Galactic Civilizations Demo Released

Galactic Civilizations is a recently released PC space-based strategy game (see our earlier story on it, or check out an elegant review at Gamespot), notable for favorable comparisons against the none too favorably received Master Of Orion 3. There's now a Windows demo (51mb) of Galactic Civilizations available, originally released via Gamespot, but also downloadable from Gamershell, Fileshack, and from Gametab's BitTorrents page. Not bad for a game originally developed for OS/2 back in 1994.

Re:All these games are for Windows

[psyco484]

KMines is starting to get old. Any suggestions?

How about Quake 3? Unreal Tournament? Unreal tournament 2003? Neverwinter Nights? Devastation? America's Army (soon)? And that's not even covering mods...More and more games are coming out for Linux, it's not an overnight thing, but it is happening. Give it time, there are benefits to Linux gaming (I get 20 more fps under Linux playing Quake3 than under Windows). Just wait, it will happen.

Re:All these games are for Windows

[mstorer3772]

I feel that Linux has reached a point where its stability and graphical speed can be a huge advantage over Windows

I was under the impression that Linux 3d speeds were still lagging behind win32's. Do you have any evidence to the contrary (some website's side-by-side comparison would be great)?

The way I see it, so long as NVidia and ATI are making most of their money on windows boxes, they'll continue to pour more of their efforts into windows drivers... and since they're not really big on sharing (last

Am I mistaken?

[dpilot]

Yes, sometimes.

In some cases, Linux beats Windows on 3D speed, though I can't cite the reference. It isn't across the board, by any means. But in some cases.

There's much touted that the nVidia drivers are single-source cross-compiled for the different platforms. Supposedly with minimal glue, the same source generates both Windows and Linux drivers.

There is also rumbling that the new ATI "Catalyst" drivers use the same philosophy, except that there are also Open Source drivers for the Radeon.

Now all I ne

Re:Am I mistaken?

[CheeseCow]

Linux uses OpenGL, while may games under Windows supports BOTH OpenGL and Direct3D.

In my experience, OpenGL can be faster, but when there is a lot of action, the frame rate drops much more than with Direct3D. This have been true with at least three PC's with different GeForce cards.

Also, the driver is really the Windows driver with some kind of HAL programmed for it. Also, Linux is built for more security, and the security and integrity checks make it all go slower.

I can only speak of my own experience w

Re:Am I mistaken?

[Genyin]

I can only speak of my own experience with Gentoo Linux(which is supposed to be pretty fast if done right), and the speed I get in UT2k3 or NWN is nowhere near what I get in Windows. Sorry.


Although you should note that, in the case of the first, UT2k3's linux port is fairly unoptimized. (IIRC, the entire openGL rendering path is not optimized) Also, NWN is still in beta... although if you are getting framerates significantly lower in it, you probably have something setting broken. (color depth?)

In any c

Annoying...

[phoenixTMW]

The demo exit sequence is a bit annoying. Normally, you can skip through the parts where they tell you about how good their game is. I couldn't, in this demo. While this has nothing to do with how good the actual game is, annoying stunts like this don't help the user's impression. I didn't check whether the intro could be skipped though. Hmph.

Galactic civilizations short review

[Anonymous Coward]

This game is really very fun, except it has a couple deep flaws that prevent it from being a classic.

I played constantly for about 3 weeks, until it got reptitive and tiring.

Re:Galactic civilizations short review

[IanBevan]

What flaws are these then ? I'm considering getting the game so I'd like to know..

Re:Galactic civilizations short review

[Allen Varney]

This game is really very fun, except it has a couple deep flaws that prevent it from being a classic. I played constantly for about 3 weeks, until it got repetitive and tiring.

A game you play constantly for three weeks sounds like a great game. In this statement the bar for "classic" seems to be set pretty high, and the severity that makes a flaw "deep" seems pretty low. What, did the control scheme give you carpal-tunnel syndrome?

Or do you mean that the flaws are so obscure that it requires deep under

Re:Galactic civilizations short review

[GryMor]

If I burn out on a game after only 3 weeks then it hasn't even made it from the ok to good camp. If I still play the game regularly after having it for 3 months then it's probably in the great camp, and, if a year leater, I still play it regularly, it's in the classic camp.

A quick survey of the other five gamers present nets similar (though not identicle) responses, but we may just be weird.

The Original GalCiv was great

[Zork the Almighty]

The original Galactic Civilizations was a great game. It was fairly simple to get started in it (and beat the computer on patsy setting), but with a large universe and hard opponents, the game was incredibly deep. Any fan of strategy games should give this game their serious consideration. Now, if only I could get it on linux.

Re:The Original GalCiv was great

[perlyking]

iirc it works on linux, probably under wine. check out galciv.com.

A great 4X game

[ckessel]

I played the original on OS2 so I'm biased, but this is one of the best 4X games I've ever played. You can win militarily, you can go tech, you can win an interesting cultural victory. It also doesn't have the "critical mass" problem many 4x games do where you know you'll win, or have no chance, once you reach a certain critical mass. The other AI's either help you or join against you, heavily based on their evil/good sympathies. I've come back from a bad position when other "saintly" AI players came to may aid during a war. I've also lost from a position where I was waaay ahead technologically, but fairly suddenly 3 AI's banded together and whacked me with some coordination. A big surprise after the largely uncoordinated moves from other 4X games. In MOO being at war with 3 different races meant fighting 3 individual foes. In GalCiv it's more like fighting an alliance of foes. They trade techs, and ships, for their mutual good. Anyway, it's not a graphics-lovefest, though it's not bad graphically, but it does have great gameplay.

I've got it...

[Jaysyn]

... and I must say it's a great game, they still have a few issues to iron out, but it's very playable (and fun if you like 4x games).

The support from StarDock however is awesome. They will be updating the game for an entire year after its release, and are giving away a free expansion pack for GalCIV in June (I think). Not to mention this is one of the most moddable games I've ever played, most of the data is kept in text files. GalCivs AI is one of the best I've ever played against. They will come fro