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Brad's known issue list

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Brad's known issue list

A look in the sausage factory..

from GalCiv2 Forums

Ever buy games where the developer pretends a given problem with their game doesn't exist?

Wish they'd just admit to a problem and fix it? Well here's our list of problems that we've encountered and some of them are going to sound pretty obscure but if they affect you, better to know.  We plan to address these by release:

Item #1: Windows 2000 on Non-English versions.  There is texture corruption on non-English versions of Windows 2000.  It works fine on Windows XP and Windows 98 all languages, just Windows 2000.  We expect to have this updated by release.  If anyone here has a non-english version of Windows 2000 as their main machine let us know.

Item #2: The video tutorials stutter. Click the "view full screen" option. This option isn't in the retail release but is in the digital release and subsequent updates.

Item #3: If you're running in 16-bit color, you need to switch to 32-bit color in some cases or the game will simply fail to launch (or launch with an error and die).

Item #4: On Some nVidia cards, if the game isn't running on your primary monitor, the mouse cursor may get flakey.

Item #5: It takes a LONNNG time to get back into the game after alt-tabbing away. This has to do with a trick we used to keep memory use down. The game isn't crashed but it can take awhile to get back. If you're going to be switchign around, run the game in a window (see the video options screen).

Item #4: TNT and Geforce 1/2 users (technically not supported but they do work) will not get lighting on planets.

Item #5: On Windows 98, if the system has less than 20% resources left, there may be problems with late game performance (frame rate).

Item #6: If you are using an older nVidia card and running your system in 16bit color, the game may not launch. You will need to set your desktop color depth to 32bit. Nothing we can do on this, some older cards don't support DirectX 9 video depth switching.

Item #7. You need to be running your system at 1024x768 or better. That means 1280x600 won't work both X and Y needs to be equal or better.  1600x1200 is fine. 1280x1024 is fine.  4000x3000 is fine.  This should only affect certain older laptops.

Item #8. Certain CRT older (non PnP) monitors may need to tweak the brightest and contrast settings of the game to their liking. The defaults were set to PNP CRT / LCD norms.

Item #9. You can run the game in a window from the options are or by running the game from a command prompt galciv2 w

Item #10. You can turn on cheat mode by running the game with a "cheat" parameter (i.e. galciv2 cheat)

Item #11. We have not tested the game on non-Indo European languages yet.  That means we don't know how it runs in Mandarin, Hebrew, or other languages.  We plan to look at those OSes in the future but our access to those kinds of systems is limited. It might work fine, we just haven't been able to try it.

Item #12. One of the weapons thumbnails in the ship design screen is missing if you run at a very high resolution on certian versions of ATI video drivers.  We have fixed this internally already.  Most people will likely never see it anyway since it is a very very high tech (we were able to find it through cheat codes).

That's all for now.  We'll keep updating this.  Hopefully we haven't scared anyone off.  We have found from our non-game software that the best policy is to treat customers as partners. 

Most of these issues won't affect anyone (they certainly didn't come up during the beta and there were thousands of people in that).  But they will likely affect someone and we want to make sure they're taken care of.

 

 

64,463 views 126 replies
Reply #76 from Stardock Forums Top
Just means we haven't tried to fix it yet. I.e. If it's not in our "this was fixed" list, it probably wasn't fixed.


Of course we all know that it wasn't "fixed." Otherwise, of course, no one would be talking about, right?

I appreciate that you feel the need to respond to comments. But, once again, you're not SAYING anything; you're just talking in circles. I don't know whether you do that on purpose or not, but frankly it's mildly annoying.

Somebody said the apparent problem was reported back in beta in December? But it's still not on your "known issues list?"

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy as heck that you know the Mandarin translations may not be perfect. But it seems that for a game like this, the actual effect of the bonus numbers - or whether they even HAVE any effect at all - would be something the designers might want to at least look into.
Reply #77 from Stardock Forums Top
Found another manual error. On page 35 the foreign policy screen is described. On page 36 the trade screen is explained. At the end of the trade screen description the manual adds several lines of information that should be under foreign policy. There may be more but I will make this the last post on the manual. In a game this complex there needs to be good documentation. So far it's the only complaint I have. A game this complex needs good documentation in the manual or in the game (think civilopedia). Especially for new players who might get frustrated and give up on it.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #78 from Stardock Forums Top
Upgrading from Virtual Reality Centers to Zero G Arenas decreases your moral bonus instead of increasing it.
Reply #79 from Stardock Forums Top
Upgrading from Virtual Reality Centers to Zero G Arenas decreases your moral bonus instead of increasing it.


Yup, you can see that (and fix if you like) in PlanetaryImprovements.xml.
Zero G Sports Arena:
Virtual Reality Center:

I assume it was intended to be 60 or 70. This is not like the Stock Market case, where you lose Economic bonus but gain other bonuses. It's just flat out worse to "upgrade" to Virtual Reality Centers.
Reply #80 from Stardock Forums Top
Just a few things I ran into last night after installed the 1.0D patch.

1. When attaching certain extras to ships (using the Yor models) the extra will be attached to a completely different hardpoint than the one I clicked on. When I remove the hardpoint, then attempt to attach it again to a certain hardpoint, is is again attached to the same wrong hardpoint. Note: This is not an issue of two hardpoints that happen to be close to one another, but rather on an entirely opposite end of the ship.

2. Some dialogue syntax problems in the diplomacy screen, particularly with the Drengin. Such as "Short Race Name Here" text. Also, my own text dialogue referring to the other race with my own race's names.

3. I may be doing this wrong, so this may not be a "bug," but in the ship designer when I click on the icon of an installed component, then click remove, it disappears but as soon as I click on anything else it is immediately reinstalled... basically, it's impossible to remove a component unless you click on it on the model. Seems like you ought to be able to do this with the icons, but it's not working for me. (But, again, I could be doing it wrong.)

Really, really awesome game though. Congrats -- Hope you guys get a ton of sales. Nice to have a worthy successor to the MOO series (I hated MOO 3 -- god what a disaster).
Reply #81 from Stardock Forums Top
I seem to get "fake" turns. That is, the turn clicks over and all ships have renewed movement, but no production and no research happens.

It's killing me when I rush-purchase a ship for defense and then it doesn't get produced!

I also run into this problem when the research time indicator lies to me. I adjust the slider to the minimum possible for "1 week", and then end the turn. Next turn I find out that the tech is like 99% researched, but still needs "1 week". So I re-load my quicksave and re-adjust the slider to add a little more than it says is necessary. Then I hit end turn and get a "fake" turn. No production, no research, nada. Of course the tech still takes 1 week! I can re-reload 'till the cows come home, but I never get a real turn after this starts happening. I have to quit out of the entire game and start up again if I want to actually get my research on the turn I deserve.

As far as I can tell, I've never had 2 turns in a row skip production and research, but it happens about 10% of the time, especially if I'm doing a lot of saving and loading.

Also, I often get ship movements (and enemy ship movements) that say something like: 2/0, meaning that I've got 2 move of a possible 0 left! I can move them the 2 it says (or whatever number, it's the 0 that's odd). Maybe this is related to being in the middle of a "fake" turn?
Reply #82 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
- Got the starbase bug. When the civilization owning was destroyed, nothing could be built on the (unselectable) resource.
- Was unable to get an alliance victory. The victory screen didn't recognise my long standing alliance with the altarians even though the foreign policy screen said I was, as did the diplomacy screen with them.
- deleted ship components aren't dissappearing from the list of icons underneath the viewscreen until you scroll left (so that they wouldn't be there anyway) and then scroll back.
- each time i load a game I get the "on this day, out civilization sets forth..." style quarterly report that you'd get taken to at the start of a new game, and I get taken to the research screen and planet view for my home planet. This happens every time in every game I've played.
- Several ship components that shouldn't be are unsymetrical in their attachment points. This is quite hard to illustrate verbally, so here's a link to a diagram



Clearly the two wings should both be pointing down. However one is angled differently when attached. Since there are two versions of this wing attachment, usually you would be able to attach one to each side and they would point in the same direction.

- I also get the issue with multiple versions of the same named ship design showing up on the quickbuild list. However, on the shipyard screen or when building from the planet screen, only one ship of that name appears.
Reply #83 from Stardock Forums Top
I am having a "crash to desktop bug" issue...

I am not sure what has caused this but this is what is happening... or happened...

I was playing a gigantic map, in control of 90% of the map. Seems my video card got a little hot and had to hard restart the system. Now my problem may not have anything to do with hard restart so here is the problem...

I load the last saved game, great fake turn time. No biggie... but I had ships in build cues that were empty... instead of deleting them, as some of them were completed, I let them build, only to discover, oh yes! of course, they are all old designs of duplicate named ship. So I reloaded, redesigned all new ships with new names .and then went thru all the build ques made them produce the new ships. A few of these were Troop transports with 4x Adv Troop carriers or 4000 soldiers... I don't know if its because I am in fake turn but if I try to take a planet with those troop ships crash to desktop, on any planet with any of the troop ships...

I will try to run past the fake turn and stop my troops short of their destination and wait for normal "turns" to happen again to see if I still crash to desktop...
Reply #84 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The planet quality abilities do not work as they should(except on your home planet). If you use 8 of your points to pick the magical planet quality ability, your home planet will have PQ 12 with 12 useable tiles. But if you colonize a planet of PQ10, it becomes a PQ12 planet but only has 10 useable tiles.

I have also noticed that most of the culture starbase upgrades do not work in the campaign.(At least in the first mission)
Reply #85 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
#81 by Citizen David Weldon
Wednesday, March 01, 2006 2:19 AM

I seem to get "fake" turns. That is, the turn clicks over and all ships have renewed movement, but no production and no research happens.

As far as I can tell, I've never had 2 turns in a row skip production and research, but it happens about 10% of the time, especially if I'm doing a lot of saving and loading.


In the "tweaks" thread, I saw someone post that after a game is loaded, the end turn does not update research/production; you essentially lose that turn. I haven't tested it myself to know if it's always like that or just sometimes, but it sounds like you're seeing the same issue.
Reply #86 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I found that from time to time I loose the ability to use the turn button, the solution is to exit out of game and then come in and load game whereby the turnbutton is back. I believe the problem is caused by the game showing various battles and movements occuring - if you move a unit during this time the movements stop and no turn button appears.
Reply #87 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have a non-english Windows 2000, and most textures from the galaxy map are missing. Version is 1.0D-1.
Reply #88 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This has probably been mentioned somewhere else I am sure... It always is. After loading the last patch and the bonus pack and the special addition stuff. Every time I start the game I get a message looking for a cd. I can hit cancel and the game comes up, so no big deal but I thought I would say something about it. I will skip the oppertunity to whine and congradulate you on a fine job.

Thanks,

.JG.
Reply #89 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
When playing I only ever hear one piece of music in my campaigns. I hear the event music properly, but whenever I am playing I hear the same piece of music repeated endlessly. I believe it is the Exploration mp3. It loops constantly. I have tried adjusting the audio volume sliders and turning the event and background music on and off, but whenever background music is playing it is always that one same song. If anyone know why this might be happening please let me know.
Reply #90 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
First, I'm running on Windows XP with Traditional Chinese, and there doesn't seem to be any problems.

However, whenever I hit "Save" after designing a new ship, the game crashes to desktop... (obviously takes away a very fun part of the game). Don't know what other details I can give you beyond that...
Reply #91 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I built a partially upgraded Military Starbase near my home planet, which was coincidentally right next to the Korx home planet. (Like, half a sector away.) I then built some squads of Medium ships with lasers and went to attack the Korx; but they weren't getting correct defense bonuses from the Military Starbase. Specifically, they were getting zero defense. Their attack was going up properly.

(Further Detail:)
They were built with 2 Impulse Drive Mk. IIIs, two standard Lasers, and Sensors Mk. II. This gave them 2 laser attack base and 0 in every other category. While within the influence circle of the starbase, they were upgraded to 4 laser and 1 missile attack, and remained at 0 defense. The starbase had +3 ships attack (2 laser, 1 missile) and +13 ship defense (Beam Interceptor, Energy Grid, Missile Defender, and a couple others I don't have on screenshots.) I have two screenshots and (I hope) a saved game I can provide if necessary.

(Edit:)
I saw the "rank this insightful" thing on my own post and said, "hmm, I'll try ranking myself insightful! wonder if it works..." Should have guessed you'd thought of it already. Frogboy = my role model.
Reply #92 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
For the starbase defense bonuses, I have discovered that the bonuses only get applied if the ship in question already has _some_ kind of defense. So if you even have 1 point of armor (for example), you can get +4/+4/+4 to your shields, armor, and point defense (or whatever your starbase upgrades yield). But the ship has to have a point of defense to start with.

I don't know if this is intentional or not, but that's the trick to getting Starbase defense bonuses.
Reply #93 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Got a new issue cropping up with the latest patch. Clicking "Build Ship" while in planet view sometimes triggers an end of turn (as if I clicked the turn button at the lower right).

EDIT: Correction, not just with the build ship button. Just trying to close out of the planet window (clicking done) triggers this as well. For the record, enabling/disabling auto turn doesn't seem to have any effect on this behavior.
Reply #94 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Weird bug: the screen starts auto-scrolling endlesslly to the right of the screen and can be fixed by either save/retire/re-load or by clicking on the coloured news icons that appear on the lower right of the interface.

Running XP Pro
Direct X 9.0c

Pentium 4 2.80GHz
512MB DDR RAM

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200
Reply #95 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


Upgrading from Virtual Reality Centers to Zero G Arenas decreases your moral bonus instead of increasing it.


Yup, you can see that (and fix if you like) in PlanetaryImprovements.xml.
Zero G Sports Arena: 55
Virtual Reality Center: 40

I assume it was intended to be 60 or 70. This is not like the Stock Market case, where you lose Economic bonus but gain other bonuses. It's just flat out worse to "upgrade" to Virtual Reality Centers.


True, but untill I saw it here I never noticed the problem. Including it in a patch would let everyone play on the same level.
Reply #96 from Stardock Forums Top

===
Item #7. You need to be running your system at 1024x768 or better. That means 1280x600 won't work both X and Y needs to be equal or better. 1600x1200 is fine. 1280x1024 is fine. 4000x3000 is fine. This should only affect certain older laptops.
===

There's another problem. Even if your monitor *supports* a higher resolution, and you've selected that resolution in the options, but you run your desktop at a lower resolution, you get the resolution warning everytime.

This also affects brand new displays running at 1280x720... aka 720P on a HDTV being used as a display.

For reference I'm using the 1280x720 desktop resolution rather than 1920x1080 because it looks best on this config. The game works fine in 1920x1080, but overall performance is much better at 1024x768, or manually updated to 1280x720. Actually the user interface works noticibly better at lower res than higher res. There are a way too many times there are small option diaglogs setup in the middle but the confirmation buttons are put way in the corners. Really a pain on my 1900x1200 monitor on another other machine. (Same annoyance I have with civ4 actually and I suppose this beef belongs elsewhere... I digress...)

One thing I don't understand is why you have a hard 768 limit. The only thing that affects (fixes?) the vertical height that I can immediately see is the fancy interface frame at the side. Which personally, I'd love to lose anyway. Looks good, but wastes space at lower res, and too small to see at higher res.

Why not warn me once when I change a setting, rather than every single time I start? Would that not cover your butt sufficiently?

Anyway, trying to be constructive here, hope this helps give you guys an extra perspective.
Reply #97 from Stardock Forums Top

Hi!


I run a Non-english Windows 2000 OS (italian) and i do have the texture corruption problem. Basically I do not see cool looking 3d planets, suns and ships in the space map but just grey rings for planets, colored rings for stars and wireframe models for ships.


I tried alterating the Strategic map distance as suggested in another post, but it doesn't help. i can see when the strategic map kicks in as there are minor variations (the star become a full circle, not a ring for example, and race icons appears on the map).


I have a ATI Radeon X800 XL that is more than capabable to run the game. so it must be the OS or something else. any help is appreciated

Reply #98 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Sometimes the game doesn't recognize buildings. For example I built an enhance factory on a square with a large maintenance bonus and I received no improvement in my military/social points. I don't know if this is related to the 700% bonus or the fact that the terrain was considered ocean. The square was on the right edge about halfway down. I also noticed that the breakdown in morale doesn't always reflect what you should see. For example with bonuses from improvements totalling 55% the computer showed only 19%. The slider for production in both these cases was set at 100%.
Reply #99 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi I having the same problem as #97. I only get circles instead of planets and the space ships are ugly... so the 3D engine isn't working for me either. I'm running it on a GeForce FX5600 265MB with the latest drivers on Windows XP.

Plz advise
Reply #100 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi i'm having the same problem as # 97. I can't see the 3D planets, only circles. And the space ships are visually basic and ugly. I use a GeForce FX5600 on Windows XP.

Please advise