Month: April 2017

A tester reported a “Next Turn” lockup bug and I tracked it down to a ship combat issue. Debugging this revealed some inefficiences in the ship combat code that I have fixed as well.

Download the 3.20 patch from here:

The Alpha 3.20 Patch no longer available! Alpha 4 will be available on 9/1/17

What’s fixed:

• Missile-only ships will track their limited-fire weapons (i.e. missiles) better and reconsider retreat if they run out. This was causing combat to end without retreat (since both sides were out of missiles and effectively unarmed) and triggering combat to retry. I’m not convinced that the logic is exactly correct yet, but the locking bug should be fixed.

No particularly noteworthy bug fixes here, but I wanted to get this version out because I want to include hooks for a planned Greek translation.

Here’s the link to 3.19:

(a newer version is available on a more recent post)

What’s changed:

• The game is a little smarter about dealing with low-memory situations caused by Windows. If you’ve had memory issues with Windows, see if this version helps
• All of the race-specific advisor text is now in the game.
• Greek is now a language option on the bottom right. I still need to find a suitable title font that supports Cyrillic as well as, of course, all of the text in the game needs to be translated
• Players were not receiving warnings if their colonies were building scrapped ship designs. Fixed.

ok, let’s just get this out of the way right now. I am in awe. This is the absolute best artistic representation of the Mrrshan race in all of video game history.

The Mrrshan are a warrior race and the headdress is a ceremonial garb. You won’t see it in the ground combat animations.

Here’s a recent image of how the Mrrshan soldier is shaping up, with some options presented to me for the spear point shape.

This would be an example of ceremonial gear.

Two bugs were introduced recently as a result of some other fixes..

Download 3.18 here:

(alpha 3.19 available, check for more recent post)

What’s fixed:

• Double-processing would occur on the first turn of the game.. double factories, double pop, etc. Fixed.
• A crash involving rally fleets with path lines drawn through nebulas. Of course, there’s no indication of what caused this, but that’s what it was.

Now that the Alpha 3 seems fairly stable, I am going to roll up the sleeves and start the real feature work towards Alpha 4. If game-breaking bugs show up in the latest Alpha 3 version, I will patch it but otherwise I need to start moving forward again.

The next set of features will include some performance changes that will DEFINITELY break old saved games, so be forewarned. However, you will be given plenty of notice to delay this as long as possible.

No real game-breaking bugs fixed here, but I thought I’d upload a small update for those interested.

NOTE: 3.17 introduced a bug where the AI would not send out fleets properly. This bug is fixed in 3.17b

You can download Alpha 3.17b here:

(version 3.18 uploaded, check more recent post)

What’s fixed:

• Button click volume toned down and eliminated on the map items.
• Fixed problem with ships arriving 1 turn late from a bug I introduced a few patches ago. Really noticeable if you have stargates!
• Threshold for the AI requesting a trade agreement escalates by +25% for each consecutive refusal you have given in the past. This is intended to reduce AI spam if you don’t want without having to close your embassy. For example, if you refuse a treaty, the AI won’t ask again until trade levels increase 25%. If you refuse again, they have to go up another 50%.
• Fixed a problem with the additional population project on the ECO slider
• Tweaked the AI’s decision of which planets to invade or defend by a better evaluation of missile bases
• Some miscellaneous memory improvements. I saw a 20-30Mb memory reduction for maps of about 500 stars.