Twilight of the Arnor Beta 6c

Final beta!

Published on April 16, 2008 By CariElf In GalCiv Journals

We've got a week to go and things are looking pretty good. Our list of bugs fixed since the last update is actually longer than this, but I had to cut off what was going into the update or we still wouldn't have it up. At this point, we are looking for game breakers and typos.

Brad has locked himself in a room with a large supply of Coke and junk food and is making the final changes to the AI. Well, I'm exaggerating, but he is in AI coding mode as we speak. We're doing internal testing on the campaign and the rest of the editors. Everything else is bug fixes.

It's particularly important that if you have a save game that reproduces a bug that you zip it and attach it with your report to gc2bugs@stardock.com so that we can quickly and easily reproduce it and fix it. Also include your debug.err and if applicable, a crash log from SmartException.

+ FIXED: Invisible ships bug!

+ FIXED: Bug where minor races other than special ones like the Dread Lords have no range, causing them to fill up their orbits with constructors they couldn't use and prevented them from using ships given to them.

+ FIXED: Bug where autolaunch stopped working after loading a game from within a game

+ FIXED: Bug where ascension starbase didn't create a thumbnail

+ FIXED: Bug where a ship stacked on a starbase that got destroyed got turned into a starbase

+ FIXED: Bug where the ascension crystal didn't show up in the starbase details screen

+ FIXED: Bug where the AI would design a defender with no weapons for the player. While this can be useful to the AI, it's more just annoying to the player.

+ FIXED: Bug where model view wnd tried to create a node with an empty filename

+ FIXED: Option for AI to design ships for player is now on by default since the core ships are disabled. However, you may need to turn it on manually if you've been playing the betas since this option was added.

+ FIXED: Made option for AI to design ships for player ON by default

+ FIXED: Added code so that if your orbit slots are full but you have auto launch on, it will build the ship anyway and auto launch it

+ FIXED: Made it so that ships that require the ImpossibleTech won't show up in the stuff that the tech unlocks

+ FIXED: Made it so that the survey ship has the tech requirement ImpossibleTech so it won't show up in the available ship list, but everyone including the Arceans will get a fully powered version of the survey ship at the beginning of the game.

+ FIXED: A logic error in the code that checks to see if the AI will go to war to defend its friends

+ FIXED: Added Plague Cure and Disease Cure to the Yor's tech tree, and set them as starting techs in the race config. The techs are also set as non-tradable and non-stealable and have robot-race specific displaynames and descriptions (ie. they are called "Antivirus Software" and "Firewalls"). This will prevent the Yor from spending money on researching the techs and allows us to removed the hard-coded check that previously checked to see if the race was the Yor in the code that referenced the Plague and Disease events.

+ FIXED: Graphical glitch where engine areas of ships would disappear after adding additional engines to the ship in the ship designer

+ TWEAK: If created in a random event, the Dread Lords now instant terraform their planet and start with a scout in orbit

+ TWEAK: Sped up the function that checks for first contact between civs which should help reduce the turn time in late game

Comments (Page 1)

Achronous

on Apr 16, 2008

WooT! I wasn't expecting this, how nice! :backflips:

At last the invisible ships are gone!

I hope you guys and gals feel proud that it's slowly coming to release! Then it's some more resting time for you and play for us!

Let's make this beta go through its paces to make sure that the game is released as polished as possible.

pndrev

on Apr 16, 2008

Very cool! So now we could use these tech (or the Yor tree in general) for all synthetic races that wouldn't be affected by the events?

+ FIXED: Graphical glitch where engine areas of ships would disappear after adding additional engines to the ship in the ship designer

That one has been around for ages, hasn't it? Incidentally, I thought it was just a bug in my ATI driver and Vista...

Zyxpsilon

on Apr 16, 2008

Ploucks! The clocks are ticking... and i've got to go to the postal office to make that money-order of 29.95$US, tomorrow.

Ahhhh, can't wait; sadly though, this new gameplay setup on my F:drive will mean yet another modding delay for X-Worlds. Once the gaping smiles at the new features & TotA gimmicks are gone - it's back to X-Com stuff and how it will_should squeeze up (somehow) in the entirely new context.

I coulda been fun to BE into that beta-run and contribute also... but, ya know life goes on and i've got a real tight budget overhere & since i'm gonna have to work (the real thingy) a lot more over week-ends during the next few months (I 'supervise' a community residence for some special people.), my gaming_modding schedule will somehow suffer a bit. 40$ here, 20$ there. Maybe a new recent PC eventually.

And, **THE** Twilight expansion!

Dano13

on Apr 16, 2008

Brad has locked himself in a room with a large supply of Coke and junk food

Er ... you mean Coca-COLA right? Otherwise that is going to result in some SERIOUSLY paranoid AI!

CariElf

on Apr 16, 2008

Very cool! So now we could use these tech (or the Yor tree in general) for all synthetic races that wouldn't be affected by the events?[/quote]

Yes. You actually could have done this as a mod, but since we did it, it allowed us to take out the hardcoded check if (race == Yor) for those events. It also ensures that the AI won't try to spend money researching those techs when they were immune from the hardcoding.

Er ... you mean Coca-COLA right? Otherwise that is going to result in some SERIOUSLY paranoid AI!

[quote]

Haven't you seen how uptight the AI gets when you move a few lousy attack ships into their territory? Or maybe build a nice space water park near your borders? Seriously though, it is, Coca-cola. That's why I made sure to capitalize the Coke.

FireBender

on Apr 16, 2008

Umm, not sure if this is still in TA but there's a bug(exploit, really) that I've noticed that is present in both DL and DA. Since I don't have TA, I can't check.

If you click an AI's planet and go into the domestic policy screen and adjust any slider, you can see that planet's buildbar and adjust your strategy accordingly.

DivineWrath

on Apr 16, 2008

I guess we can make as many custom robotic races as we want now. All of them can immune to all diseases and plagues.

Brad has locked himself in a room with a large supply of Coke and junk food and is making the final changes to the AI. Well, I'm exaggerating, but he is in AI coding mode as we speak.

Do you think you can ask him to make a few more posts about the various tweaks he is doing for the various civs? They were interesting reads.

The 2 posts I can think of are "Twilight: Drengin Gambit" for the Drengin and "Twilight: Arcea's Last Stand" for the Arceans. He even mentioned giving a new constructor module for the Arceans that was cheaper than the default version.

Emperor_Seth

on Apr 16, 2008

It seemed not long ago Sardock released beta 1.

MADJOSEPH

on Apr 16, 2008

Yay Brad! Yay Stardock! Yay Patches!

Yay Coke!

CariElf

on Apr 16, 2008

Umm, not sure if this is still in TA but there's a bug(exploit, really) that I've noticed that is present in both DL and DA. Since I don't have TA, I can't check.If you click an AI's planet and go into the domestic policy screen and adjust any slider, you can see that planet's buildbar and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Could you give me a little more detailed instructions on how to reproduce this? I'm not exactly following you.

Do you think you can ask him to make a few more posts about the various tweaks he is doing for the various civs? They were interesting reads.

I'm sure that Brad will be posting as he makes his changes since he likes to do that, but I'll mention it to him.

Loupdinour

on Apr 16, 2008

+ TWEAK: If created in a random event, the Dread Lords now instant terraform their planet and start with a scout in orbit

oooo nice!!! No more sitting duck syndrome I hope.

Achronous

on Apr 16, 2008

I've posted this in another thread but since people are suggesting stuff here it goes again: the picture for the Starport is the same now as it was from the original game. I thought it would have been improved as well

Or is it left for the release?

CariElf

on Apr 16, 2008

We would like to update the starport image for release but we don't know if we'll have time.

Achronous

on Apr 16, 2008

Thanks Cari. I guess it can be updated in a later patch if you are pressed for time

Keilworth

on Apr 16, 2008

I've been having a lot of problems with minimizing the game and then it crashing when I try to return...anyone else had that problem? Chances of it being looked at...?

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