just the first wave. We are also working on a series of new systems that will allow players to earn more Joker Tickets. Most of those new systems will be for the missions in the main game. Here is the first wave of new Joker Store items: ATAC 424 JT2 (JT 8000 & APB$ 80000) Golden N-HVR 762-SD Dvah (JT 8000 & APB$ 80000) Unlock Clothing: Double Shoulder Holster (Male Only) ( JT 1000 & APB$ 7500) Unlock Clothing: Double Gun Holster Back (Female Only) ( JT 1000 & APB$ 7500) Unlock Clothing: Domino Mask ( JT 500 & APB$ 4500) Unlock Clothing: Glossy Full Length Leggings ( JT 500 & APB$ 4500) Unlock Clothing: High Heel Ankle Boots ( JT 500 & APB$ 4500) Unlock Clothing: Canvas Hightops (JT 500 & APB$ 4500) Unlock Clothing: Cigar ( JT 250 & APB$ 2000) Unlock Clothing: Cigarette ( JT 250 & APB$ 2000) Thanks, Matt

Hi all, I have posted an update here: Thanks, Matt