Did None of the Beta Testers

[MahoTsukai]

Originally posted by Yushal Al Dai
Broken? I think thats a poor choice of words.

PD bug, yes a bug to be fixed.
Direct-X error, yes a bug too, but there are many many games you cannot even ALT-TAB out of at all, and no one seems to care about it.

Other than that, I think the game plays just fine.

I didnt like it at first, and put it on the shelf. Its now two months since I bought it and I cant get enough of it. I love this game. So much better than Civ3 CTP2.

I never did like Civ1 and 2 or SMAC.

My only problem with beta testers is that they all must have been really bad players...

But thats ok cause we get an epic multiplayer, without, I might add, having to pay another 30 bucks for it like Civ3 (that was just disgusting they pulled that crap and I'll never buy another of their product).

So true wait a sec

AI aint broken, its just Gandhi like. what was the last time you have been invaded by the AI ?

Diplomacy ?

Here is the kind of messages I usually get:
"Your excellent trade offer is insulting, therefore we hate you out of love for your race," drooled Xmanimus, genuflecting posthumously. "We have considered the treaty and find it most judicious. It would be of enormous penality to our race," Xmanimus gurgled, expectorating gently. "Therefore we reject it. We henceforth declare you our friend. We loathe you completely but request via counteroffer, that we may bear your children."

As for the list of bugs here it is, straight from Atari forums:

http://www.ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=277756

A little sample of the 159 bugs thread (yes its another whole thread dedicated to the pesky & bad bugs), mind you its only a sample, not even the 1/10th:

-) Turn delay - severity: EXTREMELY high - bug
Turn delay can become more than 5 mins. In one of my saved games on huge Galaxy, it takes about 2 min. to pass the "ground combat stage" while never being able to see "X AI enemy left" where X != 0. But once I start giving my planets away, ie high tax, gift, etc, the delay reduced to 10 sec during the whole "ground combat stage." Notice that the saved file got a lot larger, about doubling the size, yet still processed much faster.

-) Planetary Production - severity: high - bug
I'll have something in the Military build queue, and whenever I adjust the sliders so that it says 1 turn till complete, I'll hit 'Next Turn', when I return to the queue, it'll say 'Turns till Complete' 1, and it'll show that for up to 5 turns before completing.

-) Shortcuts - severity: high - bug
Occasionally all the shortcuts will lock up completely making the keyboard useless and more importantly depriving the user of the ESC key (vital for 'upon menu' commands). A complete shut down of the programme is required to reclaim your shortcuts.

-) Hardcoded Race Modifiers - severity: high - bug
"...the Ethereans were not the ideal manufacturers that they should have been..." - MOO3 Manual, p. 44. But they get +=4 to manufacturing efficiency (best, tied with cybernetiks), +=3 to research efficiency (best, tied with psilons), AND have the second best environment bonus (+2, fishies have +3). Their hardcoded manufacturing bonus combined with their huge worlds makes for some pretty imbalanced gameplay. Is the +=4 manufacturing supposed to be +=-4?

-) (A) Savegames - severity: high - bug
Currently, if you are playing sole survivor and you load a game, the senate victory (and maybe antarian X victory) is switched back on.
Workaround: Start a new sole survivor game and then load the old game.

-) Unrest - severity: high - bug
Leader effect continues even after dismissing leader.

-) Combat scheduling - severity: high - bug
During precombat task force selection for combat, non-combat task forces are selected in lieu of combat task forces. Please reorder the task force prioritization for combat scheduling.

-) Combat Scheduler, severity: high - bug?
I've noticed that in shared systems, if you're at war with one of the races, you can't touch their planet b/c other planets belonging to other races are in the system, the only way to get around this, bomb the other planets first.

-) Combat Scheduler, severity: high - bug?
You also can't bomb an enemies' planet if a 3rd party ship is in the planet... i.e. u have to destroy the 3rd party ship first, even if it is an ally.

-) Technology - severity: high - bug
Stealing or trading for sunlight redirection does not allow you to terraform planets

-) DEAs - severity: high - bug
Building bulk freighter (and I think warehousing too) improvements to your space ports actually lowers the income generated.

-) Development plans - severity: high - bug
I cannot fill the last two lines.

-) Language bug - severity: high - bug
After getting the game, to my dismay I found it would stop for 10 or 20 seconds each minute of game time (more or less). This was really, really annoying until I found that if I changed language from Portuguese - Standard ( my native language) to US the problem stopped. I think this should be looked upon because, at least here in Portugal, the game as it is being sold is almost unplayable...

-) (F) Ground Combat - severity: high - bug
Typos in GroundCombat.txt: Unicode entries for Assault Blaster, Plasma Pod, Armored Exoskeleton. Typo in TechTables.txt: UnicodeD entry for Assault Blaster. The weapons are listed in the order in which they will be upgraded by the AI, so for example the AI will upgrade to Energy level 10 plasma projectors even if you have Energy level 38 fusion obliterators

-) (A) Colonization Screen, No Planet Selected - severity: high - bug
If you click on the Forces tab and tell the AI to colonize without a planet selected, an error message will come up stating that you have no planet selected. At this point, if you back all the way out to the galaxy map, the game will crash on your next action.

-) Securom tying up Processing power even outside of game - severity: high - bug
What it does is to tie up the firmware and microcontroller of unusual drives to such a degree that it causes hefty delays when outside the game. The drive will try to figure out the format violations, speeding up and down the spindle for *hours*.

-) Ship Autogeneration - severity: high - bug
For Recon ships, there is no ship space cap or it is an overflow error. I modded the electronics to use a percentage of space instead of a fixed amount. The autogeneration works fine for the other types of ships. In fact it only puts one of the electronics on like it should be. All except the RECON ship generation.

-) Finances - severity: medium-high - bug
The ledger always lists income from scrapped units as 0. There is no definitive single number for the overall profit or loss that appears correct every time. The number next to the reserve value on the top of the screen is almost always negative, and the ledger balance number at times predicts a profit when a sizeable loss results. If it is correct, then it is not all too clear as to which value is the right one. Need an entry that indicates what income is resulting from selling surplus raw materials.

-) Ground transport assembly - severity: medium-high - bug
Having large numbers of troops in reserve causes the unit list to truncate. This is especially difficult in late game, as sometimes hundreds of new units are built, completely burying the unit you want. Condensing units down to just one slot per unit/race in each experience level with a number to indicate the number would be much more manageable.

-) System Seat of Government built but lost - severity: medium-high - bug
The planetary queue builds a SSG, but it does not appear in the Gov DEA. AI will re-append SSG to queue immediately if a free slot is available, on next occasion otherwise. E.g. build two Gov DEAs on separate planets in a system. The second will auto-queue, build, waste, and requeue SSG's ad infinitum.

FOUR FRICKING YEARS TO RUIN A GOOD SERIE'S REPUTATION, KUDOS TO QSI !

SO DONT TELL US THAT EVERY GAME IS THAT BUGGED THANKS !!!




PS: Sorry but I'm already sick of MoO3 fanboyz and at a terminal phase beside that, dont worry I'm not like this usually, please apologize, had to vent...

[The Templar]

Originally posted by MahoTsukai

-) System Seat of Government built but lost - severity: medium-high - bug
The planetary queue builds a SSG, but it does not appear in the Gov DEA. AI will re-append SSG to queue immediately if a free slot is available, on next occasion otherwise. E.g. build two Gov DEAs on separate planets in a system. The second will auto-queue, build, waste, and requeue SSG's ad infinitum.

PS: Sorry but I'm already sick of MoO3 fanboyz and at a terminal phase beside that, dont worry I'm not like this usually, please apologize, had to vent...

OMG! That's what happened when I was trying to rebuild an SSG!

As for the fanboys - I hope some of those shills were at least collecting a check for PR from QS.

[MahoTsukai]

not even that. All they deserved is a crappy MoO3, which tells a lot, and no code patch.

[CharlesBHoff]

First no game today is never release without some bugs. The entire MOO3 directory when first install is over 1 1/2 gigbytes of programs files. When Computer gameing first started some game have one files takeing up may-be 128,000 bytes to 300,000 bytes of disk space. The First computer have only built in sound (no sound card like Sound
Blaster), built in video card( no third party card and no 3-d card no video accerate card and no seperate video memony)
There was no internet to allow fan to anny game programers while they work on game by telling then to hurry
up, there was no internet to allow downloading of patches. So the release game have to be bug free which they where. Haveing no 3rd party sound and video card available make programming of game easier as everone have the same built in system.

[CharlesBHoff]

My first home computer has 2 k of memony but I brought it with than memony pack which make it 16 kilobytes of memony. The first real computer game computer I had have 64000 k of memony the computer I have now has 4000 times that memony. I than saying this now that you younger
kid donot realism how limit computer where . It we went back to no 3rd party hardware then programming than computer will be easier. There are billion 's of compaion of possilbe sound card's videx card's and etc hardware to any one game be program to handle then correctly.

[raghar]

Java virtual mashine is all what is needed. It could bring back computer to virtually no 3rd party hardvare. ^_^
It's much easier to fix global problem with JVM than do it again and again for each game.

[CharlesBHoff]

Originally posted by raghar
Java virtual mashine is all what is needed. It could bring back computer to virtually no 3rd party hardvare. ^_^
It's much easier to fix global problem with JVM than do it again and again for each game.

Well I donot have Java virtual mashine with my 3 year old gateway computer with WindowsMe.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by CharlesBHoff
Well I donot have Java virtual mashine with my 3 year old gateway computer with WindowsMe.

I have an old Gateway with WinMe as well and I have JVM. I believe you can get JVM as a free download from the windowsupdate web site.

[MahoTsukai]

funny thing, I usually buy games with few bugs, that is until I got Master of Onion 3 (not a typo, it STINKS), which "features" over 200 bugs.

Die QSI

[CharlesBHoff]

Originally posted by MahoTsukai
funny thing, I usually buy games with few bugs, that is until I got Master of Onion 3 (not a typo, it STINKS), which "features" over 200 bugs.

Die QSI

No games or programs make today are bug free anymore for many reason. One of the most common security flaw which isnot than bug but than user problen too many user leave the default password in their program without changeing it.

The only time that computer games came out bug free was the Middle 1970's to the early 1990's.

[Kahn]

Sgt. Friday: Just the facts…

OK, time for some perspective here. MoO3 started out as an in house project soon after the sales figures for MoO2 made it apparent they had another hit on their hands. Soon after, Microprose management decides that they want to move in line with the rest of the gaming business and divest themselves of development, turning instead to publishing games (packaging, advertising and distribution of the product only). This move gutted the company of talent and placed all current projects in question. It also resulted in Microprose releasing several games whose quality and tech support did not live up to the public’s expectations of the Microprose name. This is when the project was first canceled.

Over the course of time, Microprose went through a series of owners who mismanaged the company. Again MoO3 was resurrected, only to have the various design houses dismissed off the project. All this culminated in “Black Thursday”, the day in which Hasbro Interactive purchased Microprose, Avalon Hill and Atari. Hasbro Interactive again attempted to find a design house willing to work on the code for minimal cost. Meanwhile, Hasbro pushed several projects that were near completion both in-house, and at the newly acquired companies out the door with minimal play testing. Believe me when I say that these folks (HI) gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “lack of aftermarket support”, opting for the “take the money and run” strategy. Typical of their games were lots of eye candy, poor AI, erratic operation and no aftermarket support. Though I’m not privy to the actual contract negotiations, it is my understanding that this is about the time Quicksilver games was hired to take on the MoO3 project. In the marketplace, poor releases only lasted for so long before the public got wise and sales dropped off sharply. Hasbro Interactive was defunct by mid-2001, with its parent looking for a buyer to take it off its hands (and books).

In 2002 Infogrames SA bought the company for about 1/10 of its book value and began to work in earnest to bring MoO3 to fruition. Unfortunately the project had already been poisoned by a series to programming teams that had come and gone leaving little in the way of documentation as to how the patchwork of code worked. Infogrames imposed its natural desire to take the existing code and make it work with as little delay as possible. The result is what you see before you.

---

Who’s to blame?

First, Quicksilver for bowing to pressure instead of standing up and telling Infogrames to let them program the game right, or take their money elsewhere. It may hurt significantly a company’s balance sheet to just “walk away” from a project, but this happens all the time in the world of contracting. Some contracts are just dogs that are better to cut your losses and run away from, quickly.
Quicksilver’s programming effort, despite the pressure of the publisher, is to say the least, deplorable. To actually release a program with this DX bug, the result of poor coding that even is addressed on the first page of the first chapter of one of my DirectX game books is ridiculous (when I get the time, I will look it up again and place the quote here). Any first time DX programmer should know that if a DX screen loses focus, it needs to be regenerated, you can’t just return to the pointer. This happens to a great majority of the consumers of MoO3 by just bring up the system screen or being automatically switched to the battle screen, as well as just passively watching the intro. And am I to honestly believe that nobody who claims to have play tested this software ever encountered a bug that prevails in over 50% folks that have posted on various sites pertaining to the game?
The final error committed by Quicksilver was to not devote enough resources to fix the problems clearly evident after the game’s release. All this has culminated in a level of distrust they have generated in the public’s mind for having released such a shoddy product, and will cost them far more than if they had just walked away.

Second, the play testers for not owning up to the fact that the program has bugs so prevalent that most customers could find 5 major bugs within the first 15 minutes after installation! The reason I was banned from the IG forums was because I wrote that the only people that could not have found any major bugs in the software were coma patients. I stand by that claim.

Third, Infogrames for not only releasing a project before it was finished, but in not owning up to the fact. I expect that they are not funding any efforts by Quicksilver to fix the problems with MoO3. Instead, they have chosen to hide behind a name change just as Worldcom has with MCI, hoping the public is too gullible to notice. As if this corporate malfeasance were not enough, they have adopted an Orwellian spin control approach to aftermarket support by deleting any mention of severe problems encountered by customers, and having their minions belittling the few that were not egregious enough to be deleted by telling them “its all in their minds”.

[MahoTsukai]

charles I can live with some bugs, but not 200. No need to go from one extreme to another k.

[raghar]

Originally posted by Vince278


I have an old Gateway with WinMe as well and I have JVM. I believe you can get JVM as a free download from the windowsupdate web site.

I hope you mean JVM from java.sun.com . Mickerosoft JVM is outdated and really slow. You should have at least 1.4.2 beta from sun or IBM
BTW don't register jar files as archive because they are more offten executables and archivers wouldn't recognise it.

[CharlesBHoff]

So big coprporation that buy up unrelatate bussien away donot work out. I than looking for Peter Lynn Guide to Investion in Stock he say he doesnot like to buy stock in big comp of company like the ITT of the 1960' s that went belly up in the 1970's it own hotel, airlines, supermarket , steel mill and etc's. Micropose have than seperate department of people who the game while working on then and the feedback is was helpful in programming the game. There is nothing wrong with steel manufactoring company buy into coke plants, coal mines and iron ore mine as they are very closely relate bussienes that how US Steel was form but it didnot run the mine's and coke plant directly it let then run themself.

[CharlesBHoff]

The funny thing these company like US Steel, Ford Motor Compancy where started by founder who never went to Habor Bussien shool in Con. or any bussien school at all.