afaust

Reply to How Many Computers Do You Use During the Day? in Personal Computing Sins Forums

Main Machine This is my gaming machine as well as software development machine. I also run multiple virtual machines as needed on this using Virtual PC. Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHZ 4 GB RAM GeForce 8800 GTS 500 GB SATA drive 750 GB eSata drive Vista Ultimate 64-bit Two 30" HP LP3065 widescreen monitors running at 2560x1600 each. (I got a great deal on them refurbished direct from HP.) Laptop Primarily used for work related stuff. However

Reply to How Many Computers Do You Use During the Day? in Personal Computing Sins Forums

[quote]this has Vista Ultimate on it with XP as a VM via Parallels[/quote] Does Parallels have a Windows version now? When I bought my Mac version I'd thought they only had Mac versions.

Reply to FrogBlog: April 2008 (very late) in Blogging JoeUser Forums

I've been wondering. Is there any particular reason Object Dock isn't included in either of the Object Desktop Suites? Does it's exclusion mean it's meant to be replaced by Object Bar? Object Desktop Plus is my favorite Stardock product (even beating out GalCiv) so I'd love to see it get updated more frequently. And yes, I did purchase the plus version. Now that I've got a setup I like, I can't live without the multiple docks.

Reply to Highlights of what's new in Twilight of the Arnor in GalCiv Journals JoeUser Forums

Are there many music and sound changes? I loved the main menu music to Dread Lords. I'd actually take my time setting up a game just to listen to the music longer.

Reply to HUGE AI improvement in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

That is exactly what Civ IV did. (Well, the one in Civ IV also lets you change the gameplay rules also). Maybe this idea isn't as impractical as you think. Wow. I wasn't aware that Civ IV had that. I knew the Civ series always had a large amount of modability, just didn't know they'd taken it to that extent. Guess it's time to dust off the disc and reinstall it.

Reply to HUGE AI improvement in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

One thing I would love to see a game like GalCiv do is make the AI user replaceable. Perhaps create an AI API that lets you build your own DLLs that the main game can call to get all AI decisions based on the state of the Univers (as it can see it). I know it's totally impracticle, won't make you any money and in general probably not a good idea from a business standpoint. A guy can dream, though. Note: I know of games like Mind Rover and some of the other AI games that l

Reply to Let us know what you'd like in v1.03 in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

The game could really use the ability to auto download maps and saved games in multiplayer. I've been playing with 3 other people on custom maps built using Galaxy forge and it's inconvenient to have to keep e-mailing the maps around. The saved games as well. If one player has issues and drops, we tend to save the game and exit until they can get back in. However, they won't have the save game because they were dropped so we have to send it. This transfer should really just be built in to the ga

Reply to Sins launch day screen shots in Strategy JoeUser Forums

That's good to hear. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to survive long enough in a game to try it for myself. So far it's fun, but it has a very steep learning curve. I'm not complaining, though. If it were dumbed down it wouldn't be fun.

Reply to Sins of a Solar Empire reaches #2 on Amazon.com in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Probably not but hey a guy can dream right? Egosoft just announced a sequal to X3 called X3: Terran Conflict.

Reply to Sins MyColors theme in Gaming JoeUser Forums

I assume you didn't tell people how to get it as you wanted to make us figure it out ourselve? It wasn't too hard. A hint for the rest of you. Think about how you get pretty well all Stardock's products.

Reply to Sins launch day screen shots in Strategy JoeUser Forums

I have just barely started the tutorials, however, I was pleased to see that I was able to run it in full 2560x1600 res on my 30" monitor quite well. I was expecting it to look like a still painting as most other games do at that resolution. Hopefully, it will still be smooth in an actual game with more objects. Beautiful looking game so far.

Reply to Ugly Tray Icons in ObjectDock WinCustomize Forums

My solution to the ugly icons is to create a separate dock which contains only the system tray icons. I dock this at the center top of the screen, but you could put it anywhere. I then shrink the dock so that the icons are the same size as they are in the regular taskbar. I also change the hover effect so it doesn't magnify. With this setup the systray icons are no uglier (or better looking) than usual.

Reply to Voter ID requirements might be here to stay in Politics JoeUser Forums

> Enough of the shennanigans in allowing people to vote in any precinct they care to make out an affidavit in. The duplicate votes per person issue should already be largely solved. A few years ago the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) required all states maintain the master voting list. Previously it had often been handled at the county or city level. Under the old system, someone could easily vote in more than 1 county. At this point, most state

Reply to MP3 gadgets at CES in CES 2008 JoeUser Forums

> Or put another way, an iPhone with 3G and navigation iPhone needs a few more things before I think I could switch to it. More storage or expandable storage via SD cards. For a video device 16 gb just isn't enough. Third party developer support. I know the SDK is out to select companies and will be generally available soon so hopefully this issue is fixed. It remains to be seen, though, how much control over the device Apple

Reply to Are you a gifted person? in Blogging JoeUser Forums

[quote] I have to disagree with this point, afaust. I have seen many gifted people who work menial jobs. One other interesting characteristic is, money does not ALWAYS tend to be a primary objective.[/quote] I agree with you about money not being an objective. My sister is quite a bit more intelligent than I am, yet she teaches high school math for less than a third what I make. That's why I also mentioned grades. This wasn't an all inclusive list of factors. It was merely

Reply to ThinkPad as development machine in GalCiv Journals JoeUser Forums

I've been using Vista off and on since Release Candidate 1. Until about a month ago I had always gone back to XP after about a week because there were too many problems. The previous time I had Vista installed, I actually went back to XP because Galactic Civilizations 2 didn't run properly. However, about a month ago I installed again and loaded up all the patches and it's ran great. There had been some performance & compatability updates that complete

Reply to Are you a gifted person? in Blogging JoeUser Forums

I have a much easier survey to decide if you are gifted or not. [] Do you need to take a survey to validate that you are gifted? If you answered yes to this question, you aren't gifted. Gifted people know they're gifted. They see proof of it all the time in things like consistently higher grades with less effort in school and better paying jobs.

Reply to I love Amazon.com in Blogging JoeUser Forums

I assume you joined Amazon prime, then? I love it. For $80 a year I get free 2 day shipping and $4 overnight shipping. If you don't order much or don't care how long it takes to get your stuff, it's not worth it. However, if you're impatient like me and always opt for quicker delivery it's a huge money saver.

Reply to Politically Incorrect Entrepreneurs in Blogging JoeUser Forums

I've got no problems with people expressing their opinions in their products and shows. You're not forced to purchase those products or watch those shows. If people don't like it they can turn the channel. The problem I do have is that too far a percentage of the populace blindly accepts those opinions as their own because a celebrity said it on TV. The thing that bothers me most about the Scott Adams situation is that those postings were gen

Reply to Slavery for the government in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Couldn't find an e-mail for you Draginol and wanted to ask a question. For the last several months Scott Adams had been writing about controversal topics on his blog. In most cases they were just mental excercises and not even his actual stances on the actual topic. Recently he made a blog post saying that no matter what he wrote he offended some of his readers enough that they no longer read Dilbert. He said it actually began affecting his income. As a result of this, he said he was go

Reply to Custom Race Logo...? in Modding Stardock Forums

Get Paint.Net it's an open source graphics program meant to replace Paint. It handles transparency and layers. http://www.getpaint.net/

Reply to can someone explain to me how research works? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I don't know the exact algorithms that are used, however, the basic idea for research is that every technology has a cost associated with it. Suppose Lasers costs 400 tp (not sure the real number). All the research facilities you build up creates a pool that is your max research units per turn. From your example above your max would be 40 tp per turn. This is the increased by any research bonuses you may have from racial abilities or research resources. However, you don't automatically use the f

Reply to sword of the stars in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Putting in real-time tactical combat would kill the enjoyment of the game for me. I've gotten to the point where I am sick of RTS games, and would hate to see one of the last great turned based strategy franchises go that route.

Reply to Vista Crash in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I had this exact same problem with the Vista Ultimate final build. I switched back to XP specifically so I could play Dark Avatar.