Getting ready for the beta

Published on February 4, 2005 By CariElf In GalCiv Journals

A lot of the work that we've been doing so far has been work that previewers need to see. Now we have to get a lot of stuff in that has to be in for the beta. Up until now, the economy has been the same GC1 economy. Next week, we'll be starting to implement the new economy based on the new planet system. So I got the domestic economy screen working. There's a bug somewhere in the screen file so it isn't displaying correctly and it's the dirty graphics anyway so no screenshot of it this week. It will have the same functionality as the old one.

I also got the troop loading dialog done, and I had to define the colony and troops modules so that I could actually load troops on my colony and transport ships. There is a key addition to this dialog which many of you will love: there are now buttons to the left and right of the slider which will add a specific increment to the troops/colonists loaded. Currently I have them set to 100. So the left button takes off 100 troops, and the right button adds 100 troops. So you won't have to mess with the slider as much.

Joe noticed that one of the status bars on the ship design screen wasn't working, so I went into our TexturePainter class and found out why. We had added stretching code to the main texture handling code, but the status bars (which have a foreground and a background unlike most of the controls) handle it a bit differently and it wasn't handling stretching correctly. Really, though, it should have been using the same code from the beginning, so I consolidated the code and now everything works.

We were also having issues with creating galaxies larger than medium, so I fixed that bug, and along the way I fixed a bug where a lot of stars and planets weren't getting placed properly. So now we can fit 8 races into a tiny galaxy again. Yay!

Here's a screenshot to show you the tiny galaxy with 8 races (on the minimap), and the troop loading dialog:

edit: I'm organizing the directory where I store my screenshots, so I had to update the links.

Comments

Solitair

on Feb 05, 2005

population and you may want different size ships for different tasks.

Paul.

Weyrleader

on Feb 06, 2005

Looks great. I like the fixed add in addition to the slider for loading the colony ships.

Psyringe

on Feb 06, 2005

incredibly lazy when it comes to UIs and I always hunt for possibilities to save clicks.

SEB9

on Feb 06, 2005

get a warm fuzzy feeling when successfully bug hunting, especially when delving into countless lines of code - bravo CariElf

Creighton

on Feb 06, 2005

with their crew loaded and prepayed, because I can imagine situations where you wouldn't want the extra cost.

bonscott

on Feb 07, 2005

Like the +/- 100 buttons. Hopefully something similar will work it's way into the negotiation screens for money transactions. Maybe a +/-10 there or something.

Good work!

CariElf

on Feb 07, 2005

to fine tune it. And depending on how many modules you can fit on a colony or transport ships, I was thinking that I could make the button values change to be -1000 and +1000 if necessary.

Zoomba

on Feb 08, 2005

t being so early in development, I can't wait to get my hands on the beta!

Lord_StarPilot

on Feb 08, 2005

Looking great! Hey, up and down 100 buttons? Fantastic! A great little addition to make players lives easier, and get on with enjoying the game!

Thanks for all the hard work!

AngleWyrm

on Feb 08, 2005

little claim-stakers, design a large colony ship that contains several colony modules holding lots of people. And one could design a mid-size colonizer that holds just the right amount for a good start on a typical world.

Solitair

on Feb 11, 2005

I like the idea of a small colony ship with a single module, but with lots of engines and range enhancements. Fast, long range, but very small and weak colony. Perfect for staking claims,

Paul.

Martin the Dane

on Feb 12, 2005

ning level and veterans.

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