Lead Developer, Stardock Entertainment
Published on October 18, 2007 By CariElf In GalCiv Journals


** Major Changes **

+ High Score List: Lets you keep track of scores on local games

+ New Governor 'Reroute Ships': Send All ships of a given type to a specific rally point. Colonies building the ship type will also change their rallypoint destination to the specified rallypoint.

+ New Governor 'Colony Reassignment': Switch military production on colonies going to a given rally point

+ Event Log: List that keeps track of the major events that occur throughout each game

+ Memory Optimizations: Tweaked several areas to cut down on memory usage, and stomped out some glaring memory leaks, allowing lower-end machines to run gigantic galaxies more efficiently (and improve performance across the board)

+ Lease and Maintenance Tab: Helps players to manage your weekly expenditures

+ Screenshot Hotkey: CTRL + 'PrintScreen' will now take a snapshot and store it in your 'My Documents/My Games/GC2DarkAvatar/Screenshots' folder

+ Anomalies Reappear: Survey ships are now of greater importance with the addition of re-spawning anomalies to the galaxy

+ Ability to Rename Stars: Button added for the renaming of...well...stars

+ AI Tweaks: Computer opponents should now put up a better fight

+ Improvements Tweaked: A value here, a new bonus there...several improvements are now 'more better' based on player feedback

+ Debug Output: Made debug.err always go in user defined data directory. This is to deal with problems encountered by people with limited user accounts and for consistency with Vista.


** Minor Tweaks **

+ Added standby mode for auto improve asteroids and auto survey ships.

+ Terran Alliance is now more inclined to focus on building larger starships.

+ Optimized AI sorting routines for better performance.

+ Spore module are more expensive.

+ Spore Weapons technology is more expensive.

+ Morale buildings are more powerful.

+ Capped the number of stars in a galaxy to reduce the amount of memory usage.

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

+ Made it so that the saved scoring information also saves mod name and description if mods are enabled.

+ If you update several planets, it will update all of them in the colony list.

+ Auto survey and auto improve standby modes are cancelled when you set an autopilot destination for the ship.

+ 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).

+ Fixed the sorting code in the governor's screen so that Nothing is always at the top.

+ 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.

+ Made the AI mark its old designs as obsolete so that we can tell which ones it's not using more quickly.

+ 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.

+ Auto attack is now canceled if UPIssue is preventing ship from attacking because of non-aggression UP issue.

+ Tweaked distribution of planet tile bonuses so that the starting home worlds are more likely to get bonuses distributed on them, but no more than 3 per planet.

+ Changed AI ship class naming convention so that if the AI designs new ships every week, it doesn't re-use the same class name, which can cause problems; the AI now tracks how many times it has designed a shiptype and uses that for the version number.

+ Blocked tiles map is now updated once per turn so that the code that uses it will be more accurate, reducing the chance of landing ships on anomalies, planets, etc.

+ Changed it so that the stacked ships and fleet windows recycle their entries so that they aren't constantly allocating and deallocating. The Stacked Ship context window will attempt to shrink the number of saved entries if it hasn't used the last max number in awhile.

+ Ships marked as destroyed are removed from the main list the first turn they are marked destroyed instead of waiting until they are deleted; this should fix crashes and prevent the AI from picking dead targets.

+ Added code to delete multiple ships at once from the maintenance tab.

+ The prompt to upgrade a starbase now lists what type of modules are available to build.


** Bugs Fixed **

+ Crash on some machines when star density is 0

+ Bug which caused animation in combat viewer to fire wrong weapon and/or fire at the wrong ship

+ Ship list entries were not being deleted when the ship was destroyed

+ Not all planet/ship list entries were being displayed

+ Mining base lines would not disappear if the base was destroyed because planet was traded or conquered.

+ The treasury display on the main ui was being constantly updated during the end of turn, thus causing slowdown

+ Rounding errors with bonus research production

+ Reduced some of the slowdown when moving a selected ship caused by updating the ship context area

+ Bug in Xeno Ethics that reset debt to 0 and converted the negative treasury balance to a lease

+ Took out some debug messages that were making debug.err files huge

+ Possible crash in ship components when removing old ship designs

+ Crash due to not checking the colonies for what ships they're building when checking if a ship class is still in use

+ 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

+ Bug that could cause AI ships to be created with the wrong ship class

+ Fleet context window was not updating after ship moved

+ Trade Window was not popping dialogs up over it

+ Cari squashed a spider last Wedensday

+ On the TradeWnd, the dialog warning that the other civ had no money was using the player's empire name

+ Bug in GraphWnd scaling code

+ Crash caused by AI ships holding on to ship destinations that were destroyed

+ Fixed bug where clicking on a ship would attempt to clear the selection flag for all ships in the galaxy, regardless of whether they were selected or not, causing lag

+ Bug where the turn button was always green even if there were ships with moves left

+ 'Weird minimap lines' bug

+ Starbases were being added to the moveable ship list, which caused the end of turn button to never come back

+ Bug where ignored races still could be chosen in the Opponentwnd

+ Planet thumbnails were not being reused even if the planet surfaces were identical

+ Removed unnecessary information to be saved in save games

+ In the Dread Lords campaign, when playing from Dark Avatar, it was not possible to continue due to it not finding the location of the next
mission's files

+ Bug in the Dread Lords campaign when playing from Dark Avatar where scenarios with the Dread Lords would never end because they had the incorrect race ID

+ Bug with activation code on Win98.

+ Changed code that writes out debug messages to be more threadsafe

+ Made it so that the dxpacks are kicked out of memory after the screen has been created if there are not multiple instances of the screen, like custom list box entries, thus reducing the amount of stuff kept in memory.

+ Changed screen code to make sure that the textures created for the screens do not create mip map chains, which are unnecessary in screens and just take up more memory

+ Crash caused by not being able to find strings in the flavor text files (text that appears when the AI talks to you)

+ XML data saved at the end of a game was not saving campaign data if it wasn't a metaverse game

+ Crash in the rendering code related to alpha-blended graphics

1.80a changes:

+ New lightmap for the planets courtesy of Stefan and i-mod productions (found it!)
+ Minor AI tweaks
+ Raised the number of habitable planets
+ Fixed a crash on the Ship Upgrade screen when trying to upgrade an obsolete ship
+ Fixed the thumbnail on the ship logo in the Quick Build list
+ Found and fixed a bug where the graphics for obsolete ships were not being unloaded after the last obsolete ship was destroyed
 


 


Comments (Page 4)
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on Oct 21, 2007
Yes. That's a rather clunky way to implement this much-needed feature. How about a governor that can keep track of every starbase, letting you set how far you wish to upgrade it, then automatically routing all constructors to multiple starbases at once. I should be able to plan out in advance what upgrades a starbase will get so that I don't have to decide on an upgrade for multiple bases many times each turn. When you have 30 to 40 starbases, all in varying states of construction, and just about as many planets building constructors, it can get a little hard to manage.

With the current system, what would I do if I wanted to route a third of my constructors to one base, a third to another, and a third to yet another?
on Oct 22, 2007
With the current system, what would I do if I wanted to route a third of my constructors to one base, a third to another, and a third to yet another?


i've thought something along the longs of what you describe would be helpful, but i don't think it'd be easy, and i'm not sure it'd be any less clunky. for example, how much harder would it be to have the shipyards route their 'structors intelligently (that is, the closest third of planets to each respective SB)?

it'd take some manual setup, but the rally point system would work. i mean, most of the SBs i build don't take that many 'structors to begin with (weapons and defenses are a waste for the most part). when i am trying to max out SBs for some odd reason or another, i usually find it's easiest to do them one at a time and use the rally point gov's.

perhpas in another update - i think the big emphasis at the moment is on Twilight.
on Oct 23, 2007
Great update, the respawning anomalies was a fantastic idea, but maybe I'm being dense, but wasn't this update going to implement more mega events?
on Oct 23, 2007

What happened to the Constructor Manager that was promised for this patch? Why was it not included? I've had to stop playing GalCiv2 because managing constructors and starbase upgrades is so tedious. When can we expect this feature?

That will be in 2.0. 

on Oct 23, 2007

What happened to the Constructor Manager that was promised for this patch? Why was it not included? I've had to stop playing GalCiv2 because managing constructors and starbase upgrades is so tedious. When can we expect this feature?


That will be in 2.0. 




Argh! More waiting. But it will be worth it. Thank you for not dropping the feature entirely. Those of us who play exclusively on the largest maps all thank you! Hopefully the starbase manager will be comprehensive, allowing us to plan out our upgrades in advance, as I suggested above. But even a rudimentary manager that helps us direct our constructors will be a godsend. I eagerly await version 2.0.
on Oct 23, 2007
I am getting close to the end of my game but the alinment is broken in it. I should be good but it says no alinment. I forgot what your email was to send my save game too.
on Oct 23, 2007

I am getting close to the end of my game but the alinment is broken in it. I should be good but it says no alinment. I forgot what your email was to send my save game too.

You can send it to gc2bugs@stardock.com

 

on Oct 23, 2007
Good work on the update people!
on Dec 24, 2007
Hi there, I'm sorry I have some question.

sometimes, when I load my saving game (galactic civilizations 2 gold : dark avatar) it crashes, the load screen did'nt move


When I quit game too, it crashes (12 races - with the minors races), is it normal ???
The pacthe 1.8 wipe out this problem ???
on Jan 15, 2008
I'd like to say 1.8g runs great for me. Super job on the fixes. Otherwise I have some minor annoyances I'd like to mention here, hope that's okay.

There's a big lag opening the colony list when it's really long. Interestingly, there's no lag the first time it's opened after a game load, regardless of how long the list is.

When using the ship or project quick build from within the colony list, there's a wait for the operation to complete. It makes the function time consuming and defeats the purpose. Also, using the project quick build clears the highlighted line so there's no way to keep my place. Buying ships does the same thing, but I can tell where I am because the ship build time changes to zero.

Please, please add a "buy all ships of a type currently building" function. Something similar for projects would be helpful as well.

Thanks,

- Craig

on Jan 15, 2008

There's a big lag opening the colony list when it's really long. Interestingly, there's no lag the first time it's opened after a game load, regardless of how long the list is.

Yeah, it's creating all the entries the first time.  After that it only has to update it if you colonize another planet or destroy a colony, etc. so all it does is unhide it.  I could maybe pre-create the entries since I'll know how many planets there are at the beginning of the game, but that would add to the initial load time.

on Jan 15, 2008
I can't speak for everyone, but I would gladly trade some load time to improve the performance of the list. I play a lot of the game from there so any improvement is going to be greatly appreciated.

Since we're on the subject of the colony list, I'd like to mention one other thing. DL would remember the previous sort and use it as a secondary sort criteria. That was actually pretty handy for me. DA doesn't seem to have any secondary sort criteria at all. Would it be possible to reinstate that?

on Feb 29, 2008
+ Improvements Tweaked: A value here, a new bonus there...several improvements are now 'more better' based on player feedback


Any chance on a detailed list of these changes?



I never did see this posted anywhere else, so I did a diff on the planetaryimprovements.xml file before and after the patch.

Here are the changes:

1 - Galactic Showcase's description now states it affects Diplomacy, instead of Influence

2 - Entertainment Network now adds +10 morale, instead of 5

3 - Multimedia Center now adds +15 morale, instead of 10
on Apr 21, 2008
did anyone else notice colony module capacity is 250 instead of 500?

or is that just mine?

thanks garrett
on Apr 23, 2008
This might be addressed in another area;

When bartering with the AI and click "money" icon and it puts the number the AI wants, it will sometimes leave out a number.

So when it's really 9372, it might read "937" or something like that. Anyone else have a problem in that area?
(Running fully patched)
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