Sycraft

// I think the geeks among us needs to remember that not everyone knows about digital distribution, and not everyone trusts it. Hence a lot of stuff still happens retail. Also even people who do may opt for physical copies. I like owning discs and in the event I'm buying a gift, it'll probalby be physical. Retail is still important and he's rigth about the date thing. You can't tell stores "We'll ship on this date," and th

I'd like to look in the game XML files for information on various things, but I cannot find them for the life of me. Are they being kept hidden/disabled on purpose for the beta? If so that, fine, I suppose, though a little odd. However if not then something that really needs to be done is to bring them to a more clear place. One of the important things in a highly moddable game is easy access to the mod resources. Perhaps I'm being really dense, but in Civ 4 it is real easy to find, just go t

Hey I'm game for the "Special campaign for book buyers." Reason is I really hope this works out for Random House. As a whole the game industry could use better writing. There are some notable exceptions like Bioware, but usually the writing is not that good. So, if a book publisher starts to see benefits to working with game devs, maybe we get some better written games out of it. In terms of the book itself, who knows? Brad is an unproven author at this point so it could be great, cou

As a note, I did this because more help would be nice. I've been busy myself and not had a lot of time to spend on it, so it is getting dated. I've had a number of new people who asked for, and received, access but none of them have made any edits or additions at all.

Initially I was requiring authorization for people to be able to edit the Elemental wiki, to keep vandalism down and so on. However it also seems to be keeping contributions down. So it is now open. You can now just go to the site and edit. Still will need a Wikidot account I believe, but no authorization is needed. I haven't had time personally to edit much so it needs other people to help get it up to date. Would be nic

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="28" id="2635825"]If you have Windows, it's 2GB. The OS reserves the other 2GB unless you do special registry hacks.[/quote] It should be noted that running a 32-bit app that is flagged as Large Address Aware but running on 64-bit Windows it can access up to 4GB of memory. Each 32-bit process gets a flat 4GB memory map. On a 32-bit OS, some of those addresses have to be reserved for kernel and hardware, but on a 64-bit they don't. So LAA apps can get 4GB of

When I run 1G on my computer it notes that my monitor resoution is 1280x720, which isn't high enough. Fair enough, but that is the secondary monitor (which is actually just a dummy display for the HDMI soundcard). The primary monitor is 1920x1200. The game runs fine, it just throws an error upon execution incorrectly.

Sometimes, the problems are pretty elusive. Here we see rare video of Stardock's own Brad Wardell hard at work tring to debug Elemental. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohcDPgd1V5Y Well, you can't win them all [e digicons]:grin:[/e]

You kidding me? There's been tons of press for a game this eairly. They had at least one priview, and often more than one prieview, on all the major gaming sites. It was listed as one of the top 10 most anticipated games of 2010, etc, etc. There's been a lot of press for a game in beta, and you can bet there'll be even more when it comes close to release.

If you are a PC gamer, avoid Gamestop. There is actually one in town here that doesn't sell PC games andy more, and those that do have a tiny section. Best Buy is a much better choice, they've got a whole isle of them (about the same amount of shelf space as any given console). Wal-Mart is also a decent choice. Target also has a reasonable number of games, but since they don't do a whole lot of shelf space for any system, including PC, their selection is a bit limited. Online gets you

So I’ve found the actual culprit: It is an interaction between Elemental and Adaptive Multi-sample AA. This is a mode that can be turned on in the Catalyst Control Center and causes the card to perform antialising on transparent textures. However, when enabled, as it was on my system, is causes the map problems shown in my post. The solution/workaround is to either disable AA in Elemental, or to disable Adaptive AA in the CCC. I am unsure if this is a game bug or driver bu

Thus far, this is universal for me. Happens every time I run the game, right from the start. I can then run some other game, and have no troubles. My guess would be a bug in the 5870 drivers, but I'm not sure.

When I got my 5870 I found Elemental having texture problems it didn't on the GTX 280. With the latest (0.262) build, they still persist. As you can see in the picture, massive parts are missing. http://sycraft.org/elemental/debug03122009.err

[quote who="Tormy-" reply="13" id="2449312"]Well huh, I've mentioned it because it's a really annoying crash [Like I've said I cannot complete a game at all because of it], which wasn't fixed in the last 2 patches. [/quote] Welcome to game testing. You have to remember that priorities are very different in a test stage, especially a very early test like Elemental. While the issue is major to you, because you can't play, that doesn't mean it is major to them yet. They've got a lot of t

I would note that they haven't confirmed that people will be let in after Beta 2. It would seem logical this will be allowed, but Stardock hasn't offically announced it. However they have offically said if you preorder the game now, when Beta 2 hits you'll be allowed in.

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="13" id="2424706"]His arrow won't pierce the armor of the dragon and thus no matter how many of them you have, they will die. [/quote] I like this system. I think it makes sense, both in real terms and in game terms, to have powerful units that are unstoppable by weak units. For one it prevents the classic Civilization "tank killed by spearman" situation that we all hate. Sure it is just a game but that really seems to jolt the realism and

For those wondering one of the things that makes the music neat in Elemental it is that it is broken down in to sub tracks. In most games these days music is just a bunch of songs. The engine picks which song it wants played when. Works kinda like you do with an MP3 player. Ok, fair enough. However there is the possibility for more flexibility with greater storage. When you compose music, it is done in many seperate tracks. Each instrument, or at least kind of instrument, is on a sepe

In this game it started me next to TWO fertile lands, a wild wheat, and a mine. Nice, but I am guessing it wasn't intended. Also the Soverign started right on a pickup, which prevents building a city until you move off and back on to it. http://sycraft.org/elemental/debug22102009.err

If you got a BSOD, it is driver or hardware related, not Elemental. While Elemental might have been the proximate cause, a user mode app can't crash the system like that. For that sort of thing you need to figure out which driver crashed (the BSOD will often say) and then report it to that manufacturer.

Damage types I'd give a miss to over all. In any game I've played they either seem to be trivial, or annoying. What I mean is they are either something that makes little difference, and thus you can just ignore and use what you like, or they are a pain in the butt, but make no real difference in gameplay over all. As for experience in additon to being better at attack/defense I think there are a few things you could consider: 1) Better odds of survival if defeated. Part of a v

Well, perhaps offer three levels of Soverign combat as a choice when you make the game: 1) Sandbox mode. Your soverign can't die no matter what. That was for the people who really truly don't want it, they can have it. As the name implies, it makes it real easy. Some people like that though so ok. 2) Standard mode. Your soverign can die, but cen be protected as you've talked about by hiding it in cities and so on. I'd say more or less the system should be one that balances ris

When I first updated to 0.24, it crashed same as the previous versions had. However removing all data files from program data and my games fixed the problem. It could lessen the amount of problems you get from people if the updater automatically cleared these out, at least for the duration of the first beta where stability testing is a principal objective.

Testing 0.24 on my work system which crashed previously on the opening screen in all cases. 0.24 works in fullscreen mode, but crashes when it is windowed. Debug.err is attached.

Well I can remove beta from the name on the page. The wikidot URL was chosen in part because there is already an elemental.wikidot.com that has nothing ot do with the game, so I couldn't have that domain. I suppose I could buy a dedicated domain for it or something. We'll see what happens after the beta in the long term. I don't know if I'm interested in being a wiki administrator for something like this for the life of the game (which in the case of this game could be a decade or mor

Also, what the people who can't run the game and so on need to remember is that this is what testing is. Stuff is broken, you find out what is broken, let the coders know, and then sit back and wait for them to try and fix it. The idea behind testing is to find out what is wrong, and make that known. When does it get fixed? When there's time. In a testing phase, you aren't supposed to get good support. Their interest isn't in fixing your problem, in trying to make things work on your