Nutguy

Loss? Maybe, or maybe I'll spend my money on something equally good that won't bugger my PC or maybe even be a complete waste of money (TFT screen problem). Instead seems like I'll wait a bit and buy Civ 4. You bought two copies... Good for you and good for ALTAR. Now maybe you can buy a few hundred more for all those people who seem to be boycoting Starforce and then ALTAR will be even more happy. In the meantime I'm not thrilled about the possibility, however remote, of having my PC deep fried. On the copy protection discussion. I'm with you on legallity and rights and stolen work, just mine is a different take from yours. I buy my games legally and of course I wouldn't be happy if someone stole my work. But I wouldn't protect it in a way that could damage or cause unwanted problems on the property of legal buyers. Edit: @ Pete. No problem here. I did try the demo, liked it as far as I saw, but from what I've read I'd rather buy something else. In the meantime I've already uninstalled Starforce.

Yeah, right... and when the improperly maintened software or conflicting hardware comes from Starforce as the above links seem to indicate then what? That's the users problem too I guess. Mine is actually a case where (this particular) copy protection has had the opposite effect. It didn't prohibit any illegal use of the game, it actually prevented a possible buyer from acquiring it legally. I was two steps from buying the game but hesitated and didn't go through it cause of the bugs and the chance it might not be displayed properly on TFT screens. Starforce is strike 3 for ALTAR. Too bad... I really didn't have any beef with Starforce until I read the above links. I've actually installed legal copies of such games (as well as the Aftershock demo) on my system but after what I've read I'm going to find that removal tool and get Starforce out of my PC.

ditto the above. Plus, any game is bound to sell just about the same number of copies anyway. People who systematically play cracked games would never, ever, buy the original in the first place. as far as I'm concerned, there's only one issue with obsessive copy protection (like Starforce). The inability to mount an image of the game on your HD so you won't have to wear the poor CD down from excessive use (which is bound to happen). Of course that's 'cause I can live with a crash or two as far as games are concerned.

Ok, now I'm really confused... Read the topic Slaughter suggested and I'm not too keen on playing the game (any game) on windowed versions. So what I am asking is this: If the demo worked fine on my aforementioned display and settings, is there any chance the full game won't? I was thinking of buying the game tommorow (if the one and only store that said it'll sell some copies has it already) but if I can't play it the right way it is out of the question. Please reply soon!

Curious... The demo run fine on my TFT monitor set at 1280x1024 75Hz (In the demo's default setting of 1024x768 of course). It'd sure be strange if the game couldn't be played at this setting... More info would be truly welcome on this!

That's the retail price in Poland or what??? I know almost every other country sells almost everything at half the price than in this backwater little country of mine but 10 times lower???? Tell me that's not retail plz or I'll have to start packing for Poland!!!!

I tried the "one-man-Eric" team on the Britsih Isles level and got through it until I tried to see what happens if you go "hand to hand" with a knife against a flatster!

Direct links (as well as the main one) work now. What can I say... Murphy's law? Thanks anyway!

Link don't work for me.

I was curious enough to search it out and I visited H&K's official site only to find out that the entire MP5 family has a 15/30 Cartrigde magazine (meaning either 15 or 30 rounds -your choice- I believe). So, I want my 30 round magazines back please!!! Somebody tell ALTAR they made a factual error!

20 round magazines for the UZI and the MP5? Argh!!! And I hate reloads!!

Just some advice I got from a friend before I got my 6600GT. The 6600 and 6800 series have rather steep power demands. The "solution" to this is to connect the power card directly to the power supply (the card has it's own socket for that purpose) I've had my card for quite some time now and I've never experienced such problems so this just maybe it.

28th September? Just about right for my birthday present then!!! Come to me oh mighty copy of UFO: Aftershock!!!

First of all let me say congrats on a very fine article. One that I enjoyed reading! Now on to dissecting it! Bionode material: It doesn't have to be that the bionode "applicants" had to volunteer. They could be dissidents, convicts or even low ranking soldiers, ordered to die for the common good, not having another choice. Also given the fact that, in-game, the entire earth surface could be covered by a few dozen bionodes (even with multiple coverage, to make the grid more "dense") the following question comes to mind. How many Reticulans are requiered to make a bionode? If one (or any single digit number) is enough then, the number of "volunteers" would be rather small. If on the other hand, dozens were requiered for a sngle bionode then we have another issue to think of. Eventually who 'd be left to carry out the menial tasks of everyday operations? (kick United Council's a$$ etc). The only reasonable explanation to this scenario is the presence of overwhelming numbers of Reticulans which isn't justified by what our soliers were seeing on the battlefield on our first contact with them in the beginning days and months. Octupuses: Just one question. Where on earth do we know their weight? As far as I recall (and admittedly it's been some time since I played the game) you meet them in the lunar mission, kill them, victory message follows (in which there is no mention about them I think), victory video, THE END! So please informed this uninformed disciple of your theory ( ) as to your source of octupus information. (Hint: Maybe Accounting Troll is a part of this conspiracy and that's why he knows all this stuff!!! ). Military technology: A perfectly good explanation here... It's called the "developers excuse for not making the game extremely difficult, so that no-one will buy it" :mad: . Back to our fictional universe though, it may simply be that they underestimated our resolve and our capabilities and decided not to bring forth the big guns from the beginning. And as far as the collapsible plasma turret is concerned, an explanation is given by our scientists in-game. "They were impressed by our weaponry and immitated it" (Yeah, ok I know lame-ass excuse, by some superiority complex science geeks who'd like to think of themselves as gods and of our race as superior, but still ). Now, Warp technology. Our own understanding of the warp principles is limited. Maybe the application of warp technology could not be made to work on anything larger than a weapon. Power and volume limitations may apply even to the Reticulans, thus making space travel not feasible via warp. Ok, that's all I could dissect. The rest of the article presents some serious questions indeed that we only hope will be answered in Aftershock! I for one can't wait grabbing my favourite rifle back and wasting some Reti's

Kriptor is right. 21% of the whole atmosphere's air amounts to pretty much oxygen! Some wacko teacher of mine was saying that in high school and he was using the aforementioned Seaquest DSV episode to say "here, this isn't possible, cause of this and this and that" And if someone actually knows the exact figures maybe we can verify Kripton's result! :lol:

Couldn't figure out how to make a thumbnail in this site and had to scale it down from 1280*1024 to 640*480 so it would fit, but... Long Live the Empire! http://www.bfworld.net/Mosxos/desktop.jpg Oh, yes... Your standard issue Clone Trooper. Loyal, hard working and above all FULLY EXPENDABLE!

Well, after installing another age old game I have (TIE fighter. Quite a nostalgia attack this last week but while I'm waiting for BF2 I 've got to do something!!!), I noticed that the auto sound setup of the installation set the card's IRQ to 7. I'm able to run both games in the same DOSbox session (i.e one after another) with no problems... So I've come to this conclusion (which is also implied on the DOSbox site). Seems like each game "requires" it's own IRQ value to run under DOSbox. And since I don't own a SB anymore and my actuall card's IRQ value is 17, I think that what DOSbox sets as an IRQ value on its startup is just for show... Or maybe I'm talking BS here and I'm a noob :lol:

Well, actually it was simple and I was an idiot... When I wrote in my starting post that I tried several sound setups I didn't mentioned that this was done only in the installation mode 2. So, for some reason no matter what sound settings I used, if the game wasn't installed from the CD it simply refused to play. And when I installed it directly from the cd I was setting the IRQ of my sound card to 7 (IRQ:7) which was what the dosbox window was starting with (SETBLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T4). Well, on the dosbox site I found out that I should set the IRQ value to 5.

Slaughter you 're my hero !!!! That link to the DOSbox site helped a lot.... *gives slaughter a huge hug!*

So, anyone up with even a possible solution for me yet? Come on guys! PLEASE! Now that I'm eager again to play the game getting stuck on some technical difficulties is frustrating! I want to crack Lobstermen open with Heavy thermic lances again!

Well, I do own the game so, if it is possible I'd like to explore my options with the DOSbox before dabbling with downloadable versions of something I already own... I mean it can't be that hard right? Just a few setting changes here and the and I should be able to play it... Thanx anyway though

After a long time I decided to play X-Com again (I've tried to finish the game twice and I was always getting stuck due to the research tree) only to find out things have changed a lot... Last time I even tried to install the game I had Win98 OS and now with the XP... arghhhhh!!!! I've tried to use a DOS emulator (DOSbox v 6.1) but, depending on the installation mode (more on that later on) I can't get past the language screen. Installation mode 1: Directly from the CD. So, I install the files, cdspeed run smoothly, setup screen appears I set my soundcard as a SBPro (Port 220, IRQ:7, DMA:1, channels 4), the game loads, the language screen appears and when I select one (English) it's all over... Instead of a DOSbox I now have a blackbox (completely black DOS window). Installation mode 2: Copy the CD to the Harddrive and install from there. Same as before except that there is no CDspeed check of course, and that the DOSbox window freezes at the sound initialization window. I'm shown my sound selection (the one I've setup from setup.exe) and that's as far as it goes... I've tried fiddling with the sound options but even no sound at all won't do. So... any ideas 'cause I'm all fresh out of them? And by the way, can someone give me a working link for the tftdv2 patch? Thanx in advance!

eeeehhh... heh heh... Actually I'm an idiot... Your advice was more helpfull than you thought as it was the solution to my problem since I hadn't researched a live specimen! I don't even have it in the containment. See, I hated the buggers and kept killing them! :angel: Thanx for your advice!

aaaaaaaahhh yes... I knew I'd forgotten to write about something... Yup! them too, Hyperworms, multiworms... the works!

Brainsuckers, their pods, their corpses, as well as anthropods, spitters, poppers and skeletoids (all with their corpses) have been researched. The only aliens I haven't researched yet are the micronoids, and the various spawns just because I haven't encountered them yet...