It's been too long. We should try to at least one game this year.
My suggestion would be classic+1.40o patch (seems to work for me!), Impossible, strongish race, no major variants (something simple like Psilons but can't move tech sliders would be fine) but I'm open to anything that comes with clear, unambiguous install instructions (death by modmod confusion is the sad but pervasive fate of so many games these days).
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
Well, it's been long enough that it looks like this is what we've got unless we want to try checking with others who might not check the forum regularly. (If anyone would be interested in learning the game on a lower difficulty level, that's an option too) ... or if it works for all of us, we can run this as a three-person SG. I'm game for any of these.
In case it helps to formalize the proposal so there's something for everyone to at least argue about (or agree is fine; either way) - here's my take:
OSG-38: Renaissance Psilons Race: Psilons Difficulty: Impossible Galaxy Size: Medium Opponents: Five Color: Up To Whoever Gets Us Started Map Generation: Random Events: On Game Version:1.4M patch with Display Bug Fixes (see below) Variant: No adjusting tech sliders: On the starting turn, we must go to the Tech screen, hit the = key on the keyboard to equalize spending across all six fields, then lock them all and leave them locked for the rest of the game! As usual, we'll also be avoiding the known exploits, though several of them have been fixed (and thus rendered irrelevant) by kyrub's patch.
Why this patch:
We could go with the lately-posted "O" patch, based on kyrub's N experimental patch-in-progress, but patch N was incomplete, with bugs still being found and yet to be ironed out, whereas 1.40M has been working well for ages. The version I linked incorporates SDragon's fix for the battle scanner bug (so that scanners again correctly list any special system in the third slot on a ship) while making two purely cosmetic changes (moving weapon name displays by one pixel on the battle scanner screen and fixing a small typo in one tech's description text). This version still keeps the annual autosaves, unlike later SDragon patches, so that it will hopefully be easier to recover from a crash or accidentally-overwritten save should one occur, or in case it's useful to go back to get screenshots. I also made one other change myself, following instructions provided by 1oom's original project coder while that project was onging, which should prevent the bug that erases parts of techs on the spy report screens (in kyrub's patch; the same bug replaces those parts with the word "Environment" in v1.3).
I'm open to trying other patches instead, but I think this is the most bug-free version I know of.
Install instructions:
Get Master of Orion (v1.3) if you don't have it already, e.g. from GoG or the backup folder you made for whatever patch you've installed already. Make a backup of the game folder so you can revert to it in the future if you want. Then download the patched files and overwrite the equivalent files in the MoO folder you're going to be using to play the game. [EDIT: Depending on your operating system, you may need to make sure that the capitalization of each of the filenames matches the ones you're overwriting so they do get overwritten, including the file extensions - e.g. "STARMAP.EXE" might not overwrite "STARMAP.exe" if your operating system allows both to coexist in the same folder.] That's it; you should be good to play from there! Please let me know if anything goes wrong or if these instructions seem insufficiently clear.
Scenario:
We do not possess the largest brains even among species we have encountered already: That distinction belongs to the migratory vacuum-adapted paracetaceans who inhabit the outer planetesimal cloud surrounding our home system of Mentar - and even theirs may well be smaller than those of other creatures as yet undiscovered around the galaxy. We do not possess the most-numerous arms, nor the most-dextrous thumbs and fingers: What distinguishes us from the other peoples of the galaxy - what gives us such strengths as our civilization does possess - is the result not of our anatomy, but of the use to which we put it. The vast majority of our beautiful paracetacean neighbors' neurological activity is bound up with supporting and maintaining their internal equilibrium and bodily functions and locating and acquiring the necessities of their existence in the face of the vast emptiness of the trans-stellar space in which they live. The deep sea icosopods of Curiosity Deep use their twenty assorted limbs primarily for feeding and locomotion and prying Cephalian Jet Clams out of their shells. We, by contrast, use our comparatively small brains to think about the world around us, to consider where we may be wrong and test our assumptions rigorously and relentlessly, and use our mere six limbs for innumerable means of exploration: Two to help us hike the wilderness regions we've preserved to learn from their biodiversity; four to help us hold pipettes and beakers and Erlenm eyer flasks; all six, with all their digits, our voices, and sometimes our brows and elbows, or tongues, are used to learn more about our immediate environment, to operate electronic devices we have designed especially to reveal the world in more detail than can any organ of our bodies, and to pilot spacecraft with which we can explore the very stars! If our researchers achieve more than other species', it is not because of anything in our genetic heritage, nor in the details of our bodies: It is in the culture that permeates our lives here on Mentar and soon - so we hope and trust, and so we work to achieve - across the galaxy.
There have been advocates over the years, among our people as no doubt among others, for focusing our research efforts on the most-appealing technologies: Those that seen to offer the greatest or swiftest return on our investment; those that seem most necessary for our future and the strength of our civilization, those that spark the least controversy or conflict with politics or religions, those that are expected to have the most-widespread application, and those that for these and other reasons are most likely to result in further public support for scientific work generally. There have been entire continent-spanning, even world-spanning cultures on our world that embraced one or more of these principles in the past. Our archaeologists have uncovered their primitive artifacts, ranging from pottery shards to fossilized pocket computer-phones, and our linguists have deciphered their languages to unspool their history and their debates, and how their cultures died, sometimes merely overwhelmed by other cultures, but sometimes growing dominant enough to set progress back by centuries - and once by a matter of milliions of years - with ninety percent population collapse, mostly from starvation and disease due to the loss of critical infrastructure, on a timescale of less than a year.
We will be the first to leave Mentar - the first to live long enough and learn deeply enough - and broadly enough - to reach the stars. Our ancestors did not set out to conquer the vastness of interstellar space, of which many as yet knew nothing, all knowledge on the subject having been lost long before with the collapse of the latest civilization obsessed with short-term profit and divided by a confluence of cultures that each set shared opinions and loyalty above accuracy. Our ancestors did not and could not choose which special field of research would carry them beyond their home more swiftly or surely than any other or lead to the greatest health and happiness among our people over the wide course of time; no specialty would have served them so. They and we were only able to achieve both by enquiring in all directions always, without restriction, without fail, never sacrificing any one for the others, always looking to learn more - and so we shall pursue our own future, favoring no field of research, embracing them all.
Sounds good to me, RefSteel. Thanks for the explanation of the patch -- there are so many alternate versions floating around that things can get very confusing.
It has been a while since I have done an SG; I will need to check my image host and see if everything still works.
(June 3rd, 2023, 07:42)haphazard1 Wrote: Sounds good to me, RefSteel. Thanks for the explanation of the patch -- there are so many alternate versions floating around that things can get very confusing.
It has been a while since I have done an SG; I will need to check my image host and see if everything still works.
I'm happy with just the three of us (although more would be welcome!), and Ref's description of the patch reasons is convincing. Let's go for it. I'll give setting up the exact patch a try tomorrow.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
(June 3rd, 2023, 13:39)shallow_thought Wrote: I'll give setting up the exact patch a try tomorrow.
Sounds great. One thing I neglected to mention, and will edit into the post above: Different operating systems handle case sensitivity differently. So when you overwrite the files in your Orion folder with the ones for the patch, you may have to make sure the capitalization matches so they do overwrite the files they're replacing. Hopefully that doesn't cause any issues!
(June 3rd, 2023, 13:39)shallow_thought Wrote: I'll give setting up the exact patch a try tomorrow.
Sounds great. One thing I neglected to mention, and will edit into the post above: Different operating systems handle case sensitivity differently. So when you overwrite the files in your Orion folder with the ones for the patch, you may have to make sure the capitalization matches so they do overwrite the files they're replacing. Hopefully that doesn't cause any issues!
I had no problems - have set screensize, cycles etc. and things seem sensible.
I'd forgotten that SDragon had removed the multiple auto-saves - I definitely like having those, so glad to be on this patch.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
Thanks for the explanation of the patch -- there are so many alternate versions floating around that things can get very confusing.