Mods and bug fixes

Published on May 19, 2006 By CariElf In GalCiv Journals

I've been working on stuff for 1.2 this week as well as bug fixing and helping out with support. First, let's start out with the shiny new mods browse dialog! I don't get to post screenshots very often.

By default, the mods folder is in My Documents\My Games\GalCiv2\Mods. This folder and all its subfolders are created when GalCiv2 runs for the first time. Several versions ago, I added an option to the prefs.ini file so that modders could change the location of this folder, but we didn't have an interface for it. In the Options Menu, under Game Options, I added a control that lists the current Mods folder and a button to change it.

When you click on that button, this dialog appears:

We were going to do a regular Windows Browse dialog so that you'd have all the functionality of a normal Windows Browse dialog, but it's not fully supported by all video cards, so we decided to make our own version.

A tree dialog would have been tricky to do well, and probably would have caused performance issues. So I decided that we should just list the full path in the entry field at the top, and then just list the subfolders of the current folder. The little + button will attempt to create the directory if you edit the string at the top. The button with the up arrow takes you up to the next level. When you go up past the C drive, it will list available hard drives so that you can change the hard drive where you store your mods. There's also a button to restore the mods directory to the default. I'm getting close to finishing my guide to modding. I wrote the basic text for it and now I'm creating an html doc so that you can use the contents to skip around the doc, and it'll be easier to keep updated.

So maybe the mods dialog isn't that exciting, but I'll bet you get excited about this: I have the Auto-Focus option working. I put in code so that when the Auto Focus option is OFF, the camera will not move to center on a ship unless the ship select message has been sent by something initiated by the user. The ship is still selected, so you can hit the C key to center on it if you want to change its orders. This will also let you use the goto button to set its destination. I found this useful because I could center on a rallypoint waiting for my ships to arrive so that I could form them into fleets, and just assign ships whose destination was cancelled to be rallypoint I was watching. If I've missed the point of your grievances, I'm sure you'll let me know, but be nice about it ok? It should be possible to add a function to not auto-select ships as well, but that will take more work and it seemed to me that the major complaint was that the camera got moved all over the place.

I found a bug in the save game code that would only happen if it failed to open a shipcfg file so that it could copy it into the save game data, but I'm not sure why it would fail. Evidently, it has, because some people are getting corrupt save games. I've been suggesting that people who get this bug clear out their ships folders and design new ships but I'll see if I can find a better way to prevent it. I fixed the bug so that it shouldn't corrupt save games anymore, but if the game can't find a shipcfg file for a ship, you won't be able to build it.

I've been trying to figure out why some games suddenly don't know that they are metaverse games. I fixed a bug where CTRL+N could have started a normal game after starting a metaverse game (or a loaded game) several versions ago. I fixed a bug where the game mode was being set to 'end game mode' when the game was finished, which would cause it to fail the IsMetaverseGame check in 1.11, and that seemed to help some people. Or maybe not: it's not a consistent bug. So far I've only gotten one support e-mail about this with 1.11, but there could be other e-mails in the bug database that I haven't gotten to yet. I added code that will print messages to debug.err when the game is being saved or loaded about what kind of game it thinks it is (normal, campaign, or metaverse), so that might help me track it down. I've also added code to try and detect if it should be a metaverse game and recover if it thinks that it isn't one. I would prefer to know why it stops thinking it's a metaverse game, though!

It turns out that the AI was giving away freighters that were supposed to be on trade routes. This was causing all sorts of interesting crashes. This should be fixed in the next update.

I believe that I've also fixed a crash caused by the random event that gives you a free ranger or corvettes. There were two ship designs with the class name Ranger, which was causing one ship design to overwrite the other. I'm not sure how it was ever possible to build a ranger let alone get one in this event. To be extra sure that this random event wouldn't cause a crash, I put in checks to make sure that a valid ship was created.

Oh, and another bug fix that will be in 1.2: tiles that are partially highlighted by the starbase's circle of influence will now receive the starbase bonus. This was caused by the code that calculated the Euclidean distance (straight line distance) always rounded up for the number of tiles. This meant that a distance of 8.1 tiles got rounded up to 9, even though the tile looked like it should have gotten the starbase bonus. We talked about making it round up or down based on the percentage of colored area in the tile, but since the "half full" tiles could be argued to go either way, we decided to err on the side of generosity because that generally results in less ranting.

Anyway, have a great weekend and try not to burn down the forums. It looks it is going to be sunny and beautiful this weekend in Southeast Michigan.

Comments (Page 2)

jimmyb2

on May 20, 2006

BoogieBac, please read Lintman's post (#5) above. If Cari's changes fix that then she has fixed the right thing.

There is also another bug I forgot to mention in my above post. This problem may be difficult to notice if you use speakers for the sound, but is EASY to notice if you use headphones as I do. This has been a problem since day 1, and continues with the latest v1.11. When you load a saved game the volume seems to go to maximum or thereabouts. It does NOT return to the volume level that existed at the time of saving the game. After loading a saved game, and making the initial clicks to get to the game map, open up the Audio options. You will notice that all three sliders are set exactly the way they were when saved. Now click on the top slider (won't work with the other two sliders) in EITHER direction, increase or decrease, and the sound volume will return (drop) to what it was when you saved (unless you had it at max ). It does not matter whether you click to increase or decrease the volume ... it will decrease with the first click. After that first click the slider will then work as expected, increasing or decreasing the sound for corresponding clicks.

Of course, I am not really concerned that the sliders work correctly ... the problem is that I get my ears blasted loading a saved game if I have my headphones on at the time. Please fix this!

Master Marcus

on May 20, 2006

Because of a ''corrupted'' save game ( huge map, starting to crash around 280-300 turns ), I had to complete it ''in extremis'' by loading a previous auto save for a political victory instead of the ''manu military'' I wanted...... Have a high end machine + all latest drivers & updates, so I really hope 1.2 brings a solution as to fix the ''turn crash syndrome'' ( thereafter a black screen leading to desktop ) - that some ( many?...) of us are experiencing when playing mid-late games on huge maps.

This is a serious issue; otherwise why the options to play even larger maps like gigantic when the acceptable level of stability remains on medium-large maps as things are right now....

puntarenas

on May 20, 2006

(...) but we'll see how you guys like the current implementation of "No Auto-Focus" and see if it's what you're looking for (but FYI, it fixed all my problems with the feature).

Thanks, I will try to stay patiently. It's just so hard, because with my 30 years I feel like a 12 year old child again that's naughty and doesn't want to go to bed because of his new amazing computer game.

Shame on me, or better, shame on you! Give me my life back ... hmm ... but first give me 1.2

Drengin

on May 20, 2006

This is a serious issue; otherwise why the options to play even larger maps like gigantic when the acceptable level of stability remains on medium-large maps as things are right now....

Not had a problem with this myself since the 1.11 update and i play gigantic maps only

Drengin

on May 20, 2006

BB/CariElf..........

BETA... BETA... BETA... BETA... BETA... BETA... BETA... BETA... BETA...

Kosty

on May 20, 2006

It should be possible to add a function to not auto-select ships as well, but that will take more work and it seemed to me that the major complaint was that the camera got moved all over the place.

The toggle of "no auto-select" would really solve the problem, but IF the "no autofocus" would allow the camera and map to be stationary over the zoomed in map, and if by left clicking you can override the selected ship to be moved, that would solve the problem.

I want to move all the ships that interact with each other at the same time, and they are usually in the same or adjacent sectors.

I don't want to be distracted to have to move an irrelevent ship, not related to the sector I am concentrating on.

Walldorf2000

on May 22, 2006

we decided to err on the side of generosity because that generally results in less ranting

These are the things you need to know to get the development lead

Thank you very much once again

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