Capt Sealy

Here's something that I'm surprised no one has commented on. When given a quest, all the examples have the quest's location popping up on the map automatically. What ever happened to "Far to the west, beyond the Shining Sea, and under the shade of the mighty Dragon's Peak"? We already have a great mechanism for exploring and uncovering fog of war. Sometimes (often) we should make the player search for a location, not give them a road map.

I would say this is a great Christmas present. But I'm going on holiday without my PC. Crap. [e digicons]X([/e] Nice work Stardock (no sarcasm there).

@Ron Lugge - don't worry - if you're pile of things to read isn't huge and overflowing you're not working hard enough :) @LDiCesare - I'm not saying pre-compiled headers are a win in every case - the scenario you talk about is one were I wouldn't use a pre-compiled header. However when a lot of your C++ files are including, say, Windows.h and a bunch of system / STL headers then there can be massive time savings using pre-compiled headers. I've seen minute long compiles go

@CariElf - but surely a pre-compiled header can still save you time? Otherwise every C++ file that includes (say) Windows.h has to recompile it, rather than just once per build?

Incredibuild is definitely fun to play with and can make a huge difference. There is an awful lot of other things you can do to improve compile times as well. Here's a few articles you might be interested in (assuming you haven't come across them before): http://www.cygnus-software.com/papers/precompiledheaders.html <a href="http://gamesfromwithin.com/the-care-and-feeding-of-pre-compiled-he

How about: Your grand son has fallen in love with the beautiful grand child of your sworn enemy, who is of course a complete bastard to her. Rescue her from the heart of enemy territory so they can be united. For bonus points, bring about peace and a firm alliance in the process. or: Journey to the tallest peak in the Aspiring Ranges in time for the Summer equinox. Bring X and Y with you (could be materials, people, monsters, whatever). Perform

It's quite possible to implement things like fire / magic / lightning damage etc without actually having separate damage stats for them all. This has been mentioned in a few variations above, and is similar to the way Warmachine and Magic the Gathering work, but I'll just outline my take on it here: - Typically a unit has one stat for damage, so when they attack this number is used. Doesn't matter how you're hurt, it still hurts. - They may also have various abilit

Another thought, which ties in with the casualties vs deaths comments above. I'd like to see an after-battle phase where the winner can optionally pursue the beaten army (perhaps only in battles of a certain size?). It's something that occurs in some board games, and nicely conveys an advantage to an agile army. So, when one side decides to withdraw or is routed, there is some form of calculation based on speeds of the armies, time of day, terrain etc. Possible outco

I'd like to see a system where light infantry / cavalry have a chance to evade when charged and heavies can counter-charge. Heavy infantry under attack from missile fire may have a 'shield wall' option, while lights have a 'skirmish order' option. Infantry could close up when charged by cavalry and so on. I think a system that manages this would have a really nice ebb and flow to it. Experience could be factored in by giving units better chances to react based on experienc

I like the idea of the sovereign escaping when attacked, it gives the player a lot more choice / control. It seems to me that there should still be a penalty when your sovereign flees - maybe a loss of resources, essence, prestige or even time (turns that the sovereign is unavailable). One thing I'd quite like to see in battles where the sovereign may actually die is a 'last gasp' option. We're told that the battle is going badly, and the sovereign can make a last ditch ef

This is a slightly unrelated thought, but... Will units have experience in some sense? I like the thought that my battle hardened troops will be more effective than the raw recruits fresh off the factory floor, as it were. The thought of units have battle honours or flags to go along with their experience would be kinda cool as well.

I like the thought that resources you don't have just make the unit more expensive and/or take longer to produce (maybe based on how far away the nearest supply is, and how friendly that supplier is?). Trade tends to imply that there'll be a bit of everything everywhere. In terms of resources, I can see a two tier system being handy - there are a few common resources (wood, iron, gold, food?) that are everywhere. And then there's a bunch of rare resources that may only exi

A variant on Option C - what if there is an automatic back up option that's always available? So for example, if Mithril is unavailable, then the player starts getting units with normal Long Swords and helmets, rather than the nicer, shinier ones. In the case of the Twililight Honey Pack, perhaps they just lose the bonus. edit - This way, a player loses a valuable bonus without being forced to redesign their units. When this happens, the player can be informed of t

@Frogboy - forgive me for being curious, but can I ask what you use for your release builds? Are you using some form of continuous build system?

Compile times can be affected by a large number of factors. Obviously the number of lines of code can be a factor, but the way the code is laid out and compiler options can have a massive effect. I've taken projects that took many minutes to compile and speed compile times up by a factor of 10 or more, just through proper use of things like pre-compiled headers and forward declarations (sorry if that's too much geek speak :) ). I remember hearing that Windows NT took 19 ho

I've also had this problem. I've seen similar bugs when a Mouse up event is lost because the player starts to drag in one area, but lets the mouse up inside a GUI element, so the map never gets the mouse up event that says 'stop panning'. Don't know if that's what's happening here, but the symptoms are similar.

Once you've researched Mining, possible mining sites appear on the map. To use them, you seem to need to build a city next to them, much like building farms. Also, it appears that with some tech, you get a bonus immediately when you start researching it (say 20%), and then every turn you research it, the bonus improves up to some maximum. This is instead of waiting for 20 turns then suddenly getting a massiv bonus in one hit. I like it this way.

It's possible that the price you're seeing is in AUS$, not US$. I live in NZ, and while I can't remember exactly, I believe that prices in Impulse show up as NZ$ for me. And if Oz is anything like NZ at the moment, your exchange rate might make this reasonable...

Hi all, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="word-spacing: 0px; font: 13px -webk