Birth of the Federation discussion

Started by Martok, July 25, 2013, 02:09:02 AM

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Martok

Quote from: bbmike on July 29, 2013, 03:14:03 PM
Quote from: Martok on July 25, 2013, 11:24:02 AM
Birth of the Federation was the game that got me into space strategy titles as well.  (My love affair with the genre was cemented a year later with Imperium Galactica II: Alliances.)  As a huge fan of both Star Trek and grand strategy games, BOTF became an instant classic for me -- to say nothing of a years-long addiction! 

I never played Imperium Galactica II. At that time I refused anything that had RTS in the description. I guess I kinda still do.  ::)
Well I certainly don't blame you.  :)  Even for me, RTS games are the exception to the rule, with IG2 and Distant Worlds being the two big ones for me. 

"Like we need an excuse to drink to anything..." - Banzai_Cat
"I like to think of it not as an excuse but more like Pavlovian Response." - Sir Slash

"At our ages, they all look like jailbait." - mirth

"If we had lines here that would have crossed all of them. For the 1,077,986th time." - Gusington

"Government is so expensive that it should at least be entertaining." - airboy

"As long as there's bacon, everything will be all right." - Toonces

LongBlade

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

Darkspire

I never read the manuals, prefer to find things out myself by trial and error, well more error than trial  :)

Here is the link for the tutorial.

http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.8872

Darkspire
Trying to prove the existence of God with the Bible is the same thing as trying to prove the existence of Orcs using the Lord of the Rings books.


Nefaro

#18
Quote from: bbmike on July 29, 2013, 03:10:14 PM
Quote from: Nefaro on July 29, 2013, 01:44:28 PM
Quote from: Martok on July 25, 2013, 11:24:02 AM



A quick word of warning:  Some folks have had issues running BOTF on Windows 7 (although I myself and one of my friends have had no problem running the game on our machine), and it appears Windows 8 has a difficult time running it at all.  There are solutions & workarounds, however (including that project that's currently being beta-tested). 


I certainly can't run BOTF on my Win7.  The menu flickers and flashes dark, doesn't show some gfx, etc. 

Is that Direct 3D installation option the one you were referring to as being in beta??

Make sure you run it in Comparability Mode (I think Windows 98) and run as Administrator. Also, in your botf.ini make sure you set 3D=DIRECT3D

Already did the first two.  Changing the ini setting didn't do anything either.  Perhaps I'll uninstall and use the other install option.

edit:  Nope, no luck using the Hades (Direct3D) install option.  Perhaps it'll work better on my desktop with the AMD card.

Martok

Quote from: Darkspire on July 29, 2013, 05:53:02 PM
I never read the manuals, prefer to find things out myself by trial and error, well more error than trial  :)

Here is the link for the tutorial.

http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.8872

Darkspire
Meh, I don't put much stock in the game's tutorials.  Being both non-interactive *and* not having the instructions included (you have to read them separately in Adobe), this severely limits their usefulness IMHO.  Honestly, I found it was best to simply learn by doing. 




Quote from: Nefaro on July 29, 2013, 07:44:27 PM
Already did the first two.  Changing the ini setting didn't do anything either.  Perhaps I'll uninstall and use the other install option.

edit:  Nope, no luck using the Hades (Direct3D) install option.  Perhaps it'll work better on my desktop with the AMD card.
That sucks Nefaro.  :( 

Seriously, though, if you wind up still having issues, you may want to see about giving MPR++ a try.  Not that it's been a magic cure for everyone, but it might not hurt to check it out if you continue to have problems getting the game to run. 

"Like we need an excuse to drink to anything..." - Banzai_Cat
"I like to think of it not as an excuse but more like Pavlovian Response." - Sir Slash

"At our ages, they all look like jailbait." - mirth

"If we had lines here that would have crossed all of them. For the 1,077,986th time." - Gusington

"Government is so expensive that it should at least be entertaining." - airboy

"As long as there's bacon, everything will be all right." - Toonces

Nefaro

Quote from: Martok on July 30, 2013, 01:12:39 PM


Quote from: Nefaro on July 29, 2013, 07:44:27 PM
Already did the first two.  Changing the ini setting didn't do anything either.  Perhaps I'll uninstall and use the other install option.

edit:  Nope, no luck using the Hades (Direct3D) install option.  Perhaps it'll work better on my desktop with the AMD card.
That sucks Nefaro.  :( 

Seriously, though, if you wind up still having issues, you may want to see about giving MPR++ a try.  Not that it's been a magic cure for everyone, but it might not hurt to check it out if you continue to have problems getting the game to run.

I may try that out sometime.  I certainly enjoyed BOTF years ago and hope to have it running reasonably well, again, at some point.   I probably enjoyed it more than MOO2.

I still have the disc and manual.  ;D

Martok

Quote from: Nefaro on July 30, 2013, 04:53:53 PM
I probably enjoyed it more than MOO2.
So did I.  In fact, I think that in some ways, BOTF ruined me for MOO2.  I've never been enthralled with the latter game (as so many 4x enthusiasts are), probably at least in part because I've always loved the former so much. 




Quote from: Nefaro on July 30, 2013, 04:53:53 PM
I still have the disc and manual.  ;D
As do I.  8) 

"Like we need an excuse to drink to anything..." - Banzai_Cat
"I like to think of it not as an excuse but more like Pavlovian Response." - Sir Slash

"At our ages, they all look like jailbait." - mirth

"If we had lines here that would have crossed all of them. For the 1,077,986th time." - Gusington

"Government is so expensive that it should at least be entertaining." - airboy

"As long as there's bacon, everything will be all right." - Toonces

bbmike

"My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplace of existence."
-Sherlock Holmes

"You know, just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets."
-Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart

"There's a horror movie called Alien? That's really offensive. No wonder everyone keeps invading you!"
-The Doctor

"Before Man goes to the stars he should learn how to live on Earth."
-Clifford D. Simak

Anguille

Quote from: Martok on July 30, 2013, 05:33:57 PM
Quote from: Nefaro on July 30, 2013, 04:53:53 PM
I probably enjoyed it more than MOO2.
So did I.  In fact, I think that in some ways, BOTF ruined me for MOO2.  I've never been enthralled with the latter game (as so many 4x enthusiasts are), probably at least in part because I've always loved the former so much. 
The same happened to me...i discovered MOO2 only afterwards...

Martok

I have to admit, I'm always pleasantly surprised by the number of BOTF enthusiasts in this place.  As a percentage of the membership, I'd guess we comprise a fairly respectable fraction. 




Quote from: Anguille on July 30, 2013, 05:39:41 PM
Quote from: Martok on July 30, 2013, 05:33:57 PM
Quote from: Nefaro on July 30, 2013, 04:53:53 PM
I probably enjoyed it more than MOO2.
So did I.  In fact, I think that in some ways, BOTF ruined me for MOO2.  I've never been enthralled with the latter game (as so many 4x enthusiasts are), probably at least in part because I've always loved the former so much. 
The same happened to me...i discovered MOO2 only afterwards...
I should've specified that I too didn't discover MOO2 til long after BOTF was released.  By the time I did, the former just didn't hold much appeal for me. 

"Like we need an excuse to drink to anything..." - Banzai_Cat
"I like to think of it not as an excuse but more like Pavlovian Response." - Sir Slash

"At our ages, they all look like jailbait." - mirth

"If we had lines here that would have crossed all of them. For the 1,077,986th time." - Gusington

"Government is so expensive that it should at least be entertaining." - airboy

"As long as there's bacon, everything will be all right." - Toonces

Nefaro

Wow!  So I may be the only one who played MOO2 and BOTF in their historically released order, here?  :o

Another grand strat space game from that time period I loved was Star Wars: Rebellion.  It had a different title in Europe IIRC.  While the interface was odd to learn at first (and the reason it got a poor review showing IMO), the gameplay was wonderfully unusual and took a good deal of future insight for your strategies to work (since once you committed to a jump, you had to wait quite awhile for the fleet to arrive & there was no stopping it).  I still have the manual, disc, and poster with all the mil unit specs.  I fired that one up a few years ago and it still worked okay, although it required a NoCD hack else the disc check would flip Vista/XP out and not work. 

Martok

I wanted to love Rebellion, and I did like it in concept.  That damn UI was so painful, though, that I just couldn't get past it. 

"Like we need an excuse to drink to anything..." - Banzai_Cat
"I like to think of it not as an excuse but more like Pavlovian Response." - Sir Slash

"At our ages, they all look like jailbait." - mirth

"If we had lines here that would have crossed all of them. For the 1,077,986th time." - Gusington

"Government is so expensive that it should at least be entertaining." - airboy

"As long as there's bacon, everything will be all right." - Toonces

Anguille

Quote from: Martok on July 30, 2013, 11:35:54 PM
I wanted to love Rebellion, and I did like it in concept.  That damn UI was so painful, though, that I just couldn't get past it.

It's a good game...i just hated to see my x-wings flying backwards  :o

Nefaro

Quote from: Martok on July 30, 2013, 11:35:54 PM
I wanted to love Rebellion, and I did like it in concept.  That damn UI was so painful, though, that I just couldn't get past it.

I almost gave up on it, way back in the day, but I experienced a big "Eureka!!" moment on how the interface worked.  Mainly regarding how you move the two fleet/unit windows back and forth (like a sliding panel that can move from one side to the other only) and the mouse button orders functionality.  Once I figured out how to bring up the unit windows and move them back & forth to get to other stuff behind them, it became easier. 

solops

#29
After installing under Win7 on a modern PC I get the errors mentioned above: The menu flickers and flashes dark, doesn't show some gfx, etc. 

This is the only way I could get the game to run without crashes due to video problems:


1. Install BoTF (probably from .iso is your best bet)
2. If you run it the way it is, it will freeze and crash, due to Windows 7 not being able to automatically dumb itself down to those levels
3. Enter compatibility mode... to enter compatibility mode on Windows 7:
3a. Right Click on the icon I am sure you have placed on the desktop, and click "Properties"
3b. Click the "compatibility" tab
3c. check the "run in compatibility mode" check box
3d. set the compatibility for "Windows 98/Windows ME"
3e. in the settings area, turn the following things on:
- Run in 256 colours
- Run in 640 x 480
- Disable Visual Themes
- Disable display scaling on high DPI settings
4. Click "Apply"
5. Run trek.exe (that is the icon you have just edited)
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