T-man: Actually, you need to add four servers to Prox's "Bypass List.txt" to get Stardock Central to work. The appropriate lines from my config are:

[^/]++sdcentral.stardock.com/
[^/]++sdcentral2.stardock.com/
[^/]++galciv.com/
[^/]++wincustomize.com/

Only after adding all four does Stardock Central work correctly with Prox turned on. You may wish to update your FAQ with this information.

Also, is there any progress on the SDC proxy configuration bug?

~SDC~

LordZero,

"Stardock Central", is used both for Subscription services like Drengin.net and ObejctDesktop.net as well as stand alone products like Galactic Civilizations. If you are registering Galactic Civilizations you should be using the Serial Number from the CD and your email address (which most likely should be the same email address as your Stardock.net account).

If you are having difficulties registering send me an email to [email protected] with the information you are trying to register and I will take a look at it.

Atholbrose, Thanks! I will add those servers to the FAQ as well.

~SDC~

I currently must configure my NAT router to place my gaming machine in the DMZ in order to use SDC and have it log-on successfully.

I would prefer not to be so heavy handed with my router setup just to use what is, in effect, the installer and updater for GalCiv. Can anyone tell me the specific ports that SDC uses so I can put in place a more reasonable solution? I am perfectly fine with adding a few entries to point certain ports towards my gaming computer, but just opening up my gaming computer to the tender mercies of the net at large... well, that seems like a long way to go just to download a patch :notsure:

Aside from this one issue, though, GalCiv has been a fantastic experience. Thanks!

Just to consolidate comments made elsewhere:

Suggestions:

1) Search. Please, for the love of God, Search.
2) Edit/delete comment (time limit fine)
3) Seperate hotkey for "Check for Updates" than the "refresh page" key used by the embedded web browser (i.e. F5), so you don't have focus problems. Right now, F5 does different things depending on the last place you clicked, and it's not obvious which pane that is.
4) More intuitive handling of the section. It could use more numbers, for one, and it could automatically window with your selection. IOW, selecting 10 from should make the selection , instead of like it does now.
5) Thread subscription would be nice.

Bugs:

1) Only one I've found is that the Software screen didn't update my GalCiv version after you posted an update until I killed and reloaded SDCentral. Hitting F5 there was not effective.

~SDC~

I purchased the game using the download option by downloading the 80+ mg zip file and stardock from the links given to me in the email that was sent to me when I purchased the game. the install of the game went fine (after some very helpful assistance from the support chat) but some weird things have been happening with stardock.

Whenever I start it up it sends me to a log on screen which asks me for my name email address and password. Whenever I enter that information it gives me an error message that says it cannot update my account information. I then press the skip button and get a message that I will not be able to access the stardock servers but when I got to stardock I was able to download the bonus pack, manual etc. I also cannot use the email address and password that I used to purchase the game to access this forum. Whenever I try to log on I get sent to a non existant page error.

I suppose that since I seem to be able to download from Stardock I shouldn't worry about the error messages and I can get on this board using my other email address but I am concerned that these glitches will come back to haunt me later.

For example I read in another post that there has been an update but I cannot see it on either of the servers for stardock.

Sorry in advance for being such a pain

LordZero,

I know your pain. I can't get updates either despite trying how to , FAQ and recommendation givin to me by users and Stardock personnel. I am afraid to start from scratch yet again given your horror story. I wish they would simply put up downloadable updates/patches for the all the customers throughout these threads who simply cannot get this SDC thing to work reliably and consistently. I love the game but quite frankly I've put it aside until I can get an update that addresses the first wave of bugs...

Nathan, SDC uses port 80

CrazyCanuck, it sounds like SDC is not able to connect to our servers from your machine. Are you behind a Firewall or using any Ad Blocking software?

Humane, I am not sure exactly what errors you have encountered or what you have tried, but if you would like to send me an email I will try and find out the cause of the problems you are experiencing. [email protected]



~SDC~

I am behind a firewall (ad blocking turned off) but I configured it so that stardock could have full access. The odd thing is I was able to download the bonus pack from stardock even though my registration was not accepted. This may be because I was able to successfully register the game when I installed it from the zip download (I did not download the game using stardock).

The other odd thing is that I still cannot access this forum using the email address and I bought the game with (even though I went through the proper registration process for this forum with that address). I think that the two problems are connected.

last night I logged onto stardock using the email address that does allow me access to this forum and that worked (at least I didn't get an error message on the login) but I cannot successfully register using my serial number. Probably because the number is linked my other email address.

I am a bit perplexed. If the updates are all posted as separate zip files on this site so that I dont have to use stardock then I guess there will be no problem but it would be nice to have the same access everyone else seems to have.

Bug.

I'm running SDC now and down in the right hand corner it says "Not logged in" with a little icon of a comuputer with a white x on a red circle on it.

Running my cursor over this produces the message that
"Dave Oldridge has been successfully logged into Stardock.net"

Seems to me there is some inconsistency here! LOL

In this forum, I only see two messages. This one and the "So what is the average age of a Gal Civ Player??". The other two forums get updated. Anyone have a clue?

~SDC~

This Stardock interface is very poorly designed. I bought the game online and cannot find where to register it. I stupidly thought "stardockcentral1" was the updater and been clicking on it everyday and thinking it was updating my game. D'oh! Anyway, last night I had one of those Percursor fustrating-game-enders that I read here in the forums that no longer happens at the lower difficulty levels. Since I was playing a cakewalk game (trying out a new strategy and didn't want to be bothered by the AI), I finally realized I wasn't updating the game each time I clicked on "stardockcentral1". I found "Stardock" in my Programs lists, but ... *sigh* ... to say it wasn't easy to find what to do is an understatement. T-Man, I've sent you an email using the email address you gave in other replies here.

Now one of the patches should be of Stardock Central. Something real simple on start. "If you bought the game online, click here." and "If you bought the game at a retail store, click here." Then you ask for our names, registration numbers, etc. Then it should all be set up for ease of use the next time we use it. BTW, I really feel your beta-testers let you down. This should have been easily and quickly caught as a problem.

DOH! I meant to type: "I bought the game RETAIL and..."

And what's with the lack of edit, check spelling, and preview??? Come on, these are standard features. Not having them makes these forum rather amateurish.

How do I change my username ? You now the "Citizen xxx" thingy.

~SDC~

I would also like to know how I can change my user name.

The latest version drives also has a very annoying "feature":
Its CPU usage jumps to 100% in regular intervals and it does not
respond anymore during that time. This is driving me crazy!
Is there any option I could set that would stop it from whatever
it is trying to do?


~SDC~

Aah.. Nevermind.. Already found out how to change the username..
Markus.. Go to http://www.wincustomize.com
There's an "Edit Account" button.. It would be nice if this was added to other stardock
sites also.

~SDC~

SupremeBanana: Thanks, now I finally got my nickname changed.

~SDC~

Ok, I got SDC on the 26th to dowload the game, no prob, everything went fine. Since then I've been getting all the updates, and am enjoying SDC... untill today, I got a (i just logged on to check for any updates, they are coming out as fast as heck) "Your Stardock.net account (my email) has failed to logon to SDC servers. Since you aren't logged on to the server you will be unable to instasll or view any updates that are availible.

Some1 PLEAZE help, I need SDC to get my updates!!!

When GalCiv came out, I bought my download-and-send-a-disc copy online. It was also one day before my in-laws came to stay for a couple weeks -- predictably in the same room as my computer.

So I installed on my wife's machine, and played happily for a couple weeks while her parents occupied my more usual gaming space. Just Wednesday, they left, so I moved everything over and reinstalled. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly, except for some reason, Stardock Central isn't showing the 1.02 release to be available; this causes me some concern, since trying to load my saved game results in a crash to desktop now.

Is there something I can do to rectify this situation? Is this a case where I should uninstall/reinstall stardock central?

Never mind, I'm a moron. I solved my problems by remembering to put my serial number into Stardock Central again.

~SDC~

My Stardock Central shows the windowed version to be an update to The Corporate Machine and I can't download it because it says I haven't installed The Corporate Machine!

~SDC~

Regarding SDC Registration:

The very first time I installed Stardock Central (v5)and ran the program, up popped the registration screen. I filled in all the requested information logged in, registered Galactic Civilizations, and updated the game.

For specific security reasons I will not leave Stardock Central installed on my system. After performing the above I simply restored my C drive with a Drive Image made previous to installing Stardock thus ensuring all traces of it were removed. Galactic Civilizations was installed to an alternate drive and can still be run and everything works fine.

I would however like to keep the latest version of Galactic Civilizations installed. Since there is a new version 1.02.42 available I tried the following.

I reinstalled SDC however on first running the program it requests you register. You must do this or you cannot download the new GC updates. The registration screen insists you fill in all the blanks. I input all the information I had on the very first registration and clicked submit.

Registration was refused because the nickname I selected was already in use. Well of course it's in use it's the one I originally registered with. The only way around this is to select a new nickname.

Hmm okay but I prefer to use my original nickname, the one I always use and everyone knows me by. Now it's possible that once I re-register using the new nickname I can edit the account and go back to my old nickname, I never checked that but I doubt it.

My problem is that even if I do create the new nickname and update, in a few weeks time I will need to repeat the procedure, again entering a new nickname, since after updating I will simply once more remove SDC from my system.

Now I have no problem doing this but those nicknames are being stored somewhere by Stardock at their end so it should be able to link my nickname to my realname and validate that providing all the other registration info matches.

Would it not be possible to have a Logon button in the Stardock interface which one could click that popped up a window asking you to enter your username and password ?

I would much prefer to enter my logon info each time I use Stardock Central rather than have such info stored in its unencrypted state in the registry. For those who don't care if it's stored and want the automatic logon as it now exists, they could check a box indicating that preference.

If the above logon process was implemented I might be inclined to leave SDC installed.

I resolved my issue by creating an Image of my C drive using Drive Image 2000 and then restoring an image I had made of the C drive immediately following the very first installation of Stardock and GC. Luckily I had made such an Image before removing Stardock. Then I simply ran SDC, updated, and created a new Image of the C drive(I'll need that the next time I update).
After all this was done I restored my C drive back to it's original state without SDC.

Alright.. back to GC
Oh and thanks for the new incarnation of the game

So I just refreshed the software part of SDC, and it lists the Galciv 1.02 patch as available, but does not list the windowed version, the multimedia, the bonus pak, or the manual as available. Of course, I have all that installed, but if it's just not available, this could be problematic for those who have just purchased it or have reinstalled.

~SDC~

I have received a DN key + the GC key.
I've registred GC with the GC key, but I'd like to switch the registration to the DN key.
How can I do that?
Thanks, Gherardo

Never mind, it went back to normal after I updated Galactic Civilizations.

~SDC~

Uh-oh, it just got all weird again

~SDC~