Master_Xan

This latest HP movie didn't show a lot of the character's motivations well. For instance, the bridge scene. In the book, the Death Eaters are causing all sorts of problems, killing regular folks and such. That one scene is the only mention of it in the movie; they don't even talk about it later. I don't think it showed Ginny and Harry's relationship well either. It was... underplayed, underdeveloped, and just didn't feel right. Nor did they really do such a great job with Malfoy's motivations for doing what he did, either. And don't get me started on Snape! Spoilers: Dumbledore, the old grey haired dude, is supposed to be one of the most powerful wizards ever. He's also the headmaster of Hogwarts, and as such Harry is his student. Big D is trying to teach little h a few things, but also make sure that even when he's dead, Harry will know what's going on and be able to stop Voldemort. You don't realize it until the end of the last book, but Dumbledore knew he was going to die ahead of time. Over all, I enjoy the books WAY more than the movies. Yeah, the movies are shorter to watch than the books are to read, but that's because the books (obviously) have so much more detail in them. Also, I liked the books 4-7 WAY more than the first 3.

Hey Tex, have you gotten involved with SWCIC? I'm thinking of trying it out myself... I wonder how active it is.

There are a few different folks trying to make Rebellion 2. To my knowledge, none of them have finished their projects yet. However, you CAN play with Rebellion: Reloaded. It's a total conversion that changes just about everything in the game we can change without the source code. You can find it in the download section.

Ooo, that's sneaky Tex. I've used the maintenance trick before, but always as a general tactic, never to target a specific planet. I wonder how well that would work... I suppose it would depend on how many planets the enemy had left. FYI: A single ship is enough to kill all maintenance production on a whole planet, so blockading a lot of systems wouldn't be hard unless you opponent still has enough fleet presence to start wrapping up your singleton forces.

If you import a card downloaded from the site here, do those changes stay put?

To a limited extent, you could do it by making a total conversion... meaning, edit the starting planets (change Yavin to Hoth, and Corescant to Endor), and alter the basic ship classes to be what you want each side to start out with (for instance, each new game the Rebellion will start with Corellian Corvettes; you can either leave that alone or replace the ship with another one. If you replace it, the computer will randomly generate the new ship in the same numbers as it would have generated corvettes upon game creation). You can do the same with troops (maybe replacing Imperial fleet units with a snow troopers card?). It could be done this way, but it would take work, and would not give you a very fine degree of control. Even if you did it, the computer would still be generating the new game like it always does, so exact fleet sizes and compositions would be impossible.

Pshaw. Like any of us want you crazy-heads knowing when our birthdays are! That would be almost as bad as the government finding out our social security number!

The game came out before "administrator access" was a big deal. Are you running the install under an administrator profile? Also, I've noticed that mounting older games is sometimes difficult; they tend not to recognize the mount. For that matter, Rebellion is very picky about recognizing CDs; I made a duplicate of my CD to play LAN games with a friend, but Rebellion would never work off it. Same story with mounting, even with the various security features of Daemon tools (like SecuRom, etc.); I couldn't get anything to work except the original. Make sure you're an administrator. Then try running it "as administrator" (if XP has that option, I can't remember now). If that isn't the problem, my recommendation is to get a new copy of the original disc; try Ebay. Other than those two ideas, I'm drawing a blank. Also, these boards don't look too kindly on pirated versions. Forgive us if we're a bit skeptical, but... at least I am. I might note that in the aforementioned link, Undertaker has an interesting idea about getting your CD replaced for free. Dunno if it would work, but you could try it.

Is the Win7 RC currently out considered Ultimate, Professional, or Home Premium? i.e. does it contain the XP mode or not?

If you use RebEd, you can see which ships have higher bombardment ratings than others. Which has higher value, ISD II or Victory SD II? Check RebEd. Also helpful is having large numbers of fighters with bombardment ratings; if I recall correctly, Y-wings and B-wings both provide bombardment strength for the Alliance. You should note from this that not all ships have bombardment capability, and so just having lots of ships isn't enough. Ex. Corellian Gunships, if I recall correctly, don't have any bombardment strength at all. That's why you should look and see which ships have better capabilities. They must have at least 1 to be of use, though obviously higher numbers are better. In the situation you described, I would suggest bringing in a group of fighter carriers. They are cheap to make, and arming them with, say, B-wings, is much quicker than making dozens of capital ships. Bombard the planet with whatever ships either carry fighters with bombardment or have bombardment themselves; don't have troop transports in the fleet, or they may be hit by the LNR guns (costing their compliment of troops). If you're in the game and don't remember which ships have bombardment, separate a ship of one class from the fleet and see if the game allows you to bombard with that ship. If yes, then that class of ship has at least a 1 in bombardment. If no, then it won't help you take down any shields. The game may list bombardment in the Encyclopedia files; I can't remember for sure. I don't think it does, but maybe... Also, if you can sabotage the shields before your opponent has nothing left but that one planet, it will be easier. In that case, Vader may be elsewhere, other defenses may be off-planet, etc. The computer doesn't always replace a lost shield gen with another one. Conversely, if you can sabotage the LNRs, that makes it much safer to keep trying to take down the shields. Of course, you can't always get them out even then, especially on Coruscant where defenses are often high throughout the entire game. I may also mention that even if your fleet bombards and the shields hold, they may not hold if you bombard again. I usually try a few times before I decide they really can't break through. This may be painful if they have LNR stations, but at the end of the game, you can replace the ships if you really have to.

I love you. I've always wanted to do this, but never quite got around to it. Now I can finally speed up both production levels AND travel time; I can finally make it equate to what the SW universe actually would be like! *Copies and pastes text into .txt file to ensure against corruption or other mishap* Did I mention that I love you?

That's neat. Too bad all the locations are 1000 miles away from me...

By lack of visuals you mean... what, exactly? Do you not see any ships?

Have you tried Vista's compatibility mode? Also, are you using Vista 32 bit or 64? Also, go here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4216 And this thread might be useful too: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=27471 And there's another link in that thread which may prove useful. Let us know if those suggestions work! (Edit: BTW, I haven't had any trouble with BFII in Vista... What happens when you try and run it?)

You have just discovered the one and only real hardware difference between a pc and a mac. Sure, they look different, and maybe they behave differently sometimes, but in the end, its all just a bunch of circuits and wires. Except for the mouse. Maybe it's because I'm used to a two button mouse, but I just laugh at Mac one-button wanna-be mice. My suggestion: get a two button mouse and never look back. As for other solutions, there may be emulator programs that simulate a two-button interface. Like if you hold down a keyboard key and click, it acts as a right mouse click. I've heard rumors of such programs, but don't know if they are rumors or reality; check Google.

Or check your screen resolution.

Is the optical mouse wireless? If not, I'd be surprised if it's the cause. Just to make sure I got it right; your father's computer has the MMX, and yours has the FX. And the one with FX is the one having problems. Right? Okay, did you start having problems when you swapped out the video card? Or did you have the same problems in that computer when it still had the MMX? Assuming that you started having issues after changing the graphics card, then that's the most likely source. Double check your driver for it, make sure it's as up to date as possible. If it is, try rolling back to an earlier version. Many of the older games (like Rebellion) didn't do a very good job of working with various graphic cards. Alternatively, you can open up DXDiag and disable some DirectX video options. I can't remember how many of these were around when Rebellion was made, and some of them may not 'play nice' with the game. There may even be a way to disable your video card's hardware acceleration, or at least get Rebellion to use software rendering instead of hardware... that may solve the problem as well. I'll investigate that possibility. Try the drivers first, and if that doesn't work try the other ideas. If you're not sure how to do any of this stuff, drop a line and I can help.

http://www.gametoast.com/ Go there. You will be pleased. Carefully read the install instructions for the 2.2 conversion pack and 1.3 unofficial patch for BF2, or you'll end up embarrassing yourself like I did. I wonder if we can add this site to the links section? It's one of the only other SW modding sites still around.

Hmm... never heard of this one before. Since nobody else has posted yet, and I don't know what it is, perhaps more information would be useful... are all your drivers up to date? Do you have any programs running in the background? Is it always around 30 minutes, or does it have any connections to anything else (like entering/leaving space combat, or something else)? Does it happen in multiplayer as well as single player? When you load up the game, do you start it in some sort of compatibility mode? I'm assuming this is a desktop, so I'll rule out battery issues... What if you save your game roughly 25 minutes in, then exit to main menu, and reload... does it crash in a few minutes, or do you get another 30 minutes before it crashes? Does it crash if you just leave it at the main menu for 30 minutes? If Rebellion worked just fine before, then what has changed since you played it then? You said your hardware (minus the hard drive) has stayed the same. Did you change operating systems? Updated DirectX? Changed drivers? Do you have a color-altering program (one that modifies how the colors are displayed on your monitor, for instance brighter or darker) running in the background? Are you using any mods to Rebellion? Is the CD damaged? Do you have an anti-virus program running now? Did you get a wireless mouse or keyboard? I know that's a lot of questions. But I don't know what it could be, so I'm just trying to think of anything that might help narrow the possibilities. Give us some more info and we'll see what we can think up.

Might it not be easier to use Space Empires? They already have a combat simulation system set up, and while it's not open source, they are very good about making things very MOD friendly. They've also got an AI set up, and they've taken care of all the multiplayer issues. It is turn based, including the combat simulator, which could be a problem I suppose... You'd have to do something about the custom-design ship element, though I suppose you could just modify the systems researched to allow each ship class to only access systems available to that class in SW cannon. Which can be done; I did some work with that in Space Empires IV, using a Star Trek total conversion mod as a base. In fact, that could be a handy game element; if you want your Mon Cal to have more powerful sensors, you can research sensors, or even just Mon Cal sensors, and then upgrade your ships accordingly, while still maintaining things in balance with source material; i.e. you can still limit it so that your Mon Cal can only have so many turbolasers, while controlling what kinds of missile systems can be mounted, etc. Basically the only problem I can see is the turn based simulator. If you want to take a look, it's at www.malfador.com Great games overall.

I seem to recall having similar issues, though not with Vista. If I recall, it had to do with my graphics drivers; they were fully up to date, but something about the version I was using didn't play nice with Rebellion. Mine was crashing about 1 in 4 combat sessions, so I went to more effort to root out the cause. Rolled back to an earlier version, and bingo! Later when a new driver came out, I upgraded and didn't have the problem. Try updating your graphics and sound drivers, if they aren't already. If they are, you can try an earlier version, though it may be a different problem with Vista.

*steps out of the shadows* Well, can you just snag them off the CD? I don't remember how they're stored, if they're in an archive of sorts or not. Try that, if you haven't already; just open the CD up instead of running the autoplay. If that doesn't cut the cheese, you can always try a reinstall again. Drop a line here if neither idea works; we'll get you fixed up somehow or another. *returns to lurking*

If I may make a suggestion? Don't start with a game. It's too complicated. Start with basic mathematical formulas. Before you can get anywhere with a game, you have to know how the computer handles math. I took some C++ classes, and it's amazing how complicated something can get, even if it's simple in your head. Once you know how to get input from the user and use it in math stuff, then output the result, you'd best master variables. How you store variables makes a big difference. I'd avoid pointers for awhile; they'll give you a headache and aren't necessary for the basic sorts of things you're talking about. But you'd best learn what pass by value and pass by reference are, and basic structs would also be handy for you to learn. And naturally, the differences between char, int, double, float, etc. Of course, in order to get these, you'll need to figure out how to call functions, but that really isn't too bad. With math and variables under your belt, I'd suggest tackling menus next. Any sort of program or game beyond the most basic will have a menu of some sort; how you handle the input and do error checking is important. What if the user has CAPSLOCK on? That sort of thing. If you're the only one using it, then error checking becomes much simpler, as you know what the program can and can't handle. But error checking within the formula processing is still vital, as you don't want things going outside of array bounds, or causing segmentation faults, or any of a number of errors. After you can do those things, then you can begin putting together simple games. Graphics is of course way out of the question, but text games or even things with simple grids aren't so bad. I made a Sudoku program that's pretty fun, and I have a couple of useful things as well. Like a converter for standard numbers and Roman numerals, quadratic formula calculations, etc. If you need help, I'll add my name to the list of other guys here who know a bit about programming. Drop me a line!

You might take some tips from Space Empires. That game is a little more complex than what you're going to want (for instance, you can design your own units from a list of components based on your research), but there are some handy things they do. Some of the firing controls in combat would go over well, though others wouldn't. They also allow movement of cargo in cargo ships, no matter what kind it is. A cargo vessel can carry fighters, ground troops, population, anything; of course, only a carrier can actually deploy fighters in a battle, etc. Makes sense, and it makes it easier to transfer fighters around. They also list fighters by type and amount, not in a long list as in the original Rebellion. Many of the other mechanics won't transfer over well, but I think there are some things you can pick out.

I'm a budding C++ student, and I offer my services! Of course you're coding in Java. But I'm up for testing or anything else you might need...