Game advice

[krehator]

I've been reading through the site, looking at all the various projects, and I must say that I'm quite impressed with what I see.

I've read some articles about the dev, not all positive, but I get the feeling that most of it is envy. Many Multi-million dollar developers cannot put together stuff of this quality. Plus 90% of the nay-sayers have never even coded a "hello world" world app. Need I say more? Good job Derek!

Anyway...

I'm trying to get an idea about which product I should focus my attention towards. Yes, I will try the demo but I'm trying to save myself some time by starting with the right game.

I think the best way to help you, help me, is for me to list the things I like/dislike in games of this type. Maybe then you can point me in the right direction.

Like:

- Sandbox. Travel, explore, and improve my ship over time with total freedom.

- Wide array of equipment and customization.

- Managing fleets.

- Real cockpit or "bridge commander" feel.

- Commanding large capital ships as well as fighters.

- Extremely in-depth management.

- Multiplayer with LAN coop (if possible).

Dislike:

- Being forced along a story.

- Being stuck with one type of ship or class.

- Arcade/unrealistic game play and flight model.

Closest thing to what I enjoy: X2 The Threat. No multi-player though

Which one should I demo?

thx.

[Supreme Cmdr]

oooh, this one's easy. Get Universal Combat Collector's Edition. The graphics are not as modern as the more recent Galactic Command Echo Squad SE, but they're passable.

And if you buy it direct from BMT Micro, you'll get the retail boxed copy with the printed game manual, keyboard commands and galaxy map.

[krehator]

oooh, this one's easy. Get Universal Combat Collector's Edition. The graphics are not as modern as the more recent Galactic Command Echo Squad SE, but they're passable.

And if you buy it direct from BMT Micro, you'll get the retail boxed copy with the printed game manual, keyboard commands and galaxy map.

Thanks! I need something that will hold me over while I'm in Iraq. Hopefully my laptop can handle it. Then again....I can always hijack a govt desktop lol.

[Supreme Cmdr]

Thanks! I need something that will hold me over while I'm in Iraq. Hopefully my laptop can handle it. Then again....I can always hijack a govt desktop lol.

What are the specs for your laptop? If they meet with the minimum specs for the game, you should be fine. The most important is that you need to check the shader model that the laptop chipset has.

[krehator]

What are the specs for your laptop? If they meet with the minimum specs for the game, you should be fine. The most important is that you need to check the shader model that the laptop chipset has.

I have an ACER 5102wmli with 2 gig of ram and a Radeon Xpress 1100.

I works pretty well with most games, except for the very newest pigs. 9/10 times.. It's works well enough.

* Integrated ATI RadeonÖ X300 graphics core with clock speed of 300/400MHz (for ATI Radeon Xpress 1100/1150 respectively)

* Full DirectX 9.0 Support (Vertex Shader v2.0 and Pixel Shader v2.0)

* Full precision floating point pixel pipeline

* Up to 4 Multiple-Render-Targets (MRTs)

* Support for up to 12-bit per pixel formats

* Supports resolution up to 2536x2536@32bpp

* Anti-Aliasing using multi-sampling algorithm with support for 2,4, and 6 samples

* Hidden surface removal using 16, 24, or 32-bit Z-Buffering

[Supreme Cmdr]

Looks good, though you may need to run the game at the native resolution of the laptop. If the game does not support that resolution, you would have to manually set it in the ucconfig.ini file as described in the FAQ.