Things I like in the GalCiv III Alpha.

from GalCiv3 Forums

All those bug reports and endless feedback posts can become a bit depressing eventually. So I thought I would make a thread dedicated to things I liked in the Game so far. :grin:   There are many things I like about the Game but listed here are mostly things that sort of took me by surprise.

 

1. The game loads very fast! I have it installed on a regular HDD but it feels as though Its on a SSD. Maybe that is a feature of the Alpha not having many of the game functions loaded but still, it seems fast.

 

2. The Intro is badass: I like the Intro. The animators and composers did a great job. It looks professional and it is epic. I had the goosebumps when the Terran ship warped in and started mowing enemy vessels in half. 

If I had one critic to make it would be about those ''PewPew'' Rifles. They make a somewhat goofy cliché laser sound.  Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Just saying. Maybe I am the only one who thought of that.


 3. The Music is very Good! So far what we have in the Alpha and the Vault is very high quality, not just the sound quality but the composition work too. This is significantly better than what we get in most games nowadays. I would hug StarDock for not neglecting this aspect. 

4. End of turn automated ship movements are simultaneous: I was very pleased by that. No longer waiting 5 min for my 40 transport ships to move one after the other.

5. Notifications on the End turn button. I think this is a good thing to have idle colonies, idle ships or no research reminded to you. While I like it, maybe make it toggable in the options, im sure some people out there might be annoyed by it. I still hope we get proper start of turn GNN/notification in the beginning of each turns though.

6. The production wheel. There has been some critics to it, but personally I think it's great at what it aims to be. I found it extremely instinctive to use. I needed zero adaptation time and could immediately tweak it to get the values I wanted out of it. Much more efficient and fun to use than the 3 sliders in GalCiv 2.

7. The little (dum dum) sound at the end of a turn. It is not much but I still like it. Even more usefull in MP to announce the beginning of your turn. 

8. The overall look of the UI. The black and neon theme is pleasing to me. I especially like those 4 icons in the research Screen.

 

9. DESTROY PLANET!!

Seriously we can do that?

Having problems with a particular Pesky planet?

With GalCiv III you are no longer forced to suffer the existence of that miserable dirt ball. With the simple press of a button you can rid the universe of that spaceblight. Creating dust clouds has never been so easy as with StarDock's exclusive InstaDoomsDay™ Technology.

 

 

 

12,001 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

What I like most in first released GC III Alpha build is that it is almost as polished as Elite: Dangerous Alpha 1.0 was.

 

I was expecting runtime errors / BSODs when trying to start the client at worst, CTD-fest and non-working features that should have worked already at best.

 

What I got?

Download & install: success 1st try

Start the Client: success 1st try

CPU sweating its ass off: all cores utilized 60-80% with 3 opponents and most of the galaxy colonised (initially habitable planets)

CTDs: none in 3 hours of play time (two sessions, ~2 hours first and ~1 hour then)

Implemented features working: at least 95% of the time, only 'cannot colonise planet' bug and infinite attacks on stack bug encountered a couple of times so far

 

WTF? You call this Alpha? Half of publishers would call this Beta and some would call this 1.0 Retail! :P

 

No probs, I fully expect some CTDs & other 'oddities' to report as the testing process goes on. ;)

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Have to agree, really enjoying the experience. I'd like to give some constructive criticism for you guys, but apart from what would only be shameless wish-listing I really haven't encountered anything that's truly bothered me yet (accepting the current stage of development that the game is in). Kudos, looks very promising :)

As always, love some of the tech and event scripts. "Destroying an artifact of such religious significance enhances your peoples' reputation as evil bastards", these games make me laugh more than any other :D

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I like the alpha, but without diplomacy/the shipyard/big maps, the game is really only a shadow of what it could be. 

The final release can't come soon enough! :D

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting ParagonRenegade, reply 3

I like the alpha, but without diplomacy/the shipyard/big maps, the game is really only a shadow of what it could be. 

The final release can't come soon enough!

If the current AI were actually active (in wars too!), it could be "fun". I miss diplomacy a lot too but it'll come in time. Ship Viewer would be legendary and cannot wait to mess with it. :)

In addition, I had no issues with the game so far beyond the bugs already mentiones in the forums, like planet colonization. No crashes, all text in its place,... If I actually had a proper computer, it would be even better.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

GalCiv 3 Alpha is way better polished and stable than most current released games of the past decade.

Sure, a lot of content is still missing, but many other companies would have already failed with just what we have now in the alpha.
I could call out some companies now, but everyone knows them (some of the big ones).

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Wintersong, reply 4

If the current AI were actually active (in wars too!), it could be "fun".

 

I agree. So it isn't just me then who has the AI building ships and then just parking them outside their planet? :)

 

They seem to produce and improve their planets and also colonize (not quite that intelligently yet... have see many class <10 planets taken in favour of the class 23 planet in the next few hexes) and survey which is good start but apart from that it doesn't feel like there is much AI there. Perfectly understandable at this point though.

 

Completely agree with ParagonRenegade that the game is still a shadow...albeit a promising one. I am still pretty impressed by the Alpha overall, have played for about 8 hours now finishing a game and not experienced any crashes or lock ups which is certainly commendable and a lot better than I expected. Can't wait for the 'fun' and features to start trickling in through 2014.

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

4. End of turn automated ship movements are simultaneous: I was very pleased by that. No longer waiting 5 min for my 40 transport ships to move one after the other.

I did'nt realized it at first, but now you say that, yes it is a great feature indeed.

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The Intro generally was great one thing though the Thalians look rather lame like humanoids with their arms on backwards, it's not that I think all aliens should be humanoid just that those arms don't look like they could be co-ordinated very well with the rest of it's body. The way it's arms fit it's body just doesn't look like it's practical for hand eye co-ordination.

 

Think they should be re-though.

 

Having said that the rest of the intro is great and the quality is good.

 

For an alpha what is their is pretty polished apart from the colony screen, though a lot is missing at this stage that I look forward to seeing.

 

It started fine first time on my system no crashes in the ten minutes I actually got last night to play it.

 

 

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Totally concur with Mr. EvilMaxWar here. Love the trailer and I'm also pretty pleased with the other things he has mentioned so no need to reiterate them all here again. After about 7+ hours of game play and just finishing one game with all races included, I've had no CTDs at all, haven't experienced some of the bugs mentioned other then the two things I posted about in another thread. Brad mentioned that they were concerned about the state of the alpha before release and that he wanted it to be more polished than a typical alpha. Well, congrats gents, you did very well indeed. I'm only more excited/anxious than I was before seeing it to have more updates and finally get my grubby little hands on the release! Here's hoping that we actually do get a new build today. :beer:

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Same here about bugs and CTD, not many of them so far.  Game runs very well for an alpha. I had the Cannot colonize glitch, but it is understood and gonna be fixed in the patch. Beside this only a single CTD in a multiplayer game.