Restoring Factions' Colours

[Googlie]

Someone (Darius, I think) wrote a small prog that when you unzipped the turn it went to your .ini file and put the new game faction order back in.

Can anyone with the prerequisite skill here do that? (Is it just as simple as automatically overwriting the .ini file itself when unzipping?)

Order is:

Hive, University, Believers, Consciousness, Pirates, Drones, Angels

That should then set the correct colors when opening the turn (assuming everyone is using the smac default directory settings)

Do-able?

G.

[Maniac]

Or just add this manually in the .ini file:

Faction 1=HIVE
Faction 2=UNIV
Faction 3=BELIEVE
Faction 4=CYBORG
Faction 5=PIRATES
Faction 6=DRONE
Faction 7=ANGELS

If such a program would overwrite the entire .ini file, I would be strongly against it. I wouldn't want to be forced to reset all my settings every time I open an AXDG turn.

[Googlie]

Yeah - I just edit manually myself - but I thought it was neat that it could be done automatically when unzipping the saved turn.

I have a lot of wierd settings too that I wouldn't want to lose (default 'humungous planet' for starters - it's 128 x 128, which is about all I play SP games on now, except for the occasional 256 x 256 waterworld)

G.

[Main_Brain]

Will we get our shiny Rusty red back? :=)

[Maniac]

(default 'humungous planet' for starters - it's 128 x 128, which is about all I play SP games on now, except for the occasional 256 x 256 waterworld)

Why do you need such large-sized maps?? I already get bored to hell with micromanagement and two-hour-length turns on the usual Huge-sized maps.

[Googlie]

I just like long games - and as a builder by nature (often playing Morgan) I like a decent infrastructure up and running before I meet (and inevitably have to fight) the AI

Plus, I have never found a satisfactory solution to the Interceptor crash, so it's good to be outside noodle range of most of the other factions (I guess I could just not build interceptors)

G.

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Maniac
two-hour-length turns on the usual Huge-sized maps.

Takes you 2 hours to manage your bases, or for the AI to play its turn?

I've a pretty fast rig (2.8 P4 running on XP) and lots of memory (1 GB), so I find the longest wait for the AI is maybe a couple of minutes at most

G.

[Drogue]

Interceptor crash?

[Googlie]

Yeah - a well documented bug. The game crashes when you have an interceptor in a base that's attacked by a noodle or alien locust (or even when a nearby crawler or former is attacked and your interceptor scrambles to defend it.) Even if you don't have it on "alert".

Been around for ever - some solutions were to disable a wheelmouse - that worked on my old rig, but win XP has resurrected that bug.

When it happens I just relaod the previous turn and then move my interceptor somewhere to use up it movement points - then my base/crawler/whatever gets attacked, defenceless, which kind of negates the whole idea of an interceptor in the first place.

Prolly the biggest single turn-off for many smac'ers

G.

[Drogue]

I didn't know that, it's never crashed for me doing that

[Hercules]

Does it not also occur in a wider set of circumstances. With me it tends to be the AI's interceptor that causes the problem, sometimes when I attack a base with a noodle or chopper.

By that stage a lot of my front line bases are defended with a tactical chopper.

[Googlie]

yeah - I have had it when attacking enemy bases by air, but not nearly as frequently as when I am attacked.

never used to have that problem with my old rig (in fact, I used to play others' stalled turns to get them moving again)

It sure can take a lot of the enjoyment out of the game

G.

[Voltaire]

Thank you! Finally I can see the Hive graphics set in game.

[Maniac]

Takes you 2 hours to manage your bases, or for the AI to play its turn?

Two hours to manage my bases. Fortunately the AI's turn takes only a few seconds on my 1.6 Gh and 256 MB computer. And those two hours in my last real game more than a year back (It's been ages ago I actually finished a game) was when I only had twenty-five bases and only MY 2260. I did have a lot of formers, crawlers etc though.