Near gold screenshots for GalCiv II - Page 6

mystery · 02-14-2006, 06:15 AM

ONE WEEK LEFT!

Quote:

We're leaving together
But still it's farewell
And maybe we'll come back
To earth, who can tell
I guess there is no one to blame
We're leaving ground (leaving ground)
Will things ever be the same again
It's the final countdown...
The final countdown
Ooh oh

(sorry for the bad 80s lyrics, but they seemed to fit the whole space-theme)

Brad Wardell · 02-14-2006, 11:23 AM

Well today begins the server heavy load testing.

The carnage begins in about 20 minutes.
http://www.galciv2.com/forums.aspx?AID=100792

Sam Jones · 02-14-2006, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brad Wardell

Well today begins the server heavy load testing.

The carnage begins in about 20 minutes.
http://www.galciv2.com/forums.aspx?AID=100792

Ha! Oops.......

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stardock Central

Download: C:\Program Files\Stardock\SDCentral\data\public\gc2\productio n\gc2.xml 0 | Attempt: 1 | -11 Error creating/opening the target file
Download: C:\Program Files\Stardock\SDCentral\data\public\gc2\productio n\gc2.xml 0 | Attempt: 2 | -11 Error creating/opening the target file
Download: C:\Program Files\Stardock\SDCentral\data\public\gc2\productio n\gc2.xml 1
Load: C:\Program Files\Stardock\SDCentral\data\public\gc2\productio n\gc2.xml 1
Load: C:\Program Files\Stardock\SDCentral\installed\gc2.xml 1
Download: C:\DOCUME~1\SAMJON~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\sdcentral\Base\ AppData\Big_Button_Away.png_ 0 | Attempt 1 | -14 The Url is invalid
Download: C:\DOCUME~1\SAMJON~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\sdcentral\Base\ AppData\Big_Button_Away.png_ 0 | Attempt 2 | -14 The Url is invalid
Download: C:\DOCUME~1\SAMJON~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\sdcentral\Base\ AppData\Big_Button_Away.png_ 0 | Attempt 3 | -14 The Url is invalid
Result: Installation failed (0)

RepoMan · 02-14-2006, 01:25 PM

Just fired up my SD Central:

First it needed to upgrade itself.
Then it found my GalCiv 2 product! Sweet!
So it's starting to download it.

Status bar says (sequentially):
Downloading Mission2a_text.xml_
Waiting 3 seconds...
Waiting 2 seconds...
Waiting 1 second...
Downloading Mission2a_text.xml_
Downloading Mission2b_text.xml_
Waiting 3 seconds...
Waiting 2 seconds...
Waiting 1 second...
....

and on and on. It seems to be downloading each file contained in the final release... one at a time?!?!?!?!

Does this really mean it'll be downloading hundreds or thousands of small files, individually, failing on each download the first time? No wonder it's running at a transfer rate of... wait for it... <1 Byte / sec! Man, I'm glad I have this 2.2Mbps DSL line :-D

Good luck Brad! Why aren't you using a bittorrent of a single huge installer? That would be a lot less server load than fetching files individually :-O

Backov · 02-14-2006, 01:38 PM

They're serving it all off their own bandwidth as well. Admirable, but personally I would have done a mix of beefy bittorrent super seeds (on their bandwidth) combined with the load balancing of the downloading peers.

And preloading it a week in advance is just kind of a tease.

fuzzyslug · 02-14-2006, 01:39 PM

Is it supposed to be preloading yet? It still shows up as a beta for me and then errors out after bitching about my account.

RepoMan · 02-14-2006, 01:51 PM

Hm. I canceled it and then restarted, and it started over at the beginning, not even recognizing that it had already downloaded a few dozen files.

.....

shang · 02-14-2006, 02:09 PM

Seems to be working pretty good at the moment, and I got over 100KB/s a minute ago. I'm sure Stardock is busy collecting data and going over various options for their next big release, though. ;)

shang · 02-14-2006, 02:42 PM

Hah! Forget about 100KB/s! Now it's going over 600KB/s and I'm soon done with the whole thing. :)

So no load problems at Stardock from my point of view.

DanielElliot · 02-14-2006, 02:59 PM

Mine preloaded fine and very quickly. Looking forward to the release.

Sam Jones · 02-14-2006, 03:10 PM

I had to uninstall and then reinstall SDC to get it all to work, I also deleted the GC2 beta just in case.

Samurai · 02-14-2006, 03:31 PM

I just ordered the retail cd preorder from the website and I got an email confirming my order, but no serial numbers or anything like that. How long does it take them to email that out?

Anders Hallin · 02-14-2006, 03:53 PM

I also wonder this, since I pre-ordered a week or two ago.

JMR · 02-14-2006, 04:35 PM

So those that were able to preload it are beta testers? The riff raff gets to preload it tomorrow?

fuzzyslug · 02-14-2006, 04:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JMR

So those that were able to preload it are beta testers? The riff raff gets to preload it tomorrow?

Two things:

1) I can only update the beta, which doesn't actually work, apparently.

2) I was a beta tester because Gal Civ II came as part of my TotalGaming.net subscription, i.e. I paid for it about a year and 1/2 ago.

RepoMan · 02-14-2006, 04:52 PM

Me too, I paid for it in April 2005.

Well Sam Jones, you were right -- uninstalling the beta and then installing the full game works much better. Now it's downloading a great big SDC file at 150KB/second. Muuuuuch better :-)

DanielElliot · 02-14-2006, 05:00 PM

Ah that explains it. I was technically in the beta because of a TotalGaming subscription a few years ago (and I'm pretending I got the game for free because I used the tokens that I got grandfathered in with when they started using tokens), but never actually installed it. So I had no beta files that would mess things up.

Drastic · 02-14-2006, 05:24 PM

I didn't need to reinstall Stardock or anything; the core preload installed (near as I can tell), but errors ("url is invalid") pop up when trying to install the tutorials, multimedia, and movies sections under it. I assume those'll open up for preload, or just on release date, later on.

Looking forward to the game.

DanielElliot · 02-14-2006, 05:27 PM

I was able to preload those too. YOU GOT PROBLEMS, SON.

Brad Wardell · 02-14-2006, 06:06 PM

Yea, just a few notes that we made from today:

1) If you were in the beta, best to uninstall because then you get the .SDC packages which are streamed from cachefly, a super fast (i.e. 600k per second type) setup.

2) Got a TON of useful data from the beta testers, made adjustments on the XML servers to have more mirrors and did a new Stardock Central build to make use.

3) Absolutely positively make sure you have the latest Stardock Central, many beta testers also had a beta Stardock Central which does not automaticlaly update (due a bug in the beta). Go to the Downloads page on GalCiv2.com and it's there.

Brad Wardell · 02-14-2006, 06:09 PM

BTW, all users who pre-ordered it from Stardock will be able to also download the game too even if they pre-ordered the retail box from us.

People with the retail box option will receive a temporary serial # that they can use to download the game and then later switch to the one that's in the box after they get it.

mlatin · 02-14-2006, 06:25 PM

i know this isn't really the place for it, and i have just emailed support in regards to this.

SDC seems like a decent enough way to do the updates and whatnot, but for some reason, it won't accept my cd-key for galciv1 at all.. despite the galciv1 site itself accepting both my email & cdkey for any downloads there.. it's frustrating. :)

i'm looking forward to galciv2, and pre-ordered the retail box via stardock.. hoping to get that cdkey in email soon.

fuzzyslug · 02-14-2006, 07:39 PM

Brad,

Did you guys fix the issue with the beta update? After complaining and then checking your suggestions within this thread, I booted up Stardock and it appeared to attempt to update, correctly (although it was still labeled as a beta). I didn't allow it to finish, though. I uninstalled and reinstalled just to be sure. Any chance you guys were on that particular issue at a surprising speed?

One more thing: locked and loaded.

Chris Nahr · 02-15-2006, 01:02 AM

My SDC updated itself to version 2.29a 374, build 117. I deleted all GC2 beta files, just in case, and got a zippy download of .sdc packages at maximum SDL speed. Nice!

Chris Nahr · 02-15-2006, 02:19 AM

Not so nice: The PDF manual, while thankfully no longer a collection of page-sized images, contains neither TOC bookmarks nor page/title hyperlinks of any sort. Come on, Brad... even the Acrobat plugin for Word can do this stuff!

Lunch of Kong · 02-15-2006, 02:58 AM

If the PDF also has registration marks, it's probably the same PDF that was sent to the print bureau. When preparing a PDF for book printing, you strip out all the extra PDF information that's unrelated to page layout and remove the underlined hyperlinks.

Quote:

even the Acrobat plugin for Word can do this stuff!

That is part of the problem right there. If the manual was created with an app originally tailored for desktop publishing, such as Quark Xpress or Adobe InDesign, x-refs have to be added manually. There's no auto-generation. If the intended output is the printed page, it makes sense not to waste time putting in x-refs unless it's part of the requirements spec.

But then someone comes along when you're done with the manual and says "Hey, do you have a version of that we can put on the CD?" And you're like "WTF, why didn't you tell me that at the start? It'll take me a few hours to do it properly." And then they're like "Oh, shit bonerz, we have to make the final release candidate installer today. We don't ahve time. Just give us what you've got." After this happens a couple times, you start asking them upfront if they're gonna do electronic distribution, and plan for it.

So, that's how this kind of thing usually happens in regards to PDFs of printed manuals. That's not my pet peeve, though. My pet peeve is poor indexing. A poor index is worse than no index!

Chris Nahr · 02-15-2006, 04:31 AM

No registration marks, although perhaps they simply didn't bother with that either.

Are you sure that Quark Xpress and Adobe InDesign can't auto-generate TOC bookmarks and hyperlinks from the existing structure? The manual does have a regular TOC, and I'm pretty sure that one was auto-generated by the application, so converting it to PDF metadata should be simple enough. Adobe InDesign in particular should be able to do that. I know that Adobe FrameMaker can do all that, with ease, since I'm using it myself.

Lunch of Kong · 02-15-2006, 09:57 AM

Oh, nm, then. Someone already went to the trouble of wiring up the x-refs. So there's no excuse!

mystery · 02-15-2006, 11:17 AM

Oh, man....downloading it now. I'm so excited.

Of course, I'll be watching like a hawk to see if, say, sometime over the weekend Brad posts "oh, yea, *cough* you can download the .exe now *cough*".

Yes, virginia, that would make my weekend. Sure would. Yep.

Samurai · 02-15-2006, 01:22 PM

Gah! No email yet with my temporary serial number!

Anyone else still waiting?

02-14-2006, 11:23 AM	#152
Brad Wardell Social Worker Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 2,272	Well today begins the server heavy load testing. The carnage begins in about 20 minutes. http://www.galciv2.com/forums.aspx?AID=100792

02-14-2006, 01:25 PM	#154
RepoMan New Romantic Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Playing the "New Dad" game 24/7 for the win. Gamertag: Rodeolio Posts: 8,152	Just fired up my SD Central: First it needed to upgrade itself. Then it found my GalCiv 2 product! Sweet! So it's starting to download it. Status bar says (sequentially): Downloading Mission2a_text.xml_ Waiting 3 seconds... Waiting 2 seconds... Waiting 1 second... Downloading Mission2a_text.xml_ Downloading Mission2b_text.xml_ Waiting 3 seconds... Waiting 2 seconds... Waiting 1 second... .... and on and on. It seems to be downloading each file contained in the final release... one at a time?!?!?!?! Does this really mean it'll be downloading hundreds or thousands of small files, individually, failing on each download the first time? No wonder it's running at a transfer rate of... wait for it... <1 Byte / sec! Man, I'm glad I have this 2.2Mbps DSL line :-D Good luck Brad! Why aren't you using a bittorrent of a single huge installer? That would be a lot less server load than fetching files individually :-O

02-14-2006, 01:38 PM	#155
Backov Social Worker Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 2,952	They're serving it all off their own bandwidth as well. Admirable, but personally I would have done a mix of beefy bittorrent super seeds (on their bandwidth) combined with the load balancing of the downloading peers. And preloading it a week in advance is just kind of a tease.

02-14-2006, 01:39 PM	#156
fuzzyslug Social Worker Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Somewhere, PA Gamertag: fuzzyslug Posts: 4,714	Is it supposed to be preloading yet? It still shows up as a beta for me and then errors out after bitching about my account.

02-14-2006, 01:51 PM	#157
RepoMan New Romantic Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Playing the "New Dad" game 24/7 for the win. Gamertag: Rodeolio Posts: 8,152	Hm. I canceled it and then restarted, and it started over at the beginning, not even recognizing that it had already downloaded a few dozen files. .....

02-14-2006, 02:09 PM	#158
shang Social Worker Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Tampere, Finland Gamertag: shangius Posts: 2,584	Seems to be working pretty good at the moment, and I got over 100KB/s a minute ago. I'm sure Stardock is busy collecting data and going over various options for their next big release, though. ;)

02-14-2006, 02:42 PM	#159
shang Social Worker Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Tampere, Finland Gamertag: shangius Posts: 2,584	Hah! Forget about 100KB/s! Now it's going over 600KB/s and I'm soon done with the whole thing. :) So no load problems at Stardock from my point of view.

02-14-2006, 02:59 PM	#160
DanielElliot Social Worker Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 3,608	Mine preloaded fine and very quickly. Looking forward to the release.

02-14-2006, 03:10 PM	#161
Sam Jones Social Worker Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Above the Chemist Posts: 2,567	I had to uninstall and then reinstall SDC to get it all to work, I also deleted the GC2 beta just in case.

02-14-2006, 03:31 PM	#162
Samurai Hustle Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Illinois Posts: 490	I just ordered the retail cd preorder from the website and I got an email confirming my order, but no serial numbers or anything like that. How long does it take them to email that out?

02-14-2006, 03:53 PM	#163
Anders Hallin New Romantic Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Toronto Posts: 6,916	I also wonder this, since I pre-ordered a week or two ago.

02-14-2006, 04:35 PM	#164
JMR Social Worker Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 3,386	So those that were able to preload it are beta testers? The riff raff gets to preload it tomorrow?

02-14-2006, 04:52 PM	#166
RepoMan New Romantic Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Playing the "New Dad" game 24/7 for the win. Gamertag: Rodeolio Posts: 8,152	Me too, I paid for it in April 2005. Well Sam Jones, you were right -- uninstalling the beta and then installing the full game works much better. Now it's downloading a great big SDC file at 150KB/second. Muuuuuch better :-)

02-14-2006, 05:00 PM	#167
DanielElliot Social Worker Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 3,608	Ah that explains it. I was technically in the beta because of a TotalGaming subscription a few years ago (and I'm pretending I got the game for free because I used the tokens that I got grandfathered in with when they started using tokens), but never actually installed it. So I had no beta files that would mess things up.

02-14-2006, 05:24 PM	#168
Drastic Social Worker Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Live: Gar Drastic \| PSN & Steam: GarDrastic Posts: 4,685	I didn't need to reinstall Stardock or anything; the core preload installed (near as I can tell), but errors ("url is invalid") pop up when trying to install the tutorials, multimedia, and movies sections under it. I assume those'll open up for preload, or just on release date, later on. Looking forward to the game.

02-14-2006, 05:27 PM	#169
DanielElliot Social Worker Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 3,608	I was able to preload those too. YOU GOT PROBLEMS, SON.

02-14-2006, 06:06 PM	#170
Brad Wardell Social Worker Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 2,272	Yea, just a few notes that we made from today: 1) If you were in the beta, best to uninstall because then you get the .SDC packages which are streamed from cachefly, a super fast (i.e. 600k per second type) setup. 2) Got a TON of useful data from the beta testers, made adjustments on the XML servers to have more mirrors and did a new Stardock Central build to make use. 3) Absolutely positively make sure you have the latest Stardock Central, many beta testers also had a beta Stardock Central which does not automaticlaly update (due a bug in the beta). Go to the Downloads page on GalCiv2.com and it's there.

02-14-2006, 06:09 PM	#171
Brad Wardell Social Worker Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 2,272	BTW, all users who pre-ordered it from Stardock will be able to also download the game too even if they pre-ordered the retail box from us. People with the retail box option will receive a temporary serial # that they can use to download the game and then later switch to the one that's in the box after they get it.

02-14-2006, 06:25 PM	#172
mlatin Spinning Toe Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: EVE: Namco \| WoW: Fygar on Moonrunner Posts: 861	i know this isn't really the place for it, and i have just emailed support in regards to this. SDC seems like a decent enough way to do the updates and whatnot, but for some reason, it won't accept my cd-key for galciv1 at all.. despite the galciv1 site itself accepting both my email & cdkey for any downloads there.. it's frustrating. :) i'm looking forward to galciv2, and pre-ordered the retail box via stardock.. hoping to get that cdkey in email soon.

02-14-2006, 07:39 PM	#173
fuzzyslug Social Worker Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Somewhere, PA Gamertag: fuzzyslug Posts: 4,714	Brad, Did you guys fix the issue with the beta update? After complaining and then checking your suggestions within this thread, I booted up Stardock and it appeared to attempt to update, correctly (although it was still labeled as a beta). I didn't allow it to finish, though. I uninstalled and reinstalled just to be sure. Any chance you guys were on that particular issue at a surprising speed? One more thing: locked and loaded.

02-15-2006, 01:02 AM	#174
Chris Nahr How To Go Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Aurora Posts: 12,797	My SDC updated itself to version 2.29a 374, build 117. I deleted all GC2 beta files, just in case, and got a zippy download of .sdc packages at maximum SDL speed. Nice!

02-15-2006, 02:19 AM	#175
Chris Nahr How To Go Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Aurora Posts: 12,797	Not so nice: The PDF manual, while thankfully no longer a collection of page-sized images, contains neither TOC bookmarks nor page/title hyperlinks of any sort. Come on, Brad... even the Acrobat plugin for Word can do this stuff!

02-15-2006, 04:31 AM	#177
Chris Nahr How To Go Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Aurora Posts: 12,797	No registration marks, although perhaps they simply didn't bother with that either. Are you sure that Quark Xpress and Adobe InDesign can't auto-generate TOC bookmarks and hyperlinks from the existing structure? The manual does have a regular TOC, and I'm pretty sure that one was auto-generated by the application, so converting it to PDF metadata should be simple enough. Adobe InDesign in particular should be able to do that. I know that Adobe FrameMaker can do all that, with ease, since I'm using it myself.

02-15-2006, 09:57 AM	#178
Lunch of Kong How To Go Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Austin, TX. XBOX: Wonginator Posts: 10,952	Oh, nm, then. Someone already went to the trouble of wiring up the x-refs. So there's no excuse!

02-15-2006, 11:17 AM	#179
mystery Social Worker Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Madison, WI Posts: 2,533	Oh, man....downloading it now. I'm so excited. Of course, I'll be watching like a hawk to see if, say, sometime over the weekend Brad posts "oh, yea, cough you can download the .exe now cough". Yes, virginia, that would make my weekend. Sure would. Yep.

02-15-2006, 01:22 PM	#180
Samurai Hustle Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Illinois Posts: 490	Gah! No email yet with my temporary serial number! Anyone else still waiting?

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Near gold screenshots for GalCiv II