Overview
The "Community" tab includes a number of tabs on a sub-menu at the bottom of the window for getting involved with the Impulse community. My Impulse, News, Games, Achievements and Rankings tabs will be covered in this section,
with the remaining tabs (i.e. Friends, Chat, Forums, Community, and Drivers) covered on the next page.
The top menu bar includes familiar web browser buttons, as seen on the "Explore" tab. Clicking 
to return to the previous page and 
to the next page. Clicking 
returns you
to the home page for the area you are in (i.e. News, Community,
Friends, Forums). Where you are is indicated on the navigation bar, to the right of the icon.
Search
Clicking in the 
box and typing in keyword(s), then clicking the 
icon (or pressing
<Enter>), will search the Impulse website related to the sub-tab you are on.
Sub-Menu
When you start Impulse and login, it also logs you into the Community website
which is the same as your Impulse (Stardock.net) account. This
allows you to read the latest blogs, write your own article and reply to blogs. You can also see which
friends are online and what they have been involved in. Depending on the size and resolution of your monitor, you may see all of the sub-tab icons or you may not. Also if you downsize the Impulse window, that may also hide some of the menu options.
If you see these arrows 
on the far right end of the sub-menu, clicking on will open a small menu with the remaining tabs. Click on the desired option to display that tab.
The sub-menu bar consists of the following:
- My Impulse - if you do not have a blog on Impulse, then you will see a screen to "Create your Blog". If you do have a blog on Impulse, then you will see your profile information, a list of Featured Articles, Activity Board, Activity Status, Community Activity, and Friends List.
- News - news from Stardock about new product releases and other information.
- Games - view a list of games available to join in and play against other people on the Internet.
- Achievements - lists the achievements you have earned for supported games.
- Rankings - lists player rankings for supported games.
- Friends - add friends from the Impulse community, track their activities on Impulse's blogs, forums and more.
- Chat - join in live IRC (Internet Relay Chat) with the Impulse community, friends, skinning community, and
even Stardock support and developers. Supports both public and private chat rooms.
- Forums - read and post messages on a number of message forums for Stardock and other software publishers,
games, Windows software and computer topics.
- Community - read blog articles from the Impulse community.
- Drivers (i.e. ATI, NVIDIA) - Impulse will detect your video card and display options to download
the latest video drivers from the manufacture. This allows you to keep your Windows video drivers up to date.
Often times, the video drivers get out of date and are the root
cause of many issues with software not running correctly. If you do not have a video card that supports
either brand, you will not see this tab.
My Impulse
if you do not have a blog on Impulse, then you will see a screen to "Create your Blog". If you would like to create a blog, simply enter the "Blog Site Address" you would like (i.e. johndoe.impulsedriven.net), the "Blog Name" (i.e. Joe's Opinions on World Politics) and a "Blog Description" describing what this blog is about. Click "create your blog" and if the address is already taken, it will prompt you to enter a different desired address. This is the address you can give to people to visit your blog site, which is a web site. Creating & managing a blog on Impulse is free.
If you would rather read the "Latest Articles", they are listed in a pane on the lower right side.
If you do have a blog on Impulse, then you will see your profile information, a list of Featured Articles, Activity Board, Activity Status, Community Activity, and Friends List. You may need to scroll down to see everything.
Near the top of the Impulse window, but below the navigation bar is a menu with these options:
Action |
What it does |
|
<profile name> |
Displays the Impulse (Stardock.net) username (i.e. TheProf77) currently logged into the Impulse
Community website. If you have an Impulse blog, clicking your profile name (green link) will display information about your blog(s). |
| Home |
Clicking this will return you to the main Community page. |
|
Account |
Allows you to view/edit your Impulse (Stardock.net) account, including:
Profile - displays information such as: your real name, phone, address, website, other personal
information, gamers tag, instant message network ID's, etc..
Login - change username and/or password.
Images - avatar, personal, and desktop.
Options - include displaying your email address (not shown by default), and subscribe / unsubscribe to free mailing lists.
Registrations - lists purchased products with serial numbers, download
links, and end date (software subscriptions).
|
|
Friends |
A shortcut to your "Friends" page (same as "Friends" on sub-menu), which lists your friends on
Impulse and their activity. |
|
Create Your Blog Today! |
Create a blog for display on Impulse - you will be prompted for the blog site address, name and description.
(If you already have a blog, you will not see this option. Instead you will see the links "Blog"
(displays your blog) and "Manage Articles" in your blog.) |
| Blog |
Displays the blogs you have written on your Impulse based blog.
(If you do not have a blog on Impulse, you will not see this option.) |
| Manage Articles |
Lists the blog articles you have written with options to: View, Referrals, Edit and Delete the selected blog article.
(If you do not have a blog on Impulse, you will not see this option.) |
|
Forums |
A shortcut to the Impulse "Forums" tab (same as on the sub-menu) displaying
the forums page. |
|
Logoff |
On the far right, will log you out of the Impulse Community website. Log back in by entering
your login information (i.e. Username, Password) in the upper right
corner & clicking "Log In". |
News
The News tab displays the latest news releases (i.e. Top Story, Latest News) and announcements
from Stardock. Clicking on either the Top Story headline or "More >>"
will open the full news article inside the Impulse window. After reading
the full story, click the back arrow to return the to main page or click .
Tip: Because Impulse is using a web browser, you can also right-click on a page & click the
"Back" or "Forward" options.
Scrolling to the bottom of the news page reveals past news articles and "Archives".
Clicking on any of the news title links, will display the full news article. Clicking on any
links within the news piece, will take you to that site. Clicking the "More >>"
link will display past news items in an expanded view.
Games
Clicking the "Games" tab will display a list of games in progress on the Internet that you can join, if you have the game installed. This is a newer feature and will grow with time. (As of 4/09 only Demigod and The Political Machine 2008 supported this feature.) If no games are available, you will see a blank screen with a message about what to do. Some games on the internet are run on dedicated servers, which people join. While other games allow you to host your own game from your computer (server like), which allows you and people from the internet to join. The terms "host" or 'hosted games' and "server" are used interchangeably in this section.
The list of Available Games (or people hosting games) includes the following columns: Game (i.e. Demigod), Type (i.e. game type within Demigod), Map (i.e. current map being played in that game), Host (i.e. name of person hosting the game), Players X/Y (i.e. number of players (X) in the game / maximum number of players (Y) server can support), and Status (i.e. Waiting, In Progress, Full, ...). Clicking on the column heading (i.e. Game, Type, Map, ...) will sort the listing by that column. For instance, clicking the column heading for "Host" will sort the Available Games list by the name of the Host in alphabetical order (A-Z), clicking it again will reverse the sort order (Z-A).
To join a game, select it and click the 
button. This will launch the game and connect you to that hosted game. If you do not see the Join button, the game host may be password protected or full.
Near the top of the Impulse window are options to view which games (you have installed) to "Filter" the games by:
- Clicking on the pull-down menu next to "Games" will list which games (i.e. Demigod, Political Machine 2008) will be displayed in the listing. This will affect which game you join when clicking "Instant Action".
- Clicking on the pull-down menu to the right of the game menu allows you to filter by type of game (i.e. for Demigod: Any, Conquest, Flag Control, Slaughter, Structured Defense).
Clicking on the "Filter Options" menu allows you to filter (view only) the game servers with these choices:
- No Password Protected Games - if checked, filter out games not password protected. If a host requires a password, you must know it otherwise you cannot join the game.
- Friends' Games - if checked, filters out games not hosted by your friends.
- Open Games - if checked, lists only games that are not full.
- New Game Notification - (checked by default) you will be notified of new games that match your filter options while you are in chat.
Clicking in the Search box allows you to type in a server name you want to find.
Other options include:
- Instant Action - first tries to connect to the hosted game to see if it is not full yet since the last update. Then if not full, it launches the selected game and adds you to it in multiplayer mode. For some games (i.e. Demigod) there is some match-making involved in which server it adds you too. While other games (i.e. The Political Machine 2008) just connects you to the first free game it finds.
- Create - will launch the selected game so you can host your own game server so people can join.
- Refresh - updates the list of hosted games on the internet.
Achievements
This will list any achievements you have unlocked in the selected game. If no achievements have been unlocked, nothing will be listed except a message stating that.
Rankings
This allows you to view players stats based on various filter criteria. Use filters to select the game (i.e. Demigod), and type of game (i.e. for Demigod: Overall, Tournament, Map, Entity, Team, Skirmish). The third pull-down filter menu is related to the game type. For instance, for Demigod, selecting "Map", allows you to select which map (i.e. Cateract, Crucible, Exile, ...).
Clicking on a player name in the list on the left, displays detailed stat's on the right. Clicking "Website" displays the website stat's for that game.
