change log:
The biggest change in this beta is the optimzation work done on the ships. You should notice improved framerates and improved loading times (the optimizations also accelerated the creation of ship thumbnails). We had a save game where the framerate droped to 4 fps when we scrolled over sectors with ships, and with these changes it's now up to 28-34 fps. Major kudos to Jesse (aka CodeCritter) for all the work that he put into this! For those of you who like a little more technical details, Jesse implemented a batching system for the ships, optimized the meshes for speed, and optimized the storage of the scene nodes. If you want to check out your framerate, CTRL+F toggles the framerate counter on/off.
+ NEW: Added Starbase module to repair the starbase with Tech Requirement Advanced Hulls. Will only show up if the starbase is missing HP, and can be 'installed' multiple times. This module should not count towards the total modules.
+ CHANGE: In the Ship Designer, when using auto-place to place a component, the component will use the current scale and rotation settings
+ TWEAK: You are no longer permitted to change your capital to another world, and bonuses for the capital city have been increased.
+ FIX: Flushes resource manager’s resources when game exits
+ FIX: Fixed crash in invasion ground units
+ FIX: Fixed crash if memory does not allocate in ResourceGraphic
+ FIX: Fixed crash in ship design code if hardpoint data failed to load
+ FIX: Fixed bug where minimaps were not refreshing immediately when you started a new game
+ FIX: Added code to handle if you or your trading partner are in debt to fix flakiness with the money popup in the TradeWnd.
+ FIX: Fixed bug in the function that calculates the morale of a colony to fix a longtime bug where your morale could permanently drop to 1%
+ FIX: Made it so that ships on the Governor minimap should show up larger when they are affected by the switch. Also made starbases not show up on this minimap to reduce clutter.
+ FIX: Fixed typo in XML files that caused land and background textures in Invasion window to be black
UPDATE 5/21/07: I am linking to a test build meant to address the memory issues, slowdown, and graphical glitches in this beta. Please backup your existing GC2DarkAvatar.exe and Lib3D.dll files before extracting this zip file into your GalCiv2\DarkAvatar folder. When making reports from this point forward, please be sure to state which version you are using.
UPDATE 5/22/07: I updated the link with a new test build that fixes the Governor screen lockup and makes the minimap stars bigger on Large and Gigantic galaxies so that they are more visible.
http://sd.stardock.com/carielf/da_1_6_b5_test2.zip
