Solasta - 1st DLC on Nov 4th
 

Tactical Adventures revealed the date and more information on the incoming DLC for Solasta.

More information.

… And after a quick test, I see the GPU is still running at 100% when using torches and in some other conditions, so they have definitely swept the issue under the rug despite all the data they were provided with.

No support, no DLC for me. :p

Someone here said they couldn't do a Campaign Creator with Towns and merchants. WRONG :) LVL 12 will be nice because it will add new spells and fighters can get the 3rd attack.

Well, we still can't right now, but there's apparently an inner circle of creators who have access to the beta version of the DLC who are already making campaigns utilizing some of the new features. And a modder is working on adding Lua scripting to the DungeonMaker which should allow us to do a lot of other interesting things.

What’s wrong with your GPU running at 100%?

To be fair, I'm not sure this issue is being swept under the rug. They didn't get specific but did mention that more bug fixes are to come. I think it's important to keep in mind this is still a fairly small indie studio, not some huge developer with a huge support staff. I'm not going to say this issue isn't important, but for now there's an imperfect solution; turn down / shut off volumetric lighting in the graphics settings.

I mean, if there's one thing that ensures they don't fix the remaining bugs, it would probably be this DLC selling poorly.

The only solution is to disable "shadows" entirely, I've tried all the other settings. And even that doesn't work in some of the cases. It's quite puzzling. It's obviously an issue with Unity, and they could have sent the case to the engine devs.

I get they're a small studio, but there were many reports of this problem, and they've not been straightforward in their communication about it, eluding the issue with several implausible responses. That's what is annoying me the most, and why I believe they won't actively solve the problem. Perhaps Unity will fix itself in the future.

On the bright side, most cards are fine with the game.

Unity performance issues have been around a long time now and are apparently not so easy to fix. Might and Magic X was supposed to run on 32X systems, but UBIsoft couldn't do it, or decided it wasn't worth the effort. Pillars of Eternity I had huge lags on some systems loading saved games as the game progressed. Not sure if they ever fixed that one as it didn't effect my computer. I was hit by Starcrawlers though, being unable to access my saves or to save manually, even after exhausting all the options the developers recommended.

Can't tell if you're joking, but I think most people would consider it significant. That's a lot of extra power and heat over time, and it shouldn't be happening in a game as modest as Solasta.

You sure you took the burning torch out of your computer case?

A strange situation if the performance problems only affect certain people, and the devs can't replicate it. I'd have thought if it were down to problems in the code, by either the devs or the engine, it would be more repeatable. I even wonder if it could be down to driver issues - or at least something that varies on the user's setup.

They really had me at "you can skip the tutorial" because that was getting quite annoying.

I am being serious. It’s not abnormal for your videocard to run 100%. I understand Solasta isn’t a demanding game but as long as you have proper cooling running at 100% shouldn't be a problem.

Many games will hit a 100% usage unless you have a bottleneck somewhere. A properly cooled and maintained system can run at 100% for years. I assume his play sessions aren’t that long.:biggrin:

Well, I just checked taskbar while running Solasta and on max ultra settings the GPU usage does tend to go to at or near 100%. (I have a 1050ti). But my fan is pretty quiet and the temperature is in the low 60's, so I'm not terribly concerned.

Sounding better and better. Look forward to see what fan made stuff gets built.

Sure GPUs can run at 100% for long periods but it's really not ideal to have them doing so. As with most things, the harder it runs the quicker it fails.

So you only get 8 years instead of 10. :p

Seriously though. That’s exactly what videocards are built to do and most of them are built to do that while overclocked.

Unless you get a turd the card will be obsolete before it fails.

Amazon’s MMO was killing cards and everyone was up in arms talking about GPU usage until evga came out and admitted that it was a defect on their cards and they replaced them all free of charge.

I guess my point is todays video cards are made to run overclocked at high temps and extended periods of time because that’s what the majority of gamers expect and many games demand. I wouldn’t skip a game I like because it runs my GPU at 100%. They are designed to do that. Obviously though everyone should do what they are comfortable with.

Sorry I suppose this is OT but it was brought up in the thread. So, I don’t know.

I'm sure they can replicate it but didn't try very hard or at least not methodically. What gave it away was when I uploaded a saved game which replicated one problem 100% for me, and the CM told me they didn't need saved games :thinking:

The same goes with all the data I provided: all the card specs, descriptions and symptoms I could muster from the people who posted, GPU % usage depending on the settings and FPS cap. He first said they didn't have any of the cards I listed, then later they supposedly found a 3070 (the one I have) but could not replicate the problem.

When asked later during a live stream, he said they found out this was due to a well-known problem of failing fan controller. I gave GPU %, not fan RPM, but I looked it up anyway: this problem occurred only on a specific brand (EVGA) and GPU (3090); the 3090 was present in the list, but among many other cards.

Most of that is due to their bad organization I think. It's a new, small indie dev, they don't seem to have much experience in S/W development methodology.

But it is abnormal.

It's an RTX 3070, I wouldn't be surprised to see it in that regime if there was ray tracing or stunning graphics. But it's happening in scenes that are almost empty, simply because there are 4 or 5 sources of lights and shadows are enabled (at 60 FPS). Yes, sometimes Pathfinder uses 80% or so, but in a heavy scene with many graphics effects, and when I remove some of the fancy post-processing, the usage goes down to 30-40% (and it's Unity too, so there's that).

Solasta is also crawling in some areas (for everyone including people with 3090 or 3080 Ti), with the same GPU usage, simply because of a waterfall.

It is not good to let it run at 100% all the time, and not only because of the heat & sound discomfort. In Solasta, many of those reports came with system crashes and shutdowns after a few minutes of gameplay.

Anyway, I'll stop ranting on the subject. I'm obviously angry because of their behaviour, but I had many fun hours during the EA with that game and that's good enough for me.

Exactly. It's not a question of if your card can handle it. It's a question of should it be doing that.

This made me curious about what kind of GPU usage I usually get, so I just tested a few games on max settings to see what their average usage was. I tried FO:NV, Space Hulk: Deathwing, Dead Space, Battlefield 4, and AC: Odyssey.

None of them ever hit 100%, and the only one that even came close was AC: Odyssey. That's on a GTX 1080.

In fact, I was surprised how low it was for some of them. FO:NV without mods only used 25-30%. Granted that's an old game, but still. Battlefield 4 averaged 55-65%, Space Hulk: Deathwing 55-60%, Dead Space 70-80%, and AC: Odyssey 85-95%.

Oh, I’m not debating that solasta isn’t a demanding enough game to warrant 100% usage. There’s obviously something going on there.

I’m just saying these cards are built to handle the workload if it’s needed. These cards can sit in poorly ventilated mining farms and operate 24/7 for years without fail. They can easily handle long gaming sessions in a well ventilated case.

It’s true that it can shorten the life of your card but technology will make it obsolete before it fails. ( not accounting for bad cards)

I didn’t realize this was a sore spot for you and wasn’t trying to poke at ya. :) Just wanted to say that hitting 100% usage in of itself isn’t necessarily a problem.

Thinking about picking this game up next (orig game, not just the DLC). What is the overall Watch vibe on this one right now? Yea or nay?

Just a note if you really just want to try it, this is on gamepass….I liked what I played of it.

Highly recommended, but some notes:

1. The original campaign is first and foremost a turn-based tactical RPG. The combat is great if you like D&D rules. From what I can tell, it's pretty faithful to D&D rules aside no multi-classing (though there's a mod for that) and homebrewed subclasses and feats. The story is OK, but nothing special and it is a very linear game. There's a handful of sidequests (each background has their own sidequest, which are pretty well done) and some hidden areas & puzzles. There are some opportunities to use social skills in dialogue, but this is usually for flavor or to coax some extra rewards out of an NPC. There's a few opportunities to avoid some tough fights with diplomacy / deception, but it's primarily a combat focused game.

2. Arguably the best part of this game is the dungeon-maker and modding community. Right now the DM is pretty limited in what you can do (though players have already made some campaigns they are very combat focused). But on the bright side it is extremely easy to make something with. And the free update which will coincide with the DLC is going to add a lot of new features, including the ability create NPCs. And the modding community will likely add many more. So hopefully we'll start to see campaigns that are a lot more story driven and have quests beyond "kill all the monsters and get the loot".

So even if you find the main campaign mediocre, it's possible the user created campaigns will appeal to you. And perhaps you'll like to make some of your own. I'm tinkering with a few myself and very excited for the potential with the upcoming DM features / mods. But if for some reason playing unofficial content is not your thing this game may be less appealing.

I bought and played Solasta for little less than 7 hours and got bored fast. I don't really like games without full fledged companions and minimal story.

I was trying to look for Solasta module but most of them doesn't seem to have any user review so it's difficult to tell whether the modules are more combat orientated or story driven etc.

Yeah, the main campaign is definitely focused on combat with the story taking a backseat. Since you create the entire party you basically determine their personality during character creation. Normally I do prefer story-driven cRPGs but I did enjoy it because I like the combat and D&D mechanics. That said, it reminds me a lot of NWN where the real potential for the game is in the user created content.

For now, I would say hold off because you'll likely be just as bored with the modules as the main campaign since the storytelling abilities have been limited. However, once the update comes out that may change (for ex: we'll be able to make NPCs and have award XP outside of combat). Some creators with beta access to new features are already working on campaigns which sound like they will be much more story driven.

I just started working on a campaign intended for a solo rogue characters where players will actually be encouraged to avoid most combat, but I'll definitely need the new features to make it work.

Thanks, will wait for new features to kick in for custom modules then :) Hope it will take off like NWN1

Thanks guys for the info and your perspective. I am going to give it a go as I do like just vanilla party based combat stuff, especially D&D flavored. Hopefully there will be some great community content. I was reading about Knights of the Chalice 2 somewhere else here on the Watch forums and it sounds like that developer is shooting for similar platform and content creator ecosystem. And I think same ruleset maybe. Who will win the hearts and minds of the content creators out there?!

I thought given past opinions on the Watch claimed the tool-set was very limited, and you could never make an actual mod campaign like the NWN games? So what changed?

If that was false and it's been upgraded to allow better mods, I may have to give this game another try. As my first opinion was it's just a combat tabletop simulator.

I was very enthusiastic during the EA (hence the preview article that must be around), but as it is today I can't really recommend it anymore or with two big warnings. Firstly because I had too many issues with GPU overheating and was very disappointed how their support eluded all sorts of problems. Chances are you won't have any trouble with it like most people. If not, well, it's not too expensive and maybe you can even get a refund (buy it on GOG!).

Then I was expecting a little more from the quest / story part, but they confirmed the focus was on strategy CRPG, so it's quite fun for a while but I don't think I'd replay it.

On the positive side, it is very fun, it gives a feeling of tabletop game, with the immersion hanging between that feeling and being in character. And it's the only game with D&D 5E, even if it's only the SRD with a reduced number of classes / races / spells. The UI is very clean and good to understand its mechanics.

All the new new features are releasing with the DLC this November.

If you enjoy combat and a more combat-focused game then Solasta is a really good game. If you enjoy more of a story and character romance read a book :)

I stopped following news on this game when I wrote it off as a rubbish combat simulator.

Like I said above the opinions on the watch said the tools provided to make mods were pure crap. Now I'm reading differently, so I don't know who to believe anymore.:lol:

If the Dungeon Maker allows to create quests and dialogues, there will be people to create more fleshed-out campaigns, we could have a very nice result.

If not, perhaps some adventurers will create campaigns from the SDK and release them as mods, though I'm not sure it's easy to achieve by hacking the game like that.

Well, everyone has an opinion, best way to decide if it's worthwhile is just check it out yourself. But as I said to PB, wait until after the new features release and creators have a chance to play around with them, as current DM has mostly been focused on combat / dungeon crawling.

As of today; You place rooms that you can fill with props, traps, treasure, and various "gadgets" (e.g., monsters, activators to open / close doors). You can get make puzzles, mazes, etc. but mostly still geared towards making dungeons focused on combat encounters. Storywise we have been rather limited as you can make text pop up when you step in an area or interact with a prop, but we could not make NPCs.

The free update coming in November is adding a lot of features the full list hasn't been made public but what has been explicitly mentioned or confirmed is: the ability to create merchants, NPCs, custom monsters and items, additional environments (including towns), award XP outside of combat, and merge multiple maps into single campaigns.

They've mentioned "chatting with NPCs" but it is not clear to me whether they mean an actual dialogue tree or just click on NPC so they say prerecorded messages. While I'm sure it will still seem limited compared to NWN toolset, on the plus side it's extremely user friendly and you can create something rather quickly w/o much risk of creating bugs. But for those who want to create something a bit more complex, there's also mods.

One modder has started working on adding (Lua) scripting to the dungeon maker which sounds like it will allow creators to do a lot of cool things that the vanilla DM doesn't do (yet).

But RPGs are so much more than just combat - story/character/romance are all great part of RPGs, especially because it is told in an interactive way unlike in books :)

Yep but remember story focused games aren't mega sellers, and data shows you don't even need a good story. Still I'm like you I want an average story at least in my RPGs.

Link - https://bottomfeeder.substack.com/p/…o-game-stories

Otherwise it's comparable to Skyrim without direction again.:(