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MONDAY STATUS REPORT

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MONDAY STATUS REPORT

from Stardock Forums
Hi gang! Things are going very well overall. I can report that sales are very strong, much higher than anticipated.

I wanted to give you a brief update on where things stand.

## Stardock Central ##
SDCentral is our mechanism of updating the game. We are still having technical issues with it. We released 1.01a last night and a lot of people could not see the update. We found out today that the Linux server is caching the previously available files in memory. We're trying to work around that. But in the meantime, you can see the update if you switch to the Atlanta server (tools->settings->connection).

The second thing is that some people are downloading all 87 megs. That apparently only happens if you are using the download and archive since well, that's what it's supposed to do - download the full image and archive it. I recommend just installing the game. You can always archive it later.

We should have this stuff fixed up in a few minutes.

## Bug reports ##

Okay, we've finally nailed down why the game crashes for some people quite a bit. It turns out that a certain sound card (sound blaster live for instance) only has 4 sound buffers in it. Our built in MP3 player uses a lot more. We should have this fixed today and available on Stardock Central for download.

## Balance Issues ##
We are going to update 1.01A today of GalCiv with a few more tweaks. For one thing, the events will now take into account the game's difficulty level. So if your'e just learning the game, you won't have any of the nastier events come across and wipe you out.

Similarly, we took out the trade all tech UP resolution.

## The Metaverse ##
We think we've finally nailed this one too. For some reason, scores are being submitted with an invalid serial # for some people. We believe to have this fixed today too and it will be part of the GalCiv 1.01A update today.

Once these things are taken care of, we can then focus on adding new features based on your feedback. Stay tuned, there will be a news item shortly.
6,222 views 81 replies
Reply #51 from Stardock Forums Top
Yes. It knows it is installed (says 1.0.1029 or some such). I am going to try reinstalling GalCiv. I'll see how that does.

ap
Reply #52 from Stardock Forums Top
Yes reinstall worked. First GalCiv, then Multi-media, then Bonus, then Update patch. LordTheRon is correct when he noted the problem is the missing gc1.xml in the Stardock/install dir, I think. Not sure it would not be there, or when it gets put there.

ap
Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #53 from Stardock Forums Top
Does 1.01a include all the stuff in the bonus pack?
(That is, if I reinstall galciv using Stardock Central, do I want to reinstall the bonus pack, or is the bonus pack unnecissary once I have 1.01a?)

Thanks,
- Matt Lepinski :->

~SDC~
Reply #55 from Stardock Forums Top
March 31, 2003: Tweaks, fixes, and events...
1.01A.30
New Features:
+ GalCiv AI tweaked so that it bargains more intelligently at lower levels
+ General difficulty level affects which random events will be used (i.e. no more getting clobbered by an advanced story arc when you're just learning the game)
+ New Cut scene: When a player dies, you get a cut scene of ships conquering them.
+ New random event - population boom.
+ Social programs cost slightly less to maintain
+ Details screen now displays how much maint. completed projects use "(X)" by their names.

Bug Fixes:
+ Metaverse submissions should work for all players



March 30, 2003: Tweaks, fixes, and events...
Changes:
+ Some random events come later in the game.
+ Technology Trade United Planets issue nerfed
+ AI considers technology trade values more at lower intelligence levels
+ Crash bug in diplomacy screen hopefully fixed
+ Terraformer can be built
+ SDNet.lib updated for those who have had trouble submitting scores. Make sure you register with the metaverse.
+ Duplicate building of wonders / trade goods fixed
+ Added 2 new random events
+ Anti-Cheat methods beefed up
+ Metaverse submits difficulty level
Reply #56 from Stardock Forums Top
I think/find that 1.01b should have a change so that starbases are shown in the mini-map (up-right corner) - as long as resources are free, you can spot them, from the moment a starbase is on it, it's gone, not seeing your own starbases are annoying when the map gets bigger, or the number of starbases go up...

:p :notsure:

-fredo
Reply #57 from Stardock Forums Top
"I think/find that 1.01b should have a change so that starbases are shown in the mini-map"

They are, as + signs. You may have to turn on the "Show Ships" option to see them, I'm not sure... but they're definitely visible.

- Ash
Reply #58 from Stardock Forums Top
If anyone else sees the problem where SDC wants to re-install the entire 85MB for an Update can you please first look in your sdcentral\installed folder and see if the file gc1.xml exists. Thanks.

~SDC~
Reply #59 from Stardock Forums Top
It didn't exist when I tried to work out my problems yesterday. After a full reinstall (downloaded everything again) it DOES exist now.
Reply #60 from Stardock Forums Top
Same results as LordTheRon. Was not there, and SDC tried to install the full 85MB. After uninstall, and reinstall of GalCiv and downloading everything it is there. The updates went smooth..no 85MB. I should have looked right *after* the GC reinstall but before updating. I am sorry I didn't.

ap
Reply #61 from Stardock Forums Top
So, the gc1.xml did not exist but SDC was showing that a previoius version of GalCiv was installed? Is that correct? Or did SDC show that GalCiv was not installed?

Also, from the best you can remember, what were the previous steps you had done to install/update GalCiv?

~SDC~
Reply #62 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh, also, what about gc1_Multimedia.xml do you know if that was there?

~SDC~
Reply #63 from Stardock Forums Top
I think I starting to talk to myself now but I think I may know what was going on.

If you had done a download and archive using a slightly older build of SDC, its likely that when you restored the archive that the xml files were not properly copied into the installed directory. At least thats my theory at the moment.

This problem should be fixed now but only with new archives.

~SDC~
Reply #64 from Stardock Forums Top
The gc1.xml did not exist, but SDC showed GC was installed. It showed the correct build number at the time 1.0.1029(?) at least. I do not recall seeing the gc1_Multimedia file before reinstalling. I am not positive about this, but I remember being suprised by its appearance after the reinstall and updates.
The order in which I originally installed:
GalCiv (from CD).
The downloaded the Bonus Pack from WebSite and installed that.
Then SDC.
After install of SDC I used it to update itself and check for updates etc. I do not remember if I had actaully downloaded any though.
Hope this helps.

ap
Reply #65 from Stardock Forums Top
T-man
"So, the gc1.xml did not exist but SDC was showing that a previoius version of GalCiv was installed? Is that correct?"

Correct, SDC was saying it was perfectly installed (and it was) but when updating it started to download the full monty.

"Also, from the best you can remember, what were the previous steps you had done to install/update GalCiv?"

Hmmm, I installed it right away from SDC on the 25th of March (I bought Drengin.net). Didn't archive it first, just installed it. When I had installed version 1.01+mm+bonuspak I made a backup copy of the whole package.

>>>To test out the archivefunction I reinstalled from archive and I think this is it, like you said things could have gone wrong here with the xml files<<<

Then I started playing and everything worked perfectly till I started updating to version 1.01a.30. Then it started downloading 85 megs and after it finished my MM files were erased (though SDC kept claiming they were installed).

Finally reinstalled everything and patched to 1.01a.31 this morning and it worked like a charm.

Hope that helps!
Reply #66 from Stardock Forums Top
I am having a problem with the 1.01a version that I downloaded this weekend. It did clear up my issue of the game locking up. My game would lock up on any AI induced battles, now instead of locking it runs REALLY SLOWLY, i.e. takes about 5 minutes to complet the battle and resume game play. This is tolerable, as I've just shut off the visuals on battle, and it is working fine.
I do though have a new issue, it seems that if I select the starting ability of extra movement, that my ships NEVER get this benefit.
Reply #67 from Stardock Forums Top
T-Man, JavaScout and I were playing around with the last night. The gc1.xml, gc1_multimedia.xml and gc1_bonuspak.xml (and possibly one other) were all missing. This was both before and after I re-installed SDCentral. Also, when doing the "fresh" install of SDCentral I noticed that uninstalling did not remove any registry keys, so any registry issues would NOT be fixed by a fresh install of SDCentral. We copied the contents of my Stardock\SDCentral\data\public\gc1\Production .xml files to the other directory, and the correct update and size appeared. FWIW, it was showing the correctly installed version of GalCiv, but also was trying to download the complete game for the update.

Also, since my fresh install of SDC, I have had the app crash a few times. I e-mailed you one of the .cra files.

-Dave

~SDC~
Reply #68 from Stardock Forums Top
Gah! Why can't I update this game? I had version 1.01.029, and tried to update through SDC; horked while downloading galciv.ex_ saying file was the incorrect size. I tried uninstalled galciv, reinstalling from the 400+mb image I downloaded, so now I have version 1.00. Still horked on downloading. Installed the multimedia update through SDC, which worked fine; 1.01.032 still blew up with the same error. Tried reinstalling the bonus pack, which worked fine; again, 1.01.032 blows up on the same galciv.ex_ file. What do I have to do???
Reply #69 from Stardock Forums Top
Sounds like it's timing out on the download. Just keep trying. I'll see what we can do on our end.
Reply #70 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm having same trouble as Darkhorse, except I uninstalled, now it won't install anything.
Reply #71 from Stardock Forums Top
FWIW, I was using California and switched to Atlanta and this problem went away.

olaf
Reply #73 from Stardock Forums Top
Finally got it to work by uninstalling everything, including SDC, then reinstalling one step at a time (game first, then SDC). A bit of a tedious process for a patch, but I'll go with it. Hopefully we won't have to do this for every update :p
Reply #74 from Stardock Forums Top
Ah man, T-Man. You didn't say that process would wipe out the history of what had already been read. I would have prefered to just edit the discussion.ini. Bummer. Oh well, life moves on. Thanks for the new forum. :)

~SDC~
Reply #75 from Stardock Forums Top
Ooops. Some how my last comment got posted to this thread versus another. Please disregard.

~SDC~