Ben Yeoh

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="69" id="3332260"] Therefore, it makes more sense to put resources into other areas of the game. After LH, I don't plan to put any particular focus on modding in our future titles (not just Elemental games but any Stardock games). That isn't to say that they won't be moddable, it's just that there's insufficient ROI on creating tools and such specifically with modders in mind. [/quote] But won't such investment benefit

[quote quoting="post"] The goal is to have the Legendary Heroes beta out this week. It’s been held back mostly because we’re having trouble with the self-shadowing. Shadows are a pain in the butt. In Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, more engineering hours were spent on the self-shadowing than anything else. But ya gotta do it. It’s one of those uncanny valley things. [/quote] Can you share about some of the difficulties and problems yo

[quote who="AlienFromBeyond" reply="67" id="3330021"] Quoting Ben Yeoh, reply 55 It's clear that moddability to the extent that they expect is not going to be happen, simply because it takes too much effort to support that kind of flexibility from just a bunch of XML values. But Civ5 modding is the same and look at how much more interesting the modding scene there is.[/quote] Not really because Civ5 also has a scripting interface with Lua from their eng

I think the modding community needs to manage their expectations. It's clear that moddability to the extent that they expect is not going to be happen, simply because it takes too much effort to support that kind of flexibility from just a bunch of XML values. From the dev's point of view, it means that native code must be written to support each tag or value to be able to mod one particular aspect of the game. In theory, with a large enough pool of such tags, you can conceiva

This is the general impression I got when I saw that moddability in FE consists of modifying a bunch of XML values. Obviously, this will not scale. But I hope Stardock eventually gets around to exposing their core game engine API to at least one scripting language (which they should use to write their own game code anyway for a host of beneficial reasons).

[quote who="kyonhism30195" reply="32" id="3308799"]This game still have huge memory leaks :/[/quote] Crashes aren't always caused by memory leaks if that's what you mean. Otherwise, memory leaks are usually not really noticeable to the average user except for some slowdown or hard disk swapping depending on the app. Still, that is not to say that app slowdowns are always caused by memory leaks too. This just underscores my point about bug reporting. There is a dif

[quote who="DsRaider" reply="26" id="3308477"] Post actual bug reports, or it didn't happen. You can't expect Stardock to fix things unless you are a lot more specific then "it's buggy". Many issues are hardware specific so you have to bring up your specific issues if you want them fixed. [/quote] Customers generally don't make very reliable QA testers. The reasons are (1) customers generally don't know how to give detailed and professional bug repo

Usually sporadic crashes and seemingly random issues that happen on some machines but not others are symptoms of underlying multi-threading problems. This seems to gel with the rest of the bug reports and fixes that we've been seeing so far, including those for the apparently multi-threaded AI. And multi-threading bugs are usually quite difficult to trace down and fix properly...

[quote who="paladinjb" reply="95" id="3286981"]Just played a game where the AI settled right near an ashwake dragon. The dragon ignored the AI city and attacked my city which wasn't anywhere near the dragon's lair.[/quote] I think Brad has already mentioned before that the monster AI tends to ignore the other AI players at higher difficulty levels . In other words, the bias is intentional. Now whether this makes for a fun mec

[quote who="sweatyboatman" reply="19" id="3282935"]Game difficultly is directly related to how fair players perceive it to be. The harder the game, the more unfair it seems. [/quote] No, the difficulty level in FE isn't what I was alluding to at all. Anyway, when something is unfair it doesn't always mean that it's difficult. Really it's not the difficulty that people have a problem with. I think generally people like a challenge (and s

[quote who="sweatyboatman" reply="11" id="3282776"]Can we sticky something that says "just because you happen to witness a fluke event does not prove the AI is cheating." The monsters chew up and spit out the AI. Most of the time it happens behind the fog of war. Sometimes it happens somewhere you can see it. And occasionally it happens to the player. Just hit Ctrl+N and try again. The #1 basic strategy you need to learn is that you need to settle plac

I've stopped playing for roughly the same reasons. It's not so much that the game becomes frustrating, but the fact that the AI is (unintentionally) using this cheese tactic of waking monsters with outposts who then attack my cities is simply ruining the immersion for me. I find it ridiculous. But I don't know how many more posts we need to see complaining about this same exact issue before the developers are also convinced that this random monster AI thing just

[quote who="Heavenfall" reply="53" id="3272682"] Everything is rigged to the same skeleton, lower bodies use the monster skeletons instead (the hybrids are effectively permanently mounted on their lower body). Animations are slightly modified in some places, but mostly I just used what was already in game. If you equip boots on a halfspider it will be equipped, you'll get the bonus, but no 3d graphics will appear. It's not perfect. Far from it. But it works well enough

[quote who="Heavenfall" reply="40" id="3272549"] Besides, not to argue with you, but the issue isn't body type / skeleton. That's why Stormworld has Centaurs, Frost Giants, Undead skeletons, Golem, halfspiders, haldrakes, halfsnakes, living stone units. All those were done using the normal bodytype. No, imho, the problem isn't bodytype but what you decide to do with it. [/quote] I'm curious what you did to pull this off. Did you re-use the models/skelet

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="20" id="3272412"]Should almost do a poll on this: Would you be willing to give up player designed units to have a greater visual variety in the races? Basically, the limitation is that each body type / skeleton requires its own set of clothing, armor, etc. [/quote] Just visual variety is not worth giving up custom units. I would like greater gameplay variety and less h

I don't think you can sweep the opinions of the majority under the rug and argue that it's all just "nostalgia". Yes it had horrible AI and many bugs. But it certainly got a lot of other things right that FE can learn from so it's certainly reasonable to compare. Some truths to consider: 1. The game despite the issues had fans who bothered to set up tribute pages that can be seen to this day and who bothered to make fan made patches to correct the flaws and improve

That pic you posted of that ophidian man thing - looks cool. Is it possible to replace standard units with unique units per faction and champions with a mod? How much flexibility do you have in terms of giving them special abilities or stats like being able to cast certain spells or restricting them to certain growth paths or limiting the equipment they may wear?

[quote who="Heavenfall" reply="17" id="3271041"] MoM actually had very few champions/heroes, and I think that's part of what made them memorable. [/quote] On the contrary, they actually had 35 including Torin The Chosen One. I think that's a reasonably large number, considering you'd come across maybe typically 3-5 per game. But yes, it wasn't the quantity but quality that made them stood out indeed. Each was special, even the low-level ones, for a vari

[quote who="Emperor_Nero" reply="15" id="3270934"]I really like your post and I wasn't trying to offend you or anything. You are one of the few people to come here and actually provide real critique and not just a blather wall of whiny text. I personally like the customization. I can build a faction that are a cult of death worshipers that don't wear armor and cast evil spells. (Well my sov at least) I agree that a default sov can have some set units with little customization but I do

[quote who="Emperor_Nero" reply="12" id="3270873"] So you mean like Juggernauts and Golems? You can only equip them with certain items, and they fill particular roles. [/quote] Yes. But also instead of generic units like Spearmen and Mages for all factions, have faction-specific unique units that fill those roles. For example, Altar could have Foot soldiers and Spellswords instead. Yithril could have Berzerkers and War-mages. Tarth might have Rangers as equival

[quote who="SOLOSOL" reply="3" id="3270805"] But FE is not MoM. Many people here say (and I agree with that) that instead of making criticism that MoM is better in this or that, just give opinions and ideas to improve FE...[/quote] I like FE for the game as it is, and I am not asking for an MoM remake. FE must remain FE. I like customizable units. I like the game lore. In fact, when I was talking about having unique heroes and units for the factions, I really wasn't scheming

[quote who="parrottmath" reply="57" id="3270625"] Unfortunately I never played MOM and so I really don't understand the analogy to it's fullness. I know that there are a lot of people here who have played MOM and were disappointed that this game wasn't a MOM remake. [/quote] You owe it to yourself to give it a go and then you'll understand why it's held as the inspiration behind FE and Warlock and Age Of Wonders and why just about every pesky person on th

FE is a fun game. It's however not only my opinion that there's also a distinct "blandness" for lack of a better word in FE. Factions may play differently, but they still "feel" the same. Is it just the visuals or the game lore being in it's infancy? Perhaps to some extent, but it's also not just completely superficial. Let me try to illustrate. A good example is the fact that the sovereigns and champions in FE practically feel more or less the same, because th

[quote who="parrottmath" reply="51" id="3270543"]So your major complaint after sifting through all your arguments is that the game doesn't have enough altering visuals for an imersive experience. Thus, to make this game `better' for you, would be to add more unique spells to each race. Provide different environments for each race, provide a UI that is uniquely formed for each race. Provide unique looking buildings for each factions / race in the generic game. Thus, you have a big prob

Custom maps DLC for $5? Not sure that people would pay for just that kind of new content in FE. After all, a major fun element in FE and other 4X games is in exploring and discovering new things around your lands. The difference is that while hand-crafted maps may be higher quality overall, the surprise only lasts for 1 play-through compared to random maps.