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Galactic Civilizations II v1.3 BETA 1 change log

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Galactic Civilizations II v1.3 BETA 1 change log

Target availability: 7/27

from JoeUser Forums

The 1.3 builds of Galactic Civilizations II will be in beta for longer than some of the previous versions.  It's not so much that we think it's buggy but the fact that we don't want to do a 1.3, 1.31, 1.32, 1.33 and so on.  Plus, if there ARE bugs in these builds, we can say "Well it's a beta". After all, weaseling is what sets us apart from the animals...well...you know..except the weasel.

The 1.3 builds are designed to extend the playable lifespan of the game. To eliminate annoyances and pet peeves that players might have that would eventually turn them off.  That includes things like UI annoyances being eliminated based on player feedback, amping up the computer AI further, and adding more difficulty levels so that players can fine-tune things.

If I were a better game designer, I'd just have the difficulty levels be a slider with a 1 to 100.  Dark Avatar will have that (ironically the original OS/2 version of GalCiv back in 1993 had this but what did I know then?).  But for 1.3, we added 3 more difficulty levels and just generally cleaned up that area.

Below is the change log of BETA 1 of 1.3.  It will be available via Stardock Central tomorrow or Friday unless there's some disaster.

It should be fine to run.  Most of the embedded spyware, hard drive formatting, and other malicious code that all our software includes has been reduced by over 14%. Just ignore the hard drive crunching...

+ fixed first turn after load zero production behavior!

+ AI better at managing colonies

+ More difficulty levels: Dunce at the lower end, Godlike and Ultimate at the higher end.

+ AI intelligence levels above and below "Intelligent" adjusted in difficulty (so i.e. Normal will be tougher than it was because there's a new easier difficulty level and Incredible will be easier because there's two higher difficulty levels).

+ The overall difficulty levels have now bee tweaked to have a 1 to 1 relationshipo with the AI intelligence levels so "Challenging" means all AI intelligences set to "Bright" rather than a weighted overall value. Many higher level players would find that they set the difficultly level to Crippling only to find that 2 or 3 of the players would be set to "Fool" (and do very little) while the others played very well.

+ Difficulty setup screen tweaked to work better.

+ changed size of TriStrontium so that it's bigger than TriStrontium2; previously the definitions were identical.

+ fixed error in translation code for raceconfig (homeworld)

+ fixed error in translation code for UP issues.

+ fixed bug that reset the cheater's flag, allowing cheater games to be submitted normally.

+ fixed some exploits in raceconfigs for metaverse games

+ fixed missing image in Rename Ship dialog

+ fixed error in AbilitiesBonus.xml file that didn't show 20% bonus to Loyalty

+ reduced the Custom Race's default value of Loyalty to 15% so that it would not cause negative ability points

+ added code to clear the planet/shiplist between games so that it wouldn't keep old pointers (should prevent a memory leak and potential crashes due to bad pointers)

+ made it so that you can select a race by clicking on its icon on the Foreign Treaties screen

+ made it so that the seleted planet or ship in the planet/ship list is saved so that changing the sort variable or filters will still keep the selection.

+ added code to let you right click on a tech to bring up the tech description dialog when the tech tree window is maximized

+ fixed error where fleets of ships could still attack freighters protected by galactic privateer

+ Reversed direction of the moon revolution (yes, Earth's moon now rotates around the Earth the right way)

+ added a check in the Direct 3D code for vertex and pixel shader versions

+ added code to make foreign policy window try to select a non-dead civ

+ made sure that the civ manager only has to parse the entry definitions once

+ made planet screens refresh after removing or adding troops

+ fixed numerous typos and spelling errors in various files

+ changed it so that the difficulty on the OpponentWnd slider changes all of the selected races' intelligences

+ changed it so that when you enable a race, it automatically sets its intelligence to be at the level of the difficulty

+ Fixed bug where lines on Treaties screen would point off-screen if you were a custom race playing against 10 enemies

+ D and T buttons will now toggle the details and rally point screens on/off instead of queuing up multiple instances of them

+ Kills some battle related processes as soon as they are finished so they don’t stay in memory when no longer needed

+ When running in full screen mode (Release build), the mouse will be clipped to the game window to prevent accidentally clicking outside of the window.  You can still use ALT+TAB to activate other windows.

+ added function IsProtectedMiniFreighter to check for valid target

+ added code to clear selected rallypoint from minimap to prevent crashing when the rallypoint is deleted

+ added code to clear rallypoint destination when rallypoint is destroyed

+ Added a debug assert if the required technology for a ship type is not found

+ Fixed bug where ships on auto-explore that were put in a planet would immediately start auto-exploring once launched from the planet

+ Fixed a graphical bug where if you had 1 ship with moves and it attacked a planet with a fleet manager, the fleet would remain on top of the planet if the attacking ship was killed.

+ fixed memory leak caused by too many references to ship design listbox entries

+ fixed possible crash when saving std::strings in save game

+ cleaned up code in PropertyBucket class to make it more efficient.

+ Fixed a crash in the scene graph

+ Added ref counts to scene nodes in battle processes to prevent “random battle crashes”

+ Kills some battle related processes as soon as they are finished so they don’t stay in memory when no longer needed  

134,844 views 91 replies
Reply #51 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks Stardock for these updates, I especially appreciate the first turn load fix.
Azrune makes a valid point about the "Custom Race" not needing some additional work however. We are still alot like the Terrans. To make a truely custom race I suggest the following:

-Let us choose our own abilities with a clean slate. I personally don't value loyalty or soldiering very highly, and they are thrust upon me.
-The biggest difference of all to me is how your initial solar system is designed. I currently play the Thalan's because I don't like having a two-planet system with a class 10 and 4. One class 15 is vastly superior, as it is an ideal site for a manufacturing capitol off the bat, allowing several galactic achievements to be built if you are doing well, and room for lots of standard buildings if you are bottled up to be applied to your population with some planet-specific bonuses such as the technological capital.

-If I can be given complete chioce about what abilities and planetary setup I desire then I can truely create a custom race that satisfies my desires, and I can stop being a green bug. Initial technologies are fairly secondary by contrast.

Thanks for your time!
Reply #52 from Stardock Forums Top
Well said, Mascrinthus.
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Reply #53 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

When a later tech is inferior to a preceeding tech, I would say that is a bug. In some cases it is obvious, e.g., Subspace Blaster is clearly inferior to Disrupters

Subspace blaster is cheaper than Disruptor. Like Cari said, sometimes it depends on how we interpret things.  Moreover, the values on many of these things have changed since 1.0.

What Cari is getting at is that one has to look at what has been changed. EVERYONE here has their own list of priorities.  I mean come on, look at the change logs of these updates and this is on a game whose 1.0 was considered pretty good. 

Personally, I think nearly all the stuff at this point is piddly outside AI changes.  But there's been tons of posts from people who complained about the resource update thingy that occured after loading a saved game. To some people, that was a big deal. To others, it was nothing.  To you, having subspace blasters only provide 6 units of damage instead of say 8 is a big deal.   Why haven't you changed it in the XML file to whatever you want it to be? If you think it should be 8 or 9 or 53 then just change it. You're not really playing the Metaverse so that can't be the reason.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but some day -- some day we won't be doing updates to the game anymore.  And with that in mind, it seems to me that the things that should really take priority are the kinds of things only we can do (i.e. C++ code changes).  That is how we've been approaching things anyway.  Things that people can tweak to their heart's content on their own don't take the same priority.

Or put another way - which do you want me to work on? Computer AI and economic engine tweaks or participating in back and forth debates on whether Phasors III should cost 40 or 35 and then putting it into the game.  People (on all games) always think their the "proper" value for a weapon or unit or speed or whatever is "obvious". But obviously..it's not or else we wouldn't have these kinds of debates.  That's why it's in a text file -- so people can make it what they want.

That isn't to say we won't ever go back and tweak the values more, but good grief, let's keep some perspective. There's a lot of work that's gone into these updates and half the comments are "Why didn't you fix MY pet peeve that I could fix myself????".

Reply #54 from Stardock Forums Top
I knew it, I knew it wouldn't be availible on thursday when they said, why do they give you a release date when they know it won't be released? And how is it that when the internet was delayed last week for just a day we had to wait almost a week??? Also when is IGN going to post the info on the humans in the databanks? "coming soon" my ass.
Reply #55 from Stardock Forums Top
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but some day -- some day we won't be doing updates to the game anymore. And with that in mind, it seems to me that the things that should really take priority are the kinds of things only we can do (i.e. C++ code changes). That is how we've been approaching things anyway. Things that people can tweak to their heart's content on their own don't take the same priority.


That's exactly what I want you guys to be fixing. I can handle the XML stuff but I'm not going to learn code language. I believe if the community actively made their own fixes to weapons/techs/buildings and shared them they could make the game play even better with even more balance. Instead of countless threads about how something is unblalanced, it would be nice to see suggestions on why and then a link to download that techtree so others could test it out and share input. People will be more likely to agree if there is an example of how the weapon/tech "should" be. The default values work pretty well but I think it's us as players that should be making it better and balanced.

The reason the multiplayer RTS games usually gets rebalanced is due to multiplayer and playing against humans that will exploit major weakness in the game design. Here you don't really have to worry about abuse since it's SP and it's up to the human player to choose to abuse a system or not. For instance even though the last industry tech doesn't give that big of a bonus, I still research it anyways for production cause the AI does it too, now if it was MP I would never research it cause I would be pretty sure my rival wouldn't waste his time with it either thereby putting us on equal ground.
Reply #56 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I knew it, I knew it wouldn't be availible on thursday when they said, why do they give you a release date when they know it won't be released?


It's been up on SDC since at least 20 minutes before you made this comment. Lets look before we flame next time, eh?
Reply #57 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm also sorry if I have offended you in any way. I'm very happy with the support Stardock have provided to this game so far and I hope you look through my suggested changes and see that they are in fact bugs.
Reply #58 from Stardock Forums Top
Why haven't you changed it in the XML file to whatever you want it to be? If you think it should be 8 or 9 or 53 then just change it. You're not really playing the Metaverse so that can't be the reason.


Sadly that is not the case. Since completing the campaign at the end of April, I have only played very long Metaverse games. With a demanding career and long commute (60miles/100km) I have no time during the week to play, so the only time I have is a few hours on the weekend while my young daughters are napping unless I'm busy with some project around the house. For many of us with careers, wife, and young children, time to play video games is at a premium. A gigantic map with everything abundant, very fast research, 9 opponents, takes a long time given the micro-management required at the higher difficulty levels (I'm currently playing my second game at Masochistic). The first game took me May and June (not helped by the memory bug in v1.0 which caused many corrupted saved games and frequent reloading), submitted July 4. This weekend I have a wedding to attend on Saturday and painting to do on Sunday so I likely will have to wait until the following weekend to continue my current game (it is Feb. 2226, my economy is finally in the black and I'm starting to build my first NLC).

It is 10:30 p.m. and I have a 1.5 hour drive home, so I should be leaving now. At least I got Firehose v2.3.0 (an ANSI-C POSIX real-time multi-threaded server running on Linux or Solaris which relays audio and video streams to thousands of concurrent clients) out today for Network Operations, soon to be powering all of AOL Radio Link (currently it is relaying XM Radio streams) and maybe someday SHOUTcast Link!
Reply #59 from Stardock Forums Top
-Let us choose our own abilities with a clean slate. I personally don't value loyalty or soldiering very highly, and they are thrust upon me.


I agree with that.

I would also like some weapon balancing done.

Just chiming in my opinion.

For INVADER-Mod I'm probably going to do something like:
Instead of Default:
Laser 1 does 1 damage no miniturazation
Laser 2 does 1 damage some miniturazation
Laser 3 does 1 damage small miniturazation
Laser 4 does 1 damage smaller miniturazation
Laser 5 does 1 damage smallest miniturazation

INVADER-Mod will be like This:

Laser 1 does 1 damage no miniturazation
Laser 2 does 2 damage some miniturazation
Laser 3 does 3 damage small miniturazation
Laser 4 does 4 damage smaller miniturazation
Laser 5 does 5 damage smallest miniturazation

And I'll balance the shields and armor to go with the weapons. (what drives me nuts is inventing a weapon thats basically the same thing except smaller.)
Reply #60 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I thought the moons always rotated the right way but we were looking at the galaxy from the other side? Didn't you guys tell us that once?

Good work, I'm really looking forward to a further improved AI.

And Thanks!
Reply #61 from Stardock Forums Top

Ignuss, Macros, no worries.

The main thing we're trying to get across is that in the bigger scheme of things, it's probably better for Stardock to make a priority of the things that only we can do -- code changes.  That doesn't mean we won't look at text-based changes it's just where the priority is.

Adding 3 new difficulty levels, hooking the AI to it, and having a bunch of new AI algorithms in this build was non-trivial. If I had spent that time sifting through forum posts looking for requests for XML changes and then typing it in you would have lost one of those code changes. I only get X hours to do this stuff.

 

Reply #62 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh yeah, almost forgot...

If the rally list was sortable alphabetically that'd be a nice bonus.
Reply #63 from Stardock Forums Top
To Citizen Lord Nova and all readers that are interested...I have had a creation in the library for some weeks now, I first added it in early July called, "Improved Tech Mod" It took me many tidious hours to adjust and complete, I could go into details about it but you would have to check it out and see what you think. I have added the link in Modding Forum labeled the same "Improved Tech Mod" tree, for more info and feedback from anyone requesting additional ideas or maybe something else that I may have not covered or for discussion. Let me know what you think, its the best tech tree out there as far as im aware of, and without errors and should match all versions.
--Viithtrump
Reply #64 from Stardock Forums Top
All is not rosy with new beta. People could add their bug findings to this thread:

Link

I have added couple bugs there alrdy.
Reply #65 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks to the SD team for the update. I'm happy with the changes you made. There are only a few games on the market that get such decent support and updates that are by far more than simple patches (even months after its release). I think some people tend to forget that and instead of taking that excellent inch, they go for the mile.

After all a lot of work time went into this update and - as you wrote elsewhere - even more than initially planned.
Thanks for that and keep up the good work!
Reply #66 from Stardock Forums Top
What I'd like to see is some sort of graphic next to my startbases showing which ones can accept new modules (along the lines of the graphics on planets for production and shipyard).

What do you think?
Reply #67 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Frogboy (or anyone else at Stardock), could you please post all the bonuses/penalties that the AI:s get at the different difficulty levels now?
It would be nice to know what has changed.
Reply #68 from Stardock Forums Top
I have a request that I've never seen responded to by Stardock personnel, although I know a few others have requested it as well. How about a way to automate constructor management? I like using a lot of starbases, and every time I get a new tech that provides a few new modules to install, I have to manually send constructors to each of my starbases. Thanks!
Reply #69 from Stardock Forums Top
Is there a chance the minor races will be re-enabled to colonize/invade (scenerio options that currently dont do anything), or lose thier "tied range" to major races in future builds? (tied range = they acctually use major races range from homeword instead of thier own, snathi for example use the drath's ship range)
Reply #71 from Stardock Forums Top
I'd still say the biggest UI problem for me is the incorrectly calculated times to build where you have to click on a focus tech and then unclick it (eg. if none are selected) in order to see the correct build times.

It's always there when playing and it bothers me a lot more than, say, which way the moon is rotating...


This is the one that bugs me, don't know why the quote didn't work above.
Reply #72 from Stardock Forums Top
Nice list, but aren't the election approval ratings getting fixed? Now, if you go with 25% approval rating and turn it up to 80% the day before election then you win easily. Then the next day you turn it back down to 25%....Has this issue been thought of?
Reply #73 from Stardock Forums Top


Can we make this an option? I like being able to scroll th mouse off the GC2 window onto my mail/web/chat window without needing to alt-tab. I use drag scrolling any way so I would prefer this be an option rather than manditory.

Thanks!
Reply #74 from Stardock Forums Top
+ When running in full screen mode (Release build), the mouse will be clipped to the game window to prevent accidentally clicking outside of the window. You can still use ALT+TAB to activate other windows.


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Reply #75 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
BUG: Hitting "Quote" only puts in the html for the quote, but not the quote itself.


Works fine for me--note that you need to select text to quote, then click quote. It doesn't just quote the entire post by default like most other forums do.