SEV DEMO IS OUT!

Quitch · #1 September 17th, 2006, 04:00 PM

I'm a SEIII player. I worshipped at the idol of SEIII and loved it to bits... in part because the graphics were easy to customise so I could make my own ship design even though I suck at art, but mainly because the game was massively customisable and deep, yet the interface (and more importantly the advisers) kept it managable. There were niggles, like contructions ministers failing to scrap obsolete buildings, but I loved it.

For some reason I never picked up SEIV. I think it's because the demo was limited to 100 turns, so I didn't really get a chance to fall in love again. I have happy memories of the SEIII demo and the epic war I had going, with my empire and another allied against two others (not forced, came about as part of the game) and only a couple of sectors linking our two halves of the galaxy. I lost count of the number of cruisers which died in those sectors.

So, having missed IV I was happily looking forward to V. The fact that the AI was going to be easier to tweak was a massive bonus, since I'm an offline gamer. I'd played Galactic Civilisations 2, but it all seemed a little empty and souless, where as SEIII had truly random races and enough treaties to keep things interesting. I was ready to rejoin the world of SE.

Yet the above has me deeply concerned. I'm actualy stunned that SEV hasn't moved beyond text windows for the tutorial, and that the damn things are flipping tiny! Not to mention that they don't work with the scroll wheel. It also sounds like much of the customisation for which I live is gone...

I am worried and am seriously considering getting SEIV gold, along with that improved AI mod.

Raapys · #2 September 17th, 2006, 04:07 PM

Actually, the customization is higher than ever, from what I've gathered. Heck, now it's even possible to make wormholes that can only allow certain ship-sizes. The problem with this incarnation of Space Empires is, to me, purely the GUI, which is very awkward, illogical and tedious.

Phoenix-D · #3 September 17th, 2006, 04:12 PM

settings.txt is not locked in the demo.

The wormhole sizes thing does NOT work as far as I can tell. Quitch: if you've only played SEIII..SE5's customization is going to blow you out of the water.

Raapys · #4 September 17th, 2006, 04:35 PM

Neat, it was possible to increase the number of AI's and systems through it. Now I've got 4 Amon'Krie(ish) empires in my game and 3 others. I set the startdate to 25000, never know if it might avoid the 100-turn limit.