CobraA1

Reply to When will the price drop? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Well, if I'm remembering my business class correctly, there are about three phases any product goes through, and Sins is in the first one. The market hasn't saturated yet, and after that it'll go through a period where it's still popular. After that, the market loses interest and sales decline. So it's going to be a while. That being said, just save up some money. $40 isn't that much, and you should be able to create that much quickly. Do some odd jobs for people, or put aside a bit of

Reply to AI needs to read Machiavelli in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]But I've managed to stay too interested in the game almost precisely because military wins on the maps I like are so tedious that I've yet to finish one.[/quote] Yeah - and in real life, military wins are tedious as well. If you reach a choke point where the defender has the advantage, then you don't want to attack. You will attempt to bait the defender to enter the point where you have the advantage - but if the defender is smart, they won't take the bait. It's easy to end up in

Reply to Oh dear.....! in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

If you've played GalCiv2, think of them as the minor races . . .

Reply to Dual monitor glitch, plus a suggestion in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Did some playing around - and it's not GalCiv2. It's Xfire. Somehow, when Xfire is doing its overlay thing, it forces GalCiv2 to become full screen rather than a window :(. Or it just forces the mouse to stay in the window. Either way, it's Xfire that is causing problems.

Reply to Dev-Cpp + Vista...[Problem Solved] in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]I am the administrator on this computer so permissions really isn't a problem.[/quote] Unless you've disabled UAC (which I do not recommend), then most software actually runs in user mode in Vista, even in an administrative account.

Reply to blurry graphics in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]The blurring effect I mentioned in regards to anti-aliasing typically occurs on Text in the games I've seen it in. It has nothing to do with an untrained eye, antialiasing turned on in the video card in these games causes the text to be "blended" with the game imagery. One pixel width or not, it looks blurry whether your eye is trained or isn't.[/quote] If the text is too small, yeah, anti-aliasing can be a bit problematic, especially at font sizes where the parts of the font are

Reply to Piracy & PC Gaming in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]You are not getting 20+ (on High) with a 9600 in Crysis. I don't care how 'superclocked' your card is. That is not possible.[/quote] It certainly is. a) The performance of the 9600 is way beyond the 8600. It's much closer to the 8800s in performance than the 8600s. The standard 9600 has slightly faster clocks than the 8800 GT. In reviews, it has even beat low end 8800s for some tests. b) The reviews also state that it handles heavy loads better than most 8 serie

Reply to Dual monitor glitch, plus a suggestion in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I've tried it - but it seems to act just like a full screen application: The mouse stops on the border and I have to alt+tab to leave the window.

Reply to Dev-Cpp + Vista...[Problem Solved] in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

I've been using Microsoft's Express versions of their compilers. They're also free, and generally work well. You may want to try them out. Where are you compiling stuff to? One thing that changed in Vista is permissions: A lot more places in Vista are read only. You can't compile directly to something like, say, Program Files, because they are read only without escalation of privileges. Yes, you describe "main.o" accurately. It is the object file created before it is linked and

Reply to blurry graphics in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Anti-aliasing tends to blur the heck out of some games.[/quote] It shouldn't. At most, the "blur" should never, ever be more than a single pixel thick. AA doesn't actually blur anything; it simply mixes the colors of more than one shape into a single pixel, because multiple shapes can overlap a single pixel. It should be more like a photograph in that way: If you look at a photograph on your computer, you will notice that it is fully anti-aliased; there are never jaggies in a pho

Reply to Some do's and dont's for the coming Fantasy game in Games in Development GalCiv2 Forums

Agreed . . . and I'd add try to be a bit original as well. I see the same dozen or so baddies in nearly every fantasy game I've played, all shamelessly copied from Tolkien's books. And FYI, there's no way a female would ever don the armor found in most games. They may look hot in metal bikinis, but it would really be no protection in a real battle. FYI, anybody know what game type this will be? the Gorgon is talking sorta like it's going to be a RTS? One thing I've bee

Reply to The Political Machine 2008 is coming in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

As long as it doesn't cancel Rush Limbaugh while I'm playing it . . . I dunno, I tend to over analyze and be overly critical of stuff like this.

Dual monitor glitch, plus a suggestion in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Hey, playing around with a new dual monitor setup, and noticed a slight bug: My primary monitor is full 1600x1200, but my secondary monitor is running at a measly 800x600 (but that's fine for most of the stuff I do). Well, GalCiv2 warned me that it doesn't support 800x600. It did, however, load fine at full resolution on my primary monitor. There probably needs to be something to make sure it's checking the resolution of the right monitor when there's a dual monitor setup. <

Reply to AI needs to read Machiavelli in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

[quote=Sun Tzu's [i]Art of War[/i]] III. ATTACK BY STRATAGEM 8. It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two. 9. If equally matched, we can offer battle; if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from him. [/quote] Sun Tzu tends to be quite situational

Reply to AI needs to read Machiavelli in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Paragraphs are good. I dunno who Machiavelli is - are his tactics similar to Sun Tzu's?

Reply to So, I have a question about external hardrives in Technical Sins Forums

Should be no troubles if you have a decent amount of memory. Once the game is loaded, it should stay in memory anyways and shouldn't go out to the hard drive for anything. It should only affect your loading time. FYI, unlike IDEs, SATA has a specification for external drives, and some motherboards have external connectors for connecting external SATAs. It's just not very common to see them. But yes, it should work, I don't see why there should be any troubles. Unless you unexpe

Reply to Sins of a Solar Empire Demo Released in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

Well, here's sorta how it feels to me: You use the scroll wheel, and the zoom follows the mouse cursor. You zoom out, place the mouse over where you want to zoom in, and zoom in. That is what I think the designers intended the primary form of navigation to be. In addition, the camera seems to automatically "snap" to the nearest unit. Which is nice, except it's easy for it to snap onto the wrong unit. In addition, The middle mouse button pans the view, and edge scrolling works.<

Reply to Sins of a Solar Empire Technical FAQ in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

[quote]My Bad...There for a second I forgot I'm just the customer. I keep forgetting there's all these folks in the middle telling me what I want to buy. I guess they're telling you guys what you can sell, too.[/quote] Yeah, and from a recent incident where Microsoft was forced to make some of their emails public, it appears that it's the norm in Microsoft to pay much more attention to these "folks in the middle" rather than their real customers. Yeah, I think it's pretty silly

Reply to So, Nvidia the culprit for these games? in Technical Sins Forums

Perhaps consider saving up for an upgrade? Low end 8 series cards are pretty cheap. You can get an 8400 or 8500 for less than $50. My 9600 will run the demo of the game at full antialiasing and full detail with no signs of slowing down, and costs less than $200. So far, I've had no issues with it.

Reply to Sins vs Gal Civ II in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

I think Hertston is talking about game play more than graphics. So we're back to the gameplay vs graphics argument, which has been discussed a million times on pretty much every game forum in the universe. I like both Sins and GalCiv 2. Both will hold my attention too long if I'm not careful. Graphically, the only thing they are missing are more shaders. Specular shaders and bump mapping have been standard features in games for years. Today's games will heap on dozens of shader

Reply to Sins of a Solar Empire Demo Released in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]since it's to little micromanagement in it.[/quote] Too [b]little[/b] micromanagement?? I've just played the demo, and it kept my mouse very busy. Having to figure out technologies, planet improvements, building perquisites, etc all in real time is a bit overwhelming. There's a lot of stuff to keep track of, and I have troubles trying to figure out what improvements I want my planets to have and which technologies I need. It's actually a lot of stuff.

Reply to Sins of a Solar Empire Demo Released in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

"http://www.gamershell.com" Ugh. They attached their own stuff to it and shoved it into a zip file. Who knows if they did further modifications? Which reminds me - can somebody get a MD5 signature for the original file, so we can make sure copies are not modified?

Reply to Sins of a Solar Empire Demo Released in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

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Reply to Sins of a Solar Empire Demo Released in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

As if I don't have enough profiles to keep track of - sign up for GameSpot? Umm, no.

Reply to Piracy & PC Gaming in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]The GeForce 9600 GT costs like 150 bucks. With that card every medium-fast PC sold in the last 2 years can play Crysis at medium details at least and all other available games on high details. Yes, it costs a little but its just as expensive as 3 games. So if there are like 5-6 games using this kind of graphics I'd upgrade.[/quote] The Crysis demo actually defaults to the high settings on my 9600, and I haven't had any problems with it. The framerate is acceptable for my tast