AG3

Reply to Stardock's Impulse Nears Millionth User in Personal Computing Stardock Forums

Just one thing irks me about being a viable competition to Steam: Last I checked, the 2K Games titles on Impulse were restricted to North America, while the same titles on Steam were available for the entire world. If Impulse is to compete on equal grounds with Steam, you'll at the very least need equal distribution rights for your digital downloads. The only thing that irks me more than seeing games I want with the worst Securom versions is "Available in North America/Canada only

Reply to Game Vortex Previews Demigod in Demigod Journals Stardock Forums

It didn't say that in the interview, but there used to be a ton of whining about it on various message boards. I never played the game online since Warcraft III put me off online multiplayer so admittedly I can't say whether this was the exact procedure used, but the infamous "zerg" rushing of winning the game in the span of a few minutes was widespread judging by the amount of vitriol it spawned on the boards. I know there was one game where selling your starter buildings to

Reply to Game Vortex Previews Demigod in Demigod Journals Stardock Forums

In some games (Command & Conquer Generals comes to mind) it's possible to sell your starter buildings and just rush the enemy base with the troops that gives you (since sold buildings spawns a few infantry units), winning the game within a few minutes. This is a rather unpopular tactic amongst some people though.

Reply to Impulse Weekend Buys – March 5th - 8th in Personal Computing Stardock Forums

I have the odd feeling that me doing that will have as much effect as my whining about Steam's retarded pricing of most games for Europeans did [e digicons]:annoyed:[/e]

Reply to Impulse Weekend Buys – March 5th - 8th in Personal Computing Stardock Forums

Actually, I just noticed that all of 2K's games are US/Canada only on Impulse, while Steam sells them worldwide. That's kind of lame, and a bit of an unfair competition.

Reply to Impulse Weekend Buys – March 5th - 8th in Personal Computing Stardock Forums

Meh, I want the Civilization 3 pack, but once again it seems I live in the wrong part of the world. Grats to game publishers who decide on these limits on digital distribution regions, you've lost another sale to retarded restrictions. Apparently I can buy the same pack at Steam though without that limit, but I'd rather not since I prefer to have as many games as possible on Impulse since I don't need to run it to play :/

Reply to Do you really want Steam to be your only option? Are you sure? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="Peace Phoenix" reply="8" id="2056019"] the 1$ = 1€ fiasco Are you aware that some publishers force Impulse do have a regional pricing for Europe for their titles with that kind of exchange rate?[/quote] Yes, but that's not something Stardock has decided to implement globally and excuse it with "making it easier for the customer to understand the price", which is a load of bollocks, and to top it off add VAT for countries who don't pay it. I don'

Reply to Do you really want Steam to be your only option? Are you sure? in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

I'm a big fan of impulse and I also use Steam, but recently something Valve did made me pretty much stop using it; the 1$ = 1€ fiasco. Not only did this make most games 25% more expensive (sometimes much more!) if you live in a European country (even if it's not a member of the EU like mine), but they also added VAT to some countries that don't actually have VAT for international orders! A game that costs 49.99$ becomes $64.50 for me, which used to be much higher until the exchan

Reply to Stardock: The BIG Expansion!! in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

It's curious that she called SD a "digital gaming manufacturer" when they are (from what recall) a lot more well known for their non-gaming software. Or at least that's where their main revenue comes from, unless that's changed with the recent titles.

Reply to Living in Windows 7: Part 1 in Personal Computing Stardock Forums

I'm dual booting XP and Win 7 x64 at the moment. I like Windows 7 a lot more than I do Vista (which I have to deal with on a regular basis at work and when playing IT support for my parents), but it's behaving very beta for me, with BSODs not being very uncommon; usually get 1 per day or so, sometimes more. But I did expect that when I installed the beta. Win 7 is going to be my cue to go 64 bit, and get some more RAM on my game rig

Reply to Disconnect between Pricing here and other places? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

It's not as bad as Steam's recent 1$=1€ fiasco, which made their games about 25-30% more expensive if you live in europe, and much more expensive than buying a physical copy locally -_- It's not just a Stardock thing either, this is pretty much the norm for games that are distributed both digitally and physically. The retailers don't buy the games at the full price, since there after all has to be a profit in it for the retailers. Buying wholesales also tends to get them a discou

Reply to Brad's 2009 Resolutions in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

Great list, all you need now is for the Earth's rotation to slow down so that we get 40 hour days, which should be just about enough to give you the time needed to get all of that done within in the next 334 days ;)

Reply to Wanted - Turn-Based RPG in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

The first 2 Fallout games come to mind, and I believe you can buy them for a mere $5.99 each at Good Old Games ( www.gog.com ). If you decide to get them though, I'd strongly suggest playing them in order. Not so much because of needing to know what happened in the first one to enjoy the second, but because while they are similar, the second game is quite a bit more polished in various areas, wh

Reply to Windows 7 it is...now for my wish list in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

I'm not sure what Microsoft has to gain from making a 32 bit version of Windows 7. Is it to address compatability issues with older software for people who stuck with XP instead of going for Vista? Seems a bit unlikely, since they most likely would be power users who could easily just opt to dual boot XP 32 bit and Windows 7 x64 (which I will be doing). I just don't see a point in a new 32 bit OS at this point. More sales from people with dirt old computers and software? Frankly I thi

Reply to DoW II: Free content for paying customers, no *stupid* DRM in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

Thank god another company is leaving the path of stupid DRM and going the Stardock way of rewarding paying customers instead of punishing them (and meh at them saying Valve were the pioneers there). One of the most annoying types of DRM is the one that tells you that you can't play the game you bought legally because you've got "emulation software" installed. Like in the old days when they'd refuse to run if you had a CD burner in the computer -_- Yes Securom, I have Daemon To

Reply to Basic versus Advanced Colonization in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

If I remember correctly, you get only 50% production with basic colonization, and need advanced colonization in order to get the full 100% production from buildings. By the way, if you get a planet with a hostile environment that you have not researched at all (like through influence flip or diplomacy), you get 0% production.

Reply to Windows 7, list of working sofware in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="Ron Lugge" reply="22" id="2019627"]I can't seem to get GC2:TA running (and it's the only GC I wanna play at this point ) I figure it's not SD's fault I'm beta testing a new OS, and I'm going back to playing Xcom for a while...[/quote] It works perfectly for me in Windows 7 x64, so I don't know why it won't run for you. Not tried DA or DL though, I only play TA these days. As for losing partitions, on my computer I experienced that Win 7 d

Reply to Over-sleeping in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="tito_defekt" reply="8" id="2019817"] Are you drinking any energy drinks? Rarely. Most of the time I drink alcohol. But doesn't that should put me into a deep sleep?[/quote] Alcohol makes it easier to fall asleep, true, but it severely reduces the "quality" of your sleep and thus you get a lot less rested from it than you would if you had no alcohol in you. If you want to be more rested from sleep, cutting out the alcohol should be

Reply to Windows 7, list of working sofware in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

Zoomplayer Home Professional v6.00 works with Windows 7 x64 at least

Reply to Norway ... Country that did not make it into the movie Sicko. in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="General Homsar" reply="19" id="2012729"] How can police enforce the law if they're unarmed?[/quote] Well, seeing as a lot of criminals are unarmed as well, they simply subdue them, by brute force, pepper spray or police dogs (no, not poodles like in the video :P) . If the criminals are carrying firearms, then the police arm themselves as well. The police have weapons at their disposal, they just don't need to carry them around, so they don't. I mean, really, it's a sm

Reply to Norway ... Country that did not make it into the movie Sicko. in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

Oh, and speaking of oil: In Norway, the government has something it calls "Handlingsregelen" (not sure how to translate that... Emm, The Act/Action Rule?). It governs how much money the government should spend of the oil income we have. Currently it is set to be the expected yield/returns on the pension fund (after adjusting for inflation etc), which is set to be 4% of the fund. In this way, the fund will theoretically never shrink even if there's no actual new oil income being added

Reply to Norway ... Country that did not make it into the movie Sicko. in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

Yes, Norway is a very good country to live in, maybe the best one in the world if you can use such a sweeping statement like it's an objective truth. That doesn't mean the country doesn't have its share of problems, although you could argue that we aren't worse off than any other country out there. The video was nice, but it felt kinda artificially utopian ^^; If you look around the country, you won't have problems finding people who aren't having a very "good" life, be it emotionally o

Reply to Has Anyone played Mass Effect and What did you think? in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

[quote who="Tamren" reply="23" id="1995528"]Got it off Steam today. The game runs dissapointingly bad. For one thing it maxes out both my CPU cores at 100%/100% even when I am standing idle outside of combat. This seems to cause problems resulting in random crashes and freezing, perhaps due to overheating? The graphics are hella choppy, even on low graphics and with vsync on. I have never had problems with my onboard sound but mass effect has a lot of choppy static, unexplained looping noises

Reply to Has Anyone played Mass Effect and What did you think? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

Ooh, Mass Effect with no Securom? Off to buy the game then, been wanting to play it for aaaaaaaages. While I'm busy playing Mass Effect, please knock some sense into the Witcher developers so Stardock can sell the Impulse version in Western Europe. For all the bitching about piracy that game developers do, they really have some asinine restrictions on who they'll actually take money from [e digicons]:|[/e]

Reply to 64-bit Windows is better than getting an SSD if you have the RAM in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

I'm quite happy with my XP with 4GB (or 3.2GB as it is) RAM, so I'm holding out on going 64-bit until Windows 7 comes. Can't stay 32 bit forever, and from what I've read MS learned a bit from the mistakes they did with Vista that annoyed me enough to not upgrade it on my gaming rig. Hoping that we'll have some decently fast, big and affordable SSD disks when that time comes too. Why pick 1 if you can have both? Heck, I'll probably build an entirel