Mental health is pretty much the first thing cut in a spending crisis and the last thing funded in a surplus here in America. I I can't speak for your nation, but I will say I wish America did more for their mentally ill. Mostly we send them to prison or make them live on the streets.
The problem is, most often the mentally ill can't make any money. Which means, in the US they would get left out, big time. Sure there are mentally ill in prison here, but Australia is not quite so capitalistic on a few major things, including services and support for those who can't afford to pay for themselves, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, and deferred undergraduate uni fees until high enough income to start paying them off. I myself am a beneficiary of social security, and am half-way through a course at uni at the moment. 
And as I said, it looks like mental health will get some more money here soon. Maybe you could check Australia out sometime? 
Best regards,
Steven.
Curious about something- would it have worked if you made the design and then made the engine fit the design?
Maybe, but in this universe that path wasn't chosen and it won't ever happen now. And part of the problem was the experience issue for this type of game - Stardock just didn't have it when producing WoM, but hopefully they'll have it for FE with the new team and the large game/project focus. When changing and learning, sometimes you make mistakes. It's just important that you don't repeat them, especially the big ones.
Best regards,
Steven.
Assuming they actually could make the engine fit the design in the budget allocated, probably. But making 3d engines is harder then it looks, which they learned. That's why it's so common to license one instead.
The dream pipeline is to have the engine 100% done (stable with all of the features required for the design) before any game-specific code is written. Closest you'll see to this is at the end of console cycles when devs have all the kinks worked out of the hardware and they have several games behind them.
On the opposite end of the "stuff likely to going wrong" spectrum is when a new game is trumpeting a brand new engine. The smaller guys AND large companies can have issues arise in this situation (the FF13 team sighted this as a top "Thing that went Wrong" in their post-mortem).
It never works that way. Talk to someone who worked on Master of Orion 3.
You have to have the engine and then you make the game for the engine. If you want to boil down WOM's teething problems into a very very simplistic summary it's that we thought we could make the engine to fit our design.
It's good that you're working on gameplay and that you're willing to take more of an interest in community feedback this time around.
What concerns me however is stability, EWOM at launch was only barely playable and it still has some problems with memory management, thread sync and performance now. So how are things looking under the hood with FE?
As someone who has put WoM down for a long time, this thread is very very positive. I occasionally check back to see how things are going and between 1.2 coming out (not really enough to pull me back in) and FE being discussed - I like the direction things are going.
Hey everybody, I'm new here, actually just picked up EWOM a couple days ago (after weeks of consideration) and have jumped right into the game with update v1.2. I'm not going to beat a dead horse and complain... in fact, I'm enjoying the game so far and have yet to really hit the limitations that most people mention.
My question is this, however: is there really much effort going in to improve EWOM at this point, or has the vast majority of SD's focus been shifted to FE? It just seems that most responses from Brad and the rest of the SD crew are super energized and optimistic when discussing FE, but gloomy and defeated when discussing EWOM. Ok, mistakes happen, but EWOM is not a total loss. Can I one day look forward to playing a healthier, more robust version of EWOM? Or am I simply going to have to purchase FE for that reality?
Thanks, guys!
I think that most of their game division is working on FE, with 3 or 4 people working on improving WoM. It's been my impression that it's a matter of pride/principle that WoM eventually be a fun game, in addition to FE.
I personally think that it's pretty commendable on their part, and has been a major part of my decision to support them throughout the process. Also, if you have WoM, you'll be getting a discount on FE.
Unless Brad throws in the towel EWOM will continue to improve. He could decide at any time to dedicate the resources to FE or other projects. I hope he doesn't do that - especially if the reason is because of negative forum comments. But at some point there are diminishing returns, especially once sales are at a point it's completely ridiculous to keep throwing money at it. Optimistically we get to enjoy an improving EWOM whilst FE is in development. Shortly before, or certainly once FE is out, I don't think there will be any further support for EWOM excepting the mod community of course.
IMHO I think they should release pre-Beta versions of FE with some kind of Report option built into that (maybe even at Engine level).
Ya know... something like "Microsoft Error reporting" but instead of waiting for a crash there would be a nice "BUTTON!" you can press.
Once you press it a window opens where you can type your comment on the Bug/Flaw/Bad Feature you don't like and send it to a central "Bugs Database".
Inside the message there would be also plenty of game data that techs could analize to check what was going on...
I think this would be a PLUS for SD if they decide to release pre-Beta versions of FE to the public AND would steer game development in the right direction (one that gamers approve).
Starcraft 2 has this feature when their game crashes, but we cannot compare Blizzard with SD 
And since WOM failed so miserably, does that mean that FE will have a nice discount for owners of wom?
In my opinion, it's not good enough to say that our game failed, put the money on the table for those that bought WOM because it's a stardock project and expected it to be awesome.
@Jalida
http://www.gamingnexus.com/Article/Elemental-Fallen-Enchantress-Interview/Item3050.aspx
And if you bought WoM after 12/31/2010 you will have a discount for FE.
This has been answered quite a lot of times. Here's all the price-related info on FE and WoM:
If you bought Elemental: War of Magic
- before October 31st 2010 :: You get Elemental: Fallen Enchantress and Elemental: <name not yet disclosed> for free.
- after October 31st 2010 but before December 31st 2010 :: You get Elemental: Fallen Enchantress for free.
- after January 2011 :: You get Elemental: Fallen Enchantress at a discount (so you pay about as much for it as you would from an expansion to a game).
EDIT: Oops this was answered in the above post already. Well, rather safe than sorry.
I followed the development of that title from the very beginning.
If anyone at SD wants to feel better about themselves with respect to E:WoM, then go read up on that title!
[comic book guy] Biggest...disappointment...ever...[/comic book guy]
I feel like I haven't been on this site in years! and I'm trying to take this all in at once lol However, I have a pretty big question.
- I am almost positive I ordered the game before october 31st. i think i bit in either early september or early october. Are these expansions going to be automatically sent to my address (as i requested disc and digital download) and if not, how will i receive them?
thank you!
FE sounds great guys, I love derek paxton, and fall from heaven so it really sounds like things are gonna be great!
Fallen Enchantress is digital only.
One big difference between the two was when WOM was in the works it seems like the focus was on creating an awesome engine. The excitement coming out from the company was on the amazing features of the engine and how easy it was to mod. So in effect when WOM was released we got this amazing engine, but it wasn't a very polished game.
With FE they have the engine and now the focus seems to be on a really solid game. Good tech trees, gameplay balance, and so on. This is why FE won't be another WOM.
So is FE really going to be more like MOM? This is pretty much what I think most of us wanted from the start. I don't know if you played X-Com, but I'm presuming you did. This is a link to a game (Xenonauts) coming out that is basically X-Com with improved graphics, and hopefully improved AI (its not out yet, but there is no way you can look at the screen shots and not think that this is just the old X-Com game taking advantage of the improvements in graphics and AI over the 15 years since its originally release. That's all that I wanted from Elemental. I've already told all of my friends and they are excited for Xenonauts. Just like I told all of my friends about how Elemental was going to be the MOM.
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