Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

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eleazar
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Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#1 Post by eleazar »

I'm happy to see Geoff fix a couple long-standing annoyances:
  • Widened spacing of stat icons in fleet / ship data panels.
    Tweaked DoubleToString to avoid rendering 3-digit numbers as 0.XXk
If you've previously mentioned something and we forgot about it, feel free to remind us.

Zireael
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Re: Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#2 Post by Zireael »

1) Has the crash bug I reported with RC3 [battle-click fleet-crash] been killed?

2) Add outposts and colonies to "Game Concepts" so that people do not report that outposts have no pop.

3) The text for N-Dimensional Assembly says "Unlocks Hyperspatial Dam" in the box for the science babble, above the rest of the scientific description; even though it says the same in red font at the top. Same happens with some other tech I can't find now.

4) The description of "Semi-autonomous Exobots" has a misspelled "optimised".

5) The fact that the list of buildable stuff (which gets quite long mid-game, even when displaying only ships or only buildings) scrolls up after clicking is annoying. Stop the scrolling or implement a way to mark a design as obsolete or add more categories.

6) Has a way to stop a player from enqueuing two of the same buildings at the same place been implemented yet? I remember Geoff having an idea... but I still can, for example, enqueue two Terraformings at the same spot.

7) Deep Space being named somehow has been thrown around in Brainstorming. Would come useful, as even in a 60 stars galaxy there's a lot of Deep Space.

8) Planetary Garrison and Orbital Habitation are missing 'science babble' entirely.

EDIT: 9) Ships produced at the same time being put in a single fleet upon production. Putting 20+ Mk V's in a fleet is a PITA when you have 300 industry and can churn out lots of them.

ETA: 10) "Ships were refueled from a residual supply..." sitrep message fires for every ship in a fleet. It's annoying when there's 5+ ships in a fleet...

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Vezzra
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Re: Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#3 Post by Vezzra »

Zireael wrote:1) Has the crash bug I reported with RC3 [battle-click fleet-crash] been killed?
As far as I can tell, yes.
Zireael wrote:5) The fact that the list of buildable stuff (which gets quite long mid-game, even when displaying only ships or only buildings) scrolls up after clicking is annoying. Stop the scrolling or implement a way to mark a design as obsolete or add more categories.
You can delete a design. Go to the design screen, right click on the design you wish to delete. A popup menu with (currently) only one entry "Delete Design" appears. You have to make sure however, that no ships with that design are currently in the build queue, as there seems to be no safety check ATM preventing from deleting the design anyway. If you do that, the corresponding entry in the build queue isn't removed, but kind of "greyed out" and any build progress for that ship stops.

As to your other points: We are already in "release candidate" phase, so only things that can fixed quickly and easily or serious bugs will be fixed. Changes/additions to the UI or the game mechanics will have to be delayed until after the 0.4.1 release.

EDIT: Before I forget: I've noticed one more issue: When you go to the Pedia to have a look at the detection strength/level meter, "Detection range" is displayed instead. As the value displayed is "50", which is exactly the same as the detection range meter value displayed for you colonies, and not the "200" that have been displayed previously, it seems that this isn't just a typo, but that indeed the detection range meter is displayed. I don't know which change caused that, but that should probably be fixed as you currently have no way of knowing what your detection level meter value is.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#4 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Vezzra wrote:When you go to the Pedia to have a look at the detection strength/level meter, "Detection range" is displayed instead.
The detection range of a ship or planet, or the detection strength of an empire?
...you currently have no way of knowing what your detection level meter value is.
I think you're confusing the empire detection strength, which is shown in the pedia entry for each empire, and individual object (ship or planet) detection range, which is shown in the indicators for each in the fleets window or planets list. Some starting ships have 25 and some have 50 detection range. Empires with human homeworlds starts with 50 range on that, and 50 empire detection strength.

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eleazar
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Re: Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#5 Post by eleazar »

Vezzra wrote:EDIT: Before I forget: I've noticed one more issue: When you go to the Pedia to have a look at the detection strength/level meter, "Detection range" is displayed instead. As the value displayed is "50", which is exactly the same as the detection range meter value displayed for you colonies, and not the "200" that have been displayed previously, it seems that this isn't just a typo, but that indeed the detection range meter is displayed. I don't know which change caused that, but that should probably be fixed as you currently have no way of knowing what your detection level meter value is.
I changed a string. I was attempting to distinguish detection strength from range, which both previously had only been labeled "detection" -- unfortunately it seems that both use the same string. Now after changing one entry everything says "detection range"

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#6 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Nothing reported or re-reported so far about RC4 warrants delaying the release, in my opinion, so unless something major comes up in the next few hours, I'll rename the files and declare it released...

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eleazar
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Re: Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#7 Post by eleazar »

You don't think "detection range" and "detection strength" being labeled identically is worth fixing?

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#8 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Not really... The detection strength is already hidden in an encyclopedia page. People who know it's there will know what it means, making them use a different string probably requires code changes, and this release has been delayed enough.

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Vezzra
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Re: Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#9 Post by Vezzra »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Not really... The detection strength is already hidden in an encyclopedia page. People who know it's there will know what it means, making them use a different string probably requires code changes, and this release has been delayed enough.
Eleazar said that he changed the string... IIRC eleazar never does anything with the source code, he only works with the content. And why should this string not be in the stringtable? Although this would only save us the need to recompile (OTOH, if we want the SVN rev string to be correct...), as we would still have to produce new download packages.

Still, it's confusing, and it should only be one very simple, small modfication to change the string back to "detection" at least. No need to put up another RC for that (so no further delays), just make new download package (maybe recompile to have the correct SVN rev number in the version string), and upload these as the final 0.4.1 release.

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em3
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Re: Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#10 Post by em3 »

Vezzra wrote:And why should this string not be in the stringtable?
The thing is, there is only one string where two are needed. This requires source code changes.
Still, maybe reverting it to "Detection" in string table would prevent some misconceptions.
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#11 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Vezzra wrote:Eleazar said that he changed the string... IIRC eleazar never does anything with the source code, he only works with the content.
Yes, and he also said "both use the same string". To make the interface use two different strings, the code would need to be changed to look up different strings from the table.

Even if it's a "small" change, we'd still want to do another RC build and repackage, and have people test them again to make sure everything's working. That means another couple days of delay. If I understand correctly, the issue is that both the ship / planet detection range and the empire detection strength are marked as "detection range". This is not a major issue. If someone knows to look for the empire detection strength, they'll probably know what it means despite the misleading label. There are various other bigger issues that remain unresolved in this release; a somewhat obscure string error isn't particularly important.

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Re: Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#12 Post by Vezzra »

Geoff the Medio wrote:...To make the interface use two different strings, the code would need to be changed to look up different strings from the table.
That's why I'm not suggesting to implement two different strings for 0.4.1, but just to change the string back to the less confusing "detection". This is a change simple enough (just modify one string in the stringtable) that wouldn't require another RC. But of course that's only a very minor issue, so we can just leave it as it is.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#13 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Size of a change doesn't matter; if there's a new build, it needs to be tested again.

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eleazar
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Re: Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#14 Post by eleazar »

OK, i'm ready to go.
i updated the russian to the last changes.

Vezzra, can you include the changelog.txt in place in future builds? I've found it useful in other projects to be able to peek into the bundle as see what changes have been made.

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Re: Notes on 0.4.1 RC4

#15 Post by Vezzra »

eleazar wrote:Vezzra, can you include the changelog.txt in place in future builds? I've found it useful in other projects to be able to peek into the bundle as see what changes have been made.
Sure, no problem. Where exactly should I put the file? Directly in "Contents", or in one of the subfolders?

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