How do I update and where to I go to see what the updates do?

playing Dark Avatar

Got the expansion pack, and played a bit. I am trying to find the update to the game and can't find it anywhere on this site. I tried downloading the StarDock program, clicked on DA and it gave me to the screen where to buy it. I already bought it lol.

Is there and update for DA? If there is how do I download it, and where do I find the changes to what is made to it.

Thanks for any help

Davor
14,575 views 10 replies
Reply #1 Top
(Standard-issue directions, so just ignore the stuff you've already done!)

1) Get Stardock Central (our download manager, used to get patches or even the entire game should you not have your discs handy to install from).

2) Install it and log in with the same account you made for the forum.

3) Go to the Tools menu in SDC, and choose Register Products.

4) Pick Games on the left in the Register Products window, then find GalCiv2 in the Product pull-down menu. Enter your email address (same as forum account, again) and serial number, then click Register. If you have GC2 Gold/DA, repeat for Dark Avatar (if Gold, use the Gold serial here again).

5) Back at the main screen of SDC, pick Games on the left. You should see GalCiv2 under a Purchased Products heading on the right side. Select it and click the Update button that appears.

6) Click the + next to GalCiv2 and update Dark Avatar as well if you have it.

That should do the trick. If you encounter an error message while trying to register the serial in (4), please contact support@stardock.com.
Reply #2 Top
Where are the change logs for each of these updates? I can patch no problem but I have on idea what has been changed after I do.
Reply #3 Top
I did exacgly what you said. One thing I noticed, it said where it says instaled 1.5 and avaliable 1.59[b].098.

when I click action, update, i go to the screen where to buy the game.

I guess when I installed DA it went to 1.5. can I upgrade this? Or did I some how upgrade it and not realize I have done it?

Can someone send me the link of where the changes are made if I have did upgrade it?

Love the game, just wish the tech screen was more freindly in explaining what the new techs will do with a mouse scroll over.

Reply #4 Top
I did exacgly what you said. One thing I noticed, it said where it says instaled 1.5 and avaliable 1.59b.098.

when I click action, update, i go to the screen where to buy the game.


Make sure you have your serial properly registered on your SDC account for both GC2 and DA--you can't download the game/patches from SDC unless you do.

To get them registered if you haven''t, go to the Tools menu in SDC, and choose Register Products. Pick Games on the left in the Register Products window, then find GalCiv2 in the Product pull-down menu. Enter your email address (same as forum account) and serial number, then click Register. If you have GC2 Gold/DA, repeat for Dark Avatar (If Gold, just use the same serial as you did for GC2).

That should do the trick. If you encounter an error message while trying to register the serial, please contact support@stardock.com.



Where are the change logs for each of these updates? I can patch no problem but I have on idea what has been changed after I do.


The beta patch change logs are scattered around the various announcement posts for each release--here's a quick cobbling together of them all:

1.6 beta 6

+ FIX: Fixed some alt-tab crashes present in 1.6 beta 5.
+ FIX: Added code to remove AI ship designs from the graphics cache when they are no longer being used
+ FIX: Fixed bug where, in 1 on 1 battles, if both ships kill each other, the stronger surviving ship would have hp restored instead of receiving 1 hp.
+ FIX: Added support for mixed vertex processing which should help some people with older video cards who would normally be running in software vertex processing mode.
+ FIX: Changed the way that vertex and index buffers are created to help framerates for cards running in software or mixed vp mode.
+ TWEAK: Planet Surface Variety Option now defaults to 50%


1.6 beta 5

+ FIX: Added code for the super hiver to adjust the costs of factories in the queue when they take over another colony to fix the bug where factories on worlds the hivers took over seemed to be stuck at zero turns.

+ FIX: Fixed a lockup on Trade screen when you have a huge amount of money in the treasury and you try to offer money.

+ FIX: Fixed lockup on Governor screen when you click on the Starship rallypoint governor

+ FIX: Found a solution for the graphical glitches on AMD machines. For those of you who are interested, it was a bug in a particular function in the version of the DirectX SDK that we're using. So CodeCritter made his own version of the function.

+ FIX: Optimized new batch renderer so that ship instances of the same type will share the same vertex and index buffers. This will save memory over the previous implementation where each instance had its own vert and index buffers. This should also fix the where ship parts sometimes would not show textures in the designer.

+ TWEAK: The display of stars on the minimaps should now be more visible on large and gigantic galaxies.

+ TWEAK: Made a slight change to the code that starts the AI threads which may help with the AI seeming to get a free turn at the start of a new game or when loading a save game but as I didn't have time to fully investigate the bug, this may only address part of the problem.


1.6 beta 4

+ NEW: Added Starbase module to repair the starbase with Tech Requirement Advanced Hulls. Will only show up if the starbase is missing HP, and can be 'installed' multiple times. This module should not count towards the total modules.

+ CHANGE: In the Ship Designer, when using auto-place to place a component, the component will use the current scale and rotation settings

+ TWEAK: You are no longer permitted to change your capital to another world, and bonuses for the capital city have been increased.

+ FIX: Flushes resource manager’s resources when game exits
+ FIX: Fixed crash in invasion ground units
+ FIX: Fixed crash if memory does not allocate in ResourceGraphic
+ FIX: Fixed crash in ship design code if hardpoint data failed to load
+ FIX: Fixed bug where minimaps were not refreshing immediately when you started a new game
+ FIX: Added code to handle if you or your trading partner are in debt to fix flakiness with the money popup in the TradeWnd.
+ FIX: Fixed bug in the function that calculates the morale of a colony to fix a longtime bug where your morale could permanently drop to 1%
+ FIX: Made it so that ships on the Governor minimap should show up larger when they are affected by the switch. Also made starbases not show up on this minimap to reduce clutter.
+ FIX: Fixed typo in XML files that caused land and background textures in Invasion window to be black


1.6 beta 3

+ Pirates event less common, somewhat less lethal

+ AI deals with Disease event better

+ Various AI tweaks

+ 3 new maps

+ Extreme Colonization more expensive

+ Visual updates to some planetary improvements

+ AI more focused on what it builds on planets (long story)

+ Some additional dialog (but no new trees) for computer players

+ AI tweaks to tech tree

+ Fixed a minor bug with the money popup in the tradewnd if you were in debt.

+ Fixed bug where the influence and morale bonuses did not show up correctly on the summary screen (from the planet screen) if there was a influence or morale bonus (respectively) on that tile.


1.6 beta 2

+ FIX: Made it so that your allies won't declare war on you in the mega event Allied War where the good races gang up on you.

+ NEW: Added code to save score data for non-metaverse games locally in the My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar folder

+ TWEAK: Added dialog to warn you if you start/load a metaverse game with a cheater flag

+ NEW: You can now change the social project (if there is stuff in the queue) from the colony list in the civ manager

+ NEW: The popup for adding money to negotiations on the trade screen will now open with the value needed to make the AI accept the offer (or the total amount in your treasury if they won't accept it).

+ FIX: Minimap and line graphs now uses Direct3D for drawing, which should show an increase in framerate.

+ FIX: Updated the QUICKSTART command line parameter code to work with DarkAvatar's settings (Starts a sandbox game with your last settings without needing to go to the menu.)

+ FIX: The minimap scrolling lag on Vista should be resolved, and scrolling in general should be smoother with better frame rates.

+ FIX: On Vista PCs, the debug.err will now be saved in the Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar folder. (This will not work if you run the exe in WInXP compatibility mode.)

+ FIX: If you turn off the Show Damage Animations option, it will now remove the damage animations from fleets.


1.6 beta 1

+ NEW: Stacked ships will only show one ship in the tile

+ The ship that is displayed is chosen like so:

+ If a ship is the galaxy’s selected ship it is always shown

+ Otherwise, the toughest selected ship is shown

+ If no ship in the stack is selected, the toughest ship is shown

+ An icon appears next to ships that are in a stack

+ when you move a ship off of a stack, it will show the next ship in that stack

+ This significantly increases performance in our tests. We had a stack of about 50 ships and no major hit to frame rate.

+ FIX: Fixed bug where non-optimal defenses were never decreased as the defenses absorbed damage during a battle round

+ FIX: Fixed end of turn crash that happened if you had the Force AI to use Max CPU option ON.

+ FIX: Made Build Menu update after a project is decomissioned. 1 per planet improvements like Orbital Terraformers will now show up in the build list again if you remove them from the queue or destroy an existing one. 1 per civ and 1 per galaxy improvements may not be destroyed and rebuilt - this is by design.

+ FIX: Fixed bug where if you changed the settings for a custom opponent's Natural Abilities and/or Financial Resources, the values would not remain the same after leaving the tab.

+ FIX: Fixed error where invalid information was being returned by the activation code in Win98 and Windows ME by adding alternate code if the first instance failed.

+ FIX: Fixed bug where save game was not saving the campaign file name and added code to fix save games currently exhibiting this bug (should fix problem with people continuing their campaigns)

+ FIX: Fixed crash bug where if the random event that creates a new minor race happened mulitple times, the minor races would end up with the same name and then delete each other's ship designs, causing a crash on the end of a turn

+ FIX: Fixed bug where the turn a ship was created was not saved/restored when loading a save game, which could cause a ship design to be deleted too early

+ FIX: Fixed bug with loading height maps for planet surfaces

+ FIX: Fixed bug where ending the game from the planet screen resulted in a crash because the planet screen was not hidden before the end game screen was unhidden

+ FIX: Added strings that were not being saved to scenario save game code

+ TWEAK : Turned off some debug strings to try and improve loading time

Reply #5 Top


I did exacgly what you said. One thing I noticed, it said where it says instaled 1.5 and avaliable 1.59b.098.

when I click action, update, i go to the screen where to buy the game.


Make sure you have your serial properly registered on your SDC account for both GC2 and DA--you can't download the game/patches from SDC unless you do.

To get them registered if you haven''t, go to the Tools menu in SDC, and choose Register Products. Pick Games on the left in the Register Products window, then find GalCiv2 in the Product pull-down menu. Enter your email address (same as forum account) and serial number, then click Register. If you have GC2 Gold/DA, repeat for Dark Avatar (If Gold, just use the same serial as you did for GC2).

That should do the trick. If you encounter an error message while trying to register the serial, please contact support@stardock.com.



I have the same problem. However, it won't accept my serial number, and every time I ask it 2 look up my serial number it gives me a different one. This is driving me crazy. I love your game, but come on, can't you have something a little easier to use, or at least ship instructions on how to update in your game boxes? ( can you tell I'm frustrated?)

So how do I find out what my serial numbers are, and to get this thing to accept them?

Thank-you
djah





Reply #6 Top
every time I ask it 2 look up my serial number it gives me a different one.


That is normal (the serial is regenerated from the seed each time you request it).

What exact error are you getting?
Reply #7 Top
It say invalid serial number for dark avatar

(thanks for the speedy reply)

Djah
Reply #8 Top
should i even download the update cuz thers supposedly a lot of problems with it =/ ???
Reply #9 Top
It say invalid serial number for dark avatar

(thanks for the speedy reply)


Please contact support@stardock.com. You should receive an automated response shortly after you send the mail with your ticket number; if you don't, check your spam/bulk folders.

If you can't email support or get no response at all, you can submit a ticket directly through this page. Just click next, then fill out the form and submit it (no need to log in or register there).

should i even download the update cuz thers supposedly a lot of problems with it =/ ???


The majority of the problems I've seen are simply from people with low-end video that doesn't get along with the new graphic engine--those problems are easily solved by turning the new options off and/or grabbing the 1.6a update Cari posted. Other than that it seems to be just fine for most.
Reply #10 Top
Please give me a link to download the new update for gold edition because every time i try to find one it keeps on bring me to the sight where it asks me to buy the game it self.