Lead Developer, Stardock Entertainment

I killed a lot of bugs this week. 

We're getting close on the invisible ships bug, which we were finally able to reproduce here, but only in release mode, which means that we're debugging it with output statements, so it's taking awhile. 

We did manage to determine that it is unrelated to the "Warning: Clone Frames Failed" message in your debug.err files.  That happens every time you go to build a starbase that is not on a resource or an ascension crystal.  The next build after this one will fix that. 

Of particular interest to me this week is if you notice the AI creating too many space miners.  I went through the AI code and I think that I found the cause so I tweaked the functions that set the colony's military project for Brad since Brad is still not feeling well. 

We're getting close. 

+ NEW: Enabled modded campaigns

+ NEW: Hooked up new Ascension victory cutscene

+ NEW: Dread Lords and Minor races now have their own tech trees.

+ FIXED: Added code to update the planet overlay after auto updating improvements or auto terraforming

+ FIXED: Added code to planet::trade to make ejected ships set new home planet, which should fix bug where AI ships try to go home to a planet that their civ no longer owns.

+ FIXED: Bug where AI designed ships didn't show up in the upgradewnd

+ FIXED: Changed the core scout to use a tiny hull so that you can build it and removed hyperdrive

+ FIXED: Core Ship designs will now strip components that they can't use so that races can still build them (eg Arceans will now be able to build core colony ships minus engines)

+ FIXED: Code when removing ship components to be more efficient and to not lose stats.  Now ships that have a tech requirement in their xml file will retain that requirement even if the ship design is edited.

+ FIXED: Took out line from AISetColonyMilitaryProject that was not in Drengin AI which is the probable cause of the space miner spam.  Also added code to prevent it from trying to build ships it hasn't designed yet.

+ FIXED: Added check to keep minor races from placing spies

+ FIXED: Now saving the weapon and defense focus variables so that they won't be reset to defaults when loading a save game.

+ FIXED: Bug where ShipDesignFocusWnd reset the sliders to the default after loading a save game

+ FIXED: Logic error that was causing the blank thumbnails when upgrading a ship design, which also caused memory leaks.

+ FIXED: Bug that caused the context area to not show any information except about Ascension crystals once an ascension crystal was clicked on

+ FIXED: Bug where Ascension victory was not being handled correctly and was resulting in a military loss (default for unknown game over condition).

+ FIXED: Bug where certain races didn't have anything regarding their relations with you in their reports when playing as certain races. This would have occurred for the Drengin viewing Torians, Iconians viewing various races, and Drath viewing Altarians. 

+ FIXED: Bugs with initializing asteroid fields and other game objects

+ FIXED:  Missing image for Interstellar refinery

+ FIXED: Crash caused when Terror star blew up colony with an agent on it

+ FIXED:  Bug where after a starbase built on an ascension crystal is destroyed, the ascension crystal reappeared but was not detected by the mouse hit detection or collision detection code

+ FIXED: Bug where ships designed for the player by the AI were not showing up under Core ships filters on most lists

+ FIXED: Bugs with having the dreadlords in a scenario

+ FIXED:  Bug in the resource manager that may have caused textures not to load

+ FIXED: Whoever manually edited starbaseModules.xml forgot to put closing tags for the "Mining Matrix" and "Advanced Mining Matrix" modules they added.  Fixed it in twilight/data/english as well as twilight/metaverseData/English

+ TWEAK: Disabled playing DA or DL campaign in TA

+ TWEAK: Took out skip internet check option because it doesn't do anything

+ TWEAK: Added code to make sure that the AI is not affected by auto launch code

+ TWEAK: Increased max number of asteroid fields to 500 from 250 so that the game won't run out of available asteroid fields when destroying star systems with Terror stars. May increase it further for custom maps.

+ TWEAK: Assigned Ascension victory weight of 2.5

+ TWEAK: Added code to print out AI intelligence values to debug.err when loading a save game

+ TWEAK: AI will now design ships for player after unlocking ship components or researching miniaturization

+ TWEAK: Fixed typo in Krynn Tech tree

+ TWEAK: Made it so that you can't select the dread lords tech tree to use for your race

+ TWEAK: in scenario editor, made it so you can't set the Dreadlords as the player race.  This was a bug that existed in the old scenario editor and was overlooked until a user had pointed it out to Cari today.

+ TWEAK: In an effort to get more information about why some ships are invisible, I added information to the “CloneFrames failed” message


Comments (Page 1)
3 Pages1 2 3 
on Apr 10, 2008
As always, a perfect gift for the weekend!


which we were finally able to reproduce here, but only in release mode, which means that we're debugging it with output statements,


That's gotta hurt... I had to do the same thing this week...


+ TWEAK: Assigned Ascension victory weight of 2.5


That actually makes it a viable option score wise, if I'm not mistaken. At least more so than Influence victory. Glad to see it, even if Metaverse is still disabled.
on Apr 10, 2008

That actually makes it a viable option score wise, if I'm not mistaken. At least more so than Influence victory.

Yes.  It falls between Military Conquest and Influence Victory.  I figured that since the AI gangs up on you when you start getting close, it'll be harder than Influence, but it's still not as hard as a military victory.

 

on Apr 10, 2008
Hrm, SDC is showing 0.98b[b].001, but Impulse only shows 0.98a[b].010.

-HM
on Apr 10, 2008
COOL!!!!!!!!!!
on Apr 10, 2008
We downloaded from SDC...the impulse servers may not have been synched yet.
on Apr 10, 2008
But we WANT to be able to play as the Dread Lords............
on Apr 10, 2008
Thanks BoogieBac - it's on Impulse now (as 0.98b[b].010)!

-HM
on Apr 10, 2008
Excellent! Have a free night tonite. I know what I'll be doing...finally able to sit down and play this puppy.    As always, thanks for the outstanding effort!
on Apr 10, 2008
Metaverse games still not enabled

Nice update though
on Apr 11, 2008
Is SDC going to be discontinued for updates? Tried using Impulse- it worked but I had to re-download the whole game for both DA and TA to do so. I think that may be a one time deal, and maybe due to my DA registration being wonky (not a big issue- I can just type it in manually and I'm fine- so no need to complain- and it was my fault.)

on Apr 11, 2008
That's actually a known issue. There are a few paths missing in the windows registry so Impulse doesn't recognise DA / TA if installed via SDC.

If you had looked into the Impulse forums, you had seen that you simply need to add the path from the Dread Lord entry to DA / TA and everything works fine.
on Apr 11, 2008
No...SDC and Impulse will live in tandum for a while (once Impulse is officially released). For now, I'd say use SDC if you want to make sure everything works right.
on Apr 11, 2008
But we WANT to be able to play as the Dread Lords............


Yes, will we? What else should the unique trees be for?
on Apr 11, 2008
Excellent!

I'll be certain to play it tomorrow... after I get some sleep (darn late night Computer Science homework).

I killed a lot of bugs this week.


I hope that they weren't any spiders among them. They will gladly help you find bugs... and to 'dispose' of them.

+ FIXED: Bug where ships designed for the player by the AI were not showing up under Core ships filters on most lists


Thanks, Its a pain to have to sort large numbers of ships AI designed ships when you want to design your own. It makes having a second set of ship designs 'just in case' easier to manage.

By the way, have you considered making a separate tab to place the AI designed ships into?

+ FIXED: Crash caused when Terror star blew up colony with an agent on it


Quit nerfing Terrorstars... You know that something is uber powerful when it causes the game to crash.
on Apr 11, 2008
FIXED: Crash caused when Terror star blew up colony with an agent on it

Quit nerfing Terrorstars... You know that something is uber powerful when it causes the game to crash.


Yeah, instead implement the implosion of my PC on terror star use - i want them to live up to their name.
3 Pages1 2 3