GalCiv: The Anti-console game.

[Rorschach]

Qt3, all GalCiv all day, and all night.

Actually I'd like to loop back to a discussion on patching and quality control in PC games vs. console games. Is the daily updates for GalCiv a good thing or a bad thing? Discuss.

Here's what's changed since release:

April 2, 2003: Cople of new tweaks, fixes
New Features:
+ Made AI better at negotiating in trade screen
+ Changed navigation bonus to be +moves rather than a percent
+ AI easier to trade techs back and forth with.
+ AI puts more emphasis on how far away an empire is before deciding to go to war
+ planet/ship lists refresh if open at beginning of turn
+ optimized Listbox painting a bit
+ option to disable just event music in prefs.ini
+ code to make ship leave orbit if moved from ship list

Bug Fixes
+ random buttons hide when race disabled
+ fixed dead ship maint bug
+ fixed trade routes not clearing when load/start new game bug
+ fixed up message coming late bug
+ Fixed tribute bug

April 1, 2003: Couple of crash fixes
Bug fixes:
+ Divide by Zero crash (Thanks bunboy)
+ Terror Star destroying stars could cause data corruption to starship object (Thanks bunboy)

March 31, 2003: Tweaks, fixes, and events...
1.01A.30
New Features:
+ GalCiv AI tweaked so that it bargains more intelligently at lower levels
+ General difficulty level affects which random events will be used (i.e. no more getting clobbered by an advanced story arc when you're just learning the game)
+ New Cut scene: When a player dies, you get a cut scene of ships conquering them.
+ New random event - population boom.
+ Social programs cost slightly less to maintain
+ Details screen now displays how much maint. completed projects use "(X)" by their names.

Bug Fixes:
+ Metaverse submissions should work for all players

March 30, 2003: Tweaks, fixes, and events...
Changes:
+ Some random events come later in the game.
+ Technology Trade United Planets issue nerfed
+ AI considers technology trade values more at lower intelligence levels
+ Crash bug in diplomacy screen hopefully fixed
+ Terraformer can be built
+ SDNet.lib updated for those who have had trouble submitting scores. Make sure you register with the metaverse.
+ Duplicate building of wonders / trade goods fixed
+ Added 2 new random events
+ Anti-Cheat methods beefed up
+ Metaverse submits difficulty level

March 26, 2003: BonusPak!

The BonusPak is a collection of additional features, tweaks, and other goodies to thank people for purchasing Drengin.net or GalCiv. The BonusPak requires updating to the latest version of GalCiv. The BonusPak module contains:

+ New Events
+ New United Planets Resolutions
+ New Ships
+ New Technologies
+ New Starbase modules

The update to GalCiv's base portion includes:
+ *NEW* Enhanced Setup Screen!
+ *NEW* MP3 player built in that allows users to specify different background music.
+ A few cosmetic bug fixes we found while playing the game after gold.
+ Some tweaking to the economy so that it's easier to make money.
+ Populations grow larger
+ Nicer looking "good" ship panel
+ Implementation of some suggestions from message board as well as from Tom and Bruce (thanks guys!)
+ Smarter AI (in terms of intelligence, not difficulty)
+ AI penalized more to make it easier. As the AI becomes more intelligent, we'll be penalizing it more in resources to simulate human players (computers are much more efficient than humans so us penalizing the AI is more about simulating us imperfect humans).

March 26, 2003: Released!

Personally I think it is a good thing, as long as the changes are though out and don't thrash between nerfing and buffing the gripe of the day I like the tuning process and continual refinement. I also appreciate the delivery vehicle and not having to deal with a "one patch only" policy. What do the console people say? What do the people pissed at Activision/Taldren say? Is GalCiv a bad game because it has so many changes?

[Anonymous]

Great game, evolving well. Playtesters can never find all the bugs, and they can't think of every way to improve a game. Continued support will prevent the game from becoming "old" and boring.

[Raife]

Who says you have to update so frequently? If you want a static version, then just wait for the periodic version updates they'll be putting out. If you want the latest changes, get the dailies.

Cater to everybody, what's the problem?

[Jason McCullough]

Well, none of the bugs are that big, so I'm fine with it.

[Rorschach]

Don't get me wrong... I'm loving the game and playing the hell out of it. Personally I appreciate the daily feedback and small deltas to make the game better. I was just wondering how this fits into the mindset of the people who got hot-n-heavy into the console vs. PC vs. patching discussions.

[Troy S Goodfellow]

Most games that have frequent patches are addressing game balance issues or adding features. Almost every major bug is fixed in the first patch (or "update") so frequent updates are a sign of dedication to a title.

You are right that a developer has to be careful that the updates don't become overwhelming or cater to select gripes of a small constituency. Some games update to the point that the manual becomes useless but fail to provide adequate documentation of the new changes and how they affect gameplay.

I've never minded the patch cycle for games. If a game ships playable but patches could address minor problems or game balance issues, I see no reason why developers shouldn't take advantage of the PC's advantages in this area. If there was an easy to update console games, I'm sure we'd see more console developers taking this route.

Troy

[Chris Nahr]

The console vs PC question isn't particularly appropriate here since GalCiv is one of those games that you won't find on consoles. Besides, it would be unplayable on such a system.

As for the hurried patches... well, I think it's fairly obvious by now that Alex Pavloff (I think?) was right when he said that the game was shipped before it was quite finished. Just goes to show that relying on voluntary beta testers is a terrible idea, they don't test properly and they don't bother reporting what they find.

On the other hand, seeing how the game was quite playable and loads of fund even as shipped, and Brad is committed to keep improving it, I won't complain too much!

[Brad Wardell]

Let's be real here, check out what's new in the updates and it's mostly new features.

Saying that the game was shipped before it was done is, frankly, highly inaccurate.

If GalCiv 1.0 had never been updated at all, I think you'd find that the vast majority of gamers would have been fine with that. It's not like the shipping game crashes or has significant ommissions. Sure, there are glitches here and there, but the same can be said of virtually any game that ships, PC or console.

We essentially finished the game at the end of January. Then we made that agreement with IG to delay for one month to not conflict with MOO 3 and we used that time to add the mini cut scenes and polish bits and pieces.

The ultimate litmus test is: If GalCiv had not had any updates at all, do you think there's be some massive call for a patch? I would say the answer is clearly no. Finsihed is not equal to perfection.

Or to use the engineer's motto: Perfect is the enemy of good enough.

[Jason McCullough]

I'm curious how you missed the multiple trade goods bug though. :D

[Lum]

Yeah, version 1.0 crashed so frequently I resorted to Europa Universalis-style "set the autosave for every single damn turn" mode. It hasn't crashed lately though. So yay patch process!

I dunno, coming from the MMO world where we basically patch every 2 weeks for, oh, FOREVER, it doesn't seem that odd.

[Jason McCullough]

But MMO customers are gullible fools. That's setting the bar awfully low.

[Brad Wardell]

Yeah, version 1.0 crashed so frequently I resorted to Europa Universalis-style "set the autosave for every single damn turn" mode. It hasn't crashed lately though. So yay patch process!

I dunno, coming from the MMO world where we basically patch every 2 weeks for, oh, FOREVER, it doesn't seem that odd.

There have been no crash bugs fixed that would come up more than once in a very very great while and not in a typical game.

There IS a sound problem though. GalCiv assumes it's using the Microsoft MP3 player and it turns out that some programs literally replace MS's MP3 codec with their own (Rather than registering it with the OS the proper way). Some of the DivX installers do that and I've herad that some Sound Blaster Live installers do this. We have an installer we cooked up that restores the MP3 player to the Microsoft one.

[wumpus]

Brad, are you at any point going to piss in someone's mouth? I don't know, I'm just asking.

[XPav]

There IS a sound problem though. GalCiv assumes it's using the Microsoft MP3 player and it turns out that some programs literally replace MS's MP3 codec with their own (Rather than registering it with the OS the proper way). Some of the DivX installers do that and I've herad that some Sound Blaster Live installers do this. We have an installer we cooked up that restores the MP3 player to the Microsoft one.

That the l3codec thing right? NOLF2 had that same problem. I'm not using that, but, well, some of my mp3s sound rather odd using it. They're really old mp3s, encoded by gods knows what. I've got mp3s dated from April 97...

[olaf]

I think it was a pretty solid 1.0 release, but some of the tribute for tech exploits, and especially the multiple Wonders/Tradegoods thing seem like they should have been caught by beta testers.

In any case, I am happy about the constant updates, the game I have installed now is better than the one I bought.

olaf

[Brad Wardell]

Crap. Olaf you just found a serious bug that now makes sense.

The Tribute for tech exploit wasn't the you exploiting the AI. It was the AI exploiting you. I just realized that just now. Crap.

You see, in 1.0a the paying to someone else of tribute was working backwards in the money calculation. That is, when the AI was paying you tribute, it was showing up as income for you AND him. Except he got tech out of it too.

Just fixed that. But now I know why the AI was accepting those deals despite code that shoudl have made it smarter -- the AI was exploiting the player. GRR.

[Dave Long]

I'm reminded of the old Dreamcast tag line...

"It's thinking..."

--Dave

[Skinner]

Does updating the game corrupt saved games?

I had updated the game before release and my saved game got wacky. I haven't updated since because I haven't had the time to finish my current game and didn't want it to get corrupted because I think I'm going to win.

[Brad Wardell]

1.01 could cause problems with 1.0 saved games. But not always.