The Fastest Speedruns

Last week the German game magazine PC Games reported about the Speedruns Archive and listed the ten fastest speedruns. 3rd fastest speedrun of all games is the following MOO2 advanced game versus 1 AI. Just 39 seconds:

MOO2 Live Broadcasts

You may have observed that we had again several MOO2 live broadcasts on this website in the recent days. Earlier this year, justin.tv disabled the autoplay feature of their embedded videos – this made their embedded videos pretty much useless as there was no indicator of an ongoing broadcast at all – and therefore we stopped broadcasting. The autoplay feature is still disabled but they have implemented an indicator for live broadcasts again. You will now see - similar to the window on the right side - a red live button and a snapshot of the active broadcast:

Furthermore, the archive works now correctly and we have the option to extract highlights or even complete games. Let me give you a few examples:

Watch live video from MOO2 LIVE on Justin.tv

Cab here at bottom in this 5way taking out an early hydra at turn 48. Evil Sky was in the center with his telepathic race but had not enough fleet to cause trouble later on.

Some fragments of an 1v1 Cab vs Deathlord. BTW, long segments will be splitted into several 15min fragments:

Cabman vs Deathlord Pre (Build Up) 1/2 and 2/2

Cabman vs Deathlord Contact and the final (test) battle (Deathlord already conceded beforehand):

Watch live video from MOO2 LIVE on Justin.tv

Additionally, justin.tv seems to offer enough space for free to present full games. Here are two duels between Cab and Bork:

Duel 1, 20^th July:

Cab vs Bork - Before Contact 1/8, 2/8, 3/8, 4/8, 5/8, 6/8, 7/8 and 8/8

Cab vs Bork First Contact

Cabman vs Bork t101-t114 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5 and 5/5

Bork's side (Post game hotseat analysis of bork's side. Bork was frustrated by Cab's spies.)

Duel 2, 26^th July:

Cab vs Bork (t0-t109) 1/11, 2/11, 3/11, 4/11, 5/11, 6/11, 7/11, 8/11, 9/11, 10/11 and 11/11

Cab vs Bork (Contact-t123) 1/10, 2/10, 3/10, 4/10, 5/10, 6/10, 7/10, 8/10, 9/10 and 10/10

Cab vs Bork (Final Turns) 1/4, 2/4

The begin of the final battle:

Watch live video from MOO2 LIVE on Justin.tv

and outcome:

Watch live video from MOO2 LIVE on Justin.tv

Just PM me in our Quakenet channel if you are also interested to broadcast your Multiplayer or Singleplayer Games on this blog. Depending on the feedback I will possibly write a detailed instruction for optimal broadcast settings and/or adding new channels for simultaneously broadcasting xways.

Map generator

[UPDATE! Download link has changed Latest version 0.40]
I am proud to announce a new tool for Master Of Orion 2!

This tool is intended to balance the starting conditions of players.
It can replace toxic, ultrapoor, low gravity, heavy gravity, tiny and small planets with a better ones.
You can decide what to replace by yourself.
To do that, hosting player have to start new game as always and right after the game begun, he have to quit the game and run mapgen.exe with desired switches, and after that host the game again.
This is my example dosbox.conf:

cd c:\imoo2\
ipxnet startserver 6666
VDCGM2.exe /hugestart /planets=5 /noorion /nowh /nobh /nosplint /noreport /nonebula
mapgen.exe -ttoxic -tupoor -ttiny -tflathw
VDCGM2.exe /hugestart /planets=5 /noorion /nowh /nobh /nosplint /noreport /nonebula

So, after I started game, chosen race and got on the game screen, I presed "Quit game", mapgen.exe started automaticaly, replaced toxic planets with radiated, tiny with small and ultrapoor with poor. And made homeworlds almost equal.

After that, VDCGM2.EXE started again and I had to load game and wait for second player.

Here is the help about usage, that you can get by running mapgen -h:

Usage: ./moomapgen [-h] [-t terraformation] [-s special] [-m change] [-b type] [-r numOfPlayersToMerge] [-`~ [-v] [-V] [-f file]

Example: ./moomapgen -t toxic -t upoor -t lowg -t heavyg -t tiny -t small -f SAVE10.GAM

Options:

  -h [-H] This help.

  -t Terraform

      toxic - Toxic planets become radiated

      upoor - Huge Ultra Poor planets becomes poor. Other Ultra Poor planets become Abundant

      lowg - Low Gravity planets become Normal Gravity

      heavyg - Heavy Gravity planets become Normal Gravity

      tiny - Tiny planets become randomly from Small to Large. With except for -tsmall flag, if it is used, they become Medium.

      small - Small planets become medium

      flathw - Flattens unoccupied planets in HomeWorlds:

        They become Abundant, Toxics and Rads become Barren,

        gravity become Normal except for one planet,

        it become the same gravity as occupied planet, size is set in order

        Large, Large again, Medium, Small untill

        there are no more planets to modify. Gaias become Terrain.

      fixedhw - Implies `flathw`. Planets become:

        Large Abundant Swamp, Large Abundant Arid, Large Poor Tundra,

        Medium Poor Terrain, all normalG.

        If your homeworld is lowG, than all other planets except Arid

        it becomes lowG.

        If your homeworld is heavyG, than Swamp becomes heavyG, others

        become normalG

      gaia - DOES NOT imply fixedhw. Last planet become small poor gaia

        unless you are creative or aquatic or tolerant.

        elswise you get small poor terrain

      richhw - Makes first unoccupied planet rich

      hugehw - Makes first unoccupied planet huge

      goodhw - Implies richw & hugehw. Makes first unoccupied planet terrain.

  -s Specials Change

      splint - Splinter replaced by gem deposits.

      nonatives - Natives are replaced by gold deposits.

      arti - Arti planets still exist, but don't give techs anymore.

  -m Monsters Change

      grav - Guarded planets become normal gravity, even ultrarich now.

        Pirate stash and space debris under guarded planets become marooned heroes.

      terraform - Guarded rich & urich planets are terraformed.

        Toxics, Rads, Barrens, Deserts become Tundra.

      monst - Does the same thing as -mgrav and -mterraform.

  -b Balance Galaxy

  showringX - Make planets in X parsecs distance from HW visible to players

  calc - Calculate opponent starts and print out results

  -v Verbose debugging output(CHEAT!)

  -r Num of PLAYERX.GAM files to merge in 'filename'

  -V Print Version and exit

  -f file Edit 'file' instead of SAVE10.GAM

You can download This tool from here https://github.com/tifeit/moomapgen/blob/master/mapgen.exe?raw=true

Feel free to send your suggestions and bug reports to tf8@list.ru.

WARNING! This tool works only on first turn, if you will use it on any other turn it would mess up everything!

WARNING! People report, that when you use mapgen.exe, sometimes planets get extreme gravity bonus. It could be indicated by orphan coma after planet mineral status on star system screen, like "Abundant,". So please, if you use mapgen.exe, store your SAVE10.GAM file before running mapgen.exe and after and keep it untouched somewhere, and if you hit that bug, please report it to me, attaching that original save, so i could solve the problem.

UPDATE! Version 0.40
-tupoor - Huge Ultra Poor planets becomes poor. Other Ultra Poor planets become Abundant
-ttiny - Tiny planets become randomly from Small to Large. With except for -tsmall flag, if it is used, they become Medium.

UPDATE! Version 0.23
Bugfix -ssplint now works.

-tfixedhw now works slightly different. The fifth planet was Desert, but it's Gaia now - that would be more fair for non-aquatic races. But you can still play with /PLANETS=4 to avoid this behaviour.

-mterraform now works slightly different. Monster guarded rich&urich planets are terraformed from Toxics, Rads, Barrens and Deserts to Tundra. Previous behaviour was: Toxic&Rad -> Barren, Desert -> Tundra.



UPDATE! Version 0.22
Bugfix -tmonst didn't work, now it works and known as -mmonst.

UPDATE! Version 0.21
Added -tmonst, -mgrav, -mterraform, -ssplinter and -sarti flags.

UPDATE! Version 0.11
Fixed bug! Although Gaia's became Terrain when using flathw, they still produced the same ammount of food as Gaia's. Also when using fixedhw, modified planets kept the same ammount of food production as they had before using "mapgen.exe" too. Now both of the problems fixed.

UPDATE! Version 0.1
New switch!
-fixedhw - It makes homeworlds look like Large Swamp, Large Tundra, Medium Arid, Small Desert.

Additionaly -flathw now makes Gaia's at home to be Terrain. upoor - Huge Ultra Poor planets becomes poor. Other Ultra Poor planets become Abundant