Good news - team Trilambda have worked on the clouds for retribution and they will no longer have the same framerate hit they did before. I have also worked on reducing cloud numbers in dungeons... let's see how this helps things out and we can always take another look next release if things aren't improved.

Good news - team Trilambda have worked on the clouds for retribution and they will no longer have the same framerate hit they did before. I have also worked on reducing cloud numbers in dungeons... let's see how this helps things out and we can always take another look next release if things aren't improved.

Good news - team Trilambda have worked on the clouds for retribution and they will no longer have the same framerate hit they did before. I have also worked on reducing cloud numbers in dungeons... let's see how this helps things out and we can always take another look next release if things aren't improved.

Good news - team Trilambda have worked on the clouds for retribution and they will no longer have the same framerate hit they did before. I have also worked on reducing cloud numbers in dungeons...

Good news - team Trilambda have worked on the clouds for retribution and they will no longer have the same framerate hit they did before. I have also worked on reducing cloud numbers in dungeons... let's see how this helps things out and we can always take another look next release if things aren't improved.

Just to add a couple of little bits of info to this. Team Trilambda's aim was to refactor the cloud system so that in the future they could work with it easier and be able to progress that system technically. Meaning newer effects, more awesome looking clouds, and a lot of other surprises there. Maybe you'll see something at Fanfest.

Of course the benefits of refactoring, included increased performance gains. Not only the cloud system, but they also managed to alter performance hits for a lot of other areas in the game's graphic engine too.
You know those spotlights on some ships? Those used to be pretty expensive in terms of performance, now less so!

dungeons...

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Mission pockets/Deadspace beacons.

You know those spotlights on some ships? Those used to be pretty expensive in terms of performance, now less so!

When we referenced dungeons, we mean clouds everywhere. Including in all missions, in DED sites etc.

When we referenced dungeons, we mean clouds everywhere. Including in all missions, in DED sites etc.

the word dungeon hurts my eve pride though :P

Multi-Level Scenarios
They are more commonly knowns as dungeons, that consist of many scenarios tied together, are not surrounded by walls and do not have undead space rats. So we call them Complexes.

Great to hear that clouds have been looked at.

The #1 gripe I have about some of them is their ever-dominating glare.... vast patches of blinding whiteness which completely wash out white celestial icons in space. An example which immediately comes to mind is the blue/purple/white nebula that exists on the Gruistas/Sansha side of the first room in Worlds Collide.

The clipping is the other one... causing one to spend inordinate amounts of time panning the camera around in a frustrated fit to be able to see anything that's nearby.

Could you not just replace them with gas harvestable clouds, its would introduce new players/mission runners to gas harvesting. They could just be the lowest of low end clouds

Changes to clouds can not come soon enough. I have to pan the camera the other way, since the near-meltdown due to being zoomed in on my ship is easier to handle than the utter meltdown due to the presence of any clouds. My worst is blockade versus Sanshas, which has six of those glowing lenticular clouds stacked like the sides of a cube around the mission area.

Framerate improvements are nice, but will they still look overbrightly painfully unpleasant?
It was so bad sometimes: http://i.imgur.com/XvbKL.jpg

Is that what Heaven looks like? Oh, wait, no that's....World's Collide.....never mind.

If you file bug reports on things like this I can replace the cloud with something not as bright or remove it :)

Glad they are improved :)

Any clouds you come across that are too bright/cause FPS spikes or anything else that annoys you - file a bug report with detailed information on the mission/location/room number etc and I will take a look. I don't guarantee I will always agree with you, but I will at least look them over and if I notice the same issue I will fix it.

Will do

On another note, was there any consideration given to introducing harvestable gas clouds into these mission sites. I understand this may not fall under your or your teams remit

Glad they are improved :)

Any clouds you come across that are too bright/cause FPS spikes or anything else that annoys you - file a bug report with detailed information on the mission/location/room number etc and I will take a look. I don't guarantee I will always agree with you, but I will at least look them over and if I notice the same issue I will fix it.

I'll file a bug report, but the new clouds are much worse for me than the old ones. My 6yo iMac w/X1600 video card (which isn't officially supported) was able to get decent frame rates even with clouds on screen (by decent, I mean I was able to click the overview and warp out before the ship blew up). With the new clouds, I'm getting hard locks on warp-in, meaning the mouse and keyboard aren't even usable. The framerate will drop to about 2fps when clouds are on screen (any cloud in "Massive Attack" vs Sanshas, handed to me by an agent in Sasoutikh which I completed just before DT, if that helps CCP narrow it down at all).

Maybe it's just time for me to upgrade to a newer computer, but my other computers (2 yrs old) also have much lower frame rates with clouds onscreen (the clouds never really bothered them before).

Glad they are improved :)

Any clouds you come across that are too bright/cause FPS spikes or anything else that annoys you - file a bug report with detailed information on the mission/location/room number etc and I will take a look. I don't guarantee I will always agree with you, but I will at least look them over and if I notice the same issue I will fix it.

Good news - team Trilambda have worked on the clouds for retribution and they will no longer have the same framerate hit they did before. I have also worked on reducing cloud numbers in dungeons... let's see how this helps things out and we can always take another look next release if things aren't improved.

Could we get an update on this? Ever since the Retribution changes, any and all cloud effects kill my framerate, and it seems like the devs disappeared as soon as people started commenting that it has gotten worse.

I think I have to retract my previous statement GÇö it's not the clouds that are slowing my machine down these days, it's the new UI. One of my machines will drop to about 4 seconds per frame before completely seizing up if I am not zoomed out to maximum camera distance. You don't want to know what happens when I accidentally click "look at" instead of "lock target", which happens far to regularly. Since I'm zoomed out all the way I can't right-click targets in space. Right-clicking the overview will get results eventually, but it's faster to click the buttons in the "Selected Object" window. Of course the catch is that the redrawing of that window actually takes a couple of seconds: first the icon comes up representing the new target, then the buttons disappear, then they reappear. If I'm too fast on the clicking I'll be clicking where the "lock target" button used to be, which has now changed to "look at".

I've lost two ships since Retribution came out due to the game running so slow that I don't know what's going on until it's too late. Cycle times on weapons are woeful (I have to wait for the local client to decide that the weapon has finished cycling before I can click the button to start the next cycle).

Before Retribution, the game was playable. After Retribution, the game is barely usable.

I'd like to point out that sleeper site clouds are just as terrible as mission clouds.

You don't want to know what happens when I accidentally click "look at" instead of "lock target", which happens far to regularly.

Is the actual complaint:

* They are ugly?
* They cause lag?
* They are too bright?

... cause my main issue is brightness. Having entire sections of my screen with pixels letting the backlight through feels like being exposed to the Time Vortex in the center of the Tardis. Sure it might make you omnipotent for a while, but then it kills you.

Things have improved massively in recent years, and with the way things are going they likely will again.

CCP is working on setting this game up for the next 10 years, testing things on a gfx card that is nearly 6 years old, and even then wad only mid range is very counter productive. The majority of people have more modern card, and I would expect that is what they test their software too.

Well, they could easily give us the easy solution for these graphical problems.
Give us option to disable drawing these objects (clouds, wh effects etc.)

I've actually had my computer shut down through overheating of the gpu when zoomed in at a cloud heavy location a few times.

Yes, it's not a top end build...quad core AMD cpu, 8gb ram and single hd 7770 but it runs rest of the game pretty well.

After the latest crash, I decided to actually go for it and do a new build (been saving some cash for a build and this actually pushed me to order the bits...waiting for em to be delivered).

The thing is, in difficult economic times, not everyone actually has cash to spend on upgrades... especially if the rest of the game runs fine.

It would be nice to have an option to turn clouds off if at all possible.

I don't understand why anyone would lobby against this.

If the code is efficient and organized, they could probably add the on/off option in a matter of hours, but for some reason I expect it to be a huge mess. If they want to keep on working on this game for the next decade, they should start by cleaning up. That would make any other modifications or new features around that code easier. I can't imagine stuff like say floating debris moving and colliding with each other while still struggling with the clouds.

Anyway it's up to them to decide if its worth it. I'm just saying that it annoys me to no end. And no, I'm not going to buy a new card because apparently everyone has this problem and buying a machine capable of running the rest of the game at 200+ fps so you don't notice the 80% fps drop in deadspace is just plain silly.

... team Trilambda ...

as always the basic answer is no.

File a petition? really?

it is every single cloud instance.

not one or two. its every damn one.

I'd like to recommend control-clicking.



Making your dead alt immortal negates the problem. There's also a bug where kissing doctors in CQ removes the omnipotency effect and with it the impending doom. The server regenerates the doctor afterwards, and many people like the new one better, so all is well.

Just to add a couple of little bits of info to this. Team Trilambda's aim was to refactor the cloud system so that in the future they could work with it easier and be able to progress that system technically. Meaning newer effects, more awesome looking clouds, and a lot of other surprises there. Maybe you'll see something at Fanfest.

Of course the benefits of refactoring, included increased performance gains. Not only the cloud system, but they also managed to alter performance hits for a lot of other areas in the game's graphic engine too.
You know those spotlights on some ships? Those used to be pretty expensive in terms of performance, now less so!

Good news - team Trilambda have worked on the clouds for retribution and they will no longer have the same framerate hit they did before. I have also worked on reducing cloud numbers in dungeons... let's see how this helps things out and we can always take another look next release if things aren't improved.

OH THANK GOD - THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

I've noticed less choppy since Ret, but it's still there. I much prefer smooth flying over awesome visuals.

Please tweak (axe) more?

I'm not sure if clouds what's really causes fps drop. For example I have about same fps drop when I zoom-in on cruise missile explosion. That might explain why it takes so long to fix this problem. Might be just a coincidence though.

Anyway, that fps issue is annoying since I have to change my graphics settings or zoom-out/turn camera while the rest of the game works just fine.

Please, CCP... I know you are busy and I really am happy with the new features that are coming in Odyssey, but if you don't put a switch in to turn all clouds off, then I will... and I won't give a damn about what the TOS has to mention about client modifications...

A pain and nothing else are those "Clouds". I still use and will be using the no-fog tool for my graphic card. Just have to be careful with rendering distance. Even for the cloud harvesters it works, since you dont need to see the clouds in any way.

Some people who been on the dev roundtables on FF, reported that the resolution of dust clouds will come only after they release DX11 version of client.
So yeah.. Brace yourself, Summer [heat] is coming.

It's admirable that you want to improve them, but I'm not sure why you're still refusing us the option of just removing them entirely.

I am not refusing anything :) I am a content designer, I can remove clouds from dungeons but I am not a programmer so giving you the option to toggle clouds on/off is not my area of expertise :)

I am not refusing anything :) I am a content designer, I can remove clouds from dungeons but I am not a programmer so giving you the option to toggle clouds on/off is not my area of expertise :)

Taking them out of any place one can is a move in the right direction and hopefully the word is being passed along that the clouds must be purged in general.

Just an update - while we continue to work on making clouds better, every feature I touch (eg: the new archaeology and hacking sites this release) will have the clouds removed.