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Bofferbrauer on 01 January 2016
JEMC said:

Bofferbrauer said:
JEMC said:

GALACTIC CIVILIZATIONS 2 GETS SURPRISE MASSIVE PATCH

http://www.pcgamer.com/galactic-civilizations-2-gets-surprise-massive-patch/

Galactic Civilizations II is one of the best 4X games I've played—and I've played two 4X games, the other being the equally excellent Civ IV. But, regardless, it is magnificent, as Tom Francis' gripping War Diaries attest. Out of the blue, a giant new patch has appeared for the decade-old game, made with the help of the presumably-still-thriving community. The patch actually arrived a couple of weeks ago, but you might have been too full of chocolates and booze to care or notice at the time—I know I was.

Now that was unexpected. Time to test the changes, I guess.

I've been trying the GalCiv 2 demo (ah, the good old times!) to decide between that game or Endless Space, and so far I'm inclined to buy the second one because of the UI.

If you try it, could you please tell me if there's been some changes to the UI?

I'll do, just have to wait until I get home on Monday. It's actually high time I play that game again, which was btw the very first I installed on my latest PC.

Which part is the demo? GalCiv II has 3 parts which all differ (very) slightly. I guess it's the first part (would make most sense), just wanted to make sure I don't give you infos about the wrong part. I do doubt however they changed the UI, unless they wanted to straemline it with it's sucessor.





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JEMC on 02 January 2016
Bofferbrauer said:
JEMC said:

Bofferbrauer said:
JEMC said:

GALACTIC CIVILIZATIONS 2 GETS SURPRISE MASSIVE PATCH

http://www.pcgamer.com/galactic-civilizations-2-gets-surprise-massive-patch/

Galactic Civilizations II is one of the best 4X games I've played—and I've played two 4X games, the other being the equally excellent Civ IV. But, regardless, it is magnificent, as Tom Francis' gripping War Diaries attest. Out of the blue, a giant new patch has appeared for the decade-old game, made with the help of the presumably-still-thriving community. The patch actually arrived a couple of weeks ago, but you might have been too full of chocolates and booze to care or notice at the time—I know I was.

Now that was unexpected. Time to test the changes, I guess.

I've been trying the GalCiv 2 demo (ah, the good old times!) to decide between that game or Endless Space, and so far I'm inclined to buy the second one because of the UI.

If you try it, could you please tell me if there's been some changes to the UI?

I'll do, just have to wait until I get home on Monday. It's actually high time I play that game again, which was btw the very first I installed on my latest PC.

Which part is the demo? GalCiv II has 3 parts which all differ (very) slightly. I guess it's the first part (would make most sense), just wanted to make sure I don't give you infos about the wrong part. I do doubt however they changed the UI, unless they wanted to straemline it with it's sucessor.

It's the Galactic Civilizations II Dread Lords demo.

And thanks.



Please excuse my bad English.

Currently gaming on a PC with an i5-4670k@stock (for now), 16Gb RAM 1600 MHz and a GTX 1070

Steam / Live / NNID : jonxiquet    Add me if you want, but I'm a single player gamer.

JEMC on 02 January 2016
zero129 said:
JEMC said:
BasilZero said:
JEMC said:

I've thought about that, but I don't know which one should I start with.

But now it will have to wait until I get FF 9.


If you want a challenge and dont mind 15 FPS in battles - Final Fantasy IV

If you want a simple FF game - get Final Fantasy III.

If you want the latest experience in the series - get FFXIII though I heard its poorly optimized

If you want to experience a classic that didnt change much except for visual style then try Final Fantasy VI.

So it will be either FF IV or FF VI.

Both are great choices imo. FF4 was the first real Final Fantasy to have a good story and the remake is really enjoyable and imo looks better then FF6. But FF6 has one of my fav FF storys and a great villian .

FF4 good story, FF6 great story and villain.

I've taken note of that.



Please excuse my bad English.

Currently gaming on a PC with an i5-4670k@stock (for now), 16Gb RAM 1600 MHz and a GTX 1070

Steam / Live / NNID : jonxiquet    Add me if you want, but I'm a single player gamer.

Conina on 03 January 2016

According to MetaScore data (which ain't perfect, but still a good indicator for trends), 2015 was a solid year for PC games:

Most 90+ PC games since 2008 (7 games, on par with PS4), only 2002 and 2004 had more PC games with 90% or higher (although I can see "Nuclear Throne" fall under 90%).

Most 85+ PC games since... ever (35 games, second place is PS4 with 26 games with 85% or higher). Best "85+ years" before: 2013 (34 games) and 2000 (30 games).

Most 80+ PC games since... ever (91 games, second place is PS4 with 71 games with 80% or higher). Best "80+ years" before: 2014 (91 games) and 2013 (81 games).

Most 75+ PC games since... ever (168 games, second place is PS4 with 117 games with 75% or higher). Best "75+ years" before: 2014 (148 games) and 2013 (145 games).



JEMC on 03 January 2016

I don't have much faith in neither Metacritic nor in today's gaming "journalists" and their scores.

Don't get me wrong, that's good news for sure, but not 100% credible.



Please excuse my bad English.

Currently gaming on a PC with an i5-4670k@stock (for now), 16Gb RAM 1600 MHz and a GTX 1070

Steam / Live / NNID : jonxiquet    Add me if you want, but I'm a single player gamer.

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Conina on 03 January 2016

NVIDIA expects 25 Million PC Gamers To Adopt Virtual Reality: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gameworks-vr-large-scale-vr-adoption/#ixzz3wBZyJ3FZ

The most interesting part IMHO is this sentence: "According to Jason, out of the entire PC installed base, there are just about 13 million PCs in the market that are able to run VR perfectly." I'm sure their "perfectly" is based on the Oculus Rift recommendation for the "full VR experience": https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/the-rifts-recommended-spec-pc-sdk-0-6-released-and-mobile-vr-jam-voting/

With the Steam Hardware surveys I already try to figure out, how many active gaming PCs have similar (or faster) hardware than XBO + PS4... my latest guess is around 30 million. That number assumes a growth of 5 million Steam accounts per month... but with Valve's constant silence about their numbers since February, I got worried that the growth rate has gone down.

So with this new information from Nvidia in combination of the Oculus recommendation, I added a "VR recommended" section of the Steam data. GTX780 and 780 ti have almost the same performance as the GTX970 / R9 290, so I included them and ended up with 11.3 million Steam-PCs ready for the "full VR experience".

So my estimate (11.3 million) is a bit below of Nvidia's estimate (13 million), with December numbers of Valve it will come quite close. This gives me confidence that my educated guess of (5 million growth of Steam PCs per month) ain't totally absurd and that the number of Steam-PCs on XBO/PS4 level is also realistic.

Nevertheless I hope that Valve breaks the silence soon and tells us new numbers of active Steam accounts, so I can make adjustments.

 

P.S.: Damn, now I followed the link to the original interview: "By next year, when the first major PC-based VR headsets ship, there will be about 13 million PCs in the market that will be powerful enough to run VR — in the right way."

So he expects 13 million VR-ready PCs, when Oculus Rift launches, not now. So I hope the Oculus Rift launch is soon. :(

Now I'm worried again about the PC gaming growth rate... Valve: please give us actual numbers!



JEMC on 03 January 2016

Conina, the Oculus Rift is expected to arrive by Q1 2016.

https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/first-look-at-the-rift-shipping-q1-2016/

Althought I wouldn't be too surprised if they push it back again.

 

What surprises me the most from your numbers is that you are adding AMD cards into the question. With Nvidia being Nvidia, I wouldn't be surprised if they were talking about Nvidia based PC. Because of course VR will not be "perfect" running on a platform that can't use their GameWorks VR crap.



Please excuse my bad English.

Currently gaming on a PC with an i5-4670k@stock (for now), 16Gb RAM 1600 MHz and a GTX 1070

Steam / Live / NNID : jonxiquet    Add me if you want, but I'm a single player gamer.

Conina on 03 January 2016

Maybe, because he is also talking about GameWorks VR...

"Nvidia says it can extend that number to 25 million if the VR game makers use Nvidia’s Gameworks VR software, which makes the VR processing more efficient."

But more important... one of my numbers got wrong: GTX980 has to be around 0.80% - 0.90%, not 0.21%. Unfortunately the HW survey is down... preparations for the December numbers?

P.S.: The direct path works... December data! Separated to DX11, DX10, DX9 again, so I have to use my other Excel sheet. ;)

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/



JEMC on 03 January 2016
Conina said:
Maybe, because he is also talking about GameWorks VR...

"Nvidia says it can extend that number to 25 million if the VR game makers use Nvidia’s Gameworks VR software, which makes the VR processing more efficient."

But more important... one of my numbers got wrong: GTX980 has to be around 0.80% - 0.90%, not 0.21%. Unfortunately the HW survey is down... preparations for the December numbers?

I don't think they'll update the hardware stats until the end of the Sale. There's too much going on to add that on top of the traffic, specially with the problems they've had this year.

 

And I hope Gameworks VR fails hard.

From what I've read, every headset has it's own instructions so every VR game has to be tweaked for each headset. We already have 3 big names with the Oculus Rift, the HTC/Valve Vive and Sony's PSVR (and I include this one because devs and publishers know that this is a small market and they'll want to reach an audience as big as possible) to also add that stupid propietary software to make everything even more complicated. And the same goes for AMD and its LiquidVR software in the case that it's not open source.

It looks like everybody wants it to succeed, but at the same time they are all making the road to that success harder and harder.



Please excuse my bad English.

Currently gaming on a PC with an i5-4670k@stock (for now), 16Gb RAM 1600 MHz and a GTX 1070

Steam / Live / NNID : jonxiquet    Add me if you want, but I'm a single player gamer.

JEMC on 03 January 2016
BasilZero said:
Blah at VR

Not interested in VR?

As part of Hexus' Epic Giveaway that was mentioned in your Gaming Bundles and Giveaways thread, there's the chance to win a headset visor. It's not exactly a VR helmet but I think it can be a good way to try how the whole VR thing could work and if it interests you or not.

http://hexus.net/ce/features/gadgets/88760-epic-giveaway-day-25-win-vuzix-iwear-video-headphones/

I entered the competition because... why not?



Please excuse my bad English.

Currently gaming on a PC with an i5-4670k@stock (for now), 16Gb RAM 1600 MHz and a GTX 1070

Steam / Live / NNID : jonxiquet    Add me if you want, but I'm a single player gamer.