It's not just the part of the bar near OUTGOING that lights up btw, if you hover your mouse to the left near the other words I think you'll see random sections light up there also.

Matress, is there any way I can read the race descriptions short of meeting the races in-game? Because I can't exactly guarantee that I'll meet all the races in-game and even if I do it will take a really long while.

Yes, that's the hover effect for the column headers. You can click a column to sort by that column.

Yup I figured as much (although I won't be using it to avoid crashes hehe). For the record it sorts fine by every other section, just not the OUTGOING one (pure speculation but since some/all races have nothing in that field, perhaps it can't figure what to do with the empty fields?).

Yes Fedor, you can read both of the descriptions in the editor, a working version of which was part of the download in the most recent update.

To load it, click on the file called "SupremacyEditor2.exe" in your Supremacy folder.

The editor can take a bit of time to load just like the game, so be patient. It still has to load all the same race information as the game!

When it loads, you'll see a square, grey window with a few buttons near the top and lists on the left and right of the window. The editor really needs a lot of space, so I would recommend you maximise it.

The different lists on the sides of the screen let you look at different sets of information. They are basically a faster way of accessing the six buttons at the top of the screen. To view BOTH of the descriptions for a single race, you need to look at the "Factions" screen, which you can access by either clicking on the Federation icon at the top of the screen (Do NOT click on the little arrow directly unde rthe image, click the image itself) OR click on the Factions button at the bottom of the left-hand list that contains all the race names.

Next, double-click the Acamarians (Or any race) in the list, and you will see the main editing screen for that race. It takes a few seconds to load each individual object EVERY time you double-click ANY object in the editor, whether it's a race, ship, or building, so be patient! The message that is written in "Diplomacy Report" is the message that you will see when you first meet that race in the game, and the "Description" is the information that you will see in the Trekpedia.

IF you make any changes that you wish to save, click on the small x at the top-right of the Faction page, (NOT the window-closing one)



...then click on the floppy disk icon at the top-left to save your changes.

DON'T make any grammar edits in the editor for me though! The changes are loaded into a database rather than a human-readable, editable file, so I will not be able to view your changes without you sending me your entire Resources folder. I would then have to manually go through every race to see what the differences were between my version and your edited version. IF you see any changes that you think are necessary, post them or jot them down in notepad and send me the file. I can quickly make the edits wherever they are needed then, and they will form part of my next content update.

...

Mike, would it be possible to add the image of the races into the editor, as it does with the buildings and ships? I know i've asked this before, but it would help me ensure the right images are being used - or that we actually have one in the first place. I've just added the Voth to the game and managed to get a really clean image of them off the internet, but until I meet them in the game I won't know if their image is going to show up correctly.







...Obviously this is all IF we decide the Voth are going to be in the game, afterall they lived on a starship not a planet. For the time being, i've given them a really good system, made them aggressive expanders and given them a Supreme technology ranking - not even the Vulcans have that, as so far only the Cytherians and Empires have a Supreme technology ranking. They were Transwarp capable, had built an 11km-long starship that supported their entire civilization, were capable of transporting an entire ship inside of their own vessel even though Voyager had its' shields up, they could produce a dampening field that shut down virtually every system on Voyager, and could scan for individual lifeforms from a distance of 90 lightyears. If that's not technologically advanced, I don't know what is.

*Edit - Mike, i've noticed a new bug in the editor. Whenever I rename a pre-existing structure, and save it, then next time I load the editor, that structure shows up as a blank space at the top of the list. Both the name and description fields for the structure have been deleted. The image also shows up as blank.

It just happened to the Federation shipyards, which I renamed after I fixed the shipyard numbering glitch. (There was no Mark 1 shipyard but two Mark 2 shipyards)



*Edit the second - it also seems that I cannot delete these "broken" structures - in fact I can't delete ANYTHING from the editor. Pressing delete does nothing, and none of the buttons in the clipboard are selectable.

Hey by any chance ... is the selection of the building list going to be changed back to the original settings?

In the older Alpha versions when you clicked on a structure or ship ... it would be quickly put in the queue ... quick and easy... now you have to double click each structure to put in 1 of it in the queue.

Not a big issue ... just hate clicking lol

The reason for the change was that people - including me - were getting annoyed with the way that the game thought we were selecting a building just by mousing over it. It meant if your mouse wandered while you were reading a description etc, the description would moveonto something else because the game thought you had selected something else - without actually clicking!

Single-clicking would be easier, but it's a choice between a minor inconvenience, and something that makes you want to rip your hair out.

...Unless Mike could set it as one of the selectable options in the control panel...is that possible, Mike?

I always thought double-clicking was more practical because of the issue with reading descriptions. BotE also uses the double-click system, so it will probably stay that way. People have made arguments for both, but this system seems to have the most votes .

And the most massive post award goes to.... :p

There I was thinking the site was down all this time! Matress, you might wanna update the sticky that has a link to this thread, or rather had, since the link no longer works since it's missing the /forums/ part of the address. Oh and also thanks for pointing out the factions bit, I thought the races and factions page only had the difference of including/not including the major races, never hit me that I should open one up and see if there's any difference heh. Have you done any editing in there lately? I just don't want to do work on things you've already done.

On the single/double click issue... I can see how if moving the mouse deselected the item that could get annoying. However, the current method is a bit tedious - double-clicking something queues it for a build, thats peachy, but where it gets a bit annoying is if you want to queue several of the same building. Five farms? 10 clicks. Couldn't one click select, and if selected, just one click builds the object? And once it's put into the build queue, it's not deselected?

Hey whatever yous feel is best... is best and right for Supremacy

Man oh man... wish someone would invent a time machine... to get me to Decemeber 08 ... Im rippin my hair out to Supremacy in all its glory.

Fedor, I have made some updates lately - actually I zipped them for Mike. IF you want to look at them, you can download it Here. I say IF because there is a warning attached with my updates:

WARNING - there is a glitch in my updates, due to some missing code in the editor. The Federation shipyards display incorrectly - as in they technically don't! The editor isn't saving the descriptions nor the name of the structure, so they are showing as blank entries in the editor.

There are two parts to the download - it is a zip file containing another zip file, and a single file. The building/race updates are in the single file, and the zip file contains the images. DELETE ALL OF THE FILES in your TechObjects folder (Supremacy\Resources\Images\) then unzip the images into the TechObjects folder.

To "install" my building updates, put the lone file called "SupremacyDatabase.sdf" from the Download into Supremacy\Resources\Data. You might want to backup the existing file first so you can revert later due the shipyard glitch.

I've just downloaded Supremacy along with .net framework, and i can't seem to get it to work, it loads up a screnn that just says "Supremacy" on it with some cool background and stays like that, taskmanager says it's still running and the "error" file in the folder is empty, is there any reason why it's not working?

If there was a problem, or the prerequisites hadn't been met, then Supremacy would crash and you'd get the mesage saying "A problem has been encountered and needs to close. Please tell Microsoft about the problem". Seeing as it doesn't get that far, it may be something different.

What are your computer stats - operating system, processor, memory/RAM, and graphics card? It may be that there's some sort of incompatibility that we don't know about yet, or in the very least it may help to track down the cause.

Did you restart your computer after you installed .Net, by the way? Sometimes restarting can make all the difference. Stupid Windows.

Welcome to the forums, Trekkie, but sorry I can't be of any more assistance at the moment.

Sounds like maybe your video resolution is too low. You need to be running 1024x768 or higher.

I maneged to figure that out eventually, i was running on 800x600 (still). now that i can play, i can say that so far the game is great! excellent work so far

Just wondering when the interactivity will start to be introduced. The game looks great and all but afai can tell, there's not much happening on the AI side.

Also, one suggestion: With technology, I'm all for interdependence, but needing every tech at the same stage before any kind of construction can begin is a little on the annoying side. Perhaps construction can be the overriding pre-requisite. Then energy for fusion reactors, biology for farms etc. E.G. With level 3 construction and level 3 biology you could construct level 3 Farms and level 3 Fabrication Plants but not level 3 Fusion Reactors without level 3 Energy.

AI is one of the next things to be implemented. Will take a while though I think.

dahalb, the tech levels are one of the things that I have been looking at as part of my updates. I think exactly the same way as you - afterall, why would you need weapons for a farm...unless you're farming Targ?

That particular part of the updates is a long way off though. The changes i've made are purely experimental as I wasn't sure if having a set level in every area was a requirement of Supremacy. It doesn't look like it is though, so I will be trying to make the tech requirements more realistic. Depending on the individual structure, this may even mean I will increase/decrease the required tech level in the key areas to balanced out the elimination of the other requirements. Like I said though, the changes in my most recent updates (Which Mike already has, but needs to fix a bug with the Shipyards) are purely experimental at the moment, and as soon as the bugs are fixed i'll be working through the list to make them more extensive and realistic. The changes I have made so far are few and far between in this respect, and I doubt you will even notice.

The actual tech levels will be open to debate pretty much until the game is finished and balanced though. People can even mod them as they want at this very moment in time via the editor, which is the file called SupremacyEditor2.exe in your Supremacy folder. Be warned that any changes you make will NOT be compatible with any future Supremacy updates so you will have to make your mods from scratch every time you download a new version of the game if you choose to do so. To change the building tech requirements, load up the building, and change the numbers in the respective fields. The tech levels go from 0-12, so don't put any number other than these in or you will confuse the game.

If anyone has any suggestions of tech level changes, let me know and i'll have a look at making those changes for you. I will certainly be looking at the tech requirements for the farms at the very least in the near future, but we won't know if these changes make the game balanced or not, until the AI and other Empires are implemented. With any luck, that won't be too long, but AI is one of the most complicated parts of the game and will require a lot of testing and balancing before it is "ready", so don't have any expectations of it arriving tomorrow or even the day after, for instance.

I was thinking the same thing, and I went and edited the TechObjectDatabase.xml file so farms only needed Biotech and so on. After all, that is how it was in the original BOTF game. If you want to see my file go to http://www.freewebs.com/comtraya1/TechObjectDatabase.xml.

I also fixed a few research facilities that were missing a weapons tech requirement, unless that is what was intended.

The game looks really good so far and I can't wait. Good job.

Thanks for the prompt responses guys. I have only just discovered this development so am not familiar with how long it has been going and what the evolution has been to date so i just thought i would ask. I really enjoyed the first game and started playing it again recently which is what prompted my web search to find this

AI is very challenging indeed. I do not envy you the task at all, having played with it a bit some years ago.

Observationally, the game is fantastic. Everything looks the part and the what's been developed so far ties in well with the 'lore' afaik.

Thanks for all your efforts

he's not alone in that task..

AI can be fun

My original intention witht the 3d combat engine was to have a version with no AI but user friendly enough for anyone to tinker around and create there own, a sort of get to learn AI tutorial

Regards Wolfe

Lo Mike. The latest Supremacy is looking awesome, great feel, great look, great gameplay! However a few points. I didn't get far, around turn 50 each time, before various failures occurred. As a precursor to the problem, the right-click menu became 'unclickable', ie it just froze and I couldn't click any buttons to change screens. Then on Turn the game hung for a long time, and I had to quit. One turn got stuck on 'Pre-turn operations', I think, and the other said something along the lines of 'pre-turn map data'.

Anyway, I'll go through a few bits and peices as general feedback - 99% was all positive though!

-As you know I've only recently returned having been out of the loop for a while, so please forgive inferior knowledge to developments that may have taken place in my absence. I was wondering what the position was on Major Empire structures, namely the base structure 'Training Academies', which was needed to generate Personnel, as outlined in the Database. Has this been dropped?

-Ship info needs a good scrub, my specialty btw. The general look and feel of the Ship Encyclopedia screen feels a bit lacking. I know it might not be possible (yet) to implement a rotating 3D article, but what about a pre-made .AVI inserted for each vessel, or even an animated GiF! They would not be hard to create, and it would add a lot more flavour and flourish to the feel. Also the class stats and descriptions need updating I feel, with perhaps certains stats appearing in bold or different shades of colour to make it easier to know what's what at a glance. I also noted that CLASS NAMES are not present for any of the ships!

-On the production screen I experienced a little confusion with some of my output figures - I just need a little heads up to know what's what, notably for Food and Energy. For example, the numbers of 124 / +21 were cited for Food, with a figure of 147 food being generated by my farms. What does the 124 bit mean?

-I was also confused with the distribution of energy. In the production stat column on the left, it said my surplus was 43, yet I couldnt activate the dilithium refinery, which only needed 25 energy. There seemed to be a problem activating some of the energy structures.

-In the build queue list on the left hand side I thought it might be useful to have a Shipbuilding preview as well, so you can keep tabs on the progress of all build tasks at once without having to go into the ship building pane as well. Just a general percentage to build completion would suffice.

-In the Embassy panel an information overview for Races is needed as well as special structure info and pics. Maybe this is earmarked for future implementation..?

-Personally I would find it very useful (being so familiar with BoTF) to be able to select a ship on the galactic map directly via its icon in the sector, rather than have to select it from the Task Force panel.

-Also, whilst previewing a ship in its sector a small box of basic stats for a ship on mouse over, ie Range, speed, etc, as was present in BotF.

-Terraforming? I remember all systems are already habitable, but will terraforming come in at a later date?


A few buggy things:

-Tilonian home system was called Morikin. Couldnt establish trade route with system.

-Sometimes (as mentioned earlier) I cant select any of the buttons on the main right-click menu.

-I Had one sytem with all gas giants.


All in all mate a fantastic achievment thus far. It truly is awesome/overwhelming, and I can't wait to see things develop further.

We actually just started discussing about having animations for the ships, Dafedz. Great minds think alike.

The Energy glitch is a known bug. I hadn't noticed the problem with food before, although that may be the same as the energy bug.

Selecting ship icons is something that has also been mentioned in the past. Mike knows about it, at least. Mouse overs would definitely be useful too.

Terraforming works completely different than in BOTF. An ideal planet for one race may not be ideal for another. For example, Humans like Terran worlds, Klingons like Jungles, while the Cardassians like Deserts. Terraforming will occur in stages, with a planet slowly becoming increasingly habitable for the race that performs the Terraforming. This will bviously make it less suitable for other races however, who would then terraform it the other way if they later gained control of it! The Moons will eventually he habitable as well, adding to the maximum population of the system...but the building that allows you to colonize them was glitchy so it has been removed from the game until the problem can be fixed.

There have been a few reports of people being unable to trade with random systems, although it seems to be a pretty rare occurence. Mike knows about it, anyway. The Tilonians don't actually have a system name in the editor, which is why their system name glitched; the game automatically assigns something random wherever a database entry is missing. I've fixed that problem now.

Having systems with just Gas Giants isn't a glitch, afterall, it IS possible that this could happen. It makes the game more varied and realistic. The planets are set so that such occurences will be rare, but as you know it's not impossible. And even systems like these might be useful once the game is complete. You can build research stations there, or Space Depots for example. All that Deuterium would surely be of some use...

It's good to have some deadspace, makes the game hopefully more strategical and tactical

Regards Wolfe

I always figured that the systems without habitable planets were simply omitted on the map. I mean, if we wanted to have a canon map and have a real-size galaxy, we'd need billions of systems which is clearly unfeasible from any perspective. I know we need to take some liberties sometimes for the benefit of gameplay, but frankly this is probably not one of them - it simply serves no purpose. Something like the Irregular type galaxy should be fairly unpredictable perhaps with dense clusters of systems and large dead spaces, that would work well imo.

Matress, do I understand correctly that the modifications you've made have now been sent to Mike and will be in the next release? Cause if so I'll wait till then and give you more stuff to fix then.

billions would be a bit too much considering the fact that one sector equals 20 lightyears in diameter and our next habitable system is what, 20 ly away (alpha centauri)? I don't know exactly but I think it is quite realistic, the way it is now, not even in trek canon but also in real life. Always remember, the small intersection of quadrants we have in-game here barely represent a small percentage of the whole 4 quadrants=the galaxy (borg space, etc..).

You'll see what hell is when i finish minors ship database, each ship will be automatically upgraded 3 times during game... there will be no easy victorys only bloody war for each square (6400 squares is more then enough )

Ooh...how about adding the option of unlimited sectors based on available processing power?



...

Fedor, yes I have sent my updates to Mike, but I have made minor changes even since then that i'm gonna have to send him, such as the missing Tilonian homesystem name, grammar changes, and new dipomacy reports. I'm contantly making changes to the game, so perhaps sending updates to Mike is a waste of time since they'll be out-of-date by the time he gets them.

If anyone wants to update their game, i'll post a link to the updated images when I get home. I know i've posted them already, but that includes the database file and people might not want to touch it due to the shipyard glitch. Unfortunately i'm in uni right now and don't have the privileges to install Winzip so you'll have to wait til I get home.

Don't worry about overloading me with stuff, Fedor, you should know by now from my uberposts that I can handle uber amounts of info.

Malvoisin, I didn't know each sector was 20 light years across, however that illustrates my point very well. I'm guess a sector is a 3d chunk of space right, so it's 20 x 20 x 20 light years in size, is that what you meant? If so, that's quite a large area and my point is made for me - each sector would then have MANY systems if we were going to keep the game real, which we clearly can't and shouldn't do. So it would only make sense then imo to not have any systems without habitable planets.

You also said "our next habitable system is what, 20 ly away (alpha centauri)?" First, afaik we don't know of any habitable systems as of yet. It was in fact only very recently (1 or 2 months I believe) that we for the very first time directly observed a planet orbiting another star, rather than inferred it's presense from the stars wobble. Believe me, I think if scientists directly observe an earth-like planet on which we could in theory live, it will make BIG headlines =) And I do believe that time is very near now (very feasible for it to happen this year, but within 5 years would be extremely probable). Also, I was trying to remember my Astronomy class at uni and the nearest star is I believe a bit over one parsec away, a parsec being over 3 light years. OK before putting my foot in my mouth, I just googled and yeah that's right, Proxima Centauri (aka Alpha Centauri) is 4.3ly away. In fact I opened a few links and there appear to be 11 stars within 10ly of us, and the number increases somewhat exponentially with increasing distance (which makes sense since the area of a sphere grows exponentially with increasing diameter). So yeah, since we have one system per sector at most, I always thought we were working under the assumption that only "useful" systems were ever shown on the map.

Oh and about the sectors being 20ly again. Considering the diameter of our galaxy is well, let's say 100,000ly in diameter, then we'd need a motherload of sectors. Like 5,000 by 5,000 sectors is 25,000,000 sectors *cough*. So since we'd need at *least* a quarter of that, if we say had half of the alpha and beta quadrants, which is still nuts!

So, apart from the massive tangent, I still think non habitable systems shouldn't exist (I've noticed they do in BOTE also, but as here I feel it's the developer's right to go either way, I'm only expressing my personal opinion).

it increases cubic not exponentially (we would be drowned in lightrays if it did ). but aside from the maths, we can pretty much determine all the suns/stars around us but you're right we don't know if they got planets so let's just assume that not every star has planets of any kind and thus neglecting such stars (not showing them on map) et voilà we have our void space in between .