I'm going to speak about the elephant in the gaming room...

[chemical_art]

It's going to be a good holiday season. But the presents come over the months.

In other  words, if you have a console or pc , a ton of fun games are coming out.

[eRe4s3r]

Alone Skyrim will cast me away from the world for at least a week  It should be forbidden to amass so many AAA games into Oct and NOV dates.

[BobTheJanitor]

I found Oblivion so unexciting that I can't manage to build any excitement for Skyrim. But a lot of other people seem to be frothing over it, and more power to them. I hope that it's as great as everyone seems to think it will be.

I'm just looking forward to the upcoming Steam sales. I tend to live a generation or two behind the gaming curve, so I get the big games when they go on sale a year or so later. It's slower, but much cheaper. And I still have enough of a backlog to last me for a year, so I'm not missing much by saving big titles for later.

[Underfot]

... I tend to live a generation or two behind the gaming curve...

Yeah, the cutting edge of game technology tends to make you bleed green.  I'm waiting for Mass Effect 3 so I can buy ME2 cheap.

[Echo35]

... I tend to live a generation or two behind the gaming curve...

Yeah, the cutting edge of game technology tends to make you bleed green.  I'm waiting for Mass Effect 3 so I can buy ME2 cheap.

The funny thing is, I have (And always have had) cutting edge, power house machines, and yet, 90% of the games I play are either indie titles that don't require much power at all, or really old stuff (I still play Alpha Centauri!:P )

[zespri]

The funny thing is, I have (And always have had) cutting edge, power house machines, and yet, 90% of the games I play are either indie titles that don't require much power at all, or really old stuff (I still play Alpha Centauri!:P )

Ever played Stars!?

[Echo35]

The funny thing is, I have (And always have had) cutting edge, power house machines, and yet, 90% of the games I play are either indie titles that don't require much power at all, or really old stuff (I still play Alpha Centauri!:P )

Ever played Stars!?

Almost, on several occasions. A lot of Sci-Fi 4X games I play (Like Space Empires and Aurora) refer to Stars, but I've never gotten around to playing it. I did try obtaining it a few times though. As I seem to recall, it's a pain to locate.

EDIT: Of course, they would be right on the main page in front of my face. Derp. Well then, let's play?

Took some wrangling with DOSBox and hunting down what the heck files to use out of the bazillion ones listed, and finding a set of keys, but I got it running. Something to spend my time on while I wait for Sword of the Stars II to be finished

[eRe4s3r]

I must be blind, I neither see a way to get stars! nor do i find ANY trace of these mysterious "freeware tools to manage your empire in STARS!" that wikipedia claims exist. Google says it doesn't.. weird

Also stars is a really bad title for a game in this day and age.. just sayin

edit: nevermind http://www.starsfaq.com/download.htm is the way ,p

[Echo35]

edit: nevermind http://www.starsfaq.com/download.htm is the way ,p

Yeah, there are a crazy number of files on the site, and are poorly labeled, so I had to do some research. Also, you'll have to grab the list of serial keys since they don't actually sell the game anymore, and it doesn't seem to remember them so you have to enter it each time you load the game, which is annoying.

Update: Played it a little bit. The age sure shows in terms of the interface, but it's not so bad once you get used to it. Certainly a neat game, but as I play it it just feels like a very simplified Aurora, to the point that I just went back to playing Aurora

[zespri]

Update: Played it a little bit. The age sure shows in terms of the interface, but it's not so bad once you get used to it. Certainly a neat game, but as I play it it just feels like a very simplified Aurora, to the point that I just went back to playing Aurora

I admire you patience with Aurora. The Stars! I did put countless hours in back then, but it didn't not have that heavy entry toll. (Sorry, I'm in the mood for especially broken English today. You'll have to excuse me.)

[eRe4s3r]

The biggest turn off with Aurora for me is that it doesn't actually work on my PC ;p
Tis indeed very sad because i hear Aurora is not so bad,
but as it turns when trying to start the game its dependency on VB6 makes me start shouting a name
And that name, i have to tell
Is not very friendly for he
who developed this excel spreadsheet in vb6

Ah well, was worth a try

Maybe one of these eons someone converts it to java or something

[zespri]

Maybe one of these eons someone converts it to java or something

It's not open source as far as I'm aware, so this seems unlikely.
What dependency are you missing? MSSTDFMT.dll  or something else?

[eRe4s3r]

vb6 or rather the way it was used in this doesn't support German region OS

But besides that I am not missing anything, it just crashes On Vista x64

[Cyborg]

Converting to Java would be quite expensive. The model that Visual Basic uses is called "event driven programming," whereas Java is object oriented. Technically, Visual Basic 6 does have objects, but the style is different, and I think that converting it would be hell and a massive undertaking. Java is very verbose, and it takes a lot of construction work to do very simple things. As a programmer, Visual Basic is a lot more entertaining to program in because you have near instant gratification. Less than a day of work, and you have something to show for it.

When to use Java:
1) cross-platform support.
2) extensive library support, lots of references to API programming
3) The size of your team matches the effort
4) You have professional expertise with software design patterns. Project must be well-defined.

Beyond that, Java is an aging platform that is somewhat miserable to work with. I have worked extensively with it, and I have to say I prefer the .net platform to Java any day.

[eRe4s3r]

It was just an example Obviously it'd be better if he coded Aurora not in java and not in vb6. I know VB6, and i learned to program in it eons ago (and quickly learned that perl is way more awesome) after that i forgot everything about VB6 ,p

What Aurora dev does is read the .. mhh, what are they even called.. regional settings? of an OS and uses them as a sort of definition table for his own database structure (where to put comma and points, decimal separators, suffix and prefixes, that stuff)

Aurora however, expects this to be static (which it isn't) because obviously there is different decimal separators namely a comma or a point depending on your region.