New Wipeout HD patch

[Colonel]

Thanks for the physics info yeldar, I have to say though .25 secs a lap sounds fairly significant over a 5 lap TT. Just as I was trying to beat all my phantom times too

One thing I thought I'd be really annoyed with - and it turns out I'm not - is the online rank reset. When I logged on last night and saw everybody in the lobby was rank 1 I just laughed. It was kind of nice racing with everybody being "beginners", like the slate had been wiped clean and we were all starting fresh. I know this is just a silly illusion, and I fully sympathise with anyone who's pissed off, but I quite like it

Oh, and if they don't fix it, £20 says Weed_Junky3 is first to Overlord

[JFthebestJan]

...BRs are fine...

no, BRs aren't fine (the very hard ones), cause the ships re heavier now it's not possible to get enough air in several BR-spots. this makes alot of the venom WRs impossible to beat. only solution to this dilemma is to reset the leaderboards.

@ col: i would say sinus1 will be the first to 101, cause he was the first to get level 50 (pre fury) and the first to get 101 (post fury)

[trackripper]

I went and played this yesterday, the patch is released right?

It didn't prompt me to update like it would on other games, it just took me straight into the game. And then I couldn't get online.

???

[PjotrStroganov]

SL is useless at online play. They botched the HD launch, 2048 launch and now crossplay. Great way to increase the longevity of the game for new people.

[JABBERJAW]

They need to reset ALL the record boards now. It is a different game, 1.25 seconds is significant over a 5 lap race. I would also like all personal records to be reset, so the playing field is the same.

[Aeralys]

Haven't played for a few months, so I didn't feel any difference in the physics. I'm really unhappy about the leaderboards though. I was scrolling through the online multiplayer race records and there's about 200-300 top record times for each track (before I get to the 'old/real' WR's and names I recognise) that make no sense or are clearly impossible to achieve. Before I stopped playing there were only 2 or so (glitched?) records under a minute or something which didn't affect it much, but now I've lost the sense of reward for beating my own lap times or racing really well on an online race, because now the record numbers can't justify it.

Not sure if this is just a display glitch in the lobby, but I also noticed Rapier races being held with only 3 laps in them. I didn't get into one to find out if it was possible but it was something I only noticed yesterday.

Thought it was funny that our ranks were reset however. At least it's a slight excuse to play again (if I wasn't up to my neck in Dissertation work).

EDIT: made a mistake on the online race records. Caught me with the automatic switch from 'online race' to 'single race' when you change from personal records to global. Also noticed that a lot of my good records are gone, though this could be from playing on a new PS3 (I did transfer my save data and best records however) or not playing for a while. Another thing is that some records of mine that are there are ranked a hell of a lot lower and say I made them in FEISAR, which is a ship I'm pretty sure I've never used online, or barely at all for that matter.

[GiraffeRider]

+1. As far as I know about this new patch and the bug reports I've read, I think I'll stick with the 2.10 version while these issues are being forwarded to Studio Liverpool and being fixed in the meantime.

I'm afraid it's not something that will be fixed... the physics change is intentional, to allow crossplay with 2048 I suppose, and I don't think they'll be changing it anytime soon.

So it looks like our choices are not getting the patch and having no online mode, or getting blocky physics and crippled MP, as several good players have left and it appears to have issues. I'm going with the first option for the moment.

[TheWipeouter]

I'm level 6 now. Yay!!

Nothing will stop me from playing this great game. I'm so addicted to it. Please wipeouters don't give up!! Lets keep the online mode alive!!

[amplificated]

Any physics change needs to be reversed. The airbrake bug's fix should not affect the speed through the majority, if not all, turns, and it certainly should not affect BR's.

If SL are trying to make the game more like 2048... I'm abandoning ship, I'm afraid.

Might be too soon to talk like that given I haven't even played the new patch, but it really seems for some time now that things are simply going from bad to worse.

[rego]

i was wondering why i kept snagging corners i never had an issue with before...this would explain it. i thought i was just having an off night or something

[Frailavi]

Just to clarify, Jaminjack - WipEout HD started life as a tech demo based on the WipEout Pure/Pulse (the latter was still in pre-production at the time) game engine to see what it would look like running at 1080P. Andrew Jones worked on it by himself, sat in the corner of the Studio Liverpool "pod" studio. He worked on that and neural network code for improving the AI.

At that point in time, the only PS3's in the building resembled rack servers, were very loud, and were in a locked room with a key code entry. We certainly didn't have access to them in the WipEpout Studio back then (Spring 2006).

Later in its life, when WipEout HD went into full production (Pulse was on the home stretch in Summer 2007) a lot of the underlying game engine was improved to take advantage of the Cell, for sure, such as palming off particle effects and whatnot to the SPU's, but it wasn't like that game engine was built from the ground up on the Cell architecture. To say that WipEout HD was fully taking advantage of the Cell would be inaccurate, because it wasn't and isn't.

No launch title or title released in the first couple of years takes full advantage of a new architecture. This is why we didn't see the likes of God of War until late in the life of the PS2 and why something as breathtaking as Uncharted 3 didn't come out until a few months ago. It takes time to leverage these things and early game engines are merely flattering to deceive.

That's not to say that WipEout HD isn't a fantastic achievement - Matt Brooks team came up with a technique for getting it to render at a faux 1080P that was nothing short of genius considering the deadlines they were facing. But there were many on the team who hated the fact it had to be released as a 1080P poster-child for the PS3, because it would have looked so much better at 720P.

I'm inclined to agree.

Thanks for taking the time to type that post up, it was one of the most interesting posts I've read about WipEout. Much appreciated.

[BlackReign]

Since patch 2.4 on 2/14 I was unable to play online until today. Through trial and error I figured out that something with the new patch is keeping some players from connecting online if your PSN account is already logged in. Before I got to that determination I tried deleting Wipeout from my HD, re-downloaded & re-installed, downloaded the 2.5 patch, and then I tried logging in several times. I got the following error "An error has occured while logging in to the Wipeout servers. This account is already logged in. Please wait a moment and try again.". After getting that a bunch of times I signed out of PSN while in game. Then went to access online and was able to play online. Weird. So for anyone who still can't connect despite the servers being active (they went down apparently from 1-6am UK time overnight) try logging out of PSN, going into the game, and selecting online. Also like everyone else my rank was reset too. This will be corrected soon for everyone if not already according to Stu Lovegrove at SL. I reported all that I previously mentioned to him via twitter and the Wipeout2048 FB page and got a personal email from him directly this morning asking for more info, if my rank was reset, and looking for general feedback. I thought that was cool, big ups to him for that.

I played for about an hour mostly on rapier (I have phantom class WO rust since I haven't played in 2 months, lol). The game feels the way it used to feel before the 2.4 patch. However, the game does feel a little strange at times though. Kind of like The Matrix. Everything seems ok but in the back of your mind there's this nagging feeling that something isn't quite right. lol. I have a fast and stable wired connection and noticed what I thought were weird server issues. Some racers seemed to have gotten a short head start or would just randomly pop up in front of me as the races progressed. It didn't happen every race and not nearly as often as the invisible weapon thing in the 2.4 patch. Perhaps a few players had bad connections, I'm not sure. I did notice the ships do seem a little heavier as others reported (I snagged some corners too) but I thought it may have been lag, server issues, my WO rust. Since Yeldar took some time to test that theory and confirm it, I believe the physics have been changed a bit. But in the end it's not a total deal breaker for me. I also noticed that the Player's Met list didn't update while playing WO. Anyone else notice that too? Records seem to update but I agree that if lap times are a bit slower now they should wipe the slate clean.

For those of you ready to completely abandon the game (amplificated, JFthebestJan, and a few others) please don't. The game is certainly more fun with the better racers still around. Also in Stu's email to me he did mention they do want to keep everyone happy. I hope you guys decide to keep playing despite the seemingly adjusted physics.

Lastly good seeing some familiar faces online today (MegaGeeza22, matplayer, Wage23, Ponta, and a few others that I can't remember. lol)

[BlackReign]

Thanks for taking the time to type that post up, it was one of the most interesting posts I've read about WipEout. Much appreciated.

Agreed

[JFthebestJan]

i raced online this evening and some really weird things happened .
serpent got 'come back king' without winning on sebenco lol ! my players met list don't update either . and all my personal best times (multiplayer) re gone . on the record tables when watching friends records all except my times re gone either . i had several occasions when i was hit by a quake some1 in front of me fired lol...

they must cancel this cross play ****. what's the point in racing vs mobile devices ? bring back the old physics please. i had a race on metropia, really really good run with minimum 6 turbos and everything went well, but my time was just 1.38...(rapier). absolutely ridiculous

[jaminjack]

Your rack servers were using IBM virtual cell broad band engine. The reason you loaded some graphics to the cell SPE is that programmer’s couldn’t figure out the NVidia RSX chip. Basically it failed to keep up with the 6 cores Sony ps3 used. Sony used 7 cores one for their operating system and six for game play. Out of a total of 9, 1 PPE, 8 SPEs on the cell. To me programing the cell came natural but a lot of programmer’s like the old x86 architecture.
Jack

[blackwiggle]

Although I haven't had the time to play online recently to feel the reported handling changes, I've got a feeling SL have been put in a unenviable position trying to fix the problems that have been caused by having crossplay implemented into the game.

I imagine there is a lot pressure being put on them to keep the servers up and running while trying to fix these problems, which is not the ideal situation if you want to fix things properly.

Sony would of prioritised this because of crossplay being a major selling point for the VITA, 2048 being the 1st well known title to have it and that pretty much anybody that has a PS3 will have WOHD because of the various free give aways over the last 18 months, and the VITA still being a new released console they would want everything up and running at all costs.
[I don't know how sales are going with the VITA elsewhere, but I have yet to see anybody playing or even carrying one, and I'm in the centre of Sydney and it's school holidays, it wasn't like that when the PSP was launched.....also at the major gaming store franchise around the city they have captive operational VITA's for people to try, I have yet to see anybody even actually bothering trying out a VITA, you would think kids on school holidays would be gathering around these latest gaming machines in droves, but it's not happening, interest in the VITA seems pretty much none existent, here at least. ]

[jaminjack]

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- U.S. retail sales of video game hardware, software and accessories fell 25 percent in March from a year earlier to $1.1 billion. It marked the fourth month of decline as Sony Corp.'s new PS Vita handheld failed to spark a turnaround.

Market tracker NPD Group said Thursday that sales of console and portable software -- the video games themselves -- fell 26 percent to $585 million.

That's roughly in line with depressed estimates. Cowen & Co. analyst Doug Creutz forecast a 22 percent drop, while Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia expected a decline of 25 to 30 percent.

Electronic Arts Inc.'s "Mass Effect 3" was the top seller in the month.

The only PS Vita game to break into the top 10 was "MLB 12: The Show," which ranked third

[Aeralys]

i raced online this evening and some really weird things happened .
serpent got 'come back king' without winning on sebenco lol !

I saw this too. One glitch that happened to me was during The Amphiseum (R), on the bend before the sloped straights and hairpin, two players crashed into me and I fell through the track!

Now that I've played a little more I can feel a difference in physics, conering feels a lot sharper (from carrying less speed thorugh corners?) and I was getting more/less airtime than usual in some places, the BR before the big drop in Chenghou, under the tunnel in Sebenco and the double BR at the end of Moa Therma felt surprisingly easier to pull off consistently, despite having been on a long break.

[blackwiggle]

With figures like that, maybe video gaming overall as a pass time has passed it's peak.

What with a endless procession of Cookie cutter remakes, ridiculous pricing at the PStore for full title downloads, the emphasis on visuals over gaming substance, the general dumbing down of gameplay to two button mashing.

Makes you think, if there had never been any Wipeout games made before today, would it get the green light to go into production now?
As it seems the game distributors are the ones calling what get's made or not, and at what price it sells at, I would guess that would be a no.
They would argue that the game is too hard for people to pick up and far too challenging.
The very two things that have proved to be the reason for it's success and why people feel so passionate about Wipeout. Also why it's supporters want so very much that the problems that are occurring with the online portion be fixed, and the records they spent so many a long hour trying to get be up to date and viewable.

[WarioIIDX]

finally i can entrance to online mode... i'm test right now

edit: CrapOut HD/... my favourite game is broken T_T