STATUS UPDATE: 1st Weekend

from Stardock Forums
It's been quite a week! GalCiv's doing vastly better than we had anticipated.

Of course, as those who got the game in that first 24 hours discovered, even the 30 megabits of bandwidth we reserved were not nearly enough.

I won't be around as much this weekend. My wife and I moved today and so my home internet connection won't be back necessarily right away. But I'll try to visit via my SprintPCS hookup (side note: Very cool thing, I have a USB cable that hooks from the cell phone to the laptop and gets me around ISDN speed on the laptop to the net). Other Stardockians will be around intermitenly but I imagine after this past week most of them will be recovering. ;)

The bandwidth issue seems to be pretty resolved at this point and the earlier issues with Stardock Central seemed to be resolved.

Next week we'll be releasing the first update to GalCiv.

Features in the update:
+ Fix for the diplomacy crash with minor races that a few people have run into - note, the only reason we were able to fix this is thanks to people who sent us their SmartException log. Thanks!!

+ Smarter AI (not harder) with regards to star bases. One of the personalities will be really worked on to try a starbase gambit. I won't say which though. ;)

+ Various bug fixes that we've implemented over the last week or two but didn't have time to playtest adequately before checking them in.

+ POSSIBLY a new feature: Ability to have new ships built automatically leave orbit when completed.

+ POSSIBLY a new treaty option: Declaration of war. Not sure on this one yet depends on how much work that is. Otherwise it'll come later.

One of the other things we are hoping to look at are various little polish things. Little stuff like text going over its field in a few places, that sort of thing.

+ Fix for the terraformer wonder. We fixed this awhile ago but hadn't had time to playtest it.

Seperately, we expect to release the star ship builder beta next week. It's actually floating around hree somewhere (on IRC we were handing it out earlier). Basically I believe you simply make a TARGA image with the various facings of the ship for the 6 major races plus 1 for minor races and then name it.

Then you just make the text .ship file that tells it how powerful and such it is. You'll be able to submit these to the library.

Thanks for all your help and support. Lots of very exiting things are in the pipeline. Stay tuned.
2,816 views 23 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
And thank you Brad foar your commitment to this incredible game and your willingness to help us fans. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's interest in this game was based partly on your dedication towards the community. Well done! :CONGRAT:
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
The bug with racial abilities is one that is really annoying. I posted about it in the bugs thread. When buying +20% in a couple of abilities and getting only 10% or nothing.... well you can see how that could cause some kinks in plans you had for your race and how they'll develop :D

Also have to say great work on the game and I'm surprised at the short turn-around for the first patch... definitely going to be nice to have a game with such a devoted development team behind it :)

~SDC~
DeskScapes - Bring your desktop background to life.
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Also, could some of the metaverse submission issues be looked into? It is getting rather frustrating to say the least. Otherwise, the game is great and I can't wait to see the updates. :)

~SDC~
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Metaverse issues are being looked at now as you probably saw in that other thread, T-man isn't a tech support guy, he's literally the IT manager for ALL of Stardock's websites.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
SgtLoric, have you looked at the other threads on this matter and tried the fixes suggested there? Most notably, Brad's ongoing Galciv update thread.

-Dave

~SDC~
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
To Frogboy thsnkx for all the help u posted on the forum..

like the games u played and the examples on how to build an evil civ... :d
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Aye, I have been through the three ones that I have found on the subject, tried everything including reinstalling both the game and stardock central.

Also, have tried registering for metaverse numerous times. I have pretty much run out of things to try so I am waiting to see if this will be addressed in any manner.

(Also, ZoneAlarm did ask for permission to send data when I hit submit so the game is doing what it should, it just isn't being recieved it appears).

Anyways, don't want to hijack this thread, just that alot of people are stilling having problems with this so I thought it may be looked into a wee bit.

~SDC~
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks for the update! It sounds great. Keem them coming! My favorite bit was
"+ POSSIBLY a new feature: Ability to have new ships built automatically leave orbit when completed." :)

~SDC~
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
If one thing is sure, Brad, you and your team deserve a break. Incredible, this level of support! Gives us players the time to play some games and Xperience Galciv. Many already said it, this game is awesome, almost impossible to stop playing. And that says enough :)
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
Brad, very good job with this game. :) Your obvious commitment is even more commendable. I am having a blast with this game.

Thank you!
Elf
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
Brad, your and that of your team, is among the best I've ever seen from a gaming company... and to think we have an entire year of dedicated updates to look forward to... I'm estatic just thinking of all the money I'm gonna save NOT buying other games in the search for the next Civ.

It would be interesting to know what Sid thinks about this game.
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
:) Looking forward to the ship builder. :)

I hope that I am able to convert many of the ships I have designed for Space Empires IV over for use in this game. Should be interesting to try and I look forward to the challenge.

( http://galileo.spaceports.com/~william/index.html )

Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
Atrocities: Glad to see you are going to import your work over to this too. I've downloaded your work for SEIV before and loved it.

And kudos to all the hard work from the stardock guys and gals. I love the game. :CONGRAT:
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
It's no surprise to me that this game is doing "vastly better" than anticipated. I'll knew it would, sight unseen, simply because of the incredible involment & visibility of the developers.
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
A suggestion for the diplomatic declaration of war:
If it's implemented, I think two subfeatures would be cool.

First, if you attack someone without declaring war (i.e., make a sneak attack), it diminishes your reputation with the other races depending on your current relationship with them and your and the other races' relationships with the race you attacked. Second, a diplomatic declaration of war doesn't take effect until your next turn (an attack on the same turn you declare war is still considered a sneak attack).

That way there's actually a meaningful decision for the player to make when attacking another race. On the other hand, this would take quite a bit more coding and playtesting to integrate into the AI and make it balanced.
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
Brad and co, hope you guys are conscious that you will be recognize in gaming history as the ones who save the genre... Congratulations again :CONGRAT:
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
You guys are very kind. Once we get Stardock Central nailed down, we hope to be able to do frequent minor updates to the game. A sort of real-time response to player feedback.



~SDC~
Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top
"Once we get Stardock Central nailed down, we hope to be able to do frequent minor updates to the game. A sort of real-time response to player feedback."

*thud*

*picks himself up off the floor*

I'm sorry, I fainted for a second there. Real-time response to player feedback? Dear god man... how am I ever going to go back to playing games by other developers after this kind of treatment?

You say we're very kind. It's more than deserved. Really. This is incredible. You keep this up, I'm going to start believing you actually care more about the quality of the game than about your bottom line. :D

- Ash
Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh, and by the way Frogboy, I just have to say... "HA-ha". Check out the Metaverse standings... ;) :D

- Ash
Reply #23 from Stardock Forums Top
This may be a stupid question ... but what is "a starbase gambit"?

- Matt Lepinski :->

~SDC~