MEGA FAST: The next 1.6 BETA!

My computer is already drooling

That's awesome. I might be so happy playing Galciv2 I might not bother buying the fantasy strategy game. JUST KIDDING, JUST KIDDING.....

NICE.

I'll be very curious to see how responsive my computer will be with that new beta when I load my most recent endgame save with ~10000 ships.

This is a lifesaver. I have been having tons of fun with Galactic Civilizations II, until I get in a war with someone. Then more ships get involved and things slow to a crawl.

Psst... did anybody tell Brad that he already has our money?

He's got our money for this game. He wants it for the next game also. At this rate, he's gonna get it, too...

I think that Braddock missed the part where Frogboy said . To get the full fulsomeness we're clearly gonna NEED that Fantasy fantasy...that's NEED as in "NEED a fix - I'll pay!"

Are there any plans to update DL with some of these improvements as well?

Improvements, like this is always a plus in my book ...

Double-pirates?



10 times more FPS? You gotta be kidding me. It sounds too good. Make sure to publish this savegame as well so we can confirm these claims.

great news.

just wondering though: will Dreadlords also profit from these performance improvements in an update ?

Good point Moose. I still play DL quite often, in fact that is where i play with mods, so i would really love to not see DL get left behind.

Although, i can already feel the hammer falling.........

On my 'ancient' video card, DA 1.6 b3 has already made a huge performance impact...

In 1.6 b2 and prior versions, my framerates on an all abundant Medium Galaxy with 9 opponents were around 9-12 or worse zoomed in with most all eye candy except planet lights enabled...I played almost exclusively at Tactical View Level with the Icons...

- with 1.6 b3 they improved to average over 20/25 - allowing me to play zoomed in more often.

I can hardly wait to see what 1.6 b4 and the final will do...I was going to buy a new video card this summer to take advantage of DA...but now...instead I'll have some extra cash to but another game...any recommendations, Frogboy?

10X in that scenario.  The FPS is still capped at around 60fps no matter what.

Make sure you have Company of Heroes. Awesome game!

As for the fantasy strategy game we're working on -- the 3D engine in it has to be really advanced and able to handle a lot of detail because of what we're doing in it. 

Let me put it another way -- if you guys were making a fantasy strategy game, wouldn't you want to make a world that really felt organic? Where you could zoom out and see the entire world or zoom in and look at individual leaves on individual trees in a particular forest that might have things living in it?  Part of the actual game play will be the ability to interact with the world in a very minute way (i.e. imagine events liek you have in GalCiv but instead ones that you can trigger by selecting different things living in the woods or mountainains or swamps or whatever. 

Anyway, the point being, we had to do a lot of research to come up with a very new way of displaying graphics.  Since it's turn based, we can have much more detail than real time games like Crysis or Spore and such would have.

So in this next beta, we're bringing some of that engine into GalCiv II: DA. Bringing the entire engine wouldn't make any sense since GalCiv's requirements aren't that strenuous (displaying planets, ships, asteroids, etc. not that big of a deal).

(on the other hand, if in GalCiv you could zoom into an asteroid field down to seeing an individual man on the asteroid field and instruct him to check out a small glowing object not far from him in order to trigger a new optional event that might be a different thing all together).

Samen question, please could somebody (perhaps Brad) respond to this. I really hope so!

ohhh....that would be very, very, sweet !!!!!!!!!!!
maybe have a special release with the whole graphics engine...Dark Avatar S.H.O. (super high output)  

That makes me drool... The possibilities.... But I guess it would be out of scope for this game?

Sounds great.

(regarding GalCiv II: Dread Lords)

Probably not.  We did release the Heightmaps and we updated GalCiv II to support those which should result in a significant speed boost.

But Dark Avatar has to be our focus as it's what's paying for the new development.

Ouch! I knew that hammer fall was going to hurt.

Thanks for responding though Frogboy!

Just thought I'd ask if anyone else has seen this...
Running Beta 3, didn't like the graphics issues I was reading about for 4   , I've 'noticed' that my ships in a fleet are getting a raise to their hitpoints after every ship they kill. Now normally I would look at this as a good thing but I'm not sure this was how combat was supposed to work.
The second thing is influence. It seems to be a bit out of whack or maybe I am missing something but at this moment in my game the Terrans and Drengin are pretty much having every planet flip over to them. Now I am set to conquest vic only and I just don't remember either of these two issues being prevalent in my last Beta 2 game.
Too busy updating when I should just be playing...  
So has anyone else noticed any of these two things?

No, and definitely not the flipping issue. I'll keep an eye out for the hitpoints when I play next.

This is an intended feature, isn't it? The concept of veteran, killer fleets?

Of course, but I thought he meant they get an extra hitpoint with EVERY fight. That didn't used to be the case, and I haven't seen if it is now, either. But I'll have some time to play today so I'll see if I see it.

It does seem that ships "level up" far easier, i wouldn't say every fight but too far off.

As for the flipping issue, not seen it. The Krynn are getting a few flips in their favor but none more than usual...