Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

Impulse: We're listening

We are prepping a major update for Impulse for release prior to the upcoming release of Sins of a Solar Empire v1.1.

Version 1.1 of Sins of a Solar Empire is the first update to the award-winning PC strategy game to require Impulse for downloading the update. During the beta process of Sins v1.1 we got a lot of feedback from players -- a lot of it very negative.

The first question people ask is, why are we requiring Impulse for Sins of a Solar Empire? We released a number of stand-alone patches for Sins earlier in the year so why require Impulse now?

There are a number of reasons. The most obvious reason is that Impulse wasn't available then. In the user manual for Sins of a Solar Empire we actually mention Impulse as it was intended to be used for updating the game.

But more importantly, Sins of a Solar Empire v1.1 is a gigantic update. It's even a bigger update in many respects than the recently released Galactic Civilizations II v2.0 (which also requires Impulse). Making a smart installer for it would have required a great deal of effort to keep the size under control.

There's a lot to making game updates that aren't obvious. For instance, does the game update combined with the demo allow the player to have essentially a full game? You'd be surprised to discover how many games in the past have fallen into that problem. Having Impulse simplifies that sort of thing.

In addition, there's the issue of on-going support for Sins of a Solar Empire. Ironclad and Stardock want to put out more releases and make it easy for people to get the micro expansion packs such as Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment which is scheduled to go into public beta shortly. Impulse vastly simplifies and improves this user experience.

So what are some of the things we've done with Impulse that will be out soon?

Check out the screenshots below:

Besides the user interface being cleaned up, the performance has been significantly enhanced. It's a lot snappier all around, particularly on Windows XP systems.

Another addition is that tabs are only displayed when there are items in them. So if a program is being downloaded, a download tab shows up. If there are updates, the update tab shows up. The idea is to provide a much cleaner experience.

So does this mean that Impulse is perfect? No. We still have a lot of features to add to it. We're always striving to make it better.

But hopefully users will be able to see some of the progress that's been made based on their feedback. When Sins of a Solar Empire v1.1 ships, hopefully users will find Impulse to be something highly useful rather than as simply a download manager.

Stay tuned!

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Very nice indeed. That solves all of the concerns I had when I first tried Impulse months ago.

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I use the Impulse Dock on an everyday basis, so I'm quite keen to see by how much you've improved the performance.

Here's my top feature request, by the way, that I don't think has been addressed yet: make it possible to hide the Dock icons of non-Stardock products. To elaborate: Stardock games can be listed on the Games tab but hidden from the Dock. If you add a non-Stardock game to the Games tab, though, it always shows up on the Dock and the only way to remove it from the Dock is to remove it from Impulse altogether. For example, I have GalCivII and both expansions installed but I only have TotA visible in the Dock. If I added Civ4 and the Warlords and Beyond the Sword expansions to the Impulse Games tab, though, I would have three Civ-related icons cluttering up my Dock.

- Ash

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Oh, wait. That's actually only my second most wanted feature. My first most wanted feature: for the love of all things holy, please make my mouse's forward and back buttons work to navigate the Store or Community pages! Until that happens, there's a 0% chance that I'll even consider using Impulse to browse SD's various sites/forums.

- Ash

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Good stuff. Thanks for the update.

Now about allowing users to select the currency of their transaction and making that choice a permanent part of their account preferences ...

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Those are great tweaks. I wouldn't worry about most of the complaints because the majority are based on not paying enough attention to realize you can disable impulse from running until you need it. It's a nice downloader, perhaps the easiest fix is just educating people as to their options as it's obvious finding answers on their own is too challenging for many.

Honestly, it's more of a user issue than a developer issue.

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If there are that many people complaining about it, it's not just a user issue. While I agree that it's simple enough to disable Impulse from running on start-up, it seems many of those complaining didn't even know how to do so.

Some great looking updates there, Brad. Keep up the good work!

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psychoak

Join Date 07/2007

+225

It's both. It's a user issue because they're tards for not taking thirty seconds to check the menu to disable it. It's a developer issue because keeping things resident in memory really should default to no if it's not going to bring up the option during install. It's just the kind of thing neat freaks don't like having around.

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As long as Impulse

1)doesn't force you to work on start-up by default

2)doesn't crash the way it systematically did last time I tried it

I don't mind using it.

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I was one of the people who doubted Impulse whenit was first released but since then i have been converted and now like the program. I wont say its my favorite program i know of but it is useful enough (not that we are given any other choice for updates) to warrant installation on my pc.

This new update that is planned will go even further towards making the program lighter and easier to use. My only moan at present with the program is that it does feel bloated and takes far too long to start up (unless you have fast start activated, but i have enough things running in the background thank you).

So in all i am looking forward to the next update!

The Ghostbusters Metaverse Empire

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Any chance of getting a "game manual" option when you right click games you've bought? Steam has this minor feature and I noticed its missing in the current version of Impulse.

It has a dual purpose: filling the time untill the game downloads and making sure I have a clue as to what to do when I start playing.

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Impulse: We're listening - haha thats the biggest laugh I've had all day.

You have still NOT provided an easy way for people without Intetnet access to patch their games. Talk about marking patching difficult.

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You have still NOT provided an easy way for people without Intetnet access to patch their games.

Last time I checked, downloading anything requires Internet access.

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Quoting bobbobber23,

reply 11

Impulse: We're listening - haha thats the biggest laugh I've had all day.

You have still NOT provided an easy way for people without Intetnet access to patch their games. Talk about marking patching difficult.

Que?

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Last time I checked, downloading anything requires Internet access.

Yes, but at least with that I can downlaod it at work and run it at home. With Impulse I am prevented from doing that simple task.

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Quoting bobbobber23,

reply 14

Last time I checked, downloading anything requires Internet access.

Yes, but at least with that I can downlaod it at work and run it at home. With Impulse I am prevented from doing that simple task.

Ah, perhaps I have missed sth... How are you being prevented to run it at home? You download stuff at work, thus installing it. Then you go home and start the game...? You will need Impulse only for downloading, not for anythin else (especially not for playing the game... You CAN play it offline!). But perhaps I missunderstood you...

Cheers!

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The problem with Impulse and offline computer is that Impulse requires to connect on Stardock servers when starting for the first time.

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OK, the problem here is those of us who don't have home internet access (I used to be in that camp!) but do have public internet access. You can download a file to a thumbdrive, yes, but with Impulse that's not enough -- you have to install impulse to do the download, and most public computers will treat that as a no-no.

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I think the problem here is not that stardock isn't listening, it's that they're having trouble bending over backwards that far for a relatively small group. Now, I'm not saying they shouldn't try, I'm just saying that "not listening =/= can't be done".

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Ron, the point is valid, but I fail to see how in your example Impulse is any different from SDC.

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Quoting Sole Soul,

reply 19

Ron, the point is valid, but I fail to see how in your example Impulse is any different from SDC.

Ron's point is actually different from most other points. With SDC, if you downloaded a game elsewhere and archived it, you could install from the archive on your permanently offline PC.

With Impulse, you can download and archive, but installing from the archive requires Impulse to log in.

The problem is more complicated than most people understand, however. SDC was for all intents and purposes Stardock's own patcher. It had a few miscellaneous 3rd party games, mostly old ones. Impulse is a much bigger and public store, not just a simple patcher. A change to its archiving mechanism needs to please *all* the publishers that have games listed on Impulse and is no easy task. Impulse logging in on archive install doubles as a registration check (whether it's intentional or not to be that way I don't know) to make sure the person installing the archive has the lisence to use it. Fully offline archive installing will still need to make the 3rd party publishers happy - and that's no easy task.

But it's one they've already said multiple times they're looking at the possibility of.

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When can we expect clan support, match making system, leaderboards etc... for Sins (and other games) via Impulse!?!?!

This is the real update I am waiting for

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[quote who="-=XX=-Nephilim" reply="21" id="1936082"]When can we expect clan support, match making system, leaderboards etc... for Sins (and other games) via Impulse!?!?!

This is the real update I am waiting for [/quote]

Where did I get the impression that the upcoming Impulse update would include these things? Are we not getting matchmaking?

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When can we expect clan support, match making system, leaderboards etc... for Sins (and other games) via Impulse!?!?!

This is the real update I am waiting for

Demigod will be the pilot game for the advanced stuff. Sins 1.1 should be getting the basic Impulse matchmaking, but the leaderboards, achievements, etc is tied to Demigod. Dunno if Sins will take advantage of it once it is out and available, though.

Edit: Hey, who borked the quote button?

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Sins 1.1 should be getting the basic Impulse matchmaking

basic is fine as long as it's integrated well and comes out with 1.1

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Quoting Annatar11,

reply 23

When can we expect clan support, match making system, leaderboards etc... for Sins (and other games) via Impulse!?!?!

This is the real update I am waiting for

Demigod will be the pilot game for the advanced stuff. Sins 1.1 should be getting the basic Impulse matchmaking, but the leaderboards, achievements, etc is tied to Demigod. Dunno if Sins will take advantage of it once it is out and available, though.

Edit: Hey, who borked the quote button?

But how on earth are you going to "matchmake" clan or a player withour ranking him / them up in the first place - and if you have to rank them up one way or the other in order to matchmake eventually, then it is easy to create some sort of leaderboard too...

In short - all this should be closely linked - and I can only hope Sins gets this kind of treatment... It needs it if its ever to have life online...

EDIT:

In fact I really wouldn't mind some sort of official response to this one... if possible at all

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