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 5)

Franco fx

on Mar 03, 2008

You're not saying that you created a custom ship style and that it didn't use the templates, are you?

Not exactly, I am saying that in the new custom design window, I changed and saved the default templates for colony and constructor and the next game continued to use the default core templates. The system named the new templates Terran ship styl vs Terran ship style. I assume this just means the original core ship templates are hard wired.

So, you pretty much answered my question. I gather that for someone that wants to fully utilize the AI design function, it would be advisable to empty their cumtom design folder.

Either way, not a problem for me since I enjoy the designing ships but I am not sure I fully understand the new "Create custom desugn" feature.

dfalken

on Mar 03, 2008

I'm sorry to be a bother... It looks like I've still got an issue with "String Not Found". It's showing up in the Game Options screen for what seems like all the new options, on the Game Setup screen for the Allow Tech Stealing option, and in the new auto ship design screen. I've removed and re-installed the game twice. I even tried manually deleting the game folders in both Programs Files and my user Profile with no change. I'm running Vista Business. Has anyoen else seen this behaviour? If not I'm most likely dealing with a local problem that probably isn't game related.

CariElf

on Mar 03, 2008

The core ship designs don't actually use the ship templates; the AI designed ships (either for the player or for the AI) are the only ones that use them, unless you use one yourself when designing a ship. This would be fairly difficult to change at this stage.

It could be a permissions issue. Are you running as an administrator? Do you have any temp files created in your Twilight\Data\English folder? Did you install the game for all users?

Keilworth

on Mar 03, 2008

How exactly does one find/use the map editor?

socially hazardous

on Mar 03, 2008

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.

oh... ok.

how about custom ships? or is this considered a 'mod' as well?

SIR NASTY OF TANG

on Mar 04, 2008

How exactly does one find/use the map editor?

c:\Program Files\Stardock\totalgaming\GalCiv2\twlight\tools

sam0t

on Mar 04, 2008

The betas seem to come on well, but since I have been out of the loop for quite many months could somebody clear up couple things.

Is the Twilight Arnor still up for March launch?

Has there been any news on ground combat or pictures about the new ground combat screen?

albion00

on Mar 04, 2008

There's only one downside to all the new bling:

The old graphics elements (starports, etc.) really stick out like a sore thumb at 1920x1200. And, of course, the classic "evil advisor robot" still has that unmoving chest glow and grate...

dfalken

on Mar 04, 2008

CariElf, that was right on! Thanks a million. Instead of running as Admin all the time, I finally broke down and disabled UAC in Vista. I'm tired of the Allow or Deny messages anyway.

Thanks again!

Franco fx

on Mar 04, 2008

How exactly does one find/use the map editor?

Also if you use the updated GC Desktop shortcut it allows you to switch chapters and the TA chapter has an editor selection

idunno116

on Mar 05, 2008

CariElf, that was right on! Thanks a million. Instead of running as Admin all the time, I finally broke down and disabled UAC in Vista. I'm tired of the Allow or Deny messages anyway. Thanks again!

Running as administrator solved my problem too. Now i can use the "invisible" options that were not available to me despite the game saying it had the latest update. Thanks a bunch.

CariElf

on Mar 06, 2008

oh... ok.how about custom ships? or is this considered a 'mod' as well?

If the ships were created in game using the Stardock's parts those should be fine.

Is the Twilight Arnor still up for March launch? Has there been any news on ground combat or pictures about the new ground combat screen?

It's April, actually. The new invasion screen is in. There's not actually ground combat. The screen still uses the same mechanics, but the display is different (no little tanks).

CariElf, that was right on! Thanks a million. Instead of running as Admin all the time, I finally broke down and disabled UAC in Vista. I'm tired of the Allow or Deny messages anyway.

It bugs me that running as an administrator in Vista actually causes more problems than not running as an admin.

Heal

on Mar 12, 2008

I have to start with saying what a great imporvement you made on an alread phantastic game.

As this is a game under development where you allow us user to provide you feedback I would like to take the chance and do so.

- Sometimes costructurs loss there texture and become invisible. The can still be selected (if one knows where they are) but one cannot see them. I can fix this problem with my games by saving and loading the game.

- On conquered worlds it is not possible to replace a central mine with another type of factory. Maybe this is intendend, but then it would be nice to get it in the tooltip text that this is not possible. "The deep core drilling of this mine connects the structure permanently with the planets hull which makes it impossible to every remove it"

.

- The AI (I know you haven't worked with that but anyhow) could be a bit smarter when using planetary resources. I frequently find that the AI place a completly wrong building on such a resource. That seems unreasonable - and I guess fairly easy to fix by scripting it.

nyudude

on Mar 12, 2008

Hi! I've downloaded the beta 5 and my computer totally freezes up when Galactic Council window pops up. I mean it totally locks up - I need to restart it just to get back into windows

And another thing that I've noticed in both Dark Avatar and TA - my colony ship can only carry 250 colonists, while the module is supposed to carry 500. It's incredibly annoying since planets grow REALLY slow when starting with 250 colonists. I've tried enabling hardware cursor in TA to see if that solves the problem, but it didn't. Is there a way to disable Galactic Counsil? Let me know what I need to do as otherwise beta is great!

Loupdinour

on Mar 12, 2008

@Heal
The Central Mine is indestructible, thus it will always remain upon invasion, as will their farm building. That farm building is the divil when they place it on a farm tile. There are various other buildings, super projects, wonders and trade goods that are like this. Check out a tech/political/manuc capital some time and you'll get the same results.

@nyudude
The reduction to 250 colonists was done in 1.6 (I think) of DA. The text however obviously wasn't ever updated. I beleive it was done for the very reason you have issue with.

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