well said so far.

a newsletter you can sign up to or something and more info about the source of the problems would be nice.

of course i appreciate the hard work the stardock guys put into their games. you'll rarely see such a dedication elsewhere.

but also as most of the EU customers, i think, being able to get the next update, was one important reason for the decision to buy the EU pack of the game.

in which manner is stardock actually working on all that stuff? they created this new 2.0 update, which works fine on the normal versions of the game. now they are working on it, to make it somehow compatible with the EU Version?

thus, they  would have slightly different versions of the 2.0/2.1 updates and will need different versions of future updates as well.

plus, impulse yet has to recognize the EU Version, for the later distribution of the update.

edit: (so far impulse has not recognized, that i have EU installed)

my question is, what exactly are the differences between the normal game and expansion packs installed and the Endless Universe Version? The game content, i'd think is almost identical. I think even the Dread Lord campaign was accessible from the DA-Load up in the EU Version! It is possible to play the DL campaign, if you start the DA Chapter in the EU setup.

edit:again: i'm only asking what differs (in respect of game features/content)  an installation of Endless Universe, from an installation of the original GalCiv2 + DA + TA ?! This is something actually no where to be read. on the one hand in the GalCiv2:faq it is said that EU doesn't contain the base game. on the other hand, the dread lord campaign is included in the EU Version and i neither see any races or important features missing?

Which leads us to the question,

If the majority of the game content is identical, if the EU Version equals a normal Bundle of all 3 GalCiv2 games,

is there no way to write a Patch which transforms an EU Installation into a normal installation of GalCiv2+DA+TA replacing Windows Registry Keys/ executables and such?

and all the little other things impulse needs to know, to recognize the game installed.

if the EU Version equals a normal Bundle of all 3 GalCiv2 games, there should be no politics involved, preventing this?

from my point of view, the EU version is nothing more, than a strange mixture of the expansion packs + the original game, being installed through one setup, instead of three. As i'd expect, localization is always taken into account, during the design phase of a game, so that EU contains no brand new file system or whatever to manage localizations either?

(as this would have been allready included in the normal versions of GalCiv2 , DA, TA and kalypso just made a few new xml files containing the translated text)

it is not about me, not being patient enough to wait for the update, i'd wait until christmas or the next year without bitching.

what i'm wondering about is, whether it wouldn't be lot cheaper for the stardock guys, to have the problems with the EU version solved, once and for all, instead of going through great difficultys each time an update, originally designed for the normal GalCiv2+DA+TA Installation, has to be modified to run with the EU versions as well.

As for bug fixes and support in general, wouldn't it be easier, if everyone is talking about the same game, the same source code, instead of ppl. talking about 2 different sides of the same coin.

If you read the statements of CariElf, you get the impression, that everytime they thought to have solved the problem in a couple of days/hours, a new more difficult one occurred.

I'm just wondering if EU is worth all the trouble, for them and for us, and whether there is no easier way to settle the problems within the game and with impulse.

As i have no clue, about how the software was build together to form this fragile EU Version, i can only speculate.

hopefully i didn't offend someone. i just wanted to share my thoughts.

wouldn't it be more effective, for bugfixing (and support in general) as well, to merge the versions together? 

again, i don't know how stardock is working on the issues, nor how big the differences of those two versions are,

i just thought, it might be a more effective approach, as once the EU version gets replaced with a normal install, at least the v2.0 update and future patches/updates should work, with no additional code fixing and divided project management necessary. (install EU from DVD -> Convert it -> update 2.0 ...-> another satisfied customer)

My personal view is that there might be two issues (or at least one of them):
- Get EU on Impulse (and distinguish it from the rest of the GC2 products)
- Offer an update of EU which doesn't give you the base game at the same time.
(To wait for 2.01 would have been an excellent reason for the delay, but now that 2.01 is available, but EU customers still can't have it, this excuse has disappeared into nowhere) 

I have GC2 and EU installed in parallel (in 2 different folders). After I had installed and registered EU, Impulse offered me to INSTALL GC2, and I accidentally pressed the button without thinking about it. As a result, I suddenly had GC2 in my EU folder, too, but the launcher didn't work anymore. But clicking on the 3 EXE's did work! I mean DL, DA and TA. This is probably a bug in the update system.
To avoid misunderstandings: I haven't really played EU until now (waiting for 2.0), so I can't tell you whether the GC2 installation in the EU folder will give you all 3 games, or if it has screwed up some of the file configurations (after all, the GC2 installation is very likely to have replaced newer DA or TA files by older DL ones). All I know is that I managed to get to the 3 main menus and launch new games (without actually playing them) by running the 3 GC2 exe files.

I could understand that both issues might be tricky to resolve without any other negative side-effects. But both issues have nothing to do with the game and its expansions themselves, but with Impulse and the way the products are marketed. Which would be another indication for the observation that whatever vendors do to protect their investment (successfully or not - but that's another debate) is bad for their paying customers, in the sense that to use the products and to get updates gets increasingly difficult, complex, error-prone and cumbersome - and more and more expensive for the vendors, last but not least.

HI, is the patch also for GC:DL (GC: Endlees Universe) or can i play the campain until the patch is finished ?

DJC

Thank Stardock Entertainment for a great game! I didn't think games of this calibre were made anymore, it's great. I hope the patch is out soon as I look forward to any improvements there may be, and also a fix for the game crashing occasionally.

Its great to hear you're making progress! Cari, i hate to be a pain, but will the update also be available for Ultimate Edition users as well as Endless Universe users?

Any Info is much appreciated! cheers!

I concur with the above, at least mostly on general priciples. As a native German myself, I also hate localized versions but more for another reason. The localized versions do very often require a separate patch and  mods (mostly for the original version) may only work if you are lucky. As I asume that localization is a) a lot of work, even if it is done not that well done, may cost a lot of money and time and c) are not often much appreciated by the inteded recipient you have some reasons why there is often not much effort invested by a publisher to follow up and make it better.

Furthermore, I have noticed  that it is increasingly common to be only allowed to install the localized version, even if the original version is completly included. (This may be corrected with enough technical knowledge, but it is a pain in the ***) You are out of luck if they only include the localized version.

As a direct inquiry to stardock just to satisfy my curiosity (if it does not violate any business agreements or such), is there some reason for the foreign publisher NOT to include the original version (if possible) and NOT to allow a choice which version to install, localized or original ? It would, at least for the people with enough language skill, save some trouble and time. Especially with SF-Themes we are travelling back in time where it was not uncommon to wait 10+ years for the publishing of books or TV-series. (BSG Season 3 on DVD anyone....) 

Oooopps.... just got carried away.

Apologies for the long rant. <kowtows itself to the unfortunate public wading through all of this rant>

If you change your language of the game (via registry) to english, you have virtually the original since the original files are included. (As stated above it also fixes the minor race crashes.) If you don't have enough technical knowledge, find someone here on the forums who does. Maybe make two .reg files so you just have to double-click on them to change language. Updating after this switch should still be possible without breaking anything, At least it was for me with the GC2:DL updates. So normally, there should be no problem whatsoever.

...apart from that I don't really find the german translation bad... it's just that english strings pop up ever so often and in quite a few places the text doesn't fit in the allocated space (e.g. buttons).

Yes. UL is basically just a repack of EU with the base game added in its entirety (since Kalypso bought the rights to it from Paradox). Both will be updateable via Impulse.

Thanks. I asked earlier in this post and already did the registry thing which solved all problems quite nice.

This forum is really helpful as I now know for years. And also a lot of others! These kind of games really seem to attract nice and intelligent people.(No surprise as these games need a base level of smarts higher than some other genres)

The GalCiv2 games, like also for example SE5, are very user/mod friendly and can be treated easy without much trouble. A lot of other games are NOT that userfriendly !

However, there is an increasing number of games  which are very restrictive that you are only allowed to install the

localized version. (For some time you were asked by most games in the installation process which language you wanted to install, including the original ). Maybe I was only lucky in the selection of my games.

But I am curious if there is some kind of general policy in the gaming industry, licence fees, copy protection issues or else behind it, why am only allowed to install a localized version, even if it would be possible to install the original version.

There is no standard approach concerning multi-language support in the gaming industry. The decision for or against multi-language support is influenced by two conflicting factors: costs (for translations, sometimes voice actors) and revenue expectations (acceptance on foreign language markets). Both issues are highly non-trivial, and the amount of money involved can be quite high.

I won't go into the differences between languages (for example, that German texts are typically a lot longer than their English equivalents, and what this means) or cultures (which are quite a challenge for creating good localized versions). Nor will I discuss internet-based distribution channels.

Compare it with the (retail) book market: Typically, a book is published in the respective local language(s) only. You may be able to get (imported) other language versions in special book stores, normally at a higher price.

In the beginning, computer games were mono-lingual (mainly in English). When games were translated to other languages, the vendors followed the approach of the book market - influenced by marketing strategy and /or technical feasibility. Now that DVD's are common, technical limitations (mainly size restrictions) don't apply anymore, ie it has become feasible to pack multi-language versions together. This leaves the marketing strategy, associated with cost considerations.

The Witcher is a positive example (free choice of language), Oblivion a negative one (local language only). Space Empires 5 sits somewhere in the middle. Initially, there was only a US version released. Later the vendor agreed on an international release with Empire Interactive, which lets the customer choose between several languages indeed, but they are all incompatible with the original US version, including the (British) English version - which means patches and mods are incompatible with the international version of SE5. Luckily, this issue has been resolved somewhat by a patch offered by Empire Interactive ("somewhat" because you can use the patched British English version for playing mods now, but not the other language versions).

There are also several games (like GC2) where you can switch between languages by manipulating configuration files. For customers who know about it and know how to do this this is quite convenient. But I find it difficult to understand that vendors don't offer it as a visible and generally available function to all customers - it's added value after all.

In my mind, there are still too many game vendors who don't design multi-language support into their products. It doesn't add a lot to the costs of development to make all language-dependant components of the software swappable, to take into consideration that (as an example) the size of text boxes and the length of spoken text elements (where it applies) must be variable. Based on such a design, vendors could make business-driven decisions which languages they want to support (and where!), not hindered and influenced by technical limitations.

I myself prefer the originals, if this means German or English (as I'm fluent in these languages) - they tend to be a lot better than the translations.

Ummmm...I'm not sure if we're handling the Ultimate Edition updates separately or not, but I think that we may be, so I don't know if you'll be able to get the update when we get it up for 2.01.  

We had to fix some additional errors with the German version today, which is why the update is STILL not up for EU users.

It both recognized my game and serial number... Still - 2 GB patch!?!?

Nicely done guys and gals. Thanks for the patch! Your efforts are appreciated here