Favourite computer games of all time. [2]

I tried downloading Civilization V just the other day when I learned that it is available on Steam for Linux, but I haven't been able to get it to work and haven't gotten around to contacting Steam for help yet.

Anyone know if you can play a PC game from Japan on a British PC please ?
That probably sounds as daft to you as it does to me but, I have to know

Assuming that by PC you mean they were both designed for Windows, and that you have a current enough version of Windows running, it shouldn't be an issue (so long as you can speak Japanese or the game has multiple language settings, though this is uncommon in Japan).

Thankyou Eldo, ( lovely boy ! )

My pleasure.

If you have a physical copy, like a cd/dvd/blueray, though, I guess it could have some regional protection thing on it. But you'll find out when you try it, I guess.

I don't think PC games are region-locked the way that DVDs and Blu-rays are.

Eldorion wrote:

Recoveryanonymous wrote:Did anyone watch this show?

I watched the first two seasons or so, and I didn't know it became more dramatic until you mentioned it once before on here.  I might revisit it one day, though at the moment I'm trying not to watch anything too depressing for the first time.

Right now I'm just re-watching the early stuff for that reason too. I like how often it's joked that Halo are Microsoft are some sort of religion for Chief.






Even though this is played for laughs here, it does sort of comeback in a weird way when Arbiter realizes that's all his life consists of and that he's lonely, stuck with Chief. Fortunately he gets some other friends for a while.

The original intro to Elite: Frontier- First Encounters (play both vids together for a comparison)-



And the exact same game as it appears in AndyJ's most recent build with textures by nanite200.



I cant recommend getting hold of this enough, one of the greatest games ever coded, now even better.

In celebration of AndJ and Nanites latest build of Frontier I made this vid.



Link to the Frontier forums and all the info you need to download and install this remarkable game are in the vid description. Go see the galaxy!

Elite Dangerous Beta 3, it just gets better and better-

Making of Elite Dangerous (and some good stuff about how much science has influenced things).
Take note EA this how a modern games company should be. Backed by its players who have active feedback in its design stages, developed by a team of enthusiasts with creative input working for an enthusiast and released to their schedule without pressure to publish a half finished game full of holes and bugs.

Elite Dangerous- as played and recorded by me. Got a little slow down when recording with fraps but apart from that this is what it looks like on an ordinary low to mid range pc. It really is extraordinarily well optimised, even at this beta stage-

Took some snaps whilst playing- approaching planetary rings-



flying just above the rings (well I say just but its about 5km away)-



View out the side window-



Heading in for some fuel and repairs-



And finally definitive proof Nagual is not a sock puppet of mine- there he is there right outside my window!-

Your friend is a spaceship...

At times

I stumbled into a war zone!

Elite plus Monty Python!

Alternative version of my War vid-

Another Elite Dangerous vid I put together. Nice short relaxing one this time, enjoy the sights (the gamma 1.0 release is now out as of today, which bar some final tweaking will be the game that goes on general release next month, so I will probably do a proper game review at some point) -



ps a lot of the footage in this is time-lapsed- if you want to watch a solar flare in game its all in real time, so can take a while to witness a whole eruption, like watching a lava lamp!

Well I'm now playing the Gamma version of Elite Dangerous.
This is very close to what will be the released game next month.
But rather than a review I thought it might be more interesting to do a play-through of sorts, and talk about different aspects of the game as they arise.

I have put the pictures in spoilers simply to keep loading the page more convenient.

Before I started taking snaps I should point out that I did one courier mission and traveled from my initial starting system to a neighbouring one. But apart from that things as are they are when you start a new game.

The first thing that happens is that you are randomly placed in a Federation sector in a Sidewinder- a small, limited one man craft. And you start the game with 100 credits. Which is about enough for 3 refuels and thats it. So basically you start broke and in a crap ship.

The first thing a new player is therefore likely to feel is slightly overwhelmed. You are skint and alone in a game literally the size of the Milky Way. And the game doesn't tell you what to do. It points you in no particular direction, it gives no helpful hints. It's all entirely up to you.

So in the spirit of adventure I decided just to see if  could get my crappy little ship all the way to Earth in the Sol system.

Currently I am docked at Herzfeld Landing. A small refueling and repair station.
First a few word about the hud. Most of it is quite self explanatory.
You have a radar in the middle (normally, when in stations its obscured by the station menu), to the left is a holographic display of either anything you have targeted or the largest nearest body in space if you dont have a target selected (in this case the planet around which the orbital station orbits).
On the right is my ship with the blue rings representing shield strength and below that my hull status- you will notice its currently at 82% percent- that was heat damage from hanging about too close to a star taking pretty screenshots! You will also notice three bars next to my ship display, systems, engines and weapons, power can be easily redistributed to these, at the moment as I dont plan on fighting much I have taken power down to a minimal in systems and weapon and put it all into engines. If I get in a fight I will need to adjust that to boost power to my shields and weapons at the cost of speed and maneuverability. Lastly there is my fuel gauge and landing gear indicator. Mass locked means I cannot make a jump to another system as a large gravitational body is too close (in this case the station itself), the final light there is my cargo scoop, letting me know if its deployed or not-

Spoiler:

So first things first I need to plan where I am going next. And that means going to the galaxy map. Where once more a sense of being overwhelmed can set in when the scale of things starts to sink in.

The blue ship icon is my current location. Sol is marked for convenience but trust me, its a very long way away. But that very long way away is just a  tiny percent of the distances of the galaxy, so its all relative!

Spoiler:

Thiin seems an option to fly to en-route, it has an earth like planet and an orbital station. So lets go there.

Spoiler:

Time to leave the Herzfeld Landing refueling station behind.

Spoiler:

So its just a matter of setting the destination into the nav computer, pointing at the target and engaging the jump shift to leap to another system-

Spoiler:

Jumps work by locking onto system stars, so you always come out close to a sun.

Spoiler:

You can check your nav panel to see whats in the system and set a course. In this case I want to go to that earth like planet with the Euler orbital station.
All these panels are part of your cockpit, and pop up when you look in their direction, so you never have to go to a bunch of menu screens, its all in game. This really adds to the feeling you are pilotng a ship.

Spoiler:

To get about a system at high speed you use Supercruise, which temporarily takes you out of normal space and lets you travel at excessive speeds, otherwise it would take as long to traverse as it would in real life! When in supercruise you get a HUD display overlaid that gives orbits and other information-

Spoiler:

Passing Thiin 1 in supercruise, the earth like planet the orbital spins around-

Spoiler:

And there is the orbiter-

Spoiler:

Unfortunately its on the dark side of the planet so the view is of Thiin1 is not great (and yes that sun is the same one I came out of the jump next to above)-

Spoiler:

As is usual in an elite game the port authorities are a bit trigger happy when it comes to parking violations! So always make sure you get docking permission first- and don't loiter!-

Spoiler:

Having got docking permission and a pad allocation its time to go inside (even in space you cant avoid advertising hoardings!)-

Spoiler:

Having got inside I now have to locate and land at the right pad- no19 in this case. Finding your pad can sometimes be a bit tricky, especially if its immediately below the entrance. You will notice that as well as the pad allocation there is also a timer in which you must land, failure do so tends to end with some extreme traffic cop action! But the time limit is more than generous so you should never have a serious problem-

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

And safely down for a landing-

Spoiler:

Time to talk a little about my ship. I will come back to this as I upgrade and improve things, a new ship being well out of my price range right now.
But I might still hit the odd bit of trouble with pirates or chancers, and currently my two basic main weapons are not ideal. Particularly I have found when playing with a joypad lining up fixed mounted weapons on a moving target can be a right bugger. So what I need are gimballed weapons that will help by tracking moving targets when lined up on one.

Spoiler:

Unfortunately I can only afford to buy one new weapon, leaving me stuck with the other one. It also cost me almost all the money I have, so I need to earn a living.
For that you go to the Bulletin Board.
The jobs separated at the top are jobs I can feasibly carry out- the rest I am either not qualified for, don't have a good enough reputation to get offered yet, or are out of my ships range or require items I don't have. But that light cargo run highlighted will get me about half the money back I just spent-

Spoiler:

A cargo of wine- seems rather appropriate for me, assuming I don't drink it en-route. At 4 cargo units it does however use up all the available space I have on my small ship. But worth the trip I reckon-

Spoiler:

So its time to take off and leave the station and get back out into space-

Spoiler:

Unfortunately upon lining up with my destination I hit a slight snag- its over 9 light years away and my little ship only jumps 7!

Spoiler:

Failing to deliver goods incurs a fine and displeases whoever gave  you the contract affecting your reputation and likelihood of decent future job offers, the cargo also gets marked down as stolen and you might find a bounty on your head, so this is a problem.
Back to the galaxy map to try to find an alternative route-

Spoiler:

Turns out there is system 5 light years away I can us as a stepping stone to my original destination-

Spoiler:

So with the clock ticking on my delivery its time to make a jump, or two-

Spoiler:

After a couple of jumps I finally arrive in my destination system, to discover it's a rather pretty binary system-

Spoiler:

My destination is a station called Vela Ring, where someone really wants some wine. Turns out there are two earth like worlds in close proximity to each other in this system. Makes you wonder what earth history would be like if there was another earth like planet in sight in the night sky! To get your speed right on approaching at supercruise you use the two bars on the left side of the main panel. The aim is to get the two yellow lines into the two blue sections. When both are lined up you have arrived. Likewise your ideal speed is always in the blue area on the speedo, thats also when in normal flight the optimal speed to maintain turning speeds-

Spoiler:

Passing close by one of the planets. You cant go down to planets yet, thats to come in the first major expansion pack for the game after release-

Spoiler:

On my way to Vela Ring I pick up a signal, unidentified. Well its probably trouble but what the hell, I'm exploring, lets go look and see what it is-

Spoiler:

Before I even get there I get interdicted. Indertictions are when someone tries to drag your ship out of supercruise back into normal space, sometimes its just a routine patrol to scan your ship for stolen goods or outstanding fines and warrants, sometimes its pirates.
It takes the form of a sort of mini-game. You try to keep the escape vector lined up in your sights.
There are two bars on your hud, the blue which is yours, and the red which is whoever is trying to get you.
Fill all the blue up by keeping the escape vector lined up and you escape, if all the red fills up they succeed and you will be dragged into normal space.

Spoiler:

Luckily I managed to evade whoever it was and carry on my way to investigate the mystery signal.
It turned out to be the intriguing sounding, 'ancient artifacts' left floating in space by who knows what- now these might be worth a bit of money, so I deploy my cargo scoop- only to release my hold is full of wine!
This is a bit of a dilemma- I don't know how much the artifacts might be worth, almost certainly more than wine, but are they worth more than the cargo of wine, plus a fine, plus loss of reputation?

Spoiler:

In the end I decide its best to honour my contract, and reluctantly I leave the artifacts to the emptiness of space and continue on my way to Vela Ring-

Spoiler:

Safely docked its back to the bulletin board to complete the transaction and collect my credits-

Spoiler:

And I didn't even get to sample the wine!
So time to refuel and rest up before planning the next stage of my attempt to reach Earth.

Elite Dangerous Official Premiere-

Elite should be right up your street Halfy- lots of science, lots of space, and you get to play with it all!

Pettytyrant101 wrote:

And finally definitive proof Nagual is not a sock puppet of mine- there he is there right outside my window!-

Sock puppet? Really? Hmmph.

Luckily I managed to evade whoever it was and carry on my way to investigate the mystery signal.
It turned out to be the intriguing sounding, 'ancient artifacts' left floating in space by who knows what- now these might be worth a bit of money, so I deploy my cargo scoop- only to release my hold is full of wine!
This is a bit of a dilemma- I don't know how much the artifacts might be worth, almost certainly more than wine, but are they worth more than the cargo of wine, plus a fine, plus loss of reputation?


In the end I decide its best to honour my contract, and reluctantly I leave the artifacts to the emptiness of space and continue on my way to Vela Ring-

Aye, at only 5,000 credits per unit of cargo it wasn't worth losing a bit of Rep. It may have been by far far far far far more profitable, but we all know you to be a man of honour. Bravo, sir. Bravo.