what I like in 4Z

3) simple - masochistic difficulty level display on the race screen
4) the "leave UP" button on the United Planets screen
5) the new animations for first time events

i love the new sliders on trade and the planetary settlement movie is superb

The new sounds with the video (1st starbase, 1st freighter) sounds & looks great! The new opening video, with the colony ships leaving earth, is very good. Congrats!

Will you have an option (like in Diablo 2) to manually replay these videos? I

The new opening video, with the colony ships leaving earth, is very good.


Ted - where does this happen?

s

In the very beginning, when you colonize your first planet.

Mine had a blank insert. No video.

Mine too, but I haven''t downloaded the 57MB of extra multimedia stuff that just went up either.

i lke the ai asking to trade tech.

The new planet views look good enough for wallpaper!

Yeah, without the multimedia download you'll be stuck with just the text to read during some of the new "first time events". Hopefully, if you're connection speed is big enough, you'll get a chance to DL the multimedia portion of GC, cause the new scenes really do bring an extra 'spark' to the game.

If not, they'll be available on the CD version when the game is released.

ps. I'm glad you guys are enjoying all the little tweaks to the game. Every bit of polish helps.

I have downloaded the multimedia and I still get a blank screen. I can hear the sounds it's supposed to make, but no movie. Any ideas why?

Me too. I DID download the MM. Blank screens and chopped up sounds (with the main screen music playing just fine in the background).

Hey Gang,

What version do you have? There were two builds released the other day (0.9014 and 0.9017) and not only did the movies not seem to play right for me on 0.9014, unless I unistalled first, my Drengin.net account didn't seem to catch that there was a 0.9017 to update to from the 0.9014.

Lucky_Jack

i wiped out everything, did a full install and it's all there. Have you tried that?

This latest build didn't crash yet, and I was been playing it for about 6 houres
I did however see that exp level 5 after Master in ships shows 'no strings available' yet it didn't crash heh.

Ah and I like the movies

I have not tried a complete scratch and rebuild, so I guess that is what I must do. And I am on a D/U. Sigh.

Maybe it also has something to do with the fact me and Lucky Jack are running the most dispised OS of all... Windows ME! Oh the humanity...

The opening sequence is really good. Birds chipping and other animal noises over my from 4 speakers, the sub-woofer plays the sounds of the 4 colony ships' engines, vibrating my desks and floor as they prepare fly off.

I just fired the first volly from the Dreadnoughts. Not sure if I like the new sound. The old sound made my floor vibrate - kaboom!

Will the release game offer 5.1 sound?

Hey Gang,

My face is red.

While I can see the movies at home on my Win XP system with 0.9017, my Win ME system here (yeah, Win Me ) at work DOES NOT show many of these .BIK files in the game. To add insult to injury, these .BIK files play fine on my work system by themselves, just not in the game. Also, if not already clear, many of these .BIK files play fine like the tech and diplomacy ones, its just the cut scenes, at this point, that won't play. Perhaps it has something to do with resizing since, when playing the films straight its clear that the cut scenes are enlarged from their default size.

Oh, one more thing, does anybody else have that initial Main Menu Openning play really choppily for them? While, again, it plays smooth as glass on my Home XP, it plays very rough here on my work system.

The opening music plays smoothly here, but the effect specifically for the opening of the menu panel is choppy (without affecting the music, oddly enough).

Lucky Jack, if you havn't reinstalled yet, don't bother. I've just done a full reinstall and it hasn't helped at all. Still only hear the choppy cut-scene sound but no video.

I have no problems with any of the movies. Sound and video plays great. I use a Santa Cruz sound card and a NVIDIA Geforce 3 video. I can't play the BIK files on my machine but would like to view them again. Frogman, put a button on main menu so I can view all these scenes again. the freighter and constructor really sound good.

Hey Gang,

My works system is an Athlon 1100, 256M RAM, Geforce 2 Ultra (latest drivers), SB Live!, Win ME, and Direct X 8.1.

Oh, doh, if not already clear this is the system that will not play the cut scenes and a very choppy opening menu WHILE still able to play most other in game .BIK files and all of them outside of the game.

what do you use to play the .BIK files?