Slashdot Mirror
Galactic Civilizations Coming Soon
dragonsister writes "Like Master of Orion 3, Galactic Civilizations is a turn-based strategy game involving colonizing and dominating the galaxy - militarily, diplomatically, or economically. Unlike MOO3, GalCiv will (release date March 26th) come without copy-protection; Stardock are addressing the piracy issue by providing a bonus pack and further downloads to users providing a CD key. This 'rewarding the honest' approach is precisely what Slashdotters have asked for ." I've been playing a lot of MOO3, which I love, but this is looking great as well. Ah, the bounty of games.
GalCiv may also be purchased via a subscription to Drengin.net, which also supplies a variety of 'smaller' games which would not sell so well in the normal market.
I have no connection to anyone producing Galactic Civilizations. I'm planning to buy the game because I've been impressed by:
- The developer's interaction with fans, at least on the newsgroup comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic
- The level of beta-testing employed
- The comments from the public beta-testers
- The developer's budget of a year of additional development, including AI improvements (Stardock has a reputation for good game AI anyway!)
A game company that understands the key is not to cause inconvience to users but to commit to ensuring theres a better reason for buying the game "because otherwise you're a bad boy". I'll be buying it!!
But like MOO3, it doesn't run on linux. Or did this change?
*sigh*
1) spend millions making a game
2) sell it without any copy protection
3) ???
4) profit !!
Who is this Karma guy and why is he bad ??
So would I be correct in saying that if you buy the game, you get every bit of 'expansion pack' style material that comes out in the following year of development?
That's sure to be a success, although I can only think of one expansion pack I didn't buy for a Blizzard game (they're good at releasing expansions that cost half the same as the original game).
Still, I'm contemplating either MOO3 or GalCiv as I don't have loads of time to spend playing games these days.
Quick poll, which one do you think is better? I'm leaning towards GalCiv as I usually like playing strategy games single player. Multiplayer is much better in fast pace eg. FPS.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
I couldnt tell from the website, does anybody know if this game allowd you to design your own ships (like the original Pax Imperia, maybe?)? That's all I want, a space 4x with decent ship designing, not junk like Moo2/3, Pax 2.
...this is the same company that used to make games for OS/2. I remember trying out a demo of GalCiv on OS/2 back in '96 or so. IIRC it was a quite nice game. I seem to remember that they were making some kind of adventure game as well (or was it an RPG?). Whatever happened to that one? What was the game called?
This is not a sig.
Can I write a game and get free advertisement on Slashdot?
Please!
Wait. I already participate in a game that has a great user / developer relationship. It is a MUD called Genesis and it has been around since 1994. Much better game than any you can buy and there is no worry about copy protection since it is a free game.cp -R
I hate to say it, but some form of copyright is good. Do you think the average joe bloggs in the street gives a hoot about copyright if they can get around it. I personally hate to hear that the game I just forked $90AUD for is being played by a mate who just ripped it off someone else. Where then is the economical reason to purchase the game yourself?
Copyright should only be there to make it hard for most people to burn, not everyone. People should still always be able to back up their data to CD. It is only when copy right goes that step beyond reasonable protection that I complain. Like the CD I purchased the other day that wont play in my computer.
We all hate copyright because we all know that at some point in our lives we have breached it. I know I am craptacular at agruments but all I want is the prices to come down to reasonable levels.
Oh hang on, I hear you talking about the no-copyright utopia. Well sorry it aint going to happen. Ever. Look at the frickin trends that all the large companies are moving towards. Soon we will have to call up an activation center to play our favourite CDs.
(BTW, I just paid for MOO3 and it is an okay game. I realise it is strategy, but c'mon, why cant i up the res a little).
For those who like space strategy games, and colonization etc, I would suggest Imperium Galactica. It is my favorite space strategy game :) And it's real time, not turn based.
:)
http://imperiumgalactica.com/
About this game outlined in the topic, I think it's a mere advertisement but we'll see if this game is good anyway
Khalid
"What you 'seek' is what you get!"
This is a good move, allows you to burn backups of your CD's. For an example, Battlefield 1942 came out in the uk (maybe elsewhere) with CD's that were poorly manufactured and so have been cracking whilst in the drive etc. EA charge 7.50 UKP to replace each disc and as there are two that's an additional 15 UKP for the game on top of retail price. Not a good situation at all. Oh before you ask the copy protection on the CD's is a nightmare to get around.
The game comes with a CD key and this can be used to prevent online play which is what bf1942 is all about, ok so that doesn't prevent the warez kiddies from playing the game in single player which is like a training ground for multi player, so the CD key could have been the main form of protection for this game. Grrr
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
... I mean, business 101 says "our directive is to provide services that cover needs".
It's about time for commercial entities to wake up from their arrogant, profit-oriented view of running a business and observe what's going on in the global society, especially on the IT industry.
The reactions though, will determine if that is indeed a good move... I hope ppl will support their model.
Manos
This sig will be right back
Since you love MoO3, could you share the secret of your enjoyment please? So far I've found it an average game.
...because MOO3 has crashed and burned :(
:D
The AI doesn't fight back, the screen resolution is stuck at 800x600, and the enemic combat graphics are shareware quality at best.
On a positive note, it has been just over ONE week since release and there is already a thriving group of modders who are dedicated to making this a worthy successor to the moo legacy. Everything from interface skins, AI mods, and additional features are being created.
There is also a new and exciting open source MOO in the works! They are currently looking for talented and dedicated 4x gamers to sign up, check it out here,
http://www.kgasj.net/ap/
Happy MOOing!
MOO3 will run in Linux almost perfectly with WineX. Other than needing to change the cursor to 'system' in the options panel, the game works almost flawlessly for me.
Of course, WineX isn't free, ($5/month gives you binaries and voting rights to what should be worked on next), but I think it's worth it. There's also a bit a movement to get Transgaming to concentrate more on getting older classic games running in Linux, and for that hope alone, I'm behind TG.
I game, therefore I am...
I am curious to see if they really solved the critical mass problem found in strategic games as well as they claim here.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
What is there to stop people from distributing the bonus downloads from Stardock via the same methods pirates will use for copies of the game?
This comment was generated by a Squadron of Ultra Ninjas
On another related issue, I am hoping that the "Internet distribution business model" starts showing a more vibrant show of support soon. The ability to save money by taking out the middleman is just about always wanted. Add to that the possibility of increasing quality and diversity of games by reducing the groupthink draconian measures from the publisher. Every little bit helps I suppose.
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
too bad there's something fucked up in their apache config, and you're gonna lose a third of your potential views.
Yep.. atleast I'm not the only one. By my count I was supposed to have contacted the administrator.. 14 times.
I got logged out now and I forgot my password :((... I was always logged on onto /. :(
check telnet newman.hn.org 2020 for a better game, from the late 70's!
I bought MoO3, and played it for 30+ hours, desperately seeking some kind of enjoyment. I never found any. I wound up returning my copy for Freelancer. I've been watching GalCiv for a little while now, and it actually looks halfway decent. I think I may need to pick up a copy. This time around, however, I'll wait and see what some of the players are saying before I pick it up.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Yes and that $5 is worth it. They have a good buissness model too, though I haven't seen one major company work with TG because of it. Without TG I don't think I would be using Linux all that much, I only use Windows now for those games which won't run in WineX.
I've been a Stardock follower for quite a while now. See, I tried out some of their software quite a while back, and I found a rather nasty bug in their window skinning product, WindowBlinds. So I decided to go report it.
:-)
;-). They go the extra mile to help - almost every member of the company is available on IRC, from the CEO downwards. They have a dedicated community on the Stardock newsgroups and over at WinCustomize, who helped them transition from OS/2 to Windows - people bought Object Desktop subscriptions a year before it was officially out, because they trusted Stardock to deliver.
;-)
Most companies would simply have acknowledged the bug, maybe offering a simple thank-you. Their response was to give me a registered copy of the software and encourage me to submit more bugs.
(disclaimer: this approach may not work for everyone
Stardock are good. They don't mess their customers around - they might not always do what some of them want, but hey, that's true of any company, and at least they explain why
Heck, they even had a positive cashflow throughout the dot-com era, because they didn't rely on stupid business plans and massive investment. Just on listening to their customers, making a good product and shipping it.
GalCiv is one of those products. It's got a solid AI, and more gameplay than you can shake a stick at. And the price is right. So go get it now.
And no, I don't get paid for this.
If anyone knows...Brad from Stardock? Is he still at the helm? Speak!
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
It sounds like an extension of Alpha Centauri's "Pact of Submission". That worked rather well, though you really had to virtually exterminate a player before they'd offer one.
If the algorithm to determine when to offer such a pact is more sophisticated, it might just work as advertised.
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
Yes, it does look like that, loadbalancing on layer 4 would do that. But one could enable server health check on the application layer and would cause the server to be marked offline if a specified page returned an error. :)
But we all know that how things should work in theory, does not always match the real world. It always gets more complicated.
my sig
Yeah, it seems we are being slashdotted or something...
That said, I would never start large scale piracy of software I've purchased (such as by placing it on a p2p network or similar), but iI have considerably laxer standards about sharing it with my friends for a single shot multiplayer game.
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
I heard recently /. has a million users. How many do you suppose emailed pater? How much space do you suppose is on the filesystem where pater's mailbox lives?
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Most of the site has been inaccessible to me since about 3:45 ET. The outage, attack, or whatever it is, is at least 4 hours old now.
It's a Murphy thing, obviously. Yesterday, Taco and Crew pitched for more paid subscribers; now this. Oh, well; keep a sense of humor...
...another game to indoctrinate imperialism into the heads of unsuspecting young geeks.
I played this game when it came out for OS/2 - for those who don't know, Stardock started out as a strictly OS/2 shop- and I was surprised at how bad it was, given the accolades it was receiving, and how it seems to always top certain game lists. It was, to be as charitable as possible, a weak ripoff of Civilization, set in space.
The only theory I could come up with was that as one of the only native OS/2 games on the market, all the OS/2 fanatics/chauvinists had to buy it and had to convince themselves it was a good game to maintain internal consistency. It wasn't a good game.
Am I going to buy this game because it isn't copy-protected ? Nope. I might buy the game if people whose opinions I trust say it is a good game. If I happen to feel strongly about copy-protection, maybe I would restrict myself to good games that happen to fit with my philosophy.
"This 'rewarding the honest' approach is precisely what Slashdotters have asked for."
This works. It's the reason I bought the Sims even though I had already "obtained" a copy to try it.
Although I still had to crack the legitimate copy after the over zealous protection refused to recognise the cd-rom drive on my laptop.
I remember playing GalCiv way back in the OS/2 days. It was a pretty cool game.
But this is 2003 -- are they going to come out with a Linux version?
If not, then why do I care? Should I have to go out and buy Windows XP to play a game? (Sorry, I can't run Windows for legal/ethical reasons.) Should I have to dumb down my Linux box by buying a commercial WINE variant that seems little more than a big kludge?
It's got to be native Linux binaries or nothing...
GalCiv has such a bright AI that at most difficulty levels, not only doesn't it cheat, but it is defavorised against the human player - for example, if I understand well, it gets less money.
This has been made possible by the use of a multithreaded AI. To wit, whereas most turn-based games did 'think' only during a short lapse of time between the human's turns, GalCiv thinks continuously while the human is playing. So that allows for a much longer computation time.
GalCiv has already been used on Tom's Hardware to test the hyperthreading capacity of the new Pentium4 3GHz.
Moreover, there's a stuff called the 'Metaverse'. In short : after you end a game, you can automatically upload some crucial game data (your score, elements of your strategy...) to a central server which then deduces improvements to the game's AI. Then I guess you end up with a game which plays better.
The guys from the GalCiv team say it has already been working with the betatesters's games and has very significantly improved the game's AI.
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
What does this say about our society? It is sad that we feel we should be rewarded for doing the right thing. We should want to do the right thing without expecting rewards.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
yeh, that's not copy protection, that's a shitty burner. take some of the money you didn't spend on games and get a $40 20x burner, dumbass. you sure as hell can't claim you can't afford it.
Whilst this is a great idea, I have one point to make: It won't do a thing about piracy. Why? because all the 133t w4r3z d00dz will just pirate the bonus material. Sure one person will have to buy it, but it only needs one person who has bought it to then realease it...
"Success is based on knowing how far to go in going too far"
But, will Galactic Civilations run under WineX?
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
If you can download the full version why not go the whole hog and offer the option of download and burn yourself! That way you can save the carrier costs they can pass on the savings of not having to produce the box/cd etc, and can cut out the middle man completely which can take up to 50% of the costs, that way they could offer it for 20-30 bucks, and still make a good profit. 45 buck plus P&P is the same as a highstreet price. So where is my saving? Yes I can play now, but thats only a few days break before before the box arrives, and I still have to download the sucker. Yes I like this approach but they haven't followed it through completely.
James
Does Galactic Civilizations run under Linux? Does it run if you use WineX? If it doesn't, I'm not buying it under any circumstances. I hate rebooting and losing all the context in my session just so I can play some game.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
MOO3 was an unqualified disaster!
You would get more enjoyment out of burning your money.
can anyone recommend a game like Gal. Civ for the mac...
I haven't read the article, but what's to stop someone from putting the files for the updates & bonus packs online right alongside the game on KaZzA?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
That's the big question right there, isn't it. I certainly hope so, but of course there's no way to find out until somebody gets their hands on a copy and tries it. Unless of course somebody at Stardock tries it out themselves before the game is released.
Hmmm - that would be nice - to have the actual developers try to get the game running in WineX before it's released. Heck, maybe they could even fix any incompatibilities in the game itself, rather than have TransGaming update WineX to support it! Not going to happen, sure, but damn, it would be cool...
I game, therefore I am...
Sheesh - I see a headline like ./ had a scoop from the SETI
Institute.
"Galactic Civilizations Coming Soon"
and I thought
Alas, it was just a game...
I have been playing Gal Civ for about four years from when it was one of the few decent games on OS/2. Along with Stellar Frontier (shoot-em-up) and the no longer sold "Trials of Battle" it is very addictive. I wish they would re-release TOB (Trials of Battle). It became the only reason on why I had kept OS/2 on a computer. If you haven't tried the Stardock games give them a spin.
Tisha Hayes
There is no copy-protection on the game, but people with CD keys can download extra stuff.
Is the extra stuff copy-protected, then? Otherwise, when someone decides to put this extra stuff on Kazaa or somewhere, then it's all going to fall apart, surely?
Am I missing something?
The best 4x strategey game I have found is Space Empires IV Gold>. The graphics may not be sophisticated, but look decent enough. The gameplay is bliss.
Sweet......are these galactic civilizations the anarchic oppressive Star Wars-type, or the unrealistic techno-communistic Star Trek type? And do we, as a species, stand to survive in these civilizations? I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords :)
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
If this game is anything like MOO3, I won't touch it. It is sad that some of the graphics in MOO3 are worse than those in MOO2. The only thing that is better in MOO3 is that you can play over tcp/ip. I would have no idea how that works however; since I returned MOO3 cause it sucks so bad. MOO3 has a new kind of copy protection as well. Make our product so horrible that no-one will want to copy it. I'd rather play hot seat MOO2 than online MOO3 any day.
This isn't the sig you are looking for... Carry on...
Seriously, this game was pretty much the only reason I kept OS/2 Warp on my machine as a dual boot with Win 3.1 back in 1996-97. I loved OS/2... the multiple virtual desktops, the multithreading of all the programs, the clean looks, the stability... but what I really loved was GalCiv and the responsive way that Stardock and Brad Wardell would update the AIs on a regular basis, based on feedback from the players. I can't wait for GalCiv to make its return to my machine. (No, I am not in their employ... I just really, really loved that game, and really, really hated being forced to give it up when I finally gave up on OS/2.)
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
The copy protection issue is multifold.
... and game companies would not need to copy protect.
:-/
I basicly do not care if a game is copy protected, I only once had problems with a game wich did not like my CD-Rom driver.
o I buy ALL games I play.
o I use ALLWAYS a cracked version to test the game first, to see wether I like it or not.
In germany cracking and distributing cracked versions is illegal. However owning a cracked version is not.
I know companies making software where the number of floating cracked versions is ten times higher than the sold versions. And for some of those companies that is a realy bad damage to to their business.
If you can get a CASE System, wich costs you 10,000 bucks if you buy it for free somewhere, people are tempting to jsut take it.
If the software is that good that you do not need much support, then you have no costs in using the stolen software.
If you need support then the cost of stolen software is soon higher than buying it, hence a user would rather buy it and call the help desk than try to figure why he has problmes.
For games this is totally different. A game causing to much support calls is neither a pleasure for the player nor a money maker for the producer.
If we would live in a perfect world, gamers would pay for playing
But the world is not perfect, because the people are not
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I used to play a fair amount of VGAP v3 with some buds on a BBS...you know, kickin' it old skool. Any comments on how SEIV stacks up against MOO3 or GalCiv?
When everything is said and done
MOO2 was just more fun
Quicksilver might still snatch great out of the jaws of good, and are some fantastic ideas here (once you get used to the interface) but currently, MOO3 is what we in open source would call a "Release Candidate". I am amazed that Infogrames actually let this one out of the door at this stage.
So we can expect this game to go gold in 2013?
My brother got his arm stuck in the microwave, and, uh, my grandma she dropped acid and hijacked a school bus full of penguins, so it's kind-a a family emergency. So come back later? Great.
- John Cusack, "Better Off Dead"
...I would be surprised if Stardock ever develops for anything but MS OSes. Brad Wardell pretty much despised Linux back in Stardock's OS/2 era (especially after having been burned on an early effort to port GalCiv). Even if BW did not have a fundamental philosophical objection to the concept of free/open source software, he would still need to avoid Linux like the plague. Stardock has a pretty nice business providing add-ons to MS -- and, so far, at least, MS has not tried to muscle in on anything that Stardock is doing. Imagine what would happen to his business, which exists solely due to the sufferance and good will of MS, if he allowed porting (or worse, developed) products for "enemy" operating systems.
Brad has always been a good guy -- I wish him well, even though it is not likely that I will ever use any Stardock software again. (I bought almost everything it released for OS/2 -- but OS/2 is long gone from our family computers).
MEK
Credo quia impossibilis -- Tertullian
Does anyone believe this anti-piracy trick will actually work? That it is beneficial to the user?
;) and they are based on essentially the same protection scheme.
/. readers supposed to be a critical croud? Don't believe the hype.
Firstly, WinXP Service Packs are available through Kazaa and other P2P networks (or so I've heard
Second, you can read the line
"[...] providing a bonus pack and further downloads"
also as
"[...] stripping down the cd to the bare system".
I personally like it when I can install a complete game without having to download MBs of additional content. Ofcourse, it's good that companies supply updates when problems are detected. This is another issue, though.
Weren't
Give Spaceward Ho! 5 a try if you haven't already. It's an amazingly fun and addictive game and features network play as well!
Windows users can get version 4 here.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
The comment about lack of multi-player in this game got me thinking - how many people actually play turn based strategy games in multiplayer mode? I know there's been a lot of hype around multi-player features, but at least in my little circle of friends it's never caught on. Part of that is due to lack of opportunity - I don't live or work with most of my gaming friends. For the most part, though, I think it's something about turn based games in general. We still find time to play real-time games over the 'net, but no one is ever interested in doing turn based multiplayer. Those who do play turnbased multiplayer games, what's the attraction? What makes a game worth playing multiplayer even if you do have to wait through other folks' turns?
Skip Franklin
It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black. -- despair.com
More information on GalCiv, WindowBlinds and other Stardock products can be found in the very active NNTP server news.stardock.com There are groups for the various games and productivity applications, and the company has always been very responsive to the concerns and ideas of their customers. I know that several aspects of GalCiv have been under discussion on its newsgroup for years now for instance :)
(I am not affiliated in any way with Stardock, just a longtime user of their products)
The main guy at Stardock (Brad) has written several articles about the gaming industry and I believe he makes the point you made, about one of the advantages of an internet distribution model. The problem, as he also points out, is that we aren't yet at the point where a game distributed solely via the internet can be a success. As such, Stardock had to find a publisher to put the game in stores, with a box and shrink wrap and all that.
The game is going to sell for $39.99 in stores, I believe - and not only would it be a slap in the face to their publisher, but it would probably also be in violation of their contract for Brad/Stardock to turn around and sell the game direct-download for less than the store price.
If you want to support a company that is striving to eventually have all software be distributed via the internet, for the reason you stated and more, then buy this game.
I have to admit that, being a contrary bastard, the rougher the copy protection I find on something the more I want to hack it up and post it to altopia.
On the other hand, when a company says, "Please, we're not going to copy protect this, but our kids need to eat, so do the right thing, huh?" I feel like a complete scumbag, and refuse to copy it.
I know most people don't really care, but this kind of stuff is far more effective against me, and I'd like to think I'm not alone.
As for comparing it to windows XP, I fail to see the comparison. Windows XP self destructs if you don't authinitcate it after 30 days, not to mention the whole "hardware specific" aspect of it. I had a harddrive crap out, and I had to reregister the #!$^@&%!#^$@@#$^ thing because my damn hardware signiture was different after I restored to a new drive. bastards.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
First of all, I played the GalCiv beta and, let me tell you, the BETA of that game was more stable and fun than the final store-release versions of many games (e.g. Moo3).
Second, the game comes, as is, feature-rich and fun to play. It doesn't need a bonus pack or extras to be a great game. The company hasn't extracted certain features from the main game to put in the "bonus" material - the bonus material is stuff being worked on as we speak, after the game has already gone gold.
The company really believes that the best way to ensure customer loyalty is give them a whole heaping lot of extras on top of an already polished, complete game, over a period of many months after its release. That sounds like a great idea to me.
There has been a lot of posting about Linux on the XBox, but I am much less adventerous and way too cheap to buy a brand spanky new xbox. But Simcountry has an incredibly in depth and hopelessly nerd centric game that I can play with the glories of Opera/IE/Netscape. They simulate an entire world right down to each country's roadmap and social security payments...and they do it on linux. It takes almost 12 full hours of processing to make each world go thru one month of activity. I wonder where they fell on this list of favorite linux games. All servers are dual processor units running everybody's favorite free operating system:linux. You can see how it all works. And see me.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
I agree with the parent poster; MOO3 is not ready for prime time. As said elsewhere in this thread, the AI is buggy (will almost never attack, loves to build troop ships) and there are DirectX issues.
MOO3 is all about macromanagement, says developer Quicksilver...and that's all well and good, except they took away all ability to get down "in the weeds" and do the sorts of things people loved to do in MOO2, like build custom ships and command them in battle.
Sure, you can specify what types of weapons, engines and defensive systems a particular class of ship has, but when it comes to combat your control is limited to a particular battle group with the options "patrol", "attack", "move", "stop" and "retreat".
Finally, the graphics are less than stellar. Yes, I agree that gameplay is more important than graphics but MOO3 appears to be a step backward in many ways from MOO2. Combat, for instance, consists of a green grid on a black background; most ships are depicted as tiny grey or brown dots. There isn't a starfield to be seen.
The GUI is also lackluster, cumbersome, and reminicent of the Windows 95 interface. While planet and diplomacy animations are nice, a suite of generic icons are used for technologies -- a far cry from MOO2's research animation which showed a member of your race standing by a rotating custom depiction of the newest gadget.
Did I mention that there was no way to rename planets or star systems, nor choose player colors as in MOO2?
The MOO3 player community is making great strides to improve the game, but there is plenty of left to do on Quicksilver's part. I might add that the only official comment received from the developer so far has been from the art director, who says that they're working on updating the manual. After so many years of development and testing -- and over a month between Gold status and release -- one really has to wonder what the hell is going on at Quicksilver, and if they truly intend on making a mediocre game great. I fear that they will release a single AI-strengthening patch, then wash their hands of the whole affair.
Some people love MOO3, and I say: good for them. Those of you who loved the previous version, be warned: this game is not like MOO2 and is as problematic as the first (pre-patch) release of that game.
Galactic Civilizations, at this point, would appear to be the wiser choice.
All those peeps who hate Transgaming will be interested to know that it runs perfectly with WineHQ. No need to run that nasty non-GPL'd code.
No copy protection's nice and all, but I want to evaluate the game. I floated around their site a bit and didn't find a demo or evaluation copy. Anybody know if one's in development?
The only real reason I'd have for wanting a copy of the game (Besides backup) is to give it a run before I buy it. I like their approach here. "Well if he's not going to buy it, at least let him try it, then we can still reward him when he buys it."
I appreciate that they're not treating me like a theif, but I don't want them to forget that demo versions are a must.
1) GalCiv does not cease to operate if no serial is provided.
2) StarDock will not sick the law on you if no serial is provided.
3) StarDock will not deny patches if no serial is provided.
4) StarDock will provide additional goodies if a serial is provided.
Looks like the method and intent of StarDock in no way resembles what MS is doing, barring the fact that they both use serial numbers with otherwise unprotected software.
"Microsoft was (and still is) severely bashed on
Fucking wah. They deserve it in spades.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
I can see it now, I drop my space marines on a lowtech planet and begin my domination of the BRONZE age human like creatures. Oh no... Our power armor is no match for there bronze weaponry!!!!
Yeah, I realize this after playing Civ III for 40 hours only to have hoplights destory my Panzer tanks. Low tech worlds won't need missle bases to defend there planets they can just use catapults.
then I played it for 15 minutes and threw away the cds
As much as I despise copy protection, I have a sinking feeling this one is going to be warez'd out, '0-1 day' release style, approximately 3 days before it hits the stores.
It seems like the only profitable answer is to make the game so good that more people will buy it than copy it (or at least have enough purchasers to make a nice profit).
I'll wait and see the eventual comparisons between this and MOO3 before I get either; Im waiting for Vice City.
how stupid...
copy protection and serial-enabled extras...these two are not mutually exclusive.
Fun the first couple times you play it, but it just doesn't have enough depth for a serious strategy enthusiast.
It's 'cute' and 'diverting' but not 'interesting' or 'engrossing'.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Another interesting-sounding game that will apparently never make its way to the Mac.
A fellow on the web site commented that Mac users could probably run it with WineX. I don't have a problem with people knowing plenty about Windows and Linux and nothing at all about Macs, but if that's your background, don't try to answer questions about them.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
For anyone who wants to get a feel for how a game of Galactic Civilization might go, you can check out two gameplay transcripts that the game's creator made to demonstrate it. They include screenshots and are fairly interesting, especially since in the first game the creator of the game unexpectedly is outwitted by the AI that he wrote! Check them out:
First game
Second game
Sorry, but this cow doesn't moo. MOO3 could have been a great game however it fails miserably because of inadequate testing and no real documentation. Combine that with lackluster graphics, pitifully boring technology descriptions, and some amazing for this day an age limitations and you have the classic example of a game worked on for 3+ years rewritten in 6 months.
Some major game breaking issues.
Multiplayer games cannot be resumed for the majority of people (apparently 2 player games can resume more than 50% of the time)
AI does not obey same colonization rules as human player, meaning it can freely colonize in your areas but the reverse is not true.
The build queues, which you must change for any serious military ships, is 5 clicks away from the main screen. Worse its only 3 deep.
The AI is a wimp, it will not fight, and when it does it can only win if it just happens to be so numerically superior that there is no other outcome.
Real time tactical combat. Essentially the only way to make it hard was to make the player have to click fast to make the ships pretend to do the right thing.
Strange limitations like 12 character ship names. No choice of player color. No ability to rename systems. Buidling of one 1 only at a time (at max 4 can be queued, build rate has no bearing on your empire size or capacity).
More wonderful bugs like broke Point defense, automatic colonizing sends all ships to same place, menus/screens don't remember your state, and that wonder no direct X surface error.
Finally, top if off with a "find the 5 Antarans secrets" that is so glued on its funny. Not only are the Xs not on the game map, you don't even see what happens! You get a cheesy animation for each X).
Not ready for primetime, they had to resort to threatening people who posted on their forums with bans if they would not quit attacking the game. The game's artist went to far to dismiss one reviewer as having a chip on his shoulder and allowing board mods to nuke anything the author said in explanation. Amazingly all the non-glitter review sites did not rate it favorably either.
A patch or two could save it, but unless it happens VERY soon; read before end of May; it will most likely be too late.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The AI does _everything_ for you, sometimes even when you tell it not to. I have autocolonization turned off, but after awhile new colonies started springing up on their own on new planets in systems i controlled, and ocacsionally in entirely new systems. (Often in systems i decided not to colonize for good reason, because all the planets sucked)
The AI does a crappy job on the military build queue, as noted in other posts, it builds _way_ too many troop ships and marines. It seems to do a better job on the infrastructure development, although I've not tried stealing away control from that aspect yet to see how i do.
Research and production are well steamlined, for the AI. You set percentages for different areas of research, and that's about it. Even examining the research tree to see how you're doing is difficult. Each research project has about five seperate stages from knowing nothing about it to being able to use it. Each of these stages is announced for each project in all areas of research. Once these projects are finished the AI immediatly starts building any new improvements on every area of every planet. You also get told when every one of these projects are completed. The result is that every turn you get a few dozen reports in your SitRep dealing with nothing but "Technology X is now viewable," "Research on Technology Y is complete," "Technology Z has entered prototyping," "Construction of Q has finished on Phazon III," etc, etc, etc, ad infinitum. After several turns of this you just don't care anymore. You look down through the list and think, "Hmmm, some planet i own just finished constructing an automated thingamajig, i didn't know i could build those. I don't even have any idea what it is or what it does. Oh well, the AI seemed to think it was a good idea."
It would have been far preferable if there were a lengthy build queue, and the ability to plan out and save generic queues in advance. Just about every 4x game has that feature now days, but if Moo3 does i haven't found it yet. This would have given you some sense of interaction. When a new building was researched, you'd look at it, decide which queues to stick it in, and actually feel like you had some involvement.
The ship construction tool allows you a lot more control, but is akward to use, and a lot less fun that ship construction was in MoO and MoO2.
The encyclopedia sucks if you're trying to look up specific information. A lot of planets have specials on them, however i have no idea what "Ancient Battle Damage" means and what effect it will have on a colony i build there. I've tried using the search function in the encylopedia, and found nothing. I've tried searching on everything i can think of relating to the topic, and nothing returns any results. Mousing over the special should give you at least a rudimentary description, and clicking on it should take you to the (non-existant as far as i can tell) encyclopedia entry.
When you encounter enemy ships or planets, your choices are usually "sit there," and "attack." There is no option to break off an run away before combat. If you do want to run, you have to choose to control combat, intercept the fleet (or choose to bombard the planet and hope they choose to defend) and then order the retreat once combat starts and hope the enemy isn't fast enough to do some damage to you before you warp out.
Diplomacy is nice, but not as good as Civ3. I've had fleets from neutral empires hover around some of my systems, which counts as a blockade, keeping supplies from other planets from reaching it. However there was no diplomacy option i could find to ask them to leave the system, and i didn't want to attack them without provocation and screw our relations. Once my planet had starved to death the other fleet choose to attack my remaining ships. Luckily i won, and was able to send another colony ship to restart the colony. Despite the fact that the other empire choose to attack my ships it did not start a state of war between us. A lot of that seems to happen, unlike in Civ3. I've had multiple combats with and spent several turns coexting peacefully with in the same system as empires the i officially had no diplomatic contact with, and no idea of how to initiate contact. When contact was initiated they didn't seem to care if i'd been blowing their ships up beforehand or not.
I've not had a great deal of experience with combat, but what little I've had has seemed akward, unclear, and not very fun, which is why i usually just cede control to the AI.
All in all, the AI does a pretty good job of playing the game by itself, and seems to resent you trying to take control of anything yourself. It seems like taking direct control would be fun, if you didn't have to fight the AI to do it, and there were tools to do so in the way you wanted (saved build queues and better ship design!)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Actually, the problem with the AI overbuilding troop transports is a simple one to get around. The problem is that while a planet may have the shipyard capacity to build humongous ships, the cost of doing so can be ridiculous. So, the AI instead builds what it can afford. If you've done nothing but design huge ships, it will build the only small ships left that it can afford -- troop transports.
There are three ways to handle this:
1) Obsolete the design for troop transports so that it can't build any more.
2) Design some cheaper combat ships.
3) Improve the industrial & economic capacity of planets in your empire.
You can find out more about the numbers behind why the AI chooses transports here. Of course, it would be nice if the documentation for the game went over these points better or if you could get the AI to build the bigger ships, but just do so at a slower, more economical pace.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
To top iy off Battlefield 1942 is really buggy.
So perhaps you shouldn't break the law and install pirated software.
Does not imply the that...
if you can't afford the license price for XP
It is not uncommon in free markets to pay full retail price for s/w only for the BSA to claim it is an illegal pirate copy because it is a import.
I can't believe I just downloaded a 132MB demo and it can't run properly on a P4 1.8GHz w/ 512MB and a 32MB 3D card. Like seriously - WTF!!
The mouse pointer updated it's position on the screen once every 30-60 frames, although the (really fancy) pics and animations ran smoothly.
Let's see now, which needs to update all the time and which one doesn't? Well, it's not the freakin' asteroids that are just BG art!
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
(Disclaimer: I'm a die-hard fan of the Master of Orion series, and MOO3 is no exception)
Reviews of MoO3 have been mixed, because to be honest it does have a lot of issues right now. It remains to be seen how well GalCiv stacks up, but it does look to have a lot of potential.
However, MoO3 does have at least two major advantages over GalCiv. One, as you probably know, MoO3 supports Multiplayer while GalCiv does not. For some people, this doesn't even matter; for others, it is a huge deal. And second, MoO3 was designed to be extremely easy for users to modify it. Most of the game text and numbers like percentages and bonuses are stored in plain text files, ready to be changed as you see fit. And for those of you worried about cheating in multiplayer games, the game will report an invalid version error if you attempt to join a game with a different set of mods from the game's host.
#include <sig.h>
Yea, the GalCiv series sold over 30k copies total. Not much by today's standards but for an OS/2 game not too shabby.
As for my involvement on the new one, the biggest difference is that I had a whole team to work with. But I did write the economic and computer AI for the new GalCiv.
"The power of Order has destroyed your planet, and now the power of Order will destroy you..." Let's see how many got that one
The stars that shine and the stars that shrink
in the face of stagnation the water runs before your eyes
of the ONLY great game ever turned out for OS/2. StarDock was originally supplied apps for OS/2. One - not a game - provided multiple desktops and otherwise took great advantage of the object oriented nature of the os. GC was multithreaded and had a vicious AI. GC also earned a Game of the Year Award at one point. Great news.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
The continuous success of half-life is a perfect example of where something like this works.
Sure you can play the single player game without buying it, but playing online, which we all know is the best part of the game, requires a cd-key.
...is probably because you've gotten yourself a "Magnat Civilization" and they'll start popping up all over the place. In one case, my Rhea were building new colonies every few rounds. This is okay if you're Geodic and grow like, er, a rock, but it doesn't really make sense. There is a longer thread on this on the MOO3 website somewhere.
What ever happened to Stars!: Supernova Genesis?
Stars! slapped MOO, VGA Planets, and all the rest around without even trying.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
I knew that, however, I do want my native games... :-/
A novice programmer was once assigned to code a simple financial
package.
The novice worked furiously for many days, but when his master
reviewed his program, he discovered that it contained a screen editor, a set
of generalized graphics routines, and artificial intelligence interface,
but not the slightest mention of anything financial.
When the master asked about this, the novice became indignant.
"Don't be so impatient," he said, "I'll put the financial stuff in eventually."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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