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X Rebirth developer apologises for bugs and explains how they’ll fix them

x Rebirth Egosoft

X Rebirth hit the Steam Store on Friday – you can check out Fraser’s X Rebirth review for our thoughts – but its launch has been mired in bugs. Developer Egosoft’s studio head, Bernd Lehahn, has taken to the game’s forums to “apologise to those of you who have had technical problems” and to “set out our priorities for the next few weeks,” detailing which bugs are top of their list for fixing.

“I would like to apologise to those of you who have had technical problems. I have started a thread in the Steam forums where I have listed the most common errors and have now collected a lot of information about this.

“Great though it is to see that the game is so successful and that many people are having a lot of fun with it, it pains me to see every case where the game causes problems. Sorry folks, I can only apologise for that.”

Here, then, is that list:

1) Language bugs – the German Betty, french text and other problems will be fixed.

2) True crash bugs fixed. There are undeniably some program-related crashes, and we are are trying to sort these out by sending those who experience particularly large numbers of crashes special versions of the EXEs. From the feedback it seems that some people are affected much more frequently than others by crashes. At the beginning of the week we will build a group of new computers and will try to reproduce your problem PC (same motherboard, same GPU, etc.). Those of you who believe you are particularly badly afffected (and no, it is NOT safe to use 32-bit Windows) should contact us at [email protected] for the special EXE.

3) AI bugs with trade ships (please make sure you are using the trade menu correctly before assuming you are affected by this bug).

4) Performance improvements: It seems ironic that most customers who are particularly dissatisfied with performance are those with the fastest computers. This may partly be because we made no special attempt to optimise for fast PCs. It even seems as though the most extreme high-end PCs barely have higher framerates than mid-range ones. We will be tackling this issue aggresively and will be stocking up on high end hardware for tests, to try out things like SLI and hex-core systems. Of course optimisations will also benefit other systems. Tips for configuration are in my post on the Steam forum and in the Egosoft Support forum.

5) Improvements for the near future: We will now begin to organise our plans and your wishes by priority. There are a few major development areas that are sure to take us into the beginning of 2014 for an update, and many small things that we would like to address as soon as possible. Here are just a few examples:

– Smalltalk on platforms: Once you unlock a reward you can ask for all the rewards we currently have already. If you ask for a good NPC you can further filter by job type. So you effectively find e.g the best pilot in your vicinity.

– NPC classes are to be clearly marked to make it clear who does what.

– Improved joystick support – there seem to be problems at the moment with joysticks. Some may not yet be configured in a satisfactory way (we’re working on it). There is also a suspicion that certain joysticks crash the game at startup when they are plugged in.

– Improved menus – feedback regard some menus which should be improved accordingly. What I hear most often at the moment are problems with managing the Trade Order list. This should be shown in every ship that is in your squad and can then be removed from the Info menu. There are also other improvements in various menus that will need to happen gradually over several updates.

– Shortcuts – currently veterans miss many hotkeys such as “T” for next target, Shift-“D” to dock, Shift-“R” for the property list, etc.

To leave on less than a sad note of broken games here’s the game’s launch trailer.