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 9)
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on Aug 27, 2010

Well I didn't want to take any chances, so I restarted the campaign, so far so good on most things. My first play session I ended voluntarily since release. Caravans and autoturn seem to play nicely, no white screen on every third combat is nice as well, not to mention that it seems a lot easier to select the units you're trying to attack in combat, although the fact that you can only click on the square at their feet and not on the unit's model is somewhat annoying with extremely large units it's better than it was before.

on Aug 27, 2010

gardner0
Guys, I was on the fence about  buying the game, since I barely have time to play what I already own.  However, Stardock has earned my loyalty with Sins, Demigod, Majesty 2, etc.  When I saw how hard you guys are working to quickly release the patches, I decided to send my dollars your way.  The game is installing now.  Keep up the good work and realize that you are appreciated.

Scott

 

 

I don't mean to dampen your enthusiasm, but none of those 3 games are made by Stardock. Only 2 of them are even published by Stardock.

on Aug 27, 2010

Clawdius_Talonious
Well I didn't want to take any chances, so I restarted the campaign, so far so good on most things. My first play session I ended voluntarily since release. Caravans and autoturn seem to play nicely, no white screen on every third combat is nice as well, not to mention that it seems a lot easier to select the units you're trying to attack in combat, although the fact that you can only click on the square at their feet and not on the unit's model is somewhat annoying with extremely large units it's better than it was before.

 

Amen to that, brother. This was also the first game I ended voluntarily--I wasn't getting the running out of memory error. The animations were also really smooth when "close up" on your troops, but less so somewhat scrolled out (but not to the cloth map yet). Still, it's very liveable and a vast improvement. Thank you!

on Aug 27, 2010

Update for those with updating issues: I'm seeing a gradual increase after 5.9mb. However it has taken ~an hour to go from 5.2 to 5.9

on Aug 27, 2010

Xilaros
Update for those with updating issues: I'm seeing a gradual increase after 5.9mb. However it has taken ~an hour to go from 5.2 to 5.9

Well i can tell you that you will stuck again at 6.93 for an hour.

on Aug 27, 2010

I'm very impressed with all the hard work you guys are doing to roll out another patch so quickly. Thanks!

Seriously though, go home, get some rest, spend some time with your loved ones, I'm sure they miss you and are frustrated you're never home!

on Aug 27, 2010

TofuES

Quoting Xilaros, reply 124Update for those with updating issues: I'm seeing a gradual increase after 5.9mb. However it has taken ~an hour to go from 5.2 to 5.9
Well i can tell you that you will stuck again at 6.93 for an hour.

Just noticed that! Stuck at 6.93 and occasionally getting an 'error' message instead of 'retrying...'

on Aug 27, 2010

OK, have an update concerning the saved games.

We had put some code in there to try and get v1.05 to work in 1.06, but (despite a friendly warning dialog) there just seem to be too many problems with backwards compatability. We'll be putting out a hotfix that will require fresh games, but in the long-run it'll result in a better playthrough (people having all sorts of weird turn-button issues and such currently).

We'll be IRC as the new exe is staged!

on Aug 27, 2010

OMG_pacov
Started a new post, but in case you only look here:

I'm pretty sure this is a new bug, but maybe not.  I start a new game.  My sovereign has no equipment.  I come up on a creature that is strong.  I get the option to auto-battle or battle.  I choose to battle to run away.  I succeed.  My spell research finishes for flame dart.  I re-engage monster to kill them using magic.  My sovereign automatically enters battle and I die.  No option for tactical battle.  Obviously, I'm thinking the code that decides whether or not to engage in auto-battle needs a pretty big tweak as I'd think you would only want to auto-battle if you have a nice advantage... NOT to just have your sovereign automatically killed. I have replicated this issue twice.  Happens early game around turn 10-20 or so.  If more details are needed, let me know, but for now, this means I can't use my sovereigns spells to level up early, which sucks a bit.  I don't think I've encountered this specific problem before. 

I'm using default settings on build 1.06 released on 08/26/2010 around 11PM EST or so.

There is a "Tactical Battle Threashold" setting in options that you set for this.

on Aug 27, 2010

Seriously though, go home, get some rest,
I just end up dreaming about Elemental development anyways, so it makes no difference to me

on Aug 27, 2010

People in Australia can't update their games, don't make me apply diplomatic pressure.

on Aug 27, 2010

I'm impressed with the flurry of updates streaming out keep up the good work

on Aug 27, 2010

White screen fix is a big step towards enabling multiplayer. I hope once it's up, further patches will be compatible...

on Aug 27, 2010

TofuES
People in Australia can't update their games, don't make me apply diplomatic pressure.

 

Aah, well that explains why I can't update then!

on Aug 27, 2010

While noticing a major (I mean major) improvement, I am still suffering from memory leaks.

 

Eventually sluggishness, loss of sound effects and already decreasing performance.

 

Still, step in the right direction.

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