GalCiv II: Twilight of the Arnor Beta 5

Change Log

Published on February 29, 2008 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

Beta 5 is now here! LOTS of changes.

+ NEW: Ascension Victory is now enabled!
+ To win by Ascension Victory, build starbases on the Ascension Crystals scattered throughout the galaxy to absorb their aura.
+ Each starbase on an Ascension Crystal will give you 1 point per turn towards the necessary 1000 points to win
+ AI will use specific ascension-based flavor text to describe why they are going to war with you if that is the reason.
+ AI will now list ascension as one of the reasons why its relations with you are lower
+ AI will lower relations with you if you start to collect ascension crystals
+ Drengin AI will attempt to pick up ascension crystals if it is powerful enough (the others won’t yet)
+ When a civ is within 100 turns of winning by Ascension Victory, a notification window will appear in the upper left hand corner of the screen

+ NEW: AI Designed ships for player - optional
+ With the changes to the tech tree, most of the core ship desgins are either inaccessible or not useful to the player by the time that the user can build them -- this should help with that.
+ When the option is ON, you can set the weapon focus by clicking on the focus button on the shipyard, and the AI will try to design ships using those values.
+ As soon as you research a tech that unlocks a ship component or increases miniaturization, the AI will attempt to design ships for you. After that, it will re-design them once a game year (about 48 turns)
+ AI designed ships now use specific ship templates based on their weapons, and ships designed for the player use the name of the template for the ship name
+ The AI will only obsolete the player's ships if the previous design of the same focus is inferior to the new design (this does not affect designs you create yourself)
+ Players can now create their own ship styles for the race they are playing
+ In the ship styles, the first template is for ships that primarily have beam weapons, the second for missiles and the third for mass drivers
+ Added descriptions to the default templates to give more helpful info on the Custom Ship Style screen

+ NEW: Added AutoLaunch options
+ These options are for people who may not always use rallypoints but want their ships to automatically launch from the planet so that they can immediately take orders
+ AutoLaunch
+ Option to have rallypoints follow same rules as autolaunch
+ Min num of defenders in orbit before auto launching attack ships
+ Option to AutoLaunch transports

+ NEW: Improvement images
+ Biosphere Modulator
+ Dark Energy Lab
+ Doomsday Generator
+ Interstellar Refinery
+ Mercenary Academy
+ Molecular Fabricator
+ Robotic Farming
+ Shrine of Tandis
+ Shrine of the Mithrilar
+ Stellar Forge
+ ZeroG Amusement

+ NEW: Enabled custom maps and scenarios

+ NEW: Korx get festival of capitalism to help improve morale

+ NEW: Custom races are now enabled, with the ability to pick which tech tree they are using

+ NEW: Added treasury to the InvasionOptionsWnd so that you can decide which tactic to use

+ NEW: Drengin now design scouts

+ FIXED: Made it so that you can't select the default tech tree for a custom race

+ FIXED: Bug on missionwnd where the spinner for difficulty was obscured by the string for the galaxy size

+ FIXED: Bug where AStar wasn't checking for Ascension Crystals, which caused stuck turn button

+ FIXED: Bug where graphs were not drawing the last point

+ FIXED: Changed it so that negative values are set to 0 for the graphs - we may want to change this eventually but we would need the ability to draw in a zero line

+ FIXED: Made the graphs use their min value as the 0 value so that the graphs fill the whole area

+ FIXED: Bug in collision detection code when checking for colliding with a star that was causing stuck turn button

+ FIXED: Bug where negative values were messing up the graphs

+ FIXED: Added code to try and prevent anomalies from respawning on AI rallypoints

+ FIXED: Added code for the AI ships to deal with rallypoints that are blocked (which causes a stuck turn bug)

+ FIXED: Bug where AI wasn't checking to see if a rallypoint was marked as destroyed before assigning it as a location. This should fix stuck turn issues and possibly crashes

+ FIXED: Changed the settings in release mode to use more accurate floating point numbers, because it was causing rounding errors

+ FIXED Bug where resource graphics were not being created

+ FIXED: Bug where Terror Star gfx was in the wrong place after attacking a star

+ FIXED: Bug where spending sliders on the Economy tab of the Finance Management screen didn't update their slider positions from a previous in a new game.

+ FIXED: Crash when going to the CivManager's stats tab after starting/loading a game from within a game

+ FIXED: Bug where having a negative weapons ability would make attack ships have 0 attack. Now they get at least one.

+ TWEAK: Fixed typo in War Profiteering

+ TWEAK: Added labels to the screen where you pick your techs for your custom civ for available and selected

+ TWEAK: New colony maintainence decreased from 15 to 12.

+ TWEAK: Only constructors, terror stars and attack ships get charged maintenance now

+ TWEAK: Updated Twilight's icon

+ TWEAK: Techs are now more expensive

Comments (Page 4)

Franco fx

on Mar 01, 2008

Hmmm. I notice that the option to let ships be auto designed means not much when you already have designs on file.

I expected the user designs to be ignored but they always pop-up as the next option. I also can't figure out the custom design thing.

I go through the process of choosing and saving custom designs for a custom race and the game options do not change. It just gives me the standard Terran (in this case) designs without over riding the core designs.

Drengin

on Mar 01, 2008

Yup I too have noticed this. I guess it is not implemented yet?

pndrev

on Mar 01, 2008

Autolaunch is good as it does exactly as it says, ie launch all your ships for you as soon as they are built.

In the original post, frogboy talks about options, like mininum number of defenders, autolaunch for transports, etc. So there is supposed to be more then just 'launch every ship built'.

Franco fx

on Mar 01, 2008

So there is supposed to be more then just 'launch every ship built'

You have an option on how many defenders to leave in orbit before they launch. You set the number in game options. All cargo hulls launch immediately but there is no option on number of colonists so if you like to vary this you can't use auto launch.

rls669

on Mar 01, 2008

Note to designer of the program icon: Excellent! Nice to see the contrast from the Dreadlords. Fire VS Ice.

I say BAh HUMBUG! That silly blue thing replaced my ObjectDock terror star icon without my consent.

dfalken

on Mar 01, 2008

I ask again, I'm seeing a lot of "string not found" items in the Game Options. I assume these are the new things. Is there something wrong with my install, or does anyone else see this? I also have a "string not found" on the new option to allow tech stealing.

Drengin

on Mar 02, 2008

dfalken i am not getting any string messages so far.

Emperor_Seth

on Mar 02, 2008

Note to designer of the program icon: Excellent! Nice to see the contrast from the Dreadlords. Fire VS Ice.I say BAh HUMBUG! That silly blue thing replaced my ObjectDock terror star icon without my consent.

The new TA icon looks awsome. Wierd because i was thinking about wha the TA icon would look like when i preordered it.

Emperor_Seth

on Mar 02, 2008

FIXED: Bug where AStar wasn't checking for Ascension Crystals, which caused stuck turn button+

What's AStar?

socially hazardous

on Mar 02, 2008

are we finally allowed to use custom mods as well as the races?

MuLaFlaga

on Mar 03, 2008

I have played my 1st game with the new beta and I have to say the money problem is much better now. I got the memory error when a drenin ship attack the altarians. I have sent you my saved game yesterday. Hope you got it.

CariElf

on Mar 03, 2008

I've got a quick question. My install shows several items in Option as having "String Not Found". I'm guesing those are the toggles for the new stuff like AI ship builds. Do I have a corrupt install, or are these just not labeled yet? If the later, would someone mind posting what each toggle is? You could just post them in the order they show up. Thanks!

You should probably re-install, as it sounds like it didn't overwrite your screens.str file. This can happen if you have the file open or the game running while updating. It may have affected other files as well.

+ FIXED: Changed the settings in release mode to use more accurate floating point numbers, because it was causing rounding errors

+ FIXED: Bug where spending sliders on the Economy tab of the Finance Management screen didn't update their slider positions from a previous in a new game.

+ FIXED: Crash when going to the CivManager's stats tab after starting/loading a game from within a game

Given that the first one applies to DA and DL (assuming it is the rounding error I first reported in DA that appears to exist in DL as well), the second one applies to DA and I would be unsurprised to find that it applies to DL, and that the third one also applies to DA (but fortunately I cannot manage to duplicate this in DL), what kind of time frame are we looking at for a backport of these fixes?

I'm not saying I want them next week (well I do...), but is there any chance it will happen before 2.0?

I don't know when I'll get a chance to backport the fixes.

I was expecting the new auto ship design to be an in game option but it must be chosen pregame from the game options so I didn't see it in action this time.

You can still enable it from the options menu after you've started the game. The game still tracks whether you've unlocked ship components, and it start the limit for every 48 turns until after the first time that you've designed ships. I'm also fairly certain that it doesn't reset the flag for the ship components being unlocked until it has designed ships, but even if it didn't, you'd just have to research another tech to proc it.

What's AStar?

A* (known as AStar in our code because you can't name variables or class names with a * in them) is a pathfinding algorithm. A lot of games use it, or a variant of it.

are we finally allowed to use custom mods as well as the races?

Please don't. I don't want to have to sort out bugs caused by mods from the bugs in my code.

Hmmm. I notice that the option to let ships be auto designed means not much when you already have designs on file.

I expected the user designs to be ignored but they always pop-up as the next option. I also can't figure out the custom design thing.

I go through the process of choosing and saving custom designs for a custom race and the game options do not change. It just gives me the standard Terran (in this case) designs without over riding the core designs.

If you design your ships already, you may not find this option incredibly useful. This option is for people who don't want to design their own ships. It uses the templates specified in the ship style (accessible from the appearance tab in the customize race screen) and then adds weapons, defenses, engines, etc using much the same code as the AI uses to design its ships. It doesn't override the core ships that exist because it would cause problems with the campaign, random ship events, etc. Also, it's not going to insist that its designs are better than yours, so it's not going to ignore your designs. You're not saying that you created a custom ship style and that it didn't use the templates, are you?

dfalken

on Mar 03, 2008

Will do! Thanks a bunch!

CariElf

on Mar 03, 2008

If SDC is showing the latest version installed but your titlescreen does not say the correct version, you can either try re-installing or you can edit the registry to force it to re-update.

Here are instructions on how to edit the version string in the registry:

First, close Stardock Central. Go to Start->Run and type in regedit. On Vista, type it in the search box. As soon as the registry opens, click on the My Computer icon and choose File->Export to backup the registry.

The install info for GalCiv2 is under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, in the path Software\Stardock\Drengin.net\GalCiv2\Twilight.

Just change the version string to a lower number and when you restart SDC, it should show the update button again.

Here are instructions to make sure that you get the latest version once you've either re-installed or changed the version string in the registry:

Befiore installing the update, go to Tools->Settings and click on Internet. US-1 is usually the best choice for servers because sometimes we have sync errors with US-2. Click Refresh XML Data. Also, if you have the setting turned off to check for updates to Stardock Central, turn it back on and then re-start Stardock Central. If Stardock Central finds an update, let it update then restart SDC when prompted.

If the above method doesn't work for you, it may be a more general issue with Stardock Central and I'll need you to send in these files:
Program Files\Stardock\SDCentral\Installed\gc2_Twilight.log
Program Files\Stardock\SDCentral\Installed\gc2_Twilight.xml

Sole Soul

on Mar 03, 2008

I don't know when I'll get a chance to backport the fixes.

Well, I was hoping for a timeframe, any timeframe really, but I understand that an estimate might not be possible, for a multitude of reasons.

I just want to thank you again for those fixes (as well as all the others)-from my point of view, in particular the civ manager stats screen crash and rounding error.

And didn't I tell you all to take the week off?

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