Teasers

Published on May 13, 2005 By CariElf In GalCiv Journals

The best thing about working on Gal Civ 2 is that this time around, I have the advantage of more experience coding computer games. I think that any coder will agree with me that (in general) the more code that you write, the better code you write. You learn how to do things better, faster, and cleaner.

Besides working on screens this week, I've fixed some bugs. I fixed the edge scrolling bug, which turned out to be caused by an uninitialized variable, as opposed to an error in the mouse coordinates as I had surmised. I also fixed a bug where a fullscreen window wasn't moving the titlebar offscreen. I fixed a crash caused by ships on autosurvey. I mostly fixed the status bar and slider code, but there are a few inconsistencies with the way that the graphics are set up, so those will need to be fixed. I also fixed the bug where the Are You Sure prompt for deleting or overwriting a save game wasn't coming up until after all the other windows were closed.

I finished the Domestic Trade screen except the minimap isn't drawing, but I'll need Joe's help to fix that. Mormegil finished the new graphics for the Random Event screen, so I tweaked that. The new Galaxy Setup screen is in the game, and last but not least, so is the Planet/Ship list!

I had really liked working on the Planet and Ship lists in GC1, and they're even better in GC2. The Planet/Ship list is brought up by one of the buttons in the button bar and you toggle between showing the ships and the planets. Currently they show all the same information as the old ones did, although we need to get the icons in for the ship windows that show if a ship is in guard mode, etc. Each list has 4 filter buttons. For the planet list, you can show all planets that are not hidden by the FOW, just your planets, just the alien planets, or just the unowned planets. For the ship list, you can show all the ships not hidden by the FOW, just your ships, just the alien ships, and the starbases. In GC1, the starbases were displayed along with the ships, but you couldn't filter the ship list in GC1 and the state of being a starbase isn't mutually exclusive with being owned by either you or the AI. It would be a lot more complicated to show the starbases along with the ships. Another improvement over GC1 is that you can use the mousewheel on the sort spinner now.

There's also a search button on both the ship and planet lists, so you'll be able to search for stars or planets by typing in their names. Currently, it's probably not that great for partial matches but I'll almost certainly be tweaking it later. Finally, remember how you could click on the current military or social project for a planet and it would bring up the Quick Build List? You can still do that in GC2, but for the social projects, it displays the current build queue and allows you to move one of the items to the front of the queue. If there is nothing in the queue, it brings up the planet window.

Oh, and I know that this will make a lot of you happy: I also made it so that you can rename planets and ships by clicking on their names in the context area.

Comments

Frogboy

on May 15, 2005

It's looking pretty good.

Lord_StarPilot

on May 16, 2005

Hurray! Go Cari go!

Looking forward to the next beta!

Nico56

on May 16, 2005

Totally agree with the coding thing. In just the past few years, my code is tighter, faster, and more productive. Many times I can re-use code easily with little or no changes, or bundle it all together as a separate project as a code repository.

Practice, practice, pratice...

gherardo

on May 17, 2005

One small question...
Why in GC1 the starbases were "victims" of the FOW?
Since they are stationary I should have a grab on them one I've found them.
Can we fix this in GC2?
gherardo

Lord_StarPilot

on May 17, 2005

Well, starbases weren't "persistant". They could have been destroyed. And, they weren't completely non-mobile. I don't know how the code treated things, but starbases could be upgraded to terror stars. So there is a plausible reason why they didn't remain "known" after first being found.

Dark-Star

on May 17, 2005

That is really exciting stuff. Man, I wish I worked at Stardock!!!

CariElf

on May 18, 2005

Well my reasoning was that you couldn't see alien ships under the FOW, so you shouldn't be able to see the starbases under them either unless you had a sensor drone or something like that in the area.

gherardo

on May 18, 2005

Cari, Star Pilot,
my thinking is that a starbase is more similar to a planet than to a ship, so at least I should get a marker that remembers me where it was last time. I agree a starbase can become a Terror stars (not common) or be destroyed (more common

) but a marker of the position should be acceptable.

gherardo

on May 18, 2005

By the way, could we be enabled to add markers on any place to remember "things"? Let's have 4 different types of markers if possible.

Lord_StarPilot

on May 18, 2005

You want to be able to mark up your starmap? IE, "name landmarks"? SMAC has that feature. It could be very handy. I understand some people are using Rally Points for that purpose in GC1. Such clever people!

I found in GC1, that it really wasn't an issue for long. Due to having to pop off a gazillion colony ships for morale purposes. I use those to push back the fog of war and "monitor" star bases and resources. Before scouts had a maintenance cost added to them, I used to park scout ships by alien star bases and future small PQ worlds (class 13 and 14).

Lucky_Jack

on May 23, 2005

Just a thought on the FOW, there is really a big difference between 1) what you can see at a particular point in time, 2) what you remember being at a particular spot and 3) what other races are willing to tell you about what they have. If we are in peaceful communications with another race, shouldn't you expect to exchange data freely (or somewhat freely) about what planets you own and what star bases you have constructed (maybe not of ships or terror stars)? And once you have discovered something by sensor, you would mark that on survey maps, even though your sensor platform moves. Also, if you go to war with a race, shouldn't that information flow stop? Then you would have information about where and what the status was of their stuff the last you knew, but things like improvements, defenses, star bases, etc. could change without you knowing about it until you could bring them into your sensor range again or re-establish peaceful communications with that race. Wouldn't it be interesting to have a spot marked on our survey maps as containing a star base, then bring our sensors to bare on that spot to find the star base gone? "Oh, Oh! This looks bad for the home team."

webnavigator

on May 27, 2005

About the planet name changing.... that is awesome

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