Bugs

Why would we care about bugs from an older game that has a different engine. Your other post makes sense. This one doesn't. Galactic Civilizations III will have its own bugs to worry about.

+1.  GalCiv and GalCiv2 were great, but are now in the rear view mirror.  Let them go and we can move forward.  We'll be doing enough alpha and beta testing on GalCiv3 to sufficiently hold our interests. 

GalCiv3 is a Major rewrite on many levels, "old bugs" will not be relevant - would be like looking for a gas leek when you have an electrical fault.

Bug hunting starts with a clean GalCiv3  sheet

Just on the whole 'bugs' thing.

I was wondering if Stardock was going to use any external bug tracking mechanism for the alpha/beta

Just as a reference, Prison Architect is using Mantis to track bugs for all alpha users. And it's a lot easier to submit bugs, track, merge, etc stuff there than going through reams and reams of forum posts trying to find the one tidbit of information that might be useful. I mean forums are great place to discuss things, but tehy're not very good at being a bug tracker mechanism.

Just a random thought.

I'd like more insect races.

If they don't, and history shows they most likely wont, use an external program just make a shortcut to the debug log folder and just write up the issue on the forums. Leave it to the devs to look through the forums to find what they need. Historically they are very active on the forums. Hell the CEO is one of the forums most active members. 

I wish i had veto power on this one sentence. As a retired programmer, I know the value of being able to track bugs effectively, and forums are too random in the extreme to make it work. Also, didn't we have several tools for reporting errors of several types during the Alpha and Beta of both GC1 and GC2?

While we are talking about bug reporting, one of the most difficult type of bugs to report is the unbreakable code loop. This is worse than the bug that causes a "program exception" interrupt that, unfortunately, Windows has always handled very poorly. During the CG1 and CG2 testing we were given a tool that captured the program exception, gathered pertinent data such as specific pertinent information from DxDiag, register content at the time of failure, call trees, etc., etc., and sent the collected information directly to the automated tracking system at SD. Forcing a loop to cause a program exception was still difficult, but could be done.

I must assume that a collection/reporting tool will be part of the Alpha/Beta test packages we receive. It may be a good idea to ask us for some suggestions for adding to this tool.

GalCiv III will have its own, brand new set of bugs.  There's no GalCiv II code in GalCiv III.

We have provided a public tracker before, and stopped for a couple of reasons-

- Average users are not really any more effective at reporting when using a tracker. There are just as many dupes, vague reports with no useful detail, miscategorized items, etc. To be fair though this is a problem even with professional QA at some companies...

- The public tracker got spammed, in too great of volumes to sort through or clean up after.

We do have the ability to capture and upload dumps on crashes though in newer games.

I don't know about bugs; I'm one of those hapless beta users that breaks something but can't isolate what I broke or how. However, I will happily volunteer to proofread game text. Maybe a pdf of all the text in the game, rather than trying to find it all while playing the game and hoping I remember to write it down. There's still a few minor-but-annoying errors in Twilight that bug me to no end. One I was recently was a wrong text variable, a <leader name> instead of a <race name> error that made the sentence absolute nonsense.

     I would think when u r looking for bugs u wouldn't want to run into the same bugs u ran into Toa that didn't get fixed. I agree that Gc3 will probably have its own bugs either way, but it makes sense to me that it would probably be better to avoid the bugs.that were caused because different Aliens use different tech trees. One thing that I noticed is that both sins of a solar empire and Twilight of the Arnor were both based on the Dark Avatar tech tree, so my question is why will the Galactic civilizations 3 racial tech trees not be based on the Twilight of the Arnor tech trees not be based on each other. If we know that they will not spend time looking through hundreds of posts looking for bugs. Why not then have just one.

     First I going to mention the bugs about the Ai. One of the problem is the Ai charge to much taxes. If u r the generic Ai u charge 100% taxes; otherwise, u charge 80% taxes. If u r the Krynn u can eventually charge 80% taxes but only after carefully balancing a lot of mechanics. I would recommend fixing this bug before the Alpha comes out.

     The second bug is broken Ai's maybe u didn't think theese Ai's were broken when u made the game. The broken Ai's come in 2 forms. First the Iconians and the Torians don't build there improvements. The second has always been in Galactic civilizations all along. The Drengin, Yor, and Korath will only colonise planets in their own influence. I would like to add that the Arceans and the Korx aren't that militarily. I would that the Ai  should also colonise only one tenth of the map. The Ai don't do this. Instead 3 Ai's barely colonise when one tries to take over the map. Another bug is that the game recommends 100% on economy, research, and military, but doesn't follow that rule.

     The third bug is that if u increase or decrease in difficulty instead of a harder u or the Ai gets arbitrary minuses or bonuses. I noticed that instead of the normal setting for the Ai being normal meaning that u don't have penalties or bonuses. Its easier.

     The forth bug is that the Ai's trade their important planets, or they will trade planets to the point they aren't a race anymore. I think there should be an option to disable planet trading.

      The fifth bug is that the some of the descriptions of the planetary improvements or the wonders don't do what it says or does nonething.

     The sixth bug is that spme of the tech trees are in the wrong category.

     The seventh bug is that the Ai doesn't always research important techs that it needs.

     The eighth bug is that the Torians don't use their super breeder ability.

     The ninth bug is that the Ai charges too much taxes usually 80%; unless, your the generic Ai then it charges 100% taxes no matter what the approval is or how much money u have. Causing the planets to not have enough population.

     The tenth bug is that unless your the Korath, Drengin, or the Yor u don't buikd morale structures.

     Lastly I don't think that the tech trees or the races r fair. Some don't have enough techs, wonders, planetary improvements, or ability penalties, while others start out with to many techs. I would like to point out that some of the paths r designed to make one race superior and others inferior.

     I would like to see the new game without theese bugs. My question how r u going to be using a new game engine and not keeping the same general concepts? How can u fix bugs u don't know about, or r u sure the new game won't have theese bugs.

     I would like to see some races like Aliens or the undine. Not looking humanoid or anything remotely like animals on earth. I think when U think about it they r Aliens have insect like qualities.

     My question is that if we get the Alpha a beta's how r we going to report errors and how do I implement this.

     Remember if we can do something to save them time in one area then they will have time to do other stuff, and make a better game.

   '

Bug hunting starts from scratch .... its a Code rewrite from top to bottom.

yep, you got that right. codes all rewritten and I need more information to exactly how this game will be made.

There will be game designers creating the systems.

There will be programmers writing code for the engine.

There will be artist creating models, textures and lighting.

There will be the mod community creating awesome mod packs.

You have AI programmers 

There will be QA making reviewing the game. Oh because some of us signed up for the alpha and the beta pre-orders the game will not be ready until "release date".

There will be post release patches and content updates.

There will be bugs because there isn't a game on this planet that has ever been created without them. There will be parts of the game you may not like but those are not bugs. There will be bugs that are just not worth investing the time in fixing. 10 years from now these bugs may still exist. 

Oh don't forget that there will be some of the industries best game designers. 

Pretty sure that is how the game will be made. 

Wait u r telling me that stardock is not going to do much programming on this game.

Some of the bugs weren't done in programming the Ai was, but some of the bugs were like things like techs and units. Why would these not go into the next game. R u going to upgrade the Ai from the previous game, or r u going to write a new Ai from scratch. R u going to write new races from scratch, or r u going to base the new races from what u already use from previous versions. I have an associate arts in Computer business application, and I full well know that u will reuse some of the concepts, and probably some of the code from Galactic civilizations 3. What's going to be tatally knew is going to be how the Ai thinks. The graphics. The interaction between players and Ai's. Maybe the user interface. The options r probably change. This is probably to simplistic. I only was trying to help u out.

I think you misunderstand. The designers, programmers, and artists Tyrantissar is talking about are StarDock employess (or at least mostly so). And if the external Alpha is going to start early next year, then they must have produced a lot of code and art work already.

Hey Mike,

Not a rep for stardock or anything but here is what I've determined.

The AI from the old game will not be used, it will be completely rewritten.

There may be new races added but most if not all of the races from the previous game will be making a return. Possibly with retcon's to bring the game more in line with where they want the story now.

Trying to help is a noble ambition but perhaps you should more fully think out your post and take the time to ask more direct questions or explain your questions better. Not trying to be offensive but taking the time to use proper grammar and spelling helps everyone understand you, and you probably shouldn't throw around AA's like they're qualifiers. If you've worked in the industry and have taken a game from scratch to launch then that would be something substantial to qualify your expert opinion.

     I've never been an Alpha or for that matter a beta before. We can say that Stardock know what they r doing. I think this is a great game anyway. I guess I was just trying to help. I'm working on my punctuation. I guess my list of bugs was a flop, or at least according to u guys. I figured that if they had a comprehensive list of bugs; instead, of several list of bugs. These posts all these years. Then ut wiyld be quicjer than looking through a bunch of lists. This would give them more time to work on other stuff. making the game even better. If there planning to come out with a Alpha this soon that means they have already been working on the game. I was brainstorming when I was working and came out with some ideas. Cba is programming, but not game programming. 

I rewrote the post to try to respond to your request. Do u have any suggestions on how to do this.

Use the edit button to revise your posts.