Oh please do, I'd love to read it!



And yes, I do agree. I have a B.S. in Computer Information Systems, and have been working on and off for the last 4 years as a programmer/analyst/system designer for small to medium businesses and I can say from experience, it is rare that a bug is so blatently obvious, or a design decision is so hidiously careless, that a reasonable arguement for how it happened or why the decision was made can not be profferred.
Usually, the single greatest concern is ROI, Return on Investment, that is, what do I get for the "effort" invested. In this case, just how much greater is the gaming experience if individual graphics are created. Is it enough to justify the additional cost of creating the graphic, (the artist's time, the review of the graphic designs by the ultimate decision makers...), the coding time, to include each graphic in the game, and to make sure that each new minor power uses a "unique" graphic, and not one that is already in play, or link each minor race to a specific graphic. And then make sure that the additional requirements on memory will not in and of itself cause other problems, i.e. playtesting and debugging .
The end result is, to conclude this already lengthy response, will game sales increase/decrease due to the 'new/lack of' graphics by an amount greater then the $ invested.
From where I sit, I seriously doubt it. If you decided to take the game back and get a refund, the company would lose $20-$30 dollars in gross sales. You complain to a bunch of your friends, which causes another $200-$300 in potential sales. Taken against the investment of $2000-$3000 to do the graphics, I'd say sorry GoblinCookie, no offense, but CTD and other bugs just somehow seem to have more precedence...

In the description of the Scout class ship, the plural is spelled as "Scout's".

http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif

but a picture is so easy make. there are plenty of artist out who will work for a low commission for a fairly decent piece of artwork.

He was talking about the Altarian Prophesy expansion beta, which saves games in a completely different format (and then fails to load them, so I hear).

~SDC~

Shambles10 - I can't believe that you've never played a game that's had a patch released for it which voided any prior save games!! I've seen many MANY patches state exactly that! It's a common occurrence in game updates, but more so in RPG/Strat games than in FPS RTS type games, so maybe that's why?

Agreed, but that implies that you are hiring freelance artists to work on the project, not staff artists, so the look and feel may not match as well with the other graphics in place. Then the graphic still needs to be incorporated into the game via code, contrary to popular belief, it ain't magic.

if ( !ship.isVisible() ){
    ship.makeVisible();
}
~SDC~
[Message Edited]

PJ, do you mean there is a fix for an unloadable AP save?
And if there is, can I download it from somewhere? (I started an AP game, but cannot continue (:( )
Anyway, I guess we'll soon have the next version,

~SDC~

LOL If it was that simple, I'm sure Stardock would have done that by now. From what I've heard, the disappearing ship bug is buried too far into the code to make it feasable to fix. I haven't ever come across the bug myself, so I'm not sure what circumstances it tends to present itself in or whether it is even experienced by everybody. :notsure:



Well, remember, AP is very much beta at this point. Just do like I do, curl up into a ball and repeat "It's just a beta, it's just a beta." LOL

btw, so THIS is how quoting works. Quoting doesn't seem to work for me in Mozilla so I decided to try on SDC.

Ships start to dissapear when you've been playing for a long time. Like, five hours straight. It's the game's way of telling you to find something better to do with your time.

All I know about the save game issue is what David Ennis said:





~SDC~

Ah, I almost never have 5 straight hours to blow on one activity, no matter how much I enjoy it.

At least the savegame problem in AP wasn't hard to fix.

CariElf,

giggle, giggle....boy do I love this....aaaaahhhhh..

Back to BIZ

You may have wondered WHY!? I have organized

THE CARIELF ARCHANGELS WARRIOR DIVISION

YES I KNOW! You detest violence.

I'm no talking violence. I would not whant to hurt customer relations....( the FROG would get angry )

BUT!!!

As a customer myself I LOVE voiceing my opinions TO!

IF EVER YOUR CURIOUS about MY OPINION ?

Just drop the thread and post# in the CFC

If I'm not there I'm SURE there's a ARCHANGEL around that will be MORE THAN HAPPY! to fill in.


P.S. PJ and Jamester2 I like your WINGS




[Message Edited]

yes theres a fix for the save game goof in AP and Cari's is gonna try to talk Brad into posting it tomorrow so everyone can get it and yes it works fine for me

~SDC~

Shambles you misread what I said the fix I'm talking about is for the pay addon not for your problem you need to start over sorry

~SDC~

#196 by Senator CariElf

I love that statement. It's the same I feel very often

#197 by Citizen PJ_

Very true indeed.

#201 by Citizen Jamester2

Again I can only agree.

#209 by Citizen Imaginos

Yes, quoting is broken for Netscape/Mozilla/Firebird etc. I would be very nice to have it (IE is much to dangerous to use in general). My workaround is to insert "[q uote]" and "[/q uote]" manually. (Just remove the space between "q" and "u" )

[Message Edited]

Thanks for that PJ. So there IS still hope.



Yes indeed there is hope! Thanks for the info David Ennis.

Thanks for trying to help with the Save game goof everyone, but I never said I was an AP Beta tester in the first place. I just picked up GalCiv recently and was playing the 1.12 build during my 1ST Campaign EVER and saw that there was a 1.13 update. I said ROCK ON...updated my game (in the MIDDLE of my 1ST Campaign...groan...live and learn), tried playing, and FAILURE. Now after I hit Next Turn, I get a VICTORY Screen! On ALL 15 of my Saves! Yikes. HORRIBLE BUG that needs squashing...

CariElf, if you're reading, PLEASE let me know if there will EVER be a fix for a Lowly Newbie's 1st Campaign 1.12 Save ruined by a 1.13 Update. Otherwise, I'll just have to pretend that a Galaxy Sized BLACK HOLE just swallowed up my poor unsuspecting Civ.

Or better yet...does anyone know if I can find the 1.12 Patch by itself? Perhaps I could just Backup my Saves, uninstall, reinstall, patch to 1.12, and then put back my saves? hhhmmmm

Thanks again!



~SDC~

carielf

the following is a minor bug. the alexian built gravity accelerator but the next turn they were conquered by the yor collective. i tried to see if i could trade for the gravity accelerators or even build one. but shifting through the tabs i found that one no on else had a gravity accelerator and no one could build one. i think if a race is gone and it has any major galactic achievements or even trade goods the goods should not be lost. either someone else can build it.... or the conquered race should gain it... i just dont like the idea of game mechanics being lost or diminished after a race is gone....

Well, an "undocumented feature" perhaps (and actually a documented one, once you frequent the forum). I've seen this problem in many, many games and I've come to assume that this will be the case. The primary reason tends to be that new features often require changes to the data structures. Unfortunate--maddening!--but hard to avoid when working quickly to release FREE updates.

BTW, if you want you can probably still get the standalone update to 1.12 (as opposed to the Stardock.net update to 1.13). I could even email you my copy. Save your saved games then uninstall and reinstall GalCiv, then install the update to 1.12, and you can finish your campaign. You might be able to just install 1.12 "over" 1.13, but I wouldn't trust that to work. You might also be able to rename the directory for 1.13 and install a second copy of GalCiv to be updated to 1.12.

I usually miss an update or two while finishing campaigns under an earlier version. That's because I play so slowly... -- Admiral Glacier

Yeah, there isn't a fix for the 1.12 to 1.13 save games.  When we make a new format of save game, it automatically re-saves the game in the new format if it is able to load it (because usually if the save game is totally unredeemable it won't even load).  So you probably wouldn't be able to re-load it in 1.12 even if you could get restore from an archive.  If you just want to finish it, and don't care if it can be submitted or not, you could turn on the cheat keys and use Ctrl-S to research all the techs you already had researched.

Jamester pretty much covered most of the things I would have covered.  I would have also added that the artists would also have to spend time coming up with 35 different logos (35 being the max possible number of races in Gal Civ) which is not easy. They had a hard enough time coming up with 4 cool looking new ships for the Altarian Prophecy.

We think that the invisible ship bug is caused by a problem in the memory manager of Gal Civ, and fixing that problem would mean writing conversion routines for all of our graphics, since just about every system in the game (including the graphics manager) uses the memory manager.  I've estimated that it could take me up to 2 weeks to fix and test the fix for the problem.  That's two weeks when I could be fixing crashes, or other annoying things that can't be fixed by saving and reloading. 

 

My game keeps crashing to the desktop after that evil race appears and takes ove one of my systems. I always crash at the end of the turn when they appear. Also, if I trade with them when they appear they will trade 100k+ credits for 30+ turns for one of my trade goods. That doesn't seem right.

Carielf

And what about the fix for the AP unloadable saves? Will it be made available for download (yes, yes, yes , ;)) or just incorporated in the next version of the beta ?

~SDC~

Thank You Admiral Glacier and CariElf...

I guess I'll just have to chalk this up as an "Update" learning experience, and say Goodbye to my 1st Campaign Civ. No Biggie, I guess...Although I'm sure the Screams from all of my Citizens that got sucked into the Galaxy-Sized-Update-BALCKHOLE will haunt my dreams for days to come. (:( hehehehe

Good Luck on Future Patches, and finishing AP! I'll start up a New Campaign.

GalCiv ROCKS!

~SDC~

JoshBoogie, do you have an AutoSave or PreviousAutoSave game from before the Draginol event happens? If so, please zip the .sav file and the folder with the same name and send it to me at [email protected]. 

Nastavnik: I'm still testing and tweaking the save game code in AP.  When I'm certain that I have a solid build I'll ask Brad if we can put it up or if we should wait until we have the new races in.

Thanks Carielf.

As always, I'm amazed by your availability here.

~SDC~