PROJECT: Playtest

[drulius]

I can only report from the first playtest release because I haven't had time to play much lately. I haven't "installed" the new release yet, so I don't know if these things are still trouble...

I have a gamesave from year 2109 where, if you have show enemy moves set ON, and end the turn as soon as the save loads (there's nothing left to move anyway) You see a Chinese fighter fly into an empty square and disappear (it actually attacks a Korean Ironclad which you can see next time if you look around in that area before you end the turn), then the game freezes. You can still use the menus to exit or reload, but the Chinese turn never ends.

Originally I had to reload the turn a couple times, before I figured out I had my own Ironclad on Sentinal duty near enough to move it and bring the entire flightpath of the fighter out of the fog of war, which allowed the Chinese turn to finish and the game to continue. Later, I built Globesat and turned show enemy moves OFF. Just now, I reloaded the earlier turn 2109 and show enemy moves was still off, so the Chinese turn played through. But I turned show moves back on and reloaded and it still got stuck when the fighter attacked the Ironclad.

Also, later in this same game a stack of 10 tanks attacked a stack of my Interceptors from helicopters. Then after I had to air bombard all 10 tanks to death before the choppers would go down, one of the tanks left a reappearing sprite on the map, sometimes you see it sometimes you don't.

I have three gamesaves in a zip file, but it's still a little over a meg. Should I wait and see if the new release works the same way on the saves before I do anything else, like upload them?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Tamerlin
1 - Are the city revolting?
I have conquered a few cities and none revolted while the happiness level was 72, one even stayed as low as 70 for a few turns and did not revolt.

You are sure that you mean revolt and not riot, a city can riot in the non modded game, if the happiness level is under 72, a city revolts if the happiness level is under 60.

Originally posted by Tamerlin
2 - Game freezing at the end of Via Appia movie?
Impossible to start the game again, I had to close CtP2 through the Task Manager and start again from a save, I should have saved the turn before the wonder and watched the movie again to see if it was generating the crash but I clicked on the movie screen to end it. Sorry!

And you are sure that you clicked on the movie window after the movie was finished playing?

Originally posted by Tamerlin
3 - No more Blood Bath?
I have conquered the Chinese and I have never been asked if I wanted to keep or destroy a conquered city.

You play the non modded game, that does not contain the Bloodbath option, I added this by some slic code.

-Martin

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
You are sure that you mean revolt and not riot, a city can riot in the non modded game, if the happiness level is under 72, a city revolts if the happiness level is under 60.

Sorry, I meant "rioting"...

And you are sure that you clicked on the movie window after the movie was finished playing?

I could not click anywhere, the game was frozen. I tried to hit Enter, to hit Escape, to move the mouse and click randomly... no effect. I had to open the task manager and end the CtP2.exe process.

You play the non modded game, that does not contain the Bloodbath option, I added this by some slic code.

I had not played a "vanilla" CtP2 game since a few years (and I only played two or three games before switching to the Apolyton Pack) and this is something I did not remember.

Thanks Martin...

[drulius]

I unzipped the new patch over the old (dec-12) game folder and was able to continue my saved game. My color changed from blue to red (everybody's color changed), and trade routes follow roads when I break and rebuild them.

All of the things I mentioned above still occur when I load the appropriate saves, except that I don't have a save from right before the helo-tank attack. The Chinese fighter attack still freezes the game if you have show enemy moves ON, but not if you can see the fighter for more than one square before it attacks, or if show moves is OFF.

The phantom unit is still there in the last save I made, but, if you play for a few turns like I did last night, at some point it disappears for good on its own.

Should I keep playing this game as a playtest, or are you only interested in reports from playtest games that were started with this new release?

Also, great work so far fellas!! Martin's work with the trade routes and the colors is the most visible, but I know all the rest of your work is in there under the hood too. Thanks a million.

I'm getting some popup messages that are pretty cryptic. I think they have to do with my Embassy staff reporting another civ gaining an advance. All that shows up is the leader's name in the upper left of the popup window and the advance and game year in the lower right. However, it seems to pop up only when I also happen to be gaining an advance, and the reported advance gained seems to be out of date.

[Fromafar]

The messages getting cryptic is caused by us adding strings to the text files. When you load a file that has been saved with a previous version of the game, the string references will become invalid, unfortunately. But other than having to guess what the pop-ups mean, the game can still be played.

If you are prepared to put up with the cryptic messages, by all means, continue the old game. The probability of discovering new bugs will be larger at the later stages of the game.

And, please upload the freezing save game somewhere. I will have a look at it.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Fromafar
The messages getting cryptic is caused by us adding strings to the text files. When you load a file that has been saved with a previous version of the game, the string references will become invalid, unfortunately. But other than having to guess what the pop-ups mean, the game can still be played.

But that is not a problem you just need to relaodslic to do this just open the chat window by using the apostrophe (') key and enter: /reloadslic

Oh and by the way drulius post the save game in question as Fromafar asked for, so that we can all have a look on it with the debug *.exe.

-Martin

[MrBaggins]

Also, if its just different language strings, not new strings and/or SLIC, then you should be able to use "/resetstrings" instead... thats whats intended to do this anyway...

It'd be meant for a situation like the Demo game, where different languages were being switched to.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Also, if its just different language strings, not new strings and/or SLIC, then you should be able to use "/resetstrings" instead... thats whats intended to do this anyway...

It'd be meant for a situation like the Demo game, where different languages were being switched to.

I can't remember to have it working, so MrBaggins did you got it working?

-Martin

[drulius]

here is the game save that will freeze.

if you don't have see enemy moves set to ON (and fog of war ON, which you can only turn off with Globesat or the cheat menu) it won't freeze on the first turn, otherwise you should be able to load the game and then end turn right away and the Chinese fighter will be the second unit to move, causing the game to freeze.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann


I can't remember to have it working, so MrBaggins did you got it working?

-Martin

Yep. Just create a temp new StringsDB, parse it, and then iterate through the current stringsDB, searching for each instance of strID text in the temp new stringsDB, and replace the value with the "new" text, then deleting the temp object.

I'll post code when I'm not snowed under.

[tyrantpimp]

I decided to do my playtest as if it was the first time i ever played the game before. Some of the comments relate to changes made in the playtest, some are just little annoyances that shipped with the game.

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During the AI Turns the focus of the map keeps centering on unexplored territory. I think i figured out what is happening with the map focus, its moving to places where trade routes are being pirated. It doesnt matter whose routes they are or who pirates them it just wants me to see that something is getting pirated. Its a bit of a spoiler.

Still possible to accidentaly attack a civ, which becomes even more commonplace when playing with a large number of civs since the colors start to repeat. Would be nice to have some sort of screen saying we are about to declare war on such and such civ. Something like that would also end the annoying instances of setting a unit on a path and having it attack another civ on accident while its on "auto pilot"

I dont understand while its possible to build cannons and artillery at the same time who would want to build cannons? It strikes me that there are a number of these sort of build options that are really obsolete. This is something thats allways been a part of the game but maybe something should be done about it for sanity's sake.

Im curious about the internet wonder, hagia sophia, national defense shield they you get a free city improvement but what if you allready build that improvement or build it afterwards is it a waste or is it an extra bonus?

Launching a stack of planes from a carrier in a stack of ships is problematic. Say i have 10 planes and i want to bomb something i have to unload them 4 or 5 at a time instead of just hitting unload once and dropping out 10 nice bombers in a stack. I think somehow planes in a stack should stay in a stack even on carriers unless of course the ship sinks.

A stack of 12 naval units cannot dock and repair in a city with any other military force, thats an oldie but goodie one right there. I think the whole 12 units per city thing is bogus 12 units per square maybe 12 per fort ok but 12 per city thats kinda weak maybe only 12 could attack or defend at once that would be reasonable but even still thats weak too.

Unloading planes or troops from a stack somtimes does not work at all unless the ship carrying the units is removed from the stack moved to a seperate tile and then unloaded. Happens with both airplanes and land based troops aboard transports.

The build que could be easier to use if the first letter of every item was able to be typed on the keyboard and that item zoomed to in the q. eg. typing n would goto nuke s would goto settler etc etc. Also adding ctrl click and shift click functions would be nice. Also it would be great if there was a way to move items in the build que to the top with one click. Inversely it would be equally nice if there was a way to send an item to the bottom of the que with one click.

Improving the tile under a city is still impossible, would be nice to terraform the thing into a mountain and build a mine on it hehe. I only mention this because you can build on top of an imrpovement but not improve a city built on plain tiles either it should be you build on an improvement and it gets destroyed or you can imrpove the city tile one or the other.

Moving a unit long distances becomes problematic because you have to click on the unit hold down the mouse button scroll to the location you want to move it to and then let the mouse go. This is ok for small maps but large maps its a big annoyance.

AI Is incapable of mounting any sort of a decent overseas invasion on any level.

Technology dead ends and theres no need for science anymore at the end. It would be better if there was "future techs" to research that counted towards the end game score. Its been done in other civs i think its a good addition.

The trade manager doesnt tell you which civ a trade route goes to which in itself is not a problem but it also doesnt tell you which civ is pirating your trade routes which is a problem. This is especially complicated by playing maps with alot of computer ai opponents. We are now capable of playing far more civs than perhaps anticipated by the creators of the game at the time they put this code out. Some way to identify civs easily in the trade manager would be very friendly.

The solaris project bug is confirmed once my civ built the project the game crashed to desktop i load the autosave and i dont build the project and i can continue to play like normal. This one is pretty strange but im sure one of you can figure it out. I can post the save game some place if needed.

In the national manager if you highlight a group of cities and one is building capitalization and then you proceed to rush buy the cities production. You will notice the pleasant bug of the capitalization in that city is being treated like a real rush bought unit or improvement and is unable to be changed to any other unit or improvement. The next turn you can change the production but during the current turn you cant. I havent tested infrastructure but im pretty sure it works the same.

When playing a game with the pollution rules turned off it is pointless to allow the player to build mass transit eco transit recycling centers and other pollution reducing city imrpovements. At least i dont know of any reason why they should be built please advise if i am mistaken.

Theres no documentation about the different sorts of diplomatic missions you can undertake like trade pact science pact etc. The library covers some but not all of these.

The AI doesnt replace its sea transports and sometimes its ground units the year is 2134 and there are still triremes floating about.

Hover infantr, it seems like these units should be able to attack directly from air transports i mean they have jet packs at the worse they could freefall untill they could activate them and then be an effective fighting force.

City manager could at least tell the player the total defense modifier of the city terrain + city improvements.

Units disbanded from the city manager do not count towards the cities current production

It would be nice if a player could select a number of cities at once perhaps by shift clicking them on the map and then setting up the build ques for these cities all at once.

Right of passage agreements should be in the game its annoying to send units to invade another country only to anger friendly nations because you have to use their airspace or waters or land to get there.

The details of the empire manager are not correct under the area of domestic policy, it shows i have collected 17236 gold and saved 62592. I believe this is do to most of my cities participating in capitalization. The gold being collected from those efforts doesnt seem to be shown but rather reflected in the amount of gold saved instead.

There should be a way to offer gold during diplomacy in denominations higher than 100 either this or it should be able to accept input directly into the box right now it takes too much effort offer a high gold amount.

A civ is able to build a city in the territory of another civ without any sort of consequence, i noticed this when building forts in unclaimed territory. Also using the cheat editor to build settlers and then settling them in claimed ai territory.

The only other thing worth mentioning is the trade route path finding and the new costs for caravans, i noticed the changes it doesnt really effect gameplay too much. Caravans cost alot during the early parts of the game and in the middle but towards the end they are cheap again. I am referring to trade routes between foreign civs.

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Note, I first installed a vanilla version of the game then installed the first playtest and installed the 2nd one ontop of it.

[Maquiladora]

I dont understand while its possible to build cannons and artillery at the same time who would want to build cannons? It strikes me that there are a number of these sort of build options that are really obsolete. This is something thats allways been a part of the game but maybe something should be done about it for sanity's sake.

I agree only the latest unit should be buildable. This is a simple text file change.

ps. On the tech tree, Cannons came BEFORE Muskets surely? And you can reach Fascism without Iron Working...

Improving the tile under a city is still impossible, would be nice to terraform the thing into a mountain and build a mine on it hehe. I only mention this because you can build on top of an imrpovement but not improve a city built on plain tiles either it should be you build on an improvement and it gets destroyed or you can imrpove the city tile one or the other.

NO! Remove ALL resource improving tile imps under cities when a city is built.

Moving a unit long distances becomes problematic because you have to click on the unit hold down the mouse button scroll to the location you want to move it to and then let the mouse go. This is ok for small maps but large maps its a big annoyance.

Press "m" then move the cursor to where you want it to move.

Technology dead ends and theres no need for science anymore at the end. It would be better if there was "future techs" to research that counted towards the end game score. Its been done in other civs i think its a good addition.

Thats what the science end game is for.

The trade manager doesnt tell you which civ a trade route goes to which in itself is not a problem but it also doesnt tell you which civ is pirating your trade routes which is a problem. This is especially complicated by playing maps with alot of computer ai opponents. We are now capable of playing far more civs than perhaps anticipated by the creators of the game at the time they put this code out. Some way to identify civs easily in the trade manager would be very friendly.

It shows you the colour of the civ it is going to and it shows you the colour of the civ pirating IIRC.

When playing a game with the pollution rules turned off it is pointless to allow the player to build mass transit eco transit recycling centers and other pollution reducing city imrpovements. At least i dont know of any reason why they should be built please advise if i am mistaken.

Thats right, and the AI builds them too i think.

Units disbanded from the city manager do not count towards the cities current production

When i tested this with the first playtest zip it was working...

It would be nice if a player could select a number of cities at once perhaps by shift clicking them on the map and then setting up the build ques for these cities all at once.

You can do it in National Manager city list.

The details of the empire manager are not correct under the area of domestic policy, it shows i have collected 17236 gold and saved 62592. I believe this is do to most of my cities participating in capitalization. The gold being collected from those efforts doesnt seem to be shown but rather reflected in the amount of gold saved instead.

Which is right. Capitalization isnt collected from resources so it isnt counted.

Note, I first installed a vanilla version of the game then installed the first playtest and installed the 2nd one ontop of it.

You didnt install the official 1.1 patch first?

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by tyrantpimp
I dont understand while its possible to build cannons and artillery at the same time who would want to build cannons? It strikes me that there are a number of these sort of build options that are really obsolete. This is something thats allways been a part of the game but maybe something should be done about it for sanity's sake.

I agree, I am also experiencing this in my current playtest game, the unit list is not always updated and you still have some obsolete units in the build list. Sometimes the list is updated, sometimes it is not...

Launching a stack of planes from a carrier in a stack of ships is problematic. Say i have 10 planes and i want to bomb something i have to unload them 4 or 5 at a time instead of just hitting unload once and dropping out 10 nice bombers in a stack. I think somehow planes in a stack should stay in a stack even on carriers unless of course the ship sinks.

Same comment, 12 troops ordered to disembark from a fleet are unloaded three by three, you have to give the same order four times to the same fleet.

Unloading planes or troops from a stack somtimes does not work at all unless the ship carrying the units is removed from the stack moved to a seperate tile and then unloaded. Happens with both airplanes and land based troops aboard transports.

Same comment again, the fleet transporting the 12 units was stacked with a submarine. The disembark order did not work until the submarine unit was separated from the transports. If the submarine is moved from the tile, the transport order is executed as usual, but if you want the submarine to stay in the tile, you have to select the transports one by one and give the order to disembark to each of them.

Moving a unit long distances becomes problematic because you have to click on the unit hold down the mouse button scroll to the location you want to move it to and then let the mouse go. This is ok for small maps but large maps its a big annoyance.

Select the unit, click on the move button in the control panel. You can then scroll the map as you wish, the pointer of the mouse is replaced by the green and yellow move pointer followed by the traditional path line and the number of turns needed to reach the destination.

AI Is incapable of mounting any sort of a decent overseas invasion on any level.

Nor any aerial assault, stealth bombers followed by transport helicopters carrying a full load of marines while your stealth fighters are eliminating all the ennemy units outside of the targetted city can be quite devastating.

Technology dead ends and theres no need for science anymore at the end. It would be better if there was "future techs" to research that counted towards the end game score. Its been done in other civs i think its a good addition.

IMO the only effect of the future techs would be to inflate the score of the human player.

Right of passage agreements should be in the game its annoying to send units to invade another country only to anger friendly nations because you have to use their airspace or waters or land to get there.

True, as far as I know only an alliance with a nation allows you to send units into the territory of this nation.

There should be a way to offer gold during diplomacy in denominations higher than 100 either this or it should be able to accept input directly into the box right now it takes too much effort offer a high gold amount.

I agree, giving large amounts of money to another civ is a painfull process.

A civ is able to build a city in the territory of another civ without any sort of consequence, i noticed this when building forts in unclaimed territory. Also using the cheat editor to build settlers and then settling them in claimed ai territory.

I agree, it should have an effect on the reputation of the city builder. Remember, during our civ experience we have all been very annoyed by stupid ennemy Settlers building a city in the middle of your continent or near one, if not two, of your most productive and prosperous cities.

IMO the CtP2 AI civs desserve to be offered the chance to be equally bothered by such infringements.

The only other thing worth mentioning is the trade route path finding and the new costs for caravans, i noticed the changes it doesnt really effect gameplay too much. Caravans cost alot during the early parts of the game and in the middle but towards the end they are cheap again. I am referring to trade routes between foreign civs.

I have myself found the number of caravans needed to establish trade routes pretty exaggerated, 10 to 27 caravans for a single trade route is not worth the pain as far as I am concerned.


Note: I have just reached the modern age in my playtest game...

[Maquiladora]

Thats a point, so do we need the 1.1 patch now or not? Are all the altered files from 1.1 included in the playtest zips? (except ctp2.exe obviously) it looks like they are included...

[Ekmek]

"quote:
Technology dead ends and theres no need for science anymore at the end. It would be better if there was "future techs" to research that counted towards the end game score. Its been done in other civs i think its a good addition.


IMO the only effect of the future techs would be to inflate the score of the human player. "



didnt C:Ctp not have future techs but instead had Future Mine Tech or something so each time you develop a "future" tech it just added like 10% to food or production. It makes future techs worth researching if we had a series of future techs like future offense, defense, air, food, commerce, PW, happiness, etc

[J Bytheway]

CTP1 did have future techs, and they provided the top level undersea mines and assembly bays (mines in space). Other than that, I think they had no impact on gameplay.

[The Big Mc]

But what IF

Instead we did something like

Future production city’s production + 10

Future military units fire power + 10%

Future food farms + 5%

So the tech tree never really ends we just simulate the slow passage of time

[MrBaggins]

Doesn't really matter unless we can produce an effective AI that lasts towards the end of the tech tree. (well, MP is a different story... but would this be desirable in MP?)

[Maquiladora]

A game has never lasted that long unless both players agreed, mainly because its easier to attack than to defend. If it did get that far id rather it reach a climax with everyone going for a science ending. But thats pretty much impossible with having to place obelisks.

[epeterson]

Hi,

I think I read everythink in this thread but I may have missed something. I have the Activision 1.11 patch installed now. Should I just download the latest playtest version or should I download the first playtest version and then install the latest on top of that?? I am looking forward to playtesting and am pretty familiar with this game as I have played it to the end many times.

I take it that all playtesting is in single-player mode? I would like to start with the latest playtest version but for scientific purposes I will do what is necessary. Please advise me as to the correct procedure and I will comply to the best of my ability.

I am currently engaged in a MP game with my brother, so I would like to keep that seperate.--Unattached if possible from any playtest files/mods/etc. Is this possible??

[The Big Mc]

Originally posted by epeterson
I am currently engaged in a MP game with my brother, so I would like to keep that seperate.--Unattached if possible from any playtest files/mods/etc. Is this possible??

i would say yes before you install the play test version copy you activision directory (if you have a decent amount of hard disk space) you can then make a second short cut to the copy where you can install the play test so you have two version of the game play test and non play test .

[Tamerlin]

I was about to suggest the same thing, as far as I am concerned I have three CtP2 folders, one with the original version and all the mods tweaked to suit my own tastes, a second one for the Democracy Game and a third one for the playtest.

You can also start the game from the executable itself, you can find it in the "...\Activision\Call To Power 2 \ctp2_program\ctp" folder.

[The Big Mc]

yes me to I still got to re build my folder which contains my personal mod with the same method

[epeterson]

I may need a little help in understanding how to do this. I guess I would just need to rename the folder to something slightly different when asked during the install, right? I can't remember...How much room do I need to install another copy with the patch and playtest file?

Now, should I install the first and second playtest files or just the second?? Should I install any of the mods? I really would like to do this without the mods for the time being. I want to keep it simple and straight-forward--Take it one step at a time, document all that I encounter bug-wise and not waste time duplicating effort. So any advice on start-up would be greatly appreciated!

I intend on playing a hard game with max AI's. I will play it all the way through and will give progress reports along the way, (with bugs I encounter/possible fixes/etc.) Perhaps I will start a thread just for this playtest so that I can receive your guys input directly on the game I will be playing...

[Maquiladora]

Rename your original CtP2 folder something like "To be renamed Call to Power 2", then run install option from the CD. A minimum install (not including the movies etc) with 1.1 official patch and BOTH playtests zips takes about 260MB of space.

When installing ask to install to a different directory during installation rename it "Sourcecode Call to Power 2" or something.

When its done, install official 1.1 patch, then the first playtest zip file and then the second one. Then rename your first installtion BACK to its original folder name "Call to Power 2" or whatever it was called, that way you keep all shortcuts entact to your original install.

[epeterson]

Thanks Maq! I will do as you say this evening if I get a chance. Any suggestions on what type of map to play--size, environment, barb level, # or AIs, etc.? My pet peeve is that on the larger maps I can't put cities all over the place because of the governmental restrictions. I can understand it for the earlier govs, but the latter ones should be limitless.

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
... install official 1.1 patch, then the first playtest zip file and then the second one.

I have only installed the source patch called CTP2_Playtest_2004[1].01.31.zip. Do you mean, Maq, that I should have installed another source patch before or after the one I installed in the first place?

[Maquiladora]

I dont know for sure either. I asked earlier if i should install 1.1 patch or not but no one responded, so i played it safe and installed 1.1 > 1st playtest > 2nd playtest.

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
I dont know for sure either. I asked earlier if i should install 1.1 patch or not but no one responded, so i played it safe and installed 1.1 > 1st playtest > 2nd playtest.

I was just wondering if you really have to install two playtest patches.

[Maquiladora]

It didnt work right when i installed only the second one. I got the const.txt line 225: error, then it worked when i installed the first and then second again.