Yea, some bugs are really difficult to fix in public builds because they're so crippled. The best way to get them fixed is to move forward to where users are closer to using the same build we have.
Well I think the issue is that multiplayer should be done right. Either don't do it or do it right. If you want to know who does multiplayer right it's Blizzard. Any of you in the Starcraft 2 beta? THAT is how you do it and that's how we're doing it as well. It costs a lot more $$$ to do it right (because we have to provide a server for every single game) but it eliminates so much hassle. Imagine how things would gone with Demigod or Sins if it were done this way.&
Tormy: I lied. Turns out that we won't be able to do that as long as we've got the graphics engine disabled for beta users. They're related.
I will be the first to say that multiplayer is not going to be central to Elemental. It's only in there because we keep getting flack for not including multiplayer with our TBS games. It'll be reliable because we're spending the bucks to host on our own machines each and every game (except for those who choose to set up their own games who, one presumes, know what they're doing). But I wouldn't be willing to sacrifice a single day delay or a even one single player game f
[quote who="Peace Phoenix" reply="322" id="2617891"] Are people here really that ignorant about Steam. You can just go into your game folder and launch it via the startup .exe and never have to even start Steam. Does this work like that for games that are using STEAMWORKS? Can STEAMWORKS work without any STEAM client launched by any means (even by a startup.exe)?[/quote] No. Games that use Steamworks require the Steam store/DRM client to be running. This is why
[quote who="Darvroth" reply="12" id="2617412"] Quoting Frogboy, reply 10 Or it might declare war (or ask for peace) because the data it's using to determine its relations with you is slightly off. I have a distasteful response to this portion of the bad data. It is frustrating beyond belief to have the AI conduct diplomacy via random events. I'd suggest that diplomatic data not be included in the bad data for the AI to ensure a mor
[quote who="Maktaka" reply="8" id="2617378"]When you say 'randomly bad data', would this be like imagining there being a non-existent resource on the map and planting a city near it to harvest it, or over/underestimating the amount of a resource available at a real location? I'd expect the latter to be more human-like, since we have a tendency to mis-read or mis-remember information and make bad judgments because of it. Although you may have something else in mind entirely.[/quote] So
[quote who="Ryan Hanson" reply="6" id="2617361"]Brad, given that it seems you intend for the AI to make minimal use of crude bonuses to be a challenge, how do you intend to differentiate the difficulty levels? Will there actually be an attempt made for the AI to play "dumber" or "smarter" at the different levels? Or will it be one level of "intelligence" with resource bonuses/handicaps to differentiate the levels?[/quote] I'm looking at two things to distinguish difficulty
The Empire has buildings too. Just not as many.
We're moving forward to beta 2. Based on reports, it's working pretty well for most people. It makes more sense to deal with edge cases during Beta 3 when the full engine is on.
Meat farms has promise. :)
[quote]Good post...but is it possible that releasing across multiple platforms (steam, Impulse, D2D) would cause a split in the community? Wouldn't it make sense to choose one service, and then focus on integrating the community features into that? Obviously I don't know what they mean yet by "community features",,,but if it's a place where mods are released to and easily accessed and installed from - it seems like one centralized location would make the most sense. [/quote]
[quote]What if Steam was just the best option? What other services allow sharing game saves across multiple computers, installing to different machines, unlimited download of the game/patches, access to the community and other players from within the game, and a way for a huge number of potential clients to be reached and purchase your product? Does Impulse really offer all that?[/quote] Well first off, selecting Impulse (to answer your question) would still allow you to sell it
[quote]Some of the FFH civs do have different game mechanics. One of the dwarven civs has its happiness tied to its treasury. Another civ was limited to only 4 cities but they were super cities. There's a vampire civ I never played, but you basically fed off your city's population. That sort of thing.[/quote] Those are some great distinctions. FFH = FTW. Awesome stuff.
That 2K response just as easily applies to any number of options. If game updating and mod handling was their primary concern, there were plenty of other options that wouldn't have required bundling a third party store with the game.
I like that. Guildsmen. I also like Magistrate or something too.
@Xan While it's true that Beta 3 marks the 90 day or so clock (barring stability issues) we're still currently in beta 1. The purpose of beta 1 was simply to work out the game philosophy with you guys which we did. I'll create another article on this in fact to illustrate how much beta feedback meant. But the goal of beta 1 was not to create the full game as cloth map because frankly, we can't. There are some things that we really need the full engine in order to
[quote]Yes, most of the historical strategy games don't have big differences between factions. But fantasy games, for example MoM and the Fall from Heaven mod for Civ4, have them.[/quote] The Fall from Heaven mod is a great mod but from what I remember, each faction doesn't have completely different game mechanics. The different factions in Elemental will be fairly distinct from one another but it'll be based on what talents and other faction strengths/weaknesses. Those choice
1. Beta 2. 2. Beta 2 should be out "soon". :)
[quote who="KickACrip" reply="2" id="2614487"]If it wasn't Microsoft, do you think another company would of done something similar? [/quote] Absolutely. Every for-profit company that's remotely ambitious goes about trying to maximize their market share. The issue isn't Microsoft. The issue are the stakeholders of a given platform giving up their stake in exchange for short-term benefit. Word Perfect, Lotus, and many others abandoned their OS/2 efforts to support W
[quote]Thanks for posting...but how does Impulse differ from Steam with those points? Sure Impulse may not have 70% of the share, but..isn't expanding and acquiring more users a goal of Impulse? When I bought GalCiv 2 the first week it came out, and then after moving/losing the case and tried to install it from the game disks 2 years later, I suddenly found myself with a very closed product that wouldn't allow me to update. The option Impulse gives
From reading this thread, there's a lot of people talking past each other. If I might summarize the objections and issues: You basically have 3 groups from as far as I can tell. Group 1: Doesn't like Steam. Some had problems with it Some object to being hassled when playing the game (i.e. it really wants the player to be connected to the net when the game is started). Some object to having an extra client running in ord
Nothing can stop it other than downloading tonight's update which should remove the giant icons.
@DeCypher. Steam clearly does not have a chokehold on the PC digital distribution market. If it did, everyone would have to put their titles on it to be commercially viable. According to Valve, they have 25 million accounts. That's about the number of *consumer* PCs that Dell ships each year. It's about the amount of unique visitors Gamespot.com gets per day. Steam has a huge lead in digital distribution and is likely to lead for the foreseable future, perhap
Steamworks is architected according to their business model. Prior to Steamworks, if you wanted that kind of functionality (matchmaking, accounts, DRM, etc.) you had to pay $ per unit (whether it be to GameSpy or SecuROM or whomever). Steamworks pays for itself by bundling the store. I don't object to Valve doing that. I object to Steam fans who assert that it technically had to be done that way. It didn't have to be that way. As a greedy capitalist, I am