Martin Michalak

Reply to It is time for your destruction to begin in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Something I haven't seen other people mention.. and it might be slightly getting ahead of things, but.. if you do come up with an excellent AI, keep a little bit of randomness. Don't always use the optimal tactic. Often, a little bit of unpredictability is a better tactical advantage than taking the obviously best path. You don't want your players to think that they've figured out all your AI's moves and use that knowledge to manipulate it into favorable tactical sce

Reply to Twilight 1.96 Change Log in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

An issue I had noticed while playing that I didn't see fixed was trade routes not disppearing when destroyed. That is to say, if you destroy enough trade ships, a route will stop working, but the track for the route will continue to be displayed until you reload the gme.

Reply to Black screen on starting game in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

There it is! I was looking everywhere in the game directory for a config file. But it was in My Documents! Thanks guys.. that fixed the problem.

Reply to Black screen on starting game in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

After seeing that debug file, I also went in to dxdiag and tested Direct3D acceleration. The tests for Direct3D 7,8, and 9 were all successful.

Reply to Black screen on starting game in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Debug Message: Version v1.5 last updated on: Thu Jan 11 13:39:19 2007 Debug Message: GalCiv2 is activated. Debug Message: Checking DX Version. Debug Message: *********DXDiag info follows.********* System Info Time: 4/13/2007, 12:32:05 DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) Machine Name: D1CPYCC1 Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_qfe.070227-2300) Languages: English (Regional Setting: English)<b

Black screen on starting game in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

When I run the game, the screen goes blank. No music, no error. Just blackness. I can quit back to the desktop using crtl-alt-del. I tried updating my graphics drivers. The game worked fine yesterday, and it is the only software that is having a problem. Also, when I reinstalled the game using the online download, it installed it to a different directory. Who do I set the install directory?

Identified something that makes 4X games fun/tedious in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I think I've managed to put a finger on a feature of 4X that can make them fun or make them tedious: When dealing with adding features which give the player greater depth of control over his/her empire, it seems best to implement this added control in a design once-use many paradigm. Example: Letting players design a new model of ship from a variety of components, and then produce a large number of ships of this model - very cool and ver