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MOO3 finished!
Thought this would be something everyone in here would like to know, even if it's not directly SE4 related . . .
Masters of Orion 3 has gone gold (released to manufacturers to produce copies of the finished product, wrap it up and ship it to stores)! More info here: Yahoo Press Release and of course on the MOO3 official homepage. Maybe I should put a warning so noone has a heart attack from playing MOO3 and SE4 at the same time... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif - b00tch |
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Damn, just missed being in the <font color=#9933CC>LURK REPORT</font>! But it is great to see it finally has been released!
<font color=purple>mlmbd http://www.shrapnelgames.com//ubb/icons/icon6.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif </font> |
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The moo3 homepage goes nowhere but to the Gone Gold image, which only has a Buy link. What kind of practice is that? They have disabled the rest of the site! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif
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Agreed, that's pretty screwy. |
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Good luck with the game guys. I hope it delivers on it's promise and that it was worth the wait.
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... holy smeggin' frick!!!
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif I thought I'd be playing Starfury before this... I was just at the MOO3 forums a few hours ago (and almost got myself Banned, IIRC)... MOO3 here I come!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Now if I only had some money... Mom, I know it's not October yet, but can I have my birthday present early? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif that antaran wearing gold is just a bit... freaky, though... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif hey, I used up my quota of 8 smileys per post exactly! :insert smiley here I ran out: crud! |
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Hmm, I'll have to buy it when I get some cash. (Couple weeks I get a nice check coming to me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif )
But I have never played any of the MOO games so I have no idea what to expect. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif |
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I wouldn't buy it for at least a few months... Think of every other major game release you can recall. Were any of them successful immediately or were there a jillion bugs that had to be corrected before the majority of people could play the game and enjoy it? When you buy the first release of anything you are a beta tester. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Look at the "OT: Do Not Buy Warning" thread just posted here to day about SimCity 4. I bet there will be a similar thread about MOO 3 next month. Summer is likely to be the earliest that a 'non-beta' MOO 3 is available.
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I agree baron. i also am waiting for player comments (not rag-mag reviews). With no demo, and all the delays, I choose to be cautious in this one. I try to not spend 50 bucks to beta-test a game. If they want me to beta test their game, then....well, you know (avoids rant).
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as to the rag mag reviews, get PC Gamer
they are hard core gamers, and from my experience, they give a very fair and true game critique |
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I'll be avoiding this one. No demo + several questionable features in preview =no sale.
Phoenix-D |
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I got free subscription to computer gaming world, and after "round filing" the renewal over a year ago, and still I get it. it's really the only one I look at. Good bathroom reading. I have heard people say they all suck but this one, or that one. But it has been my experience, there is no more accrutate of a review, than the players who have bought the game, and felt strongly enough to post on a BB about it. I know some people hate a paticular game, when others like it. I am not talking about that. i am talking about bugs. I can decide for myself if a game is enjoyable, and no one can tell me that anyway. But if the game is broken, completly unbalanced, in desperate need of a patch, and missing key features, this will be apparent in short order by the sheer number of Posts about it on said BB. I don't mind waiting. I have been there/done that with getting a game as soon as it is released, and it turning out to be "unfinished". And all things being equal, I don't mind the wait. If they want more first-day customers, put out a demo.
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Warcraft III Neverwinter Nights Medieval: Total War Morrowind Age of Wonders II Freedom Force Civ III Starfleet Command III |
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NwN had a few mega issues with it's copy prot software that for a couple months could only be fixed by downloading a crack, or not updating past Version 1.18 (and thus being unable to multiplayer).
Think it was a fairly sizable group of the playerbase. I do however have to say it's rather unfair to compare a game to an EA game without playing it first. EA is the MS of the gaming world as far as I'm concerned. I rarely buy games without playing the demos first, with few exceptions. There's just no way to really know how the game will feel to you til you can play it. |
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Civ III was most certainly not perfectly playable right out of the box, especially later on in the game.
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Actually I would say Microprose is the MS of the gaming world.
Anyone remember Xcom and UFO? You couldnt even finish UFO unless you got the patch! And Xcom had a habit of it's own in crashing. But Infogrames has a better reputation, right? |
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so is star fleet command III worth buying?
I have al the others... so I was pondering buying it.. is the ship customizing very well done? [ January 25, 2003, 14:28: Message edited by: AJC ] |
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I happen to have a rather well designed system that has handled EVERY other game in the universe without trouble. When I do have the slightest bit of trouble I can typically fix it rather quickly on my own. I do however agree it wasn't a problem with the game itself (rather in the 3rd party libraries used to copy protect it) however it was a support disaster as nothing was accomplished to fix it in a reasonable time. Also NwN had a game-breaking bug in the scripting that prevented the completion of the second act through gameplay. It required intervention by switching onto gamemaster mode. Many many games come out perfectly playable on day one, NwN wasn't one of them. Moving on..... I wouldn't call Microprose the MS of gaming, they just aren't big enough a company, that's why I put the bullet on EA. EA is huge, the largest of game companies and they are a disaster. |
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The playability of Civ III out of the box has is a debate that will run on for ages. I thought that many of the bugs that were in the initial release really killed the game. That's just my opinion. I think the point that is being made here is that there seems to be an alarming trend over the past few years of game companies releasing...well, utter crap, to the public and then coming back and patching the game later, after the profits have been made. If the game doesn't do well, they might not patch it at all! I know the current climate has completely soured me on buying any first release game from a major publisher.
To those who are going to buy it right away, I really hope that it is a great game and that you enjoy it. I would like to see nothing more than the delay turn out to be the software companies desire to squash any and every bug they could find before release. I am a cynic, however, and believe that this might be a major turkey. |
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"That was a hardware problem with people who have sub-standard hardware, and not really a problem with the game itself."
Why is it people always blame the ones having issues, and not the sub-standard program causing it? Fact is, many copy-protection schemes are crap. Removing the copy protection from Morrowind can give up to a 20FPS improvement! And given the fact that it CAN be cracked, and was done so quickly after the game was released, it isn't stopping pirates at all. Another time this happened was MechCommander 2. Everyone assumed since they had no problems, no one else did either. Heh. As it turned out, the game had an odd issue that resulted in two files being made. When those files were present, performance went in the toilet. My 1.5 GHz Geforce 4 system got MAYBE 5 FPS with everything turned off. Then I removed those files and got over 30 with everything on. If that isn't a game programming issue I don't know what was.. Phoenix-D |
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Edit: I've read the "DO NOT BUY Civ 3" thread, and basically, it comes down to Atrocities complaining that he only got a month's worth of play out of a game. If you get a month out of any game before getting tired of it, then I would think it's up there as one of the best of all time. Then you have people copmplaining about micromanagement. Well, that's what automating your workers is for. They are perfectly capable of handling any and all improvements by themselves. Further, aside from the crashes which only a minority of people reported, the only real bugs were with precision bombing and air superiority, neither of which were game breakers. The complaint of the AI producing masses of weak units comes from not realizing that the AI never gets rid of its ancient units that guard its cities, so when trouble comes, you get plenty of warriors and spearmen that have been sitting around for a few milennia. It's also certainly not infeasible for militarily trained soldiers without firearms to defeat modern armour, especially in a large city, because while they may not have guns, they aren't bronze age people. Unless of course, you think that they have somehow survived for 6000 years. [ January 26, 2003, 04:28: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ] |
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Did any of your friends buy the game on the weekend it came out? Cause I did, and it crashed, a lot. |
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If I made a game on my computer, and tested and debugged it on my computer to the point of it being bug free, I could then bring it to a very new machine made with top quality parts and experience bugs that never existed. This is because I was stupid and assumed if it worked right on my computer it must work well on everyone's. This is how bugs are born. Of course there are ways I can program it to reduce the chances of incompatabilities by making less assumptions on my target audience's hardware and reusing older, 'tried and true' libraries where possible, but in the end TESTING is the key. And that still doesn't account for gameplay bugs which have nothing to do with the hardware (i.e. the old bug at the end of Act II in NwN). This isn't to say that poor hardware configs don't cause problems, but they are by NO MEANS the only source of problems. As Pheonix-D pointed out, problems with copy prot schemes aren't limited to the stupid, or to those with poor system configs (or to pirates for that matter), they WILL screw all of us at least once as time goes on, give it time, they'll get you too! [ January 26, 2003, 04:33: Message edited by: MacLeod ] |
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The game is still better than it's immediate predecessor SMAC, which has the ridiculous unit design mechanism that allows you to kill attackers armed with the best weapons by putting better armour on you units. Quote:
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Copy Protection schemers are looking more and more outside the CD to determine if their CD is 'legit' or not. Last time I checked (admittedly, about 6 months ago), SecuROM refused to allow it's games to run on a wide variety of CD burners or on systems featuring certain burning software and *gasp* virtual drives. My cynical dispositions are telling me this is the beginning of a trend. Also, please note the Last part of the sentence you quoted wasn't entirely serious. [ January 26, 2003, 04:56: Message edited by: MacLeod ] |
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I personally would have to describe once an hour as pretty unstable, especially since you may lose at least 15 minutes of gameplay since your Last save (and I've had a few games that didn't even have a save). Quote:
I've played UO for 5 years, and back in my younger days Doom, and it's extreme editability Lasted me about 3. SE is also another long Laster, though I'm too tired to remember how long ago it has been since I started playing SEIII. |
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"Like anything else you do on a computer, you should be saving no less than every five to ten minutes. If it's word processing, I save every thirty seconds."
Some programs don't -let- you save this frequent, or become unstable if you do. And frankly one crash per hour is pretty bad. Most games I've played do -far- better than that. Metroid on the gamecube has crashed about as much as some of the better PC games I've played. Twice, and I've played it for twelve hours. Phoenix-D |
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One crash is too often.
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I wouldn't call it substandard, if we tested till all bugs were gone on all machines, games would never get released.
See that is the problem these days, computer technology has diverged so much, and evolved so quickly, all systems are just way too varied. |
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Stability: I consider a game to be very stable if it crashes once for every ten hours I put into it. And I have a lot of games that meet this standard (including SE4 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ).
Value: I picked up Might and Magic 4-8 a year ago for a grand total of 11 bucks. To date, I've logged somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 hours on MM6-MM8. Now that's value. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif |
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" The game is still better than it's immediate predecessor SMAC, which has the ridiculous unit design mechanism that allows you to kill attackers armed with the best weapons by putting better armour on you units. "
Oh horsepucky. I played SMAC for a couple of years. Civ3 Lasted about 2 games before getting deleted. And yea, gee, it's amazing that if you put your best armor on your units, you have a greater chance of defeating an attacker. You love Civ3, that is apparent, I hated it. so what. Opinions are like a**holes. every has their own, and it's usually full of crap. When you talk about value in a game, value in an item is based on a standard that people are use to. A good meal at a nice restaruant can cost $20 a plate, and your done eating in 30-60 minutes. If you compare that to a $20 game you play for a whole day, then the meal looks like a bad value and the game looks like a good value. That, is comparing apples to oranges and is no basis for comparison. $20 for a one day game is poor. $20 for a tasty meal is not. Stick with apples and apples and leave the other fruit in the fridge. Customers have come to expect games, esp in the 4x genre', to have months and months of enjoyment. If the game playability is bad because of bugs, balancing issues, hardware issues, ect to the point it is not worth the effort loading up, and you just bought the game, it's not a good value. You talk about playing several new games a month. At $45-50 a copy for new games, you must have an unlimited game budget. Must be nice. I, and the majority of gamers do not have that much money to burn. We expect value (meaning dollar spent, per game hour enjoyed, per industry standard). And lately, most games have fallen short of that mark. imnsho [ January 26, 2003, 12:15: Message edited by: couslee ] |
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You need to get a better computer! How on earth do you want to get any play done with saving every 5 minutes, or any typing done with saving every 30 seconds?!? Heck, saving in Baldur's Gate 1 cost me 5 minutes each time, having to save every 5 minutes is flat out ridiculous. |
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Of course that's what Golden Coral is around for. You pay $10 but all you can eat buffet. And it includes all you can eat steak. You just go up to them tell them how you want it cooked and presto, steak all night. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Excellent buy in that deal I say. [ January 26, 2003, 17:08: Message edited by: Ragnarok ] |
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If it is a true classic, you should be playing it until the CD/Floppy wears out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Not to the exclusion of everything else, of course, but Classics are the ones that keep you coming back! |
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I agree with Couslee. I have SMAC, and it was my favorite TBS game until SE4 came along.
You may think the unit design in SMAC is flawed, but it's still fun. And Civ 3 doesn't even have unit design. SMAC also has a complex tech tree that keeps the late game intersting with all the facilities and units you can build. Contrast that to the tedious late game of Civ 3. Like SE4, factions in SMAC are unitque with their own strategies. Miriam plays different than Deirdre, who plays diferent than Morgan, etc. In Civ 3, the strategies among the diferent civs isn't as diverse. SMAC also has a complex government and social model that doesn't exist in Civ 3. What are there, four government systems in Civ 3?! In SMAC, you have abou a half dozen government types, and social and economic models to choose from. SMAC also lets you play the game how you want, just like SE4. You can be a reckless expansionist if you want. You can also be like Israel, a tiny little powerhouse. In Civ 3, you have to play every game the same, as an expansionist. Don't expand, and you're finished. Again, makes the games too similar and repetitive. I don't totally dislike Civ 3. I give it kudos for its random resources concept, which is well implemented. I also like the idea of the cultural borders. Diplomacy is very well done, too. Too bad the AI cheats when it comes to tech trading, though (civs will trade with everyone else except you, unless you want to pay up the nose). The AI in Civ 3 is also more aggressive than in SMAC. Civs will actualy attack you with an *army* (especially those Persians!), and not just a few units, like in SMAC. I like the look and style of the game. It's okay. But SMAC is better, IMO. |
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... Civ 3 has nothing to do with SMAC. It should not necessarily be SMAC 2, but more the Civ 3 it claims to be. [ January 26, 2003, 20:42: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ] |
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