DrGuppie

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="16" id="2066110"] I smell an important slider for game setup, perhaps as important as the Stars, Planets, and Habitables trio in GalCiv2. Back when I spent most of my weekends around tables playing RPGs, something that distinguished one of my favorite refs was his tightfistedness with magic items. Most of the games in that circle ended up so buried in magic items that I ended up with things like a character with a 'golf bag' of enchanted bastard swords. Tha

I'd want artifacts to be rare . Really, really rare - as in a couple per game per side. I have no problem with them being player created, but doing so must take a not insignificant amount of your essence such that making one is a significant choice. To me, a potentially cool idea that could be used to make powerful, player-created artifacts (that aren't destructible) a double-edged sword is that they could have a chance of converting whoever is using the artifact to the origin

[quote who="mrakomo" reply="12" id="2064441"]No, I disagree. Unlocking the camera is simple. I modeled a 3D landscape in my thesis and moving camera was feature you really needed for such project. In OpenGL it was pretty easy and it is similar in DirectX. However it is something different. If you use a 3D engine and lock the camera angle, you must draw the objects only from one single side. The other side remains hidden forever and so you don't need to bother with it. It also

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="10" id="2063552"] Quoting mrakomo, reply 9I do hope it will NOT be able to change the angle of the view. With a good design it is not necessary. If one can rotate the screen, it makes only problems with orientation. And if you allow this, you must handle the extensive 3D graphic problems too and it does not have a any influence on a gameplay. Heroes V has this feature and I think it is useless there. It is better (and easier) to have a nice graphics from one

[quote who="KnutAreMykland" reply="14" id="2061116"]some randomness in games makes the games more fun to watch and play. But it comes at the price that the game can never include a realistic ladder, since a relatively poor player can quite often beat a top player. Aka master of magic, AOW series etc[/quote] A relativley poor player should not be able to beat a top player, that doesn't mean that the top player can't suffer setbacks or the poor player have some lucky breaks.<

[quote who="alway" reply="13" id="2059346"]*BBZZZAAAAPPPP* I personally use a http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811208005. Works well, and looks awesome in a low light situation Glows green like its running on kryptonite or something.[/quote] Well, there are plenty of amps running through some of the systems ... just figured the cat would have had to be pretty dedicated to get itself electrocuted. Guess biting into some of the wires (like to the gfx car

[quote who="Silveus" reply="11" id="2048153"]My freind had a computer that was missing its side. He kept it on a table so that atleast it wasn't on the floor, but things still make there way inside, in this case it was a spider. so the little spider gets inside and his cat, who loves to eat spiders, pounced into this computer. even after he extracted the dead cat the computer still wouldn't run.[/quote] Dead cat? How'd the computer kill the cat? Or did you mean the spider?

[quote] ...snip.... D2D and gamersgate are cross compatible with their games and any expanion packs. If not they tell you so and if a patch is up and comming for it. So is Impusle and gamersgate, for the most part. Born of blood from impulse will not let murder of crows be installed on it[/quote] This is totally not really "on topic", but have you tried modifying modifying the registry so that Impulse ends up putting Born of Blood in its own directory (instead of on to

[quote who="Ynglaur" reply="5" id="2057999"]I think one of the keys to good UI design is not having minimal (or "just enough") information on the screen/in a window, but having all relevant information for a given process/workflow. Thus, the "town" viewer should have everything needed for managing a town at your fingertips. The "army" viewer should have everything for armies. GalCiv2's GUI is very good, but I think it fell down here in some areas. To manage a plan

I like the idea of research effort (for spells/tech/whatever) being somewhat uncertain, especially as the amount of user made content grows and you might not even know what all of the potential spells are/do, but I'm wary of it as well. I think my concern would be that you might get shafted with no way to recover (through no fault of your own), which could be especially annoying late game. What about an adjustment of the idea - you're researching "the next spell tier" i

[quote who="Jonny5446" reply="5" id="2051331"]Ooooooow nice Looks very different to the other screenshot where the town/city looked like one big castle; diversity is good [/quote] I don't think it's diversity; it's probably the "zoom out/zoom in" detail changes. When you're out on the cloth map, it's just a castle showing the location (and maybe relative size). Then you zoom in and see that :) And I'm with everyone else - no need for "early" disclaimers, I really like that ar

Oh I dunno about the fan; it's very large so it's probably running at a pretty low (and quiet) RPM. The rest I'm with you on :)

My personal thoughts are that it's more show piece than anything else. I don't think it offers anything that any decent case couldn't offer in terms of function, and it's more open to accidental damage of components and you can't put anything on top of it. In any case, I don't have anything against it, I just don't see it taking over from more practical designs. [Edit] Plus, have you seen the price? It's priced for high-end features, but it's definitely not a high-end case (be

The render definitely brings warcraft 3 very strongly to my mind, but I think it's because of the red roof and the white bone/tusk/whatever. Actually, I think if the corners were blunted and not bone-colored and maybe the roof a maroon or something (still red-ish, but not so close to the red from warcraft 3) then I wouldn't feel "warcraft 3 orc" so strongly. As Aesir Rising said, the quality looks great. Maybe if we had the Men aesthetics to compare it against side-by-side we'

[quote who="Zaisha" reply="10" id="2036953"]Sounds like a good idea to me. Get the game system working first, then add the bells and whistles. Sign me up! Heck, I'd still be playing Master of Magic if I was computer savvy enough to get it running on XP. Also, the Warlords series ROCKS! (especially Warlords 3, not so crazy about 4)[/quote] DosBOX is your friend :) I didn't have any problem firing it up in DosBOX when last I tried (couple of months ago), but then I got mildly

GHenrikG - thanks for mentioning Drakensang, totally going to be checking that out when it releases. I had never heard of it but it definitely sounds like it could be a very good game.

Awwwww, that's unfortunate ... guess I'll have to pick up AMoC and sort out the install. dreamer of pictures - Yeah, I noticed that when I was reinstalling through Impulse after a fresh OS install. Pre-Impulse they installed to two separate locations with their own disk paths, registry etc, but then post-Impulse it overwrote vanilla SotS. I asked about it, thinking it a bug, but it's apparently intetionally installed that way. Not a gigantic deal, unless you wanted to play van

A Murder of Crows adds another new race and a bunch of other new stuff, too. Sadly, Stardock doesn't have AMoC available via Impulse (SotS and SotS:BoB both are). I really wish they did, because I'd like to pick up A Murder of Crows but am not sure how the expansion would interact with the games installed via Impulse.

There's no auto-upgrade, if you get new weapons you need to design a new ship. You can, for a fee, upgrade existing ships I believe. I don't think I ever have, just using them for cannon fodder if they've become too outdated (or scrapping them to recover some of the material). There are a few upgrades that apply without rebuilds/redesigns, missile improvements and accuracy for mass drivers I think, but they are rare.

It still isn't a hard cap though, since it's a dynamic balance between how fast people are born and how fast people are dying. Changing healthcare, for instance, would mean a rebalance or you could end up growing (positive healthcare change) or shrinking (negative healthcare change). That's all I'm after, I haven't advocated no population management mechanisms, just not a flat "limit to x". I'd like options, letting them starve, providing monetary incentives (either to have kids or to

[quote who="Tamren" reply="6" id="2027061"]That doesn't account for how many missiles there are. There were points where I tried sending in ships armed with nothing but point defence. All of the platforms targetted one ship and it was quickly destroyed. There were so many missiles flying in that they got through because the point defence was busy recharging. I got bored of it pretty quickly though so I never took the time to integrate any advanced tactics.[/quote] Maybe it'

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="14" id="2027658"] Issuing an order or legistlate the number of children allowed per household isn't entirely uncommon, and very feasible. Getting them to breed on command, though, is another issue entirely (but even that can quite easily be regulated by managing the amount of child support, if any). Overall, stopping people from breeding isn't very hard. Just fine them into kingdom come if they get more than 1-2 child per pairing. Edit: And I'

My personal preference is for no direct "No more than X people" type of controls. People don't generally breed or not on demand and what you as a ruler do about that is an important aspect of 4X games. Do you let them die? Do you work to support them? Do you take advantage of them as cannon fodder, forced labor, something else? Now, I would not be opposed to being able to stratify society by mandate e.g. "Your family gets these lands" or whatever, which is effectively a way to distrib

[quote who="Tamren" reply="2" id="2025661"]Sword of the Stars can get extremely boring at times. Late in the game every single enemy planet will have a full complement of defensive platforms. Meaning that your fleet will just get HAMMERED by wave after wave of super long range undodgeable missiles. Your fleet will always start far away from the planet and the only ships that can survive the barrage are point defence ships and shield ships, both of which sacrifice so much offensive

I personally like both GalCiv2 and Sword of the Stars. They play very, very differently though. If you would like to control (or at least choose to control) your fleets in combat, Sword of the Stars is it. It's entirely possible to win a battle through better tactical control even with fewer or less technologically advanced ships, which i find a compelling reason to play. GalCiv2 has a much more rewarding diplomacy model, and more options than "kill everything to win." It's possible t