A slew of bugs and a few complaints

[Mysterious]

My tremendous excitement at tearing open a brand new edition of Civ quickly deflated within the first 10 minutes of gameplay today. Here's a list of several issues I noticed, with varying degrees of irritation:

INTERFACE GAFFS

- When you hit ESC to leave a city, the game no longer remembers if it was in minimal-interface mode (CTRL+I)

- There seem to be several mistakes on the arrows in the research screen, eg: Priesthood doesn't seem to require Meditation, Monotheism requires Masonry, Philosophy doesn't require Drama.

- Why does the Research advisor screen stay open when I switch to a new advisor screen using the function (e.g. F2) buttons?

- Rollover tips disappear before you have time to finish reading them (for an example, see the tooltips on the Difficulty settings options during game creation). Doesn't anybody ever TEST these things?!

SLOW INTERFACE RESPONSE

- Scrolling is annoyingly slow. This is my biggest game complaint, to date. There should be an option to turn off the "sliding" pan and make the game simply recenter instantly when you click.

- Annoying pauses before going into the advisor screens. (e.g. the Civlopedia and the Religion adviser both take a full 5 seconds to come up)

I'm running on a dual-CPU 3.2GHz machine with 3GB of RAM and a GeForce 6800 graphics card. In addition, I've turned all the graphics settings down and disabled animations/effects. In general, I find the whole game isn't as responsive as I'd like - even plain old clicking seems to hiccup slightly before it responds . It's barely perceptible, but enough to make the entire interface feel clunky and laggingly slow.

MULTI MONITOR ISSUES

Lots of these.

- When running multimonitor the dialogs should position themselves so they aren't split between monitors. This would be so easy to implement - just have a "DialogHOffset" setting in the INI file that multi-mon users can adjust. Add this to the calculated X center position when showing dialogs.

- When in windowed mode, the game should let you resize the window like any other Windows program, instead of having to use the in-game resolution menu. The in-game menu 3200x1600 option is a little bit to large height-wise, as it extends under the start bar which makes it very annoying to try to get at in-game buttons at the bottom of the screen (e.g. the OK and BACK buttons during game setup are hidden under the start bar. Turning the start bar to autohide helps, but then it still pops up annoyingly every time my mouse goes to a low-down in-game button). For now, I'm using a custom resolution setting in the INI file as a workaround, but it's a pain to have to change this and reboot the game every time I need to resize.

- The code to draw the resource circles (CTRL+R) produces ovals instead of circles when I run in dual-monitor mode. This makes the graphic in the oval is eggageratedly stretched. I can understand it's because the whole window is stretched, but since the gridlines don't suffer the same problem I would expect the resource circles not to either.

- When in windowed mode, the window doesn't repaint if I drag another window across in front of the game.

PERSONAL IRKS

- I find it difficult to see and manage my units on a global scale. As well, I never ever use the closest zoom levels. I realize this is a personal irk that others may not share, but I really find the move to 3D is useless. Stupid marketing people.

- Is there any way to remap the keys to control the game? i.e. I have a special keyboard (see Kinesis) that doesn't have a normal numpad easily accessible. I miss the old HOME-END-PGUP-PGDWN method of moving units.

- Would be nice if the minimap still displayed when in minimal interface mode.


<upset rant>Once again yet another software publishing company has made me feel like they really don't "love" their product as much as their customers do. It's even more frustrating to realize that of the people who might be able to DO something about these kind of issues, probably none of them will give a hoot and they'll go forever unfixed. What a big disappointment. I wish the software industry was as accountable as other fields of engineering.</upset rant>

ps. Sorry if I'm not following bug-post protocol with this post; I didn't want to have to put up a separate one for each issue, and they're all fairly straightforward to reproduce.

 

[mrgenie]

"I wish the software industry was as accountable as other fields of engineering."

that corresponds with my ideas which I've described twice now in the forums too! other engineering fields like car industry MUST be tested extensively and checked by governmental organisations. if there are any flaws, wether in your toaster or in the car, they can't hit the market and must change their product untill it does what the manufacturer promises to you! If they however still manage to sell you lies and uncompleted things, you go to court with a 100% chance of winning and wether getting a good solution, alternative or repair or they are forced by law if they don't comply within an reasonable amount of DAYS!!! not weeks or months, normally garages and stores have to comply within DAYS, they must refund you your money so i can choose alternative manufacturers.

.software criminals(industry) seems to be the only industry to have the right to sell you lies and failures and mistakes without taking any responsibility. for me, this was the final last time i ever gonna buy any software around. they spoiled my trust things would get better over the years now so frequently, i never ever gonne trust any software manufacturer because they all just sell you incomplete or untested beta-crap, which they don't tell me on the software package!

they should write something like:"be aware, this software is highly system demanding because it has not been tested, we don't know if it actually works on your system, it can be very incompatible, it is not finished nor completed yet, there are at least over 100failures in the code, many unwanted things can and will happen like even crashing your complete computer, and it slows down even the fastest systems down to 1970system performances" then at least i know what im buying. oh yeah, they should also write down:"you don't have any normal costumer rights and all your complains at our hotline will be answered with:"yes we send you the help to fix it within 30minutes" but you'll never get anything more then this answer, our lies even strech out towards the support line, we will keep you in black if you have problems and never going to help you"

 

[Shakes]

- There seem to be several mistakes on the arrows in the research screen, eg: Priesthood doesn't seem to require Meditation, Monotheism requires Masonry, Philosophy doesn't require Drama.

The arrows denote optional requirements. You need one of the techs that point to the new tech to research it. The compulsory requirements are shown by an icon on the right of the tech.

 

[tegilbor]

I'm running on a dual-CPU 3.2GHz machine with 3GB of RAM and a GeForce 6800 graphics card. In addition, I've turned all the graphics settings down and disabled animations/effects. In general, I find the whole game isn't as responsive as I'd like - even plain old clicking seems to hiccup slightly before it responds .

That is really becoming my main complaint. I don't care that I can't see the wonder movies. I don't care that half the time, I can't see the other leader in the diplomacy window. Even the memory problems are somewhat acceptable. What really spoils the game for me is how unresponsive the interface has become.

It's barely perceptible, but enough to make the entire interface feel clunky and laggingly slow.

Exactly - I think it's the "barely perceptible" thing that keeps many people from even noticing it (good for them!). I guess it depends on your style of playing the game - for me, it's a major issue.

I find it difficult to see and manage my units on a global scale.

Yup. The world is so colorful now, it's sometimes very hard to figure out where that small scout has gone.

As well, I never ever use the closest zoom levels.

I wonder: Who does?

I realize this is a personal irk that others may not share, but I really find the move to 3D is useless.

Dito. It's not that I am against change - on the contrary, Civ4 has introduced quite a few interesting new concepts. I'm just against pointless change.

 

[Mysterious]

The arrows denote optional requirements. You need one of the techs that point to the new tech to research it. The compulsory requirements are shown by an icon on the right of the tech.

Ah! My bad on that one. Thanks!

While I'm here.. is there any way to make the zoomed out ("earth view") mode act like the zoomed in mode? (i.e. show units, get rid of clouds, show terrain more clearly)