CobraA1

Debug.err: [quote]Debug Message: Version v2.02 Twilight of the Arnor last updated on: Wed Dec 3 09:43:09 2008 Debug Message: Could not open reg key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE\Stardock\ComponentManager\Drengin.net\GalCiv2UL Debug Message: Could not open reg key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE\Stardock\ComponentManager\Drengin.net\GC2EU Debug Message: Could not query reg key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE\Stardock\ComponentManager\Drengin.net value

I like Alfonse's ideas, although I understand Jonnan'spoint of view. It's basically the whole having lots of control vs keeping things simple. Basically, some people like a lot of fine grained tweaking and "bean counting", while others like to just have an abstracted, high-level view and don't really want to care about all of the details. The trick is, of course, satisfying everybody. Basically, where I'm seeing a lot of games in this genre headed is towards so

Dual/triple booting is always a bit tricky and risky. Especially with Windows OSes. You've got three OSes, each wanting to write its own boot loader when you install it, nothing really cooperating. Check to make sure your XP partition is marked as being bootable. It may also be that the last OS you isntalled didn't detect everything correctly when installed. I can't really offer that much help, except that frankly the more OSes you try to stuff onto one computer, the more troubles you

[quote]Just installed Windows 7 Beta....How can I get Object Desktop to activate on Windows 7...I.E. Windowblinds keeps telling me it cant write the activation signature...How can I fix this...[/quote] I guess it's time to renew my subscription and see if I can help you . . . EDIT: Ok. Yeah, not all programs seem to work. The massive UI changes seem to affect WB to the point where it simply doesn't seem to work at all.

Grab a Linux Live distro on another computer, write it to a CD-R, put the CD into your own computer, format the drives (repartition first if you know how), reinstall Windows . That is the only way to know for sure.

[quote]Maybe you should try a fresh install of W7, then install only the Windows Update files, then Impulse before anything else.[/quote] This is good advice. We have no clue what's causing it, but we do know that Impulse seems to install fine on our systems with a clean setup. [quote]Well it's the public beta - build 7000 - and I updated everything I could. I have Steam and Firefox and a few other things installed, but that's about it. Mostly games thus far, not many applicat

[quote]The screenshot was taken from a Windows 2003 Server during a remote desktop connection and it's the default IE UI.[/quote] Likely IE6 or earlier, then. Back when the browser wars was all about adding more features and they weren't particularly concerned with simplicity of the interface. Frankly, IE6 was a joke. The joke that beat Netscape, but still a joke. IE 7+ is greatly simplified. It has about the same number of items as Konquerer. [quote]By the way

(posted in wrong place)

[quote]Yes, I did. Take a look at the screenshots below. [/quote] Great screenshots! Items circled in IE: 9 Items circled in KPDF: 11 Items circled in Konquerer: 16. I'm noticing a trend. That's not the default UI for IE7 or IE8. In fact, it doesn't even look like IE7 or IE8. K3b has black up, back, home, and reload icons, while in Konquerer they are grey/blue. Adobe reader is not a Microsoft prod

[quote]Remember: most of the time, these ships will be maybe 64x64 pixels in size.[/quote] Stardock has repeatedly increased the texture resolution on their ships, and currently the textures are way overkill for a 64x64 size. At full screen 1600x1200 with the ship nearly filling the screen it's obvious the textures are high-res and very detailed. There's no way Stardock is content with making it look decent only at 64x64 size. They want it to look good zoomed in as well. In an

After running more tests, here is my take on global illumination: Flat ambient lighting is not desireable pretty much no matter how you look at it. It makes the shadow areas either look stark black, or if you add an ambient term, a very flat color. Even in space, this is unrealistic and not very pleasing to the eye. Ambient occlusion with a virtual, invisible "sky" to create ambient light may be unrealistic, but it still far more pleasing to the eye, and may be

[quote]No organization of your start menu, no way to switch between users easily, no way to add extra bars intuitively[/quote] Clutter = the number of items you see , especially when the desktop is loaded and you haven't clicked on anything yet. I agree "All Programs" needs a lot of work. That is cluttered. I've been harping on Windows fanboys about this for as long as I can remember, and it drives me crazy that, just like Linux fanboys defending Gnome's defaul

[quote]Doh, dangit, I meant Impulse. Also, some more information: I've tried both the 6-meg installer and the full installer.[/quote] That's odd. I installed it in Windows 7 myself, no problems. What other programs do you have installed in Windows 7? A clean install seems to work. Also, it this the most recent Beta of Windows 7, with all of the latest updates?

[quote]Yes, but due to the empty nature of space, you're only going to one one or two bounces before the light simply disappears.[/quote] Okay, so there is no atmospheric scattering and no ground plane. So yes, that will certainly mean that the lighting will be different. That does not mean, however, that any light bouncing between the surfaces on a complex object will have no impact on the image. In any case, since there is no ground plane and no atmospheric lighting to accou

[quote]GNU/Linux has a far more intuitive interface on where to find your applications than windows which simply dumps everything in the start menu and/or under each developer's company's name[/quote] I would agree that Windows would greatly benefit from categoriztion and centralized package management. For being an OS that likes to center on customization, however, sometimes Linux does seem to be a bit on the complex side. Take moving around the icons on the bars/pane

[quote]Yes, but in space, there's nothing for light to bounce off of.[/quote] You are correct in that it won't be receiving any light from atmospheric scattering. It is still possible, however, for light to reflect a few times between the panels of the ship. Depending on the ship's design, it may bounce more or less times. A design with a lot of concave surfaces, holes, and crevices could see a lot of reflections between the surfaces. In addition, a ship near a planet or star

[quote]Um, FYI: in space, there's no "ambient" light.[/quote] In real life, there's no "ambient" light, either - it's simply the effect of light bouncing around a gazillion times. Many of the ships from the Show off your ship designs posts are fairly complex, and at least a rudimentary illimination pass would, IMHO, improve the accuracy of the lighting. I don't know if you've noticed it, but when you add a "light" to a ship, it doe

By "Stardock," do you mean Stardock Central? Stardock Central isn't supported in Windows 7, and it's very unlikely that they will add support for Windows 7, as they are replacing SDC with Impulse. Try Impulse instead.

In all honesty, all of today's OSes are mature. They all perform all of the basic functionalty the user expects, and they all provide powerful APIs that the developer can use. It's mostly a matter of the UI these days. Mac OS is the easiest (from what I've heard; I haven't really tried it). Windows will be getting easier with Windows 7. Linux - well, Linux is easier than it used to be, but that's not really saying much. Linux is admitedly very flexible from a technical standpo

Since most everybody else has already mentioned the gameplay improvements, I'll go a bit to graphics: More visible damage to the ships. I wanna see the scars after the fight. More shaders. Add some reflection, self-shadowing, real time ambient occlusion . Procedural textures. If you use shaders to calculate them during rasterization, you won't need to pre-render it to a texture.<

TIP: Hit the "tab" key after renaming a file.

[quote]I wasn't specifically addressing the ribbon[/quote] True, but stuff like that is where Microsoft seems to be headed - the person who came up with the Office Ribbon was moved to the shell team for Windows 7, hoping to improve the experience with the Windows shell.

[quote]NTFS is an inferior filesystem no matter how you look at it.[/quote] How many Linux file systems offer all of these features: Access Control Lists Alternative Data Streams Sparse Files Reparse Points Hierarchal Storage Management Volume Shadow Copy Native File Compression Single Instance Storage Encrypting File System Ever y</st

[quote]And no, many of the better programs available for GNU/Linux do not exist for Windows, unless you can somehow use K3b, Amarok, Evolution and others. [/quote] There are alternatives to all of those programs, some for free, some at a cost. If you want to go the free of cost route, you can in Windows. Basic CD/DVD burning is standard with Windows, and all DVD burners come with their own software for Windows. As far as music players go, take you

[quote]No... no double click...[/quote] You can configure Windows for a single click as well; that's just how I have it set up. [quote]Disagree. Example: cp /tmp/ninja.png ~ You cannot do this with less keyboard + mouse clicks in a GUI, regardless wether the GUI is KDE, Gnome, Aqua or Aero.[/quote] Using Windows Explorer in Vista (Aero is a theme, not a shell) Windows+E to open a new window (2) go to temp folder (about 3) "ninja.png" in the se