My First Time Playing at 1024x768

[Sprayber]

Makes a real difference I'll tell ya. It has a better feel to the game but it took a little getting used to.

For those that know is there anything that won't show up on this resolution that would on 800x600?

[Basilisk]

Well i've been playing on that for about a month now and I feel that it is a great improvement, as you can see so much more to a screen! Haven't noticed any problems...

[MariOne]

Yes, there is one thing that I've been bit ching to FurXs® since Jan99 to no avail:
at 1024 you can't see the (linked) tag besides the Network Node entry in the built facilities list in a basewindow.
Also the long names of projects will drop whole words when they don't fit in that column width.

Mastering the basic draw text API to make the text shrink to fit or at least ( ) ...wrap (!) was TOO MUCH for FurXs® programmers skills

For the rest, seeing 10 bases instead of 6 in the F4 screen, seeing more units at screen bottom, etc... are advantage I can't renounce to.
In case I *need* to know whether an enemy has an available unlinked node in reach of the Artifact he just landed, or when I can't recall which is the nearest port where to send the artifact I popped overseas (from where I can't use the goto trick), I occasionally save, switch res, resume, check, resave, reswitch, reresume...

[Googlie]

MariOne:

There is a slightly less cumbersome way to check your own bases. Bring them up one by one and select "scrap network node" If there is an artifact attached it'll tell you - then you just cancel the action. If none attached, you'll just be given the "Are you sure?" message - and again just cancel.

Cumbersome, but beats saving and exiting (esp in PBEM's)

(Doesn't help with espionage. though)

Googlie

[MariOne]

Thanks Googlie, I usually don't have that much artifacts so that I fail to rememebr where I linked'em, I was just taklking in theory.

But in practice, I don't think that saving and resuming is so cumbersome after all (that's why I strongly believe that the IronMan option is a ridiculous useless farce, and I have just a PII 333...). It's rather straightforward, and should I have to check 4-5 bases or more that way, it would require less clikcs maybe to save and resume a couple of times...


In PBEM too it's not a problem at all: as long as you keep one-thread turnplay (that is without looping back and replaying what you already did once in the turn), you can pause by saving a pbem turn a thousand times, and you're not doing anything immoral or illegal.
If each time you resume the pbem turn from the correct file you last saved, it would be as if you left your PC on and went doing something else in the meanwhile...


Anyway, thanks for reminding that hint to the audience, I still think that this is one stupid interface display error about a simple thing (and they were warned before first patch), thus it's far more dishonorable than a bug on game logic in a complex structured design...

Apart this FurXs folklore, playing at 800 should be advisable only for those with very small CRTs and some sight problems...

[johndmuller]

Originally posted by MariOne
In PBEM too it's not a problem at all: as long as you keep one-thread turnplay (that is without looping back and replaying what you already did once in the turn), you can pause by saving a pbem turn a thousand times, and you're not doing anything immoral or illegal.

Well I'll be ...............
Here I've always thought that you had to play the turn all in one sitting or suffer the whatever of the reload message. I've replayed the turn from the beginning on a number of occasions after finding that the Windows environment was too degraded to play on. I've noticed that it gives you a save dialogue box when you quit (when the environment has enough left to open it), but I always thought that it was a save/end-of-turn rather than a save that the same player could resume. Thanks for the info.

I imagine that you know this, but the GoTo command brings up a window with base names that say in some fashion whether or not they have an unlinked node (at least if it is an artifact's turn if not all the time). IIRC, it is not a complete list of your bases, only those that a land unit can reach or some such limitation. (Don't get me started on the numerous limitations of the game's movement smarts - at least they fixed the one where air movement projections were all effed up.)

[MariOne]

jdm, of course you must not "complete" the turn. You have to save it with Ctrl+S, and save it with a different name (possibly meaningful, I use suffixes like beg-mid1-mid2-end) . If you later LOAD that halfway save, it will NOT be a RE-load of an already played position, but just resuming the game from where you left it (you actually load every file only once).
Of course, if in the meanwhile you reopen an old position to explore in alternate directions, that would be a cheat because you'd gather infos that you would not have been able to obtain otherwise, as in the "official" turn you sent those units elsewhere.

Personally, I ALWAYS Ctrl+S ALL my pbem turns at their very end, whem I'm done with all my moves, settings and written all my diplomacy.
Then I resume only to hit "complete" right away and send it on. That way I keep a snapshot of the turn as-I-Sent-it, to be eventually used later as evidence in case of controversy, and to be parsed if I'm asked some detail in email negotiations after I sent it.


I mentioned the "goto trick" in my first post.
Too bd that when your artifact is on a transport or on another continent, it doesn't work, and it's in that situation that you have to choose and set the fastest course to the nearest *avaiable* node

[johndmuller]

Originally posted by MariOne . . . . Of course, if in the meanwhile you reopen an old position to explore in alternate directions, that would be a cheat because you'd gather infos that you would not have been able to obtain otherwise, as in the "official" turn you sent those units elsewhere. . . .

That sounds like a pretty serious loophole - if what you're saying is that all someone has to do is to save the game sometime after they've started their turn and they can reload from that save as much as they want without messages - hopefully that's not what you're saying.

(so as to not totally hijack this thread) I noticed a thread recently asking about higher resolutions (perhaps 1280 x 1024) and being told to set the .ini file entry to 1024 x 768. I presume that all that does is to make sure it doesn't use the low resolution, or is there by chance an implementation of something higher than 1024 x 768 which gives you more useful space - of course with a larger monitor, one can zoom out more, but the control panel stuff would still occupy the same percentage of the screen.

While I'm on topic, I sometimes lose information in the little box that gives the details about the tile, particularly the coordinates are sometimes bumped below the bottom edge; similarly, the details about the units sometimes gets close to the bottom edge, particularly if they have a long name which uses an extra line (or two?) - it looks like you might lose info such as the damage percentage and/or the moves info for planes. Can that be corrected by changing the font somewhere, or would it then become to small to be legible?

[Clear Skies]

This may sound completely stupid but how do you actually set resolution in SMAC?

[Basilisk]

Well when i switched my screen res to 1024x768 the game changed automatically... Just in windows settings i think.

[MariOne]

As long as I can be of help, I'll keep replying...

SMAC can work only at 1024 or 800.
It automatically adopts the closer of the two to your current screen res.
Sometimes your screen remains in the original setting when exiting, sometimes it is forced into the resolution elected by the game, including the color depth which gets forced down to 256 for your system too.
Sometimes, the attempt to revert to the original system color depth on SMAC exiting is the cause ot that crash message you may see when you save a pbem game, which gives so much worries to the players but that actually occurs after the file is correctly saved.

You can also force the game to play on one of the two resloutions by entering the value by hand in the proper .ini file, before starting the game.

At higer resolution, the control Panels will occupy the same portion of the screen, but you will be able to see muchmore objects in them, and that's the boon, not only seeing more tiles in a map screen.

Info lost in the terrain boxlet and under the units it's another annoying thing, which we can again thank FurXs and their brilliant programming skills, mastering of text display APIs and attention to details for .
I didn't notice whether this problem is more evident in one or the other resolution (as I practically always play at 1024).

I attempted to change the AlphaCentauri.ttf file that comes in the game, but that's not the one used for those text lines.
I remember that I attempted to tweak the system font and size, and there might be also something about it in some .ini file, but as I obtained just some messy result I gave up (IIRC my setting changes HAD some influence tho, it's just that I could not control it, and forgot how I did it)

About the undue info that you could gather unspoted in pbems, I remember that Bingmann and I were aguing about it more than two years ago in early ACOL days.
I believe that you can't forbid to reload the OLD turns, strictly for reviewing purposes, that is without uncovering any new information. Keeping an end-of-turn save also helps me that way, as all my moves have been taken and I just *read* the past situation without altering anything.

In theory tho, yes, ONCE YOU SENT ON THE OFFICIAL FILE, you can repoen the beginning of turn and send your copter exploring areas you didn't explore in the game, and gather further infos for your NEXT turn.
You can also reload the Previous turn and attempt for instance the infiltration that failed in the true turn, till you get it. You'd have one-turn-old infiltration, and nout dynamic, but that would be a cheat, and there's NO WAY to prevent or even spot it.
As usual, the only assurance for fair play in PBEMs in the end is relying on trust ans honor system.
If you doubt that your pbem opponent is intentionally cheating against you, then it makes no sense to play with him in the first place.

Then there is something a bit more uncertain.

1. You receive a file GameXgaia2150.sav
2. You open it.
3. You then Ctrl+S GameXgaia2150mid1.sav

Now, if you
4. open GameXgaia2150mid1.sav,
it's the first time you do it, there's no cheat and no warning. You can complete, saving GameXhive2150.sav and send it. After that, you can reopen GameXgaia2150.sav and gather cheat info at your will.
That would be cheating of course, although your 2150 turn has been played before that cheating: you will benefit of the fraud in knowing better where to send your units when you'll play your 2151 turn.

BUT.

If *before* doing 4. you RE-open the GameXgaia2150.sav, you'll be warned that you already played that file. Game says "IF" you go on, but it's already too late,m even if you cancel, that file AND the register of your PC gets marked with your cheating.

You'd say, no prob, the GameXgaia2150mid1.sav it's untouched and integer, I just need to NOT save the reloaded session, and resume from point 4. with the official turn game-flow.
At point 4. you will not get a reload warning becuas as a mater of fact it's the first time you load that file.

WEELLLLL.... I have never come to a conclusion about how mechanism to mark the cheats actually works.
The fact that the cheat is marked not only in the file but also in the PC register (expert system engineers have attempted to spot the key, using tools to compare the system registers, to no avail), should also provide that even if you reload file 1. before regularly resuming with file mid1 from point 4. the system has a tag able to mark as reloaded all the instance of the same turn that you will open from then on, even if you open a file that is not a cheat in itself. You need to Complete a turn (it gets saved for the NEXT player) before you can reload the beginning of turn without propagating reload signatures.

Unless... it could be that if you don't save the reloaded original file, you don't mark the still unopened mid1 file.




Of course, I tested this all to see what I could expect from evnetual cheaters, I've not used this tricks myself in official games!
And at that point I didn't want to investigate further.



Besides, all this moot after all, because we know that SMAC is hopelessly buggy, so that when one players tells that he had to reload becaus the game crashed (or even his PC rebooted because of a power shortage) you have to accept it.
It happens to me every 2-3 months, I am ususally very embarassed but what can I do as it's not my fault and I'm telling the truth?

And if you're awaken now to the awareness of the potential cheats meddling with the pbem savefiles, go figure that FurXs left a bug in their IDIOT interface (when you choose the LOAD command you have a SAVE button in the dialog!!! ...), allowing you to play MULTIPLE turns in one without the other players noticing anything unless they have infiltration on you - just a sudden step up in your powergraph.
Hey, you could even transcend on turn 2101 of your pbem without ever sending the first turn to the next player...
Kudos to FurXs!