Master_Xan

This is old, but I figure someone might be interested in this stuff. I typically reboot my computer once a month, just to clear things out. Sometimes once a week if I'm working with several VMs or doing a lot of compiling/compressing/decrypting. I was going to describe why using analogies, but it came out sounding childish. No analogies for you. Computer programs allocate resources for different tasks. When the task is complete, or the program ends, those resources are supposed to be returned to the general pool. They don't always get returned. The base process in the operating system is supposed to forceably reclaim resources from "zombie processes," but sometimes this doesn't happen. Particularly when it is a protected thread or process from the operating system itself that has gone zombie. These can typically be shut down manually, but that requires a lot of computer knowledge and the desire to do so. Some corporations do this from time to time on production servers, but end users pretty much never do this. Except for Linux guys; I'm convinced they do it just because they can. Additionally, many programs have little services that run in the background. These check for updates, load portions of the parent program into memory so the program can be loaded faster, or do other little things. Think Microsoft Word and iTunes, both of which do this. The more such background services you have running, the slower your computer becomes. Many of these start with the computer, but others load themselves after you run the parent program- and then they stay in the background even after the parent has been closed. These can be shut down manually, but very few people do so, not even businesses (it isn't typically necessary on production servers, as they usually load a given set of programs and then don't close them or load others). Then there are environment variables. Many of these are permanent, but some are not. As these temporary variables change, they can slow your system down. It's a pretty minor hit to performance, but the longer a system stays up, the more noticeable it can become. This can include temporary files and cache files, which also clear out after a reboot. Then the page file. This is particularly important for older programs, which often rely upon it more than newer programs (which are used to having lots of RAM on hand). The page file is basically a portion of the hard drive that the operating system treats like RAM. It is obviously slower than RAM, but can help manage things when you run out of available RAM to perform an operation. Depending on the settings for your page file, it can fill up and remain full. When programs need to use it, they then must first clear part of it before using it- making the already slow page file even slower. If your page file settings are really bad, it can actually fill the hard drive, though it never does so by default (you have to manually go in and muck it up for that to happen). Then there are faulty programs. Perhaps the most common problem is a memory leak. A program is allocated a certain amount of RAM to work with; a memory leak is when the program goes out of its bounds and fills up RAM not assigned to it. Because normal programs are never designed to do this, the program cannot typically clear this RAM. The operating system usually can't clear it until the offending program is shut down. All sorts of programs have, or have had, memory leaks, and these can really kill performance in a hurry. I still remember a version of Firefox (many versions ago) that had a memory leak. Each new tab that opened leaked, and since I often have lots of tabs open (and the leaks were not fixed when a tab closed), after an hour or so on the internet I had to close Firefox and let Windows reclaim the RAM. Otherwise my computer was so slow I had to wait a full minute just to scroll down on a web page. Of course, programs can also have other problems. Like over-allocating resources, running the hard drive when it isn't needed, segmentation faults, endless loops, etc etc. All these factors (and others) contribute to the need for a computer to restart occasionally, just like people need a break from work to clear their heads. Restart it and you clear temporary variables, reset the page file, flush the RAM, kill background processes that don't start with the operating system, slay any stubborn zombie processes, etc. Although newer systems are better at running for long durations, personal computers are just not designed to remain on for months at a time, and often the programs running on them are far less robust than those running on servers, which contributes to why your PC probably should be restarted more often than servers. But even servers have to be reset from time to time (though large companies have multiple servers so there is no down time in their services as one server reboots). K4qQZ6, you rightly guessed that VMs suffer the same problems. But even if you haven't had a system running for a long time, if something loads incorrectly or in a corrupt state, a simple reboot will fix it. That is probably what happened to you, heatblazer. It is also possible that VirtualBox isn't handling your hardware properly (which could explain your music problem). Sorry for the long post. Hopefully someone finds this interesting/useful.

Not too keen on the Academy, actually, but the robes and sabers look great.

If you dig around, you might find an old thread of mine where I did similar stuff. I tinkered around with RebEd to get the biggest fleet battles I could, then played them- and wrote them out almost as if from a novel. With little bits here and there connecting the battle accounts. Rebellion really is good fodder for the imagination.

Better question: who is actually making the games? EA is just publishing them right?

Couldn't name the source of Toph without looking it up. Then felt like an idiot.

Use a VM. I don't think Windows 8 will allow Rebellion to play it natively, and I'm not sure anyone will spend the many hours necessary to figure it out. Using a VM is just much, much simpler. A VM is a virtual machine. I recommend using VMware Player, though other people prefer Virtual Box. Take your pick, download one (they both have free versions), and create a VM with an old version of Windows, like WinXP. Should be cheap to pick up somewhere if you don't have one. Then you can install Rebellion on the VM and it should work without any fuss at all.

Looks perfect. Hey Slocket, are there specific runtimes that must be installed to run the game? Or any other background libraries/resources Mitth may not have, which you and I apparently do have?

If you are blocking scripts, you will have to unblock filedropper.com. If you use a separate download assistant, you may have to use the default browser version instead. Also, I'm using Firefox.

I'm seeing a 0kb download at this link. Is there a problem at my end or with the server? I see the file just fine. Use the "Download This File" link in white text with a grey box, just below two text fields for URL and Embed. You'll know its the right link when it asks you to prove you're human with a Captcha. The other links are ads.

I think the blue halo to show shields is a great idea for the at-a-glance view. I did not notice that. I can only pull up a detailed view by clicking on the planet's name, not the picture. Also, once I have clicked on a planet's name, the detail view doesn't seem to have a means of closing manually, timing out on its own, or being replaced by clicking on another planet. Perhaps the detail view should show up when the mouse hovers over the planet? If the user clicks, the view stays up so it can be interacted with, but the hover view could function to quickly check a planet's status. Hm... what to put there... I like having some things visible at a glance, as in stock Rebellion. That would be loyalty and the presence of a fleet. It would be nice for idle personnel to be viewable at a glance, without setting any views. Not that views have no place- having the stars show up from the galaxy view is important. But the things I want to see most often when playing Rebellion are: Loyalty, Fleets, Idle Personnel, and Idle Facilities. The presence of mines/refineries or the presence of some sort of defenses were of much lower importance to me. Available energy was also occasionally useful; not sure if it should be viewable at a glance. For the detail menu, regardless of whether you use a hover-over function, a click-on function, or both, I would want defenses and facilities. Assuming other things like loyalty are visible without the detail view, you could do something like this: [2] [1] [0] [5] [3] [etc] Each set of brackets represents a picture with a number. The first could be active personnel. The second, total troop regiments. Third, total fighter squadrons. Fourth, total defensive emplacements. Also nice to see here would be total factories (possibly broken down by type), perhaps the total number of capital ships in orbit or a calculation of fleet strength (could be computed based on numbers of certain ship classes, or on total hull damage it would take to destroy the fleet, or something else). And any of the things I mentioned before that you chose not to make visible at a glance should be in this detail view (such as available energy). The color of the icon can represent what faction the units are made up of; a red fleet icon of [5] would represent the presence of five Alliance capital ships, while a half-red, half-green [3] for personnel could represent three active operatives, of which some are Alliance and some are Imperial. I think simply knowing how many troop regiments are present is enough for a quick view. If I want to know what operative is active on a planet, or whether the troops are Sullustians or Mon Calamari, I could open up the planet's full view.

Interesting. Well, glad it works!

If you have a shortcut for REBEXE.exe, just add -window or -w to the file path, which is in the "Target" field. Do this by right clicking the shortcut and selecting "Properties." Here is an example using my shortcut in Windows 2000: C:\Games\Rebellion\REBEXE.exe -w Newer versions of Windows put quotes around the path. In which case, it would look like this: "C:\Games\Rebellion\REBEXE.exe" -w If you don't have a shortcut, right click on the exe and select "Create Shortcut." Then go to the new shortcut's properties and add the option, as above. Note that not all games/programs support this, but many do, and Rebellion does. Also note that you CAN do this with the shortcut the game creates inside your Start Menu (if you chose to create it when you installed the game). If it doesn't work, or the game loads but doesn't fix the problem with tactical combat, remove the -w to restore normal functionality. Once you have the shortcut created and modified, just run the game with that shortcut. You cannot load the game from the CD or through RebEd, as these point directly to the exe and not the shortcut. Speaking of which, REBEXE is located inside your install directory; default is C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Rebellion (or something like that, I forget exactly).

Looks good. I can scroll around by left-clicking and dragging, and can move the "sector view" window that came up when loading. However, it loads off-screen. Can't seem to figure out how to bring it back to the center, nor resize the window. Tried window mode, various compatibility settings (like scaling and running in lower resolutions), etc. Also, when minimizing and maximizing again, I lost the "sector view" window. Not sure if it's just hiding somewhere off screen, or if it actually disappeared. Running in Win7 64bit.

Sure thing Slocket, but let's talk about it in the other thread. SpaysMuhreen, it just occurred to me that if you aren't running in window mode, perhaps you can try doing so and see if that works.

You aren't running in window mode at all? Hm. Other than running in a VM, I can't help you. Anyone else have ideas?

Can you get the game to run in full screen mode? Otherwise, I'm not sure what to tell you. Its probably the way in which Rebellion is interacting with your video card or the driver. Personally, I gave up trying to make it work on modern systems; I just play in a VM with Windows 2000. Much less stress involved that way.

What version of Windows? Also, is it 32 bit or 64? Have you modified the game in any way?

Ha, I get those emails too. Half of them are crap, but the other half are pretty decent.

I agree. I also think if this gets passed, we will see a marked rise in tor browsers and onion-style IP disguising, along with other means of obfuscation, and when the dust settles there won't be much change in piracy.

We are actually on CISPA version 2; the first version was shot down awhile ago. They did indeed reword some junk and are pretending its a good idea now. I'm getting cynical. Pretty sure it doesn't matter what the law says; online privacy doesn't exist and probably hasn't since the 90s. Between businesses and "big data" and the government, everything is tracked these days. Including your location, via smartphone data mining.

Dragoon, I spent some time investigating the reverse engineer thing. It'd be easier to rebuild from scratch; even if you ignored the illegality of cracking into the code, it would be extremely difficult to reverse engineer it. Then you have to update it to run on modern systems, and that's just to get the game working. I'd bet anyone willing to invest the time and effort would then have to modify the game to make it better in some way (graphics and UI, anyone?). I also spent several months trying to track down anyone who might have the original code, which would remove the difficulty of reverse engineering it, and possibly even provide us a legal copy to work with. The folks at LucasArts flat ignored my email requests, while my phone calls went to people unable to make the decision (and usually unable to comprehend what I was even asking for). I found some of the original developers, but could only find contact information for one, but only an email, and he never responded. Dead end. At one point I had the assistance of a well-connected individual at Game Revolution, but he was also unable to make progress. I'm not even sure if an original copy of the code still exists. The remake projects are the way to go. Too bad those with the desire lack either the skills or the time to really get the job done, and make no mistake, the amount of work necessary is daunting, to say the least. There were attempts to mod other games to make them into Star Wars strategy games; perhaps you would be interested in those? Some of them are darn good.

Not a bad era to make a new game. Although isn't that when Force Unleashed takes place? Still, plenty of material there.

What do you mean when you say flashes? Like a strobe light? Flashes white, or purple? If you haven't got it figured out yet, I'll try and help.

Yay progress!

I saw that yesterday. Supposedly, the Star Trek reboot was inspired by Star Wars in the first place. I'm excited to see what he does with it. It is also supposed to be "an original story." I don't know what that means in this context; outside of the expanded universe, thus creating more problems for the continuum? Or based on the books, but "original" to movie-only audiences? In other news, the Ender's Game movie has a release date- Nov 1st. That's one I'll be there for the midnight showing!