Back in Michigan

from JoeUser Forums

Just got back from the tour in LA. I stayed in the loudest hotel in the universe. Holy cow am I tired. I’ve been a little (lot) irritable on the forums this week.

The team is working on a ton of things this week from tweaking how Caravans work to putting in the UI for handling saved games in multiplayer.

This weekend I have to really get on the AI. It’s still nowhere near where I want it to be for release. Heck, it doesn’t even do the “Your civilization makes me laugh, give us 50 gold or we’ll crush you!” type stuff.

Over the years, I’ve written so much AI that it’s amazing how it gets into your genetic memory. The algorithms just spring forth. :)

Scott (Boogie) has been working on the cut scenes like crazy. I keep forgetting what’s in the public betas and when I go back it’s pretty painful because all the spirit is sucked out of them.

But I have to say, the public betas have been instrumental. I don’t think we would have nailed the memory leak issue without the public beta. Basically, Beta 4 is unusable if you have 64-bit Windows and certain ATI cards. It’s a pretty specific case but holy cow, can you imagine if the game came out with that? Though that’s not the only leak but there were people who couldn’t play more than 30 turns before it ran out of memory. That’s huge.

One of the valuable things on the forums has been the concepts and suggestions people have posted. Even when they’re mod proposals.  There’s some great stuff there that we’ve been able to add in already.

Anyway, I’m going to make this short since I’m looking forward to just sleeping now. :)

Cheers!

74,743 views 37 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Excellent work. Make sure you get some well rewarded rest.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

The game suffers a lot of crashes for me, and I use nvidia with win 7 64bit. 

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Thanks for all the hard work. I am sure the game is going to be spectacular come release.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm very glad it was fixed. It's ok for a beta to hold the record for the only program to cause an Out of Memory Error on my 8 GB system ;)

 

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Welcome HOME

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Hellfirex25, reply 4
Michigan huh? im curious where at!
End of Hellfirex25's quote

IIRC, it's Plymouth.

Anyway, welcome back Froggy:frogboy: , don't let yourself get too down, and keep up the amazing work! Seriously, it is awesome what you guys and gals do.:thumbsup:

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Willw e be able to say "Give me 50G" to the AI then.. good.. <G>

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Hang in there Frongboy, your entering the home stretch!

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

I know how you feel Frogman. I never get good sleep on hotel beds.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Glad you had a safe trip. :) So, did you give Morgan my number or what? hehe

Reply #13 from JoeUser Forums Top

Just got back from the tour in LA. I stayed in the loudest hotel in the universe. Holy cow am I tired. I’ve been a little (lot) irritable on the forums this week.
End of quote

I'm afraid to ask what kind of noises were going on there.   :grin:

 

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah, I was one of those who couldn't play 30 turns. I haven't seen anything! grrrrr.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

I was having an amazing amount of fun in a Beta 4 game. I keep looking back to Beta 2 (or whichever I joined in on) and remembering when we had to garden-spam our cities, which had a limited amount of space for building stuff. And snaking. Oh, the snaking!

It's come a long way. I, personally, am looking forward to seeing some of the stuff you were talking about yesterday.

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

Welcome back!

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

Glad your back , any chance we will get to mess with Beta 5? 4 brings back painful memory of the past! :D

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting jeffalford, reply 18
Glad your back , any chance we will get to mess with Beta 5? 4 brings back painful memory of the past!
End of jeffalford's quote

Pretty sure he said there wont be.

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

Glad to hear that there won't be a memory leak issue in this Stardock game.  I remember buying GalCiv2, complaining about memory leaks, getting flamed in the support forums (by you, incidentally), and then returning the game to Stardock all b/c I had the wrong video card with a "must be my computer only" memory leak issue. 

Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

It’s a pretty specific case but holy cow, can you imagine if the game came out with that?
End of quote

Actually, Civ IV went out with worse problems. On many ATI cards, the screen was mostly just black. I managed to play my first games before it was fixed by drawing a map by hand and keeping the paper nearby as I managed to see some of the land. Units tended to be fine though...

Now sleep well and don't dream of AI's too much.

Reply #21 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Xython, reply 5
I'm very glad it was fixed. It's ok for a beta to hold the record for the only program to cause an Out of Memory Error on my 8 GB system

 
End of Xython's quote

:)

Actually it only requires it to use 2 GB to run out of memory because the process limit on 32-bit is 2GB. It's a killer.

But without the public beta, we would never ever have been able to track this down.  

Reply #22 from Elemental Forums Top

I hope my crashes are fixed have been fixed - ATI card running XP 32bit..

Reply #23 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 22

... But without the public beta, we would never ever have been able to track this down.  
End of Frogboy's quote

See here, a testament to public betas. I know they can be stressful, annoying, and slow but, in the end, they can certainly be worth it. Everyone wins!

Reply #24 from Elemental Forums Top

I loved to watch the memory grow on my 64 bit windows 7 :-)

Also the glitches like if you change your mind about increasing a stat after leveling, then you reduce and your unable to add it anywhere else.

 

Yeah very painfull. BUT it also showed little gems that started to grow over the beta's that made me happy.

 

Reply #25 from Demigod Forums Top

wb froggie!  The marathon is almost over!  Here's to a smooth release and no major 0 day issues!

:beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: