Small Bug Report!!

Just a quick heads up. I've played three quick games from the first skirmish release and found the following bugs (I would state these as low rate due to them not overly effecting the general gameplay itself):

1. This effects ALL three sides. On some of the default maps (and some of the additional ones supplied) when constructing the second level of the mining station the actual asteroid would disappear. This was tested more than once with the Tauri and definately happens more than once. The result is that the Tauri mining facility is left suspended in space. The same happens for the Goa'uld but sometimes less for the Wraith (however, on one other provided mods maps (cant remember which one offhand), a second asteroid was placed inside the stock model when using the wraith.

2. The Wraith Generals second special on his ship is showing up as "[MISSING]". Same goes for Michaels cruisers first special weapon.

Other than this I've yet to notice any crashing bugs and all ships/weapons function as they should.

Now that, thats out of the way I'd like to do a small personal review. I'll split this into three parts and give my views on each section:

THE GOOD
Each of the three chosen sides gives a nice selection of units to play with. Weapons are brilliantly implemented with authentic series sounds. There seems to be a good mix of balance and gameplay and the AI is pretty tough, even on its easiest setting. Its very good to see the AI actually capturing and using ALL mine areas and capturable stations. A very nice opening video and some truely decent graphical improvements when using the ingame GUIs. Although I personally extracted the initial EXE file the overall installation of the mod is very easy and relatively quick as well, so big plus points on that.

THE BAD
As with any space based skirmish mode there isn't alot of variation for such things as special weapons. Some textures also suffer from lower quality and so don't look that good when viewed zoomed in or in cinematic mode (which is a shame). Some missing text may not help as well on at least two of the special weapons (as reported above). Finally the 50 pop cap may seem very low for some players but thats an easy quick edit if your up to it.

THE DOWNRIGHT UGLY
I think my biggest gripe and possibly the biggest let down for me was the unit voices. Some were clear and easy to understand whilst many of the others were, how shall I put this, poor to say the least. Its a big shame that the team couldn't obtain far better quality unit speech as this would have greatly enhanced this particular area (I think it was one of the wraith voices that repeats the same sentence far to many times).

OVERALL
Still. As with any mod this is only what I would term a "beta" so with that in mind its definately a well put together piece of coding. The wraith models, especially, are highly impressive and I think if the team can change the stock maps then this will be one of the greatest FoC mods to date. This will certainly remain installed and played from time to time although I believe a couple of minor XML edits (particularly to change the pop count) will be in order.

A big thumbs up to the team and heres to the next release!!

MajorPayne wrote: Just a quick heads up. I've played three quick games from the first skirmish release and found the following bugs (I would state these as low rate due to them not overly effecting the general gameplay itself):

1. This effects ALL three sides. On some of the default maps (and some of the additional ones supplied) when constructing the second level of the mining station the actual asteroid would disappear. This was tested more than once with the Tauri and definately happens more than once. The result is that the Tauri mining facility is left suspended in space. The same happens for the Goa'uld but sometimes less for the Wraith (however, on one other provided mods maps (cant remember which one offhand), a second asteroid was placed inside the stock model when using the wraith.

2. The Wraith Generals second special on his ship is showing up as "[MISSING]". Same goes for Michaels cruisers first special weapon.

Other than this I've yet to notice any crashing bugs and all ships/weapons function as they should.

Now that, thats out of the way I'd like to do a small personal review. I'll split this into three parts and give my views on each section:

THE GOOD
Each of the three chosen sides gives a nice selection of units to play with. Weapons are brilliantly implemented with authentic series sounds. There seems to be a good mix of balance and gameplay and the AI is pretty tough, even on its easiest setting. Its very good to see the AI actually capturing and using ALL mine areas and capturable stations. A very nice opening video and some truely decent graphical improvements when using the ingame GUIs. Although I personally extracted the initial EXE file the overall installation of the mod is very easy and relatively quick as well, so big plus points on that.

THE BAD
As with any space based skirmish mode there isn't alot of variation for such things as special weapons. Some textures also suffer from lower quality and so don't look that good when viewed zoomed in or in cinematic mode (which is a shame). Some missing text may not help as well on at least two of the special weapons (as reported above). Finally the 50 pop cap may seem very low for some players but thats an easy quick edit if your up to it.

THE DOWNRIGHT UGLY
I think my biggest gripe and possibly the biggest let down for me was the unit voices. Some were clear and easy to understand whilst many of the others were, how shall I put this, poor to say the least. Its a big shame that the team couldn't obtain far better quality unit speech as this would have greatly enhanced this particular area (I think it was one of the wraith voices that repeats the same sentence far to many times).

OVERALL
Still. As with any mod this is only what I would term a "beta" so with that in mind its definately a well put together piece of coding. The wraith models, especially, are highly impressive and I think if the team can change the stock maps then this will be one of the greatest FoC mods to date. This will certainly remain installed and played from time to time although I believe a couple of minor XML edits (particularly to change the pop count) will be in order.

A big thumbs up to the team and heres to the next release!!

First of all, thank you for your honest review. It's things like this that pave way for progress, not screaming comments about "OMG fix this naow".

@Asteroid mines: Can't say I've encountered that bug even once in the mod before, but it's worth exploring!

@Textures: Sadly, this is a limitation in the Alamo engine; texture size is extremely limited with todays standards.

@Missing text and sounds: As we don't have a professional voice and SFX department with professional, paid software we sadly can't achieve the level as the original series. I edited all the English text before release and it's possible I screwed something or something went wrong when the final installer was compiled. Thanks to your specific report this is something I will be looking on tonight for the first patch.

@Pop cap etc: You're free to change anything you like. The current balancing is "official", but could of course change at any time. We will obviously correct a few things in the first patch and continue to do so further on as we go.
Thank you for your time and we hope you enjoy the mod!

Well unfortunately I've seen so many people who do nothing but blow smoke out of modders asses with nothing but praise. I've yet to see a single mod that doesn't suffer from bugs for any sorts. As for "screwing up". Well its easy to make oversights when editing files. I know I've done it often enough myself. Even Alpha and primary Beta testing phases can still miss bugs if they dont effect the overall gameplay. As for the sounds. Whilst its disappointing sometimes its just unavoidable.

MajorPayne wrote: Well unfortunately I've seen so many people who do nothing but blow smoke out of modders asses with nothing but praise. I've yet to see a single mod that doesn't suffer from bugs for any sorts. As for "screwing up". Well its easy to make oversights when editing files. I know I've done it often enough myself. Even Alpha and primary Beta testing phases can still miss bugs if they dont effect the overall gameplay. As for the sounds. Whilst its disappointing sometimes its just unavoidable.

Not sure whether you understood me correctly; I think your review is as reviews should be, listing both good and bad things, room for improvement (rule of thumb: nothing is ever completely 100%) and an overall "judgement". About sounds, without professional voice actors, ~$3000 microphones used in completely sound isolated recording rooms, professional sound editing software and a lot of time voice acting and SFX effects are actually some of the hardest things to achieve in a non-commercial mod. Models you can always use free modelling programs or student versions of paid ones etc, but getting the real "hardware" and voice actors is really hard, considering whom the voices in Stargate of Stargate are done by..

Well I would ask a question then. Does this mean that the mod is complete? If it is then that means no more content. However, I was under the impression that the mod still has galactic conquest mode to sort out, as well as additional patches to fix all the errors that remain (no matter how minor the errors might be). That's why I stated it as a "beta". Besides which. I've personally made enough mods to know when one might still be in beta even if its out private testing phase.

Still. As I said before. I have no intention of uninstalling this mod although I am seriously interested in any updates that might be forthcoming.

I know jack and I look forward to the next update.

i found another missing text on Baal's ability Shield Energy Boost but otherwise quite a good job on the mod and i look forward to seeing the other parts of the mod in the future

The only problem i find annoying is crashes that tend to occur after i reach tech level five that freezes the game, turns the mouse to loading and the game no longer responds to any input until it is alt F4ed then restarted. i might mess with the settings to narrow down the problem but it shouldn't be a computer problem

Thanks for the Awesome Mod