Topic: "Shores of Hazeron"

[Foil]

Ah... I could tell you some early-exploration stories...

<Best 'grandpa' voice:>

My very first time in Hazeron (the universe previous to this one), there weren't any good moons in my system, so I had to dead-head to a nearby star system.

The problem was, at that time you couldn't refuel your rocket from inside.  You had to exit and refuel it from the outside.  Not a problem... except that I had the throttle all the way up, so as soon as I put fuel in the rocket, it just took off!  Gone... leaving me to float alone between star systems. 

Kind of boring, but I did eventually get to the destination system... only to float past its planets, going way too fast for any possibility of landing. 

[Matthew]

Er, how did you refuel it from the outside? o_o

[Foil]

At that time, you had to have fuel in your personal inventory, and click on the rocket with it as your current item.

I lost other ships other ways as well (the tiniest bumps between players and ships went haywire sometimes, and weird things happened due to coordinates being rounded near the extreme edges of systems).

Personally, I think that's part of the game - it should be difficult to get those first moon bases up and running.

[Matthew]

I almost feel kind of bad... On both PTMC and my alt empire, I got my moonbase up and running in one trip. 

[Foil]

Really?  Well done!  

Of course, I didn't have the benefit of the "list 'o items for your first moonbase" from the manual.  

[-<WillyP>-]

My how times have changed.

[Foil]

Any success with the rocket yet, WP?

[-<WillyP>-]

I haven't tried it again.  Today I took a sailboat back out to the island near the north pole and found the other sailboat.  But I couldn't make a town square in the cove I liked because it said 'area too small'.  So I went to explore the island to see if the southern edge of the island was big enough, but then I died.  So now there are two sailboats in the cove.  

How far from the pole do you need to be to build?

[karx-elf-erx]

Hey, this sounds cool!

Foil, couldn't you put up kind of a quick start guides for newcomers to the game, or is something like that available already?

Maybe spice it with some "secret" hints from experts?

[Foil]

WillyP, yeah, the terrain tiles at both poles are too narrow to build on; it's just an effect of the way the planet-sphere is tiled.  The devs plan to adjust the tiling at some point in the future so players can build anywhere.

Karx, there are a few "guide" resources.  The most concise guides are in the Game Manual, but there is also a Hazeron Wiki, and I know there are a couple of user-created "getting started" posts on various forums.

Matthew has also created the PTMC Forums, which is being commonly used as the central Hazeron forum until one is officially created.  There is quite a bit of help/support information there.

[-<WillyP>-]

Trying to get it running for my son, but when he gets to where he can create an empire or join an existing one, he get's this message:

Failure to compile shader: :/fcloudlayer.cg, exiting...

If you ignore that it pops up another with a different filename.  Any suggestions to get it running for him? I've tried reinstalling, updated XP, updated drivers.

[Matthew]

It would probably be better to ask these kinds of questions on the PTMC forums where more people will see them.

I hate to say it, but what I've heard, the only solution to that is a hardware upgrade.

[Foil]

Yes, there are apparently some gpu shaders being used in SoH which don't compile on older cards (the ATI x1000 series in particular, from what I've heard).

[-<WillyP>-]

It doesn't have a video card and upgrade isn't in the budget.  Oh well.    :'(

[Foil]

Ah, integrated graphics chipset.  I've heard some of the shaders have trouble with those as well.