Bruce Hake

Reply to Dark Avatar--Short Positive Review in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

By the way, I had paragraph breaks when I wrote that. And I went back to Edit it and added DOUBLE paragraph breaks, but it still came out in a big block. ??

Dark Avatar--Short Positive Review in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I've been playing Galactic Civilizations since the OS/2 version in 1994. It's one of a very few games, including Civilization and MOO2, that I've gone back to time and again. Played the heck out of the original GalCiv2. Eventually got the DreadLords expansion and played that an awful lot too. But I got bogged down halfway through the DreadLords campaign and never finished it. Although I've come back to GalCiv2/DreadLords many times, and have probably played 50 games to the end, I final

Reply to Complaint about Patching Dark Avatar in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Thanks very much for these instant responses! None of these hit the nail on the head--but they led me to figuring it out. In particular, they led me to poke around with the Stardock settings, and I decided to go to Games and to register the game again from within Stardock. That worked. That was a little counterintuitive, because I had already gone to the trouble to register the game once, as prompted, when installing from the CD. And it is a big trouble for me to type in the 3

Complaint about Patching Dark Avatar in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I just bought the Gold Edition. It comes with Dark Avatar 1.5. For the life of me, I can't figure out how to get the 1.8 patch. I'm a programmer and have been playing computer games for more than 20 years. I love Stardock's games, but I swear they have the most unfriendly patching I've ever encountered. I always have troubles, and this time is the worst. The manual to Dark Avatar says you can get the patch by going to www.galciv2.c

Reply to Clogged Furball in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Nope, my battle is TEC vs. Vasari, so no Malice involved. I'm sure happy to see somebody checking this out! Please post what you think.

Reply to Move and attack orders randomly cancel in 1.04 in Technical Sins Forums

Sure you've got a saved game, plus a saved movie (replay) file. This game saves everything automatically.

Reply to The Battle of Gethsemane-Strange Indeed in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Apologies for posting this in three threads. This thread here really could have been simply appended to the Clogged Furball thread, but please forgive me, I was unreasonably exuberant to realize that *everything* is automatically recorded in this game and can be easily replayed, zipped, and shared. That's really very slick! ************** You can find my very interesting "clogged furball" situation on the following replay: http://rapidshare.com/files/107836397/Furball.

Reply to Clogged Furball in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Thanks, Annatar11! You're very helpful. You can find my very interesting "clogged furball" situation on the following replay: http://rapidshare.com/files/107836397/Furball.zip.html It's only about a 400K file. Watch what is happening on the planet Gethsemane and its neighbor (in the red Vasari solar system). Use 8X with everything revealed. The really interesting stuff starts after a few minutes. Watch what is happening with all the fleets at Gethsema

Reply to How to post replays? in Technical Sins Forums

Thanks much for all the help. Gosh I hate Windows. Even with all the specific help in this thread, it took me more than 20 minutes to find the darned replay folder! The file arrangement in XP and beyond is the most insane thing I ever encountered. I understand this is a fruit of the illegal and immoral effort to corner the browser market (and other markets) by completely smearing the boundary between OS and applications. Anyway, please forgive me if I post this in several places-- <

Reply to Clogged Furball in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

I'm the original poster in this thread. As I wrote today in a new thred entitled /General/The Battle of Gethsemane, I found the autoreplay for the clogged furball situation, and I think it's fascinating to watch. However, I don't know (1) how to find the autoreplay file on my harddrive, and (2) how to post it here. So far nobody's answered those questions in that thread, or in a short post on this I made in the /Technical forum. Please somebody let me know so I can post it. I'm really

How to post replays? in Technical Sins Forums

Where do I find autoreplay files on my harddrive? How do I post them here?

The Battle of Gethsemane-Strange Indeed in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

This is a follow-up to my thread from yesterday entitled "Clogged Furball." I've found that I do have an autoreplay of the entire sequence, called AutoRecord-04130008. Can someone please tell me (1) WHERE that is stored on my harddrive, and (2) HOW can I post it here. If I get that info, I'll post later today. I think people may be fascinated by this. I was intrigued to be able to watch it at high speed, from a different high-level perspective, in the replay. T

Reply to Ships With Minds of Their Own in Technical Sins Forums

Ironhandx, thanks for the link! Actually, I did get 1.04 from that link on this website. I wasn't sure if that was the "standalone" version mentioned above, because the download link on that page actually downloads from stardock.com (but not through funky "Stardock Central"). Anyway, I checked, and it turns out that I sorta can scroll the Empire Tree while paused in 1.04. Sorta. Sometimes it works fairly (but not very) smoothly. Sometimes it balks, which is why I had the impression it

Reply to The learning curve, in my opinion, is *punishing* =( in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Actually, for the record, you can make a map that has less than 7 planets per star. I've made several with 5 planets per star. I think it's possible to limit it to 3 planets per star if you don't add any "planet groups." The map builder is not the most obvious program I ever saw in my life, but it shows clearly what it's doing, and you can figure it out pretty fast if you just poke around.

Reply to Clogged Furball in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Ah pfui! I'm going to leave work two hours early so I can play around with this some more. Incidentally, of course I realize that all CPUs aren't equal. But if the box recommends 2.2 dual core, and you have 3.0 Intel dual core, it would be pretty tricky if that didn't work, eh? I certainly agree that the Hz rating of CPUs is about 99 percent crap. It's just a way they sell new computers. It's like "horsepower" on tractors (what is really important is the torque, not the nominal hp). Fo

Reply to Clogged Furball in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

In response to some of the latest comments, let me emphasize again, as I indicated in my posts above: in my game, there was no 10-AI struggle. It was a very simple map, 3 stars with 5 planets apiece, for a total of only 15 planets. And I had completely wiped out one AI, so it was just a 1 on 1 with a single Hard AI. It's been about 10 years since I did any C++ programming, so my memory is beyond rusty. What I meant by "database" was that I think the program may have some kind o

Reply to Clogged Furball in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

kaashar has an interesting theory. In my furball, the enemy was strewn in a long line to the SE, far away from the grav well, similar to the tail of a comet. It makes sense that it might have been trying to retreat, or undecided about that. Of course, that doesn't explain why a battle appeared to be raging, the display showed enemy strikecraft being killed and then replaced, but not a single ship on either side was killed despite enough firepower for World War 10,000. I think it's a dat

Reply to Ships With Minds of Their Own in Technical Sins Forums

Hmm. I did update off of Stardock, and my game says it's 1.04, and I certainly have the feeling that the AI is goosed up a bit from 1.03. I'm not sure where to find the standalone, but I'll figure it out. Thank you.

Reply to Hard to have an epic battle when the game freezes in Technical Sins Forums

But kjpwv, haven't you read the responses on my /General/Clogged Furball thread? It has been loudly stated that the problem is not the game but your lack of a computer that is lightyears beyond the recommended specs. He he. You need a computer with more acronyms!

Reply to Clogged Furball in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

UEF, yours may be bigger than mine, but you have a reading comprehension problem. As I said, the game's RECOMMENDED (that is, higher-level) spec is for a 2.2 dual core processor. I have a 3.0 dual core processor. The Pentium D is a dual core processor. So my processer is above the recommended specs. You don't know what you're talking about. I also showed that I have fully double the recommended RAM and the exact same recommended video card. So maybe my machine is not as "far beyond"

Reply to Ships With Minds of Their Own in Technical Sins Forums

By the way, for all my griping today, this is after a day where I played Sins all day, up to 3 a.m., thought about it all night while sleeping, and have been following this forum all day and ignoring my work. It's actually a little rare for a game to get under my skin like that.

Reply to Ships With Minds of Their Own in Technical Sins Forums

Annatar, I have 1.04 installed and apparently running fine, but the Empire Tree is not scrolling for me while the game is paused. I can minimize planets, etc., but I can't get to planets that are off the screen to the bottom. Hmm. I'll try again. Maybe there's a different way to move the scroll bar. Yep, pip boxes (a term I hadn't heard before) are introduced in one of the tutorials. They're the colored pips representing ships in the box right to the right of the Empire Tree planet ico

Reply to Ships With Minds of Their Own in Technical Sins Forums

I'm probably the only Sins player who doesn't like the Empire Tree. I wish I could minimize it entirely. I mainly don't like the fact that you can't scroll it while paused, which is an annoyance I keep running into over and over. I also hate the way the pip boxes dominate the screen when there are large fleets. In general, I find it awkward to rearrange fleets in this game. I dread the thought of having to split a large fleet in half. I've experimented with that quite a bit, and I ju

Reply to Clogged Furball in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Napalm, It's not unusual for a game to eventually patch itself into a need for higher specs. But good grief. This game just came out a few weeks ago! I have been running with all graphics set at their highest level. I think I'll experiment tonight by trying to recreate that big battle, moving the graphics settings all down several notches. But I don't believe it is a graphics problem. I mainly play zoomed way out, monitoring battles using the fleet displays on the sides of th

Reply to Clogged Furball in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

I'd say that sets some kind of record for simultaneous missing the point and condescension.