GalCiv3 Forums
It has been almost a month since the founder's vault has had any new content. :'( I would like to take this opportunity to point out that some of us are suffering from withdraw symptoms and will need another hit soon. 
A picture of colony management or government management or something. More music. Concept art.
*beg*Please please please*beg*
It would be nice if way the content is presented changed as well as Frogboy said he would do. A grid of thumbnails would work infinitely (or at least noticeably) better than a list of files that are only downloadable). 
Would that make it too easy for people to hotlink? I'm sure there's a way out.
yeah seems they've been busy since being back at work after the holiday's little activity on this front the last couple of weeks 
posts by Stardock reps or founders vault. I hope that means great game
How about the alpha installer? That's what I want to see.
We uploaded it, but something went horribly horribly wrong!
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/11/04
Alpha installer what's that I want to see the Alpha is it out already.
I would think if the Alpha was out there would be a lot more chatter here... This is not the case, you'll know when the public Alpha is released.
Actually I think the opposite - should alpha be here, we would have awful silence on these boards, because we would be, well, playing.
I hope their would be a post announcing it with instructions on how to download and install it. Along with what programs we are going to need to effectively respond to this. Plus they would probably reply on at least all the active posts. Plus advertise it on steam, Gamestop, Stardock central, Facebook, Yahoo, and Joe user. That way no one is going to miss the Alpha, or not be able to respond on how it plays. Remember it is better to assume people need as much help as possible instead of being encrypted, and not everyone can have fun.
Yes, there would be chatter as some people would be having difficulties or people would be frustrated as missing something they were hoping for or simply feedback on what players are seeing. So, yes, you will know when it's publicly released.
Don't worry Stardock will let you know how to get it, you will not be left out. Also don't expect it for another month or so at the earliest, Per the post of expectations around Christmas Frogboy indicated they were shooting for end of February, I can understand people getting excited that you may see it in the middle of February but, also don't be upset if we don't see it until the middle of March as well.
Just relax.
The only thing that would be nice at this point is to get some more glimpses of the game in the founders vault for us founders to see
But at beginning there will be silence...
Or here in Stardock people play games differently - all other alphas I participated turned to some wasteland upon release of new version.
I agree. The alpha/betas for GC1 and GC2 that I participated in had a lot of forum activity once the external tests started. I expect we will be aiding each other in learning the mechanics of the new game right from the start.
Don't know what games you're playing but every alpha/beta I've ever participated in there was tones of forum activity both positive and negative.
Sigh.
We are off topic. Though if they did release the alpha to the founders vault, I think I would squeee like a little girl.
Right now though I am hoping for a screenshot or something tomorrow or something.
Various, probably a bit too many.
Yes, there was activity, but at the moment of access to beta, forums usually were empty, because everyone was playing. And after that, oh, yeah, activity...
I've never done an alpha before so I don't know what to expect, but when it comes to instructions on most computer things. Companies either assume you have a lot of comercial software, or people know actually what the good free ones are. I've even seen the bad apples actually work for other people. Or people assume you know something you don't. Or assume you know things about the computer that aren't common sense if you are over a certain age. I would hope all you people assume I don't know when this alpha comes out find one of my posts no matter how old it is. Tell me that the alpha is hear, and give me instructions on everything just because you don't want me to miss out. Or maybe create an announcement post for this.
When the alpha comes out, it'll be a Steam code. The instructions will be pretyt much what they are for all Steam gifts:
1. Install steam
2. Login/create an account
3. Enter this code
Tridus, Willy is NOT talking about how to install the alpha. He is talking about DEBUGGING it. There will be bugs, but from what StarDock people have been saying, I gather that there will be much fewer of them than in previous alpha/betas of GC.
In addition, they gave excellent instructions for bug reporting when the alpha was released for GC1 and GC2, and altered the instructions appropriately as the newer builds came out. They also provided a "program exception" reporting program that automatically built the data they needed to solve crashes, called "SmartException", which, I have noticed, is still available on the StarDock website as a free offering. I have asked on this forum if there will be a new SmartException (this is, after all, 64bit addressing code, not 32bit), but have not heard back yet. Certainly, if they are being effective in their internal testing, they have to have something available. We will undoubtedly need it too, but the version we will need will require features not needed "in the shop", such as code needed to send the debug files to StarDock.
Now that I think about it, this issue needs a separate thread, which I will create momentarily.
Really?
Seems fairly clear to me. 
Hhhmmm, Maybe part of what he is asking for is installation instructions, but there is definitely a flavor in his post of what to do about other things as well, such as bug reporting, spelling errors, comments of impressions, etc. Also, the response you gave presumes too much and is way to terse and incomplete for an alpha, since I can see at least one omission: special instructions to have Steam allow you to download pre-release products, such as alpha or beta tests. I have faith that StarDock will indeed give us complete installation instructions, even mentioning whether or not setting special switches for betas are required or not, but we can not risk advising others of us what those instructions will be unless we have definitive installation information from StarDock, which I have doubts that they have as yet finalized.
There's no special instructions to have Steam download it, unless they're doing something weird. Steam doesn't care if it's per-release or not if you have a key and it's the only version available. You only need to enable something for alpha/beta versions if the game is already in release and they also have a beta branch, in that case you need to opt in.
Stuff like how to report bugs will be released at the same time, and there's really no point in speculating about it at all right now.
Weird is a weird word. What is weird to one may be an absolute necessity to another, and we have not yet seen how this will work out with GC3 (they have not told us as yet).
So you can tell me right now what mechanism they will provide for trapping "loops" and "hangs"? These are the most difficult types of programming errors there are to diagnose. User descriptions of what they were doing may be useful in some cases, but not all, and can be completely unrelated to the actual cause. The only way to be sure of finding the cause is to capture data from the PC at the time of the event and delivering that data to the programmer responsible for diagnosing the problem. This can't be done without user interaction, which requires a command to activate the process. Does your experience with Steamworks give any clue as to how this might be accomplished? My experience with Steamworks is totally lacking in this regard.
I want these questions in front of the devs so they can ponder their answers when they craft the instructions they give us with the release of the external alpha code. If they already have the answers, excellent. If not, the success of GC3 depends on them hearing these questions before they craft the announcement and instructions for the external alpha release.
Weird as in "not how games normally do this on Steam." The standard method would be to release the alpha by giving people a code. When the beta comes, just update the alpha to the beta and hand out more codes. etc. Unless something happens that requires a reinstall (which is possible but unlikely at this point, though being asked to clear user data could certainly happen at any time), there shouldn't be a reason for any special Steam instructions.
That part comes when the game is released and they want to do a beta of a patch or some such. For that, people have to opt into the beta branch for the game or they won't get that beta patch. During alpha/beta itself the game is that and if you have a code, that's what you get. Easy peasy.
Of course not, I don't work there.
I'm just saying that speculating about how this stuff will be done is a total waste of time, becuase it's guesswork. Who knows how they want bugs reported this time?
Capturing it can be done without user interaction. Debugging & instrumentation tools have come a tremendous distance in the last few years. They might need you to upload a dump in those kind of scenarios, but Steamworks helps with a lot of that (as do more modern development tools, IntelliTrace can do some really remarkable things).
Fair enough.
I remain very skeptical on this point, but I will wait and see.
Well I met all the above. I never debugged or did an alpha before. I agree with lucky Jack that it would be nice for them to have the questions before them. My experience with the past few years is that computer developers seem to be little on directions. Like they did in distant worlds where I would like them to have an interactive tutorial.
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