Progress Report on 044

[Vehem]

We just cracked "the big one". There was one particular CtD problem that occurred in 90% of games that caused a potentially unescapable crash at around turn 200 or so. That was the major reason for the delay so far. We've now nailed the cause of that and things are a lot more stable.

In addition, the time spent hunting for that one revealed one or two other issues that have been fixed up a little. We also have a working Debug DLL thanks to Jean Elcard and Xienwolf, which we've been using to study things that happen "under the hood" whilst games are in progress. All very handy things for the future.

It's still not perfect, but my last "AutoPlay" game ended with a time-victory with only 1 CtD along the way, which was recoverable using the AutoSave. We still need to get some more feedback regarding multi-player games, but have also exposed some more information to the logs to help get that (on the other hand - one of the big new features may cause some additional problems with MP in the short term - hence needing the feedback. The attack-OoS is fixed though).

Regarding a release date - I'm pushing to have a release candidate for testing by the weekend and if things seem to be working, releasing after that.

 

[Thunder_Gr]

Yes!! Great! I am looking forward to see what you have come up with!

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

this is awesome news. can't wait for the release. thanx so much guys!

how's the performance right now? for example, does "barbarian world" still cause severe slowdowns?
another tweak I've been really looking forward to is optimizing hell-terrain spread, which is a major CPU killer right now. it'd be a joy to hear that things have improved!

any chance we're gonna get a changelog BEFORE the actual release btw?

 

[Vehem]

this is awesome news. can't wait for the release. thanx so much guys!

any chance we're gonna get a changelog BEFORE the actual release btw?

Aye - I typed up the changelog for the first 73 revisions the other night - only another 116 or so to go

(changelog might not be quite so many entries as some are just fixes for things that were committed earlier - it should be fairly large though)


EDIT:

how's the performance right now? for example, does "barbarian world" still cause severe slowdowns?
another tweak I've been really looking forward to is optimizing hell-terrain spread, which is a major CPU killer right now. it'd be a joy to hear that things have improved!

Jean Elcard has done some work on optimizing the redrawing of hell-terrain during the spread, which should improve things noticeably for that. I haven't tried out Barbarian World with a view to checking performance, but given the project Xienwolf has been working on, I suspect things may have changed in some way there...

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

hey, I'm sure it'll be a worthwhile read

btw - editted my post above with a couple questions. feel free to ignore them if the answer would be a spoiler

 

[Vehem]

hey, I'm sure it'll be a worthwhile read

btw - editted my post above with a couple questions. feel free to ignore them if the answer would be a spoiler

I edited mine whilst you were posting this

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

thanx for the reply, that's even MORE good news.

now off to speculate about what barbarian-related project Xienwolf has been working on... I guess it's something about the multiple barbarian civilizations feature he posted in the modders' thread ( yes, I've been spying on that - btw, we're going to be able to group HN units together, yay! thanx xienwolf, the Svartalfar empire loves you! )

 

[Tarquelne]

I've been cowering under a rock while the rest of the team has been putting a lot of time and effort into whipping the .dll into shape and tracking down the CTD problems.

Lets have a hand for the guys! The other guys, I mean.

 

[Jean Elcard]

Spreading Hell Terrain will never take more than 3 seconds (worst case) on a huge map. With an AMD 4800+ (2500MHz/core) processor that is. If it still takes more time between turns, then other calculations are the source of the delays.

The changes done to Hell Terrain should also significantly reduce the time needed for thawing in End of Winter, Genesis and for some other spells and events, which are changing the terrain. At least I hope that this the case for other people than me.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Jean Elcard, my core2duo @1.6GHz/core thanks you from the bottom of its heart

 

[xienwolf]

I don't remember releasing any spoilers. I guess you've been REALLY attentive, or I posted it quite some time ago and forgot about it. I've been trying not to update that thread at all with the dozens of new fields so that I don't accidentally update something "spoilerific"

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

OMG why do you guys toture me so! im going to japan for THREE WEEKS on saturday, and now you release this?!?! bah... oh well, on the bright side im gonna come home to a fully patched masterpiece

 

[RogueThunder]

OMG why do you guys toture me so! im going to japan for THREE WEEKS on saturday, and now you release this?!?! bah... oh well, on the bright side im gonna come home to a fully patched masterpiece

Oooh. Have fun. I was there from about newyears to the 10th...

Hopefully the weathers gotten a little warmer. XD

XD I played a game by remote desktop while over there... but lol... That requires a crappy laptop. And really isnt all that pleasant... effing 4fps limit.

 

[xienwolf]

Screw warm weather. Best thing in Japan is Saporro Snow Festival! Well, that and the Snow Monkey Hotsprings... Damn buggers are cute as hell.

 

[zup]

Why bother with Japan? You are not bored of Erebus, are you?

 

[RogueThunder]

Screw warm weather. Best thing in Japan is Saporro Snow Festival! Well, that and the Snow Monkey Hotsprings... Damn buggers are cute as hell.

When I was there it gave a solid attempt at snowing in Osaka...

... So...

XD Tho that does sound pretty fun too.

 

[Tarquelne]

I've been trying not to update that thread at all with the dozens of new fields so that I don't accidentally update something "spoilerific"

For awhile I was afraid I'd mentioned the Dwemer civ. before Vehem announced it.

 

[pchem]

It's still not perfect, but my last "AutoPlay" game ended with a time-victory with only 1 CtD along the way, which was recoverable using the AutoSave.

Wait, AutoPlay game? Please explain. I was under the impression that an all-AI game which the player could just spectate and watch was impossible. Does it allow you to advance it manually turn by turn? I would LOVE to have an all-AI game where I could go turn-by-turn and inspect the game from a no-fog, godlike point of view.

 

[Vehem]

Wait, AutoPlay game? Please explain. I was under the impression that an all-AI game which the player could just spectate and watch was impossible. Does it allow you to advance it manually turn by turn? I would LOVE to have an all-AI game where I could go turn-by-turn and inspect the game from a no-fog, godlike point of view.

Turn the Cheat mode/Debug mode on in the Ini file ("chipotle"), then press Ctrl-Z to view the whole map/all current research+production. Then Ctrl-Shift-Z and enter how many turns you want to watch for (click OK, don't press enter).

Disclaimer - you do see the AI do some really stupid things from time to time...

For awhile I was afraid I'd mentioned the Dwemer civ. before Vehem announced it.

See now all the Morrowind fans will actually *want* a Dwemer civ...
...which means you get to make it

 

[KingOfLands]

Turn the Cheat mode/Debug mode on in the Ini file ("chipotle"), then press Ctrl-Z to view the whole map/all current research+production. Then Ctrl-Shift-Z and enter how many turns you want to watch for (click OK, don't press enter).

Disclaimer - you do see the AI do some really stupid things from time to time...



See now all the Morrowind fans will actually *want* a Dwemer civ...
...which means you get to make it

The Luichurip are honestly pretty close already. Just add a little more "bam!" to them the way you guys did the Elohim if there's demand.