MattScott

Hi everyone, I'm going to be posting early this week. Hopefully everyone knows we're running the first Open Beta test tomorrow, Saturday, June 27th at 11am PDT to 2pm PDT. I expect this test will be a mess. That's why we're only running it for 3 hours. That should give us enough data to work with, while also giving a lot of players the chance to log in. The Known Issues are here: Please be patient with us, and know that some systems just wont be able to get in right now. That includes systems that don't support AVX. We'll do a comparison build with AVX turned off to try and see if this optimization is worth it. You also wont be able to run 1024x768. This is something we inherited from Reloaded. They increased the minimum resolution for console and changed several UIs. It will be a pretty big task to undo those changes. And lastly, if you're running Win 7 or Win 8, you might experience more input lag than Win 10 players in Fullscreen Windowed mode. I highly recommend upgrading to Win 10 if possible. There are many optimizations that help gamers. These are all areas we will continue to look at as development moves forward. For this week, I thought I would share some of the Fullscreen Windowed work we did, and how we evaluated our progress. Several testers and several developers ran benchmarks in Asylum to get apples to apples comparions. Here is a sample of what those looked like. 1) This is what my machine looks like on Live with Fullscreen Exclusive mode. Couple key stats to point out: FPS average of 149.5 with some stuttering 0.23% of the time Input latency ranging from 18.2 to 24.9 No dropped frames Here was our first set of benchmarks for the APB 2.1 Beta right after we put in Fullscreen Windowed Mode. By comparison, this is mostly a mess: FPS is the bright spot with 237.1 average but 1.26% stutters Input latency was between 34.9 and 39.2 which is nearly double FSE in Live And dropped frames.. lots of dropped frames (25.2%) Finally here is is my last capture against the Beta build for Saturday: 241.7 FPS which is solid and 0.5% stutters, but not the big spikes like in Live Input latency is actually slightly better than FSE on Live at 16.1 to 20.3 No dropped frames The testers were great about helping us work through this. NOTE: We still have some work to do here. If you run at a lower resolution than your desktop, you will introduce the kind of performance from the earlier Beta build. If you want to run the game at a lower resolution, change your desktop resolution and then match it in game. Crossing my fingers for tomorrow. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, I want to personally apologize for an incident that occurred during yesterday's stream. I was running late to setup the stream and it didn't occur to me that I would need the pictures of the winning designs. On the fly, I flipped to the forums to show the winners, and accidentally exposed the IP addresses of several players because I was logged in as an Admin. I should have known better. I am sorry. I can do better. Sincerely, Matt

Hi everyone, I also want to acknowledge the hard work put in by SPCT and our closed testing group of players. This was very tedious work, and a lot of it wasn't fun. It wouldn't have been possible with them getting on week after week and reporting issues. I also want to level set expectations. I'm releasing the Beta because we need a lot more concurrency and mass testing now. Expect crashes and issues. This is going to be bumpy, but at this point we can't do this without the community. We needed to cross this threshold so we can start focusing on mission districts and better matchmaking. Thanks, Matt

To the OP: Okay. https://www.gamersfirst.com/apb/news/2020/6/22/legendary-beta

Hi everyone, I spent some time reviewing the thread that Flight made for last week's question. It looks to me like the vast majority of players responding would just like us to release the Beta and then finish work with feedback from the community. I'm taking that under heavy consideration. This week involved a lot of activity: Improvements to monitor settings to help with input lag Migrating content from APB 1.20 Adding more crash logging around GPU crashes Our normal Friday play test was pushed to today, so I'm still reviewing logs. But here are the general notes: Lots of good feedback on the performance. The expanded monitor options seemed to go over well. Still some issues with input lag - enough that testers said the game felt far below the reported FPS. We got 2 crashes from today, but neither triggered the GPU logging. We've had 5 crashes in the last 2 weeks that are logged in our defect tracking software. We are still looking at mouse sensitivity issues when in Marksman and the crashes. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, Lots of progress on tickets. Those numbers keep coming down. The straggler tickets from the 26th and 27th are complicated and taking days to resolve. So the date isn't great, but I'm waiting for date to move quicker as we close out these tickets. As of today we have: 221 new tickets (more than 60 down from last week) 354 total tickets (more than 90 down from last week) We are responding to tickets submitted on 5/26, which is at 24 days. Thanks, Matt

Yes. To start just those two. But the plan is to expand as quickly as possible. One reason for launching sooner, is to free up testers to start hitting the mission districts.

For those that have asked, the Open Beta will run in a completely new environment. So it will be completely optional, and not interrupt APB 1.20 (Live).

Hi everyone, This week we got in 2 play tests. One on 6/10 and another on 6/12. We still had 2 crashes on 6/12. The team is looking at those. These new builds focused on a couple things that our previous comparable test on 5/29 didn't. BattlEye performance compared to EAC Windowed Fullscreen mode Character baking hitches when new players enter the district So I thought I would go back compare play test stats from 5/29, 6/10, and 6/12: BattlEye: I found that in general it runs faster than EAC did. Windowed Fullscreen mode: I'm not sure our stats capture input lag, and some testers mentioned some noticeable difference vs APB 1.20. That's something we'll have to keep working on. Character baking hitches: I can see a significant improvement in the 6/10 & 6/12 Rendering stats. 5/29 was much slower. Most players reported a reduction or elimination of the hitches, but since the engine is multithreaded and mostly not render bound, the change didn't affect the FPS a lot. Here are some of the stats over our testing period going back to April. For next week: We should have a new build that incorporates much more functionality that supports different refresh rates across different monitors and more. We should finish the latest migration of code and content from APB 1.20 to APB 2.1. We should get some solid time to work through more of the crashes to try and eliminate those. Beyond that, there are some tester concerns related to: Input lag from Windowed Fullscreen Visual and audio bugs Doors getting out of sync with the server and showing open when they are closed or closed when they are open Issues with Field of View and mouse sensitivity in Marksman mode. The more zoom, the more problematic this becomes. Possible bugs in the UI that are slowing down FPS Issue with stutters that was cleared after rebooting Removal of 1024x768 resolution This last one was called out very strongly by a couple testers. For APB 2.0 (console) they expanded UI screens to show more information and generally use the screen space better, so those screens no longer fit in 1024x768. We will have to do a bunch of extra work to put back in support for this low resolution. My personal feeling is to launch the Beta as soon as the content migration and crashes are fixed. Then iterate on Windowed Fullscreen and other bugs. But I've also been told that the first impression is everything, and to some extent I believe that. But I feel like that would apply more to the APB 2.1 full launch and less to the Beta. Thoughts? I would be interested in seeing a thread on these topics. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We're trying hang in there. The good news is that we started training with the new CS, and both CS candidates from last week are being hired. As of today we have: 287 new tickets 448 total tickets We are responding to tickets submitted on 5/21, which is slightly over 3 weeks. Thanks, Matt

This first phase does not include the ability to rebuy ARMAS weapons, but the system was designed so that we can do that as soon as possible. I am excited to see this go in across the board for all purchases.

We are still running DX11, and Windows 10 has not removed FSE. We are dropping FSE because it crashes the game. But if we find a way to salvage it, then I have no problem putting it back - for the time being. We are looking at going to DX12 at some point. They improved a lot of the deferred rendering systems that we are using for multithreaded rendering. DX11 has its own options for supporting Windowed mode. The team is making sure we do this right.

Hi all, There seems to be some confusion about Full screen mode, so I'll try to clear up the information we are working from, and then we discuss the issue further. There are two forms of Fullscreen - Exclusive and Borderless Windowed. As of DX12, Microsoft is no longer supporting Fullscreen Exclusive. Essentially this is going away whether any of us like it or not. It is worth pointing out that every game that runs on DX12 has already removed Fullscreen Exclusive and replaced it with a Borderless Windowed version. Fullscreen Exclusive literally doesn't work in DX12. They just weren't as transparent about it. Microsoft has written a pretty concise explanation of their strategy here: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/demystifying-full-screen-optimizations/ They are basically saying that Fullscreen Optimizations under Windows 10 equalizes the performance between Windowed and Exclusive, which is why they are phasing out Exclusive. For those that don't know, Fullscreen Borderless Windowed mode looks just like Fullscreen Exclusive. It just interacts with the OS differently. Based on that information, we looked at the distribution of Windows versions across players. Here is what that currently looks like on Steam: Out of the 95% represented by all Windows versions on Steam, Windows 10 accounts for 85% (so 90% of Windows gamers overall). Even with all of that in mind, I recognize that still leaves 10% running Windows 7 or Windows 8 at a disadvantage because of increased input lag. I know that up until January 1 2020, Microsoft was still giving away copies of Windows 10, and believe there are still some ways to get a legitimate copy for free - even with a fresh install. But lastly, we are making this change for a specific reason: During playtests, we kept encountering a common crash related to a vague DirectX error where the DX device was "lost". After spending a lot of time researching this, we narrowed the error down to a combination of problems with Fullscreen Exclusive mode. In our last playtest, we had all the players run in some form of windowed mode. That test only had 1-2 crashes down from 25 for the previous test. I don't want to hold back the Open Beta any more than I need to, so for now based on the information at hand, we are going to remove Fullscreen Exclusive. If the team finds a way to make DX11 Fullscreen Exclusive work without crashing during the Beta, then we'll put that back in. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, My schedule has been out of control for the last couple weeks. I've made it through the worst of it, but some of those commitments cut into my time interacting with the community. All of my various inboxes are overflowing with messages from around February. I am hoping to start responding soon. The last two playtests have been somewhat smaller. After reviewing the results from the 29th, there wasn't much to comment on. We did collect a number of very good crash reports, and the district server issue got fixed. Yesterday's test was very positive, but we had less testers, so I can't do an apples to apples. I don't want to get lulled in by good numbers based on less concurrency. For this update, I'm going to track progress on the few remaining items blocking the launch of the Open Beta. I have highlighted the actual blocker bugs, so you can see how close we are. The original crash bug that I listed on Memorial Day. (fixed) 3 more crashes popped up on the 29th, but our test yesterday only had a single crash. So we're making progress. Still investigating the new crash from yesterday. (not yet started) One of the new crashes seems to be related to exclusive fullscreen mode (in progress) This is very close. We are implementing borderless windowed fullscreen that can run at different resolutions than the desktop. Nearly all modern games today have dropped exclusive fullscreen in favor of windowed fullscreen. A bug related to the in-game browser (not yet complete but non-blocking) We have a work around in place to force the browser to open externally for now. A bug on the server related to performance (fixed) A bug related to the crash reporter that is stopping it from working all the time. (fixed) A client fix related to hitches every time a new player loads into the district related to baking out customizations. (partially fixed) This ended up being quite a bit of work. The partial fix was tested yesterday, and we saw some improvement. The full fix is finished now, and we're hoping to get tested internally by Tuesday. That will allow us to get another playtest organized for Wednesday and possibly a second on Friday this week if necessary. A backend task related to copying the Live characters to Beta the first time the player logs in (fixed but in testing) Copy new code and content from APB 1.20 to APB 2.1 (not yet started) This usually takes about a week to do, and we've done it plenty of times before. It's necessary so that when characters are copied over from APB 1.20 for Open Beta they don't crash the new version with clothing or guns that don't exist. There are also a lot of minor bugs, but the whole purpose of the Open Beta is to get lots more players involved, so we can fix the remaining issues. I'm excited to get this behind us, so we can start working on more impactful things like matchmaking and phasing. I'll be back on the 13th with another update. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, This week looks weird, but overall we made good progress. It seems there were just some really high ticket volumes on the 13th and 14th. As of today we have: 260 new tickets (way down from last week) 454 total tickets (way down from last week) We are responding to tickets submitted on 5/14, so we lost ground on the date putting us back slightly over 3 weeks. But since we're significantly lower on tickets, so I expect us to jump ahead on days soon. We added a new CS, and we're interviewing 2 more. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, Sorry I missed this post last year. I appreciate your perspective (and offer to help push money toward development). This is a tricky line for me, because we get a fair amount of inquiries like this each week. Out of respect for the original backers who took the leap of faith back in 2014 and then got burned for so many years, I made a commitment not to re-open the Kickstarter campaign to new people. Instead we are looking at Steam Early Access before the end of 2020. That version wont have all the KS rewards, but we're going to try and do a pre-order once Chapter 1 is launched that is less expensive than the entire game, but above what KS backers paid. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, Everyone is getting the same error. It was reported about an hour ago on Discord. We have determined what the problem is and we are working with Steam Support to resolve it - hopefully with no change on your end. Worst case, we'll email out new codes tomorrow to everyone once they are approved. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, If you missed my First Playable stream today on the Little Orbit Twitch channel, we have uploaded it for everyone on our YouTube channel. You can watch all 3 hours here: Thanks, Matt

I don't have exact stats, but I don't remember quite so much latency back when we were using BattlEye. I assume this is because EAC is still sending all the data needed for the server side system even though they cant use it.

Hi all, We're going to be making a change to the anti-cheat soon, and I want to walk the community through it instead of brushing it under the rug. I'll start with why we are no longer sticking with Easy Anti-Cheat. When we negotiated the deal with Kamu (Epic Games), the service was supposed to be client and server side. The critical reason for moving was their management tools and the server side piece which we didn't get with BattlEye. However, we also agreed to pay more to get that. The client side integration was fairly smooth, but the server side integration hit immediate snags. We spent months trying different configurations with the networks to get them talking properly, and when that didn't work, both sides dedicated programming support to fix the issues. When it still didn't work, we started exploring other ways to possibly fix it, but Kamu said based on our concurrency we wouldn't like get good results anyway. More recently I was finally contacted by their head of development with the news that they could no longer justify the resources to finish the server side integration. So then we attempted to work out a reduction in pricing. But we couldn't come to a compromise, so we have mutually decided to end the agreement. Clearly, we will need to keep evaluating server side solutions or build our own, because I have yet to see one that works well enough. During my discussions with various providers, I also went back to BattlEye. Their solution has had some nice improvements since we left, so we're going to give that a try again. Next I want to talk about the current cheating issues in APB. While we do have some private cheats for EAC floating around, I will say that is still in the low single digit percentages for our entire population. However, we do have a problem right now with scripted triggerbots and aimbots. These are an entirely different category of cheat, because they are typically built with the hot key/mouse scripting systems. They are easy to spot, but they are easy to false positive. There are many legitimate uses for scripting systems, and players don't often realize they are enabled by default when they enter the game. With all of that in mind, once we switch to BattlEye we are going to start taking measures against the systems that these cheats are written in. This may be a little bumpy, and I guarantee some players will not read the forums and find themselves very frustrated. But I am taking this step to let all of you to know in advance, that you need to disable your macros and hot key / mouse scripting systems. Anti-cheat will always a work in progress. We will continue to iterate on this. We need a level playing field for players to have fun. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, Today is my APB AMA on Reddit, so I wont be updating this thread until maybe tomorrow or Monday. But you can get Reddit and ask me questions directly here: Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We did pretty good this week, but hit a large ticket today that took up one agent all day. I don't want to single this player out, because they pro-actively put their ticket on hold weeks ago till we got more availability. As of today we have: 424 new tickets (slightly up from last week) 585 total tickets (slightly lower than last week) We are responding to tickets submitted on 5/10, so we're holding steady at just under 3 weeks out. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, This update isn't going to be very long. We finished a number of fixes last week, and ran another playtest. We knew there was a potential issue with the test district server that popped up on our 5/15 test, so this time we staged a backup district server. We were right and the same issue popped up, but switching to the backup failed because our provider didn't open up the right access, so it was useless. Frustratingly, we still haven't gotten a decent run without crashes on APB 2.1. However, the devs were still able to do a few profiles and capture more areas that we can look at for optimizations. Right now, the most common question I get asked is "When will the Beta launch?" I can't answer that yet, but I can share the remaining tasks/bugs blocking the release: A crash bug that has already been fixed (we hope) A bug on the server related to performance (this has been blocking our last two play tests) A bug related to the crash reporter that is stopping it from working all the time. (this is critical for getting good data from the Beta) A client fix related to fixing hitches every time a new player loads into the district (this is the client taking a hit to generate the customizations for the new character) A backend task related to copying the Live characters to Beta the first time the player logs in Enjoy the Memorial Day weekend, and stay safe. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, This week was good. Both our new tickets and total tickets are lower than last week. But unfortunately there were a metric ton of tickets created on 5/3, so we've been blocked for days trying to clear all those out. As of today we have: 416 new tickets 606 total tickets We are responding to tickets submitted on 5/3, so we're just under 3 weeks out. My hope is that we'll jump ahead on the date a lot next week. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, I didn't quite make Monday, but this was a lot to organize. I probably wont be able to post this level of detail in the future. These stats are admittedly a little disappointing. I know many of the testers complained about latency issues on APB 2.1. We're looking to what happened there, but the stats also show that OTW2 didn't perform across the board like last time. It is also important to know that we ran the most complicated customizations that we could, and we still have hitches when new players are entering the district and their customizations are being baked. With so many players versus the 5/8 that could be affecting the stats as well. Regardless, here are the numbers: 5 testers performed lower on APB 2.1 than APB 1.20. And 6 testers from 5/8 weren't able to make it this time. I left their entries blank. We do have more lower spec machines this time, and everyone is running Maximum in APB 1.20 and Very High in APB 2.1. You can definitely see how much raw processing speed affects APB 1.20. The biggest gains for us in APB 2.1 are tied to having more cores. I might be missing some over clocking data for a few of these, which might explain some of the oddball discrepancies. Like I mentioned on Saturday, we had about 10 crashes. They all turned out to be related to the same thing, and we believe we have a fix for that now. We'll spend the next couple days chasing down the rest of the issues, continuing to multi thread new bits of the game, and fixing the hitch when baking customizations. We plan on running another test on Friday 5/22, and this time we'll try to make sure the APB 2.1 server is running better. UPDATE 5/19: I put a new listing up that had more details for overlocking by several testers. I think that helps put the numbers in better perspective. Thanks, Matt