Windower 4 - Discussion and Support

[Aureus]

seems like a poor decision with regards to functionality

Take a look at the 3.4 launcher. I mean really look at it. It's a cluttered mess of checkboxes. That's what we're trying to avoid here. These are settings that shouldn't impact the -vast- majority of users. It's not worth cluttering the UI to add a setting that you only need if you're using a PC with less computing power than most cell phones.

It's great that you don't want to have the game look like shit, but if someone needs to set the compression to High (or just wants it uncompressed) for some reason - perhaps one you haven't anticipated - they should have the ability to do so.

And they do have that capability. People have found and posted quite a few different methods of circumventing the launcher settings. What they will not have is the capability to do so through the launcher UI. This is intentional.

Also, uncompressed textures are much like a square BG res, it takes up more resources and provides zero gain. Not "no noticeable gain", zero gain. The textures are compressed on disk, all uncompressed does is unpack them before loading the textures. The actual texture contents are bit-for-bit identical between uncompressed and low compression.

[Obsidian]

And they do have that capability.

Manually altering your registry every time is hardly what I would call an adequate solution.

These are settings that shouldn't impact the -vast- majority of users.

Attempting to be omniscient is a very poor design philosophy. If a driver update tomorrow breaks compression, and the only way to see anything on screen is via uncompressed textures, which is easier/more logical: telling everyone affected to scour the internet for the previous version of their driver, or directing everyone to the compression option inside the settings XML for the launcher?

The method to edit the registry entry obviously already exists. Your refusal to be proactive is honestly baffling.

It's not worth cluttering the UI

Then don't put it in the interface, put it in the settings XML or somewhere else where it's editable. 90% of people will never even touch it, and the 10% who do probably have a reason for doing so.

[Aureus]

Manually altering your registry every time is hardly what I would call an adequate solution.

I wouldn't call playing on a 2003 era PC adequate either. It -can- work, but noone is expecting it to be easy or look good.

Attempting to be omniscient is a very poor design philosophy. If a driver update tomorrow breaks compression, and the only way to see anything on screen is via uncompressed textures, which is easier/more logical: telling everyone affected to scour the internet for the previous version of their driver, or directing everyone to the compression option inside the settings XML for the launcher?

I think it'd be easier to just push a launcher update that addresses that. But now you're arguing one-in-a million hypotheticals, let's get back to reality here.

[mistmonster]

Then don't put it in the interface, put it in the settings XML or somewhere else where it's editable. 90% of people will never even touch it, and the 10% who do probably have a reason for doing so.

This would be ideal. Everybody wins.

[Aureus]

Then don't put it in the interface, put it in the settings XML or somewhere else where it's editable. 90% of people will never even touch it, and the 10% who do probably have a reason for doing so.

You're welcome to submit a feature request for that on our bug tracker.
If you have something else you want to see added, that's the avenue for it, not forum posts demanding it be changed.

[Arcon]

There is nothing unreasonable about the design decision. If someone finds an actual use for one setting and they point out that it does in fact matter, then it will be adopted. Settings 18 and 19 are proof of that, as they were not initially customizable, but upon notice from players that they actually do affect things within the game, that was changed. If anyone can give a good reason for why anything else should be in there, it will be adopted as well. If not, what's the bitching about? About Windower not providing something useless to three random people who have no idea what it does? That is not good design philosophy.

[Obsidian]

I wouldn't call playing on a 2003 era PC adequate either. It -can- work, but noone is expecting it to be easy or look good.


I think it'd be easier to just push a launcher update that addresses that. But now you're arguing one-in-a million hypotheticals, let's get back to reality here.

Push a launcher update to do what? Force the compression to Uncompressed? Great, now you have to push another one to force it back to Low whenever the driver gets fixed. That's twice as much work as adding <compression>1</compression> to the settings XML and being done with it, never mind being much less complicated for someone to change that trying to explain them how to edit a registry entry, or wait on you to push the launcher update.

The point is that there are a million different one-in-a-million scenarios that you can proactively prevent from causing troubles by doing simple things that require no maintenance. Instead you're taking a reactionary approach for no discernible reason, which neither makes your life easier in the long run, nor improves the quality of life for your users.

Edit: In response to Arcon, my argument has next to nothing to do with texture compression itself and everything to do with the approach the Windower team has taken with regards to problem-solving. The attitude seems to be "we'll deal with it if it happens", as opposed to "let's make sure this never becomes an issue in the first place." One of these methodologies is much more effective than the other.

[Jem]

Couldn't you just have all the settings of 3.42 but have the ones currently missing in 4.0 as hidden unless toggled to appear in the settings file? Then the vast majority of users aren't going to even know about them and only the people who want to mess around with them will toggle them to show up.

[Aureus]

Push a launcher update to do what? Force the compression to Uncompressed? Great, now you have to push another one to force it back to Low whenever the driver gets fixed. That's twice as much work as adding <compression>1</compression> to the settings XML and being done with it, never mind being much less complicated for someone to change that trying to explain them how to edit a registry entry, or wait on you to push the launcher update.

The point is that there are a million different one-in-a-million scenarios that you can proactively prevent from causing troubles by doing simple things that require no maintenance. Instead you're taking a reactionary approach for no discernible reason, which neither makes your life easier in the long run, nor improves the quality of life for your users.

Yes, and a mothra attack would likely make FFXI unplayable too. We're not adding kaiju protection either.

If you would like a feature added, put in a feature request on our bug tracker and it will be considered.

[Arcon]

Edit: In response to Arcon, my argument has next to nothing to do with texture compression itself and everything to do with the approach the Windower team has taken with regards to problem-solving. The attitude seems to be "we'll deal with it if it happens", as opposed to "let's make sure this never becomes an issue in the first place." One of these methodologies is much more effective than the other.

How is that not our approach? We're trying to avoid issues wherever possible. Your suggestion does not do that. Pressing a launcher update is much easier than notifying thousands of people through different channels to start editing their settings.xml to change a value manually. That is poor user experience.

Like I said, if you can mention a good reason for why any feature at all should be there, it will be there, and that includes prevention of errors. People have, and we adopted. And people, sadly, also post a lot of things they're completely clueless about, and there is no good reason at all, practical or philosophical, why anyone should waste time on that.

(For the record, texture compression is no longer enforced by the launcher and hasn't been for a month.)

[Vyvian]

I believe the current behavior is to set texture compression to low, and environmental animation to smooth. The animation setting has negligible performance impact, and a low texture compression is functionally identical to uncompressed, it just takes up less vram. Texture compression was mistakenly set to high for the initial release, this has been fixed for literally months now.

I tried playing with it, and if I change them off to other settings, the only setting that is forced back is the Environmental forces back to smooth. It looks like texture compression, font and on-screen map keeps your current setting without making any changes. I don't think its a problem if the launcher "leaves the settings alone" as it did in my test. Forcing a change on settings the user can't edit probably isn't a good idea in general though. If it's really so simple it causes no difference, then let user run the game with whatever settings defaults they have.

[Mafai]

I tried playing with it, and if I change them off to other settings, the only setting that is forced back is the Environmental forces back to smooth. It looks like texture compression, font and on-screen map keeps your current setting without making any changes. I don't think its a problem if the launcher "leaves the settings alone" as it did in my test. Forcing a change on settings the user can't edit probably isn't a good idea in general though. If it's really so simple it causes no difference, then let user run the game with whatever settings defaults they have.

Open the settings file, some options are in there instead of in the launcher. Not many keys are "forced" but just aren't visible in the launcher.

edit:
2 keys are forced, all the others are settings driven, or not touched.
0011 - Environmental Animation
0034 - Official Windowed Mode

[Xantavia]

Has there ever been a fix for the crashing on exit? Only extras I have running are tpparty and the distance plugin.

no guildwork, nothing else even downloaded.

[grevenilvec75]

no guildwork?

[Byrthnoth]

I no longer crash when logging between characters, at least since I started using plugin_manager. It could be that an unrelated change occurred at the same time and fixed the problem, though.

[RicFlair]

Follow up to my scoreboard problem. It seems to work on my 2nd character even when im not engaged but doesnt work on my main until i die? No one knows why I'm still bugged? ; ;

I checked all the lua files with notepad ++ and couldn't find anything specific to the name of my main character.

[Arcon]

Has there ever been a fix for the crashing on exit? Only extras I have running are tpparty and the distance plugin.

no guildwork, nothing else even downloaded.

TParty and Distance were both occasionally crashing on exit, but that has been fixed for both, they won't crash anymore.

There might be other reasons for the crash, but these two plugins are fine, and I haven't crashed since they've been adjusted.

[grevenilvec75]

Any progress on fixing Timers? Two mul runs and never once actually saw my stratagems on-screen. Might as well not even had the thing loaded.

[Kohan]

There might be other reasons for the crash, but these two plugins are fine, and I haven't crashed since they've been adjusted.

I personally unload all addons and plugins before shutting down, and I still crash. I've tried to wait for a bit in case some things were still processing (e.g., saving settings), but nothing has ever prevented it.

[Sechs]

I still crash (almost?) everytime I shutdown.
Altough tbf I used to have seldom crashes on shutdown even with 3.34, but they were somewhat rare.

Now it happens I think every single time?
Altough honestly I'm so "used" to this I don't even bother anymore.