Bring back the GLANCE tab to the foreign advisor!

[CivAgamemnon]

@ Honkoid:

In your .ini file in My Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword

; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves.  0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 4

Put 1.

; The maximum number of autosaves kept in the directory before being deleted.
MaxAutoSaves = 5

Set the value to the max number you want. Be warned, it will slow the game down slightly with having to save every turn.

 

[ruff_hi]

We've added the GLANCE page back with our BUG mod and tried to improve its appearance based on some comments here and general artistic talent (ie minimal). I would value your comments ...

Original Glance

New Glance found only in BUG

 

[r_rolo1]

^^Nice... It would be better if it had a WFYABTA and a "we have our hands full" display, but am I to put defects in a such nice work

 

[Honkoid]

@ CivAgamemnon: YES!

 

[LlamaCat]

well all I can say is they took it out, so the powers that be agree with me. Maybe I was involved in some secret meetings or beta testing, who knows. I would have to kill you if I told you. actually I would never admit to being involved with Firaxis beta testing because that would mean I'm an idiot.

the foreign relations glance screen was redundant, plain and simple. that alone is enough reason to ditch it. clicking on a leaderhead is not difficult. a screen that tells me Boudica is -6 with me means nothing, it's just a number. the other screen gives you a better visual understanding to quickly see who is friendly, cautious, etc. the hidden math underneath all these relations can be viewed just by mousing over the leaderheads on that same screen.

spreadsheets are fine when I'm at work... not when I'm at play.

Moderator Action: Warned! - Flaming the betatesters, especially when they can't defend themselves due to the NDA.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

unbelievable... some people should learn how to read

Moderator Action: Warned - PDMA
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Arlborn]

unbelievable... some people should learn how to read

Maybe the original post was more offensive and the mod edited that part out?

I don't know, just an idea, as I already saw it before.

 

[Bhruic]

I suspect it was the "I would never admit to being involved with Firaxis beta testing because that would mean I'm an idiot." line. Kinda hard to read that without the implication that "beta tester" == "idiot".

Bh

 

[dot]

I suspect it was the "I would never admit to being involved with Firaxis beta testing because that would mean I'm an idiot." line. Kinda hard to read that without the implication that "beta tester" == "idiot".

Bh

First off ... I'm no native speaker.

Couldn't it - assuming an ocean of best intents - be read as:

If I were to admit that I'm a beta tester I'd be an idiot because I wouldn't have any shelter from all the questions and gripes that I would receive from fellow civvers.

.

 

[Bhruic]

I'm not saying there aren't other possible interpretations. I'm just saying that the "average" person, when reading that sentence, is very likely to interpret it in the way that I mentioned. So whether intentional or not, it's going to come off as an insult.

Bh

 

[dot]

Yes. Certainly. When I read it the first time I had this rather insulting interpretation shooting up, too.

Well, maybe he just phrased it badly, maybe it was intentional. I'm gonna stick with my ocean of best interests. Innocent - until proven guilty.

 

[r_rolo1]

I'm not a native speaker as well, but when I read the post that people are talking about ( when it was written ), my intrepetation was: "The guy is saying that if he was a beta tester, he had a multitude of reasons to not say it was one , including the non-disclosure agreement", a rather non agressive intrepetation.....
But I have to say that I read much more ofensive posts about the beta testers that passed unnoticed by the moderators ( like one implying that the beta testers were somewhat handicapped because of a declaration of alexman ( If I recall correctely... ) before the BtS release saying that no beta tester had achieved a AP diplo win .... )...

 

[LlamaCat]

the line was meant as you read it: Firaxis beta testers are idiots. does anyone dispute that? I see nothing wrong with writing this... they are employees of Firaxis and as such subject to criticism and I've seen much worse on here. But I guess Firaxis just bought this web site in a secret deal or something and the moderators are now getting their cut.

Moderator Action: Warned! - PDMA
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Bhruic]

You can criticize them. You aren't allowed to insult them (or anyone else).

Oh, and yes, I would dispute it.

Bh

 

[LiDDiS]

Good job on the glance tab clean up! I'll be using it for sure.

 

[jray]

the line was meant as you read it: Firaxis beta testers are idiots. does anyone dispute that? I see nothing wrong with writing this... they are employees of Firaxis and as such subject to criticism and I've seen much worse on here. But I guess Firaxis just bought this web site in a secret deal or something and the moderators are now getting their cut.

Expressing disappointment in a buggy patch is understandable, but there are a zillion possible explanations besides idiocy. Even if we could prove such an assertion, it wouldn't be polite to proclaim it.

Don't forget the optimistic angle on this 3.13 soap opera-- look how awesome it is that Firaxis made this game so moddable that the forum community here could pump out fixes to most of the issues in just a couple days! Not only Bhruic for his masterful bug hunting, but also everyone who took the time to report bugs and post savegame files. This wouldn't be possible if Firaxis had just done business as usual (for the gaming industry) and offered us merely superficial skinning and scripting capabilities. No, they provided nothing less than the logical guts of the game itself! Don't worry, they'll eventually catch on that they can get a lot of value out of letting us beta-test patches. Especially if we're polite about things .

 

[LiDDiS]

Back on topic...

BRING BACK GLANCE TAB!

 

[CivAgamemnon]

Back on topic...

BRING BACK GLANCE TAB!

Uh... Bhuric fixed that. Click the link in my signature about "Bhruic's fix to BtS 3.13". It's the 2nd link on the first post.

 

[greggbert]

First rule of software development. Never take away a feature unless it is bugged to the point of being unusable.

 

[LiDDiS]

Uh... Bhuric fixed that. Click the link in my signature about "Bhruic's fix to BtS 3.13". It's the 2nd link on the first post.

Yeah I know, I've been using it. They should still officially add it back in next patch though. Not everyone civ player will come to these forums and see there are unofficial fixes.

 

[lulu135]

My 3 cents (playing Financial ) : I'm sure the beta tester's aren't idiots. But, Firaxis clearly has problems with their test/release cycle. My guess is that the QA people are mostly on other projects and probably are given very little time for patches for old products. I used to work in software engineering, QA people always have specific test procedures, just "playing a game" is almost certainly not what they do... they probably have just enough time to directly test whatever changes have supposedly been made and don't look for regressions.

It's really unfortunate that they don't work with the community. Just having people playing the game turns up lots of bugs that their own test procedures miss. They already get lots of bug reports from official releases, if they opened up their betas then the community would give them a lot of additional QA free of charge which would benefit everybody, and then they could release "final" patches which have already been well tested by hundreds of community members.

It's true that all software has bugs, but it does not have to be case that software has obvious bugs. The "inevitable" bugs come from things that happen .001% of the time, it is simply inexcusable to release software that has bugs that everybody notices within hours.