Frogboy

My advice is generally to wait for the demo. The updates so far (the 1.0x) series have been purely about engine fixes. The game itself hasn't really changed. v1.1 is the first version with substantial changes and that won't be out for a bit still. Like others have said, the game has massive potential. But it's going to take awhile for it to find itself. It's a good example of why we get sequels these days. It's really hard to create a AAA strategy game from scratch

This particular thread was hidden because it got fairly profane near the end. Often times, the post itself is fine but the comments get so derailed and problematic that there's no salvaging it. We generally prefer to lock threads that get out of hand but that isn't always possible.

[quote who="Peace Phoenix" reply="28" id="2799722"] Stardock policy: NO manager shall work fewer hours per week than anyone under their management including the CEO. If my guys were working 90 hours a week, I was working 100 hours a week. It was a bedrock principle. You do that for a few months and you'd be surprised at how "good" easier solutions start to look. Knowing when you productivity starts to be negative (ie you introduce more problems than you are fixing)

[quote who="Alstein" reply="138" id="2799693"]One thing I'm curious about- and a possible suggestion. Is Kumquat going to be just in-house, or are you going to try licensing it out? One potential idea: use free Kumquat in a way Valve is using Steamworks to get games on Impulse, maybe even exclusives? (maybe free if exclusive, cheap if you use it to sell on other DD platforms) [/quote] Ku

[quote who="Melamine" reply="137" id="2799640"] Quoting Frogboy, reply 136I'm a pretty big fan of FFH2. I realize many of you weren't in the beta but as the beta group can tell you, a lot of game mechanics in Elemental changed from the design. When you have a finished game engine to work with, it is much easier to design a good game because you know what you're working with. For that reason, very few studios create their own engines anymore. Middle

Also, I'm really not interested in discussing the game with people who believe we knowingly released something we didn't think was finished.

Those who feel our forums are a place to trash us need to find somewhere else. The behavior in this thread is disgusting.

The whole "knowingingly" thing is just, frankly, bizzarre. What exactly would be the motivatin to release Elemental before it was "finished"? The typical game industry reason why games are released early is because it would affect their public stock price if they slip a date. That is, "the street" (wallstreet) expects public company X to generate Y revenue during Z quarter. We're privately held. We have no such pressure.. We released the game because we honestly th

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="25" id="2799560"] Quoting Frogboy, reply 21...Why did that happen?... Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living". Your asking, let alone answering, your above question bodes well for Elemental's future, and upcoming SD games. I respect your 'the boss expects more from himself than his/her employees' philosophy. The bosses I've most respected led from the front, didn't ask of others what they wouldn't do themselves,

[quote]Only in the world of computer gaming could a reputable company release a KNOWINGLY DEFECTIVE PRODUCT and hope to survive in the marketplace, with the promise -- TRUST US -- We'll fix it later."[/quote] KNOWINGLY? How about you find some other forum to troll.

Great feedback. The multiplayer aspect of Elemental is something we plan to keep enhancing over time. I agree with the points you're making. One of the general changes that we're working on throughout the engine is a movement to a multithreaded event system. In time, this will allow both single player games and MP games to behave a lot smoother in general, especially on lower end hardware.

I always envisioned we would slowly evolve into a soft-core porn provider. That seems to be pretty mainstream. :)

[quote who="Delmoroth" reply="22" id="2799269"]Lol i know what you mean on the long shifts, though not quite that long most weeks. Worked about 6 months of 7 days a week, 12+ hours a day before i decided to tell my employer I had better things to do and went back to school.[/quote] The lack of global mana keeps us going with the "What the hell were we thinking???"

[quote who="MOIISKA" reply="14" id="2799211"]Quarter to Three sounds like 4Chan.[/quote] It didn't used to be. I became a member 8 years ago and for the first 6 or so years, it was an amazing place. My friend Tom Chick owns it and I used to help arrange get togethers at trade shows and Stardock would pay for dinner at many of them. It was a place for industry veterans to hang out. Then, a couple of years ago, the site got opened up to pretty much anyone who wante

[quote who="Pherdnut" reply="14" id="2799219"]You know, it's not so much the bugs that make me a little timid about making a purchase. It's the idea of really enjoying a core mechanic or really loving a certain unit or spell and then seeing that get changed or nerfed in favor of something I don't like as much. Part of me would rather just not know and come to enjoy the game once it's stabilized a bit more. It makes me wonder if it would be feasible to loosely couple game rules/bala

[quote who="Yigor" reply="12" id="2799206"]thank you all for your warm words , I beg you frogboy, make me smile again with a "perfect" elemental game experience![/quote] That is what I'm committed to. Next week, there will be announcement that will really demonstrates just how serious I am to making sure Elemental rocks. People are going to freak out.

Nick - non-global mana was the achille's heel of this. In the original design, global mana was a core game mechanic. Which isn't surprising since I ripped it er, I mean was inspired by Master of Magic on that. However, our engine was not able to allow unit actions to make use of global resources until v1.09. The mistake was thinking that we could turn mana into a local unit stat without it undermining the overall game mechanic. People nitpick this o

[quote who="MOIISKA" reply="18" id="2799195"]Frogboy: um, global mana pool and initiative based combat?[/quote] Global mana pool is in v1.1 and initiative based combat wont' show up until the expansion.

[quote who="cpl_rk" reply="17" id="2799164"] Quoting KillzEmAllGod, reply 16how has city spam been delt with in real life? It hasn't, there's like 6 billion people on the earth.[/quote] Yea but a lot of them are getting negative productivity penalties because of a lack of food resources.

I am thinking that Razing a city shouldn't require a technology.

I'm very much looking forward to a Dance with Dragons. I had the privilege to work with some of the editors at Del Rey who work on the Game of Thrones series. If you haven't read the Elemental related book, I recommend it (I'm biased but there are places you can tell the editing and tweaking was done by the same group).

The main things v1.1 is targeted to address are: City spam General AI crumminess Hero spam Crummy spells Your society's direction being determined by random resource placement General clean up of research trees General balancing of improvements and techs and monsters What v1.1 will NOT address but instead will come in the expansion: Tactical Battles Combat Syste

Well I won't say any comments on Tandis. But I will say there are supposed to be at least 2 more books in the series. It'll ultimately boil down to sales since a sequel being published will be determined on Random House's feelings on how well it sold. One thing people who have read the book could do to help is review the book on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Elemental-Destinys-Embers-Bradley-Wardell/dp/0345517865/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1286650477&sr=

I'm a pretty big fan of FFH2. I realize many of you weren't in the beta but as the beta group can tell you, a lot of game mechanics in Elemental changed from the design. When you have a finished game engine to work with, it is much easier to design a good game because you know what you're working with.

In v1.1, mana gets stored and has no mana cap. Thus, a cost of 15 isn't that big of a deal then.