Elemental: April FAQ

Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

Elemental: April FAQ

Greetings!

First, thank you everyone who in previous journal entries who have submitted questions to be answered. Anything that reduces my work load makes me happy. Frankly, eating and breathing on my own is a continuing resentment.

So let’s dive right in:

Q: Does the Gamestop acqusition of Impulse affect the free expansions to the Elemental universe customers of War of Magic were promised?

A: Not in the slightest. Stardock Entertainment is a separate business (Stardock Entertainment, Inc.) from Impulse (Impulse, Inc.).

Q: Where does War of Magic stand?

A: We’re still working on v1.2 of it. Without getting too technical, the memory issues that the game has boil down to what is called heap fragmentation. Sins of a Solar Empire pre-allocates its memory and then dishes it out from there. Elemental: War of Magic grows and shrinks in real-time. Over time, memory becomes fragmented and eventually a block can’t be allocated. There are differences between Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 on how this is handled as well as very different effects based on how much memory is on a given video card and the driver model in question. Suffice to say, that’s why v1.2 is taking awhile is that we really want to do it right.

Q: What happens to War of Magic after v1.2?

A: v1.3 is being developed concurrently with v1.2. That’s because v1.3 is pure features so v1.2’s delays don’t affect that. It just means that v1.3 will come out a lot closer after v1.2 than originally planned.

Q: If Fallen Enchantress is in development, why continue with War of Magic?

A: There’s a lot of mundane reasons. But when the beta program for Fallen Enchantress starts, users are going to quickly realize that Fallen Enchantress isn’t an expansion pack. It’s like like Dark Avatar was to GalCiv II. It’s radically different. The second reason is that War of Magic has a lot of potential to continue into the future on its own track. The third reason is just because we like working on it. Our games are labors of love. Smile

Q: When will Fallen Enchantress be done?

A: We don’t have a set complete time. The full team is working on FE right now other than myself and my mini team which is working on v1.2/v1.3. We are not going to have an early public beta of Fallen Enchantress. Its beta will come out largely feature complete. So right now, it’s likely to be a Fall 2011 thing but it could be later. The requirement for Fallen Enchantress is it won’t be released until we are certain it be an overwhelmingly positive experience for our customers. To that end, we have eliminated as many conflicts to that objective such as sacrificing a retail date for it.

Q: Are the hardware requirements for Fallen Enchantress going to be the same as War of Magic?

A: Fallen Enchantress will use Pixel Shader 3 instead of Pixel Shader 2. One of the reasons for this is because Pixel Shader 2 drastically restricted the amount of environmental texturing we could do (i.e. brown brown brown) in Elemental: War of Magic. In Fallen Enchantress, we want the world to be visually much more enchanting and interesting and not be restricted by a hardware requirement (the current pixel shader version is v5.0 to put things in perspective). DirectX 9c is still the standard used here.

Q: Any news on the modding front?

A: Yes. Jon Shafer and I have been working on the mini-campaigns for Elemental: Destiny’s Embers. And so as we work on those we uncover weaknesses in the modding tools that we have been trying to get addressed which in turn should make modding even easier in the future.

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By Frogboy on April 5, 2011 5:10:45 AM from JoeUser Forums

Greetings!

First, thank you everyone who in previous journal entries who have submitted questions to be answered. Anything that reduces my work load makes me happy. Frankly, eating and breathing on my own is a continuing resentment.

So let’s dive right in:

Q: Does the Gamestop acqusition of Impulse affect the free expansions to the Elemental universe customers of War of Magic were promised?

A: Not in the slightest. Stardock Entertainment is a separate business (Stardock Entertainment, Inc.) from Impulse (Impulse, Inc.).

I purchased the boxed version of E:WoM, which on the box simply says "Note: online activation required for updates". If Impulse, Inc. and Stardock Entertainment, Inc. are separate entities why have sales@stardock.com informed me that deleting my Impulse account also prevents me from activating a product I purchased from Stardock? Am I able to continue to use a product I purchased from Stardock if I have my Impulse account deleted? Will I also require an Impulse account to activate and use Fallen Enchantress?

Account deletion is a permanent and serious matter, and because of this we cannot permanently delete account information without a signed written request. In order to have your account deleted, please do the following:

-Write a letter indicating your full name, address, and e-mail address (as listed on the account)
-Acknowledge (in writing) that you understand that deleting your account will:
-Revoke access to all software and games, for both downloads and activation.
-Disqualify you from receiving technical support for your purchases.
-Remove your access to all Stardock and Impulse online services (forums, etc.)
-Be a permanent action, and can not be restored in the future for any reason.
All of the above must be written out in the letter.
-Sign and date the letter
-Mail it to:

Stardock Corporation
Re: Account Deletion
15090 N Beck RD
Plymouth, MI 48170-3770

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To my knowledge, your account with Impulse is the same as your Stardock account. Impulse was just the digital distrubution center of Stardock's products. So you aren't just simply deleting your Impulse account, you're deleting your Stardock account and all privilages thereof. I think the deal is that when you delete your account, you are deleting the proof of ownership of the products you have from Stardock. And since Stardock has no obligation to someone who has no proof of ownership, it is perfectly reasonable (imo) that all access be denied to their services. So again I suggest you just uninstall and forget about it for now, as at a later point in time, you may wish to reinstall to get some of those updates or activate that future game.

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Quoting Rath3130,

reply 77

So tell me, have you ever seen Star Trek: The Next Generation? Know of Captain Picard? Patrick Stewart probably has the best facepalm technique of all time.. However, I'm quite certain I just gave him a run for his money after reading your post RussW. The simplist solution for you in my opinion: uninstall impulse, and move onward towards tomorrow with your chin held high my friend.

To my knowledge, your account with Impulse is the same as your Stardock account. Impulse was just the digital distrubution center of Stardock's products. So you aren't just simply deleting your Impulse account, you're deleting your Stardock account and all privilages thereof. I think the deal is that when you delete your account, you are deleting the proof of ownership of the products you have from Stardock. And since Stardock has no obligation to someone who has no proof of ownership, it is perfectly reasonable (imo) that all access be denied to their services. So again I suggest you just uninstall and forget about it for now, as at a later point in time, you may wish to reinstall to get some of those updates or activate that future game.

You missed the point; the question is why does the information with Stardock get deleted if Stardock is a separate entity from Impulse.

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Quoting Gwenio1,

reply 78

You missed the point; the question is why does the information with Stardock get deleted if Stardock is a separate entity from Impulse.

No, I got the point. My opinion is still quite valid to his question. Also, the letter he qoutes answers his own inquiry.. Stardock isn't just a gaming company, which is Stardock Entertainment inc. It is a corporation, with many moving parts (unless my understanding is incorrect), thus your Stardock account, isn't just a Stardock Entertainment/Impulse account, it is a global Stardock Corporation(who holds the proprietary license of Impulse inc) account. Either way, many people are overreacting to this Impulse/Gamestop deal. So my point is this.. The hassle of deleting the account isn't worth the end result. Just uninstall it and it is as good as gone for as long as you wish it to be, with always the option of reinstalling. It is a win/win. Gone when you don't want it, but still there for when you may want it in the future. However, to those wishing to make some sort of ideological statement by deleting their account, it will not matter if someone is trying to help by injecting reason into the situation. They will do what they will do.

It was my hope that RussW, and I'm certain there are others out there, who maybe hadn't thought of the solution that I had suggested in my post. And that they would see what was written, and maybe..just maybe take my advice and avoid the entire sticky situation outright. And that is my opinion on this matter, I could be wrong, and someone may have an even better solution to the situation, or Frogboy himself could chime in and answer the question directly. Either way, moving on.

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Did someone say my name?

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New FAQ Question: Will there be a comprehensive manual for FE and, if so, in which ways will this differ from the WOM's manual?

A: ?

It will be comprehensive !?

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Quoting mqpiffle,

reply 58

Here's my concern:

I paid $50 six months ago for a mediocre game.

The way development is going now, in six more months, hopefully I will get a good (or better) game which is similar (but not the same) as the game I originally purchased. So right now I own a mediocre game and a chance at getting a better game. Right now you have happy devs, but unhappy gamers and unhappy modders. (I speak in general terms here, not speaking for anyone specifically.)

If Stardock had applied all of it's vast resources into making WoM a better game, I am 100% certain that by now we would be playing a good (or better) game, the gamers would be happy, the devs would be happy, and the modders would be happy.

The fact that Brad and co. want to make things better is a noble and righteous cause, and I believe they will do it. I'm just feeling like my investment into his vacation home (or whatever) is not turning out so well for me.

Also, what does " The second reason is that War of Magic has a lot of potential to continue into the future on its own track." mean? Does "own track" mean with SD guidance and development or does it mean on its own with the tools available to modders (which apparently isn't very much if anything from what little I know.)

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Kantok

Join Date 10/2007

+67

Quoting alborrelli,

reply 82

+10 seeing as Froggy keeps saying that money's not an issue and they they want(ed) to get WOM right, I still fail to see why the hurry to do FE when WOM is still in the state it is in. I'm putting my money on 1.3 being the last thing officially worked on/released.

Also, what does " The second reason is that War of Magic has a lot of potential to continue into the future on its own track." mean? Does "own track" mean with SD guidance and development or does it mean on its own with the tools available to modders (which apparently isn't very much if anything from what little I know.)

Frogboy has already said that he'll wait to see the community reception to 1.3 before deciding to take WOM farther. If the forums are inundated with non-constructive criticism they'll move on to solely FE. Or at least that was my impression.

He has also stated that WOM would (and has) split to be its own branch of the code base and will be developed on its own merits (which partially ties back into my first point). As long as they're getting constructive criticism and working with the community to improve WOM, WOM will have some development support apart from FE.

That's my impression from the various things he's said over the last few months anyway.

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Here's my suggestion: Don't even mention a release date for Fallen Enchantress. Don't do it.

Don't!! Do what Blizzard does: "It's ready when it's ready".

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 15

Quoting Aeon221, reply 10Ballsy move selling Impulse. Seems odd that someone who was previously a champion of the conglomerate model has rejected it so thoroughly.

I mean, you've said a million times that you derived significant advantages from having multiple income streams (desktop apps, publishing, retail, games). Why the sudden urge to dump one of the fastest growing segments? I suppose not wanting to run a big company makes sense, but there's no reason you couldn't have pulled a founder fadeback like the Twitter guy did and hire a biz guy to CEO while you focus on the fun stuff (and own the joint). And why a sale rather than spinning the company off as an independent entity or firewalling it from the development company (which presumably was already in effect, since Impulse Inc exists)?

Pots of money is a damned good reason, but it doesn't seem like that's the driving force here when you're out and out saying that being huge isn't appealing. Anyway, Impulse was presumably generating pots of money all on its own, so that's doubly implausible.

And that Joystiq interview did not ask any interesting questions.

I guess the quick answer is to ask everyone here a question: How many different things can you focus on at once?

Let's look at War of Magic as one example. Why did it suck at launch? Lack of money? Nope. We could have delayed it. Lack of time? Nope, it had 3 years of development. So you tell me, why did War of Magic suck at release?

To answer that you need to really make sure you're not looking at Stardock as "a company" but rather a collection of individuals. People matter.

On GalCiv II and Sins of a Solar Empire, myself, Brian Clair (former editor of Avault) and countless others were focused ONLY on those games. That's it.

By the time Demigod rolled around, we were spending huge amounts of time on Impulse instead. Why? Because it was making a ton of money.

People are always saying how they would reject empire building their company and instead focus on making excellent things. But they reject the premise that others would do that too. I don't want to put too fine a point on this but I'm already rich and have been for a long time. But even I got tempted to focus on Impulse because it's so successful.

You know what is key to making great stuff? People. It's not the money. You have to have really talented people and if you spread them too thin, well, you've seen the results.

You know what I go to do this weekend? I got to spend it evaluating hash table fragmentation. For me, that's wonderful. I haven't got to spend time debugging anything in a long time. Normally, I'd be approving contracts for new publishers or looking over proposed Impulse Weekend promotions.

Then you have the people who say "Why not just hire out for that?" We're in Michigan. I haven't even been able to find a qualified lead game developer for Stardock. Barring relocating to Dallas, Boston, Seattle, San Fran or LA, we knew what we'd need to do.

Sorry to ramble but hopefully this helps.

I'm graduating from Penn in May, an Ivy League school. I also have background in the business as well. Email me if you're looking to hire someone. I'll make the company more successful and people that work there even happier. You should have told me you needed people to hire. I'll even relocate!

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Curious how much Impulse banked for...

About Brad selling; consider this:

-. Your love for the industry stems from programming.
-. Your bank account >= 3 million (i.e. settled for life).
-. You own a company that makes heaps of money and grows fast.
-. The quarterly reports mean not much more then a highscore anymore.
-. 2011 was suppossed to be a sabatical year allowing you to do what you love.
-. The company growing means lots of worries and headaches with not gaining anything in return that you didnt allready have.
-. The company growing keeps you from doing what you want to do.
-. Letting go of the people in the company is the hard part.
-. You want to see your puppy end up with responsible owners that have loads of resources to provide it with all the walks and attention it needs and takes all the kids from the neighboorhood in along with the puppy because the helped raise it.
-. Letting go allows you to do what you love (some like to sail the world others like to hide in a closet, blinds closed and program all night).

That's my what I get from reading what Brad says (heh I may be way off, welcome on the internet), especially with fincancials not being a concern in his life anymore, I fully understand it and would have done the same (shame my bloody company did not yield me anything close to even being allowed to make the same decision so im stuck with running it).

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I and my friend just wish they fix the mutiplayer christ sacks what is taking so long to make add abilty to make mutiplayer into a full singleplayer exprince with large maps or bigger, custom factions, and full singleplayer exprince.

I see no point in buy or getting or caring about expasions till then and i even preordered could care less for free exapsion.

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Question: Does Stardock's development plans include an RPG game? aka, an updated Baldar's Gate style game.

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Quoting Edwin99,

reply 88

Question: Does Stardock's development plans include an RPG game? aka, an updated Baldar's Gate style game.

now why would they go and do that just now? lol they'll keep us in the dark just to keep us wondering.

besides FE is suppose to be more RPG like then EWOM is, at least that's the vibe I'm getting from reading all the developer stuff

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Quoting Rath3130,

reply 77

Perhaps you failed to read my post properly. My copy of Elemental is a boxed copy, not a digital download. I did not purchase my copy of Elemental from Impulse, I purchased it from Stardock. In addition, my Impulse account is not proof of purchase (as I didn't purchase from Impulse), my Stardock receipt is my proof of purchase. I wont bother finding it, but there is a thread here somewhere where Frogboy says that Impulse is not simply the distribution arm of Stardock, but is in fact a separate corporate entity. Oh, it was this thread. (facepalm)

Well, my friend, I appreciate the advice you give but I will decline to follow it. I do not find the process of having my Impulse account deleted to be particularly onerous, and to be frank, I will not particularly miss playing Elemental. I was hoping to try Fallen Enchantress but apparently will have to forgo that experience. Thanks for your....help?

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I feel pretty disappointed with him selling Impulse off, not necessarily because of any lack of trust for Gamestop, I feel neutral concerning them, I liked the fact an independent game company owned an independent digital distribution company. Valve/Steam - Impulse/Stardock.

After surfing about this business transaction, a lot of people are "Oh no, I'm sticking to Steamzzz111!" I have an understanding why, considering Gamestop barely sells PC games in most of their store outlets, but if I'm right, their move to purchase Impulse is to fill in this gaping void in their empire.

I still liked Frogboy being the owner of Impulse though.

In actual, true seriousness, "Brad" better not fuck up Galactic Civilizations 3 because, that's what made Stardock a reality... So I'd like to see my Galactic Civilizations 5 have tactical invasions like Master of Orion 3...

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Impulse was the first place I checked for games because I wanted to support Stardock...

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I admit it, I'm dredging up the past https://forums.elementalgame.com/391708 , but I did my homework before making a post of my own... I just finished the campaign. End of book I. I've read all this stuff about Fallen Enchantress and how it's a totally different game and changes a lot of things but Brad and StarDock will continue to work and EwoM. I've read that mods are being added and 1.2 and 1.3 will make a ton of changes. I remembered reading something right from Brad about Book 2 and I found this https://forums.elementalgame.com/395485 thread and it talks about "Cerena" as does a post from a few days earlier (September 3rd) which also talks about Book 3 https://forums.elementalgame.com/395131 - These were easy to find using the search function and the words "book", "book 1", "book I", "book II"... and then adding Cerena into the mix.

so what I've read is that Fallen Enchantress has taken a majority of StarDock's team. The sale of Impulse brought a lot of chatter in, and while I haven't been active in the forums, I have been visiting for 5 or 6 months now. I'm extremely impressed with Brads honesty and the way he speaks to us directly, explaining why things are the way the are. I could gush all about it, but it's all been said before. Brad started this thread, and replies on the first page to say

We all know the things about WOM that didn't go right. I don't think there's much disagreement in that either. That's one reason why I want to still spend *my* time on WOM.

(I'm sorry, I lack the sleep and the technical skills to properly link to that response without losing what I've already typed). So I've written this out of tense, and as if I'm speaking to the public, but I guess I am really directing this to Brad and the other StarDock employees who read these forums. I understand the reasons behind the sale of Impulse. It frees you up to focus on the things you want to focus on. What I don't understand is why Fallen Enchantress was introduced into an unstable environment that included employees being laid off. Somehow in my gap between (my own fault) between purchasing the game RIGHT after Christmas (before dec. 31st so I could get the expansions free and because I had gift $$ to spend) and now, I missed the logic behind Fallen Enchantress. Brad has explained to death the reasons why pushing back the release of EwoM wouldn't have changed much, if anything, that happened following the release. I understand most of it. A lot of lessons were learned the hard way. I don't intend to re-hash those things...

summing all that sleep deprived rambling up, why are StarDock resources being used on a new/different game when EwoM still has at least two Books waiting to be written/compiled/debugged. if it isn't for the money, and as said multiple times StarDock isn't one of those "big name" companies that has to answer to share-holders... if the employees are there because they love making great games, and Brad says

I want WOM to redeem itself. I know FE will be excellent. But I want WOM to get a lot better too.

why is this other game even in that sentence, getting in the way? I know posting release dates for things is a double edged sword, I'm not asking for dates for Books 2 and 3, I'm asking why they are being held back for a different game...

it's right there in Brads own words:

To answer that you need to really make sure you're not looking at Stardock as "a company" but rather a collection of individuals. People matter. - we were spending huge amounts of time on Impulse instead. - You have to have really talented people and if you spread them too thin, well, you've seen the results.

so replace the word Impulse in the above abbreviation with the words Fallen Enchantress... I could keep going but I'm sure everyone gets the point by now (unless my ramblings are worse than Brads... lol)

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Interesting point Hybridvitae. They've put the cart before the horse here.

I wish War of Magic would be completed before gamestop takes over Impulse. It would have been nice to final update E:WOM into a working fun state before canceling my Impulse account. I don't mind missing out on Fallen Enchantress so much. At this point I just want the game I paid for (had planned on purchasing E:FE as well, despite it being free for me). But SD had shifted priority in order to get an expansion/new game out within a year. I am doubtful that E:WOM will be completed before gamestop takes over Impulse. E:WOM still has memory and content problems. And the rest of the campaigns and Destiny's Embers material have still not been added. SD talked a big game, but in the end they reduced post sale support for E:WOM in order to focus on another title. Just like everyone else.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

Q: Does the Gamestop acqusition of Impulse affect the free expansions to the Elemental universe customers of War of Magic were promised?
A: Not in the slightest. Stardock Entertainment is a separate business (Stardock Entertainment, Inc.) from Impulse (Impulse, Inc.).

I understand all of that, but what I want to know is if there is a problem, what is Stardock prepared to do about it? Do you have an alternate digital delivery system, or will you ship game discs to all of your customers, or what?

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I'm kind of glad FE will be completely different/seperate from WoM. WoM kinda sucked, hate to say it, but there it is. Sadly, it still sucks.

I was pretty peeved at game launch being as I paid 30 Queen Heads (that's Pounds Sterling to non-English folk) and the game was fairly shoddy. Thankfully Stardock have a ton of my goodwill thanks to their community interactions and previous games (Gal Civ, Sins) so I'm really hoping they nail FE and make it the game WoM should have been.

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I'm glad its going to be a stand alone too. There were some fundamental things in WoM that could have been done differently and I think Jon, Toby, and Kael will create a more interesting, balanced, and polished product with FE.

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They made a good move to hire Kael, I mean look at the work he did with the FFH2 mod for Civ4

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Great! This gives me time to get a new computer! Right now I'm stuck on my old Toshiba Tecra with 16MB video memory, 512 MB RAM, and a sub-gig processor (I don't even bother remembering the frequency)

Fall will be just fine.

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Are we, the consumer, ever gonna see this game finished? Anytime soon maybe? It has been over half a year since you release it. What the hell, really! You should have dumped your time into this game immediately been done within a month and moved on to other endeavors; however, you have slowly putzed around with this game, while making an expansion and working on other projects. WOW! I wish you would have just waited til it was done to release it. If it would have taken you another 6-7 months to fix it we wouldn't have known or cared. But you didn't and so we do. I am so damn frustrated with you guys I can scream. I keep seeing all these forum updates on all the <touchy feel good> stuff about how wonderful you think stuff is and how great this guy is or that guy or we are working on this and that. Get off your asses and get it done already. God, I would have fired the lot of you already for your inability to fix this game. I don't am not even sure I am gonna play the frigging game when you get it done at this point. I sure as hell am not gonna purchase another thing from you at this rate. I have had to alter, rewrite and change so much of this game on my own to make it palatable and have become so familiar with it's layout I could have finished it for you in my spare time. Here is a suggestion on your next release of a game: Hi we haven't worked to much on this and we really don't give a damn if you like it or not, but here is the open source code, fix it up, make it work and submit the finished work back to us so we can then sell it. We will even give you a forum's high five, pat on the back as we rake in the money. I really really hope you get your act together and finish this up before the end of April. That is 12 days to write some code, wrap it up and finish it. Work 3 - 4 days straight on this without looking at other projects and you will be surprise to see how little time it actually took you to finish. Good luck because you will need it.

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