Devs - Please give us a hotfix - Fog of War

I take that back, this game is unplayable. I seem to be encountering this bug every single game I play. I guess it's going to be sitting on the shelf until someone does something about it.

I just restart and it goes away.

What exactly is the bug? And the devs won't be on until monday, they have weekends off from what I understand.

since the lastest patch, the fog of war will not disappear on three sectors from the edge of the map... very annoying!

What do you mean, you load from a save? Or do you restart the game? Because I've hit Ctrl-N a number of times and it still keeps coming back.

Well maybe if enough people get on this thread and voice their concern in the meantime, they might actually do something about it. Kryo has mentioned that it has been fixed in their new patch build, so it shouldn't be a big deal to give us a new version of 1.5 that fixes the problem.

It's a gamebreaker for me. I don't want to play if I have to keep looking at that ugly grey background all the time. It really pisses me off since I went out and spent $150 on a wireless setup so I could get on the internet and upgrade the game. And now I can't even play it. And the tech trading is too drastic a change for me to want to go back to the original game. Although I think they went a bit too far, I still prefer itt over the original. I even tried playing Dreadlords again, but that's not an option for me either.

Well it is annoying but you can play through it. I would think we will see a new update next week to fix this if enough people have sent in the issue to the bugz email.
I can live with it for now even though it is a pain.

Start a new game without CTRL-N. DOesn't work every time, but I can always get it to work.

EDIT: upon further testing, I am now getting the error all the time now. Three tiles out from the edge, is always under Fog of War. Pretty much a showstopper for me.

According to Kryo, they're not planning on releasing a fix until the next patch release, which is way too long to wait as far as I'm concerned.

Got a link to that? It doesn't sound very SD to me, and would disappoint me greatly if it were true.

Yes, right here:

WWW Link

According to his statement, they all ready have it fixed so it would just be a question of releasing another version of 1.5X.

Ah, I don't think he's talking about 1.6 when he says patch there, though. I think that, for example, the metaverse fix that started this problem was itself a "patch" in their lingo, rather than an "update" like 1.5X or 1.6. So I'd expect a fix this week for it, actually. Again, I'd be very surprised if SD didn't quickly address the issue, they've been good about this kind of thing in the past.

Any new release would qualify as the "next patch"--I didn't mean to imply it would wait until 1.6.

I expect the devs will put this fix up as soon as they're able since it's already been made, there just wasn't time to build and post a new version on SDC before the weekend.

Ah, thank you for the reassurance, I was expecting the worse. I tried going to back to the vanilla game but it just doesn't cut it anymore, nor does Dreadlords. I guess if it's only a temporary problem I can put up with it and get back to playing. I just can't see myself playing on anything but Gigantic maps. Even those are a bit too small for me frankly.

Hey guys. Stardock has always been very responsive to patching up big issues. They wouldn't let this go. But you've got to understand. People can't work 24 hours a day - 7 days a week. There are few (if any) developers who work so closely with the community. So give them a little bit of time. You wouldn't want them to get burned out, because then a game becomes a massive nasty burden.

We could only dream about companies like EA giving half a crap about what we think -let alone working to help us. I'm playing through this issue in a gigantic map too. So, I feel your concern.

The worst part about his bug, I have since discovered, is that if you red a saved game, all of the stars and planets that you had previously stumbled across in the Fog area are once again missing. Every time I reload, I have to send a scout ship out to rediscover where the Altairan homeworld is again.

I would hope we are going to see a patch on Monday seen as this is by far the biggest issue a previous patch has ever caused. Be nice to know how this one slipped by the net

Go Stardock! oh and patch pretty please

I don't want to sound like an ass I really don't but if I was a small developer who depended on a fairly small group of hardcore players to keep the game going I would think making a mandatory saturday workday for a bug that makes a game unplayable would not be that big of a deal . Your not talking about making your guys do 6 weeks of crunch time like most all other developers just to hit a mile stone you are talking about having them come in on a saturday to patch an unplayable game .

Ohh and there is a FIX of sorts .

This is a cheat and I am sure 99% of players wont think about doing it you'll wait for a patch but you can put in the cheat after the .exe in the dark avatar icon . This will allow you to use ctrl+U which will take fog of war off of the entire map . If you have good self control you could stay away from check out planets and other stuff before your ships get to them. It changes the game play a bit and the other races are aware of you right away but it makes the game playable . Of course you can't use metaverse but this is for players who just want to enjoy the game until then .

I think you underestimate how many units Gal Civ really sells. And when people already work a lengthy work week adding extra days isn't good for morale. In fact it can be wholly counter-productive. Not to mention the fact that some of them have newborns and little children etc... and "just working on Saturday" is more than just putting in that day. You have to think about schedules, baby sitters etc.

Trust me. I used to think just like you. But Stardock has one of the most efficient coding teams I've ever seen. Start piling on tons of excess overtime (keep in mind, the people at SD don't just work 40 hour weeks - it's more than that), and you have a problem with more time yet decreased efficiency. Why do you think EA games are so horribly buggy and never get finished? Just look at their recent sports games... on consoles no less. More tired = more mistakes and less happiness (hey it's like running a colony in GC2 hehe!).

If you'd like more insight, please check these two links.

Gamespot article on limiting OT for developers

Developer and journal discussion

Keep in mind... I love playing games - I depend on gaming to get me through a lot of physical pain from a disease I have. So waiting isn't always easy... but it's easier when I know how dedicated and good a dev team is - and that we won't be waiting month(s) for a fix (or never).

Sorry for the long post and hope it isn't too preachy or anything.