Hotfix, Stability Pass and More - Not Compatable with Old Saves!!
Published on August 26, 2010 By ScottTykoski In Elemental Dev Journals

Hey guys!

Got a fancy new build coming your way tonight. The big fix we wanted to get out there was for the "white screen" that happened in tactical battles on certain setups (this should also fix memory issues those players may have encountered).

We're testing this internally now and we'll let you know when its public. In the meantime, here's the changelong of various additions and bugfixes...

10:08pm - Just finish testing the major bullet points...giving it one last look over (a be triple sure when the boss isn't around) then we'll start the mirror uploading.

11:10pm - It's out!  Stop reading this post and go update!!!!     

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----------- Elemental v1.06 Change Log  ------------
---------------------------------------------------------

**********************
* Gameplay / Balance *

+ Cost of weapons increased in terms of gold and materials
+ Monster leveling tops out earlier so that there aren’t crazy powerful monsters late game
+ Training time increased for the more sophisticated weapons
+ AI will focus more on training soldiers rather than building up their cities if under threat
+ General AI improvements
+ AI smarter about training units in cities based on their current resource situation
+ AI more effective at determining who to go to war with
+ By default, the AI opponents added in the Choose Opponents window get difficulty set based on the World Difficulty
+ Campaign: Markinn now gives tactical HASTE spell instead of strategic SUMMON ROCK GIANT spell
+ Campaign: city leveup bonuses for TECH KNOWLEDGE and ARCANE KNOWLEDGE now suppressed in campaign
+ AI sov's are now using an HP adjustment multiplier based on AI difficulty settings

***********
* Battles *
+ Hooked up the projectile follow camera code to obey the Auto-Move Camera in Tactical option.
+ Adding message boxes to explain why spell casting fails.
+ Fix to repick targets in autoresolve when a counterattack kills the attacker.
+ Fix to make targeting picking more intelligent (to be sure it doesn't pick invalid targets).
+ Auto selection of the next unit in tactical battles should no longer occur if the game option for not auto selecting is turned on.
+ Tactical action cost modifiers for everything except for movement (which can have buffs) should now be 1.
+ The tactical action cost of special abilities is now 2.
+ All tactical actions use up to their cost, except for spells which require at least 2 action points.
+ When a tactical battle closes it now sets the cursor to be an arrow.

******
* UI *
+ Fixed Map Notifiers only placed for resources your faction can eventually tap (ex. won’t tell kingdoms about wargs)
+ Trade Equipment Wnd tweaks so that summoned creatures show up in the scene views better.
+ Hooked up new entries for the actions list, vitals list, and other basic image entries in main game wnd contexts to act more like buttons (highlight and have a click down state) to indicate that they are clickable

*************
* Bug Fixes *

+ Fixed the infamous "white screen" in tactical battles that occurred on a very specific hardware/driver/OS configuration.

+ Fixed a problem that would cause the particle effects to disappear after alt-tabbing out of the game when running in full-screen.
+ Fixed a DirectX warning in Tile Highlight Graphic
+ fixed uninitalized UNIT pointer in AIMessageBox (caused a debugger crash, probably fixes random crashes users have witnessed)
+ Fixed bug where linked pioneer improvements were getting the multiplier bonuses from their linked cities twice
+ Changed around the values grabbed for some resource breakdowns so that they match getting rid of this double bonus
+ You can no longer build pioneer improvements on resources outside of your ZOC, even if they are adjacent to a city, to prevent them from getting destroyed if they can't get absorbed in time
+ Adjacent pioneer improvements to cities now get absorbed into the city the very next turn, instead of 2 turns after they became adjacent
+ Fixed bug where custom empire factions designed in the faction designer wouldn't have a valid tech tree
+ Custom factions now get the appropriate wall set, and change their name to "Kingdom of" or "Empire of" appropriately
+ Fixed a bug in the faction designer that caused the race spinner to not match the actual race being displayed
+ Shortened the text in the caravan info cards to make it less likely that text entries will overflow to the next line down, and got rid of some old text that doesn't mean anything to how caravans work anymore, and got rid of some hardcoded strings, and moved the hardcoded quote to the different caravan/trader unit types
+ CMapGenerator no longer generates race starting position for tactical battles, since they aren’t used in that mode and were causing debug messages to flood output as the random land tile buffer isn’t getting filled after the first tactical battle map is created.
+ Campaign: Fixed oddity where reloading a save would reblock the pass between New pariden and Gilden.

 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

** Hotfix Update **

We've released a 1.06 hotfix - despite our intentions were to have 1.06 be more supportive of 1.05 saved games, things didn't work as planned and we were seeing a lot of oddities throughout the forums.

The hotfix will force the player to start with the new data, ensuring validity of key components (read: less crashy).

Enjoy!


Comments (Page 7)
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on Aug 26, 2010

The beta test wasn't even a beta test. I was in it, and they never let us test the actual game: only various small portions of it in isolation. I gave up even giving feedback, as all of the systems in the game are so strategically interconnected that commenting on one area without taking the others into account were nearly meaningless.

Further, I tend to wait until I can see the whole game before even reporting bugs... the reason is that when something is still effectively in alpha (no feature lock yet) which this game seems to have been until the last few days before release, bug reporting isn't usually being obsolete by the new code constantly in any case.

on Aug 26, 2010

tnx for the update.

on Aug 26, 2010

Further, I tend to wait until I can see the whole game before even reporting bugs... the reason is that when something is still effectively in alpha (no feature lock yet) which this game seems to have been until the last few days before release, bug reporting isn't usually being obsolete by the new code constantly in any case.

That's why I favor auto-reporting crashes and asking for optional tester input in terms of describing what they were doing and in what what the program blew up.  It's easier on the testers since they don't have to waste time pointing out a bug that's already been fixed or posting in a forum- only for the devs to respond asking for clarification from a tester who never notices the request for more information.  *Sigh* I'm running low on coffee right now so I'm murdering the english language piece-meal with every brutally disfigured sentence I mash together on my keyboard. 

on Aug 26, 2010

wow nice thought it would be a week also.

on Aug 26, 2010

jhwisner
...That's why I favor auto-reporting crashes and asking for optional tester input in terms of describing what they were doing and in what what the program blew up.  It's easier on the testers since they don't have to waste time pointing out a bug that's already been fixed or posting in a forum- only for the devs to respond asking for clarification from a tester who never notices the request for more information... 

Yup. I've been a developer for 20 years and participated in upwards of 100 beta, both to help others and professionally, and I hate to say that the SD beta test process was pretty, um... I think you get the idea

They should really implement a bug database... only way to really do a beta. Also, looking up "feature lock" could be useful They wanted this game to be highly moddable from day 1, which is a very ambitious plan... that's why most companies wait a few months to release their mod tools... hard to build mod tools until you have a solid product without a lot of strictly unnecessary iteration.

on Aug 26, 2010

"+ Fixed the infamous "white screen" in tactical battles that occurred on a very specific hardware/driver/OS configuration."

Sure hope  ... downloading now

Meanwhile, maybe I'm getting too cynical, but I don't suppose they fixed it to give the infamous "blue screen" instead ?

I know, cheap shot.  I just couldn't help myself.

on Aug 26, 2010

(no feature lock yet)

this game will never have a feature lock.. They may get tired of changing things or not implement some things because of game vision but with Stardock.. When they or we come up with a new idea they like they will implement it..  at at least that's how they do with the games the design themselves heh heh

on Aug 26, 2010

None of my units can be moved after 1.06. Theyre all stuck wherever they were. Cannot progress to next turn either

on Aug 26, 2010

Twohawks
(no feature lock yet)this game will never have a feature lock.. They may get tired of changing things or not implement some things because of game vision but with Stardock.. When they or we come up with a new idea they like they will implement it..  at at least that's how they do with the games the design themselves heh heh

It takes a little discipline, but it's not hard to take the good ideas that you really want to implement, and put them in a little file to be done with the next post-release update Believe me, I know this from painful experience. You cannot effectively test a product that is still changing. It is 100%, totally, impossible.

on Aug 26, 2010

Actually just fixed it, make a new save game, then load that save game

on Aug 26, 2010

hmm somehow my update stops at 4.52 mb with 607.8 kb/s and it just keep saying it is retrying. >< 

on Aug 26, 2010

^Correct me if I'm wrong, but they also area good about letting you roll back to previous versions through impulse right?  I remember they were with the old stardock launcher, so if there was a version dependent mod you really liked, you could install an older version of the game.

on Aug 26, 2010

Patch is up

on Aug 26, 2010

It's up, downloaded it just now.

on Aug 26, 2010

CTD on first starting after patching to 1.06 and loading save game. Not a good omen.

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