So Distant Worlds 2 ae...

[Star Watchman, of Yeshua]

Long time DW:Universe player. . .

IMO, You cannot make a 4x game 3D and expect it to be on par with its 2D predecessors, Even on 2-dimensional combat planes. 
If they redid DW:U and implemented and revised other things, but left a similar graphic yet improve UI design, I'd spend $100 dollars.


DWU, I could build monstrous ships and draw my own PNG images for ships and vessels.
Cons: Crappy UI, Small Tech Tree, 1000 systems really aren't enough at times.

[Froggiest1982 (OP)]

Long time DW:Universe player. . .

IMO, You cannot make a 4x game 3D and expect it to be on par with its 2D predecessors, Even on 2-dimensional combat planes. 
If they redid DW:U and implemented and revised other things, but left a similar graphic yet improve UI design, I'd spend $100 dollars.


DWU, I could build monstrous ships and draw my own PNG images for ships and vessels.
Cons: Crappy UI, Small Tech Tree, 1000 systems really aren't enough at times.

Honestly the multi tread and 64 bit "upgrade" among other things have already covered the price of the ticket, at least for me.

I play only Aurora, WINP:AE and due to my work football manager, so I guess I dont really care if 2d or 3d, but I do understand your point.

I stopped playing Distant Worlds because of the issues cause by mono tread and 32 bit limitations.

However, I am a Matrix fan boy and my view must be put on that context.

[Star Watchman, of Yeshua]

Long time DW:Universe player.  .  . 

IMO, You cannot make a 4x game 3D and expect it to be on par with its 2D predecessors, Even on 2-dimensional combat planes.   
If they redid DW:U and implemented and revised other things, but left a similar graphic yet improve UI design, I'd spend $100 dollars. 


DWU, I could build monstrous ships and draw my own PNG images for ships and vessels. 
Cons: Crappy UI, Small Tech Tree, 1000 systems really aren't enough at times.

Honestly the multi tread and 64 bit "upgrade" among other things have already covered the price of the ticket, at least for me.

I play only Aurora, WINP:AE and due to my work football manager, so I guess I dont really care if 2d or 3d, but I do understand your point.

I stopped playing Distant Worlds because of the issues cause by mono tread and 32 bit limitations.

However, I am a Matrix fan boy and my view must be put on that context.

Ideally, and IMO the best thing you can do to crank out performance in DW is to just get a fast computer with hyperthreading.  It makes all the difference.  As well as turning off some UI elements like civillian ships(when they become annoying to look at anyways)

I wouldn't argue so much the memory limitations(being on 32-bit) but it's just the bloody CPU optimizations (Which verily I say unto thee, is nothing but the bane of why it sucks to play aurora at times due to poor CPU performance, especially with C# avail. )

I play on an HP DL380 G7 2U server, and I'm getting *OK* performance in C# at around year ~250 (I haven't left the planet yet, which is probably why, but I do feel NPR lag kicking in)

TL;DR get poopc

Real question is, are we going to get a universe to tinker with, or a 4X that feels limiting like SW: EAW? (Not a 4x, but the RTS element is very much similarly prevalent.

[Steve Walmsley]

I play only Aurora, WINP:AE and due to my work football manager, so I guess I dont really care if 2d or 3d, but I do understand your point.

I keep looking at WITP:AE and deciding whether to dive in.

Do you have any recommendations about to best way to learn? I did play Uncommon Valour many years ago and it was a very enjoyable game, but WITP looks a little larger

[King-Salomon]

I play only Aurora, WINP:AE and due to my work football manager, so I guess I dont really care if 2d or 3d, but I do understand your point.

I keep looking at WITP:AE and deciding whether to dive in.

Do you have any recommendations about to best way to learn? I did play Uncommon Valour many years ago and it was a very enjoyable game, but WITP looks a little larger

it is at sale for 13,80€ at the moment.. instead of 70€... a real steal...

but... if you really think about playing WITP:AE ... you will not come back to aurora for a long.. long.. very long... time 

[Black]

I play only Aurora, WINP:AE and due to my work football manager, so I guess I dont really care if 2d or 3d, but I do understand your point.

I keep looking at WITP:AE and deciding whether to dive in.

Do you have any recommendations about to best way to learn? I did play Uncommon Valour many years ago and it was a very enjoyable game, but WITP looks a little larger

Well If you start with WITP: AE, then we can say good bye to Aurora updates for some time. 

There are several smaller scenarios that are good for beginning. But it mostly depends if you play Allies of Japanese.

As Japan you need to plan your production (Factory expansions, how many engines you need for your planes and what type of engines you need. Do you want to build smaller submarines or rush some more carriers instead.) and resource flow (you need to get oil and resources from DEI and China to home islands). So lot of excel sheets and much longer planing before you can actually start to play. And something like the condition of the oilfields you capture can affect the game significantly as they can be damaged during capture and repairing them is resource sink.

But there are lot of experienced players that share their turn one preparations for Japan on official forums.

Allies are easier as there is no production to deal with you just need to get supplies and fuel to frontline bases and try to limit Japanese expansion until later years.

[Zincat]

.... A full campaign of Witp:AE can easily take 1000+ hours. Easily. Like, really easily.

Considering each day is one turn, from 8 december 1941 to whenever you win. Win condition is calculated at the end of each year (or some other conditions if  you reach august 1945 iirc. But I'm not sure I remember correctly that one)
So, over a thousand turns. And a lot of turns will be well above one hour, if you play well (check all important bases, are not lazy with air operations /ships operations, use troop well and let's not go into air training)

1000+ hours easily for a full campaign XD
... does it sound like I'm speaking from experience? Unfortunately, yes XD

[vorpal+5]

That's probably the main reason why I did not get into. Our time (and leisure time in particular) is limited. So one game replaces another.

[Froggiest1982 (OP)]

Even if I discourage WITP: AE to Steve as we may don't see or hear from him for quite some time, I still strongly recommend it to all wargamers.

It's a must-have.

The learning curve it's insanely high. Let's put it this way: Aurora is way easier to learn.

[n01487477]

Long time Matrix fan and player of DW and WITP-AE.  Been out of the loop there for a while now but helped program WitpTracker and made some video tutorials and guides during my years there.  The avatar n01487477 is the same on the Matrix site if you want some help. . . 

I guess we all gravitate to the same complexity of gaming experiences . . .  have a good one guys.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I'm sort of looking forward to this. I loved distant worlds... but it was quite buggy towards the end of games, and it does not work with modern windows 10 either.

How do I put it... I don't want to get burned so I won't hope TOO much. And hope I'm wrong and it's great 

I play distant world universe through steam on windows 10 consistently and stably. This is despite me having a modpack installed.

Lucky you. I have the GOG version and it won't work. Apparently it's somethig related to the 20/04 win10 update.

Everything I tried didn't work. I tried installing it again, I tried following a huge amount of suggestions, messing with inis, reinstalling .net frameworks, reinstalling directx, launching the exe with arguments.... It just won't work. And if you'll read the forums or the gog page, I'm not the only one.

It's really a bummer honestly.

'
Have you followed these EXACT steps... anywone I have helped getting the game going it has worked for in Windows 10... even the GOG version.

I just installed the game (from Steam) and also installed the Bacon mod with the RetreatUE on Windows 10 64bit on a Laptop with an Intel/Nvidia double graphics card, probably the most complicated setup to install any game on.

My problem was three things that needed to be done...

Step 1

in your "...\Steam\steamapps\common\Distant Worlds Universe" folder there is a text file called "startup.ini". In this file change...

playmovie 1 to playmovie 0

Note: The reason why the movie does not start are most likely becasue you have a hybrid Intel/(Nvidia or ATI) as you do on many laptops, but even some dasktop computers have those. The media player will try to start the movie with the Intel CPU and the game runs with the proper GPU. This will not work. You can force the game to run with the Intel GPU but I would not recomend doing that, just disable the movie...
You sadly can't force Windows 10 to run the Media Player with the proper GPU such as Nvidia or ATI


Step 2

Install DirectX9... the files does not come with the Steam installation so use this one...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-nz/download/details.aspx?id=8109


Step 3

I had to start the game with Administrator mode for the Bacon mod to load, but I don't think I needed to do that with the standard game. Most likely because the Bacon mod throw a modal popup when the exe is run.

Note: This step should only be necessary for the Bacon mod...

[Droll]

in your "...\Steam\steamapps\common\Distant Worlds Universe" folder there is a text file called "startup.ini". In this file change...

playmovie 1 to playmovie 0

Its been a while since I actually booted up distant worlds and completely forgot that this was one of the problems I faced but now that I see it I remember having to do that clearly.

[Zincat]

snipped for readability

Pardon my language. I can't believe this s**t.

I want to thank you all. Although your posts did not provide me with the solution, it encouraged me to tinker with it once more, to try once more from the beginning. Without this thread I would not have the drive to try again, so thank you. And I managed to solve it, so now I can play once again

I had followed the exact steps that Jorgen posted more than once, and it didn't work at all. Today, I reinstalled the game from the start and followed those very steps again, and the game would still not start....

Then inspiration struck, and I went to check in the control panel... and saw that Windows Media player is listed as an optional component, and it was not installed. Don't ask me why, as I'm pretty sure I never uninstalled it. Must have happened somehow during a system update. Anyway, I installed it... and BAM now it works. And in fact I can also change the playmovie line in the ini, and movies WILL play...

I would really like to ask WHY. I told the game not to play any movies anyway. Why would installing windows media player solve it?
Because it makes NO sense whatsoever. I mean, is it still checking somehow if the playback program is installed...?
What. The. Hell.

I'll just settle with being happy that I can play again...

[Droll]

snipped for readability

Pardon my language. I can't believe this s**t.

I want to thank you all. Although your posts did not provide me with the solution, it encouraged me to tinker with it once more, to try once more from the beginning. Without this thread I would not have the drive to try again, so thank you. And I managed to solve it, so now I can play once again

I had followed the exact steps that Jorgen posted more than once, and it didn't work at all. Today, I reinstalled the game from the start and followed those very steps again, and the game would still not start....

Then inspiration struck, and I went to check in the control panel... and saw that Windows Media player is listed as an optional component, and it was not installed. Don't ask me why, as I'm pretty sure I never uninstalled it. Must have happened somehow during a system update. Anyway, I installed it... and BAM now it works. And in fact I can also change the playmovie line in the ini, and movies WILL play...

I would really like to ask WHY. I told the game not to play any movies anyway. Why would installing windows media player solve it?
Because it makes NO sense whatsoever. I mean, is it still checking somehow if the playback program is installed...?
What. The. Hell.

I'll just settle with being happy that I can play again...

It's probably some dependency thing. The game doesn't necessarily expect you to turn off movies so it expects to find windows media player but when it doesn't it has an existential crisis.

[Jorgen_CAB]

snipped for readability

Pardon my language. I can't believe this s**t.

I want to thank you all. Although your posts did not provide me with the solution, it encouraged me to tinker with it once more, to try once more from the beginning. Without this thread I would not have the drive to try again, so thank you. And I managed to solve it, so now I can play once again

I had followed the exact steps that Jorgen posted more than once, and it didn't work at all. Today, I reinstalled the game from the start and followed those very steps again, and the game would still not start....

Then inspiration struck, and I went to check in the control panel... and saw that Windows Media player is listed as an optional component, and it was not installed. Don't ask me why, as I'm pretty sure I never uninstalled it. Must have happened somehow during a system update. Anyway, I installed it... and BAM now it works. And in fact I can also change the playmovie line in the ini, and movies WILL play...

I would really like to ask WHY. I told the game not to play any movies anyway. Why would installing windows media player solve it?
Because it makes NO sense whatsoever. I mean, is it still checking somehow if the playback program is installed...?
What. The. Hell.

I'll just settle with being happy that I can play again...

Ahhh... yes... that is one other thing I left off that list... I remember that if you don't have Windows Media player installed it probably would derp out as well... have to remember that one when someone else have the same issue and will add that to the list.

The reason why it don't start with media player not installed probably is as simple that the game try to access the player using some API and if it is not there it receives some errors. Windows used to come with the media player as part of the operating system so programming something for it being there was not dangerous back then.