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Elenkis

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Everything posted by Elenkis

  1. Games I'm currently playing: Hidden and Dangerous 2 UFO Aftermath Temple of Elemental Evil LOMAC demo Silent Storm demo Sub Command And of course the classics I never really stop playing like Falcon 4 SP3, Op Flashpoint, Europa Universalis, BCM, Thief 2 fan missions etc.
  2. Abit NF7-S v2.0 is currently the board to get for AMD processors if you plan to overclock.
  3. Yes, it's been known for a while though not officially announced. However the lead designer on the FO3 project (Chris Avellone) resigned from the company a week ago, so I wouldn't get too excited if I were you.
  4. This was not written by John Cleese, it was written by Andrew Marlatt of SatireWire back in Jan 2002. How it came to be attributed to John Cleese is a mystery, I guess someone just found the writing style similar and made an assumption. You can find the article at its rightful home here: http://www.satirewire.com/news/jan02/axis.shtml
  5. quote:The AI isn't necessarily to blame - when you think you see all those troop movements AWAY from your lines like it's a stupid maneuver, it's really your forces losing sight of some units or those units never really being there in the first place.It's not any one particular thing, the AI is just very ineffective and easy to defeat. One of the big reasons behind it is that AI handles supplies very poorly and can't build a big enough army to compete, this is not helped by the flaw that AI alliances cannot send supplies to each other. There are numerous oddities and balance issues causing the problem as well. The way research is done is another one, too easy to research everything you will ever need... It's kinda screwed up when playing as the Soviets and by 1940 you have 30 divisions of T-34s ready to roll through Germany and they have nothing that compares. It just loses the fun when you can take any major nation and conquer most of the world every game without difficulty, you know? This is currently the same problem I've discovered with MoO3 I also have issues with the whole diplomacy model in the game, there is not a great deal of use for it. Many alliances can only be formed after specific historical triggers (eg no matter how much work you put into influencing Italy as a German player, they wont ally with you until you take France), it's all very rigid and I miss the more dynamic relations system from EU2. Still, the game is understandably more focused on war. So I can deal with that. As I said, the game certainly does get better with every patch. I would agree that it is in a better state than MoO3 after the 1.03b patch, but when first released HoI was horribly unplayable for most people - it got even more flames than MoO3 has received. Despite all this keep in mind that I am a huge Paradox Entertainment fanboy, don't assume that the negatives I list here mean I hate the game or anything [ 03-05-2003, 06:45 PM: Message edited by: Elenkis ]
  6. Yep, been playing it since it came out. But like MoO3 it has major flaws, including an AI that is much too easy even on the hardest settings. The more you play the more the flaws become apparent. Thankfully Paradox Entertainment (Strategy First did NOT make it) are great at supporting their games and each patch has made a significant improvement with literally hundreds of fixes. It still has a long way to go though.
  7. quote:2. AI is irritating (it likes to pump out tons of troop transports and ground units, when what I really want are battleships).This is just one example of people not understanding the game. Which is mostly the fault of the interface and lack of decent documentation... Mark the Troop Transport design as Obsolete when you don't want any being built and the AI will NOT build any. Then when you want to build some more just mark it as Active again. Believe me, you WILL be needing those troop transports eventually The reason the AI does this is that it looks primarily at Hull size when chosing what Military to build (every ship is classed as military). If your Troop transport is your only ship designed in that hull catergory (Cutter I believe) then it will build them. Either create some new Cutters or just obsolete Troop ships until you need them. I really hope the new manual will address this stuff (or better still would be a patch fixing up the UI) as it is something most people will miss due to the obscure design. quote:4. The game has a very questionable design. MOO3 may look complex, but your planetary viceroys actually handle most of the detail for you. Most of what you see in MOO3 is actually just clutter that adds little to the game.Part of the depth of strategy comes when you learn how to properly control and influence your voiceroys. The voiceroys just handle the micromanagement of the plans that you set for them, the grand strategy and planning is left to you - though you can micromanage mostly everything from DEAs to every to individual ship if you really wanted to (I wouldn't recommend it). Once I got used to it I found it to be a pretty cool system as it lets me concentrate on the grand empire scale. I recommend reading this: http://www.ina-community.com/forums/showth...threadid=267650 Also none of what you see is useless clutter, after a while you learn how all the information ties together and nothing is quite as useless as you first thought. I agree entirely about the combat stuff which has been a disappointment to me in the game, though it does look pretty cool when you have battles of 100+ ships vs 100+ ships. [ 03-02-2003, 05:25 AM: Message edited by: Elenkis ]
  8. quote:are you a Beta tester?Correct. As I said, GalCiv is a nice game and has great AI. It's a well designed 4x strategy game but not really anything new and it doesn't have enough to keep me playing it the way I played games like MoO, Alpha Centauri, or Europa Universalis. I just don't feel much desire to start it up. Right now I'm having a better time with MoO3 than I have had with GalCiv, but it's still too early to say how long my love for MoO3 will last. Right now I am enjoying the ride though. Anyway, GalCiv is a very different game to MoO3. They're both strategy games and both set in space, but GalCiv plays more like a Civilization game than a MoO game.
  9. quote:Stardock's upcoming GalCiv is going to blow MOO3 like a nuclear weapon.Frankly having played both games I will say, no, it is not. Not for me anyway. GalCiv is fun, but once I started to understand MoO3 and learn how things work I fell in love with the game - same with numerous others over at GoneGold who are warming up to the game the more they play. The game has some core elements that really need to be understood before you start to "see the light", development plans being the most important. That being said, like Battlecruiser it is a game that not everyone will enjoy and requires some dedication to truly understand. The problem I have with the game is a lack of aggression in the AI, if they fix that then I can see myself ranking the game right up there with Europa Universalis 2. Coming from me you can't get much more praise than that. Despite the flaws (and it definitely does have some flaws) I was up until 9am playing last night and 4am the night before. If you want Civilization in space with nice AI then I would recommend GalCiv. It is certainly a fun game, but MoO3 has opened up a world of strategical depth I've not ever got from GalCiv. [ 02-28-2003, 02:47 PM: Message edited by: Elenkis ]
  10. quote:Really? Thats interesting to know. How come?I actually meant to say any other "space" game. Sorry about that. So far in Freelancer when I go exploring I always seem to find something that makes me think, "woah, that's cool". It's rewarding to go out into the depths of space and find a secret research facility or some long lost alien ruins - if you've played Morrowind then it is the same kind of deal. I decided to take a diversion away from the trade-lanes south of Pittsburg and after a bit of travelling to my surprise came across this huge minefield, hundreds of very dangerous mines (which I almost cruised straight in to ) - in the center of the minefield I could see a natural jump gate to an Unknown destination. Now I don't yet have the equipment to get through that minefield, but I can't wait to find out where that jump gate leads to and what other secrets can be found in there. What could be beyond that jump gate that requires so many mines to keep me away? That's a cool feeling. When I found the Badlands I was creeped out, that place is eerie. It has this foreboding atmosphere that makes me think I really should not be there. Curiousity got the better of me and I pressed further in... A little way in four red names appeared on my contact list, lasers flashed across my screen, in two seconds my shields were gone. In panic I hit the cruise engines and just kept going, I didn't have time to look at my nav map and find a route to safety. Just when I thought I was safe I met another four ships, I died. I wonder what is in that place? When I get a better ship I will go back there and find out what's going on. These are things you would never find if you didn't go and do some exploring, seems the majority of people who have played the demo don't even know that these places exists. I guess I just haven't found any other space sims that make exploration feel that rewarding. [ 02-25-2003, 11:32 AM: Message edited by: Elenkis ]
  11. Maybe I'm just weird, but I played the demo for a good 6 hours and had a lot of fun with it. A lot of that time was spent exploring. You can find so much hidden stuff by exploring space: pirate bases, abandoned research facilities, derelict ships containing valuable equipment, a secret jumpgate in an old mine field, all kinds of cool anamolies and nebula etc. Many of these things tie in with rumours you here in the bar (and the full game has a full news system). For example I heard about a navy patrol that went missing on a mission to the Badlands - I went to the badlands, which is probably the most ominous and creepy place I've ever seen in a space game and actually found the derelicts of that lost patrol... It was eerie. And this is all in only one system, the full game has about 50! Freelancer does the whole exploration thing better than any other game I've seen, period. It does have some problems though, the generated missions for example are even more repetitive than those found in Privateer and Frontier. Kill this group and assassinate this guy are about all you get. You can still do trading, pirating and escorting/patrolling (none of these things require generated missions to do) which I've not put any time into yet. But I've been having fun anyway.
  12. quote:Westwood made the C&C series and was working on Generals.C&C: Generals was made by EA Pacific, not Westwood. They will not be affected by this and they've already since confirmed that they'll be starting work on a Generals expansion pack soon.
  13. quote:Okay, he broke half off trying to smash the ring in the last movie.Actually he picks up and breaks the axe belonging to the Dwarf that was sitting beside him. He also has carries more than one axe with him throughout both movies. [ 12-23-2002, 07:24 AM: Message edited by: Elenkis ]
  14. A hands on report from one of the Lancers Reactor guys who was lucky enough to visit the offices last week and play the game for seven hours: http://www.lancersreactor.com/t/forum/topi..._title=&M=False [ 12-23-2002, 12:16 AM: Message edited by: Elenkis ]
  15. Actually those space shots don't impress me a great deal either. The screenshots released recently for both BCG and X2 look much nicer in my opinion (the new X2 movie is gorgeous). But as long as it delivers on gameplay then I will be perfectly happy. Definitely looking forward to it!
  16. quote:While I'm sure there are people out there who like gaming laptops, I do not believe that it's truly feasable.It's very feasable, I use my laptop for gaming a lot and in many ways it is more powerful than my desktop PC. It's a Dell Inspiron (P4 1.6Ghz, 512MB DDR-RAM, 64MB Geforce 4 Go) and the keyboard is very comfortable to use (I have big fingers too) - the keys are the same size as the keys on a desktop keyboard, only flat. I do keep an optical mouse in the carry case and plug that in whenever I want to game though as the built in pointing devices are not suitable for UT2003 [ 12-01-2002, 05:25 AM: Message edited by: Elenkis ]
  17. quote:Each and every single time RealOne nabs the settings and changes them back causing the scenario to repeat itself ad infinitum.You can turn that off... Did you go into RealOne Preferences and uncheck "Always Play File with RealOne" for media types? quote:You have to give them your credit card info FIRST and then "Opt out". What a freaking JOKE.Huh? You don't have to give them ANYTHING to download the free player. You just click "Free RealOne Player" on the main page and it gives you list of download mirrors, click one and it downloads... Sounds like you were trying to subscribe to their Premium service (which has a 14day trial and clearly says stuff like "Are you sure you want to sign up for our fantastic premium rate content?" all over the sign up process). RealOne does suck, but not for the reasons you mentioned. [ 07-29-2002, 04:52 AM: Message edited by: Elenkis ]
  18. Nice Though everyone gets the option of hiding from the recent users list when they register and via their profile options - These folks will still show up in the admin logfiles, right?
  19. quote:Okay. It is the only error message I had to give. It is never "in" the game when I get it, it is just after the 'splash screen' goes away, but prior to where the program screen should open. BCM never got past the close of the splash screen. Yep. Just to confirm, that is exactly how it was for me too. The invalid page fault would happen right after the Safe Disk splashscreen (or the BCM splashscreen in patched versions) goes away. I'm curious about something... Idaho, when you get the error, what happens if you then try running dxdiag? Does it load ok? (Start/Run, type dxdiag and then OK)
  20. Had the same problem with needing to reboot in order to load the game again after exiting. Here it is in more detail: I had the game running perfectly on my system in WinXP, never a problem. Then when my HDD died on me recently I was forced to get out my old backup drive which has a Win98 SE install I keep around for such disasters... Got my system running again with the backup drive and installed BCM - It ran fine, no crashes and no problems encountered, until I exited for a while. When I next tried to start the game I got an invalid page fault similar to the one Duncan Idaho reported. I rebooted and was able to run the game fine, until the next time I exited where I again had to reboot in order to load the game without an invalid page fault. I should mention here that I've worked as an alpha/beta tester for several companies so am farily adept at troubleshooting problems (having tested alpha versions of software that has crippled my operating system I am used to getting things running again) - I can safely say that I tried just about everything to isolate the problem. Uninstalled and reinstalled DirectX (both 8.0a and 8.1) numerous times, did the same with BCM and tried it patched and unpatched. I tried several videocard drivers (including the Hercules drivers that came with the card, as well the numerous nvidia dets). Tried different combinations of the VIA 4in1s, different sound card drivers, changed BIOS settings (and unlike some Quack-heads I DO know what I am doing and I know what everything in the BIOS actually does). I even removed the Geforce 3 and installed the old Creative Geforce DDR from one of my other machines - Problem still persisted. It wasn't long until I suspected it was just a fubar OS installation. Regardless of my suspicions I still went on to test with different combinations of hardware and drivers installed to try and elminate possibilies (I removed all hardware from the machine except video card, HDD and CD-ROM). Only thing left was an OS reinstall. I probably should have tried a reinstall of 98 to see if that would be enough but I've been using XP since it was in beta (legally testing it via the MS developers network) and was missing it badly. So I did a straight upgrade to WinXP (usually I'd format and do a fresh install but I am only using this while waiting for my new IBM drive to arrive) - Ran BCM and it worked perfectly. The invalid page fault problem is all gone and I can restart the game endlessly without need to reboot (note that I did not reinstall the game after upgrading to XP, I wanted to test with the old install first). So the folks having the reboot problem may want to think about formatting and/or reinstalling their OS (or better yet get WinXP already).
  21. Woah, I'm impressed I think you're including every single one of my unspoken wishlist items in XP1 and a whole bunch more. Great stuff, thanks SC!
  22. Bah, you caught me out with the "original" master part. I knew the answer but gave the wrong one, was expecting the usual simple questions Got any more?
  23. Actually Simparadox is exactly right They are different names for the same creature - It is simply a case of Tolkien changing his mind. He calls them Goblins in the Hobbit but then changed their name in LotR so people wouldn't confuse them with the more traditional folklore Goblins found in popular faerytales. Originally Elves were going to be called Gnomes, but he changed their name for the same reason. Tolkien's story explanation is that Orc is the true name of the race (as listed in the LotR appendix) and the word goblin (used with small g in LotR) is a kind of slang name for the race used by Hobbits. Tolkien writes this explanation himself I think in the preface for one of the books and also explains it in letters (which can be found in the book "Letters of JRR Tolkien"). As to your next questons: 1) Smeagol 2) Melkor (later known as Morgoth) [ 12-23-2001: Message edited by: Elenkis ]
  24. www.snopes.com is your complete online source for all urban legends. It has every urban legend you can think of there and details their origin as well as investigations into their truth. One of my favourite sites http://www.snopes2.com/inboxer/scams/jailcall.htm for this particular legend.
  25. Still here Waiting for my copy of the game (it's finally shipping and should be here soon)
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