Messages

I sure hope you mean empties.

Oops... yeah, that's what I meant.  LOL.

heh, I used to play your variant all the time before I started SRV. The doubled scrap flow was awesome and unlike LF's, the pilots were still there. (I think it was LF's that got rid of pilots)

Huh?  So, maybe I should fix it instead of scrapping it?  Uggg!

Anyway, my idea was basically that BZ2 strat took too long to build up units.  In other RTS games, you have multiple building to queue units, and could build up a sizable army/navy/whatever within 10 to 20 minutes.  In BZ2, you'd be lucky to have a battle of 8 or 10 ships.

Granted that when BZ2 came out, most computers couldn't handle anything more than 20 vehicles.  But times have changed, and bigger battles IMHO make for more intense game play.  So the whole idea of faster scrap rates and empty sabre/warrior was to reduce the downtime between battles.

It's the same reason why Extreme and Insane AI are more "fun" (perhaps).  Yes, the AI cheats, but the more units the AI throws at you, the more loose scrap the player collects, which makes for faster, more intense game play.

Anyway, I think there's a bug with my rec. variant - sabres aren't suppose to get mortar.

Yeah, I think my rec. variant can be removed for PB5.  It doesn't add much value, so best to shrink the list a bit.

Sorry, it was my fault.  I'm glad Steeveeo caught the problem.

Just my opinion, but I don't think it will be too much longer.  Maybe a week or two at most.

What's important is that PB4a not only has cleaned up a lot of bugs, there's now enough time to add some refinements.  IMHO, PB4 was just too rushed.  With PB4a, there has been a real concerted to fix and clean-up first, before considering any new additions.

Personally, I wasn't quite ready for PB4.  I was still trying to grasp all the changes that had happened to AIP scripting.  I made changes that made it *compatible* for PB4, but not optimized.  It has only been in the last 2 weeks that I have better idea of how to use the added flexibility.

Nothing's perfect, but PB4 and PB4a are necessary steps.  Have to keep moving forward.

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oh and wug while youre around, do you have a tips on some AIP's i want to do? i wont continue the topic here though

I was thinking about writing an article (something I was going to do for lucky_foot), but I think the best tip I can tell you ATM is to look through and use either mine or the stock AIPs as a template/reference.

It's like writing an app... it's easier to start with something than a blank screen.  By dissecting how the AIP files work, you'll probably learn a lot faster than if I try to give some kind of long-winded tutorial.

The stock 1.3 AIPs are more basic, and that's what I used as a reference when I started.  I started by cutting out chunks, leaving only the base building portion, then went into the game and watched what the builder did.  Then I layered on some defense plans, and lastly attack plans.

Hope that helps....

X-Fi has what they call "Alchemy" middleware to translate Directsound calls into OpenAL, which allows Vista to use hardware acceleration.  So that's why I have good sound in BZ2 again.  There's no way to disable software mixer otherwise.

Some games do support OpenAL natively, while a few games exclusively use the software mixer even for XP.

After SP1, Vista has been rock solid for me.  Drivers have finally matured, and most of the OS issues have been addressed.  Now, when a game crashes (which is fairly rare), I can usually switch out back to the desktop.  In XP, it'd be dead in the water.

I think I'm going to have to write an article about this sometime.

The DRM part is only for MS's media player / media center stuff.  Most people use the software they like, so it doesn't change anything.

The extra hard drive space isn't a big deal... on a 500+ GB hard drive, it's nothing.  What's important is to stop all the services/processes that aren't necessary from running.  I had to do that with XP to make it more 98-like, so the Vista being XP-like is no different.  Vista still uses more memory, but maybe 100 MB or so.

I learned that the first thing to turn off is Superfetch, which is what uses up ALL the RAM.  It's suppose to help speed things up by pre-loading, but for a power user / gamer, pre-loading always picks the wrong programs.  I can only see a person who does only word processing and surfing benefiting from something like this.

The other biggie is Indexing.  It's suppose to make file searching much faster.  Yeah, it does, but it eats up CPU cycles and slows down the hard drive.  Turning those two things off also really helps battery life on laptops.

Vista seemingly uses a lot more memory even with Superfetch off because it caches aggressively.  And that memory isn't really "used/lost," and doesn't impact performance negatively.

There are real benefits to Vista (with SP1).  Faster network stack (much faster than XP), more stable video (especially switching out of full-screen game), better memory management (excluding Superfetch), DX10, better security (signed binaries).  Pretty much slight improvements over XP on most things.

So, it's too much pain to switch from XP for existing PCs, but new PCs I feel are better supported with Vista.

And I still cannot get Bioshock to even install.  One of the worst installers of all time...

Sorry to hear that.  It's a good game... not perfect, but worth playing IMHO.

I think PCs that are using XP should stick with XP, especially with SP3 now.  But a new PC, I'd definitely go Vista x64.

Partly because of work, and partly because I wanted to try x64.  Windows XP x64 is just not well supported.  And DirectX10 does look good in games like Bioshock.

But I think people make too big of a deal out of XP vs. Vista.  Vista is really just an incremental upgrade to XP.  Once the extraneous stuff is removed or disabled, it's really a slightly more refined version of XP.

Man, Vista loads all sorts of crap by default.  It's understandable that for the average joe, Vista can be slow and frustrating.  Even techs that I've talked to complain about Vista... LOL.

I just picked up a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium.  Yeah, I hate Creative, but let's not go into that.  I finally have hardware 3D sound again in BZ2.  Over 100 channels of sound... yeah!

One of the worst things in Vista is being forced to use the software audio mixer.  Blah!

I always thought of gun spires as a "poor man's" alternative to titans.  Specifically, when down to two scrap pools, I don't want to count on maulers alone for defense.

TheJamsh, calm down, man.  It's just been released; just enjoy it.  Play with it for a few days, and see how it shakes out.

Just my two cents.

Also, remember to thank Commando, Red Devil, GreenHeart, and the rest of the grunts who did, well, the grunt work.

The mod guys need to be thanked too, but that can wait until after the mods are released.

Happy hunting!

As far as I can remember, Commando made a 1.2 rec. variant to try to make 1.3 more playable for vets.

I also made a rec. variant to try to address the problem by boosting empty scouts to have greater speed and health (to compensate for a lack of flying), and added empty sabre/warrior that could survive long enough to knock out jammers and the like.

Oh well, it was worth a try.