Puzzle Agent Graphical Bug on Puzzle 2 with Snowmobile

[DjNDB]

Originally Posted by BloodShed

Please do not try to excuse or justify this situation further.

That was not what i was going for. I knew that it was easy to sound like that though. I was not trying to sugarcoat the situation. Mistakes have been made that could and should have been avoided by careful management.

This thread is complicated to deal with, as there's nothing that can be said to fix it. It's been too long and of course a lot of emotions have grown over time.
Everything that's said can easily make it worse, if it looks like just another excuse.

I was was trying to show the big picture to those who might be new in this thread and only see that there's a bug, and it hasn't been fixed for a long time. That was not meant as a justification or excuse for what happened, rather than showing the complexity of the situation. I was trying to add some background information to a one sided dialogue.

Since i've seen TTG dealing with bugs a lot faster over the past years, i thought it was worth looking at what has changed recently.
The growth of TTG, the changes in staff an the bigger workload don't justify the delay in bug fixing and lack of communication, but they show that it is a deviation that can be dealt with by proper management.

To make that clear once more: I understand that some people are angry. The have every right to. I don't see it as my mission to change that, because i can't.

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by BloodShed

Unfortunately, there is no excuse for the handling of this bug, the handling of the customers, and the lack of communication here. I feel that both I and the affected community have been more than reasonable and understanding. In fact, I have a lot of respect for almost all of the users here because of it.

Yeah, if you go back almost 6 months a lot of us were saying things like "oh it's okay, things happen, let us know when you have a fix." Then as time went on we got a little more forceful, saying "hey guys I know you're busy but we can't play the game at all!" It's only gotten now to the point of anger and disappointment because it's been almost 6 months.

[anglerush]

Originally Posted by BloodShed

I'm sorry but it was said exactly that way:

Specifically, the "people who bought the game". Not, as you suggest, anything related to QA. I thought it was very clear.

Seriously though.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the only real pock mark on telltale I've ever encountered. Granted it's a huge @$$ pock mark, and it'll take me some time before I trust you guys enough to preorder, which is what I always used to do.

The silver lining is that now that they have the series 400 cards, they have NO REASON TO NOT USE THEM IN TESTING TO MAKE SURE THIS CRAP NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.

I'll just go put my torch and pitchfork away for now...

[DjNDB]

@anglerush

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

The portion of customers effected is small, and a Telltale rep even said that was one reason for the delay earlier in the thread.

Originally Posted by Amy Lukima

And I know everyone is going to hate hearing this but this issue only affects a small portion of the people who bought the game.

Amy said, that a small portion of people who bought the game were affected by the issue. Nothing more.
She did not explicitly say, that that's the reason for the delay. That's just interpreted into it now.

Even if it was not related to how extensive the play testing was, and how that resulted in only a few people having issues, it was more likely meant to put things into perspective, than to mock anyone.

[Sir Primalform Magnifico]

Given that I (we) bought the game months ago and have been unable to play it, a free copy of Poker Night or some other compensation would be appreciated. ;D

[DarthBo]

I don't need a free game, I want to play THIS game!

[Sir Primalform Magnifico]

That's a given. :P

[DjNDB]

It's probably moot because the patch is on it's way now, but did anyone try if it displays correctly on a Windows installation in VMWare Player on an affected host system, as i suggested as a possible workaround a couple of weeks ago?

Configuring Direct3D features with 3DAnalyze, as some did for Poker Night, could also help.

[KirinLink]

Just wanted to say I've got one of the GTX 4xx series, and I've been watching this thread silently for months, waiting for a fix. I watched a whole bunch of people yell and scream about what an awful company Telltale must be for releasing a game with a bug and not fixing it immediately. I'm very glad to say they have fixed the bug, and I thought it might be appropriate to overreact just as much as those people, but in the other direction.

OH MY GOD TELLTALE; YOU ARE THE BEST COMPANY EVER! THANK YOU FOR FIXING THIS BUG!! NOT FIXING IT CLEARLY MADE YOU THE WORST COMPANY EVER, SO NOW THAT YOU HAVE FIXED IT, YOU MUST BE THE BEST!! TELLTALE FOR PRESIDENT OF EVERYWHERE; VOTE NOW!!

Seriously, thanks for keeping us informed and getting this fixed quickly. For a (relatively) small studio like yours, with so many other irons in the fire, I'm impressed you stayed on this and got it done. Thanks, I can't wait to play (which I am going to do as soon as I click "submit").

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by KirinLink

Seriously, thanks for keeping us informed and getting this fixed quickly.

Hahahaha...

Wait, this was sarcasm right? You think 6 months is quickly? And actually the clock is still ticking, it hasn't been fixed for telltalegames.com customers (amazingly).

[KirinLink]

No, seriously, no sarcasm. According to their site, Telltale has 4 full-time engineers and 5 full-time content programmers, plus 5 full-time testers. Compared to the Sam and Max franchise and Back to the Future, Puzzle Agent is relatively a small deal for them. I certainly don't feel like 6 months is an outrageously long time, given that number of engineers (four) and the amount of other stuff they have to do.

Look, I'm angry that I paid for a game that didn't work, and they certainly should have done a better job of informing the public about the bug, and of making it easy to get a refund. I don't like spending money on a game and finding out it's broken. But graphics card compatibility is HARD. That's why developers like consoles so much. And as a developer, I'm certainly not outraged at the 6-month time frame it took 4 engineers to put all their other games on hold and do extensive testing on a brand new line of graphics hardware.

I think Telltale's failing here was in PR: they needed to do a better job of keeping us informed, and they CERTAINLY shouldn't have released a Steam fix before releasing a fix for their own site's customers (although I'm personally very glad they did ). But the time frame for the actual bugfix, in the grand scheme of things, just doesn't seem that bad to me.

[koriar]

Any news on when the fix will be released? Specifically for the Adventure Pack copy? I'd really like to play this on the weekend while I still have time...

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by KirinLink

No, seriously, no sarcasm. According to their site, Telltale has 4 full-time engineers and 5 full-time content programmers, plus 5 full-time testers. Compared to the Sam and Max franchise and Back to the Future, Puzzle Agent is relatively a small deal for them. I certainly don't feel like 6 months is an outrageously long time, given that number of engineers (four) and the amount of other stuff they have to do.

It's all about how you use your resources... Telltale had the people to get this patched in no-time, they chose not to. You can talk about how small the company is all you want but indie games with much smaller teams get patched quickly with fixes and new content, and I don't just mean 2D simple stuff I mean games like Zeno Clash.

The simple fact of the matter is that because the number of people effected was small and refunds were offered Telltale did not make the patch a priority. 6 months for a game-breaking issue to be fixed is not quick by ANY stretch of the imagination and you saying this is frankly ridiculous. You can say it didn't bother you or that you understand if you want, but don't say it was quick when it was anything but.

[olz]

When will be patch available for TTG customers?

Thank you.

[olz]

at last, a new version is available for download

[TTG - Caleb]

Originally Posted by anglerush

The silver lining is that now that they have the series 400 cards, they have NO REASON TO NOT USE THEM IN TESTING TO MAKE SURE THIS CRAP NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.

I can assure you, we are definitely testing on 400 series cards now.

[BloodShed]

Originally Posted by olz

at last, a new version is available for download

Thanks, olz! In spite of Telltale's spectacular communication on this issue, somehow I missed the official announcement.

I can confirm that the issue is fixed for me... I was able to play for more than 3 minutes.

[Hassat Hunter]

You guys sure and not confusing it with the Poker Night update? Since the file has the same name, while there they atleast put v2 behind it to indicate a new version...

[Pidgeot]

Yes, the puzzle worked here as well.

The installer is rather silly, though. It detects that you have the game installed, and allows you to keep your settings - but the game looks in a different directory now, so it doesn't actually use them.

It also leaves the old version files on your hard drive, because the game folder is just called "Puzzle Agent" now, rather than "The Mystery of Scoggins", so it doesn't overwrite the files (nor does it run the uninstaller in the background).

Also a slight annoyance: even though it detected the game was already installed, it still defaulted to the standard install location. Seems rather silly when it knows the game is already installed.

Edit: Hassat, it is indeed a new version, even though Telltale haven't said anything about it themselves. The new installer file size is almost 50 MB smaller than the old one.

Edit 2: On closer inspection, it looks like this might just be the Steam version with the DRM removed. There's no launcher, and instead of the launcher-related files, it has a "steam_api.dll" file instead.

[koriar]

The Adventure Bundle version is still the old version... Any update on that?