Aesir Rising

[quote quoting="post"]For today, I’m going through the a lot of the values (weapons, defenses, city improvements) and relooking at their balance. I’m finding it way too easy to just “rush” nearby enemies because the values grow so much, so fast.[/quote] In RPGs, a similar exercise is when you go through and try to smooth out the leveling curve. In this RTS, I think it is more difficult because your 'level up ding' is from completing research and obtaining

Start | All Programs | Stardock Games | Elemental - War of Magic | Manual (PDF) That shortcut, on my system, redirects to: C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Elemental\ElementalManual_EN.pdf

[quote quoting="post"] By contrast, things you mod should go into the documents\my games\elemental\units directory in general (eventually we’ll just put a general mods directory)[/quote] Would love to see ..\My Games\Elemental\Mods\ or similar created, before things get too messy. Having a custom version of CoreDifficultyLevels.xml in ..\Units offends my OCDness. On a mildly related note, if one wanted to distribute a set of difficulty settings - or a g

Try this for a custom AI set addition. Create a "Mods" folder in your game install directory. Example for Win7x64: C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Elemental\ Mods In that folder, create a text file and name it something useful, such as: CustomDifficultyLevels.xml The intent of that file is to store any/all customized AI difficulty settings. Copy+

Up until just now, I thought the book exclusive was a mod or addon type content that you'd use within Elemental. What you just wrote makes it sound like a stand-alone product that either doesn't require the game to be installed, or (if it does require the game installed) runs entirely separate from main game.

See the edited post. The forum code block didn't do what I was expecting. P.S., to roll-your-own difficulty setting appears to be simply a matter of creating a new XML block (or even editing an existing one) and putting in your own values as desired. The "Normal" setting has no fog-of-war cheat (the AI can't see the entire map all the time, just like you), no hit point bonuses for the sovereign, and no economic bonuses. <

There is a file, CoreDifficultyLevels.xml that defines some differences. I can't say (yet) if Difficulty-related changes exist in other files (they can, and probably do). On my system, the file exists in: C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Elemental\data\English The contents of the file, while not plain language, can be used to get an understanding of what changes. An excerpt (for the Novice and Ridiculous d

[quote who="killer105" reply="16" id="2721797"]What is the downside?[/quote] The consumer doesn't get to base vendor choice on the merits of the vendor. If you don't give Best Buy or Wal-mart your business, you can't have the content (or in this case, you can't have the content for 3 months). It's a deal that benefits the vendor and the developer. What is the upside? I understand the benefit to the developer (and retailer), but it isn't something I en

[quote]the product has no effective manual or documentation[/quote] Possibly helpful video tutorial series: http://frogboy.impulsedriven.net/article/391280/Elemental_VIDEO_TUTORIAL There are some other resources I've found over the preceding months, but these are new and essentially up-to-date and easy to watch/listen to to get an overview and serve as a starting point. &nbsp

Raven X: That sounds more like the built-in NWN map transition (at least how I'm reading your description). Nothing special there as far as game data saves - it just happened. I'm talking more about the persistent worlds that ran multiple interconnected servers. Some examples include Exaria (two servers), the Avlis and CoPaP servers (dozen or more...iirc) and ALFA (many servers). When a character transitioned from one physical server running

For crashes especially, you want to dropbox the dump file archive. You can get this from a hidden folder as described in the sticky post on reporting bugs. Here's the relevant info from that sticky: For crash reports in particular , the most helpful file you can provide is a memory dump that the game will generate when a crash occurs. If you're running Windows XP, there will be a zip file with the memory dump located in Documents an

These extra-large map sizes are where we're going to see issues between 32-bit and 64-bit systems, wrt memory usage. Pretty sure large maps were indicated as one reason they wanted to have 64-bit support early on in development, though I haven't looked for that post (from sometime last year, I suppose). On a related note, is it possible to have multiple maps as part of a game, and transition between those maps with game state saved between transitions? The

Valve specifically wrote a patch to their stub version of Oblivion's .exe when Oblivion came to Steam to help their .exe be compatible with the OBSE .exe. Valve simultaneously submitted the necessary info to the OBSE developer and the OBSE dev added in the support for the steam version of the Oblivion .exe in subsequent versions of OBSE so that a separate Valve provided .exe was no longer needed. I imagine the same process and communication (though the implementation will be dif

[quote who="Civfreak" reply="45" id="2698840"]Oh so you can't actually mod the UI atm then? I've been going crazy trying to figure out how to modify the UI using Desktopx and reading line after line of xml trying to figure it out dohh.[/quote] Depending upon what you're trying to do, you can open the dxpacks with 7-zip (or other ZIP utility) and experiment with changing the component art (e.g., PNG files) and DesktopX .ini and XML outside of DesktopX. Also, I

That link for the xsi modtool is for an older version. I don't know if it helps but SD seems to have updated their version of havok during development in the past year. Older hkb files showed Havok-6.0.0-r1 , and the current Elemental hkb files show Havok-7.1.0-r1 . So... if you get the current mod tool from the autodesk site , and no

I recall a few months back some post on GPG forums, iirc, about SD approving another patch to the game. Looking forward to it. Unless it was just rumours and lies. I liked the single player game quite a bit and still periodically fire it up, so if there is going to be another update to the game, I'm all for it. As for MP, I think my fellow players think the greatest enjoyment from the game is when you get to call the other players "idiot" or "fucking n00b". At least

Each of the following dump files relate to crashes creating tiles in the Tile workshop. I see no pattern other than a suspicion that the crashing seems to occur just as a tile object/resource tooltip is about to appear. I don't have repro steps, but each time I tried to: Create a 1x1 tile place 1 each of the four shard types (from the Resources pallete) then open some other pallete (any will do, I suppose) and hover the items looking at toolt

Crash creating a Tactical map. Launch Elemental, Play Game, and select Workshop, then Map Tools, then pick Tactical Battle as the map type. Once you click the button to create the map, the game crashes (it may take a few minutes for Windows to pop up the application stopped responding prompt). Each of these are dumps created when doing the above. http://dl.dropbox.c

Rather than mouse over tips showing the 'real' version, would it be possible to just have it in the Version field at the bottom bar of the impulse client? There it currently says 0.98 , but you really need to look at the tip to see the 0.98[b].085 value.

re: Tactical battles I did see two updates today, and the tooltip version # info within Impulse Client shows 0.98[b].085, so it looks as if I'm current. I crash when trying to create a Tactical map. I haven't played the game itself so I don't know about the issue discussed within this thread, but I would assume there's a remaining problem with Tactical and/or with my install. Is there a installation verification option for this game (like there used to be for some ga

[quote]- Where does the engine put these cartoony ink lines? It is not always just the outline of the character/object, i think so. Can i somehow control that in my modelling tool?[/quote] These lines don't connect correctly. Or, I suppose someone thinks they're correct, but they have gaps, sometimes they overlap and cross over one-another, and afaic, in each case it would look better if they didn't do that *and* if there was the option to disable these lines (whi

[quote who="Thrawn2787" reply="10" id="2692813"] Quoting arstal, reply 1LOL at describing the game as an RTS. Though I'd love to see you do one someday. Sins of a solar empire ring any bells? [/quote] Sure does. Here's the website of the developer: http://www.ironcladgames.com/ Anyway, the Hooked review was in need of professional edit

I do. It took a moment to load in and start pulsing through the colors. Neat.

[quote]Aesir, I'd hope that every company's latest major title is intended to be their "magnum opus." [/quote] While that would lead us to some form of a gamer's Nirvana, you and I know from experience that some titles do not qualify for the description of "classic" or "great" - much less what I had in mind when I used the term "magnum opus". Here's a good description of what I was thinking of when I wrote "magnum opus" instead of (for example) "masterpiece": <a

I get the impression that Elemental is intended to be Frogboy's/SD's magnum opus. Like Pink Floyd's The Wall. Wagner's Ring Cycle. Tolkien's Middle-Earth. The Double Baconator , if you will.