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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.

 

 

64,489 views 126 replies
Reply #26 from Stardock Forums Top
I just downloaded the game and installed it. When i select "Start Game" and the main game screen comes up, the buttons along the right have seriously messed up characters, making them meaningless.

I'm using a 24 inch wide screen LCD on Windows XP connected digitally to my Intel box. I'm running an Nvidia geForce 6800 GPU.

When i click around on the buttons, i get more screens with the same problem. The game is completely unplayable for me.

Reply #27 from Stardock Forums Top
One little bug :
I was trying out the different gaming modes, and first loaded a 'classic' galaxy, gigantic size. Tested out a bit, then went back to the main menu and started a new game, 'battle of the gods' mode. When I clicked on next on the race selection screen, the rest didnt follow, I didnt even get any loading, but I found myself dropped in an empty galaxy map. Went back to main menu again and did the same thing, and everything is fine now.

Oh and yes, I do have the latest drivers for my hardware etc : )
Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #28 from Stardock Forums Top
No time to read all the bug reports, but I wanted to make sure someone was aware that I can't adjust the Technology when customizing my race. I usually play as Terrans, and that may be why (they don't really get starting tech), but I'm not 100% sure. I haven't tried playing as anyone else yet, though.
Reply #29 from Stardock Forums Top
Been having an odd bug that I am not seeing listed elsewhere - after exiting the battle screen, using the numeric key pad 4 to move a ship will move the ship but ALSO will zoom the map out with each press. After a few zooms, the main map will compress to a tiny mess that sort of looks like it's WAY WAY zoomed out but trying to zoom back in has no effect, nor does further zooming out. The mini-map show the area being 'shown' on the main map as just a line rather than the usual trapezoid. Saving, exiting and reloading sets everything back to the defaults.

Hope that makes sense.
Reply #30 from Stardock Forums Top
Ok I think I have found a significant bug/hack.
I found that if you move a fleet (havent tried with single ship) then save the game, then quit galciv2, then start galciv2 backup, then reload the saved game you can move your fleets again! Without taking a turn. Enables neat hit and run tactics but please take it out as I feel bad using it.
Reply #31 from Stardock Forums Top
1. I too am getting the "They blew up my resource mining starbase and now when I try to build a new starbase on that resource, the game acts like it's not there any more" bug. (Did not try to save and re-load to correct issue.

Quicksaving and loading did the trick for me. I did however quit the game inbetween but it probably works without that measure.
Reply #32 from Stardock Forums Top
Using Nvidia 81.98 drivers for a Nvidia 6800GT on a Athlon 64 3500+. Some minor bugs.

1) Hitting spacebar while watching a tutorial freezes (sometime doesn't the first time, but if pressed again) up the entire game.

2) Full screen button on tutorial screen when using 1280x1024 is not in the proper place. See screenshot here.

Two minor bugs but might be something new people who watch the tutorials would run into.
Reply #33 from Stardock Forums Top
OK, this isn't a game bug, it's a support system bug, but it's freakin annoying. I'm not able to update the multimedia pack for some reason, so I sent an email to support. Now I've gotten more than 15 identical emails telling me my ticket has been received and will be processed!!!!!!!!

Can someone from Stardock please fix this bug??

Reply #34 from Stardock Forums Top
Since alt-tabbing has problems, I tried running in window mode (as recommended above if you want to switch apps a alot). New error showed up: every time the Windows screen saver activates, GalCiv II (in Window mode) crashes to desktop. This is extremely annoying if you leave the computer for just a short time, and lose X turns since the last autosave...
Reply #35 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I also have the bug in shipyard when you "save" the new ship design, the description box doesn't come up. Result is that you can't save the design. Upon quitting the now unsavable design, the description box is shown. Hit ok for the description, the game crashes.

I also had some wierdness on initial startup where the game didn't display anything more than the black box. Update to the most recent NVIDIA video drivers and running the first time through in windows mode fixed the problem -- add the tag w to the shortcut target command line so it reads "C:\ [Install Directory]\GalCiv2.exe" w

McAffee anti-virus software freaks upon attempts to load GalCiv. There will be much complaining about this one, but it's really an overprotective hostility to scripts by McAffee. Solution is to disable Antivirus.
Reply #36 from Stardock Forums Top
I came across the ship designing bug where components dissapear when you finish and save, and the ability to see the other races influence area in the minimap before you explore space is not cool, I wish in the patch that would get fixed, or add an option to ask the race you meet to tell you where their space is, then have it show up in the mini map. Otherwise the game is awesome.
I would be cool if you could board enemy ships and take them over.
Reply #37 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Unless I hit a wrong key by mistake, in my first game, after a reload (from both auto + quick), I lost visual on ALL anomalies in the universe. I knew where one was, and could target and grab it, but they are invisible now, with no way of getting them back on screen. I tried restarting both the game and my system, but nothing.

I can't imagine I hit a bad key because, why would there be a setting to hide anomalies (besides in the mini-map obviously)?

Edit: I am using a Radeon 9800XT with what I believe are updated drivers.
Reply #38 from Stardock Forums Top

First off - kudos on an awesome game - got it Wednesday and have only stopped playing to sleep once and eat (at some unknown point). I have encountered several bugs however, some of which i do not see listed here. They are:

1) Ship design problems. Several issues here. If you don't right-click after selecting a component to add (un-select the component) and then try to save the ship or quit the menu you can have a variety of problems (some listed above) - trying to save a ship before I right clicked caused the only game crashing bug I've encountered and has done it consisitantly. For people above with the ship design issues all I can say is as long as I remember to right-click to deselect the item I was placing before I do ANYTHING ELSE, none of the issues listed in this post happen to me.

Also, after loading a game, all previous iterations of all designs (i.e. the upgraded and resaved designs with the exact same names) show up in the quick build list - even ones tagged obsolete. It also graphically screws up previous ship designs if you start a new game with a race you have designed ships for before, but change the ship type in the civ apparence tab.

2) The galactic guide book "wonder" does not do anything. I've tried it in 2 different games now.

3) Music will cut out sometimes during a GNN update and then never come back.

4) I have the anamolies dissapearing bug from above as well - really annoying as it makes you not want to leave the game until you've explored all visable anamolies.

5) The A.I. set to auto-explore will all congregate at the top of the map once they have explored all that they can within your supply radius.

None of these are real show stoppers - but they are all annoying especially given how great the game is. Thank you for finally giving us our modern 4x space opera.

Reply #39 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Oh yeah, forgot to add, sometimes my music will platy at 3x the level I set it to (seems like it goes to 100% max), and when I go in to audio options, and touch the slider, the sounds reverts to the level it should be at.
Reply #40 from Stardock Forums Top
Bump.
Reply #41 from Stardock Forums Top
I hope i am not repeating one, but i just was playing around with the default races, seeing what you can add to them. I was messing with the Yor, i saw they still had 3 pts left in racial abilities, and i added some traits. After doing this, they lost the +100 loyalty, but kept what i added, the problem is, now they won't get the Loyalty bonus back, even if i take off what i added. Seems this is the same iwth all the races, if you mess with them they do not go back to default stats. Reloading game did nothing to fix this.
Reply #42 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think I've managed to read all the posts, hopefully avoiding duplicates:

- When renaming ships/fleet: Auto naming when making a fleet will be something like "Terran Alliance Fleet 13" - trying to change it manually won't allow more than "Terran Alliance Flee".

- When constructing: Building a Manufacturing Capital - for some reason one can press upgrade in that zone before it is actually completed, which in my case removed the unfinished (but almost done) Manufacturing Capital - all the weeks of progress towards the Captial vanished, leaving an unbuilt factory instead.
Reply #43 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
When changing my ship colours to new colours, the old colours still show up in the ship portraits, even though in-game, they are the new colours.

Edit: To clarify, I start a new game, set my race colours, ship colours, etc, and play the game. I then exit out, start a new game, change my ship colours to something different. When playing, all the ship portraits still have the colours that I selected previously, even though they are the new colours in-game.

I also had the stuck mouse-cursor problem. The cursor stays stuck, even after exiting back to Windows. As someone ele mentioned, the focus area of the mouse cursor is still active, the graphic for the cursor is just stuck.

Standard setup here, AMD64, GF6800GT, 1024MB RAM, WinXP Pro.
Reply #44 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I can confirm that Social Production is completely broken after the patch and Research may be bugged as well.

Make a custom race with no bonuses in production or research and start a game. Set taxes to 50 and spending to 100. Output on the homeword for military production, social production and research is 8-7-8 respectively (shouldn't it be 8-8-8?)

Start another game with +50 military production bonus and output is at 12-7-8. This makes sense: 50% of 8 is 4, 4+8=12.

With +50 research bonus it is 8-7-10. Obviously research bonus is giving about half of what is advertised.

With +50 Social bonus it is 8-7-8.

BTW, why do we get +10 bonus to Social and Military production for free (as shown in the civ stats screen) even if we don't chose any bonus ability in those areas?

Reply #45 from Stardock Forums Top

The patch didn't touch any of these things.

I suspect there's something else going on there.

Reply #46 from Stardock Forums Top
Something I found tonight: starting an expensive building (i.e. Research Academy) on an empty tile then immediately switching to a Galactic Achievement causes the achievement to be built in severely reduced time and cost.
Reply #47 from Stardock Forums Top
i loosed the planet and graphics after a game crash (alt+tab too often) , the game show me now only icons , not any more the ships and planets. Also debug say i am missing severals files in my user folder

I have re install game in new folder (game and my documents / users) and still no graphics
Reply #48 from Stardock Forums Top
Bugs and issues I encountered:

I usually get an extra turn when (re)loading a game. I can move all my ships (they show like 5 of 0 moves), then I hit the turn button, the date doesn't advance, nothing is produced, the AI doesn't move, and I can begin a normal turn (moving all ships included). (this is probably related to #30)

When (re)loading, I often have a lot of ships on auto-pilot to the "southern" corner of the map. Only idle ships are affected by that AFAIK, but I have to stop them manually.

Sometimes after fleet combat or when exchanging ships between fleets, the fleet has all movement points reset to maximum. (I'm sorry not to be more precise on this one, I could dig deeper if you wanted.)

I think the mentioned research bonus of economic starbases doesn't work at all - but you probably know that.


Other than that I'm having a lot of fun!
Reply #49 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Avatar Frogboy [Stardock]:

The patch didn't touch any of these things [regarding the effects of Research and Production bonuses.]
I suspect there's something else going on there.


This is an official comment from Stardock? Quick question: What does this mean?

1. That you tried to fix it, but couldn't get it to work for reasons you don't yet understand?
2. Or that the game is working as intended, but that the players aren't SUPPOSED to see exactly how the bonuses impact production?

Reply #50 from Stardock Forums Top
Hi,

don't know if anyone's posted this.
when upgrading space station, I get a white square overlapping the pictures that are next to the upgrades. Minor stuff, and it's a wonderfull game!