Interestingly, Matrix was able to recreate this problem; it seems Visual C++ doesn’t have admin rights. They’re suggestion is to uninstall the libraries and the game, and reinstall both while logged in as admin. My question is whether that will screw up something like Dragon Age, which seems to want more recent libraries. I guess only one way to find out.
What OS? Vista?
Yeah. Their solution didn’t work, but I suspect it’s because there are four separate runtime libraries for Visual C++, three for 2005 and the last for 2008; the game installs the latest, and that was the one I uninstalled and reinstalled logged into the admin account. But it had no effect. I’m loathe to kill all of the libraries without knowing what uses what, and frankly right now it’s more important that other stuff work than this game. But it’s quite frustrating.
Is it possibly a DEP error? I wonder if calling “incorrect” libraries might give a false positive on that.
Gave it a brief play this evening, I like the concise presentation, and the quickly fathomnable tech tree and planet management. This is fairly straightforward stuff, not too overwhelming. Let down a little by the 3d real time battles, the scale that they’re presented on is way too big, so you have very small craft to follow about on a 2d plane, including planetary combat. Also, not sure what tactical play there is, other than 2d range placement. Perhaps flanking is important, but it seems to play out a bit distant and sterile for space combat. Like the fleet groupings and the formations, but just haven’t worked out any tactical benefits or details as such.
Its a 4X game for people who want short burst games, or games with more focus than endless reams of economic fiddling and micromanagement. In fact, for me, the UI is excellent compared to the current crop of 4X games. But I guess it could almost be classified as “4X lite” compared to the likes of GalCiv2 or Sword of the Stars etc.
It fits the bill for me, and I’m looking forward to upping the game and exploring the nuances of the different races and their affinities with the tech tree limbs.
Happy to hear this. Just got home and have about 6 minutes left on the download. Incredibly grateful the wife is working late tonight.
The Visual C++ that the the game installed on my computer was version x86 9.0.21022. I’m running Vista Ultimate 64 and the game seems to work fine. Hope this helps narrow down your choices for what Visual C++ the game uses.
Yes, that’s the one it installs for me, too. But it still doesn’t work. Some others are having similar or identical issues it seems, and they’re working to see what the problem might be. The assumption was the game wasn’t able to access the libraries because of access issues, but installing the whole shebang while logged in as admin didn’t help, so who knows.
Have you tried running the game in admin? I basically run everything in admin and haven’t had any problems. Although everybody else who uses my computer runs in user mode.
No, the VC++ library packages you get from Microsoft all install side-by-side, they don’t overwrite one another. It’s up to the individual programs to select the correct version from all the installed ones.
How odd. Thanks for the info though. I’m not the only one having the issue, though, or at least, there are others with very similar if not identical issues. And yes, I’ve tried running the game as admin, while logged in as admin, and every other combination known to man. The game installs the latest libraries and then, apparently, can’t access them. Unless it’s something else :). Like, could it be the .net stuff? What’s very weird is that I have never had these issues with a Matrix game before, that I know of. I’ve always installed as a regular user, elevating as necessary, and had zero issues.
What’s really odd is that even if I install while logged in as admin it won’t run, even for admin!
Going out on a limb here, could your virus protection be causing the problem?
Played through the tutorial, fun game so far. Wish the production of what’s going on at each planet was a little clearer. Definetly scratches the Moo2 itch though.
Well, I don’t have the game so I can’t really say much else. This could be basically anything… but at a guess they may have linked the executable to the wrong library version, so the game only works if the correct version is accidentally already installed on the user’s machine.
.NET did not have any great number of versions, very unlikely that there’s a problem. Check Windows Update to make sure you have the latest fixes, if any.
Yeah, good thoughts. I’m up to date with all my multifarious Windows updates, etc. Virus protection might interfere in theory but generally that would either screw with installation or at least give me a warning–AVG is pretty communicative about stuff.
Ah well. I’ll fool around with it as I have time while I wait for Matrix to think of something.
If anyone is interested, I happen to have an extra digital download copy, due to some miscommunication.
I could probably sell the copy of Armada 2526 for a tad bit less than list price (within reason), if anyone wants to help me out. My download is still “live” so you could download it straight from the Matrix servers. I did not register it, obviously.
I can accept Paypal payments, or we would work out a “trade” for a gifting of King Arthur on my Steam account (will be the next game I buy) if you don’t want to use Paypal and have no other way to send funds).
Let me know by PM if anyone is interested - obviously first come, first serve as I only have one extra copy.
Bael
This is pretty much what I came here to say; I enjoyed the tutorial I played last night, and a lot of the things I felt were “missing” at first (custom-built ships, deeper tech tree) turned out to really help streamline the game play. On the whole, I’m looking forward to booking some more hours on it this weekend.
Please keep us all updated with your playing experiences of this, it’s booked a place on my ‘very possible purchase’ list - but more info/impressions would be great thanks.
I’ve been playing for a couple of days, and I can say that for 31€, I’m going to get my money’s worth out of this game, at least. I wouldn’t pay more though. The quality is very uneven throughout the game. There is some UI stuff where you go, ‘what a great idea’, and others where you go, ‘what a terrible idea’. The main idea is to get you clicking through the turns quickly and painlessly. The game pretty much succeeds with that. There’s not a lot of micromanagement you need to do. Tax rate, for example, is high, medium, or low.
The AI doesn’t seem all that great (on normal), tending to dribble ships at you instead of sending a crushing fleet, but he did sneak attack me while I was occupied elsewhere. The diplomacy counter offers work well to hammer out a deal, but then the AI will spam requests for a trade mission every 3 turns, never learning that I don’t want trade missions.
The real time part is probably the worst part of the game. If there is strategy there, I haven’t found it. It’s hard to control your units, so I usually just set a line abreast formation and move my guys up. Whatever you do, don’t give your missile cruisers a direct attack order, they will close to short range, even though they can fire from halfway across the map.
The starmap is sort of boring to look at as well. At a decent zoom level, everything is too small, and everything looks dim. A minor quibble.
But yeah, it definitely has the ‘one more turn’ thing, and is worth 31€.
DeanCo–
It might be more worth it to me if I could actually play it. I guess I’ll have to wait until after this weekend to get any more tech support feedback. So far it’s been a waste of money. I just wish I knew why it wouldn’t work. Bah.