VISTA pretty please

[Dreadzly]

Hey guys im a long time player ive recently had to stop playing because of the fact here are no plots for sale and now i find out my super fast high speed kick *** computer cant even play the game because i run vista 64 when will horizons catch up with the rest of the world and fix it so we can use vista

[Nidhoggr]

Just so you know Horizons isn't the only application that doesn't play nice with Windows Vista. :P

[Amecha]

I've heard that Vista can be worked around, though I haven't yet checked into it. I run Vista on my laptop, so I will have to eventually get to work on Vista. Check these forums before you leave, there may be an answer to your Vista problem:

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=17885
http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=17674


And as for the plot problem, you must be on Chaos. On Order
the plots are plentiful!

[lightning claw]

Sadly Vista needs to be disclaimed as not a ms Product like Windows ME its just not a good os.

Dont get me wrong , its a Up and coming system give them a little more time i might change my view on windows vista but for now Upgrade your computer back down to Xp Pro its MUCH BETER

[Favoran]

Vista has its uses. Unfortunately, playing Horizons doesn't seem to be one of them... not right now, anyways. But there are some things that Vista does well.

Just don't ask me what they are; I don't have a Vista machine and I don't plan on buying one for a looong time. XD

[Amerelium]

Vista is the mother of all system benchmarks...but that's about it.

Vista has its uses. Unfortunately, playing Horizons doesn't seem to be one of them... not right now, anyways. But there are some things that Vista does well.

[Hasai]

Folks may or may not believe this, but when I recently ordered a replacement system, the question as to whether Horizons would run on it was the deciding factor when it came to OS.

And thusly, XP lives on....



P.S.: As of today there are only 80 more days before MS terminates most sales of XP, in spite of the dead duck their erstwhile 'replacement' turned out to be. So, stock up now....
http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/

[Spirit]

Unfortunately, the FACT is that if you buy a new pc now, it is almost certainly going to come with Vista. Unless you have an old legal key to revert the new system to Xp (or dual boot of course), you're smegged.

There are other ways to get Xp of course, but they are problematic. It's much more convenient to have a proper copy.

What needs to be decided is whether there is enough life in Horizons to justify a patch to make it run on Vista. I believe there is. You can't force a reversion to an old operating system on someone quite possibly not savvy on doing such things. Additionally some newer laptops, for example, *only* have Vista drivers on their support sites and you are Screwed if you want xp drivers. Perhaps you can dig around for generics... but bleuugh.

Vista support is the way to go, and I think there is enough support for this game to justify it.

Rakku

[gopher65]

What needs to be decided is whether there is enough life in Horizons to justify a patch to make it run on Vista.

I wondered this myself (personally I'd have said no). But then I realized that this isn't actually the case. HZ runs just as well on Vista as it does on XP, maybe better. The problem is that HZ won't *launch* on Vista, except under unusual circumstances. So the client doesn't need to be recodded or anything, it "just" needs to have the launching mechanism changed. I say "just" in quotes because I have no idea how involved that would be to change. But, like I said, once the client gets going it is fine.

[velveeta]

absolutely in agreement, goph.
i just spent 2.5 hours trying to launch horizons after an update reboot.
still not in and not happy about it. up til now, i had been very lucky and was getting in on the first try.
once i am in game, however, i only suffer the same crashes as everyone else (and not horribly many of those, either, especially compared to my xp machine) - the game itself runs fab and comes back after a relog.

[Zexoin]

I wondered this myself (personally I'd have said no). But then I realized that this isn't actually the case. HZ runs just as well on Vista as it does on XP, maybe better. The problem is that HZ won't *launch* on Vista, except under unusual circumstances. So the client doesn't need to be recodded or anything, it "just" needs to have the launching mechanism changed. I say "just" in quotes because I have no idea how involved that would be to change. But, like I said, once the client gets going it is fine.

I do not agree. The laptop I use was pre-installed with XP ; unfortunatelly my mother decided to install Vista. Not only I had hard times to launch HZ, but my fps dropped by half or more.

[Amerelium]

Microsoft bechmarked Vista SP1 against XP SP3 this winter - XP performance was DOUBBLE

I do not agree. The laptop I use was pre-installed with XP ; unfortunatelly my mother decided to install Vista. Not only I had hard times to launch HZ, but my fps dropped by half or more.

[Favoran]

Microsoft bechmarked Vista SP1 against XP SP3 this winter - XP performance was DOUBBLE

Wow, that surprises me... I knew Vista wasn't a good OS, but I didn't know it was that slow!

[Foxfire]

I do not agree. The laptop I use was pre-installed with XP ; unfortunatelly my mother decided to install Vista. Not only I had hard times to launch HZ, but my fps dropped by half or more.

My fps is about half again as good on Vista as it was on xp, once I finaly got it going. It seems faster to me, but then, the machine is two years newer and the video card is more spruced up.

*shrugs* Think its faster because of the newer hardware, but it certainly seems to be performing fine on Vista for me.

[gopher65]

Vista has a lot of added garbage. I kinda disabled about half of it, so it never really occurred to me that some people might try to run Vista "out of the box". It would definitely be slower if that was the case.

[Favoran]

The problem is most people probably don't know where to find the garbage or how to get rid of it... Or even what it is. XD But it's good to know some people can get a fairly decent performance out of it.

The only thing I really have to say about it is that it looks spiffy. All translucent and shaded and stuff... Maybe they're compensating for something?

[Mairynn Nalnair]

The problem is most people probably don't know where to find the garbage or how to get rid of it... Or even what it is. XD But it's good to know some people can get a fairly decent performance out of it.

The only thing I really have to say about it is that it looks spiffy. All translucent and shaded and stuff... Maybe they're compensating for something?

Nice package often indicate no content

[Vaz]

The only thing I really have to say about it is that it looks spiffy. All translucent and shaded and stuff...

The same effects, including the 3D desktop effects, can be achieved on Linux, and quite easily on the newer distros. Some of them can be approximated on Windows XP.

Without wasting time on a long analysis, basically everything else Vista offers can be replicated cheaply or freely on other operating systems at equal or superior quality, with some software and a little brain usage. Anything unique it had was cancelled during the development process.

Microsoft loves the demographic who don't have any clue what's going on in their computers and are content to shell out hundreds of dollars without doing any research (I'm certainly not implicating anyone here, just making a cynical but accurate statement about the audience that would be optimal for Vista; the only reason I quoted Favoran was to respond in my first paragraph to his mention of Vista's graphics).

[Amerelium]

It's a 12 gig operating system that burns up a gig of memory - do the math. I set up a friend's laptop with Vista this winter, killing all the flashy stuff and the all the nonsene. I basically turned into Win98 mode. The effect on CPU and memory usage was hardly noticable - it still burned a gig of memory.

All OS upgrades runs similar software a bit slower, but there's a difference between having a shave and having one's head cut off. Fun part is of course that hardly anything older then 1 year works at all. There is no OpenGL support. The file structures are a nightmare. Remember in the old days, when all game files was placed in the install folder? With XP, savegames and pref files were moved into my documents/my games. With Vista, they are spread into HIDDEN system folders; users and documents / local settings / application data etc...

It's so silly that it's...well, silly...

[Summbuddy]

well i have a few things i would like to add to this thread. Sadly when purchasing computers around here it is all vista vista vista. I love this game and live here. I think that vista compatability should be the top priority of the devs. many will come if they can and sadly most cannot. i own 3 systems one of which after 20+hrs of work i have gotten xp running on one to play but sadly i cannot play with those i wish beacuse we must share the 1 system that can be converted. I have tried all the *tech tips* to no avail. I have read the posts which say it is being worked on but i feel that it cannot be getting the attention it deserves. I guess i'm ok with this for lack of ability to do anything about it. Please V spend more efforts on this .. all the content in istaria will not help if players cannot play they will not pay.