Hi everyone. Uncertain if my laptop would run GalCiv2 I went ahead and bought it anyway. Happily, it runs pretty well (I have Intel Extreme graphics w/ 32 MB vid mem) although I get the occasional slowdown. I know I can turn textures and explosions on and off to improve performance, but I'm wondering if there's a chance to implement an intermediate option. I don't know what kind of textures are used - 16 bit or 32 bit. If they are 32 bit, what's the chance of implementing 16 bit textures, something not as taxing to lower-end systems.
More important than ship & planet textures are the explosions. My laptop starts chugging and hesitating whenever an explosion occurs. Now, the explosions are pretty nice, all sorts of colors, but not nice when when an explosion takes 5 or more seconds to display, or when you only see a fraction of those explosion frames. Turning them off improves framerate, but then ships just disappear. Is there any chanc of a 'simple explosion' option? A quick flash of light maybe, or something quick and basic? Or is this something we can do ourselves, by replacing the explosion graphic?
This is just a minor quibble, but would improve my experience immensely. The game is as addictive as the first GalCiv, as addictive as Civilization, and I salute Brad and the Stardock team for again showing that a small dedicated team can produce a stellar (ha!), top-notch game. Even if my problem isn't addressed, I offer a million thanks to you.
