Lead Developer, Stardock Entertainment
Published on October 11, 2007 By CariElf In GalCiv Journals
Our primary concern with this update was stability and the out of memory issue. If you're hitting the 2 GB mark with your games, I highly recommend turning down the Planet Surface variety option to zero (this will help most if you have the heightmaps module installed). At this point, BoundsChecker is only reporting about 35 K of leaks, and I suspect that most of those are actually false positives because I've stepped through that code and it appears to be actually deallocating the memory. Most of the remaining problems are caused by graphics being kept in memory longer than they should, and that's not something that I can fix in a week. However, if you save your game, exit, and then reload, you'll notice a significant drop in memory usage because those unused graphics are not being loaded back in with the save game. This has been true for awhile, and it's not a solution, but at least it's a workaround.

+ FIX: Changed the way that save games are saved so that you won't lose your previous auto save if you fail to save (due to out of memory, etc).

+ FIX: Whenever a planet changes ownership, any trade routes involving the planet are cancelled

+ FIX: There was a bug where mining base lines would not disappear if the base was destroyed because planet was traded or conquered.

+ FIX: Added code to flush planet textures and thumbnails between games, which should help prevent leaks due to CTRL+N

+ FIX: Added code to cancel auto attack if UPIssue is preventing ship from attacking because of non-aggression issue

+ FIX: Added check in code to distribute bonuses for if it runs out of planets to prevent a possible endless loop

+ FIX: There bug in the AI ship design code that was causing multiple ship designs to be created with the same exact name, which could cause memory leaks and graphical glitches

+ FIX: Removed code that could cause AI ships to be created with the wrong ship class

+ FIX: Re-wrote the sorting code in the governor's screen so that Nothing is always at the top.

+ FIX: Changed it so that all textures not generated by the game (like thumbnails) and not in dxpacks should be loaded (and flushed) by the resouce manager, which should help keep memory usage down

+ FIX: Changed the code that cleans up the obsolete AI designs because it was letting the designs hang around in memory even after no ships were using it

+ FIX: Eliminated crash in ship components when removing old ship designs

+ FIX: The code that cleans up old ship designs makes sure that no planets are building ship designs before deleting it

+ FIX: Added code to make sure that the AI doesn't leave its survey ships and miners in the standby state.

+ FIX Capped the number of possible stars in a randomly generated galaxy (ie not a custom map) to be 300, which should help with the memory problems.

+ TWEAK: Thumbnails are now 64 x 64 instead of 128 x 128, to reduce memory usage

Comments (Page 1)
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on Oct 11, 2007
just downloaded.

day off, have a darn cold (yay michigan, from a high of 90 to 45 in two days rar).

wondering if you could take a look at the "Crtl L" cheat/feature and bump the population up from 100million to 1b.. would make testing mods etc much easier.

as always, thanks for the time and passion for perfection.
on Oct 11, 2007
This is really great a job well done.

Idea re rights of passage (which you don't have to answer just think about)

What if there was a threaten to declare war tag/button where we state like the AI that we will declare war unless certain payments etc are made. This would give the AI an opportunity to try and get out of the war especially if their military are down or income is low etc. or if they think they can beat us, they can tell us to go to hell.

Regardless of the outcome we then get to choose whether to go to war or not after their response.

It similar to what they do to us. It would just make it fair for us to be able to threaten a littlen like them.
on Oct 12, 2007
Lynx > Nice idea
on Oct 12, 2007
Cari just to let you know 1.70c[b].001 remains in the available column after updating to 1.70d[b].001 in SDC!
on Oct 12, 2007
Cari just to let you know 1.70c[b].001 remains in the available column after updating to 1.70d[b].001 in SDC!


Shutting down SDC and restarting it removes it (though, as nited, it shouldn't be there after the update at all).
on Oct 12, 2007
Sweet.
on Oct 12, 2007
+ FIX Capped the number of possible stars in a randomly generated galaxy (ie not a custom map) to be 300, which should help with the memory problems.


That won't affect gameplay in the smaller galaxy sizes I tend to play, but it sounds like it could be a big change for huge and gigantic galaxies. Is there any way to make this an optional feature?
on Oct 12, 2007
I won't be able to try the beta for about a week, but I just wanted to say thanks for aggressively developing and supporting this game! I just was able to get beta 3 and its performance is significantly better on my creaky old machine.
on Oct 12, 2007
+ TWEAK: Thumbnails are now 64 x 64 instead of 128 x 128, to reduce memory usage



Bad looks like crap !!! IMHO go back to the way they were 128 x 128 !!!

on Oct 12, 2007
Which Thumbnails? I haven't noticed any difference.
on Oct 12, 2007
yes, the thumbnails look really bad. Please go back to 128 x 128.
on Oct 13, 2007
They are supposed to look that bad? I thought it was a bug so emailed a screenshot etc in
on Oct 13, 2007
There is something I'd like to show you but I don't know how to post a image and I can't find the instruction on how to do it. Help?
on Oct 13, 2007
Posting images

Since the betas the remaing movement points aren't updated in realtime. I always have to click the selected ship or fleet again to see how many moves it has left. Is that only me or do you all get that?
on Oct 13, 2007
+ FIX Capped the number of possible stars in a randomly generated galaxy (ie not a custom map) to be 300, which should help with the memory problems.

+ TWEAK: Thumbnails are now 64 x 64 instead of 128 x 128, to reduce memory usage


Please remove these before final 1.7

While I appreciate the performance tweeking, please stop punishing those of us that have adequate machines. I guess I'll stick with beta 3 for now.

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