UI Glitches

[raynor]

nVidia makes the best mid-range video cards and out sells ATI by a very good margin. Currently, ATI makes the best high-end card. nVidia's card came out six months late, isn't really faster than ATI's high end card, sounds like a vacuum from a room away. Oh, and nVidia has already said they aren't even going to mass produce it.

Your statements about AMD chips are just ridiculous. Where the heck did you get that hilarous stuff from anyways? AMD and Intel *seemed* to be competing pretty good. In fact, right now the best bang for the buck chip *is* an AMD. But Intel is pulling away from AMD, and it seems pretty likely that the best bang for the buck may soon return to Intel.

I guess you forgot to read my post below where I tested the bridge functionality. I added it to the Rock Colony and couldn't create a ship with two of them. So then, it comes down to personal preference. You probably would rather play around with the design and possibly add three or four or one hundred components to a ship that in the end can't be there. Myself, I would prefer that the game indicated to me that I can't successfully create a ship that has two components that have the bridge functionality.

If you want to argue on an reasonably intellectual level, it is your job to refute my aforementioned argument. By dropping it, you show either that you forgot to read it or you just didn't understand it.

I find it extremely offensive that you are willing to say that you are the final judge of what is a good use of Malfador's time. I am simply making suggestions that might transform this from a "niche" game to one that might have hopes of selling as many copies as one of the MOO series.

The key problem with Phoenix argument can be found by comparing it to the number of on/off settings already provided by the game. Some folks find it annoying that the game warns them before they delete the top item from the queue. That's why Malfador added the ability to turn that feature off. Why did they add that warning in the first place? They added so that you won't spend 17 turns building a ship with a Grav. Resonator I and then accidentally waste 17 turns of production when you delete the ship from the queue.

As to your comment about me being a programmer: Why don't you take a look again at the user contributed utilities on your SEIV CD? You might just see my name staring back at you.

Your comment about the game not allowing you to add something to the queue that you don't have the resources to build is ludicrous. I find it ironic that you would make such a laughable comparision while siding with SJ in dismissing my MS Word software usability arguments.

Yep. I think that Last comment is the same as comparing an apple to a mattress.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by raynor:
Myself, I would prefer that the game indicated to me that I can't successfully create a ship that has two components that have the bridge functionality.

It does. It tells you that the ship has too many.

Your comment about the game not allowing you to add something to the queue that you don't have the resources to build is ludicrous.

No, it really isn't. The queue also allows you to add items with a completion time of "never". Should this be removed?

[Instar]

Problem with ATi cards is that their drivers have sucked -- a lot -- but its getting better. I rather prefer Intel and nVidia myself.

[raynor]

I've heard that from lots of sources but since all my cards at home are nVidia-based, I've never seen it. If you see a link to some of the problems, would you mind posting it?

Until I found this awesome utility, Advanced Gamma Corrector:

http://www.iomagic.org/fsc/

I did find one really neat feature in the ATI drivers on my laptop at work. It has the ability to set the gamma for gameplay. For a bit, I was starting to consider a new ATI card just for that one feature.

Now, with AGC, I can just set my gamma settings using hot keys like CTRL-ALT-2 (for Gamma 2.0) and CTRL-ALT-0 (for no Gamma correction or 1.0.)

I was really hoping that when the GeForce FX came out, it would further drive down the prices of the GeForce 4200 throught 4600.

BTW, I highly, highly recommend that gamma utility.

[ February 24, 2003, 06:56: Message edited by: raynor ]

[Fyron]

nVidia makes the best mid-range video cards and out sells ATI by a very good margin. Currently, ATI makes the best high-end card. nVidia's card came out six months late, isn't really faster than ATI's high end card, sounds like a vacuum from a room away. Oh, and nVidia has already said they aren't even going to mass produce it."

Umm... reread my post about the video cards.

Your statements about AMD chips are just ridiculous. Where the heck did you get that hilarous stuff from anyways?

Ever hear of a web site called Tom's Hardware? They tested this by removing the fans from the CPUs while running a FPS game. The intel systems slowed down, and the CPU survived. All of the various AMD CPUs went up in smoke. A few of the AMD models took out the motherboard with them.

AMDs give you more clock cycles for the dollar, sure. But, they are not a good alternative to Pentiums.

I guess you forgot to read my post below where I tested the bridge functionality.

No I did not. There was nothing relevant to respond to that was not covered in the rest of my post.

Myself, I would prefer that the game indicated to me that I can't successfully create a ship that has two components that have the bridge functionality.

And it does do that. The error message window is there for a reason, after all.

If you want to argue on an reasonably intellectual level, it is your job to refute my aforementioned argument. By dropping it, you show either that you forgot to read it or you just didn't understand it.

There was no argument to speak of in that particular section of your post. I can not refute a non-existant argument. There were a few statements of some actions you took, but no argument to be understood or ignored.

I find it extremely offensive that you are willing to say that you are the final judge of what is a good use of Malfador's time. I am simply making suggestions that might transform this from a "niche" game to one that might have hopes of selling as many copies as one of the MOO series.

Where did I say that? I never said nor implied that I was the ultimate authority on what is a good use of MM's time. As a thinking being, I can make logical conclusions about what is valuable and what is not. My conclusion was that programming the greying out feature is not worth the time and effort it would take to code it. I do, however, know for a fact that MM is rather busy at this time, and does not have much time to be spending on SE4 right now. I (and many others) would prefer that MM spent all SE4-related time on actual problems.

The key problem with Phoenix argument can be found by comparing it to the number of on/off settings already provided by the game.

It would be annoying to have to turn that off. It is annoying to have to turn on a lot of options already.

Some folks find it annoying that the game warns them before they delete the top item from the queue.

This has nothing to do with adding an item after giving Repeat Build orders. Queues with Repeat Build are very clearly marked as such. There are many situations in which you want to use Repeat Build for so many turns to build the top item, and then end Repeat Build to build the rest of the items. The message you propose would not be of very much benefit, and adds nothing that the game does not have already. As I said before, the game should not compensate for poor descisions on the part of the user. Repeat building when you don't really want to do so is not the game's fault, it is the user's fault.

As to your comment about me being a programmer: Why don't you take a look again at the user contributed utilities on your SEIV CD? You might just see my name staring back at you.

So what? I don't care what you contributed to the Gold CD. That has nothing to do with this discussion. If you claim to be a programmer, that is fine. But, you have displayed a lack of knowledge about programming in your Posts, which is what prompted me to make that statement.

Your comment about the game not allowing you to add something to the queue that you don't have the resources to build is ludicrous.

I strongly suggest that you take some time away from this forum and cool down. I would hate to see you get in trouble with the admins for further comments of this nature.

My comment was not at all ludicrous. It was perfectly reasonable in context with the course of the discussion. Your question was "Why would you want the game to make it easier for you to add an item to the queue that will never be built?", and I answered that. Adding a ship to the queue that you can not afford (and you aren't building any new facilities) could very easily result in adding an item that will never be built.

I did find one really neat feature in the ATI drivers on my laptop at work. It has the ability to set the gamma for gameplay. For a bit, I was starting to consider a new ATI card just for that one feature.

nVidia video card drivers do that too. It is a standard feature of video cards, and has been for a long time (and the very latest when 8 MB cards were the best around).

[raynor]

Can you please post the url of an article on Tom's that mentions that? I read that site pretty religiously and have never seen anything like that. But it's a monster site, and I might have missed it.

My main machine at home right now is an AMD 1.33 (before they started using the XP designation.) It worked absolutely fantastic, and I wholeheartedly recommend buying AMD CPU's.

On Pricewatch.com, the AMD XP 2600 is $230. On Tom's the closest Intel chip above the XP 2600 is the Intel Pentium 4 2.6. Pricewatch has that one for $236. In this case, I think the Intel is definitely the better value.

At a lower price point, you can get the AMD XP 2100 for $79. On Tom's, the closest Intel chip (IMHO) is the P IV 2.2. This one sells for: $175
In this case, it looks like the AMD offers comparable performance but is almost half as expensive.

In this case, I'm looking at the Quake III Arena benchmarks:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/2003...charts-22.html

Here is an article describing Compaq laptops containing the AMD processor:

http://www.computingreview.com/AMD+N...5_1744crx.aspx

Sadly, I did find this article when I looked to see if Dell is using AMD.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/cgi-bin/uk/p...cgi?id=2076782

On the other hand, this article suggests that Dell may be embracing AMD's 64-bit offering:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/28366.html

Go figure...

[Mephisto]

*Moderator mode /on*
As in the other thread, please, all sides, keep it friendly. And please keep it to this thread. Thank you!
*Moderator mode /off*

I personally own AMD chips for 2 generations now and they are good CPUs for their price. They are, however, quite hot. This can be a problem in summer time or warm rooms. And yes, my Last AMD did smoke away just like TH-Page described when my fan died. However, all the new motherBoards do have a safeguard for this and will shut down the chip before any harm can be done. If the motherboard fails to have this safeguard it will not be certified by AMD. This was the direct result of the TH tests. So, in the end, both of you are right.