CraigHB

Reply to Time Time Time. See what has become of me. in Elemental Dev Journals Stardock Forums

One of the big drawbacks of a "time-bank" or turn rate is the possiblity of things happening while you are not online. Even when you're out of turns, you have a tendency to sit online just to see if someone is going to take all your stuff. This was one of the reasons I quit playing the game I mentioned before. You'd spend weeks or months playing, only to sign on one day and find you're dead. Maybe you could have done something to defend yourself if you had be

Reply to Time Time Time. See what has become of me. in Elemental Dev Journals Stardock Forums

I used to heavily play an online turn based game some time ago. The game gave turns per time period. You could sign on every time a new turn was awarded or let them pile up for a while and play them all at once. The game host could set the turn rate so a casual game would have a lower number and a more hardcore game would have a higher number. My feeling is that taking turns sequentally in a public arena would n

Reply to Repaired a laptop only to find another issue... The cause of the problem. in Personal Computing Stardock Forums

Laptops are all different. My laptop has the fan on the card so I assumed incorrectly. Either way, I'd replace both the fan and card. At least try to find a fan with a dual ball or other high duty bearing. Those crappy little fans almost always use sleve bearings that don't last very long.

Reply to Repaired a laptop only to find another issue... The cause of the problem. in Personal Computing Stardock Forums

Lord how I hate those little cheapass cooling fans. I found a nice fanless video card for my wife's computer and it works well for the games she plays, has a giant heat sink, but that's not a problem since the box has no other peripheral cards. My computer has a big card with a good fan so that's not a problem. But, yea, I go out of my way to avoid those kinds of fans, but with a laptop, it's not much of an option. I'd go ahead and replace the card. I had

Reply to HOTTEST JANUARY EVER in Everything Else Stardock Forums

Been using Impulse a lot to get access to new games, so that's a good entry point for me now. Some of the GC2 forums are shared, but not all of them. Yea, that explains it, people are pretty left wing for the most part at the GC2 forum so we rarely had debates like this and most of the gamers on Impulse forums are also pretty left wing. That surprises me that the off-topic forum has such wide access. My wife hates Ayn Rand with a passion. Sometimes I

Reply to HOTTEST JANUARY EVER in Everything Else Stardock Forums

[quote who="Mumblefratz" reply="45" id="2552026"] [/quote] Oh, Hi Mumblefratz, been a while since I've seen you on the forums. I'm using the Impulse forums now. Is that where you're coming in?

Reply to HOTTEST JANUARY EVER in Everything Else Stardock Forums

[quote]The ice caps are the earth's temperature regulators. The earth warms, the ice caps absorb it and melt a little. The earth cools, the ice caps absorb it and advance a little. But the 32 degrees remains 32 degrees. But once those ice caps are gone, that lifts the lid on the global temperature something serious; probably to the point of making the planet uninhabitable, as far as I'm concerned. [/quote] Not to mention the rise in sea level that would result in the loss of many coas

Reply to Are you worried about the sudden popularity drop of PC games? in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

[quote]And the reason you're seeing fewer PC games on shelves is the explosion in digital distribution. As bandwidth becomes cheaper and physical distribution becomes more expensive, digital distribution makes more and more economic sense.[/quote] That would be me my feeling as well. B&M retailers are abandonding PC games, which is not problem for me since I use digital distribution primarily. Also, publishers are not releasing games in boxed retail versions like they

Reply to HOTTEST JANUARY EVER in Everything Else Stardock Forums

[quote]And many scientists do not believe the AGW hype. You just dont read enough.[/quote] That well may be true. In any case, time will tell. Certainly it's a bad thing to dump CO2 into the atmosphere without any regard for its environmental impacts. Is there anyone that would say this is not a bad thing?

Reply to GamePro DRM Analysis, Interview with Brad Wardell in Elemental News Stardock Forums

Interesting read, some comments; How do publishers really know how many illegit copies of a game were actually downloaded and used. Even if they could obtain a reasonable estimate, how can they have any idea of how many downloads actually resulted in lost sales. All of it is pure speculation. I think piracy is a paranoid obsession for the guys is suits managing the bills. I would venture to say that an extremely

Reply to HOTTEST JANUARY EVER in Everything Else Stardock Forums

Northern Europe is climatized by the Gulfstream. Otherwise, it would have the same weather as Siberia. Melting ice slows down the Gulfstream which casues unstable weather in areas affected by it. So even if the Northern hemisphere saw the warmest January on record, England could see historically colder temps. I don't think there are any skeptics in the scientific community anymore, but I think the public won't be convinced there's a problem

Reply to Are consoles d0med? in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

If all consoles are going to motion controls that would create more disparity between the two making PC games more of a niche market. That could be good or bad, probably good. I would rather see PC games developed as PC games rather than ports of console games. So many console games are crap and it would be good to see those filtered out of the PC market. I play games on PC only for various reasons. I really like road racing games as well, but more the arcade s

Reply to The true face of DRM in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

I much prefer digital distribution over the old buy-it-on-CD retail method. It's just so much more convenient. As discussed already, there is a trade off, but I think it's worth it. The DRM situation for digital distribution can be a real problem and it's a total case of buyer beware, i.e. Assassins Creed II. It goes too far when it requires you to log in and/or be logged in to play or has activation limits. That's just cruel

Reply to Steam Vs. Impulse and Thrid-Party Sellers in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

To be fair to Steam, you can run it in offline mode which (I believe) removes the requirement to connect to Valve servers. However, last time I used Steam, you couldn't put it offline mode without connecting first. So, you're out of luck trying to switch when the servers are down. Overall, I feel Steam is just poorly designed in so many ways. Impulse has none of those issues. Though, Impulse isn't perfect either. It has has a f

Reply to ImpulseTV launches in Personal Computing Stardock Forums

I scored some major brownie points with my wife by putting Kitten Sanctuary on her PC. She simply loves that game. Best 10 bucks I've spent in a long time.

Reply to Steam Vs. Impulse and Thrid-Party Sellers in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

I'd use Impulse for a couple reasons. I like the client better, it doens't act as a full time front-end for the games it supports. Also, I like Stardock better as a company and I would support them by using their store. They're more customer oriented than anyone else out there and they actually respond to support requests. I abandoned Steam for various reasons, one mentioned already, but from what I've read, it may be more reliable than Impulse so that might be a

Reply to Fallout 3, my Review in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

I tried Fallout 2, but gave up on it after a while. The graphics and mechanics were outstanding, but it seemed like too much pointless wandering without a whole lot happening. I much prefer the directed approach to Mass Effect 1 & 2, for example. You never have to travel for long periods or waste time trying to find things. Now that's a game that rates very high for me, super fun to play and great story. It soun

Reply to ImpulseTV launches in Personal Computing Stardock Forums

Cool, I was thinking of buying Kitten Sanctuary for my wife, but I'm not sure if she'll like it. I'll check out the bit on it.

Reply to Are consoles d0med? in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

[quote]Mass Effect 1, 2 = vastly better on console[/quote] ME1 might have been better on console because the controls weren't as well optimized for PC, but ME2 works perfectly on a PC. You can bind the controls however you like so I have no complaints at all with that aspect. I don't see the advantage.

Reply to The Age Old Debate in Everything Else Stardock Forums

Only drink diet soda, but it would be Pepsi for me. Surprising difference between them for me. Coke out of proper soda fountain is pretty good though.

Reply to Pretty pleased about Steam in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

Hehe, my wife likes Mahjongg and Solotaire. No one's going to make any money off her. I'd like to comment on Impulse versus Steam. I'm not interested in using Steam for various reasons. Impulse is my exclusive game connection. I hope for nothing but continued growth. I like Impulse GOO much-much better than any other form of DRM. It's simple, compact, and unobtrusive. I hope that Stardock gets enough sales horsepower behind it to fund more big

Reply to Mass Effect 2: Questions in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

I'm playing ME to work up to ME2 as well. I'm really enjoying ME. I've never been interested in traditional RPG's because I don't really go for the fantasy theme. I really like the sci-fi theme of this one. It's just a great game, too bad Bioware had to go to EA to publish it.

Reply to Please help... in Twilight of the Arnor Stardock Forums

Delete prefs.ini in the ./My Games/GC2TwilightArnor directory. That will reset all of the game settings. The uninstall does not remove that directory or any of the files in it. That's why it still didn't work after you reloaded it.

Reply to Mass.....Effect........2.....OMFG!! in Everything Else Stardock Forums

[quote] I seem to be finding quite a bit of replayability due to the game's combat mechanics which are more FPS-like than standard RPG[/quote] I'm still playing ME1, but Ill be getting to ME2 soon. I assume ME2 is similar. In any case, that's what I'm finding so interesting about this game, it combines aspects from different genres in a way I haven't seen before. It's very original and I'm enjoying the emphasis on story.

Reply to Mass.....Effect........2.....OMFG!! in Everything Else Stardock Forums

I picked up ME and ME2 yesterday. I read in a number of places that ME2 follows the story line of ME and you'll get the most out of it if you play ME first. So, that's what I'm doing. If ME is any indication of what I can expect in ME2, then I'm really looking forward to it. This a great game. I'm really picky about comptuer games and I'm very happy with this one so far. Glad I went for it.