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Beta 4B available

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Beta 4B available

from Stardock Forums
Beta 4B is now available for download via the Drengin Network Component Manager.

4B focuses on these things:

1) Stability.
2) Performance
3) Polish.

In stability, we have, we think, fixed most of the reported crash and hang problems that were reported. The details screen crash though is still there.

In terms of performance, it's even more threaded now. Late in the game where there would be 9 second waits between turns, that time has been dropped to less than 1 second by making the parts that were taking several seconds calculate during the player turn (you'll still wait 9 seconds if you wail on the turn button of course but late in the game we assume you're moving ships and such).

As a result, galaxy sizes have been increased again to now have NEARLY 600 sectors in the gigantic sized galaxy (nearly twice as big as the already substantially increased gigantic size in 4A).

In terms of polish, we have begun translating the game from illiterate engineer to English. Thanks for all the reports. Hopefully you'll find fewer typos.

We have also continued to work on the diplomacy screen. We hope to have "Make Peace With..." in beta 4C.

There are several new United Planets issues and the AI is significantly more intelligent.

A lot of work has gone into tweaking game play to make the game more fun. In fact, there were TWO updates tonight (a final tweak to gameplay was done).

There will be ONE more public beta (4C) which we expect out one week from today. Then it's gamma and at that point the beta will be closed to the general public.

What we want to know:
1) Is it crashing on you at all? I.e. is it stable? If not, please report the crash to us by providing your OS, your hardware info (CPU/mem), the debug.err file and the SmartException log (SE can be found at www.stardock.com/temp/smartexception_galciv.exe).

2) Is it performing well for you? Does the game seem responsive. Obviously if you're playing on a gigantic galaxy on a p3-600mhz system with 128MB it's not going to be very fast. But we do want to make sure that the game is responsive.

3) How about polish? Are there any items in the game that you find particularly glaring? We're not talking features that you would like but rather game play flaws or buglets that really detract from the overall fun of the game?

Let us know. Thanks! Have fun!
1,500 views 55 replies
Reply #26 from Stardock Forums Top
To: Lucky Jack
Re: SmartException tool and "original" post of this thread.

Question: Why didn't you simply put a link to the tool in your reply? Are you chastising me for not searching every other post on this forum?
I tried looking but could not find another thread named "Beta 4B Available". I found a number of 4B related threads, but couldn't find the posting/tool.

Please remember non-developer playing the game is a customer who paid money to be here. I paid my cash because the game looked interesting and I was told I would be able to contribute. I was not impressed to find out the team's crash finder tool had to be downloaded separately.
I've encountered a number of hangs that I would like to report, but don't have the means to give the dev team enough information to act upon them.



Reply #27 from Stardock Forums Top
Chill, Smiley, he meant the first ("original") message ("post") of this thread (the top of the page): "SE can be found at www.stardock.com/temp/smartexception_galciv.exe"

To answer some of your questions:

1) There are pop-ups that occur when one is built, but no lookup.

2) Y'now, I've never actually double-clicked on one--I'll have to try that. Of course, all ship/starbase popups have formatting problems, especially with the description text at the top. Context-sensitive help would also be nice.

3) Click the domestic affairs button (economy, governor, etc.) and choose the "Trade" tab. That page needs some further polish (like a sector tool-tip on the mini-map and mini-map zoom). Aside to Stardock: It would also be nice if the view of trade routes was by colored sectors rather than drawn lines. That is, just show us which sectors they actually pass through and a count or a variation in intensity for sectors with multiple routes.

4) Unforunately, a good question. There is currently no lookup for specific alien or un-settled planets. It would be nice if the diplomacy screens gave you a way to do that. A couple of us have been lobbying for a way to click on planets and ships in various lists and have the mini-map display the current position. This would be another good application of that--clicking on things in the diplomacy screen would highlight them in the mini-map as appropriate.

-Robert
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #28 from Stardock Forums Top
Chill, Smiley, he meant the first ("original") message ("post") of this thread (the top of the page): "SE can be found at www.stardock.com/temp/smartexception_galciv.exe"

To answer some of your questions:

1) There are pop-ups that occur when one is built, but no lookup.

2) Y'now, I've never actually double-clicked on one--I'll have to try that. Of course, all ship/starbase popups have formatting problems, especially with the description text at the top. Context-sensitive help would also be nice.

3) Click the domestic affairs button (economy, governor, etc.) and choose the "Trade" tab. That page needs some further polish (like a sector tool-tip on the mini-map and mini-map zoom). Aside to Stardock: It would also be nice if the view of trade routes was by colored sectors rather than drawn lines. That is, just show us which sectors they actually pass through and a count or a variation in intensity for sectors with multiple routes.

4) Unforunately, a good question. There is currently no lookup for specific alien or un-settled planets. It would be nice if the diplomacy screens gave you a way to do that. A couple of us have been lobbying for a way to click on planets and ships in various lists and have the mini-map display the current position. This would be another good application of that--clicking on things in the diplomacy screen would highlight them in the mini-map as appropriate.

-Robert
Reply #29 from Stardock Forums Top
Smilling Death,

My appologies. I intended no disrespect. I do feel, however, that it is not appropriate for me, or for any of us non-stardock people, to repost links to files belonging to Stardock. So just go to the first post in this thread and find whare Brad said "What we want to know:" and look at item #1. The URL for SmartException is at the end of that item.

Some other information you may need (not everything, but some): SmartException captures information about attempts by GC to do something the CPU doesn't allow. These are sometimes called a "crash", or a "CTD" (crash to desk top), or a "trap" (which comes from the CPU traping the invalid operation and passing it to the OS). SmartException ONLY captures the data about these errors. You mentioned "hangs", which to me you are getting a situation where your PC is failing to respond to your actrions. There can be many causes of hangs, everything to the code getting into a non-ending loop (sometimes coloquially called "bit twirling") to user impatience. (I am not trying to point blame here, just pointing out that there is a complete spectrum of possibilities from program error to user error.)

Hangs can be the most frustrating problems to try to report, and try to diagnose and fix. Your observation about lack of means to provide enough information is key to this frustration. GC has one aid that, sometimes, can be of some value in trying to locate the cause of a hang. You will find a file in the GalCiv directory called "debug.err". This file contains a running dialog made by the game of what was being done. This, combined with what description you can offer of what you were doing and what you saw can, sometimes, be enough to give the developers ideas of what MAY have caused the hang. I have seen Cari find the cause of hangs that I could swear would never be found, but then, before I retired from programming, I remember pulling some remarkable rabbits out of hats with problems others had given up as lost causes. My advice would be to try your best at describing the problems you run into and let Cari guide you to what she needs. It may take time, but she is VERY good at it.
Reply #31 from Stardock Forums Top
Two more polish comments:

1) If you invade a system that is on the verge of rebelling (showing the deaths head icon), the deaths head remains, even if morale is 100% and you have most of the influence in that sector.

2) "reasearch" should be "research"

As far as performance, I just had a long war with the Drengins (who attacked me as soon as a Yor world defected - I believe the the Drengin and Yor were at war at the time), and even with hundreds of ships, things were perky on a 1.4 GHz Athlon. There was just the barest pause bewteen turns where the starbases stopped rotating. In the past, that would have been several seconds.
Reply #32 from Stardock Forums Top
performance was incredibly fast. Still have a few minor little things but i'll comment on them later. The nephew want to attack the yor so i'll sign off for now
Reply #33 from Stardock Forums Top
I thought the bug which caused planets to defect to you after you lost an election had been fixed. However, it happened to me again in the game I started today in a gigantic galaxy. I thought I'd let you know it's still present.
Reply #34 from Stardock Forums Top
Just finnished 1st game beta 4b. Excellent, However I am experiencing some frustrations with the auto pilot option. When you move large numbers of ships from one side of the galaxy to another, I get the feeling that some of the ships arn't moving. So I put view autopilot ships and they are moving, but it takes a long time. So I take view autopilot ships off. when I press find nothing happens but there are ships with move points unused. I think that when auto pilot is moving ships nothing happens on screen to tell you, so although my orders were being carried out. I pressed end turn button.

Somehow we need a visual confirmation that ships are moving without actually seeing them move to keep the game flowing. If the info screen at the bottom where the ships info comes on flashed the ship number we would know that although nothing was moving on screen things where happening, and to wait until all movements were finnished.

I don't see this as a problem in smaller galaxies or early in a larger galaxy game. It is just in the last third in huge and gigantic.

Every thing else seemed to be ok. Just one other minor worry. I remember Brad saying that there seemed to be a problem with drawing on xp. and that causing complete freezes. I have had some of them, but not in this game. I did get some phantom comand button, for a time. They were in the ship info box at the bottom, and when a constructor was highlighted the deploy and scrap buttons seemed to detach themselves from the Skin and move 2-3 mm left of their original position. this happened with all ships except the command icons changed. So I could'nt move any ships. I had to close down the game and the DGM and start again with a auto save game and things were ok then.

Antone else experienced this?
Reply #35 from Stardock Forums Top
Possible "polish" problem. The yearly report numbers (at least some of them) appear to be off. For example, my population is increasing exponentially, but each of the last 4 yearly reports tells me that I've had a negative population change (forex -110.4 billion). A popup came up comparing me with the Dregin, saying that they rated a 4 in research, and I rated a 4. The next yearly report said I was 435 in research.
Reply #36 from Stardock Forums Top
Anther thing I would like to mention.

I don't think the UP or events is working quite as it should do. I get special events and UP isues early in the game but not (as well as I can remember.) later in the game. Is this because.

There arn't that many UP issues and events in yet and when they have been used that's it.
Or there should be more of these but I just have'nt seen them in the last game.

I would like to see a UP issue every 2-3 years and other events every 1-2 years.

Incidentally has the Good Evil morale skin changed It used to go Blue or Red. I havent noticed that recently. Is it just the buttons that change colour?
Reply #37 from Stardock Forums Top
Another very minor "polish" problem. When bringing up the planets list, the list seems to appear with the last selected planet in the ones visible, but the scroll bar does not reflect the correct position - e.g. the scroll bar make it look like you're at the top of the list, but you're not.
Reply #38 from Stardock Forums Top
Red-
I think the UP meets as often in turns, but late in the game, because you are managing so many more ships, planets, etc. it seems less often because each turn takes so much longer.

Good civilizations have a white border.

Reply #40 from Stardock Forums Top
Some more "polish". Dreadnought is the more common spelling - sometimes you have Dreadnaught.

How does one remove a governor from a planet and go back to "manual"? It's not obvious from the details screen. (The workaround is to have one governor have no projects and assign him - but that's kind of a kludge)

Are Combat Transports (which also appear as Battle Transports) really supposed to have the highest defense of all ships?

Trade techs very late in the game (like Benevolance) don't seem to open up the new routes they are supposed to.

Loading a game from within a game (rather than from the first screen) seems to take forever. I haven't had the patience to see if it finishes loading or not.
Reply #41 from Stardock Forums Top
'Trade techs very late in the game (like Benevolance) don't seem to open up the new routes they are supposed to.'

How many trade routes were available? If you already have 10 trade routes, for some reason, the game won't add any more.
Reply #42 from Stardock Forums Top
Had another case where the graphs show a massive drop when I save and then restore a game. This time it isn't in the population, it is in the influence graph. See ftp://tonn.ca/gc4b_sr.jpg for a screen shot.
I didn't catch it right away because I didn't select influence until a while later, but it is obvious in the screen shot.
Reply #43 from Stardock Forums Top
Possible polish item: sometimes I can't get a fleet of ships to attack another ship/planet until I ungroup, then regroup them.

I'll try waiting a turn or five, but that doesn't seem to help. Once I ungroup, then regroup it works great. I haven't (purposely) used Sentry mode, so I don't think that's responsible.
Reply #44 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm also experienceing the big drops when I load a saved game. However, it's on every graph except the one for influence, which is flat and has been for the entire game, so far as I know.
Reply #45 from Stardock Forums Top
I could be wrong, but has anyone noticed that after a save all your ships seem to loose a lerge amount of their hitpoints. Every ship seems to be repairing themselelves. Or have I missed something?
Reply #46 from Stardock Forums Top
Magus, that's it. I had 10 routes. (THat opens up the question of why there even *are* techs that will push a player past 10 routes, of course)
Reply #47 from Stardock Forums Top
Red101,

I don't know if this is the problem you are seeing but...

There is a bug in the current beta where if a ship has gained one or more experience levels the current HP level is not saved and restored correctly while Max HP is. The result is ships that didn't have damage before saving do have damage after restoring.
Reply #48 from Stardock Forums Top
One polish thing might be the slider in the save game list. At 1600x1200 the position is just that it cuts though all the names and time stamps, which makes it really hard to use the time stamp to determine a specific game. Would be great if at this resolution the slider would be at the right side of the list.
Reply #50 from Stardock Forums Top
Got another focus problem with events. See the screen capture here. ftp://tonn.ca/gc_focus.jpg
You can see the event screen in the right side. It looks like it is waiting for a user response, and is holding the keyboard/mouse click focus. But the mouse scrolling is still attached to the main screen. I can move the galaxy view to different sectors but I cannot select anything - even the menu. I can't find a way to dismiss the event screen in the background either.