Sunday Night Debugging!

Fun with the XML files!!!


Me on a Sunday night.

And what am I doing? I'm going through and cleaning up my mistakes in the XML.  And it's been frustrating.  The technology tree setup is very complicated because you have base technologies and inherited technologies.  That is, a given race can have their own spin on a particular technology. So for instance, Warp Drive might be cheaper for humans and have a different description. This is very cool from a game point of view but can be a bit of a headache from an XML point of view.

There is also a lot of grunt work putting in all those planetary improvements that are unique per race.

We're getting there!

 

34,888 views 21 replies
Reply #1 Top
Well keep working and you might get there.
Reply #2 Top
Frogboy, i'd like to thankyou for your time tonight. There was no reason for you to do that bar for the respect you have for you customers....us.

Thankyou once again, not that i needed any more reason to support Stardock, but you just iced the cake....And i might add, gave everyone a little insight to the hard work you put in....11:00 on a Sunday night...wow!!!

What other game developer's give their time like this........

Reply #3 Top
I'd like to chime in with a thank you as well. I found the chat very insightful and informative, and it was a great way for the customers to see what goes into debugging and preparing a game! Very cool!
Reply #4 Top
Respect! Anyone who loves the game as much as you obviously do earns my respect. I hope your wife is an understanding lady
Reply #5 Top
Seriously, when was the last time someone from EA or Microsoft did this?
You guys certainly have my respect.

You know what? I should go there on EA and demand that their lead developer for Crysis works on a Sunday night on the game.   

I see you have a master plan for those pesky Torians, Arceans and Drengin and especially those faulty XML files. Fight on, noble Frogboy!

Also, I'd like to ask what this 'chat' is everyone is talking about. Someone left me out of the loop.
Reply #6 Top
I love whats on the white board! lol! Man, I want to study that subject in school!!
Reply #7 Top
Ok, now that I've finally found out about the live chat: Are there to be anymore? If there are, any previous warning?
Reply #8 Top
Yes Stardock has got to be the most awesome group of peoples ever (Dont tell the Kerberos Productions dudes I said that). Frogboy has done a fantstic job on the games AI. I play Civilization 4 often and I end up being very disappointed with the AI, because Galciv2's is sooo good.
Reply #9 Top
I want to follow up on my question:

I'm wondering, whats your opinion on ethics in this game? The current ethics seem lame at this time.


Your reply was something like, "we don't want to be going around telling people whats right and wrong.".

What I'm wondering is, if you were to make changes to the current ethics system, aside from whats mentioned above, what would you be looking for as an update or replacement? I'm in a brainstorming mood right now.

________________
P.S. Was this chat recorded? I missed part of the begining.
Reply #10 Top
BTW... that is a lot of anomlies!!
Reply #11 Top
Wait wait wait....you worked on galciv2 on sunday and didn't answer our threads?!  
Reply #12 Top
In the second pic I see a wall of asteroids, perhaps this is a step towards obstacles and choke points.
Reply #13 Top
You know if you guys took an extra month, or even two, to do TA, I think most of us would
understand and support it. You guys are on what seems to be an insanely tight schedule
Reply #14 Top

In the second pic I see a wall of asteroids, perhaps this is a step towards obstacles and choke points.


It looks like those asteroids are affecting borders too. See how the Arcean and Drengin border are curved with the wall? Wonder if that's just a coincidence or maybe their are going to be not only physical obstacles but border obstacles as well.
Reply #15 Top
That wall would be a pain to defend if you mined put mining stations on all of them. Maybe you could have a defensive unit that would excell moving through asteroids, but would be slow while not in a field.
Reply #16 Top
Thou shalt not work on Sundays. At least not unless Stardock is just another word for a Drengin slave pit
Reply #17 Top
It was very enjoyable, and he answered most of my questions, especially one about super abilities, the arnor and the story. It was pretty great.
Reply #18 Top
he was answering 80 -90%of the questions toward the end especially at about 11:15 ET when he said he had to go because it was getting late ant then he stayed until 11:30ET and just answered questions by us for the remainder until he really had to go.
Reply #19 Top


In the second pic I see a wall of asteroids, perhaps this is a step towards obstacles and choke points.


It looks like those asteroids are affecting borders too. See how the Arcean and Drengin border are curved with the wall? Wonder if that's just a coincidence or maybe their are going to be not only physical obstacles but border obstacles as well.


More likely that's just the Terran's influence pushing back their borders.
Reply #20 Top
Can someone link to this chat transcript for those who missed it?
Reply #21 Top
Can someone link to this chat transcript for those who missed it?


If there was one, it wouldn't be much use since only the questions were in the chatroom. Frogboy was answering on the live video, which doesn't appear to have been recorded.