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adsii1970

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Posts posted by adsii1970

    Cities: Skylines

    in The Lounge

    Posted

    What do you mean close out of dropbox? The website or the actual folder on the computer?

    if the latter, what do you mean? Not sure I know how to exit out of it.

    If you are like me, I use DropBox and Microsoft OneDrive all the time. DropBox runs in background, but in the upper memory addresses that are not commonly used by programs... With that said, once i exited out of DropBox (and Outlook) running in the background, I was able to play Cities: Skylines without any problems. You can do this one of two ways: 1) Do a right click on the DropBox icon on your systems tray and select "Exit"... or

    2) Open up your Task Manager (control-alt-delete will bring this option up) and select "Task Manager" and look through the Apps, the Background Processes. Find DropBox.exe and do a right click, then select "End Task."

    Hope that helps.

    Steam Summer Sale!

    in The Lounge

    Posted

    Yoink!

    Looking at Civ5, haven't played it yet. Also, can anyone recommend a modern Stronghold-esque castle builder game?

    Civ 5 is great, but is not as good as Civ 4. You don't have as much control over espionage. The trade-off is the religions, and ability to influence game development through the spread of culture. Overall, I would still recommend it. In fact, I would venture to give it :D :D :D

    Steam Summer Sale!

    in The Lounge

    Posted

    Cities: Skylines is 25% off right now. I bought it cause I was scared the sale would go away before I got the chance.

    Now watch, it'll be 75% off tomorrow :sticktongue:

    I bought the game when it was still in development. It is a great game for the $15 I paid for it through Steam.

    Should the USA go metric?

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted · Edited by adsii1970
    Forgot to add something...

    Any system that uses "stick" as a unit of measure for butter is insane.

    As someone that bakes and cooks for recreation (there is a difference between cooking and baking :wink:), if you tell me a stick of butter, I KNOW that it's roughly 1/2 of a cup or 8 tablespoons. It is just something you learn and it sticks with you. While a lot of newer cookbooks actually do use the 1/2 cup designation, it will always be a stick of butter for those who have learned to cook from the older generation. It's not insane by a long shot. Neither are recipes that call for a dash, nip, or pinch as those are also cooking measurements. :D

    I grew up literally all over the world. My father was career military and so I went to school in Hawaii (which had a Japanese flavor), American schools in Texas and North Carolina, and in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany before the nation reunited with East Germany). Within the Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DoDDS), I was taught the Metric system along with the Imperial English system. While I never really mastered the weights too easily, I know that a half-inch is basically 1 cm. A meter is roughly 36 inches... Once you master the basics, you can use either one fairly interchangeably...

    Has everyone forgotten about the fabled extra gas planets?

    in KSP1 Suggestions & Development Discussion

    Posted

    And yet no one has really proposed any "meaningful things to do" aside from more sightseeing, which I don't really find any more "meaningful" than adding more planets because they're essentially the same thing.

    I've thought about it. Why not put a derelict vessel on an asteroid/comet - one with an orbit that is eccentric, and maybe only enters into the Kerbol system every fifty years of Kerbin time? Discover the derelict ship while sending a probe to map the comet as one contract, then maybe visit/recover the derelict later in the game as the tech tree fills out?

    PSA: Kerbals Not Kerbins

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted · Edited by adsii1970

    True, though Sun System just sounds silly so someone morphed Sol into Kerbol and everyone sort of ran with it.

    I have an old astronomy textbook that actually refers to Earth as Sol III, and the Moon as Sol IIIa; I bet this is why in the Star Trek world, we hear of places like Seti Alpha V...

    What ticks you off about scifi spaceship designs?

    in The Lounge

    Posted

    That particular line was never about reducing mass for dV requirements; the implication was "the Empire does what it damn well pleases, and doesn't give a rat's behind for the messes it leaves in everybody's backyards." Essentially another character-development line establishing how the Empire is a bunch of bastards.

    Since it is a movie, we have no idea what the real story line actually was and while your perception may be valid, I do feel that there was something else at work. To simply assume that Star Destroyers jumped garbage simply because they could do it and to show their ultimate badness can be considered a leap of faith. One could argue that the reason they did this was to keep the craft more stable - after all, who would want a hold full of garbage that could not be secured shifting around while in hyperspace? It would have to require computer monitoring and nearly constant adjustment to keep the ship stable.

    Besides, the Millennium Falcon could not have escaped had the Star Destroyer not dumped its garbage load. :sticktongue:

    What ticks you off about scifi spaceship designs?

    in The Lounge

    Posted

    This has been a pretty fun thread to read... we are all discussing the realistic portrayal of spaceflight and space warfare as portrayed in movies... kinda makes me feel like one of the Thermians out of Galaxy Quest learning that the "historical documents from earth" they received from space were actually a television show... :sticktongue:

    That makes me think of waste disposal in space...

    I wonder why there haven't been any fiction feature a field of...well, you know what it is...on an interplanetary orbit due to long term interplanetary travel.

    In Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back, we learn that Imperial Star Destroyers dump all waste before going into hyperspace. I imagine this would reduce the overall mass of the vessel but do not see how it would be significant enough to curb the energy needs of such a large vessel accelerating to FTL travel. There were a few episodes of Enterprise and Voyager where waste recycling were discussed; water waste purified and reprocessed so that it can be reused. Solid waste was also broken down into common substances and recycled as well.

    Supposedly, Star Trek warp drive doesn't work through thrust. However, the impulse engines are supposed to work through thrust. Which is a problem, because they they weren't thrusting through the center of mass, either.

    The warp engines, based on Star Trek canon, works by creating an envelope around the ship, then folding space around that envelope. It is the same theory behind space travel in the original movie, Dune, but just from a different perspective. In the Star Wars canon and Babylon 5 canon, they talk about hyperspace - a plane where space itself is condensed and folded because of gravity. Not sure how it works yet, but let's just say that "they've gone plaid..."

    About the most realistic portrayal of FLT, in my opinion, is both the original and SyFy remake of Battlestar Galactica. In both episodes, Galactica could achieve FTL travel but only in short bursts as it was rough on the superstructure and it was costly in fuel, indicating the Galactica used raw thrust to achieve the speed rather than folding space.

    Star Trek Impulse Engine "exhausts" are behind the centerline of the saucer. Fractionally above the thrust line, the warp nacelles. Significantly below the line, the secondary/engineering hull. To balance this, the warp nacelle coils would have to massively outmass the secondary/engineering hull. Unfortunately, the first official-looking ST: Tech Manual, published 1975, put some numbers on things, saying the nacelles weighed 18,000 metric tons each, and the entire ship: 190,000 MT. (The same total weight figure is also in The Making of Star Trek, published 1968.) [ 18x2 = 36, 190/36 = ratio of 1:5.3 ]

    I now dislike all you people*, for drawing attention to things I happily ignored for years, making me read books, and think ;)

    * But not that much. "You'll thank us, later!"

    I'm glad I am not the only one that collects Star Trek "manuals", memorabilia, as well as the novels. I still choose to ignore the physics and just enjoy the good storyline. Now want to talk about a ship that violates physics - we can harp on almost every ship in the Star Wars universe... Don't get me wrong, I do love science fiction and science fantasy, the category where Star Wars belongs.

    As it stands right now, I have all the components needed to make (yes, I do sew) a uniform from ST:TWoK, which in my opinion were the best uniforms of Star Trek; the only one that came close was the uniforms used on Voyager and the Next Generation movies.

    What ticks you off about scifi spaceship designs?

    in The Lounge

    Posted

    Supposedly, Star Trek warp drive doesn't work through thrust. However, the impulse engines are supposed to work through thrust. Which is a problem, because they they weren't thrusting through the center of mass, either.

    This is a problem with nearly all the ships in the Star Trek universe, with the exception of the Defiant, Reliant, Klingon Bird of Prey, the Klingon Battlecruiser D7 (and variants), the Romulan Bird of Prey, and a handful of other craft. Each of the classifications of ships that I name are low profile for the most part and have thrust somewhere near the center of mass.

    Show off your awesome KSP pictures!

    in KSP Fan Works

    Posted · Edited by adsii1970

    Got a little bored this morning grading papers from my summer class. Decided to spend a few minutes playing KSP and came up with this craft. It is still a work in progress as it has a few issues that I need to work out. Otherwise, it has a few very neat characteristics that will make exploring Kerbin a bit easier such as short takeoff and landing needs (I actually took off at a speed of 35.5 m/s and on a quarter of the KSP space center runway. I landed at a speed of 21.5 m/s and had it completely stopped within a few seconds of touchdown).

    2015-06-04_00004_zpsqhwqgebp.jpg

    Rest In Peace Maxis

    in The Lounge

    Posted

    While there were issues with SimCity 4, I really enjoyed the game. I think the series peaked there and I still play around with the Sims 3. (I need to find my copy of SC4 again... ) I enjoyed SimAnt... SimEarth, and I wish I had tried SimLife.... but others have said this, nothing that innovative has come out of Maxis in a long time. I kinda miss those games ..

    I never tried SimAnt, but did do SimGolf for a while. The Sims, the one released at the same time as SimCity 4 was a really neat concept that Maxis/EA could have developed more. It was kind of neat to be able to get a SimCitizen's opinion of the city. SimLife was pretty awesome when it came out and it gave the player the ability to tweak a planet's evolutionary model; I remember one time I actually evolved - FROGS! Yes, folks, a planet where FROGS were the sentient species :confused:... I read somewhere that SimLife was the basis for SPORE; so I did buy the game. It worked ok until you got into the space age. From there, the game got a little lame. I was really looking forward to the much hyped and advertised SimMars, but the game was pulled during development. ;.;

    Going to second this sentiment. Back in the day I used to love all the different ideas they had, back when they focused on proper simulation games (though I never did get the chance to try 'em all). Unfortunately, they got into a rut with rehashes of SimCity and The Sims -- both of which were admittedly quite fresh when I first found out about them, but I didn't feel the latest iterations of either added enough to be worth distinct sequels.

    I agree wholeheartedly. SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4 were great games but besides some visual updates, were virtually the same game. The Sims (1, 2, and 3) were nearly the same and probably 2 and 3 could have been add-on packages to the first game since neither the graphics, basic game play, or features changed in any remarkable way. But by 2000, Maxis was also being challenged by other simulation games - Tropico (and it has become a little stale, too), Roller Coaster Tycoon (which has also become a little stale in its three revisions), and Zoo Tycoon (Microsoft's attempt to do something other than its Flight Simulator and Train Simulator). I hope that when the decision is made to do a KSP 2, it is more than updated graphics and a few new trinkets...

    Rest In Peace Maxis

    in The Lounge

    Posted

    One incident is no reason to shutdown the whole studio. I think it is about time. *grabs pitchfork*

    But it wasn't just one "incident" but several. I am a huge SimCity fan since the original release (SimCity with the clunky box graphics). SimCity 3000 had a few bugs and required a couple of patches just to make the game playable. SimCity 4 had four Maxis patches just to make the original release compatible with their own update (and the fan base at numerous sites began to mod the game even more to make it even better). Then there was SimSocieties which Maxis originally claimed was to be the elusive SimCity 5 just to ignore their own claim when SimSocieties bombed (it sucked really bad). Then there was the recent release of SimCity 5, which I didn't even bother to purchase. SimCity 4 had so much potential...

    When Cities: Skylines came out, it really appealed to die-hard SimCity players. It seems that nearly every complaint we had about the Maxis SimCity franchise was answered by another game studio. Unfortunately, EA Games has, for the past fifteen years, spent more in developing first person shooter and sports related games rather than invest in the Maxis brand and simulator gaming. I know that many gamers enjoy first person shooters and sports, I prefer the challenges of simulation games (except Goat Simulator... i mean, really...:huh: ) If Squad ever wanted a way to destroy KSP, then just study Maxis...

    Is KSP too expensive?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    I bought the game for 20 dollars in a steam sale. I saw it today for 39.99. I know this isn't my place to judge, but I think that's a bit much. Don't get me wrong, I love the game and have logged hundreds of hours on it, but I see it as a bit of a barrier to entry. I've recommended KSP several people about it and every one of them said it was too expensive. I would love to hear your opinions on this.

    SmallFatFetus

    EDIT: think of whether it's a turn off to new players. Is $40 too steep for a game they might not like?

    Well, when I purchased KSP, it was also in development and I think I paid $5.99 for version .22 through STEAM. Using the equation someone else presented (amount spend/hours played = value), that means that each hour I've played is valued at $0.006, basically FREE! (As of today I have 941 hours of play time).

    Now, about the price... I have paid $39.99 for many games going as far back as 1996. Some of them were "da bom!" while others, well, "bombed." KSP is priced about right; I would easily and without reservation have spent that much to purchase this game based on the demo alone (the original demo I played was .17, I think). The expansiveness of the Kerbal universe is astounding when you stop and think of it. There is no other game that allows such design flexibility to where you can do with it based on what you think is fun and challenging.

    Ask the Mods questions about the Forums!

    in Kerbal Network

    Posted

    Can't speak for the other mods, but I get at least a half dozen a week, sometimes substantially more.

    AFAIK all our users are human. Except Rainbowtrout, he's a mudkip. :P

    Well, now that is all very subjective. I have a few college students that have called me "inhuman" because of me expecting academic performance at a certain standard. I actually had a student tell me last semester that I make Spock look like an amateur Vulcan...

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