800x600 only? Your kidding me....

[Desprez]

Wasn't there an option to run MOO3 in a window?

You could use that if you absolutely didn't want to switch resolutions.
I don't know what the problems is with that though. Most games swith the resoultion automaticaly on the fly. I hardly notice.

3d acceleration is a non-issue. Let me get this straight, you want to tripple the sys reqs just so you can have the ships rendered vector and textures instead of voxels? Come on, this isn't a FPS.

It's my understanding you won't even view battles close enough to SEE textures. Not that you can't, but you will need to stay zoomed out to see a bigger picture of what's going on. Someone from the developement team said awhile back, that if you are zoomed in too close you get your butt kicked.

All so you can look at pretty ships the first 5 times you play. Sheesh.

Desprez

[vmxa1]

True most will switch, but not all. How about Civ3, need to set an ini value.

[Llama]

Originally posted by Desprez
Wasn't there an option to run MOO3 in a window?

I could be wrong, but I don't think so, there was quite a lengthy discussion on the IG forums as to why MOO3 wouldn't allow you to Alt-Tab out. Although I could be confusing the two issues.

[Xentax]

AFAIK, MOO3 will only run full-screen in the final release. Last I heard, Alt-Tab was going to be disabled, but who knows where that's at by now? It's been months since that was "officially" discussed.

[Sarxis]

Ugh! This is unsettling and disheartening.

I hate hearing this kind of stuff, because things like this are symptoms of 'other' cut corners..

[Harry Seldon]

I've been browsing through this link and just can't believe what I'm reading. I don't care what the screen size is; I want incredible game play. If anyone's seriously considering dumping MOO3 because of something as superficial as that, or because the graphics aren't bleeding edge, then maybe you should consider buying a game like Azurik. It's a beautiful game and you'll have plenty of time to admire the scenery because it plays like a one legged dog that's been hit by a bus, trying to strum mariachi solos. This game could use ASCII characters for graphics, size to 320x240, and use IBM speaker sound as long as the AI's intelligent enough that when it signs a Non Aggression pact with me it doesn't viciously attack me two turns later. Long live MOO!

[vmxa1]

While the play is the most important thing, there is a limit as to what the thing can look like before most will not buy it. There is no reason to force a resolution limit. It has nothing to do with the play as different people are working on the art, than the mechanics.

[Harry Seldon]

I agree that there should be no limit to this setting. It would have behooved the development team to have been better prepared for future expansion. Unfortunately, it looks like the shuffling of companies has caused some things to be overlooked. That said, we have waited around ten years, through letdown and heartache, for this game to come out. It makes me sad that someone would get so upset over one or two small problems that they wouldn't purchase the game.

[DATarbell]

Originally posted by Harry Seldon
It makes me sad that someone would get so upset over one or two small problems that they wouldn't purchase the game.

Rantz just posted in another thread that he fired up a game last night to just check out one thing, and the next thing he knew it was past 2 in the morning and he was 200+ turns into the game! If that is the typical game experience reported here at Apolyton it won't take people long to forget about 3D acceleration, voxels, resolution, IFP's, et cetera.

(Not to mention, forgetting about our spouses, kids, jobs, hygiene, meals... )

[Craig P.]

Originally posted by vmxa1
There is no reason to force a resolution limit.

Aside for the reason why the limit is there, which is that the screen design does not scale to a higher resolution.

[Mahdimael]

I don't think anyone is saying they're not buying the game because of the resolution or lack of 3d acceleration. Personally, I don't really care what it looks like as long as it's intuitive and fun. That said, it's amazing that a product in development for so long would not be updated to take into account many standard conventions for graphics- namely, different resolutions and 3d acceleration (mostly the former). If you really would be happy with ASCII graphics, more power to you, but the majority of releases in 2002 will have the aforementioned features.

[wervdon]

This game could use ASCII characters for graphics, size to 320x240, and use IBM speaker sound as long as the AI's intelligent enough that when it signs a Non Aggression pact with me it doesn't viciously attack me two turns later. Long live MOO!

Wow, uhm thats dedication :P I have to admit I wouldn't buy that, and Im mostly interested in the gameplay But I am fine with 800x600 and the screenshots of the interface and battle ive seen. The main thing I want out of the graphics is an easy to use/intuitive interface, and I dont mean that in terms of learning curve necessarily, but rather how convenient it is to use once you've played 30+ games


*** more off topic, or is it on topic ***
As far as the 800x600 thing, with my software engineering project (just a 2d tile based game), I supported higher res's than 640x480 by just using a simple direct 3d blt operation, I drew the "screen" in an off screen buffer set to 640x480, then copied it to the screen with a stretch blt to whatever the screen was set to. It worked well on some cards and crappy on others though :P It works great on my current geforce 4, and used to work horrible on my voodoo 5 :P I also tried on some ati card at an in-laws house and it looked fine. It just depends on how the video card handles stretching bitmaps: If it doesn't handle it then direct x does it in hardware bi-linear I think, if the card does then its however the card does it. If it's done bi-linear, then it looks ok, otherwise it goes blocky.

So basically, what Im asking, can't they add a scaled display method like that as unsupported/unofficial means of allowing higher resolutions for those who want it bad enough to put up with any distortion it causes. (ie) just put something like that in the ini file, with the understanding that its an unsupported mode.

Of course, I understand it might require alot of work to impliment if they are currently using the built in flipping chain And at this point, it'd be more likely to come up in a patch. Or even an expansion (though hopefully in that case implimented properly with seperate routines to handle each screen res, or one that handles an arbitrary one)

[DATarbell]

wervdon, interesting insights on the scalability of graphics.

If I understand you, this would simply make the existing image bigger--filling the 'available' resolution. But the whole reason I use a large monitor/high resolution combo is to see more context.

Again, if our experience is similar to what Rantz is reporting, all of this may be moot!

[Harry Seldon]

Originally posted by wervdon


Wow, uhm thats dedication :P

I like to think dedication to gaming. I still like to pull out my old Infocom games (Zork, Planetfall, etc.) and give them a whirl. Even though they're text games, they're still some of the best games I've ever played. I mean, where else could you be eaten by a grue?

[vmxa1]

Phil S. of Tropico and Railroad Tycoon2 (also was involve in some heroes games) wrote an article about that subject in one of the gaming mags awhile back. They can and did make the art scalable for graphics and cpu concerns, so lessor systems could play the game. It does not have to be a problem as the solutions are already known.