In rare cases, deadly snow is almost invisible.

[ghost]

Describe the bug

Expected behavior

Additional context (optional)

[ghost]

Why is it so hard to distinguish between some land/compact ice and ice I can travel under. 3 or 4 areas look passable but are not.

[ghost]

1205e, 3239n 538e 3248n

[ghost]

Have all graphics maxed out. Several more like this.

[ghost]

1074e 2561n

[finnbear]

For reference, the middle of this image is deadly snow.

[ghost]

Thanks - My team managed to get iulik to 115,764 today without going under the ice death traps. Will try to post video, may help other people get better at the game. As for now my goal was to knock toad off the leader board and we did it! May return to play the game if someone beats this score ;)

[finnbear]

My team managed to get iulik to 115,764 today

I'm speechless, and curious! How long did it take? How large was your team? What was your strategy? (if the video answers these questions, I'd gladly watch it)

Anyway, thanks for playing!

[ghost]

Took about 8 hours, I spent 3/4 building a wall with a couple dredgers. Then a failed attempt where I got betrayed at 37K but Iulik survived with about 25k. So we decided to focus on getting Iulik to 60k then 60k moved to the goal of 100k. I managed to get to 32k again and donate all this to iulik. But keeping iulik alive & gathering xp to donate was the main strategy.

Then to 200k but due to time zones etc people were leaving the team. And a well known player joined the server and team upgrade killed Iulik by beaching.

Also having at least 2 players constantly repairing holes in the wall. I think 200k would be possible if I could get 4 good players to stay on for 8 hours but extremely hard to achieve this.

Timing is also important, playing when Antifa, doggo, & aaaaaa are asleep/away is also "key", as they will happily commit suicide to kill anyone.

[caibear]

A mitigation for this will be released in the next update. Terrain will now repel boats that collide with it. This will hopefully give players time to reverse or turn away from the land.

[mitm001]

I have another solution. Make land repel sea ice so we can identify it better. This would give it a visible border. You could dirty up the sea ice some to help.

Repelling is not really a fix because subs would know if there is "deadly snow" and never collide with it. It would be just as obvious as land.

[finnbear]

I have another solution. Make land repel sea ice so we can identify it better. This would give it a visible border. You could dirty up the sea ice some to help.

The issue here relates to the root-cause of this problem. It's not that the shader intentionally makes the difference between snow and ice too hard to see. The problem is that the shader doesn't have precise knowledge of where ice ends and land begins due to systematic differences between the terrain interpolation algorithm on the server's CPU and the terrain interpolation pipeline on the client's GPU (some of which is dependent on the WebGL implementation details). In rare cases, these two process disagree on where the deadly snow is, and as of now, we have not found a way to avoid this. The repulsion solution helps by allowing the server to communicate its perception of where snow is (the ground truth) in a less-deadly manner.

[mitm001]

Your solution hasn't gone live yet right?

[finnbear]

Your solution hasn't gone live yet right?

Correct. It will go live next update, for which there is no precise ETA. We usually update when the benefits far outweigh the cost of switching servers, which usually means we end up making many changes per update instead of releasing every change in its own update.

[mitm001]

Whats the cost involved?

I am up to 15 deaths now. Sea Wolfs last half dozen or more. This is a significant bug fix. This last time I was barely moving. I even cleared 3 hidden pieces with torpedoes prior to this one that sank me as I was barely able to pull out of them in time. All grouped around each other and identical to surface ice.

That is 4 pieces grouped but not obviously land. I even fired a torpedo in front of me to see if the path was clear but still hit one. First time I have seen (well didn't see but you get the drift) that many grouped together.

Worth a restart imo.

[mitm001]

I am unsure if you can determine ice land from others, but if you can, would increasing the height of the ice land help the shader distinguish the difference easier?

[ghost]

O_O

[ghost]

Please make more space on map, I like to hide.

Tanti Saluti, K 😘

[finnbear]

Whats the cost involved?

The cost of switching servers is as follows:

• Players on the old server, most of whom don't understand what is happening, will gradually be exposed to an empty/dead-looking server
• The new server, for the first ~30 minutes of its existence, also looks relatively empty/dead.
• We monitor the new server for an hour to make sure it is running smoothly
• Around 10% of updates cause some issue that we have to immediately patch, causing stress on our part and doubling the costs.
• At least 3 players ask if there are any new ships, to which the answer would be very disappointing to everyone reading chat
• Our statistics show that, in the hours and days after an update, certain warning signs become more prevalent (e.g. percentage of players that leave before playing and percentage of players that leave in the first 30 seconds. this may be due to http caching causing more loading time)

I've designed the servers in a way that, if there were multiple active servers, they could be updated independently. If and when the game is popular enough to necessitate multiple active servers, the cost of updating might be reduced.

[ghost]

Something needs to change if serious on scaling this, it's got stagnant recently. If that's not the vision for the project that's cool too. I like to check it out every few weeks kinda interesting to follow.

From finnbear (sorry; I accidentally clicked the Edit button instead of the Reply button) Thanks for the feedback! In regards for our vision, it goes far beyond Mk48.io. You can read more here or look in discord message history.

[ghost]

I slag the game off too much sometimes & forget it's someone's baby. Sorry

[finnbear]

I slag the game off too much sometimes & forget it's someone's baby. Sorry

No problem. This issue remains open because it remains valid. If it wasn't a valid issue, we would have closed it and/or marked it "wontfix."

We are happy to listen to all valid criticisms. That doesn't mean we will fix them, quickly or at all, though (that is both a prioritization issue and a lack of resources issue).

As previously mentioned, the next update (for which there is no ETA) will add a repulsive force when you contact land from the server's perspective. This is intended to mitigate the issue.

[ghost]

I really don't mind, I have memorised where all the ice locations are now, but still a good fix. Would it be possible to add more ice as default and have more spawning areas under or close to ICE as not enough people use the north IMO and low level subs deemed mostly useless.

The map when over 100 people are online is so much better, is the counter still broken also or has it been fixed?

Would be nice if my team doesn't keep getting attacked by the same person/s who "magically" appears out of nowhere when we reach higher scores recently. O_O

What's the ETA for LV10 ?

I appreciate they may just be a side hustle and things take time etc....

tks, k

[ghost]

Would love to help but can't programme Rust 👁👄👁

[finnbear]

The map when over 100 people are online is so much better

The map expands to an area proportional to the number of players. This expansion causes more arctic area to exist, as the latitude of arctic is constant but the upper border expands.

is the counter still broken also or has it been fixed?

The player counter is accurate, if that's what you mean.

Would be nice if my team doesn't keep getting attacked by the same person/s who "magically" appears out of nowhere when we reach higher scores recently. O_O

Unless they are spawning next to you, there isn't any magic in the game ;)

What's the ETA for LV10 ?

No ETA.

I appreciate they may just be a side hustle and things take time etc....

It's not just a question of the work taking time. I'm just really busy with school work, and when I do have free time, I'm trying to develop more games. More Mk48.io fixes, ships, and features are planned for when we do have time, though.

Would love to help but can't programme Rust :eye: :lips: :eye:

You could learn it (it's a great language, so you won't regret it)!

[ghost]

Yeah the same person suspiciously appears O_O

If the map was bigger by default that would make the game more interesting, there is little ICE when 40/50 players are online.

[mitm001]

The latest fix is helpful but not quite complete as things are still the same if traveling in reverse, which you do when defending yourself.