Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Texashawk]

I don't think I'll have much use for the new stations, but the Penal Colony sounds fun!

Yes, they are. You can get quite a network of cheap material production planets with 99 unrest and no emigration. It'll be nasty when rebellions are programmed... 

[Texashawk]

Great news!

The final version before the .3xx series is here. There are a lot of fixes - the changelog is basically the same as the previous post, with a few extra changes. The updated readme contained in the setup file has all the information. There is a lot, but here are the highlights:

NEW UI THEME - The UI will now start black (neutral) and slowly change color towards blue or red as your Emperor becomes more Nationalist or Tyrannical in nature. This will eventually extend to music, sound effects, and fonts.

NEW EDICTS - You can now create a prison world, add a logistics base, create an exploration outpost, and more!

NEW CHARACTER ACTIONS - You can embargo planets and cut them out of the trade net, and from receiving emergency goods. Perfect for bringing that hardline viceroy into line, and more for controlling your supply network.

FIXES - Virtually every crash bug that has been reported has been fixed. There is one case that I am still working on getting more info.

BALANCE - Generally lowered the cost of most Stellar Edicts and slightly raised the cost of most Terrestrial ones. Also added more ADM per planet, weighted towards capitals.

NEW FEATURE - New Terra can now support any Terrestrial Edict in range, even if it is not connected to its sector.

This will be the last release for probably a few weeks, barring any hotfixes. I will be working on the Emperor screen and updating the Wiki. If you are interested in helping write for the wiki, please let me know - it's a daunting project!

Also, we are about to welcome our 5,000th visitor on the blog site this week. I can't thank you all enough for your support on this project. Sometimes I get frustrated for some reason or another, and then I'll look at the visits to the blog or get a nice comment or E-mail and it reminds me of what I'm working on. You are awesome! I have also gotten a lot of great feedback from people on this forum, and I truly appreciate all types of feedback to make Imperia the best 4X it can be.

As always, you can download the setup package here:http://sourceforge.net/projects/imperia/files/.

Enjoy!!

-Steve

[EuchreJack]

Awesome update!

Also, I had the game crash when I selected a sector viceroy's name.  I had done it before for the same and other sector viceroys, but this time it just crashed.  Using a lower-resolution computer.

[Texashawk]

Awesome update!

Also, I had the game crash when I selected a sector viceroy's name.  I had done it before for the same and other sector viceroys, but this time it just crashed.  Using a lower-resolution computer.

What resolution?  Are you saying that in this version, using a lower resolution, it crashed?

[EuchreJack]

Awesome update!

Also, I had the game crash when I selected a sector viceroy's name.  I had done it before for the same and other sector viceroys, but this time it just crashed.  Using a lower-resolution computer.

What resolution?  Are you saying that in this version, using a lower resolution, it crashed?

1366x768 resolution.  What I meant is that generally in this version I can select sector viceroys without problems, but there was one time that it crashed.

Also, I tried to cancel a "survey planet" edict, and the game crashed.  I've cancelled other edicts in subsequent games, including the "survey planet" edict, and no crash.  Probably another fluke.

To be honest, if there was some sort of save/continue feature, it would be a lot easier to ignore the occasional crash.  Plus, if a certain setup/scenario/set of variables regularly caused a crash, you'd be able to analyze it better if there was a save to send.  It might be worthwhile to prioritize a save feature.

[ptb_ptb]

To be honest, if there was some sort of save/continue feature, it would be a lot easier to ignore the occasional crash.  Plus, if a certain setup/scenario/set of variables regularly caused a crash, you'd be able to analyze it better if there was a save to send.  It might be worthwhile to prioritize a save feature.

I have to agree. After a few (game) years of generally productive play the game just crashed when I clicked on the 'next month' button.

[Retropunch]

To be honest, if there was some sort of save/continue feature, it would be a lot easier to ignore the occasional crash.  Plus, if a certain setup/scenario/set of variables regularly caused a crash, you'd be able to analyze it better if there was a save to send.  It might be worthwhile to prioritize a save feature.

Thirded, I realize that new features and documentation are priority but saves would realllly help people play more and be able to send you more detailed results.

[Texashawk]

Awesome update!

Also, I had the game crash when I selected a sector viceroy's name.  I had done it before for the same and other sector viceroys, but this time it just crashed.  Using a lower-resolution computer.

What resolution?  Are you saying that in this version, using a lower resolution, it crashed?

1366x768 resolution.  What I meant is that generally in this version I can select sector viceroys without problems, but there was one time that it crashed.

Also, I tried to cancel a "survey planet" edict, and the game crashed.  I've cancelled other edicts in subsequent games, including the "survey planet" edict, and no crash.  Probably another fluke.

To be honest, if there was some sort of save/continue feature, it would be a lot easier to ignore the occasional crash.  Plus, if a certain setup/scenario/set of variables regularly caused a crash, you'd be able to analyze it better if there was a save to send.  It might be worthwhile to prioritize a save feature.

Yeaaaaaah.... I shouldn't have waited so long to start implementing the save functionality. The issue isn't with the actual implementation - XNA makes that pretty easy. The issue is with the data structure. Imperia is very data heavy and XML is not the most efficient way to store data when there's recursive elements. I'm going to pretty much have to end up building a save game class from scratch and pull out each object individually and then store it manually on a load. On the bright side, I'm glad I didn't wait even longer to tackle this when the game got even more complex. Still, working on it now, along with some crash log functionality.

[ndkid]

Yeaaaaaah.... I shouldn't have waited so long to start implementing the save functionality. The issue isn't with the actual implementation - XNA makes that pretty easy. The issue is with the data structure. Imperia is very data heavy and XML is not the most efficient way to store data when there's recursive elements. I'm going to pretty much have to end up building a save game class from scratch and pull out each object individually and then store it manually on a load. On the bright side, I'm glad I didn't wait even longer to tackle this when the game got even more complex. Still, working on it now, along with some crash log functionality.

Does XNA still give you access to the basic .NET binary serialization? Then you still get most of the structure of serialization, without being tied to XML.

[Xinvoker]

Good decision. I suppose it's boring work but I'm sure it'll pay off.

[Imperial Guardsman]

PTW
someone make me an official IG seal of approval and denial

[Texashawk]

Yeaaaaaah.... I shouldn't have waited so long to start implementing the save functionality. The issue isn't with the actual implementation - XNA makes that pretty easy. The issue is with the data structure. Imperia is very data heavy and XML is not the most efficient way to store data when there's recursive elements. I'm going to pretty much have to end up building a save game class from scratch and pull out each object individually and then store it manually on a load. On the bright side, I'm glad I didn't wait even longer to tackle this when the game got even more complex. Still, working on it now, along with some crash log functionality.

Does XNA still give you access to the basic .NET binary serialization? Then you still get most of the structure of serialization, without being tied to XML.

It does, as far as I know. The only real issue that I'm coming across is the recursion. For example, if I have a System object, one of its properties is the planets that it contains. So far, so good. Where the problem lies is when the property start to read in the Planet object, it will eventually find... a property that tells what System the Planet is located in, at which point it throws a recursion error. There are a few ways to go about fixing this:

1) Generate unique IDs for each object in the game. Then, any given object will only need to refer to a number/letter combination instead of linking to an entire object (planets in particular are very large objects). This is my preferred solution, as it will also make the memory situation better and make programming events easier. It will require something of a rewrite, however, but it's something I should have done earlier.

2) NonSerialize the properties that are causing the issue and rewrite the properties to generate the object on-the-fly instead of storing the object statically. In other words, instead of telling System that it contains certain Planets statically, I would write a dynamic property to search each Planet in the Sector and add any whose Planet property says they are in that particular System. It would be easier, but it would not materally solve the issues raised in fix #1.

3) Rewrite the objects so that they do not recurse. Similar to #2, but taking a broader look at each object and rewriting the data flow. I will probably do some of this as well since I'm already at this point.

4) Write the Save/Load game class to manually write and read all non-dynamic properties in each object in the game. This is the 'easiest' in that it means that I don't have to do any rewriting, per se, but it would be incredibly tedious because instead of simply writing a Manager class to the SaveGame object, and letting inheritance do its thing, I would have to write every single property out and have it pull manually, meaning literally hundreds of calls for each variable of data, and then writing an equally torturous load game class.

Fun, eh? For now, I'm looking at #1 with some #3 thrown in for maintenance.

Steve

[ndkid]

It does, as far as I know. The only real issue that I'm coming across is the recursion. For example, if I have a System object, one of its properties is the planets that it contains. So far, so good. Where the problem lies is when the property start to read in the Planet object, it will eventually find... a property that tells what System the Planet is located in, at which point it throws a recursion error. There are a few ways to go about fixing this:

1) Generate unique IDs for each object in the game. Then, any given object will only need to refer to a number/letter combination instead of linking to an entire object (planets in particular are very large objects). This is my preferred solution, as it will also make the memory situation better and make programming events easier. It will require something of a rewrite, however, but it's something I should have done earlier.

2) NonSerialize the properties that are causing the issue and rewrite the properties to generate the object on-the-fly instead of storing the object statically. In other words, instead of telling System that it contains certain Planets statically, I would write a dynamic property to search each Planet in the Sector and add any whose Planet property says they are in that particular System. It would be easier, but it would not materally solve the issues raised in fix #1.

3) Rewrite the objects so that they do not recurse. Similar to #2, but taking a broader look at each object and rewriting the data flow. I will probably do some of this as well since I'm already at this point.

4) Write the Save/Load game class to manually write and read all non-dynamic properties in each object in the game. This is the 'easiest' in that it means that I don't have to do any rewriting, per se, but it would be incredibly tedious because instead of simply writing a Manager class to the SaveGame object, and letting inheritance do its thing, I would have to write every single property out and have it pull manually, meaning literally hundreds of calls for each variable of data, and then writing an equally torturous load game class.

Fun, eh? For now, I'm looking at #1 with some #3 thrown in for maintenance.

Steve

I apologize in advance if I missed a detail in your description that obviates what I'm about to write. Ditto if there's a detail you didn't mention that makes the following stupid.

You don't have to serialize every property of an object. So when you have bidirectional links like that, could you have the owning structure serialize its child objects, but *don't* serialize the child object's references to their parents? So, in your example, just set the System reference in the Planet to not get serialized.

You'd need to populate it when you deserialize it, of course, but there are any number of ways to accomplish that in initialization.

[Zireael]

Then I wonder if it's a font issue. If it were a programming/empty object issue, it wouldn't work for 99% of people. Can y'all check to see if you have a specific font on your computers? Segoe UI Light I think may be giving the issue. If you don't have those fonts, you can download them and add them to your system. Try that. I have absolutely no programming explanation left if the intel screen is crashing every time.

The game doesn't crash if I don't touch any planet. If I mouse over one or click the intel screen = instant crash.

Tried:
1) installing Imperia as admin
2) reinstalling the Segoe UI Light font
3) unticking the box in Control Panel which hides some fonts due to regional settings (it was auto-ticked on)

... nope, still the same. What gives? Maybe we could get a test version with a standard font, like TNR...?

[Texashawk]

Then I wonder if it's a font issue. If it were a programming/empty object issue, it wouldn't work for 99% of people. Can y'all check to see if you have a specific font on your computers? Segoe UI Light I think may be giving the issue. If you don't have those fonts, you can download them and add them to your system. Try that. I have absolutely no programming explanation left if the intel screen is crashing every time.

The game doesn't crash if I don't touch any planet. If I mouse over one or click the intel screen = instant crash.

Tried:
1) installing Imperia as admin
2) reinstalling the Segoe UI Light font
3) unticking the box in Control Panel which hides some fonts due to regional settings (it was auto-ticked on)

... nope, still the same. What gives? Maybe we could get a test version with a standard font, like TNR...?

Zireael,

Sorry for not getting back to this sooner. RL stuff. Anyway, I'm working on the load/save system this week. Maybe that will shed some light. Other than that, maybe I can like you said create a TNR-based test download. I can also program a quick test hotkey to disable the system info bar, to see if that's really the issue. I can get that out as a test download tomorrow. Would that help?