xthetenth

[quote]Let me add my voice here. I really, really hope we can have something a little more nuanced than kingdom good, empire eeeeeeevil. I recall reading references to kingdom factions using life magic and empire factions using death magic. If memory serves, at the time there were tantalizing hints that life wasn't neccessarily "good" while death wasn't neccessarily "bad." I'd love to see that followed up on in some way. I'm encouraged by the Tolkien analogies that point out that some of the

I'd presume it's a set of relation modifiers governed first by fallen/human status and then cultural traits.

Glorious. I'm going to have a hell of a lot of fun just to prove you wrong. [e digicons]:grin:[/e] Can't wait to watch the game grow up before our eyes.

[quote]I'm only suggesting my solution of a desperate-times-calls-for-desperate-measures script by the AI when it's obvious that their opponent is intent on completely obliterating them. It may be their strategy to deal a nasty blow in order to make the negotiating table more appealing.[/quote] Don't forget vice versa. An AI who's desperate should theoretically consider putting his civilization into hock to buy an army or allies to help out against a stronger enemy. I want AI

Just wait till you figure out how smart those damn cpus can be with full cpu set and how ridiculous the biggest map in twilight of the arnor is. That'll take a month at least, but it will be an awesome month (if you really know the game beforehand, otherwise you'll die early). But it is awesome. Just pace yourself. [quote]If our games you are trying to best, Some advice on attempting your quest: Just remember to eat, And sometimes leave your seat, So your wife won'

I kind of think that medieval total war handled it best, with a major penalty trait for the immediate descendants that lessened over generations, but I think it should take a few generations to build up enough to be debilitating. I think it'd be hilariously twisted to let you marry off children with inheritable negative traits as a sort of weapon. It's amazing how crippling a few genetic disorders were, such as Mary Queen of Scots' case of porphyria screwing up endless royalty to the bursts o

I think that the idea of a checkbox labeled 'keep up to date' is the best so far, because the vast majority of technological changes in that era were ways of making superior goods for the same amount of work, so it's not like making a unit with less advanced weaponry would necessarily make it cheaper. I think that the auto-upgrading should be on the commodity level if the intricate economic system is used, that is, make all newly produced items of a type automatically be the most advanced typ

[quote]Imagine playing Galactic Civilizations or Supreme Commander or Sins of a Solar Empire purely from the zoomed out strategic map.[/quote] I do that by choice. [quote]It’s going to be HORRIBLE actually. At least, for the first month and a half it’ll be represent such a dense level of crapitude that it actually has its own detectable level of gravity.[/quote] Liar. Sins beta 1 was fun. Sure it was endless cap spam with no discernable tactics but it was s

What I really want to see is Crimson Skies. Same folks who came up with Mechwarrior, but crazy awesome 1930s with zeppelins for commerce and AIR PIRATES! Zeppelin riding, fighter flying air pirates! That and the fact that it was the best ode to 1930s style action drama this side of Indiana Jones, oh god what a game that was. Sure they're working on mechwarrior first, but they also got the CS license, and have said kinda obliquely that they had plans for it. I have to say that's probably my fa

[quote]I must wonder... what secrets do the people all around us, people we think we know, hide?[/quote] Ask the shadow. Only he knows what darkness lies in the hearts of men (and I bet he's gotten to know what darkness lies in the hearts of women in the intervening years). [quote]That and some of the pornography that seems necessary. Must it really be a rule of the internet that if it exists there must be porn of it? Why? For whom is this fulfilling? Why? I'm not even saying

[quote]I'm not interested in inventing a particle called the magiton, or arcaton in order to make magic a type of energy that we can observe in the world...[/quote] Don't need to, but making magic a quantifiable entity is especially important in a computer game setting, since if it isn't quantifiable for the computer it might as well not exist. Internal consistency is also quite important just so it makes sense. If magic follows set laws, it makes the handwave of 'researching' spells

[quote]I don't know that much about this stuff, but from Civ IV I had understood that as you moved stuff from C++ to Python, the game's performance would get slower and slower, since Python compiles at runtime. I wasn't clear on whether that meant the game would just take longer to load, or the game itself would actually run slower when you are playing it (or both). Hopefully, it won't be a big issue.[/quote] Pretty sure that what happened there was that they opened a new vm for eac

What I want to see is a turbocharged version of the sins dev exe at all possible. The key features of that are the console and the real-time reloading of game assets. I want that and even more importantly, (and this may just be a pipe dream but it would be the best tweaking interface ever), the ability to select a square and be able to open any entity on it in a nice text editor, so for example if you see something has 10 times the damage it should be doing, just pop open its file and fix the

[quote]Uh, a man = hu[man]. Might want to call them something different from men if they arn't human. Also, the current pictures look pretty human to me.[/quote] Well, there are men, but if there aren't women it'd make the species rather different [e digicons]:P[/e] . Anyway, back to sanity, I'm moderately worried about the levelup essence gain allowing a serious channeler rush type thing where you just pour most of your initial essence into making channelers a

[quote]I suppose you guys are not looking for statisticians .[/quote] I've done more (basic) statistics in working on my sins mod then you could shake a stick at. Granted a lot of that's because I'm trying to translate a tabletop game, but man would some more advanced stuff be useful. Try it, it may work. On the subject of jobs, would you happen to have internship openings for people willing to relocate for a summer and not get paid and who are mostly done with

There's other criteria for skill than sheer power/hit points ratio. Mobility is a tremendous concern as well. If I have a force of mostly cavalry archers and you only have a few archers or cavalry I could pick your force apart with near impunity no matter the quality of your infantry. I seem to recall the mongols doing that a lot. There's also the classic divide and conquer which can be done easily with mobile cavalry and can easily let a low quality cavalry force overwhelm parts of an elite

[quote]There is nothing to turn off. Frame rate determines when it switches to the next quality level.[/quote] Ahh, so that's how it determines scaling. I thought it might have been some "you can't see the detail of this level at this zoom" algorithm. Will you be able to change the frame rate threshold? Some people are fine with a lot more stuttering than others. Also, I presume there will be a set zoom level for the transition from 3d to 2d, since otherwise a powerful computer could

Looks good. How are you scaling to performance with it, just having the different settings use different qualities?

[quote]Be warned though, our betas are not fun. [/quote] LIARRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!! [e digicons]:grin:[/e] Does the fact that I enjoyed sins beta 1 speak ill of my mental stability? [quote]Quick, everyone, cross all your fingers, toes, and split tongues and sacrifice many goats so that it will happen. [/quote] I'm saving my goats for the public beta, not the annatar and friends show (TM) alpha. [e digicons]:P[/e] [quote]However, we anticipate

I can't wait, Galciv 2 was a rare treat, just being able to ramp up clock cycles for the AI and having a fair game against competitors who managed to come up with very different strategies that somehow all managed to give me a very hard time. Good times.

Absolutely sounds like a good idea. Love the sound of an early simple mp mode. WRT to the map, I think it's essentially going to be like galciv 2 zoomed out till you get icons, and I think that's what frogboy's using that picture to show.

[quote]Getting paid to do it takes a lot of the fun out by adding in irritants like schedules and deadlines, not to mention customers.[/quote] And oversight. Complete creative control is a big part of why I enjoy modding and it's the part that really makes modding be for the fun of seeing your idea reach fruition rather than as work. Plus, for somebody like me who's still in college it's good coding practice and lets me get a feel for game design. I'd be working on my current mod for

[quote who="StoweMobile" reply="20" id="1966443"]You guys are fogetting one important factor...Is the battle IN SPACE!!!!![/quote] YES! If it's in space, bad things happen to the bear! Otherwise, I put good money on the bear. Teeth. Claws. Rider probably in full plate just for the lulz. All this against the ability to survive hard vacuum, which is unsurprisingly only useful in a vacuum. Still, we should get koscy over here to remind us if we're forgetting the pink space pony killrays

Considering that Brad has repeatedly remarked on designing for the most vocal instead of the entire potential market (re: crysis, among others) I think we're safe. That said: Sandworm Cavalry! [e digicons]8O[/e] (sorry, couldn't resist)

I like this idea a lot, I'd much rather have my games tied to my impulse account (which everybody'll have, and which will probably contain their stats and the like, making it easier to deal with) than with an email that may have no bearing on the game. This'd be a neat feature for impulse in general, I like the idea.