Hello,
We hope everyone is enjoying their summer. v3.8 is here with enhanced feedback on Ascension Crystals, improved UI layout, and more flavored starting-ship names. Also, you can now change the game difficulty mid-game.
Changelog
After updating to this opt-in, I started a game to see what's new and improved. I think the text is much better for my old eyes. It seems sharper, and the changes in size and color are very nice. I did find one problem. The text in Choose Civilizations screen does not use the whole width available.
During the game something happened that never happened before. An event that has an option that gives a class 8 planet with 5 population occurred twice in a short period of time. I took the planet option both times to get the planet. A little later the event that gives a class one planet with 5 population occurred. I also took the planet then. This gave me 5 planets in my home star system. When I found the Iconians and Torians, they also had 3 new planets for a total of 5. The new planets weren't the same class as the ones I got. I don't know if that means they terraformed them or if they were just different. Some had classes that were too high for terraforming that early in the game, so I don't know what it all means. I'm mentioning it because it seems odd, and I have never seen anything like this before this opt-in.
The change in the information about ascension crystals and ascension status is excellent. It shows more than I expected and everything I want to know. I especially like that is shows the number of crystals in the galaxy, so I know how many I or others have to get to secure the victory. This information was missing before.
Thanks for the feedback! I'll ask about the "choose civ" screen.
We didn't making any changes to the event system so I'm guessing its a old bug. Let us know if it happens again or if there's repro.
Glad that you liked the changes to crystals!
During the game something happened that never happened before. An event that has an option that gives a class 8 planet with 5 population occurred twice in a short period of time. I took the planet option both times to get the planet. A little later the event that gives a class one planet with 5 population occurred. I also took the planet then. This gave me 5 planets in my home star system. When I found the Iconians and Torians, they also had 3 new planets for a total of 5. The new planets weren't the same class as the ones I got. I don't know if that means they terraformed them or if they were just different. Some had classes that were too high for terraforming that early in the game, so I don't know what it all means. I'm mentioning it because it seems odd, and I have never seen anything like this before this opt-in.The change in the information about ascension crystals and ascension status is excellent. It shows more than I expected and everything I want to know. I especially like that is shows the number of crystals in the galaxy, so I know how many I or others have to get to secure the victory. This information was missing before.
I got the 3.8 updates in the middle of a long game I started on 3.7, so I suspect that I might be seeing only some of the changes.
But so far, I like the font changes, I really like the new Ascension Crystal icon, and the change to show ship production is very good.
Something you didn't mention, since I got the 3.8 update the problem with the notifications disappearing has gone away. Was that something you fixed or have I just been lucky so far?
More improvements! Excellent!
Thank you, SD!
nice update, thanks
In my current game, the 3.8 Ascension icon looks like this, with the mouse over:
My question is, what does the 39% next to the icon (in the upper right corner of the picture) represent? It's not the percentage of crystals I own, that's 13/27 or 48%. And it's not the chance of an Ascension victory shown on the Victory window, that's 65%.
I've started several games since my first game, with and without various mods, without it happening again. I guess it was just one of those things.
I did look at various screens to see how they appeared and found one that could use a fix.
The red arrow shows one that fades out, while the green arrow shows one that does not. The one that fades out is just a little longer than the other one. Could the space for it be adjusted a little so that all of it shows?
This is on a 1920 x 1080 screen with normal UI size.
The Research Complete screen needs a scroll bar or more room or less text for at least one tech. It has been this way since the text was enlarged one or two updates ago.
Xeno Archeology shows the same problem.
Updates 7/30
Old-spider: we'll get those screens fixed in the next optin
I just updated and checked the screen. It is fixed. Also, I have a lot of civs from the workshop, and I found one that had a lot of text in the description. There wasn't enough room for the text vertically, but there was a scroll bar that allowed all the text to be seen.
For the screens that have too much text, a scroll bar like the one in the choose civilization screen should be perfect for all the research complete screens. There might be more with too much text than the two shown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zz2ZnhBe0g
There is a bug in presist in 3.7 that allow you to duplicate the starbase module if the game were lagging during the end turn. I believe this has been a thing for awhile but nobody found it out. I put this here so you guy can fix it during 3.8 test.
Updates 08/02
Updates 8/5
Thanks for these notes, guys.
Back on July 26th I remarked that the problem with the Notifications disappearing might have been fixed. Well, it hasn't. I started a new game yesterday on 3.8 and while the notifications are not disappearing anywhere near as often as they used to, it still happens sometimes.
Same here. The notifications show for a brief moment, then disappear leaving a gap and showing only the other Civ's updates.
If you need a screenshot, I will try to provide one when it happens again,
Richard
It just happened again, as @rap33042 described. The turn ended, the screen was updated, the notifications were there, but then a UP meeting window popped up and afterwards the notifications were gone. In the past, if I've had enough notifications so that they needed a scroll bar, when they disappear the scroll bar still shows, and I've been able to make them come back by scrolling the scroll bar up and down.
Hmmm...can you provide a screenshot? I happened to be starting pretty closely at the notifications today and didn't see what you described.
Here you go ... There were somewhere between 6 to 10 notifications when the new turn started, then I had a pop-up about a shipyard mission completing, then a trade offer from one of the AIs, and when that was cleared the notifications were gone.
On the next turn the notifications showed, and after I cleared a pop-up from a declaration of war, they were still there ... so it's an intermittent problem, which I know makes it hard to find. Here's what it looked like after that ...
And sometimes the notifications disappear except for the hypergate notifications ...
That last image is what I usually see. The so-called minor notifications will disappear and the more important notifications will remain. As noted, it seems to happen any time a pop-up occurs.
I have thinked it many times ....Would be nice to have scrollable notifications for the last 10 or 50 turns ........ (configurable)
[like many other and much older 4x games ....]
To many info is "wasted" in this game, where is basicaly an turn based game, and so no time pressure ... Examples :
I get an video ... nice to watch ... but why is in the background still processed the turn and i dont see the movement and maybe things i would like to see ?
The same is going for nearly all other things that can happen in the turn-process phase ...
Starbase build screen - game is in background going on and lagg the screen like hell .... this musst not bee ..... (not only the lagging - but the processing of the game Hidden is an no-go ...)
diplomatic screen by meet new race in the turn .... i mostly dont see "where" the meet was performed ... this would be an not unimportant information ... (the other ship is after turn out of range from my sensors and i dont see on the map it anymore .. so i have no info .... in reality i would get an detailed info of the position from the ship on the meeting , the ship self and his known tech and his course after this ... here i musst estimate what have happen, i am only an leader of an star empire .....)
This was only few examples where the "good idea" of parallel processing was an very bad outcome in the end ... from game play side and from "laggines" side ...
[and i have an 12 Core Xeon CPU 3.8Ghz - so the lag is definitle NOT an CPU problem ...... ]
Regards
Thanks for the info. I've added to to the list of things to address in the next update (as 3.8 just came out).
The notifications disappearing problem didn't begin until I changed the setting to allow all notifications to display. At least, I never noticed it before. Maybe that was because the list was so much shorter.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
