1.09p Changelog

By Derek Paxton on December 2, 2010 10:54:41 PM from

Elemental Forums

Derek Paxton

Stardock

Join Date 03/2003

+105

*** 1.09p will break save games (you will need to start a new game after patching) ***

*** 1.09p was released on 12/03/2010 ***

Changes:

1. City level 2 raised from 10 pop to 15 pop.

2. Capitals provide a base 10 pop storage instead of 5 storage.

3. Sions and catapults no longer show on the train list (but greyed out) before you get the appropriate techs.

4. Fixed a crash when clicking train on a level 3 city (with low resources).

5. Modifiers from starting tech are now applied correctly (previously, for example, Capitar couldn't create caravans because they got trade as a free tech which didn't correctly unlock caravans).

6. Wolves won't talk to you anymore (I might actually miss this bug).

7. Fixed an issue with Arcane Arrow and Spellbast having defendable damage and the formula for Arcane Arrow doing 25% of the casters int in damage instead of 75%.

8. Fixed Cloth map only mode (http://forums.elementalgame.com/400772).

9. The Empire can now build crystal mines.

10. Blink is castable now.

11. Fixed a bug where partial prestige from units charisma was not being added to cities. Changes were made to City.cpp and LoreBookWndListHelpers.cpp to accomodate this change (and display it in the city breakdown screen).

12. Balanced the Sentinel starting units.

13. Balanced sovereign starting weapons and armor.

14. Changed store prices of huge portions of armor items and weapons to more accurately reflect the cost to train with that item, this should make it more balanced price wise but probably will not be perfect

15. Fixed defense boost of improvements that boost defense to their proper values.

16. Balanced goodie huts that were spawning weapons/armor that was now too good for their spawn rating.

17. Fixed a bug with quest data being lost during save/reload causing crashes or weird quest behavior.

Known Issues (with 1.09p):

1. The campaign isn't playable.

2. There is currently no way to target a unit in an army for a strategic spell (without breaking him out of that army, which is a pain).

3. Gold modifier improvements (like markets) currently don't effect the tax rate. Making them useless in most cities.

Yeah a ultra fast patch for a sweet weekend

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Nice

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I wondered why building markets seemed to be having no effect.

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I have an idea for #2 known issue.

Add an enchantements pop-up, where you can enchant your heroes/sovs/etc , when you click on a stack, similar to how it is done in AOW2.

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quoting post

2. There is currently no way to target a unit in an army for a strategic spell (without breaking him out of that army, which is a pain).

Perhaps you could add a popup window like the aircraft window in Civ V to select a target for a strategic spell.

I think there should be another ranged weapon in Elemental to give the player more options:

Warbow: Attack 15, Accuracy - 2, Range 8, Should be researched with the Longbow

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A another crash prone Beta release and then a hot fix patch, sounds familiar. Beta or not, what's the point of putting out a release that crashes every 10-15 min? Stardock is doing the same thing it did before the game was released. One has to ask, if Stardock keeps doing the same thing, how will the 1.1 release be in any better shape then Elemental's original release? Doesn't Stardock have any in-house QA ability?

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Cool! Seems to be e weekend without social life.

Quoting pad152,

reply 6

Such a nonesense.

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Quoting pad152,

reply 6

We don't have a significant lockdown before a beta patch. We could delay a few days and allow QA to do their job (they are excellent by the way, they just aren't being given the time to test) but we don't for beta patches. This way is more efficient for us (developers cant do much during lockdown) and the community generally asks for patches as soon as possible. We appreciate all the feedback, both in finding issues and other feedback.

But it does mean that beta patches aren't scrubbed for issues. Which is okay as long as those playing them understand that thats exactly what they are. If the expectations are that they will be release quality, then of course players are going to be frustrated. So we try to warn people, but I know its tempting to install the beta to get all the new stuff.

For what its worth people (including me) had played games for hours on 1.09o. The training bug came in late (the risk of not having a significant lockdown period) but I don't want anyone to think that we hadn't played a bunch of games for a long period.

The reason we skip lockdown (and risk crashes) now is that we have a list of features we want in 1.1, and a time frame to have them in by. From a stability standpoint we could add a few features, lockdown for a few days, put out a beta patch and repeat. That would give us the highest reliability, but it would take a huge amount of time to get everything in. Check out the changelist for 1.09n. It's huge, 1.09o is the same.

From an speed factor it would be best to just check everything in, dont test, and release the final patch and be done. Of course that would be a disaster.

So the compromise is to do beta patches, try to get everything checked in. Then lockdown and fix all issues for the public version. The betas allow us to get your feedback and help finding issues, but we dont loose days and weeks to lockdown and at the end we still produce a stable release version.

But it does mean the beta can be a bumpy ride. To those that participate and provide feedback, it is greatly appreciated. We know it isn't always fun. For those that are frustrated by it, we certainly understand.

Most game companies would just release these beta patches to a private community, and not allow everyone to participate (ive been involved with internal builds from game companies for years, they don't lockdown before them). The process is the same, it's just a public perception difference.

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Some unmentioned bugs:

Researching trade does not allow me to build caravans. Big deal!!! Edit: Seems this only applies to Capitar.

Upon leveling I choose the free unit bonus, and got a group of robbers. But even though they were all called robbers, some on them were clearly spiders or wolves.

Game seems to crash more when saving, loading or when at main menu.

Thank you for all the hard work!

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Quoting Derek Paxton,

reply 8

Quoting pad152, reply 6A another crash prone Beta release and then a hot fix patch, sounds familiar. Beta or not, what's the point of putting out a release that crashes every 10-15 min? Stardock is doing the same thing it did before the game was released. One has to ask, if Stardock keeps doing the same thing, how will the 1.1 release be in any better shape then Elemental's original release? Doesn't Stardock have any in-house QA ability?

We don't have a significant lockdown before a beta patch. We could delay a few days and allow QA to do their job (they are excellent by the way, they just aren't being given the time to test) but we don't for beta patches. This way is more efficient for us (developers cant do much during lockdown) and the community generally asks for patches as soon as possible. We appreciate all the feedback, both in finding issues and other feedback.

But it does mean that beta patches aren't scrubbed for issues. Which is okay as long as those playing them understand that thats exactly what they are. If the expectations are that they will be release quality, then of course players are going to be frustrated. So we try to warn people, but I know its tempting to install the beta to get all the new stuff.

For what its worth people (including me) had played games for hours on 1.09o. The training bug came in late (the risk of not having a significant lockdown period) but I don't want anyone to think that we hadn't played a bunch of games for a long period.

The reason we skip lockdown (and risk crashes) now is that we have a list of features we want in 1.1, and a time frame to have them in by. From a stability standpoint we could add a few features, lockdown for a few days, put out a beta patch and repeat. That would give us the highest reliability, but it would take a huge amount of time to get everything in. Check out the changelist for 1.09n. It's huge, 1.09o is the same.

From an speed factor it would be best to just check everything in, dont test, and release the final patch and be done. Of course that would be a disaster.

So the compromise is to do beta patches, try to get everything checked in. Then lockdown and fix all issues for the public version. The betas allow us to get your feedback and help finding issues, but we dont loose days and weeks to lockdown and at the end we still produce a stable release version.

But it does mean the beta can be a bumpy ride. To those that participate and provide feedback, it is greatly appreciated. We know it isn't always fun. For those that are frustrated by it, we certainly understand.

Most game companies would just release these beta patches to a private community, and not allow everyone to participate (ive been involved with internal builds from game companies for years, they don't lockdown before them). The process is the same, it's just a public perception difference.

Then again, no matter how much you tell some people that a beta is a beta, they still don't listen.

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Will save ganmes from 1.09o be fully compatible with 1.09p ?

As far as you can tell of course. No garantuee needed on this.

I just was wondring if I should start a new Game now and could continue it tomorrow with the new patch applied.

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Quoting Dsraider,

reply 9

Some unmentioned bugs:

Researching trade does not allow me to build caravans. Big deal!!!

Were you playing capitar?

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Ya I was, thanks for listening Derek.

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Quoting Dsraider,

reply 13

Ya I was, thanks for listening Derek.

Thats the start techs bug. Modifiers form starting techs werent being applied correctly (its going to be fixed in todays patch). Capitar get trade for free, but it didnt correctly unlock caravans.

Quoting Arendis,

reply 11

Will save ganmes from 1.09o be fully compatible with 1.09p ?

As far as you can tell of course. No garantuee needed on this.

I just was wondring if I should start a new Game now and could continue it tomorrow with the new patch applied.

No this patch will break save games (we have players reporting issues because they are starting them on former versions, so we are going to increment the min save version in this patch).

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do you got a eta on this patch?

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Thx for the quick answer

Based on the release time of the Patch yesterday I'd guess something between 6 and 8 Hours until release.

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Quoting Derek Paxton,

reply 8

Quoting pad152, reply 6A another crash prone Beta release and then a hot fix patch, sounds familiar. Beta or not, what's the point of putting out a release that crashes every 10-15 min? Stardock is doing the same thing it did before the game was released. One has to ask, if Stardock keeps doing the same thing, how will the 1.1 release be in any better shape then Elemental's original release? Doesn't Stardock have any in-house QA ability?
We don't have a significant lockdown before a beta patch. We could delay a few days and allow QA to do their job (they are excellent by the way, they just aren't being given the time to test) but we don't for beta patches. This way is more efficient for us (developers cant do much during lockdown) and the community generally asks for patches as soon as possible. We appreciate all the feedback, both in finding issues and other feedback.

But it does mean that beta patches aren't scrubbed for issues. Which is okay as long as those playing them understand that thats exactly what they are. If the expectations are that they will be release quality, then of course players are going to be frustrated. So we try to warn people, but I know its tempting to install the beta to get all the new stuff.

For what its worth people (including me) had played games for hours on 1.09o. The training bug came in late (the risk of not having a significant lockdown period) but I don't want anyone to think that we hadn't played a bunch of games for a long period.

The reason we skip lockdown (and risk crashes) now is that we have a list of features we want in 1.1, and a time frame to have them in by. From a stability standpoint we could add a few features, lockdown for a few days, put out a beta patch and repeat. That would give us the highest reliability, but it would take a huge amount of time to get everything in. Check out the changelist for 1.09n. It's huge, 1.09o is the same.

From an speed factor it would be best to just check everything in, dont test, and release the final patch and be done. Of course that would be a disaster.

So the compromise is to do beta patches, try to get everything checked in. Then lockdown and fix all issues for the public version. The betas allow us to get your feedback and help finding issues, but we dont loose days and weeks to lockdown and at the end we still produce a stable release version.

But it does mean the beta can be a bumpy ride. To those that participate and provide feedback, it is greatly appreciated. We know it isn't always fun. For those that are frustrated by it, we certainly understand.

Most game companies would just release these beta patches to a private community, and not allow everyone to participate (ive been involved with internal builds from game companies for years, they don't lockdown before them). The process is the same, it's just a public perception difference.

I really admire your patience...

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Great response to the training crash...........Thanks guys.......

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Were the prereqs changed/removed for inns and markets? I noticed I was able to build them at a point where the only civics research I had was harvesting. Are they now tied to trade?

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quoting post

*** 1.09p will break save games (you will need to start a new game after patching) ***

Aww, I just managed to luck out and get a starting position with 2 farms, a lumber mill, a marble quarry, an arcane temple, a clay pit, a fire shard, and an air shard...

Btw, I'm loving the public beta dev process. Also love the new Enchantments Ledger.

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I just was owned by 5 spiderlings

Anyway to decrease group spawning in the first - dunno - 10 years?

Its just ridicolous that those thugs and Spiders gang up faster the i Am able to build troops

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Kael, is it possible to put the task of cleaning the XMLs on a (near) future patch's list? The indentation, the comments and sometimes the data have issues (outdated - war staff, I'm looking at you-, not easy to read, inconsistent, etc.). I know it's a lot of work, but modders are an important part of what could make this game cool, and our only tool so far is quite difficult to use because of the current state of the xml portfolio.

Thanks and congratulations for the great work.

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I have to say, I love these changelogs, keep them going Kael.

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Quoting Werewindlefr,

reply 22

Not in the short term. I have an excel spreadsheet that writes xml for me. the advantage is that everything it does is always perfectly formated and it validates data (Fall from Heaven also used an excel spreadsheet to write all the xml).

The spreadsheet isnt ready yet, it only has monsters, weapons, armor and a few other things on it. And Im not sure that we are going to switch to it (at the end of the day it comes down to whats easiest for the team). But the nice part is that if we do xml will be consistently formated and of course I will be happy to share the spreadsheet with anyone who wants it.

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Good news about Arcane Arrow it was rather weak doing 25% instead of the advertised 75%. When's the eta on this patch e.g. an hour or two or 3 or four? Just wondering.

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