Psiborg

Reply to Why squares instead of hexes? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

My apologies b0rsuk if I did not paraphrase you well. I was just trying to quickly sum up the general issue where movement costs would be different depending whether you are moving orthogonally or diagonally, without getting into the specifics. I do realize that you were suggesting representing these different costs as best fit integers (7 and 5) rather than as floating points values (sqrt(2) and 1) to ease certain calculations. But, regardless of the numeri

Reply to Why squares instead of hexes? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Interesting replies. I assumed that the octagon comment was made in jest as they obviously don't tesselate. In 2D they are really just squares with the corners cut off but function identically. B0rsuk's comment about keeping a square grid but calculating movement based on real distance (e.g. moving on a diagonal costs sqrt(2) per square) is interesting but I agree with him that in a grid-based game this is too confusing for players. In a grid game we all assume 1 g

Why squares instead of hexes? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

This is really a question for Brad I suspect as it's tied most closely to the AI. Why does Elemental (and GalCiv for that matter) uses a square grid rather than a hex grid? Hexes seem to make a lot more sense as they approximate distance more consistently. Square grids lead to unequal movement speed as you effectively move faster along a diagonal than you do vertically or horizontally. In addition to inequities of movement, there is also the visual component. R

Reply to Twilight Feedback! Let us have it! in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]If you want my honest feedback, Twilight should've been pushed back two months. Numerous bugs that were never fixed from the beta that have been around for months, brand new game-stopping ones that showed up in the last couple weeks in that 'big crunch'...[/quote] I agree. Stardock has the luxury of self-publishing and are therefore not at the mercy of another company's marketing department. GC2 also doesn't have any (current) direct competitors (Sins would be the close

Reply to Bugs in Latest Version in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Q. Also, I'm not sure how to use a custom portrait/logo ... I tried putting a custom JPEG in the ...\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor\Gfx dir but that didn't seem to do the trick. A. You have to convert the image to PNG.[/quote] Ah... PNG for transparancy - of course. Should have thought of that. Tnx! Works fine now.

Reply to Bugs in Latest Version in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

The "Create Custom Ship Style" on the Customize your Civilization page is greyed out. I'd like to be able to do this as I play custom civs all the time. Also, another problem I'm having is that the favourite ship parts are storing the correct parts. Seems like an internal index number is off or something. Also, I'm not sure how to create/use a custom portrait/logo. Is there a thread or help somewhere that will point out how to do this? I tried putting a custom JPEG in the .

Reply to Epic Games Focusing on Consoles in Game News Stardock Forums

What seems to be often left out of the discussion is that PC Gamers want PC 'style' games - not console ports. Console games have a different feel than PC games and are (in general) more "arcade-like" while (good) PC games tend to be more "in depth". Knowing that a game was designed for a console and it's gamepad and then ported to the PC is a big turn off for me. I know that developers are motivated by money and that consoles sell well. I get that. But, I also get the feeling that

There and Back Again in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I'd like to see a new rally point type added to the existing Normal, Fleet and Auto Attack: Forward . All it would do is simply assign another existing rally point to the autopilot of any ship sent to it. That's it. No special patrol/attack logic or anything of that sort required - just a simple redirect. With this simple mechanism we could implement basic patrols (have two or more waypoints forward to each other) or just define more specific/controlled paths in general. It w

Reply to Speed Bumps and School Zones in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I still hope that the ideas for gravity wells and nebulae and considered by the devs. But, upon further reflection I can see that mechanisms like these are not realistic for DA at this point. I'll chalk it up to a brain-fart and leave it at that. DA is in beta, not pre-alpha. Nonetheless, I really like the idea of more varied space terrain So, that said, my $0.02 would also be: <tabl

Reply to Speed Bumps and School Zones in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

The second part of my post was perhaps not as clear as the first... My additional space-terrain ideas are not meant as an *alternative* but rather an *addition* to speed reduction. I was hoping the new *max* speed might stay higher than 15-18 (say 22-25 maybe?). I'm aware that, due to the exponential nature of the problem, a speed of 22 may be effectively just as impossible to deal with as 80+. But only Brad would know that for sure. G.W. you are right in that the sp

Speed Bumps and School Zones in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

There has been quite a kerfuffle regarding speed issues now that there has been an indication that some form wing-clipping is forthcoming. For those that may have missed the particular post: AI computations increase exponentially as the number of possible moves increases. Net result? Super-fast ships are not something the current AI has been designed to deal with and can unbalance the game. Proposed solutions to this involve reducing ship speed in one way or another. From the posts

Reply to Gameplay Report Card for Beta 1A in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Whoa!!! Holy eyesight charts Batman!!! Sorry about the MEGA FONT. Perhaps a moderator could help me with that as there is no EDIT POST option I can see. Didn't mean to shout

Gameplay Report Card for Beta 1A in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

So far I've played two games (large & gigantic) with the Dark Avatar beta 1a and I really like what I see! The game feels not only fresh again but overall just more interesting. I had to stop both due to technical issues and I've already submitted bug reports and suggestions via email. Rather than repeat those reports here, I thought I post some of my general feelings about the gameplay (not UI or technical) additions and see what everybody else thinks too. These thoughts acknowledge t

Reply to AI surrenders seem out of whack in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

This just happened to me too. But it was the Altarians who surrendered to the Drengin. No evil of course but the point is that they were friendly with 3 other civs including me and I also has economic & research treaties with them. Normally, they would have surrendered to one of us. I'm sure it's all part of the AI tweaking but it's not behaving as we have come to expect in previous versions.

Reply to What's the sensor range of a planet? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

The fact that planets don't have a sensor range of 15 like ships/starbases when you have the Eyes of the Universe used to really bug me. The reason some of your planets probably seem to have a range of 15 is because you have ships in orbit. Regardless, the planet itself has only short range. However, it is what it is. FWIW, I rationalized this by thinking that only in orbit modules have the ability to sense that far. I think of it like the Hubble telescope. There is too much atmosp

Reply to Rebalancing costs for Dark Avatar in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Bravo. These sound like very good design decisions to me. Of course, the ability to balance them and get them feeling "right" will be critical but I'm sure that's just a matter of time/tweaking. Glad to see the game balance priorities heading in this direction!

Reply to Quality vs. Quantity: Beware feature creep! in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Ship design and upgrading is easy. Just obsolete designs that you know you won't use anymore. There's a big button that says "OBSOLETE." Try it. Managing ships is not as easy as it should be. Let's take an upgrade example: Say I have 35+ fighters that I want to upgrade to a killer new design. I select a single fighter to upgrade then c

Reply to Objectdock Systray Problem in ObjectDock WinCustomize Forums

The common solution is to download Stardock Central https://www.stardock.com/products/sdcentral/ After installing, open the app and go to Tools > Settings > General > check "Enable MCP notification area support" > OK. Or, you can add a shortcut to SDMCP.exe to your startup folder. SDMCP.exe can usually be found in "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Stardock" You

Reply to Systray Revisited in ObjectDock WinCustomize Forums

FWIW, I'm having the exact same problem. I did a search on the forums about it (still sifting through the results and interestingly, this systray problem (and variations of it) seem to affect many Stardock products. I'm guesssing this means they may share a common .DLL or something but haven't dug that far yet. There are 5+ pages of posts dating back to 2004! There is clearly an issue here and one that seems to have evaded a fix for a long time. I'll post more if/when I learn more.

Reply to Quality vs. Quantity: Beware feature creep! in Dark Avatar Stardock Forums

Whats UI? It's the UI in GUI! (User Interface)

Quality vs. Quantity: Beware feature creep! in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

With all extras being added to GC2:Dark Avatar, my comment is to be very careful about feature creep and bloat. GalCiv2 is without a doubt a fantastic game. Don't break it by enhancing it, so to speak. Before the obvious rebuttals to that comment come, please understand: I want cool new features too! I just think care needs to be taken to refine what is there before taking on too many new things. The UI of a strategy game is critical! As these games are complex by nature, without

Reply to Tech tree improvements? in Game Talk Stardock Forums

There have been some very good suggestions here about improving the tech tree. For me, this is also the biggest stumbling block of the game. Especially for the beginner as you end up researching mainly because something sounds cool but you don't actually have a concrete idea what it does. Tech tree reseach is critical to whatever strategy you decide to play. And it takes so long to reseach the techs that the "trial and error" method required to learn what the actual items and bonus

Reply to Galactic Civilizations II, Copy Protection, and Piracy in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

I have not read the entire current list 145 posts but I imagine that they all echo the same sentiment of approval and support. Regardless, I think it's important to add my voice to the crowd because attitudes such as that of Stardock towards (or rather against) hardware copy protection needs to be applauded!!! Treating paying customers well and not as potential criminals DOES help your sales and offset piracy! However, the real proof is in the pudding. While supporting comments are