A few questions about TA and Impulse

I've seen some issues like the install problem show up on Impulse since launch, but I'm curious.

Why do I have two separate installs of all three games, even though they were 'uninstalled'?  The old ones were being launched by Impulse, so it knew where they were; they're still there.  It's made a new x/stardock/totalgames/galciv tree and installed the new version there... for whatever vain reason makes developers always set default path to /we'recool/youloveus/rememberourname/game.  Amusingly, launching through Impulse brings up the launcher applet, which thinks the old x/galciv ones are the newest, so I've been playing beta 8 instead!

When did the change in custom race extension happen, and why?  The betas used 'customracexml' and the full version uses 'raceconfigxml' and flat out refuses to use the old ones.  They're exactly the same format and can be renamed... so... who thought this was a good or useful idea?  Why not let the game 'see' both for legacy support?  I know it's been years of 'force the player to dig around in arcade mydocs trees to do stuff' but honestly.  At least back in DL/DA days, they changed the ship format functionally instead of just renaming it to make not work for players.

Additionally, the 'custom ship style' now works even less than it did before.  I was hoping they'd actually have them fully supported (ie, players actually started with the ship designs from their style), but the legacy stuff where you get the starting ships from 'style 4' or whatever from years ago is still there, making players go edit some xmls and rename dozens of files for something that should just work.  In full TA, even the preview screen uses 'style 4' and not the in-game player created ship style, whereas the betas at least let you see the thumbnailed ship as 'styled'.  I actually thought the styles were broken, but open them up and yep, all classes changed to new designs.  The preview image is now totally misleading - except from the 'ship classes don't really work for players, edit files yourself' perspective.  I guess I should be glad they didn't rename the ship style files, not tell you, not provide a converter or allow the game to see the exactly identical but slightly differently-named files?

For those of us who like making custom races (that are disadvantaged through super-powered main races, but whatever), this is just crazy.  I mean, sure, we'd all like a 'custom race' area of the UI so you could easily tab through your races and edit them instead of mendaciously loading each one separately (after renaming them manually) and checking everything in the normal config screen, but I don't even understand why these roadblocks keep getting thrown up.  I'm no stranger to manually doing things, but when there's no reason bar laziness that I have to do it, it means Galciv2 is going to sit unplayed for another month.  It's a good game, it's been a good game for years, but this sort of thing just mean I'm going to say 'fuck it' and not bother to play it.

4,760 views 3 replies
Reply #1 Top
Oh jesus.

I have no idea what the issue is (it happened over on the Stardock.com forums too), but my carriage returns didn't work. Believe me, if I click 'edit' they're there and it's a properly-formatted series of paragraphs. Charming.

Sorry, guys. In the edit window the paragraphs are triple-spaced now, but it's just a block of text in the forum.
Reply #2 Top
Why do I have two separate installs of all three games, even though they were 'uninstalled'? The old ones were being launched by Impulse, so it knew where they were; they're still there. It's made a new x/stardock/totalgames/galciv tree and installed the new version there.
End of quote


There is a topic about this issue in the Impulse Beta forum, so it should get looked into.

When did the change in custom race extension happen, and why?  The betas used 'customracexml' and the full version uses 'raceconfigxml' and flat out refuses to use the old ones.  They're exactly the same format and can be renamed... so... who thought this was a good or useful idea?
End of quote


For exactly the reason of preventing beta-made races from being read in the final version of the game, to avoid potential issues and particularly metaverse cheat flags from having inconsistencies with the base files.


Reply #3 Top
Which is why there's no importer or even a test to see if the files are cheats? 90% of players are going to remake their races, AGAIN. This is not optimal. And what's with the race styles? With all the lowend changes to TA, are styles still built on the DA hackjob and only work on the initial ships for AI players (ps, manual xml editing is not a game feature, if people have to do it, it's broken). Why would it, for instance, display the thumbnail for a Drath ship in the 'style select screen' when opening the style reveals a 100% replacement of every ship type with custom ones?