Still intersted in another tester mstrobel? I'd love to lend a hand somewhere in your project. It's looking fantastic so far

btw, how are you guys running vista? You got the Beta edition or something?

Chris, you're more than welcome to help out. If anyone can get this to run on Vista, I'd love to hear if there was any substantial performance difference. Other than that, I'm not recruiting any "formal" testers, so I'd just like to hear feedback from anyone on the forum. I'll be posting regular updates, and your client should update itself automatically. Just play as much or as little as you want, and whenever you see something that doesn't seem right, post it to the forum or drop me a PM. This goes for everyone.

BTW, the multiplayer feature should work, so if any of you want to get together and test a full game, be my guest. There are just a couple restrictions that you should be aware of:

• You cannot choose which empire to play as yet, but since there are only two empires right now, you can still pick sides by determining who hosts the game. Player 0 (the host) will always play as the Altarian Republic, and Player 1 will always play as the Dracari Imperium. Pay attention to your race's planet environment preference (the planet type of your homeworld), as it is different for each race. The Altarians will want worlds similar to Oceanic, and the Dracari will want worlds similar to Inferno. You can see a planet's relative comfort level in the tool tip when you hover over it at the bottom of the main galaxy screen. If a planet type matches a race's environmental preference, then conditions are "Ideal". If it's one step away, then conditions are "Comfortable"; three, "Adequate"; four, "Inhospitable"; otherwise "Terrible". Comfort level affects maximum population as well as growth rate.
• At the moment, multiplayer gameplay is probably only suitable for players with broadband connections (256kbps or higher). You can expect the turn updates sent from the server to each player to exceed 100kb in a game that's pretty far along with a lot of buildings and ships. The good news is that these are only sent once at the beginning of each turn. Note that the initial client download when you first start a game may be a good bit larger, as the client download's the server's race database, tech database, and other information as well (but this only happens once per game).
• There is currently no way to send messages back and forth once the game has started, nor is there a way to tell if the other player has finished their turn. Therefore, you may want to use some sort of IM client or voice chat program so you can talk to your opponent while you play.

I think that's about it... if I think of anything else, I'll post that as well.

Tweaked the UI theme around a bit. Check it out in the screenshots or the preview update if you have it installed. I'd like some feedback.

Note that there's one or two places where the old font still shows up, and text gets cut off in some places because the font is wider. I'll take care of all that.

hmmm...

i tried to get the update, but when i opened the file it gave me the error:



ive got everything that is needed - the ZIPed version i had works fine.



I'll play a test game with someone.

are the versions backwards compatible?

No, the versions are most likely NOT backwards compatible, as the main game state structure has probably changed just enough to cause the client to flip out.

General, were you able to use the installer before? Or is this the first time you've tried? Can you send me the detail log from that error message?

Cheers,
Mike

this is the first time i've used the installer.

sure, i can send the report.

its a bit large, dont want to fill up the forums. Can I email it to you?

You can just PM it to me.

mkay

PM sent

OK, there was a problem with a missing MIME type on the server that prevented people from running the installer. If you clicked the link and were taken to an XML file, this was why. It should work now, assuming you have the prerequisites installed.

Cheers,
Mike

nice stuff

great! Its working now.

FFClick once works great.

I could grab Vista from any of a number of BT trackers, been wanting to, and now this gives me an excuse! ATI has Vista drivers these days, just not sure about my motherboard components.. but Vista should come stock with general drivers to make it work for the most part.


Couple questions though.

When we say 'Vista', do we mean 64bit Vista or 32bit Vista? I'd rather be shot than use a 32bit "next gen" OS, but just curious. I'm running Win x64 Pro right now, and might try the game on this before moving to Vista.

Also..

I don't imagine the Vista install will offer me an easy way to set up dual boot really simple like Linux would, eh?

Too bad MS pushed Vista back until Jan, too. Bums.

And last one; say I install Vista now. When a new public release comes out, does it update itself through Windows Update to the latest build, or does it require a fresh install? Oh, and a college related one! I'm an economics major, but realized, woops, got to minor in a non-business related subject, and picked computer science. I don't imagine I'll be learning how to do anything like what you are doing at all though?

Sorry for all the questions!

Ringold,

If you're looking to snag a copy of Vista, you may as well go for the 64-bit version. If you can actually get Supremacy to run on Vista at all, then it shouldn't matter if it's 32-bit or 64-bit.

Many moons ago, I installed an early beta of Vista alongside Windows XP on a separate drive, and it installed a new boot menu that gave me the option to boot to Vista or Legacy Windows (XP). I imagine it shouldn't be too difficult to dual boot, unless you have an existing bootloader that you don't want overwritten (i.e. Grub).

As for updates, if you're referring to Vista itself, then I have no idea. If you're referring to Supremacy, then it will check for updates whenever you go to run the game. If there is one available, it will automatically download it and patch itself.

Glad to hear you've taken an interest in Computer Science . Moreso than with other majors, however, how much you learn is heavily dependent on you.

Well, my real major in Economics, but.. I spend so much time on this computer anyway, computer science seemed natural. I'll try to milk it for all it's worth though; I see all these open-source programs, and most specifically, people taking source code and making their own custom builds for their particular systems, ie, tweaking it for Athlon 64s SSE2, SSE3, 3DNow, X86-64 properties, like people do on a massive (and automated) scale with Gentoo, etc. I'd like to be able to contribute a bit here and there, so.. yeah. i'll try to absorb what I can inbetween my major classes.

Regarding Vista, I'll see what I can grab, maybe by the end of the weekend I'll post and let you know how the game might work.

Keep up the good work though. You know, some people are asking about an AI, but I'd be happier than a pig in mud for just decent multiplayer, which it almost already is. AI's are fundamentally retarded anyway; they either cheat horribly or play fair but ultimately are never as challenging as a human player. Really looking forward to future versions!

Thanks for the kind feedback . It's always nice to know that people are taking an interest in something I develop, and it's great motivation to keep working .

I actually used to run Gentoo on both my desktop and mobile workstations, and it's still one of my favorite distros. I did quite a bit of research on my chip architectures in order to get my gcc flags just right . Sadly, I got tired of having to recompile every little update--particuarly when I was in class--and I eventually joined the hordes of people moving over to Ubuntu. I actually do most of my development on the Microsoft .NET platform now, so I've been spending most of my time running Windows anyway. Even so, I've intentionally kept the core Supremacy framework separate from the client frontend. That way, the core of the game doesn't have any WinFX/WPF dependencies, and it would be possible to compile the SDK with Mono. That would allow the game to run on Linux or Mac OS X if someone took the time to write a cross-platform interface. Of course, I'll probably be done with my undergraduate degree by the time the game is that far slong, and if I decide to go for a Ph.D., then I may try to port the WPF library to OpenGL/Glitz for my thesis . If we're very lucky, however, either Microsoft and Novell will do it first .

I haven't touched Linux in a little while now, but about to drop Ubuntu on my girlfriends computer (dual-booting Windows though for anything she needs that cant be easily done there) so that her parents, who speak and read very little English, can use its Vietnamese localization settings without me having to go pirate a Multilanguage version of Windows.

It's just my opinion, but I think developing on Windows is probably the best course anyway. Linux will have its day, but Windows I figure will always have the widest user base, most compatible user base. It's still by far the most user friendly.. dont need a computer science degree to know that much! Even Ubuntu, which seems great, I bet still has to be dropped down to a command line when XFree86/Org or something else goes wrong, and when the average joe gets dumped off at something that looks very much like DOS, they get scared. And looking up tech support through lynx isn't exactly fun either

I'm sure everybody here though would love to see you continue to develop the game; it sounds like it's actually almost sort of done! Like I said about the AI too, neh, not even necessary; MOE and I can battle over who's the best gamer on the Folding@Home team, heheh. If it got released publicly, I bet this place would light on fire with new people. Wouldn't mind even paying for it; I bought Flatspace 2 because the darn demo sucked me in and I felt guilty about using a crack on what was obviously definitely a one-man game developing team.

I noticed the next public Beta for Vista is about 3 weeks off; thats encouraging me to really grab it this weekend. I can play around, get Supremacy on there, and see what breaks the OS and what doesnt, then feel good knowing in a couple weeks it'll be a clean-slate updated install.

New update published, and this will probably be the last, as the demo faire is this Friday. After that, I'll start the BOTF2 conversion, and all subsequent updates will be posted to the Supremacy forum (on this site).

I posted a demo video in the main post, for anyone who's interested. You'll probably want to do a right-click, "save as".

you mean Beta 2?

Cause beta 1 was released last JULY publically.


Nice video! Games coming along nicely!

Ooh I just watched the video. VERY nice. And you used the music I sent you.

Sorry for the double post, but I was just watching the video again, and I noticed a typo.

About 1m 23s into the video, it says make peace with your "neighors". I assume that's meant to be neighbours?

Just thought you should know about it, MStrobel, in case you used the video for work purposes or anything...

...

I've finally decided to install all the stuff that this game needs to run. It's all installed, and i've got the game running now.

First of all...wow!

I love the music, the interfaces are shiny, the Planets are cool, (Although it would be even better if they were rotating like they did in BOTF) and its easy to understand.

...Well, almost. Is the single player button supposed to be greyed out?

Anyways, there's two points I thought i'd mention:

First off, I think the system overview should also contain inductry points. I know industry is displayed just to the right of the box, next to the slider, but I think it should additionally be in the boz as well.

Secondly, is research. Does the research system work yet? Or is all my research going to waste?

This is amazing work, MStrobel...now i'm off to ary on playing the game.

Research and Intelligence didn't make it into the final cut, though the facilities are still there. The single player button is grayed out because there isn't actually an AI capable of being a full opponent. Diplomacy AI is the only AI system currently implemented. It's rather simple, but it works for both empires and minor races.

By tomorrow evening I'll be finished with my last class project of the semester, and then I'll be able to start working on the game again .

As for the typo, you're correct--but I didn't notice it until I had compiled the final video, and at that point I didn't have time to correct it before I had to turn it in. I don't think my professor noticed, though.

Does this still work?

It works if you install the prerequisites listed in the main post. However, if you use a more recent version of the WinFX Runtime, it won't work. I haven't bothered fixing the UI to work with Beta 2, since I'm now focusing on Star Trek: Supremacy (BOTF2).

Ok, just wanted to make sure before I start installing stuff. I'm going to assume that the gameplay will be similiar, and it will help me figure out some of your design decisions and allow me to come up with some possible coding decisions you may have used.

If you have something more current that I could tinker with, that'd work too.

As soon as I get my hands on the RTM of Team Foundation Server, I'm going to upgrade my source control system (I'm still on Beta 3 at the moment). At that point, you'll be welcome to poke around in the current source branch.

Are you still going to require people to update in order to start the game up? I bring my laptop almost everywhere (it's in my car atleast), and typically break it out at my girlfriend's house when I get bored.

Oh yeah, did I mention she has AoL dialup? I respect my laptop a lot more than to install something so increadibly horrible on to it.

Seeing as though I'm not updating the game anymore, it will check for updates when you start, but it will not find any. It works offline as well, so an Internet connection is not required to run the game.

Ah, cool. Exactly what I was looking for. I want to give it a spin - maybe tonight.

my hosting company will happily provide free hosting for this project with unlimited bandwidth.

hosting is on a uk based server with a gigabit connection.

you would need to register a domain for the project, and point it too our nameservers - i can provide this service for a price of $20 us dollars, or you can do it yoursef.

contact me @ zach@hailingfrequency.co.uk if you are interested.

in other news i cannont actually download the game.

when i run th application file it trys to connect then says "cannot download the applcation, the application is missing required files, contact the application vendor for assistance*