Update 3 Information

Zworf · Post by **Zworf** » Oct 02 2005

Don't worry not buying the computer just to be able to play games

But have a 900Mhz Athlon atm, so was in need of an upgrade

swatter555 · Post by **swatter555** » Oct 02 2005

George Geczy wrote:
swatter555 wrote:Please, tell me you fixed the World scenario a little. I sent you guys an email offering to help, but havent recieved a reply.
I don't recall exactly what about the World scenario you had mentioned, but we have improved the performance of it a bit. We still want to make more improvements to the scenario itself, that will be getting looked at in the near future.

Sorry if we didn't get back to your email, in the past few weeks we've been plugging away pretty hard and haven't had the chance to reply to everything.

-- George.

PS - and the unlimited missile storage option IS in, as promised

Np, about the reply thing. I am very pleased that the speed issue has been improved, but the World scenario is crippled is some easily fixable ways. I really want to create a mod that would fix it, but the important data is locked away, hence the scenario is not moddable.

The debt heaped on the nations is massive and ruins the game after one year, everyone is broke and no trade is possible. The World scenario is the most important one IMHO, and waiting for a fix several more months just isnt going to cut it, especially when you could tell the community how to get to the data or release a simple utility that would allow modders to fix this. Also, telling the AI not to build so many units in said scenario would help immensely too.

Im willing to spend a good number of hours to fix the scenario, but you just wont let us. Im sure several of us(including me) are programmers and would be able to help in short order, but our hands are tied.

I am sorry to say, but this is starting to look like Superpower 2. The game as released was crappy(SR is awesome as is BTW) but they promised extensive modding capabilites. They never ever delivered even after a year. Never again, no matter what promises they make, will I ever buy a game from Golem Labs again. Please, take the time and release crude tools if needed, we will figure them out.

There is no excuse making us play broken scenarios, especially since in the designer notes you promised to quickly release a fixed version of the scenario.

I dont mean to be harsh, but these things could have been fixed long ago.

Post by **Balthagor** » Oct 02 2005

It's the weekend so I don't have any of the files in front of me for tracking changes, but I can say that the WM offers have not changed drastically. There has been some minor changes to what it offers and when it offers it but nothing major. For example, when the World Market offers to give you money (I know it's rare, but playing Cameroon in Africa they offered me cash 3 times in two game years) the money is no longer a lump sum, but is payed out over 60-90 days. Same amount, just not all at once.

Baloogan · Post by **Baloogan** » Oct 02 2005

Can we get a detailed feature list?

Post by **Balthagor** » Oct 02 2005

Balthagor wrote:It's the weekend so I don't have any of the files in front of me for tracking...

The readme should be done before long...

Post by **George Geczy** » Oct 02 2005

... I dont mean to be harsh, but these things could have been fixed long ago.

With the work on Update 3 we haven't had much chance to discuss existing-scenario modability issues, but these will definitely be addressed very soon. Feel free to start a thread on this after Update 3 is out, and we'll tackle the issues.

The world level scenario will certainly receive some more attention sooner rather than later, and you are right in that we should have a full set of data available to people to be able to easily mod it.

-- George.

swatter555 · Post by **swatter555** » Oct 02 2005

I will attempt to rein in my impatience

Chaim · Post by **Chaim** » Oct 03 2005

Hey BG, update 3 gonna solve the save game problem?

Post by **Balthagor** » Oct 03 2005

It should, I don't have any savegames that still crash the program, including the ones you sent. All savegames seem to be working fine.

ozmono2005 · Post by **ozmono2005** » Oct 03 2005

Now the drumbrolls done, the announcements made it is time for the countdown! all still good to go BG ?

feel like Christmass anyone?

I just made myself laugh thinking about how excited I am By that I mean I came to this forum intent on getting revenge on BG and strategy first for not returning my email (it turns out BG did

)

now three months of many long nights/mournings many hours of sleep deprived my thaughts were of an obbsessive nature or more accurately.... bordering on insanity

Now I've gotten a handle on myself I play in moderation although many would still tell me to get a life

I find myself now anticipating a update like it were a sequel and wondering if my mental health is in serious danger

Now the amazing part is I came here to cause trouble

.... instead I'm now a strong supporter ? ..... and the thought of having update 3 tommorow

and how I fell about it, just puts things into perspective

lordrune · Post by **lordrune** » Oct 03 2005

Sorry if this has been answered, but have you guys fixed the population bug yet?

Post by **George Geczy** » Oct 03 2005

... thought of having update 3 tommorow...

Tomorrow? Hey, it's only Monday here still! You Aussie troublemakers with your "today is tomorrow" date-lined view of the world

In any case, glad you're back on the forums (and glad that you don't find a need to make trouble

)

And yes, all strategy games should be taken in moderation

I've lost more than my share of sleep to Empire, Panzer General, and of course Supreme Ruler

Ooops, I gotta go, have an update to work on

-- George.

Post by **George Geczy** » Oct 03 2005

lordrune wrote:Sorry if this has been answered, but have you guys fixed the population bug yet?

The population bug (Births and Deaths not being recorded properly) has been fixed in Update 3.

-- George.

ozmono2005 · Post by **ozmono2005** » Oct 04 2005

George Geczy wrote:
... thought of having update 3 tommorow...
Tomorrow? Hey, it's only Monday here still! You Aussie troublemakers with your "today is tomorrow" date-lined view of the world

In any case, glad you're back on the forums (and glad that you don't find a need to make trouble )

-- George.

thanks mate, I couldn't keep myself away (I assume you are refering to me because of my dramitic exit and cause LordRune only calls himself an Aussie because to many people have never heard of New Zealand

just kidding lordrune)

George Geczy wrote: And yes, all strategy games should be taken in moderation
-- George.

Mate, I wouldn't change a thing

people have their hobbies I've mine, just so long as I see daylight once in awhile everythings cool

I was big on Panzer General and even though it was a world that was fairly new and exciting to me I can honestly say that I've enjoyed yours more

Butby all means get back to work and stop chatting with me and make it even better! 1/2

PS. You lied, this update sounds great! "don't expect any significant content"..... well you and Chris have mentioned heaps just today(but I'm not complaining)

Post by **Balthagor** » Oct 04 2005

Well, we're learning not to promise things we might not be able to deliver

But you are somewhat correct. I was watching Legend compile the readme changes yesterday (before you ask, he was still working on it when I left so it is not ready to post, hopefully later today...) and he showed me that we had a small list for update 1, slightly more for update 2, and the list for update 3 went on for two pages or more on his draft copy!

Some of those may be duplicate entries, but I'm certain this will be our biggest update yet.

It may have taken us a bit of time to get update 3 ready, but we certainly have not been idle all this time. George mentioned that for the World scenario our focus was on performance improvments and corrections in the economic model, things that affect all maps, but some work has been done on the scenario, we simply had not finished testing how much it has been affected. Last night however I did some testing

It may still have some issues but after 9 game months all regions still had money in their treasury. Some of this is due to changes in the economic model, some due to updating the balance of the scenario.

Also, the new unit role hap I feel offers an important control system that makes using missiles much easier. It also means that for the first time you can get aircraft to attack targets without firing at everything along its path. If you remove the "land" role, aircraft will not fire on land targets unless you right click - attack unit. This means you can tell your aircraft what unit to attack and they will not directly attack other units along the way (They will still fire missiles with launch authority in passing). The other option is to use the "autoload missiles". This may confuse a few ppl in the wording since we replace the "no autoload" flag with two buttons, one for "accept autodeployed missiles" (this does what "no autoload" used to do) and one for "autoload missiles". The second one will make the aircraft go and get missiles to match the role it has been given. So as an example, you could build anti-ship missiles set not to autodeploy. When done they would sit in inventory. You can fly all your groups of aircraft as normal, but when you spot an enemy fleet, select one group, set role to Anti Ship, enable autoload. These aircraft will go directly into your inventory and load with the anti-ship missiles. You can then send that group out to attack the fleet knowing it will be equiped for the job. The setting can also be used in cases where you have launcher that is capable of firing two types of missiles such as saturation and anti0-fortification. If you leave it autoload enabled on default roles (land, air, sea, sub, not fortification or nuclear) it will get the saturation missiles. Turn off land, turn on fortification and unload all missile groups and as fast as you unload it will reload but this time, since the roll has changed, it will switch to fortification killers.

The fact that we also added a roll for "nuclear deliever" means that using nukes is also easier. You can have one sub set as your nuke launcher, set this roll with autoload, and the sub will take all nuclear missiles from inventory as fast as they are produced.

I think this new feature will be one of the biggest improvements of this update