Release 3 - Known Issues

Graphical:

1. LODs (level of detail) objects are still being implemented so players may occasionally experience objects visually ‘popping’ out of existence or between visual states.
2. Camera will occasionally clip through walls when near them.
3. When using a multiple monitor setup there may be issues with the default window placement in windowed mode.
4. Logging into the game takes a little while to load in characters and geometry, there will be some visual popping and general framerate issues for a short duration after logging in.
5. Due to head shape swapping some neck seams are visible when graphics are at higher settings when clothes are removed.

Gameplay:

1. Combat is turned off - will be enabled in Release 4.
2. Player Housing is only enabled in Single Player Online mode for this release.
3. Changing the house on a lot will clear out and delete currently placed decorations, there is a warning that will ask before clearing.
4. The maps will reset upon entering/leaving (either through quitting or returning to login).
5. Most hand sized items should be able to be picked up by the Avatar with a few exceptions: by design stacks/bundles of items (book stacks, vegetable/fruit boxes, etc) will not be lootable and as a bug certain items that already have interactions (light sources, etc) will not be lootable at this time.
6. Some doors are only opened by using a switch (sometimes hidden)- currently there isn’t yet a visual accompanying a locked door, but there is a locked door sound that will play when attempting to open.
7. If the Avatar is idle for an extended period of time (roughly 30 minutes or so) the game will auto-logout. In the future this feature will likely be accompanied by an idle warning msg.
8. Characters are currently blocked from entering water via invisible barriers. In a later release, we will have swimming along the surface of water (as long as you are not too encumbered).
9. Jumping interactivity, height, and animations are all still being tuned.
10. Crafting items can be difficult to find once placed on the crafting table when in bag inventory mode. If you are having trouble crafting a recipe, make sure that all of the correct components are on the crafting table. The Take All button will help clear the table if having problems when attempting to craft.
11. Weight values for objects throughout the game are still being adjusted and are not finalized.
12. Players will not be able to trade items with each other until a later release.
13. Switching locale for your system (for example switching from English to German) can lead to character problems which can be fixed by deleting your character.

Dialogue and NPCs:

1. Basic multiplayer support for dialogue is in. NPCs will respond to you and to those around you. If an NPC addresses you directly as part of a conversation, it is considered to be “whispered” and is only seen by you. However, your conversation *to* an NPC is currently seen by everyone.
2. NPC speech can be filtered from your chat log on a per-tab basis using the “NPC” checkbox.
3. You should now only see NPC chat in your chat log if it is addressed to you personally. Things that NPCs say to each other (or to other players) will still appear over their heads.
4. Line of sight for non-player characters is still not incorporated for R3. We hope to have a working line of sight system by R4, but for now you will still see/hear NPCs talking to you through walls.
5. NPCs will no longer repeat themselves endlessly. If you need an NPC to repeat a topic, for now you will need to leave and re-enter the scene. We will have “Tell me again about…” topic support in R4.
6. Some topic responses will be flagged as “major” and cause other keywords entered to be ignored, to prevent NPCs from speaking at length about unrelated topics simultaneously.  Flagging these responses is an ongoing task and will continue into R4.
7. NPCs will respond to several hundred minor keywords with “small talk” chatter. These keywords do not highlight and are intended as a replacement for repetitive “I don’t understand what you mean” responses if a given player conversation is not understood. This is just a small subset of what is planned and many more of these will be added as an ongoing task.
8. Some NPCs have new models. Thomas Strongbeard again has a beard (this was very important to him).
9. Although Morgan of Owl’s Head now actually sells and buys things, his promised discount for people who finish his task has not yet been implemented.
10. NPCs will no longer say a blank line as a possible response; please report if you notice this behavior again.
11. The Kingsport alchemist no longer assumes you are helping the Owl’s Head town guard before you actually agreed to do so.
12. We continue to log your interactions and add to conversation responses as you engage in conversation with NPCs.

User Interface:

1. During character creation the chosen hair color does not yet apply to eyebrows.
2. When playing full screen and using multiple monitors, the user can move the mouse cursor outside of the game window- this functionality is only intended to work in windowed mode or borderless windowed mode (which has yet to be implemented).
3. Remappable keys are in, but the interface is temporary.
4. Inventory list items can jump around unnaturally and get put in bad positions when dragging around an inventory list with a scrollbar, where the scroll is not set to the top of the list.

Chat interface:

1. Occasionally user input may become locked until the user left-clicks the chat interface text entry box.

Performance:

1. FPS counter is not always accurate.
2. There may be framerate issues and slowdown in game, optimizations are still in progress.
3. Quitting does not immediately exit the game, it will take the user to the start screen and clean up assets for a short time before fully exiting the game.

Via Starr Long’s post on the forums (https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/r3-update-patches-troubleshooting-etc.7772/), here is some info regarding how to improve performance-

1. Optimization (or lack thereof): As mentioned in my notes about each release we only spend a minimum amount of time on optimizations each release so that means we don't have LOD's (Levels of Detail) for everything and we don't have a lot of fallbacks in place yet.

• Solution:

• For now the best way to fix any client performance issues you might have is to crank the graphics settings down to "Fastest".
• Run in Full Screen
• Disable second monitor (if you have one)

2. Memory: Because of the above we are really greedy with memory which means that sometimes the game can need more than 2 GB of RAM at any given time. This increases over time as you collect more items, move between maps, etc. For those of you running on 64 bit machines this is usually no problem if you have a ton of RAM but 32 bit machines can only address a total of 4 GB (this includes system RAM, VRAM, etc.) so you will quickly run out of memory since your system needs some of that RAM to run the OS (among other things). At best this will result in poor performance but often it will mean you cannot even load the game. This is compounded by the fact that while we have managed to fix all the memory leaks we could find there might be some lingering ones which means memory utilization will slowly creep upwards.

• Solutions:

• Make sure you are not running any applications other than Shroud.
• Run in full screen
• Disable second monitor (if you have one)
• Restart Client

3. Maps in bad states: Certain conditions and/or bugs will put a map in a bad state that will degrade performance for everyone connected to that map. For currently unknown reasons the map can sometimes recover, but not always.

• Solutions:

• Switch maps as soon as possible and adventure elsewhere. You can try returning to the map you were having issues with at a later time to see if it has recovered.
• Switch to Single Player Online mode and play there for a while. You can try returning to the map you were having issues with at a later time to see if it has recovered.

Audio:

1. Sound FX used in game are not final and in many cases may be placeholder

Patching:

1. If the patcher process is terminated while updating (e.g. computer/patcher crashes) user may need to uninstall and reinstall to finish the patching.

Linux:

1. Linux version is downloaded via direct download, there is no patcher at this time.
2. Use 32bit executable on 32bit machines and 64bit on 64 (can be checked with uname -m).
3. Officially we only support Ubuntu, however it should run on other distributions but might require some work.
4. nVidia users: nouveau works, but is slower than the official drivers and might crash; full-screen and resolution switching might be buggy with nouveau.
5. AMD/Ati users: radeondrmfb works, but is slow and might show graphical artifacts, use official Ati/AMD drivers instead (e.g. fglrx, however do not use experimental drivers).
6. Both nVidia and Radeon users might experience graphical issues dealing with transparency on game objects.
7. Mouse cursor doesn't hide on camera movement, fix being investigated.
8. Mouse cursor might be rendered incorrectly on radeon cards.
9. Switching graphics mode, resolution and full-screen might be buggy on radeon cards (switching back from full screen can cause graphical anomalies - work around to switch out of x11 and back).
10. Cloth sims don't work on this build, is being investigated for R3. This will affect the way capes look.

Mac:

1. Mac version is also downloaded via direct download, no patcher.
2. Full screen mode doesn't block Dock when moving cursor to middle bottom of screen.
3. We only support two button mouse currently. One button mouse support will be coming in a later release along with remappable keys.
4. Mac client isn't developer signed, so if you have the default gate keeper settings set, you won't be able to directly run the app. If you control-click when you click on the file, it should allow you to open. Once you do that, you will be able to run the app without issue