4. Huh? I don't quite understand what you mean? I was making reference to the fact that Stardock had to purchase Havok's physic engine. Since they paid for it and it would be well suited to this situation in my opinion they might as well use it. Edit: @ Scoutdog I would replace the word fact in your post with potential.
Ok let me make myself perfectly clear. I will state the advantages as I see it for having a physics based system for such effects. 1. Negligible increase in calculation time if done properly. 2. The code is already there to be manipulated thus saving time. 3. Allows for potential expansion to more advanced effects in the future. 4. You paid for it might as well use it. 5. I have Intel stock, Intel owns Havok, what is good for Havok is go
I just don't see how you think it will affect game-play. If I have a 10 tile map 5 of which have forest on them and I set one forest tile on fire. Using physics based calculation the fire would spread to other tiles adjacent to the one that has been set on fire. The path fire takes is very predictable and linear in nature. It couldn't jump over a tile unless a programmer took the time to create such an effect. Even if you expanded this to 1000 forest tiles and set the center o
Very interesting, I like it. I could see myself using something like this on occasion. Although I'm traditionally a big picture kind of guy and don't micromanage unless necessary.
Darkodinplus' Top 7 7. What did you mean by "real-time" and continuous turn? 6. Will players be able to have different kinds of mounts for soldiers or even the Channeler? 5. How advanced will the regular tech tree get? 4. Can spells with multiple effects be created? 3. How much depth is there going to be for Channeler customization? 2. Are any "unvictory" conditions planned? 1. Will players be able to create Super Soldiers / Super
Setting fire to a forest does one of two things from my point of view it either destroys a resource or damages building / units inside if forests are passible terrain or if they are impassible it creates a new path to march troops or whatever. The physics calculations for this have no impact on game-play. The hill / mountain creation is similar it creates a natural obstruction to the player that either needs to be removed or gone around. The physics calculations have no impact on game-play. I
Just out of curiosity how do you think the "physics calculations" for spreading fire or creating a hill / mountain would affect game-play? I can see what they represent affecting game-play but not the physics calculations themselves for this sort of game. At any rate I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on this point because the vast majority of what we are discussing I feel would only require a decent amount of unique calculations. The physics calculations for fire spreadin
What I was trying to convey is we don't know what the smallest unit of game-play for lack of a better word will be in Elemental and how it will function. It could work like your normal grid based game or it could be something we haven't seen before. I was saying if it works like a standard grid based game it wouldn't matter so much but if it is something more complex like grids within grids or joining multiple grid sections together to make an open / closed system I feel
We are really getting quite the collection of avatars here. You could link a bundle to download all of them at once or groupings of them. Just a passing thought.
Am I the only one that remembers this turn based vs "real time" debate? Long story short Brad showed up and said Elemental is a turn based game period. He never really defined what he meant by continuos turns or "real-time" as I recall.
Using the physics engine to determine things like the rate a fire spreads " can " be overkill. I believe it would be easier to make use of Havok in this particular situation rather than hardcoding it from scratch. Truefully, I doubt either would take very long but if you did the coding using Havok you could potentially do some really cool stuff that would take a lot more work to perform if you coded it from scratch. As for the grids within Elemental do we know exa
I'll guess May 10th at 1:04 PM Eastern Standard Time.
Very nice journal and informative too.
I'm all for physics but I would point out you guys may be taking this a bit to literally. You could easily impose limits and generic values on material physics. This would allow Havok to simulate just about anything easily. Of course, it would be lacking realism but we are talking about a game with magic. To use the fire ball example if you set an average distance the fire could spread and average speed based on the type of fire spell used it wouldn't be difficult at all to simu
I did it but then again I'm a professional. [e digicons]B)[/e]
I wish I had as much free time as you Wintersong. Nice job on the avatars though.
Great update Brad.
Ah functions takes me back to the good old computer science days but business is the ultimate evolution of just about anything.
Print button.
You mean a standalone book that doesn't come with the game? Hmm.
No worries a good post by and large.
Having infinite resources typically leads to overwhelming victories where Player A pumps out more units because he has more resources. Player B never really gets a chance to turn the tables because both players have never ending resources. That model works for some games but I wouldn't like it for Elemental. Finite resources adds strategic depth by forcing the player to make meaningful decisions about how he wants to spend resources. Where if you never run out of resources you don't care if a
I don't know if Elemental's tactical combat will be that deep. I wouldn't mind seeing something like what you discussed. I however think item customization will be limited to damage and maybe damage type. I would like more options but I just haven't gotten that impression so far.
This is relevant to the conversation. Psychoak's Top ten most used words Link