Patches? What I am told.

Sarxis · August 1, 2000, 11:09

My god! Are we F***ed in the @ss or what?
Here is a response I just recieved from Kelley Gilmore at Firaxis:

Hi Arak!

SMAC v4 and SMACX v2 are the most current patches for these games and are available on our website at www.firaxis.com. We have no plans to make other patches.

Thanks.

Kelley Gilmore
Communications Manager
FIRAXIS Games
(410) 891-3001 x131

-----Original Message-----
From: Arak Koba
Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2000 1:20 PM
To: pr@firaxis.com
Subject: SMAC[x] patches?

We (about a thousand of us fans) were wondering what the status on the SMAX 5.0 and SMAC 3.0 patches is?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All I have to say is: WTF?!?!?!
Anyone have an explanation? Is Kelley out of the loop?

(Sorry about the cursing, but not really)

Sarxis · August 1, 2000, 14:37

And yet another Firaxis official replies with:

These patches have not been produced or are planned to be produced. Please
look at the Firaxis website for the most recent patches. Thanks.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Arak Koba [mailto:koba@home.com]
> Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2000 1:20 PM
> To: pr@firaxis.com
> Subject: SMAC[x] patches?
> We (about a thousand of us fans) were wondering what the status on the
SMAX
> 5.0 and SMAC 3.0 patches is?

This one from Mike Jeffress.

Now my question is, what are we going to do?
I personally vow that I SHALL NOT purchase another game from this ailing company; not until the mysterious patches (which I understood were already completed, but hadn't past final testing) are released.

Sarxis · August 2, 2000, 00:20

Argghh!
[This message has been edited by Anunikoba (edited August 01, 2000).]

Sarxis · August 2, 2000, 00:21

And yes, I know I switched SMAX and SMAC around in my original message (AC 5.0, and AX 3.0).

Adm.Naismith · August 2, 2000, 05:56

Anunikoba, Firaxis must keep something new to sell to us as SMAC 2

Back serius now, You must understand they are (my guess) in big trouble with all that developers leaving Firaxis few months ago.

If they need fresh cash for the end of the year is better they hurry up and concentrate efforts on Sid Dino release for Christmas

I don't know their Hasbro agreement for Civ III either, but I suppose they must put the product on the shops for the second quarter next year.

They probably haven't spare time to make their SMAC customer happy for free.

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

DilithiumDad · August 2, 2000, 11:09

Well, I have to say I don't think SMACX needs a patch. 2.0 fixes all the issues I've seen, except for multiplayer, which is poorly executed anyway. I know there's a long list of bugs, but I have to tell you I've never seen 99% of those supposed bugs.

It would be nice to see a SMAC patch that is equivalent to the SMACX 2 patch. I don't see why that's so hard.

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Creator of the Ultimate Builder Map, based on the Huge Map of Planet

Googlie · August 2, 2000, 14:16

I have never - in maybe 200 or so games. RedFred tells me they are particularly prevalent when playing the Hive. I often do, and have opened up some old saved hive games, but never seen them.

Maybe playstyle affects it?

e.g. I am a big believer in using talents/crawlers. As soon as I get five pops, I'll turn one (or more, with bigger bases) into a librarian/thinket/transcendii if I can, so maybe the program doesn't give me the fake drones in those bases.

Or maybe I'm just missing the signs.

But honestly, I have followed these discussions here and elsewhere without really knowing what the heck people were talking about.

Googlie

August 2, 2000, 16:08

i'm sure that in a perfect world firaxis would want to make 10 new patches for smac, and would indeed make them

but this isnt a perfect world...

WhiteElephants · August 2, 2000, 16:31

The fake drones come out of the wood work when I'm running Police State. I think it has something to do with the use of units as police. Sorry, I'm off topic.

Googlie · August 2, 2000, 20:51

How feasible (and difficult) would it be for Aployton to champion the release by Firaxis of the code, and to invite some of the talented programmers among the gamers to donate their ecpertise in bug-fixing and AI strengthening?

Of course it would be an "unofficial" terranXXX, with all sorts of disclaimers, and would need to eventually result in a single .exe prog so that MPers would be on the same playing field, but is it feasible?

And presumably it would need some central co-ordination - which is where mark and dan come in ??

Or is this just naive?

Googlie

Aredhran · August 3, 2000, 00:00

DDad, don't tell me you've *never* seen the fake drones !? (that's probably the most annoying one for me)

Aredhran

RedFred · August 3, 2000, 03:35

Girdle your lions. Prepare for yet another whiny post about bugs from Uncle Red...

Yeah, I still get the @#*%@ fake drones bug in SMACX. I'd love to know how you've managed to avoid it, Googlie. Of course, it is tolerable for me now I know its there and that I have to summons the stupid @#$^! Psych screen to count up the angry red faces. I'd greatly prefer to leave it on the resources screen and look for drones at the bottom of the base control screen.

More serious for me is the @#@@$!@%+ terranx.exe crashes. I've given up on playing Ironman on account of them. Top, bottom of the world and interceptors protecting a non-fighting unit may or may not knock the game out. Most annoyingly, it seems to happen more frequently in games where I am really pushing the limits in a fast transcend game.

I've loaded and played a great number of other games including vanilla SMAC without experencing anything like the intensity of the SMACX crashes.

Since I am a huge fan of the game I'd love to be able to claim that it was the sheer complexity of the code responsible for the problems. Regrettably, that doesn't seem to be the case. The base trade bug seems to work exactly opposite to how it should. The worse your base is the more likely the AI will go for the trade. Seems like a + should have been - or a > should have been < somewhere in the code. Nothing more. Same for the bug that occurs when two AI factions start to fight and they've mixed up the aggressor and victim when you go in to make the peace. Even on the fast replay after you transcend it seems like there is something pretty basic wrong with terranx.exe at the upper and lower edges of planet.

Instead, my feeling is that many or most of the problems are easily fixable if resources were allocated to the problems. What do you want Firaxis? Money? Heck, the premise of the game is good enough that I for one would gladly pay to have it done right.

Its things like this wot cause unrest.

Sarxis · August 4, 2000, 14:58

I wouldn't be as agitated as I am about this whole thing if it wasn't for these two facts:

1. Firaxis gave us the impression that they really wanted to release one more set of fixes for SMAC[x].

2. They haven't sent a rep here to give us the honest truth (i.e."Hey people, we just don't have the resources to finish any patches right now.")

I do have to be honest by saying I personally haven't had too much trouble with bugs- only a few mild instances, and that's all. But I know from the lengthy bug-list that was being compiled in these forums that many of you have had BIG troubles with all sorts of programming yuck. If the bug-list was very small and included only small flaws in the game, I really wouldn't care. But you and I know that there are still some serious bugs in the game that need to be addressed.

Q_tip1976 · August 4, 2000, 17:15

Answering the question: Jeffery Morris when will SMAC version 5.0 be out?

"IT'S DONE BUT HASN'T ENTERED TESTING. We're currently focusing on SMACGold, which is a marketing SKU containing SMAC and SMACX (that's it!). Once that's done, we'll start looking at the patch question again. If we do a v3 for SMACX, we might wait until it's done and incorporate any SMAC fixes into a new v5. We'll have it more organized in a few weeks."

jkm

firaxis games

Now first asking your most loyal customers to spend alot of effort compiling a bug list and then making the above statement is certainly misleading. I would have very much appreciated an apology and explanation from Firaxis. Buggy programs and a poor customer service are two big reasons I'm not going to invest in CivIII.

Q_tip1976 · August 4, 2000, 17:17

Answering the question: Jeffery Morris when will SMAC version 5.0 be out?

"IT'S DONE BUT HASN'T ENTERED TESTING. We're currently focusing on SMACGold, which is a marketing SKU containing SMAC and SMACX (that's it!). Once that's done, we'll start looking at the patch question again. If we do a v3 for SMACX, we might wait until it's done and incorporate any SMAC fixes into a new v5. We'll have it more organized in a few weeks."

jkm

firaxis games

Now first asking your most loyal customers to spend alot of effort compiling a bug list and then making the above statement is certainly misleading. I would have very much appreciated an apology and explanation from Firaxis. Buggy programs and a poor customer service are two big reasons I'm not going to invest in CivIII.

Q_tip1976 · August 4, 2000, 17:22

Double Post
[This message has been edited by Q_tip1976 (edited August 04, 2000).]

Varradami · August 4, 2000, 23:23

quote:

Originally posted by Q_tip1976 on 08-04-2000 05:15 PM
Answering the question: Jeffery Morris when will SMAC version 5.0 be out?

certainly misleading. I would have very much appreciated an apology and explanation from Firaxis. Buggy programs and a poor customer service are two big reasons I'm not going to invest in CivIII.

I agree. Not only will I not buy Civ3, but I haven't bought SMAX, and refuse to do so until (read as: unless) the bugs are fixed. It's a shame, because if it wasn't for the terrible support I'd almost certainly buy Civ3.

Googlie · August 5, 2000, 01:17

RedFred:

I haven't had a terranx.exe crash for three weeks since I took two steps that you might consider trying:

I read the readme file, where some fixes were listed, and I applied one:

ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1
If the game crashes intermittently, try adding this line (to the .ini file).

Secondly, (and easier for me to do with ADSL), I stream a music station constantly (you have a choice of thousands - I play either the British Classic Gold, or the London Symphony (but of course that's irrelevant).

Never had a terranx.exe crash since, and in fact I was able to move my famous stalled game to completion as well

It may not work for everyone, but it certainly did for me.

Googlie

[This message has been edited by Googlie (edited August 05, 2000).]

RedFred · August 5, 2000, 01:55

What!? Are you suggesting that working productively towards solving a problem is better than whining about it?

I'll give it a go. Thanks for the tip.

Sarxis · January 22, 2001, 04:17

I am a bitter man, still in his youth... so here I sit, sulking over lost patches.

DilithiumDad · January 22, 2001, 12:57

The phantom drones are the worst problem with SMACX --there are no real problems with SMAC 4.0, that was the point I was trying to make. Phantom drones appear in every game. They appear in every base after the Longevity Vaccine. But it's not so simple as it just "forgetting" to display the Longevity Vaccine effect --some police effects drop out too. It's maddening!!!

In talking to Fireaxis, we should focus on the phantom drone porblem, which is highly reproducible, rather than these lists of 100+ problems which are only seen by one user.

I only ge terran.exe crashes in multiplayer, which is just part of the poor execution of that function in general.

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Creator of the Ultimate Builder Map, based on the Huge Map of Planet