Ray Radlein

The internet is a very busy place these days, which is why I would like to thank the inventors of the word "Socialism." Any time you see it used, you know that there's a 95% chance that the person using it can safely be ignored, as they have no real idea what they are talking about, and are simply using it as a funny little noise to indicate something that they dislike. The ratio of "things which are actually Socialism" to "things which get [b]cal

If Steam [i]Spore[/i] uses only Valve's DRM, I am so there.

I was less and less impressed with that article the more of it I read. The author stopped even [i]trying[/i] to hide the fact that his thumb was on the scales as he went along. He ignored several of the most obvious problems with copy protection and DRM, such as the inability to make backups (like him, I, too, owned Amigas; and I am painfully aware of how several of my favorite games became [b]unplayable[/b] to me because of the gradual deterioration of their uncopyable

New plan: I went ahead and bought it on Impulse now, so that I could play it enough to decide if it's worth buying a physical, boxed copy for my wife or her mother. So far, so goo.

If my local Best Buy doesn't have it in stock when I go there Thursday (what can I say, I'm still a sucker for tangible property), I am [b][i]so[/i][/b] going to buy [i]World of Goo[/i] through Impulse. From everything I've heard and sen about it, it looks like the first game since [i]Lemmings 2[/i] to really have that [i]Lemmings[/i] feel. In fact, I may buy it for my mother-in-law, who still has me fire up my 23 year old Amiga 1000 hooked up to our big TV in the livin

I hate hate hate Vista as it runs on my new laptop. Before the hardware keeled over, my [i]very[/i] old XP laptop (it orignally shipped with Windows 2000 Profesional on it) ran like a champ. The new, much more powerful laptop, with more and better everything? Ugh. Half of my games don't run at all, and some others (like [i]Sins[/i] and GC2) only run in certain ways (full-screen, in those cases); but the biggest problem lies with the Atheros chipset drivers -- my wireles

I experienced considerable graphics corruption and instability running both [i]Sins[/i] and GC2 in windowed mode on my Vista laptop (an HP 6915nr, FWIW). Both run reasonably in full-screen mode, however, so it's all good for now, even if I prefer windowed mode (a lot). BTW, as an aside, I'm typing this on the miniscule keyboard of my fun little Fedora 7-based One Laptop Per Child X O laptop. I have not yet attempted to get [i]Galactic Civilizations II[/i] to run on [b]t

Oddly enough, as the guy here who has run GC2 under Linux, I find myself agreeing with, well, everyone, more or less. Linux certainly is more secure and virus-free; but by the same token, I have never once had any problem with viruses under Windows, either. Linux isn't great for games, especially commercial ones; but there have been commercial games that were ported to Linux without much difficulty (I bought [i]Railroad Tycoon II[/i] for Linux ages ago, for instance), and othe

Oh, yeah, I dual boot now, using my BIOS as a boot manager (I just change the boot drive order in the BIOS setup screen) so I don't have to deal with GRUB or XP's sad old NT-based bootloader utility. But once Codeweavers did their free Crossover suite giveaway, I just [b]had[/b] to try to get GC2 running under Linux (especially when I was told it couldn't be done).

I am happy to report that I am, in fact, able to run Galactic Civilizations II under Linux in WINE, using Codeweavers Crossover Games suite. There are some graphics and I/O issues, and the whole experience is not one to make me want to give up GC2 under XP, of course, but it does run (in fact, it runs faster than I expected it would, although, like I said, still not as well as under native Windows).

I have gotten GC2:TA to run at least far enough to make changes in the options menu at least using Codeweaver's Crossover Games package under Fedora 8 on my computer. On the other hand, it was [b]really[/b] sluggish, and threw a couple of really troubling error messages: The game apparently couldn't detect Crossover's DirectX drivers correctly, and thought that my display was set to MAX_LONG x 1 resolution (!). Given how slow it is to simply start the game and load to the menus (and t

Someone mentioned pathfinding bugs, and I absolutely second that -- I'm already tired of watching my fleets swerve out of their way to plow into entirely avoidable asteroid fields for no discernible reason. But there's an even more aggravating bug, and it's one that has existed, in one form or another, for pretty much the entirety of GC2's history; and that's the fact that "Save Game" is a lossy operation. As much as I love GC2, that's just completely bleeping absurd, and I don

[quote]Another update! Excellent! Hey, Cari..I sent you guys a saved game with the issue of having a ship frozen in the lower corner of the screen that seemed to do nothing but occupy the lower corner of the screen. It was not recognized by my cursor. I have also had that issue with Terror Stars (long) after I had fired them. In fact, I had a game where the Terror Star basically became an ornament on the screen after I used it. Even the enemy ships were ignoring it. Did anyone have a chan

[quote]Twilight 1.95 should be up on both later today if all goes well.[/quote] Got it! Wheee! Now I can resume my game, in which I was just about to finish building the apparently crash-inducing Gravity Accelerators...

[QUOTE]+ FIXED: Gravity Accelerators were missing a Special ID, which was causing a crash when they were built[/QUOTE] Impulse's "View History" option for [i]Twilight[/i] lists "Crash when building Gravity Accelerators" as a bug fixed in 1.91. Is this the same thing? If so, was it fixed in 1.91, or only under 1.92a/1.95? I'm about two turns from completing Gravity Accelerators in my fist big Twilight game, you see, and I'd rather not flame out. :)

So one of my planets got invaded, out of the blue, by the Drengin the other day. [i]What?[/i], I said. [i]I'm not at war with the Drengin! And the United Planets passed that "Neutral Territory/One week Warning" law anyway! What gives?[/i]. Fortunately, my 8000 elite soldiers fought off the invading army, allowing me to take a look at the planet that had been invaded -- it was a formerly Drengin world that had culture-flipped to me, but which I did not have the right colonization te

By the same token, I really wish that this was done automatically for you, the way that [i]Civilization IV[/i], among many others, does -- by giving saved games a root name modified by the turn number (or date, or whatever), so that you can easily play and load several different games at the same time. I mean, the early game has a different feel from the mid-game or the late game. Sometimes I might feel like playing through the heady colony rush phase of a game without having to finish

I've been looking forward to [i]Spore[/i] like no game since perhaps [i]Civ IV[/i], but this is just plain totally infuriating. On my computer and the seven or eight others on our network, [b]nothing[/b] "calls home" on its own, [b]ever[/b]. Keeping tabs on outbound network traffic is basic security; if something does compromise one of my computers, I don't want to contribute to the problem by allowing it to spread outwards to the rest of the world. Going back to my first Amiga

[quote]Get her some flowers...[/quote] Flowers... which Tech Tree are those a part of?

Speaking of the public Beta and orders and pre-orders and such, why is the web form trying to charge me shipping if I pre-order the CD version? The various released GCII packages clearly say "+ S/H" for the CD versions; the pre-order of Arnor just as clearly [b]does not[/b]. And yet, when I try to pre-order the CD version, it sets up to charge me $10 shipping on top of the $29.95. What gives? I thought that pre-orders were supposed to ship free, as the order page implies.

[quote]GalCiv III to be released for consoles ONLY!......hehe....[/quote] From now on, Stardock will be skipping both PCs [i]and[/i] consoles, and will be releasing games exclusively for the XO laptop and the Chumby.

My prediction [i]was[/i] going to be "Pantsless Thursdays," given that, as we all know, the PC gaming industry currently goes without pants on [b]Fridays[/b]. But would that really be a big enough change to merit this level of hype?

[quote]Agreed, bring forward the rise of the Snathi![/quote] "[color="#FF0000"][B]The Rise of the Snathi[/B][/color]" — I smell an Expansion Pack!

If [i]Twilight of the Arnor[/i] is going to feature completely distinct tech trees for each race, what will happen with Custom Races? Will those of us who like to play custom races have to construct our own unique tech tree just to start playing?

The thing I've noticed is that the frequency is at least uniformly variable across the map — in those games where I don't have many bonus tiles, no one else does either; and when I have a lot, so does everyone else. So that much, at least, is good.