Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch and all.

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Distant Worlds 1 Series >> Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch and all.

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Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch and all. - 5/14/2015 10:39:53 AM

major.pain

Posts: 179
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Can we get one please i want to pick this up without having to wait for the Christmas sales???

Post #: 1

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/15/2015 9:47:42 PM

Erik Rutins

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From: Vermont, USA
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Well, the new update is not official yet, but will be soon. The one year anniversary of the Universe release is coming up as well, so who knows?

Regards,

- Erik

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(in reply to major.pain)

Post #: 2

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/16/2015 8:46:33 AM

major.pain

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\( ﾟ◡ﾟ)/

(in reply to Erik Rutins)

Post #: 3

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/16/2015 6:13:56 PM

Siddham

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nod nod, wink wink :)

(in reply to major.pain)

Post #: 4

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/17/2015 9:41:03 PM

SirHoraceHarkness

Posts: 400
Joined: 5/17/2015
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Picked up my copy of universe on the steam sale they had for launch last year. Only recently started playing though as I have a bad case of steam wallet and it's packed to the gills with 80% off games I will probably need a second life or possibly a third to have enough time play them all.

However this game will certainly take a bite out of your time if you love grand strategy and my first game outside the tutorial was 200+ hours. I foresee many additional campaigns lasting as many hours in my future so my steam wallet is getting mighty envious.

(in reply to Siddham)

Post #: 5

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/18/2015 10:47:29 PM

solops

Posts: 814
Joined: 1/31/2002
From: Central Texas
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: M J R

Can we get one please i want to pick this up without having to wait for the Christmas sales???

Can't figure out why they need a sale. This is the well developed, premier 4x space game on the market with a big fan base and lots of mods. There is no way I'd put it on sale. I guess 10% maybe, if I was a bit inebriated and feeling happy. I've paid full price for every iteration of DW and consider every penny well spent. I wish even a quarter of the other games I have were as good an investment of my entertainment dollars.

< Message edited by solops -- 5/18/2015 11:49:18 PM >

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(in reply to major.pain)

Post #: 6

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/19/2015 5:34:37 PM

HerpInYourDerp

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You're in the minority. Lots of people on Steam and elsewhere simply turn away the moment they see the price tag. Whether you agree with that or not is irrelevant, because they're lost sales at the end of the day.

(in reply to solops)

Post #: 7

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/19/2015 6:51:14 PM

Cauldyth

Posts: 752
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Sounds like a sale is imminent, so soon more people will get to enjoy the best space 4X ever made.

(in reply to HerpInYourDerp)

Post #: 8

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/20/2015 8:47:40 AM

major.pain

Posts: 179
Joined: 3/27/2012
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I have keep checking everyday now so i dont miss it if it does happen lol.
My guess though it would be at least a week long sale if it happens, maybe it would start on a Monday as a Deal Of The Week special.
Only guessing so dont ddos me if i am wrong >.<

(in reply to Cauldyth)

Post #: 9

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/20/2015 9:21:55 PM

SilentHunter

Posts: 216
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From: United States
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ooooo if they wait till Monday they will miss a lot of memorial day sales that will happen starting Thursday night. Many people off on Friday and the 3 day weekend looking for something to play.

(in reply to major.pain)

Post #: 10

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/22/2015 5:58:40 AM

aaatoysandmore

Posts: 2848
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quote:

ORIGINAL: HerpInYourDerp

You're in the minority. Lots of people on Steam and elsewhere simply turn away the moment they see the price tag. Whether you agree with that or not is irrelevant, because they're lost sales at the end of the day.

That's kinda like piracy. You can't really prove they are lost sales because you don't know the minds of others simply your own mind and your own mind is telling you others will do the same as you but, you simply can't prove it.

(in reply to HerpInYourDerp)

Post #: 11

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/22/2015 10:48:48 AM

major.pain

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My spidey senses are tingling.....

(in reply to aaatoysandmore)

Post #: 12

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/22/2015 6:12:42 PM

HerpInYourDerp

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And yet it's still a incredibly niche title within the 4x genre, with most of the complaints about it that aren't game/bug-related some variation of 'why is it so expensive?'.

But don't let me get in the way of your blinkered view of the world.

(in reply to aaatoysandmore)

Post #: 13

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/22/2015 8:16:15 PM

SirHoraceHarkness

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quote:

ORIGINAL: HerpInYourDerp

And yet it's still a incredibly niche title within the 4x genre, with most of the complaints about it that aren't game/bug-related some variation of 'why is it so expensive?'.

If the game had modern 3d graphics no one would really be complaining but they see old style pixel graphics and immediately associate it with a game made back in the heyday of the type like master of orion and others.

However its what's under the hood that matters here and you certainly get what you pay for in the latest universe bundle.

Also the dev and publisher have access to the sales numbers and since this game is as you say a niche game with a loyal following they might know that they can charge a higher price to maximise profits.

Saying that the game could use a general ui, ai and gfx update as you can do a ton with pixel graphics and still not really stress out the overall game performance.

This game still has a ton of potential and maybe the dev and publisher can take a card from arcens deck. What used to be a one man operation with its popular but niche ai wars which started out like dw with basic gameplay and quite frankly primitive graphics and sound but with constant updates and clever low cost but steady expansions he morphed it into the current extremely fun 4x tower defense supreme commander mash up game with just as much replayability as this game. Building off that he made some key partnerships with a sound guy another coder like himself and a starving art studio along with a very dedicated volunteer group doing bug testing to upgrade his existing games and branch off into completely new territory with other fun games like federation or tidalis. Definitely an indie success story there and one that should be followed.

(in reply to HerpInYourDerp)

Post #: 14

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/22/2015 8:33:07 PM

Siddham

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In fact Distant Worlds Universe is already similar in development pattern to the game you mention
Distant Worlds has been developed through a series of years and expansions and constant updates to be the game it is today
and the development continues...there was a new update delivered a few days ago

(in reply to SirHoraceHarkness)

Post #: 15

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/22/2015 11:13:34 PM

HerpInYourDerp

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Tbh, I'm on the completely opposing side of the whole graphics argument; I don't see anything wrong with it's current 'dated' (or however you want to put it) presentation as the game is pretty much 100% CPU - I'd much prefer some of the serious lategame slowdown/performance problems be sorted before any UI update or shiny new graphics be rolled out, although this has nothing to do with the issue I have here.

No, what I'm getting at is that so many people here seems to have this idea that listed price for the game is somehow completely irrelevant when talking about the pros/cons of the game, yet it is a major reason why a lot of prospective players end up shying away from taking the plunge and there are even the numerous posts & topics not including this very one on this very board asking about sales/price/etc. that said people have conveniently forgotten about. Even I was one of those a bit sceptical, having it on my Steam wishlist for quite a while. In fact, if it were not for a bit of good fortune in getting a bunch of nice drops I flogged on the market a few months back that ended up paying for most of the cost, I may well still be on the fence about whether or not to take the plunge and buy it.

(in reply to Siddham)

Post #: 16

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/23/2015 12:33:26 AM

SirHoraceHarkness

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quote:

ORIGINAL: HerpInYourDerp

Tbh, I'm on the completely opposing side of the whole graphics argument; I don't see anything wrong with it's current 'dated' (or however you want to put it) presentation as the game is pretty much 100% CPU - I'd much prefer some of the serious lategame slowdown/performance problems be sorted before any UI update or shiny new graphics be rolled out, although this has nothing to do with the issue I have here.

No, what I'm getting at is that so many people here seems to have this idea that listed price for the game is somehow completely irrelevant when talking about the pros/cons of the game, yet it is a major reason why a lot of prospective players end up shying away from taking the plunge and there are even the numerous posts & topics not including this very one on this very board asking about sales/price/etc. that said people have conveniently forgotten about. Even I was one of those a bit sceptical, having it on my Steam wishlist for quite a while. In fact, if it were not for a bit of good fortune in getting a bunch of nice drops I flogged on the market a few months back that ended up paying for most of the cost, I may well still be on the fence about whether or not to take the plunge and buy it.

Well to be fair those of us who enjoy the game so much we feel the need to discuss it on an online forum are going to overlook the warts and flat feet of our love.

But the discussion is about why do people think its overpriced and the reason is it looks like a game from the past even though its not.

However there is no reason the devs can't poke the publishers for a bit of a budget for another expansion that bundles in needed fixes to everyones various gripes and bring in a larger installed base to boot.

This is why I pointed out arcens model as the devs are highly active with the community who responds with lots of free qa work and ideas for new features via his well thought out bug report and feature submission process.

As to the shiny new graphics unlike 3d which takes a large team of artists all doing seperate work with 2d pixel art its as simple as finding a couple of talented starving artists and mailing some legal forms around then poof you have a budget art studio cranking out new hires art assets on the cheap they can send to you from the other side of the world using the internet.

Steam tried this but failed due to blatant money grabbing by taking the lion's share of the money and leaving the modders with diddly so hopefully matrix isn't as greedy and knows how to make a fair profit.

(in reply to HerpInYourDerp)

Post #: 17

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/23/2015 1:13:00 AM

aaatoysandmore

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You obviously haven't seen Reach for the Stars graphics.

(in reply to SirHoraceHarkness)

Post #: 18

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/23/2015 7:23:17 AM

major.pain

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Cutting edge graphics for me are not the most important thing when making a choice of to "buy a game or not", one of my favorite games of all time is Masters Of Magic and thats 20 years old which still has not been matched to this day even with all the latest graphics and programming experience ect.

Initially i will admit on first glance graphics/looks are what will grab your attention and make you take a closer look at a game, but if the "gameplay" and a certain amount of depth are lacking it wont hold my attention for long(funny enough pretty much like a woman lol).

I would rather the graphics be clear and functional and the interface be clean and easy to read and provide me with all the information i need in a logical way than the engine displaying all the latest rendering techniques and endless filters ect. Graphics are nice to have for sure but should always take a back seat in my view.

On the other hand if you create a game with the latest graphical technology it will inevitably cost you more in time and money than if you use a ten year old engine ect so you would expect to charge a premium for a product using the latest and greatest technology right????

(in reply to aaatoysandmore)

Post #: 19

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/23/2015 10:29:01 AM

Siddham

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Joined: 3/18/2012
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There is another space 4X recently released that has more shiny graphics...
but I prefer the look of DW
There are no doubt some graphical improvements which could be made inexpensively
for instance the ship and object models are relatively low res
so they could be improved easily
the present look of the game (which I like very much) could be sharpened-up
I dont think that would cost all that much in development time or expense

(in reply to major.pain)

Post #: 20

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/23/2015 8:10:31 PM

HerpInYourDerp

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Frankly, by far the most important updates this game really needs before anything else are 64-bit & multithreading support. A lot of people don't realise that the game barely touches the graphics card as it is right now and that's almost completely due to the very basic graphics it currently uses; the low-fi graphics may grate a few and seems to be constantly brought up in the wishlist topic, but it's sufficient for the job right now and is more a fluff upgrade than anything else.

What is actually serious and where the game gets really bad is the severe slowdown and lag/poor responsiveness when you have a lot of ships & colonies active in a game, especially if you want to zoom in to system-range or closer and this is precisely down to the game utilising only 1 thread. Even if just simple things like drawing the menus when you bring up charas/diplomacy/colonies etc. were offloaded to a second thread, it would still noticeably improve gameplay performance.
I'm well aware that it would require a major overhaul of code, but that along with 64-bit support to access more RAM are the two things which would universally improve the game more than anything else.

(in reply to Siddham)

Post #: 21

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/23/2015 8:52:31 PM

Siddham

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The already game does support 64-bit...

(in reply to HerpInYourDerp)

Post #: 22

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/23/2015 10:21:03 PM

HerpInYourDerp

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The exe runs in 32bit mode.

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Post #: 23

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/23/2015 11:13:43 PM

Siddham

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This from Elliot recently:

DW runs better on 64-bit Windows, because there's more memory available to it.

And you can load your old savegames fine on your new machine.

Thanks
Elliot

Also, from the Steam Store page:

Recommended:
OS: Windows Vista, Windows 7 or 8 (64-bit)

< Message edited by Siddham -- 5/24/2015 12:17:17 AM >

(in reply to HerpInYourDerp)

Post #: 24

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/23/2015 11:58:46 PM

HerpInYourDerp

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Which doesn't say DistantWorlds.exe can access more than the 4GB limit for 32bit process.

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Post #: 25

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/24/2015 12:04:36 AM

Siddham

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Elliot says it very clearly....read it again..

"DW runs better on 64-bit Windows, because there's more memory available to it"

(in reply to HerpInYourDerp)

Post #: 26

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/24/2015 1:50:55 AM

Cauldyth

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32-bit applications can be compiled to use up to 4 GB when running on 64-bit Windows. On 32-bit they're limited to 2 GB. That's the source of Elliot's comment.

< Message edited by Cauldyth -- 5/24/2015 2:52:13 AM >

(in reply to Siddham)

Post #: 27

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/24/2015 7:14:01 AM

SirHoraceHarkness

Posts: 400
Joined: 5/17/2015
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Siddham

There is another space 4X recently released that has more shiny graphics...
but I prefer the look of DW
There are no doubt some graphical improvements which could be made inexpensively
for instance the ship and object models are relatively low res
so they could be improved easily
the present look of the game (which I like very much) could be sharpened-up
I dont think that would cost all that much in development time or expense

My point exactly. When I say graphics upgrade I mean refreshing the pixel art to be more in line with what's expected nowadays when you play a game using pixel art.

Gratuitous space battles does this pretty well and tosses in particles and lighting to boot and the results look very very good for a 2d game.

youtube /watch?v=fEh3N__hJ5E

youtube /watch?v=44vWgyoMF64

quote:

ORIGINAL: HerpInYourDerp

Frankly, by far the most important updates this game really needs before anything else are 64-bit & multithreading support. A lot of people don't realise that the game barely touches the graphics card as it is right now and that's almost completely due to the very basic graphics it currently uses; the low-fi graphics may grate a few and seems to be constantly brought up in the wishlist topic, but it's sufficient for the job right now and is more a fluff upgrade than anything else.

What is actually serious and where the game gets really bad is the severe slowdown and lag/poor responsiveness when you have a lot of ships & colonies active in a game, especially if you want to zoom in to system-range or closer and this is precisely down to the game utilising only 1 thread. Even if just simple things like drawing the menus when you bring up charas/diplomacy/colonies etc. were offloaded to a second thread, it would still noticeably improve gameplay performance.
I'm well aware that it would require a major overhaul of code, but that along with 64-bit support to access more RAM are the two things which would universally improve the game more than anything else.

Have you tried unchecking the most common messages for the scroll window at the top? Would get massive lag when the ai decided to do a massive refit of bases and ships but most of it went away after unchecking that specific message. Still get slowdown late game but nothing game inhibiting.

(in reply to HerpInYourDerp)

Post #: 28

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/24/2015 10:31:35 AM

Siddham

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On my 32-bit system the addressable ram limit is just slightly above3GBs

I would like to hear a developers comment on this issue

< Message edited by Siddham -- 5/24/2015 11:31:54 AM >

(in reply to SirHoraceHarkness)

Post #: 29

RE: Now is a great time for a sale with the new patch a... - 5/24/2015 10:51:49 AM

Cauldyth

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The addressable RAM limit is, but any individual process can only use 2 GB.

(in reply to Siddham)

Post #: 30