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[Texashawk]

Thanks Texashawk.

On an unrelated note, my game currently gets crashed to desktop when ending the turn.  I have a feeling that it's being caused by a planet with 0% posup.  It might be trying to fall below 0 on the next turn and crashing for some programming reason.

Does the game have the save data in a separate file?  If it does I can email it to you if you'd like.

It should be generating a error log in C:/ImperiaLogs. The save file is also in My Documents, under Saved Games. I'd appreciate if you could post the log to imperia.boards.net - there's a board there specifically for crash logs and others may be having the same issue (you can post as a guest). I'd also be interested in your save game - email is texashawk76@yahoo.com. Thanks! The PoSup shouldn't be able to fall below 0 since it is derived from pop units and their PoSup is clamped at 0. But a 0 might be causing some other issues (namely, divide by 0). I'll check it out!

-Steve

[Texashawk]

Updated WIP build notes for .310. Lot of good stuff in here. :-)

Imperia V.310 Change Log/Readme
7.8.14

Notes
* Please uninstall any previous version of Imperia before installing a new version. I have not yet added patch ability. The good news is that the install is relatively quick.
* I am updating the Sourceforge Imperia wiki periodically and this will be the best document for questions and how to play Imperia. Please refer back to it frequently.

Fixes
* Fixed issue where game would crash after dismissing 2nd viceroy in the game
* Fixed issue where logistical stations would not receive food/materials for their planet
* Fixed a small glitch where if you loaded a game anywhere other than the quadrant screen, it would be blank and you would have to refresh it first
* Fixed a terraforming crash bug where it attempted to calculate the terraform amount using a viceroy on an unowned planet
* Fixed some save game issues with character intelligence and greed not saving properly, causing very high intel values upon reload
* Fixed an issue with saves that would cause save games to get exponentially larger if unchecked, although it would not affect the game itself
* Fixed emperor not aging issue
* Fixed several trade/logistic issues; trade should be more consistent and smooth
* Fixed crash issue with adding a system capital and moving the system governor

Changes/Additions
* Added Emperor screen
* Added numerous additional conversation strings to further personalize interactions
* Added Nationalist/Tyrannical continuum and added effects
* Added Nationalist/Tyrannical value effects for every character action
* Added hit to Nationalist rating if you cancel a good Edict equal to double the original effect (to prevent cheese ‘start Edict, cancel Edict’ techniques)
* Added next/previous buttons to Intel screen for easier navigation
* Added additional sort hotkeys to the Intel screen (Unrest - 'U')
* Added a check to each planet each turn to adjust the bio rating based on the primary designation
* Added more labels to Intel screen for additional designation types
* Added system trade screen window. This shows downstream trades (moving goods towards trade hubs) and upstream trades (moving goods towards planets that are in short supply). This is the first step in improving the trade/logistical UI.
* Added expanded trade mode UI on quadrant map. This mode will show lines and arrows showing upstream and downstream trades, as well as the amounts moving to and from each system.
* Adjusted trade logic so that planets will not send materials if they are below the goods alert threshold
* Added flag for characters who ask for a starbase to be built in conversation will now no longer hold up construction of it regardless of influence or loyalty
* Added UI feature: right-click will exit any main screen (intel, emperor, etc). ESC will also do the same
* Added remaining Edict alerts on system screen showing what is being built and what estimated time remains
* Updated look of planet status information on system screen for easier readability
* Added mouseover/contact capability for planetary viceroy on system screen
* Added character PoSup foundations: When you have at least level 3 intel on a character or active informers, you can see their PoSup. Will eventually lead to things such as breakaway systems, planets, and sectors if your PoSup is low, theirs is high, and they don’t like you
* Added new Character Action: Have personal conversation - this is another way to increase your knowledge of this character, and when the needs and wants system is implemented, it will give clues to what they want and covet, helping to improve relations with that character (if desired)
* Added toggle on quadrant screen to remove sector lines (default option on ‘no submode’ display mode)
* Added ‘Stockpile Goods’ character interaction. This will always succeed and basically allow the planet to no longer be required to send most of their excess goods to their downstream hub. The character will be grateful and this is seen as a Nationalist act.
* Added ‘Send Goods’ character interaction. This may NOT succeed depending on many factors and will always make the character less loyal and depending on their personality (and the state of the planet) more angry. This is why you should be careful before taking a planet out of the trade network – you may not easily be able to get those goods back!
* Added build number to main status bar
* Added Emperor Continuum display to main status bar for consistent reference without always having to go to the Emperor screen

Balance
* Raised cost of Logistical Station slightly
* Adjusted Nationalist effect of most Edicts downward slightly
* Adjusted Tyrannical effect of most Edicts upward slightly
* Adjusted Tyrannical effect of more Designations that promote military or heavy production or excessive government
* Lowered the chance that characters will reduce government unless they are very loyal and/or strongly Nationalist
* Lowered pool recharge rates across the board
* Changed character reactions to show ‘neutral’ until you have reached a certain level of interaction with them in order to promote more interactions and initial learning about your leaders’ personalities
* Changed Emperor power calculation to take into account your Will and Charisma rating, also dropped somewhat the PoSup rating factor. This will serve to have an initial lower rating early in the game, but more room for growth without having a super high PoSup later

Unresolved Issues
* None

[varsovie]

I had disabled windows media player and that was the issue.

Awesome. That scratches off the last known crash issue. I'll put a note in the install package that WMP is required for Imperia to run, since XNA seems to use it exclusively without outside binaries. Thank you so much for taking the time to look into this. I hope you enjoy the game!

-Steve

Oh that's bad from a Linux friendly standpoint. Also 1st time I hear of a "windows media player dependency".

Any chance to get a portable (all in one folder, no installations) versions, it might speed up my process a lot since the installation seems unpossible.

XNA 1, Portability 0

[Scoops Novel]

Given that you have a focus on what your character can actually do as opposed to what depends on byzantine wheels, do you expect to go into more detail into day to day life? Hopefully beyond a Crusader Kingsish events system.

[Texashawk]

I had disabled windows media player and that was the issue.

Awesome. That scratches off the last known crash issue. I'll put a note in the install package that WMP is required for Imperia to run, since XNA seems to use it exclusively without outside binaries. Thank you so much for taking the time to look into this. I hope you enjoy the game!

-Steve

Oh that's bad from a Linux friendly standpoint. Also 1st time I hear of a "windows media player dependency".

Any chance to get a portable (all in one folder, no installations) versions, it might speed up my process a lot since the installation seems unpossible.

XNA 1, Portability 0

Mmmm. I am planning on doing a self-installer in the not-too-distant future, since that gives more control over where the game is installed and lets the user modify the files easier (there are several user-modifiable XML files). I looked into using Unity, but it's not the greatest engine for turn-based games. If I do an Imperia II, however, I may bite the bullet.

[Texashawk]

I want to do a lot of events, but what do you mean by day-to-day life?

-Steve

[Scoops Novel]

I want to do a lot of events, but what do you mean by day-to-day life?

-Steve

Propaganda events (with say speech writing), interactions with your household servants, grand war councils, relishing your power, lessons from private tutors or the very best university classes (possibly involving political rivals?), traveling from place to place, security alerts, diseases, practicing with that new transhuman hand you got, etc. Not necessarily full on rpg mode, but definitely some involved events, and hopefully a personal sense of "hey, this is why my family bothered". Pangalactic achievements are well and good, but i want to see some adoring masses for my trouble, or at least a interesting new species in one of my private ecosystems.

By contrast, crusader kings would yearly or so have family matters pop up, or an aside about falconry, but more detailed and frequent interactions between the player, his court and his interests would be appreciated in this game.

[Retropunch]

I want to do a lot of events, but what do you mean by day-to-day life?
-Steve

Propaganda events (with say speech writing), interactions with your household servants, grand war councils, relishing your power, lessons from private tutors or the very best university classes (possibly involving political rivals?), traveling from place to place, security alerts, diseases, practicing with that new transhuman hand you got, etc. Not necessarily full on rpg mode, but definitely some involved events, and hopefully a personal sense of "hey, this is why my family bothered". Pangalactic achievements are well and good, but i want to see some adoring masses for my trouble, or at least a interesting new species in one of my private ecosystems.

I'd love to see this (actually, I'd love to see a more or less full on rpg mode!). One thing I'm not a fan of however is the 'one off events' that so often crop up in these games. Yeah, a few in and among are alright, but in most 4x games random events are completely detached from everything else and just give a +/- on something.

If you were wanting to add in events, I'd really encourage having a sort of 'events tree'. So for instance, lets say a plague starts spreading, the first event could be if you should try to keep it secret or not. Depending on how well that works the second event should crop up after a few months that deals with how to deal with the news getting out and the third with what resources to give to it and so on down a whole line of events ending in you curing it or not. These could stretch from small ones like interaction with an character to something as big as destroying a planet.

This would be way more interesting than just 'pick a, b or c' and also give you a lot of replay value, even if you came up against it again. Really it's all about integrating it so it doesn't just seem like a completely random event, and more like something which is actually meaningful.

[Texashawk]

I want to do a lot of events, but what do you mean by day-to-day life?

-Steve

Propaganda events (with say speech writing), interactions with your household servants, grand war councils, relishing your power, lessons from private tutors or the very best university classes (possibly involving political rivals?), traveling from place to place, security alerts, diseases, practicing with that new transhuman hand you got, etc. Not necessarily full on rpg mode, but definitely some involved events, and hopefully a personal sense of "hey, this is why my family bothered". Pangalactic achievements are well and good, but i want to see some adoring masses for my trouble, or at least a interesting new species in one of my private ecosystems.

By contrast, crusader kings would yearly or so have family matters pop up, or an aside about falconry, but more detailed and frequent interactions between the player, his court and his interests would be appreciated in this game.

Well, there will be speeches that you can make voluntarily, and you will have yearly 'state of the Empire' addresses where your Charisma and Intelligence and Power, as well as a trait called Majesty will come into play, and their will be war councils and the ability to move around your Empire (at some risk) to more directly interact with a planet. You will also be able to improve certain stats from taking 'classes' that will cost ADM to take. These won't be 'events', though, just things you can do. What I'm trying to really capture is as you exactly stated, the 'adoring masses' affect, which is why the pop system is modeled in such detail. I want to make the role of emperor big and little at the same time, if that makes any sense, and you have some really good ideas about how that could be visualized, Novel Scoops. I especially like the diseases and the servants. I can do something with that! :-) May I use them?

-Steve

[Texashawk]

I want to do a lot of events, but what do you mean by day-to-day life?
-Steve

Propaganda events (with say speech writing), interactions with your household servants, grand war councils, relishing your power, lessons from private tutors or the very best university classes (possibly involving political rivals?), traveling from place to place, security alerts, diseases, practicing with that new transhuman hand you got, etc. Not necessarily full on rpg mode, but definitely some involved events, and hopefully a personal sense of "hey, this is why my family bothered". Pangalactic achievements are well and good, but i want to see some adoring masses for my trouble, or at least a interesting new species in one of my private ecosystems.

I'd love to see this (actually, I'd love to see a more or less full on rpg mode!). One thing I'm not a fan of however is the 'one off events' that so often crop up in these games. Yeah, a few in and among are alright, but in most 4x games random events are completely detached from everything else and just give a +/- on something.

If you were wanting to add in events, I'd really encourage having a sort of 'events tree'. So for instance, lets say a plague starts spreading, the first event could be if you should try to keep it secret or not. Depending on how well that works the second event should crop up after a few months that deals with how to deal with the news getting out and the third with what resources to give to it and so on down a whole line of events ending in you curing it or not. These could stretch from small ones like interaction with an character to something as big as destroying a planet.

This would be way more interesting than just 'pick a, b or c' and also give you a lot of replay value, even if you came up against it again. Really it's all about integrating it so it doesn't just seem like a completely random event, and more like something which is actually meaningful.

Neat! That's a really great idea. It's sort of what the Paradox historical games have, but I don't know about the branching part that actually tell stories that affect the empire as a whole. I think I can make that work, and I want to try. If I can make that work the way I'm picturing it, may I give you credit for assisting with the overall game design? More to the point, would you be willing to write some event trees? I'm serious. I want to know how that planet gets destroyed. :-)

-Steve

[Scoops Novel]

I want to do a lot of events, but what do you mean by day-to-day life?

-Steve

Propaganda events (with say speech writing), interactions with your household servants, grand war councils, relishing your power, lessons from private tutors or the very best university classes (possibly involving political rivals?), traveling from place to place, security alerts, diseases, practicing with that new transhuman hand you got, etc. Not necessarily full on rpg mode, but definitely some involved events, and hopefully a personal sense of "hey, this is why my family bothered". Pangalactic achievements are well and good, but i want to see some adoring masses for my trouble, or at least a interesting new species in one of my private ecosystems.

By contrast, crusader kings would yearly or so have family matters pop up, or an aside about falconry, but more detailed and frequent interactions between the player, his court and his interests would be appreciated in this game.

Well, there will be speeches that you can make voluntarily, and you will have yearly 'state of the Empire' addresses where your Charisma and Intelligence and Power, as well as a trait called Majesty will come into play, and their will be war councils and the ability to move around your Empire (at some risk) to more directly interact with a planet. You will also be able to improve certain stats from taking 'classes' that will cost ADM to take. These won't be 'events', though, just things you can do. What I'm trying to really capture is as you exactly stated, the 'adoring masses' affect, which is why the pop system is modeled in such detail. I want to make the role of emperor big and little at the same time, if that makes any sense, and you have some really good ideas about how that could be visualized, Novel Scoops. I especially like the diseases and the servants. I can do something with that! :-) May I use them?

-Steve

Sure, but the important part is that you and not your stats (albeit indirectly) determine events. For speeches say, you could delegate the task (an option you should usually have as Space Emperor), with a risk of terribleness/deliberate sabotage which may need you to do some quick thinking, or you could write it yourself, based on knowledge of the planet (which might depend on either databanks, spy's or local courtiers at the worst) and your aims for it. Your stammer and lack of eye contact could still throw you under a bus, but it should help. As for those classes, i hope they come with tests and irritating peers/teachers.  I really like the idea of event trees.

I would also recommend the option of having an NPC set up your timetable, just to get that diplomatic, shuttled-around feel.

[Retropunch]

Neat! That's a really great idea. It's sort of what the Paradox historical games have, but I don't know about the branching part that actually tell stories that affect the empire as a whole. I think I can make that work, and I want to try. If I can make that work the way I'm picturing it, may I give you credit for assisting with the overall game design? More to the point, would you be willing to write some event trees? I'm serious. I want to know how that planet gets destroyed. :-)

-Steve

I'd be honored to get credit, and equally so to write some event trees!

I'll start having a think about a good tree and PM it over to you so we can work out if it fits in technically. 

[Texashawk]

Neat! That's a really great idea. It's sort of what the Paradox historical games have, but I don't know about the branching part that actually tell stories that affect the empire as a whole. I think I can make that work, and I want to try. If I can make that work the way I'm picturing it, may I give you credit for assisting with the overall game design? More to the point, would you be willing to write some event trees? I'm serious. I want to know how that planet gets destroyed. :-)

-Steve

I'd be honored to get credit, and equally so to write some event trees!

I'll start having a think about a good tree and PM it over to you so we can work out if it fits in technically.

Since I've been using XML, I think it would be pretty easy to code, relatively speaking. You'd need a event ID, a event name, a description, and choices with their own ID - that way you could make future events either deterministic (i.e. event ID E01 fired, and you have at least 10 planets, and a viceroy with an anger level of 60 is now present on one of those planets, so fire the event), temporal (i.e. event ID E01 fired, so in 10 months/turns Event E02 will fire) or sequential (E01 fired, with choice C01-1, so event E01-1 will fire as a result).

Steve

[Texashawk]

I want to do a lot of events, but what do you mean by day-to-day life?

-Steve

Propaganda events (with say speech writing), interactions with your household servants, grand war councils, relishing your power, lessons from private tutors or the very best university classes (possibly involving political rivals?), traveling from place to place, security alerts, diseases, practicing with that new transhuman hand you got, etc. Not necessarily full on rpg mode, but definitely some involved events, and hopefully a personal sense of "hey, this is why my family bothered". Pangalactic achievements are well and good, but i want to see some adoring masses for my trouble, or at least a interesting new species in one of my private ecosystems.

By contrast, crusader kings would yearly or so have family matters pop up, or an aside about falconry, but more detailed and frequent interactions between the player, his court and his interests would be appreciated in this game.

Well, there will be speeches that you can make voluntarily, and you will have yearly 'state of the Empire' addresses where your Charisma and Intelligence and Power, as well as a trait called Majesty will come into play, and their will be war councils and the ability to move around your Empire (at some risk) to more directly interact with a planet. You will also be able to improve certain stats from taking 'classes' that will cost ADM to take. These won't be 'events', though, just things you can do. What I'm trying to really capture is as you exactly stated, the 'adoring masses' affect, which is why the pop system is modeled in such detail. I want to make the role of emperor big and little at the same time, if that makes any sense, and you have some really good ideas about how that could be visualized, Novel Scoops. I especially like the diseases and the servants. I can do something with that! :-) May I use them?

-Steve

Sure, but the important part is that you and not your stats (albeit indirectly) determine events. For speeches say, you could delegate the task (an option you should usually have as Space Emperor), with a risk of terribleness/deliberate sabotage which may need you to do some quick thinking, or you could write it yourself, based on knowledge of the planet (which might depend on either databanks, spy's or local courtiers at the worst) and your aims for it. Your stammer and lack of eye contact could still throw you under a bus, but it should help. As for those classes, i hope they come with tests and irritating peers/teachers.  I really like the idea of event trees.

I would also recommend the option of having an NPC set up your timetable, just to get that diplomatic, shuttled-around feel.

So let me make sure I have this correct. Do you see these events as almost a minigame, or how would the player actually interact with these events? I'm intrigued; I just want to know what level of granularity you are proposing. The original plan was pretty much 'press a button, see the results'. :-)

-Steve

[forsaken1111]

I'd like to see some short interlude events where you wander the palace, speak with servants and guards, maybe even 'sneak out' in disguise and walk among the populace. You could gather news that otherwise wouldn't reach your ears, and make friends with random people who may have skills you can use.

Met a guy in a bar who seems alright? Appoint him planetary viceroy!