Brad Wardell's Blog


GalCiv 1.1 BETA 4 REPORTS!

Published on Thursday, April 13, 2006 By Brad Wardell In Bug Reports

It's time to wrap up 1.1 so that everyone else can use it.

At this point, only SEVERE issues (i.e. like a game crash or something that really affects game play) should be mentioned unless it's something NEW.  That means suggestions, pet peeves, etc. should wait until future updates.

 Please download from Stardock Central (in the "free stuff" area) a program called Smart Exception.  When you have it installed, run it and then run the game. IF the game crashes, it will create a file that can be emailed to [email protected] that will tell us literaly what line of code it crashed on. It's even possible that just one solid smartexception report could resolve this completely.

Debug.err reports will NOT tell us where a crash occurs. We need the SmartException.

Beta 4 has passed Stardock's internal QA at this point so as far as they're concerned, it's ready for release.  But we want to run it by you guys as well.

The Two Page Spreads are coming..

Published on Thursday, April 13, 2006 By Brad Wardell In GalCiv II News

Stardock is expanding its advertising in game magazines and elsewhere.  We have at Gamespot, Penny-Arcade and many other websites.  We've also been taking out full page ads in many game magazines as well.  Now we're expending into two-page spreads.

I don't know about you guys, but when I read magazines, I almost never notice 2 page ads. My eyes are trained to skip past "non editorial".  So when we decided to make a 2 page spread, we wanted to make something that was like the game play examples. To let people see what they could expect in the game. That meant using in-game graphics, describing what was happening.  So the result is an ad that is somewhat unlike anything we've seen before.  We're not marketing geniuses here so maybe there's a good reason why game publishers don't tend to make full page spreads like what you see below.  But we like it and wanted to share it with you.  These ads will start showing up in Computer Gaming World, Computer Games Magazine, and PC Gamer.

The 2-page spread:

Below is the full page ad that should start showing up in the new issues of the various game magazines:

Feel free to let us know what you think.

OH, yea, I fixed THAT alright!

Published on Wednesday, April 12, 2006 By Brad Wardell In Bug Reports

In beta 3 and beta3A, one of the new features was that the AI would no longer trade or just give out starbases to players to help them.

The net result of my AI change was that instead of it trading a starbase or giving it to you to help you, the game would just crash instead.

The important point was that the change log was correct -- the AI WOULD NOT trade those starbases with you or give them to you.

Beta 4 should be up shortly...

GalCiv II: v1.1 BETA 4 Change Log

Published on Wednesday, April 12, 2006 By Brad Wardell In GalCiv Journals


This version basically fixes bugs that were introduced in the 1.1 betas to prepare for the final 1.1 release:

Note, your saved games may not work with this version.


+ Saved games now load MUCH MUCH faster on new saves

+ Fixed bug in Ship Designer where auto-place would not create a slot icon for modules such as colony, trade, troop, etc

+ Fixed bug in Ship Designer where auto-placed modules could not be removed from the ship

+ Fixed crash when trying to buy AI ships from trade screen (ahem)

+ Fixed bug where Diplomacy history would have no data

+ Fixed bug where large galaxies might save planet data before it the data had been initialized, making the saved game crash in unexpected places

+ Changed saved game version because saved games no longer save influence data - speeds up saved game load time

+ Added support for loading older saved games that still have influence data

+ Fixed bug where you could not select a ship that had been upgraded in the Quick Build list

+ Fixed crash in ship move calculation because the ship had no ship type

+ Fixed crash related to ship/improvement built icons

+ Fixed crash related to failure to load and create fonts

+ Implemented Cari's change to prevent AutoSave crashing

+ Improved stability in various places by checking process pointers before appending them to other processes

+ Added debug messages when memory allocation fails

+ Influence updates immediately after loading a game (No need to wait a turn for the influence to correct itself)

+ Fixed a bug where saved games from older versions that had orbital fleet managers in them did not allow the player to attack ships in a planet

+ Ship Design Screen deletes an old design if the new design has the same name

+ Fixed bug where if you pressed ESC in election window, you would never get any more elections from then on

This version should be available by 8pm EST.

The Desktop Pet gets updated!

Published on Wednesday, April 12, 2006 By Brad Wardell In WinCustomize News

Have some fun with your Windows desktop with teh Desktop Pet.  The Desktop Pet is a virtual pet that actually lives out its life on your desktop. Users can feed it, play with it, watch it walk around your desktop interacting with your trashcan, and other desktop objects that come with it. 

The pet isn't just randomly walking around, it has a sophisticated artificial intelligence engine that gives it moods and desires and based on them will perform various actions.

Version 1.01 of the virtual pet updates the graphics to give it a more "teddy bear" look and smooths out some animations, updates the AI a bit and more.

The desktop pet is only $9.95 ($8.95 if you have Object Desktop) and is a great diversion or simply something that can run in the background (it uses virtually no CPU when it's covered up).

PC Magazine reviews KeepSafe

Published on Wednesday, April 12, 2006 By Brad Wardell In WinCustomize News
 

PC Magazine has reviewed Stardock's new utility, KeepSafe.

KeepSafe is a program that provides real-time file archiving and revisioning. It makes protecting your important files and data an integregal part of the file system.  Once installed, users decide which directories and files to protect and from then on, when a user (or the system) saves a change to such a file, KeepSafe automatically creates a revision and backs it up to a remote location decided by the user. Users no longer have to "remember" to back up their data nor do they have to put together system wide "timed backups" to protect this data.

PC Magazine review summarizes:

KeepSafe is devoted to protecting all versions of the files you're currently working on—a second line of defense after your full backup strategy. It does this one job with single-minded intensity and makes recovering earlier versions a snap. If you've ever saved a bad file over a good one or found your latest version corrupted, you'll appreciate the ability to get that file back just the way it was a minute or a month ago.

KeepSafe's home page is https://www.stardock.com/products/keepsafe

BETA 3A BUG REPORTS: We need your help!

Published on Wednesday, April 12, 2006 By Brad Wardell In Bug Reports

Somewhere in the 1.1 beta code is a crash bug that people are running into but we have not been able to track down.

We need your help.

Please download from Stardock Central (in the "free stuff" area) a program called Smart Exception.  When you have it installed, run it and then run the game. IF the game crashes, it will create a file that can be emailed to [email protected] that will tell us literaly what line of code it crashed on. It's even possible that just one solid smartexception report could resolve this completely.

How did you find out about Galactic Civilizations II?

Published on Monday, April 10, 2006 By Brad Wardell In GalCiv II News

So how did you hear about Galactic Civilizations II?  We've created a fairly detailed web poll (left side of this page).  We are very interested in finding out how people learned about this game. What's the best way to get the word out there and so forth.

The poll is located on the home page of galciv2.com on the left side.

Thanks!

GalCiv II: v1.1 BETA 3A Change Log

Published on Monday, April 10, 2006 By Brad Wardell In GalCiv Journals

Here's what's new in Beta 3A over Beta 3 (basically what we did over the weekend).  We're trying to tidy things up for the 1.1 release.

For marketing reasons, 1.1 won't be released until NEXT week. This week everyone's busy releasing KeepSafe so in theory, this build should be considered a release candidate.  This does NOT mean we've gotten to every single person's request, suggestion, comment.  This is a feature-complete version of 1.1.  So if you have some big problem with this, let us know.  This should be treated as if it came in a box.

 

+ Updated AI rally point code to adjust to it being blocked by opponents.

+ AI rally points are now closer to friendly planets so that they're nearer to reinforce

+ New Ship Design and Adaption system implemented based on experiences from (ahem) "after hours play testing".

+ Alien ship names are better. I.e. Drengin Fighter instead of just "fighter".

+ Tightened AI tech trading so that weapons are rarely traded.

+ Torians much better at managing planets.

+ AI treats home planet differently than other planets when it comes to deciding how to build improvements.

+ Lots of tweaks to how the AI determines which technology to research.

+ Updates several of the AI modules to support an improved starbase handling algorithm (didn't update all because "better" is subjective).

+ AI better at upgrading their ships

+ Lots of tweaks to the tactical battle AI

+ AI will tend not to send combat ships out of orbit if doing so would leave the planet vulnerable to an invasion.

+ Normal and Bright AI intelligence levels made a bit easier

+ Trade route value increased based on population of source/destination planets.

+ Fixed bug where display name was used to find ships (can't assume English names!)

+ Updated AI ability picking based on new values.

+ Optimized AI usage of space on a ship.

+ AI will now create sub-fleets that will go after enemy starbases.

+ Technologies 20% cheaper by default (use technology rate to adjust this).

+ AI wont' "help" you by giving you starbases to fight wars.

+ AI is much less likely to trade away mining starbases.

+ Nano Ripper costs more, does 5 damage instead of 6 (it's still a very potent weapon).

+ Drengin loyalty removed from abilities.

+ Fixed bug where ship components that are in the .xml but not in the .shipcfg would not be displayed in the slots in the ship designer

+ Fixed bug where AI ships would build mining starbases without resources.  It was allowing them to do this as long as the starbase limit had not been met.  Now, if they try it, it will abort before building the starbase and leave a message in debug.err

+ Fixed bug where camera would scroll to AI ships that were targeting the player's dead ships

+ Fixed bug where trade route graphics were not clearing the vertex shader

+ Fixed a crash related to the starbox render function

+ Planet Context window will now update the planet stats as you change the sliders in the Domestic Policy Economy window

+ Fixed upgrade overlay for AI fleets to not display time to upgrade (Release Mode only)

+ Fixed "Auto-obsolete" bug when upgrading a ship design

 

-------- Previous Betas of 1.1 change logs are below -------------

Here's what's new in v1.1 Beta 3 over Beta 2.

+ More balancing on what techs AIs should research

+ Tighter controls over tech trading

+ AI won't lower relations with a player for military reasons unless it has a distinct military advantage

+ Good civilizations now get an outright + to their relations from neutral civs.

+ Torians better at making use of constructors

+ AIs will tend to have much different sets of technologies based on race.

+ AIs will make a priority out of terraforming their tiles

+ Terran Alliance AI ship designs more flexible with galaxy size (other civs already using this)

+ Terran Alliance will use economic bases to extend their range

+ AIs will accelerate military production if they fall behind enough on military spending.

+ New API FindClosestLocalUnfriendShip(). AIs will use this to put ships near potentially hostile ships that are somewhat near its worlds.

+ New APIs: CalcFullAttack(), CalcFullDefense(). These APIs allow the AI to quickly (CPU wise) determine if a potential target is getting benefits from military starbases and make decisions based on this information.

+ Military Might makes use of the new CalcFullAttack and CalcFullDefense APIs

+ Precursor Rangers don’t show up until after game year 5 (was 3).

+ Some Civs put more emphasis on increasing food production

+ Tech research slightly faster at default tech rate

+ Cleaned up planet economy display so that ()’s only show up if you’re not spending.

+ Tool tip for military spending now shows up if you mouse over the actual number. It will explain where that number comes from.

+ AI better at valuing the worth of planets.

+ AI more wary about attacking fortified starbases (this is harder to balance than it might seem, you want the AI to sacrifice units if necessary to wear down a starbase but you don’t want it mindlessly throwing ships at them, it’s a fine line).

+ Start-up abilities made cheaper but less powerful too. More opportunity to spread ones Civ out.

+ Political Parties re-balanced based on new values.

+ Updated graphics for some planetary improvements.

+ Some planetary improvements made less expensive

+ Spin Control Center now requires Majesty

+ Neutrality Learning Center added

+ Attack Assist Modules now cost typically $300 per module.  The reason for this is that these modules essentially give the same benefit as building several small ships when used correctly. $300 may even be too cheap. Late in the game, these costs won’t be significant but it prevents a player from b-lining to these techs and eliminating opponents before the game has really started.

+ Attack and Defense assist modules will require that the starbase have battle stations on them at the very least.

+ Starbase militarization techs cost more to research.

+ Terran Alliance AI focuses more on self-defense of planets Drengin

+ AI now uses experimental weapons focus technology system Scoring system tweaks. See https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=345&AID=111746 for details

+ Music playing tweaks

+ Update the influence borders when an influence module is added

+ Drengin racial morale increased to 25%, Soldiering racial bonus decreased to 20%.

+ fixed bugs reading in height map mods

+ added ability to read in .str files from the mods\data folder

+ added support for modded star types

+ added support for replacing the custom planets and race config files with copies in the mods folder (but not adding new or partial mods)

+ added support for replacing the abilities xml file with a copy in the mods folder

+ tweaked code that sets the star type so that we get more variety, and made it so that yellow stars only appear for systems with habitable planets and purple stars for systems with class 20+ planets

+ made it so that if you want to mod the AbilityBonuses.xml file it will use additional entries which were previously excluded like Logistics.

+ Implemented “Disable Point Sprites” option.  This option will force the game to not use point sprites whether or not the hardware supports them or not.  It can be used to speed up performance for cards that do not support point sprites, because point sprites will not need to be emulated with software.  The option has the following effects:

   a) Stars will not be rendered  ( no appropriate substitute without point sprites )

   Engine exhaust will not be rendered ( no appropriate substitute without point sprites )

   c) Ship damage will show as electricity whenever it would normally appear as a fire, smoke, sparks, or any effect that uses point sprites

 
+ Fixed dials precision in ship designer.  When using certain rotation amounts, cardinal directions like 180 deg could not be accurately obtained.

+ Fixed display bug when number of weeks before an election was calculated as negative

+ Stacked Ships window: If you select a fleet, the Details button will change to “Manage”

+ Fixed bug in invasion where number of colonists in colony ships was included in amount of troops after an invasion

+ Fixed autosave loading crash when mods are used

+ Fixed bug where all class 0 planets have the same texture after reloading a saved game

+ Fixed bug/exploit where if you use a fleet with both transports and attack ships to attack a defended planet that belongs to a civ you are not at war with, and you vote to declare war, you skip fighting the ships in orbit and go straight to a land invasion

+ Fixed wrong number of troops displayed when choosing invasion tactic if the fleet has both colony and transport ships in it.

+ Fixed various crashes caused by texture painter not getting initialized

+ Fixed glitch where some components on core ships could not be removed because they said there was something attached to them

+ Planet Context window now takes into account bonuses for ships in orbit

+ Fleets have their own version of CalcFullAttack and CalcFullDefense to add up the full attack and defense of each ship in the fleet

+ added code to make nosprites option read in from prefs.ini file

+ fixed bug where setup appearance screen didn't have the correct style selected in the lisbox

+ added function to galaxy to return the correct directory for the shipcfg file based on the shiptype

+ adding code to be able to upgrade but not overwrite core designs and mods

+ added code to track if a data type is a mod or not

+ now if the anti-aliasing is set to an invalid value, it's just disabled

+ added code so that it will always try to create at least 11 stars (1 for each major race) to keep the code that picks the starting locations for civs from breaking down

+ added code to delete ship cfg files when galciv2 is loaded if there is no definition for it

+ updated shipcfg files for the pre-canned ships so that they save the component name as well as the model name

+ FOW tweaks to remove cases where FOW is permanently unhidden

 

-- below is from the previous betas --

+ New Option: No tech Trading. Players can prevent any tech trading by anyone.
+ New Option: Blind Exploration. Players can now start out not knowing where the other civilizations are located.

+ New Option: Disable Minor races. No minor races.

+ New Option: Randomize player intelligence. This will scramble opponent intelligence by around +/- 10 points to have more variance.

+ New Option: Randomly pick opponents. Players can simply choose to play against N opponents and it will pick them out.

+ Ship Design Screen re-designed to allow far more visible space for designing.

+ Ship Design Screen supports panning with left-mouse button held down.

+ Ship Design Screen displays installed components in a grid list. Right click to remove a component.

+ Ship Design Screen supports rotation of components.  See options screen to control how much you can rotate them.

+ Ship Design Screen supports copy/pasting behavior with ship size/rotation. If you select an existing component and then select a new component, the new component will automatically take on the size and rotation of the installed component you had just selected.

+ Ship Design Screen supports symmetry in rotation. Select an existing component, then select a new component to add on and then RIGHT-CLICK on the appropriate rotation dial and it will mirror the rotation automatically.

+ Ship level doesn't add as much to max HP.
+ Option now to display an animated dotted line showing where your selected ship is going.

+ How many turns it will take to reach a destination can be displayed at the destination target for selected ship. Note that you can hold down the Shift key and drag select multiple units.

+ If low-level espionage achieved, you can see the destination of selected enemy ships.

+ AI values range technologies more

+ Sensor techs increase sensor ability

+ Lots of little AI tweaks not worth mentioning but together will make a substantial difference to making the AI more enjoyable at low levels and more challenging at higher levels.

+ AI's more aggressive about expanding range with starbases. (some of  them anyway)

+ Uncommon habitable planets tweaked to make them slightly more likely to have habitable planets.

+ Fixed AI bug where it would sometimes put its rally points on planets when it didn't mean to.

+ AI takes distance more into account than it used to for determining relations.

+ AI more sensitive to cultural and military build up using new APIs that do fewer false positives.

+ AI gives more effort towards researching propulsion technologies.

+ AI puts more effort into logistics techs.

+ AI puts more effort into miniaturization techs. In all 3 cases it does  an evaluation of the galaxy state to determine whether it should be doing this.

+ Some AI personalities focus on significantly different techs.

+ AI will design faster or longer range ships depending on its needs

+ AI tech trading rewritten so that it doesn't do sweetheart deals. Tech trading somewhat rarer now as a practical matter. May need to be balanced so that human player doesn't get too much of an advantage.

+ AI can upgrade ships if it has enough money and thinks it's worth it.

+ AI manages colony improvements more effectively.

+ AI adapts economic strategy based on whether the new "disable tech trading" option is on.

+ AI generally better at picking techs based on new algorithm for evaluating galactic state.

+ Some AIs smarter about building constructors/freighters/defense.

+ Terran Alliance AI will not allow it to fall behind militarily beyond all hope.

+ Most AIs now will try to upgrade existing starbases more so than building new ones.

+ Most AIs will tend not to upgrade starbases that exist just to extend range.

+ Terran Alliance AI builds helper starbases closer to home.

+ Terran Alliance experimental strategy: Very focuses research - will  ignore other weapons techs other than its main strategy. If you're not playing against the humans, you're missing out.

+ Terran Alliance has a whole new ship design sub-module for having its very own types of ships.

+ Terran Alliance will build defenders with no weapons (not needed to keep invaders out).

+ Drengin AI planetary management substantially different from others.

+ AIs take into account wasted social production (which is no longer wasted) into account when deciding what to build.

+ Drengin more likely to escort transports.

+ Drengin will focus more on trying to have the strongest military at all times.

+ Terran Alliance focuses on diplomacy techs, gifting, etc. to keep relations up so that it can pursue technology.

+ Drengin and Terran AIs now very much focused on controlling all nearby galactic resources.

+ Drengin focus more on extending their range of their ships and getting more morale building techs than previously.

+ Drengin tend to focus more on their primary weapon and defense techs. We'll see how it works.

+ Drengin AI a LOT smarter about what they research.

+ Yor AI now derivative of new Drengin AI.

+ AI, in general, values research more than it did previously.

+ First attempt, but probably not last, for AI to try to take out resource starbases of enemies where it can find them (as a reminder to players, the AI doesn't necessarily know the existence of a resource starbase, it has to "see" them. So if you have some resource in the corner of the galaxy, don't wonder why it's not getting attacked any more than why you don't see their resource starbases tucked into some corner).

+ Trade revenue increased on larger galaxies, decreased on smaller galaxies.

+ Starbase factories improve the production of factories and labs on planets by X%. Half of that increased bonus is "free" and the other half is charged for.

+ The -2000 ceiling on debt has been eliminated for players playing at higher difficulty levels.

+ Last vestiges of aborted feature "Propaganda" eliminated. Expansion pack will have "agents" that players and AI can assign to do mischief and counter-mischief instead.

+ ECONONOMIC ENGINE CLEANED UP! Production and research now works as follows: Labs and Factories produce N production of their kind. How much of their capacity is used is based on the domestic policy sliders (spend rate X what % on each of the 3 sliders is used).

That amount is then multiplied by 3 types of bonuses:

(1) Your Civ Ability (which you set at start and can enhance by mining special resources).

(2) Economic starbases with factories on them.

(3) Planetary bonuses that comes from random events, UP issues, etc.

50% of this bonus you get for free -- not charged for it. The other half you pay for out of your treasury.

Example: If I have factories producing 100 units and my spend rate is 50% from domestic policy and my military spending is set to 100% then that factory's base production is 50 (50% of 100).

If my Civilization ability on military production is 10% and I have an economic starbase doing 5% bonus and I had an event that increase planet production by 5% then I would have 50 + 20% bonus = 60 production. I would only be charged 55 however -- 10 bonus production, 5 free, 5 paid for.

+ Tax rate angers citizens less (a bit).

+ Your Morale ability is taken to the .90 power and then added to morale (was .80 power).

+ Population growth fixed dramatically. This is going to have a significant game play result that we're still having to fix in the AI. Before, on a class 10 planet with a morale of 70 your population would increase at 20% per turn. Now is would change at 3%.

The "population growth ability bug" wasn't a bug but rather a problem with having populations in billions rather than millions. The population growth was previously capped at 200 million per turn. 20% of say 1 billion (or
higher) reached that cap. So all those bonuses meant nothing.

Now, at 3%, if you have a population of 1 billion then you're looking at an increase of 30 million per turn X your population bonus. If your morale is 100%, that gets doubled again.

Here's the thing: If you drain a population down to only a few billion, it'll take you a very long time to recover. Say goodbye to mass colony rush. You'll need to be very careful or else you could end up with a vast empire of tiny populations producing no money while smaller empires grow beyond you and conquer your weak but large empire.

Population Growth = CurrentMorale X Government Level X PlanetQuality Factory X GrowthFactor.

+ If your morale is > 75% you now get a 25% extra bonus to population growth. If it's at 100% you get a 100% extra bonus.

+ Population growth ability taken into account at the very end of this process for maximium effect.

+ Research Ability used wholesale (previously it was chopped in half).

+ Base taxes collected now is the square root of the population of a planet. This may be tweaked based on play testing.

+ New clean APIs: CalcTotalMilitaryProduction() and social and research equivs that just give you how much a planet is producing (for AI use later).

+ Social Production that is not being used anymore is transferred to military. So you're no longer being charged for social production. However, only the BASE social production is transferred and that amount is not subject to bonuses and so forth (lest there be a lot of cheese tactics and gaming of the social production bonus). So you still need to manage your economy decently but you're no longer being charged for production you're not using.

+ AI at lower levels gets less money to account for improvements in overall AI.

+ AI now "adds noise" to its decisions based on difficulty level.

Essentially, on things that are prioritized, AI that is playing as a "dumb"
level will have injected into its calculations a noise factor that will result in it coming to wrong conclusions about what it should do and hence do stupid things. It's random

+ Planets on the verge of defecting are more likely to defect.

+ AI updated to use its points differently based on new ability costs.

+ AI Ship design looks at the galaxy size and then decides based on that whether it needs to focus on range or speed more. Before it was one size fits all.

+ Cost to upgrade ships now cheaper.

+ Lockup fix: AI could get confused on where to put a starbase and get into an endless loop.

+ Player and AI on same starbase rules: 4 friendly starbases per sector.

+ AI more likely to target starbases.

+ New function: FindClosestEnemyStarbase()

+ AI will send its ships to guard nearby planets rather than cluster them in hordes.

+ AI will target military support starbases more so.

+ Bonus production now displayed in various displays).

+ Updates to the various screens to display the correct economic data based on the new economic engine (involved 9 different .cpp files).

+ Planet Abilities decreased in player start-up. Before someone yells (or if someone can answer them on various forums): Before the abilities would then get nerfed in game. For instance, a research ability of 20 was treated as a 10 when calculated. Now, the research ability is half as much in the player setup window but multiplied directly. There's no net change, it's just a display change.

+ Message changed to tell players they can only build 4 friendly starbases in a given sector.

+ Most defense modules are now slightly smaller

+ Logistics change: Large ships now use 6 logistics (was 5). Huge ships use 8 (was 6).

+ HP change: Large ships get 30HP base (was 28).

+ HP change: Huge ships get 50HP base (was 48).

+ Nano Rippper damage changed from 8 to 6.

+ Capitals no longer provide a morale bonus.

+ Maintenance on labs and factories increased slightly (1 to 2) to compensate for higher tax income and easier morale.

+ Factories and labs produce slightly less base production (because the new bonus system provides more bonus production).

+ Cost of some high level buildings substantially decreased.

+ Slight tweaks to racial abilities.

+ Eliminated Galactic Mall and Concert Hall starbase modules. Since influence victory strategies have been strengthened, we require players to have to go for the cultural domination tech path.

+ Put cost to upgrade an influence starbase at the beginning, subsequent modules are free.

+ Mining modules have been significantly nerfed since abilities are now directly multiplied rather than modified.

+ If you have the cultural domination techs, you can build directly to  those upper cultural influence modules bypassing the wimpier lower level ones.

+ Influence modules are less powerful (since you can now go directly to them) but still very powerful.

+ Fixed some tech tree bugs where the category was wrong. The AI relies on category to determine what type of tech it is since the AI isn't scripted.

+ Lots of tweaks to technology costs based on play testing and user feedback.

+ AI values tweaked. Miniaturization was valued very low. So the AI tended to have lots of cheap and ineffective ships compared to expert players.

+ AI less aggressive at lower levels.

+ Fixed typo in UP issue.

+ Prevent Cheese: Do not allow player to open fleet manager for a ship that is fighting. They could disband or change the ships in the fleet.
 
+ If a component on the ship is selected, size and rotation will remain the same as the selected component when a new component is chosen
+ You can click a slot at the top of the window to select a component on the ship. Clicking the slot again, de-selects the component.

+ Clicking a component on the ship, high-lights its slot in the component list

+ Fixed bug where if you choose a filter, and then add a component that should be filtered out, it would still show in the list

+ Size and rotation settings are no longer reset when selecting a new component type

+ Fixed bug where Clear button did not restore modules ( like colony, trade, etc) in the list of available components if they had been added to the ship before clearing it.

+ Fixed an exploit where players could add several modules of different types on the same ship by using auto-place.

+ Fixed not being able to select slots Slots now tint to the correct color

+ Took out the old component "slots" code and replaced it with new code using a grid list control.

+ Implemented the filter controls for choosing function or structural parts, or all parts. Known bug: if you choose a filter then add a component of diff type it will show in the list.

+ Added support for mouse wheel to the rotation dials. They will use whatever increment you have set in the options screen for rotations.

+ Made the constructor highlight slightly less transparent to make it more visible

+ Random ?'s turn on and off on the Opponent screen Polished

+ Functionality on the Opponent Screen added funciton to

+ "OverrideTextDisplay" of Spinners

+ added code to make civ save extra research points when it has more needs for the current tech

+ changed code to save ship designs as .xml files blind exploration now works

+ Changed "Enable Minor Races" option to "Disable Minor Races"

+ Changing any of the Game Options in Galaxy setup will now trigger the galaxy thread to be recreated if it is already running

+ Random Number of Races option working

+ Random Selection of Races option working (PaulB will be cheking in a screen to fix the clipping)

+ Random Intel option working (PaulB will be cheking in a screen to fix the clipping)

+ Added Stat in "Foreign Stats">"Misc" that gives the intelligence of the race.

+ NEW FEATURE: Auto-Pilot Lines checked in NEW FEATURE: "Show Auto Pilot

+ Lines" option added to Options screen NEW FEATURE: Resource icons on

+ tactical map are now color-coded NEW FEATURE: Number of weeks to move

+ to destination appears on the destination cursor

+ Tweak: Made dial needles thinner in ship designer

+ Fix: Bug where adding a ship with moves to a fleet with 0 moves restores the fleet's moves

+ Fix: Potential crash in overlay code

+ Fix: Made constructor highlights slightly more visible

+ Fix: Fleet Manager updates context area if fleet is disbanded

+ Fix: Removed code in CalcAStarRoute (used by trade routes and auto-pilot lines) that prevented the route from reaching across a gigantic galaxy

+ added code to FindPath to allow AI ships to get a new destination when they don't have one

+ added code to CanRaceBuildShip to check for an existing model file if  it's a user defined ship

+ added code to classShipTypes to save out an XML file for its def. If a ship is user defined and this function can't find a .shipcfg file for it, it will now return FALSE. This fixes the bug that Brad found where he was playing as a custom race and he changed what style of ship he was using.

+Fixed length of the Zombie Army event to make it fit nicer in the box

+Added ability to pan and rotate main map with the Keyboard:
   -CTRL and Arrow keys to rotate (with snapback working if activated)
   -SHIFT and Arrowkeys to pan main map

+ Old "hardpoint modifiers" that rotated and flipped hardpoints have been marked as "hidden." This removes them from the components the players can choose, and also allows them to keep using the designs they have previously made that use them.

+ Improvement Summary window now shows tile improvements and their effects on the improvement and planet

+ Fixed bug where obsoleting a ship that had been purchased prevents the star port that purchased it from ever building anything else again

+ Improvement Summary Window: Fixed spacing of units

+ removed some references to humanity in the Tech Tree (but only where it made sense to remove, most places it worked well)

+ Fleet Manager: Now displays number representing ship's logistic value in ship thumbnail

+ Fleet Manager: Implemented the command buttons

+ Ship Designer: Implemented "Reset Component" button

+ Ship Designer: Added tool-tips to the new design UI controls

+ Ship Designer: Fix: Scaling selected part now scales ONLY that part

+ Fleet Manager window is implemented

+ Dbl-click a fleet or click on Details in the fleet context window to open it.  Use it to add ships to your fleet. Use it to move ships from one fleet to another. It still needs a few graphical tweaks: Some things don't tint Will be adding a number next to the ship icons to show their logistics (like the stacked ships window does)
 

+ You can no longer multi-select dead ships or ships hidden by FOW (This fixes bug where multi-select highlights empty spaces)

+ You can not cycle through fleets in the ship details window anymore (This is to make way for the new Fleet Manager screen)

+ Action buttons in ship details screen are now disabled if the ship cannot perform that action

+ Fixed bug where text in trade screen would display green when using the money slider even if the AI would refuse to trade a military tech because the civ was too powerful.

+ Fixed bug that Brad e-mailed about (Planet logos missing when zoomed out)

+ Fixed bug in Tutorials window where pressing ESC key would hang the game

+ Fixed UP Starbase Tax law-related problems.

+ Fixed bug where a player could not attack Dread Lord planet with an orbital fleet manager on it

+ Fixed non-working scroll bar in rally point window Added GetTurnsAway  function to classStarShip that returns a float indicating number of turns it will take to get to specified tile CTRL+I now displays the number of turns it will take a ship to get to its destination.

+ MiraclePlanets Event: Now updates the overlay icons for the planets. (They used to have "uninhabitable" icons even though they were upgraded by the event)

+ Fixed exploit where you could get around UP starbase module limit using a fleet of constructors

+ Fixed sizing to 0 error message in debug.err in ShipCombatShipsEntryWnd.

+ AIUpgradeShip will not allow you to use it on a fleet (it will abort gracefully) “Fleets” themselves cannot be upgraded, but the ships in them can
+ Fixed UP Law bug where starfaring tax was applied even if the civ in question was dead

+ Fixed UP Law bug where war tax was applied even if the civ you were at war with was dead

+ Fixed UP Law bug where Starbase tax was applied even on starbases that were destroyed

+ Changed starship::GetFleet function to return a pointer to itself if the ship is a fleet.

+ Found and fixed source of “Influence Flooding” bug.  If the invader used the “Use unhappy citizens” tactic, these citizens could be counted as casualties and the casualties would exceed the number of troops on the transports, thus giving a negative population.

+ Fixed crash when memory allocation fails on ship type creation in ship designer. Adds message to debug.err when this happens and takes appropriate action to avoid crash

+ Fixed crash in Polyline.  It now checks number of points in the line to avoid out of bounds crash.

+ Fixed CTD on Governor Screen.   pColony was not set in governor mini map. Pointer is checked now.

+ Fixed bug where removing components does not remove their tech requirement.

+ Fixed crash when entering victory status screen.  Planet was not set in colony::CalcMorale.

+ Fixed incorrect stat shown in ship statistics text (Trade screen)

+ Fixed bug where data on main screen (treasury, tech, etc) would not update immediately after loading a saved game

+ Fixed crash in OverlayGraphic::QueryInterface function.  Pointer was not being checked.

+ Trade Screen, if you right-click a ship, you will now get the “ship intelligence report” on that specific ship, instead of a generalized ship type information popup.

+ Trade Screen, if you right-click a starbase, it will now show the correct data based on what modules your starbase has.

+ Fixed a typo in conversations

+ Fixed a “false positive” message in debug.err.  It would display “Could not find texture” when PictureFrame images were being set to NULL (to clear the image).  This is ok.

+ If population after an invasion is less than 1, it will be set to 1

+ Fixed incorrect data being displayed in Ship Upgrade window

+ Fixed colors in a few end game summary screens to use race color instead of interface color

KeepSafe released!

Published on Monday, April 10, 2006 By Brad Wardell In WinCustomize News

Plymouth, MI - (April 10, 2006) – Stardock Corporation, a leading software application company, announced KeepSafe today. KeepSafe is a revolutionary new utility that combines data backup and revisioning into one simple program. Based on user-defined backup locations and settings, KeepSafe becomes a seamless component of the Windows XP operating system. It is available for $29.95 on www.stardock.com.

Once installed, KeepSafe can be configured to protect user-chosen file types (i.e. -- .doc., .pst, .xls, etc.) or entire directories (i.e. -- "My Documents"). From then on, any time a user works on one of those files and saves their changes; KeepSafe will automatically store a revision to a user-defined location, typically a server, locally, or external drive. The archiving feature allows users to store multiple versions of each document based on the user’s preference. If a key data file gets corrupted, the user can right-click on that file and choose to return to an earlier version, minimizing the lost time and effort. KeepSafe is the intermediate step needed to secure data between backups.

Brad Wardell, CEO and president of Stardock said, "This product works without the user even realizing it’s working. It’s that seamless. Users, once they’ve customized their setting definitions won’t have to remember to backup their important files anymore. KeepSafe will do it automatically without hot keys or hot buttons to worry about."

Another key aspect of KeepSafe is that it builds an on-the-fly database of everything it is protecting. As a result, users can quickly find versions of any document they've ever worked on quickly. If you've ever had to search your hard drive to find something you recently worked on or use a "desktop search" program to find your documents, KeepSafe is for you.

Visit https://www.stardock.com to learn more about Stardock’s KeepSafe as well as Stardock’s other award-winning software products.

Screenshots

KeepSafe makes it easy to choose which types of files and which directories you want to "keep safe" It has a ton of configuration options to give the user total control over how many revisions of a file should be kept, where they should be stored, etc. KeepSafe integrates into the shell making it easy to recover a lost, deleted, corrupted or just older version of a protect file. KeepSafe keeps all your work in a database. Any protected file becomes incredibly easy to find. Can't remember where that document from last month you wrote is? No problem, KeepSafe remembers. Just start typing in the name of the file and KeepSafe will filter in matching names as you type.


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Specifications
KeepSafe: $29.95
Developer: Stardock Corporation (www.stardock.com).
System Requirements:
· Requires Windows XP, 2003, or Windows Vista.

Home page: https://www.stardock.com/products/keepsafe/
Media Inquiries: [email protected]