General comments on beta 0.11b[b].002

from GalCiv2 Forums
New beta today (1st April) is much more stable than last beta. Here are my general comments,

- minimap is still not being updated unti lyou click on it

- warning icons on left of screen don't die out. This causes problems with them overflowing when there are too many which then causes no icons to appear at all (or maybe they appear off the screen?). I suggest that then should shrink and fade away in later turns. There also needs to be a quick and easy way to remove them without having to click on each and every one.

- Anomolies which add +ATT and +DEF don't add to the ship. This is probably just nto implemented yet but my flagship never sees these stats upgrade.

- Ship mis-positioned. I had a problem where my flagship could not pick up an anomoly because it was slightly off grid from the rest of the map. I just sent it somewhere else and then back again and it worked.

- 'turn' button not appearing: On a number of occasions the turn button has failed to appear. It seems to be associated with a ship getting stuck or confused on autopilot. If I click on all my ships the turn button eventualyl reappears.

- destroying a planetary facilitary that was queued for building caused a CTD. Will post seperately with a debug and smart exception if it happens again.

Looking good overall and definitely more stable,

Paul.
14,521 views 16 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
- playing as other races now works! Nice to play with their ship designs!

Paul.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I find it very hard to see anamolies on the main screen. They are dark bunch of rocks and I don't really notice them until zoomed in the closest zooms. I'm sure the graphics will change a lot over the next few months but just wanted to mention it.
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
- could someone update the SDC to show the date of the latest GC2 beta file and not the date GC2 first appeared.

Paul.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It said 3/31/05 for me last night as the date of latest release...
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

News Icons: I had a problem with them stacking as well.  We'll have a death-rate for them eventually, but for now you can Right-Click to delete without activating.

Anomalys:  Yes, we've noticed that they're hard to see.  We'll definatly get that fixed.

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Did you try moving the camera around on the main gameplay screen using the mouse? You have to do it for a few seconds sometimes before it works.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
When my turn button disappeared it did eventually come back. May have been related to an autosave that was happening at the same time. For now you may want to consider turning autosave off (since you can't reload games and saving will occasionally crash the game).
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Now it doesn't crash on startup anymore.
It starts up fine but none of the buttons has any text.
I guessed that the topmost button must be for starting a new game and clicked
the bottom right button on the following screens.
After a bit of loading it badly crashed my machine. (Video seems to be dead, monitor goes to stand by because it loses the signal. Otherwise the machine seems to be alive but I see no other option but to shut it down.)

System specs: Windows XP SP2 on Athlon 64, DirectX 9.0c, Radeon 9800XT, Catalyst 5.3

Seems that Galciv 2 and my machine are a really bad match...
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You may want to install SmartException (it is in the Free Stuff section in Stardock Central) and run it while you are playing.

When the application crashes, it will then save a GalCiv2.EXE.CRA file onto your computer (on mine it drops it into c:), which you can send back to the developers to help them fix the problem.

Also not a bad idea to check to make sure that you have the latest drivers for your video card.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Also not a bad idea to check to make sure that you have the latest drivers for your video card.


AFAIK Catylyst 5.3 is the latest ATI driver at the moment. I just upgraded last week when I first installed Galciv2.
I don't think I will risk thrasing my installation anymore. I thinks it is better to wait for a late beta before I try again.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Marcus Aurelius, please e-mail me your debug.err file.



Done. I don't see anything suspicious in that trace but at least you can see the exact system specs and driver versions.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I just wanted to comment on the Colony screen. When I am adding facilities I always have to click which one I want to build and then click Build. Could the last facility I selected remain highlighted. It would save time when building a research planet or a factory planet. Also, on the Starport screen, once I select a ship to build there is no way of knowing that the ship is building until I go back to another screen and see how much time is remaining for the build. It would be nice to see something change when a ship is being built.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Though saving a game does not cause a crash (on my machine) When I over-write a save-game, it is not until I drop all menus back to the game that I see the warning window: "Are you sure you want to over-write a previous save game?"

Also, lost the "TURN" button and played around with anything I could for several minutes. That fails, I save game, exit game and try to reload...finding out I can't load the game again.

Looking forward to the new game...it is already looking better than the previous and I still get a lot of good play time on GalCiv I

Chris
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Illvatar: Concerning the colony screen - Yes, we should definatly keep the current item selected for players using the build button. 

As for the Starport screen, that is being tweaked for Beta 2, so you'll have a much more functional and friendly UI in a couple of weeks