[quote who="NTJedi" reply="4" id="2749089"] I know creating GOOD maps for any games takes a very long time... which is why I wish at least the cartographers table had more features/configurations. [/quote] I agree . I've spent thousands of hours, for the past 14 years, creating & editing maps for Heroes of Might & Magic 2, 3, 4 & 5. Cartography is crucial to confer to a game a lot of challenging diversity and replay valu
[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="70" id="2741785"] Being forced to choose between 2 bad choices (Aug was too soon, Feb is too late), they decided on Aug. (I'm tempted to say they made the wrong decision but don't have enough info on why they ruled out Feb -- there may be something that truly made that not an option) [/quote] I wonder why a February 2011 release would have been "too late". Like you, I "don't have enough info on why they ruled out Feb". On Augus
You might then be interested in reading this quote from Stardock CEO & Elemental Lead designer & A.I. expert "Frogboy" : " We’re a small dev team as you can imagine so your kindness and support really puts wind in our sails. We love you guys. I think many of you love Elemental for the same reasons we do. Personally speaking, I feel like too many games come out these days to be “consumed” and then move
" What’s next ? For me [Stardock CEO + Lead A.I. Designer] , it’s AI AI AI. Elemental is a lot more complex of a game than Galactic Civilizations was. I do want to emphasize that the difficulty level at the world setup is not related to AI difficulty. It has to do with how tough the monsters and such will be (crazy shrills late game type stuff). The player intelligence is set up on the opponent set up scre
" I can tell you this : Regardless of whether Elemental gets good or bad reviews or sells well or sells poorly, this game is the ONLY game Stardock’s development studio will be working on for 2010 and much of 2011. One of the benefits of being a small, privately owned company is that we can focus on things for reasons besides quarterly earnings. This is a game we love and will be expanding for years to come. " Stardock
Great Thread, thoughtful Original Post, exquisite Game ... with an awesome Future.
[quote quoting="post"] [1] Just wanted to thank the dev team for a fun game. [2] I know you guys put a lot of work into it. [3] [.. The recent PC Gamer article is] just more proof of how the video game media, even PCG, is heavily influenced by big companies like Activision and EA that pump out massive AAA titles with production values far surpassing those of smaller companies like Stardock. [/quote] 1. I second that. 2
I, also, agree 100% with the OP. Stardock employees and the CEO himself have worked very hard and long hours, last evening + last night, to not only produce version 1.05, but additionally, to hot-fix it with extreme diligence (to 1.05.016).
[quote who="I Intrude" reply="30" id="2730638"]I don't see that article as overly harsh in any way at all. Most of what he said is true. [...] Sincerely, A loyal but concerned Stardock customer.[/quote] Not "harsh in any way at all" ?! What about the following passage, in the PC Game r article ? " But putting junk like this in a box and charging money for it is not okay, however rapidly you try and patch it
ALL games which are released have bugs and crashes : all of them (except, perhaps, a few simplistic indie games). It's the price you have to pay, in the gaming-software industry, for increasing complexity to have richer content -- compatible with gamer systems that become more and more complex (such as : the high sophistication of recent, videocard electronics, architecture and drivers). The Big Boss of Stardock (forum nick "Frogboy") was still on the forum yesterday evening, around 1
ALL games which are released have bugs and crashes : all of them (except, perhaps, a few simplistic indie games). It's the price you have to pay, in the gaming software industry, for increasing complexity to have richer content. The Big Boss of Stardock (forum nick "Frogboy") was still on the forum yesterday evening, around 11:15 (my time : Eastern), when they were in the process of putting up 1.05 on Impulse. I came back here this morning to learn that 1.05 had already been p
[quote who="Folcik009" reply="7" id="2723239"] I don't think you can cast any spells while garrisoned within the city (couldn't in beta).[/quote] That would explain why I had to move my Sovereign out of his capital, yesterday, to cast an enchantment on the city. What was odd, then, was that most of the city tiles were highlighted with a red color. I had to find a city tile which was highlighted green. I wonder why I couldn't cast a city enchantment on just any city tile -
There is a quick-start manual in your Elemental installation folder : a .PDF file. But it is really not very useful to learn how to effectively play : it mostly describes game features, without educating new players on how to effectively execute procedures. For example, I found that trying to cast a strategic spell on a city could be a too complicated, not simple and obvious, procedure.
What happened to the "huge" map-size the manual mentions? At the moment, the "large" size seems to be the largest -- outside of the editor. I remember that arch-designer Frogboy mentioned somewhere, a year or so ago, that he was aiming for truly epic, gigantic maps -- their size only limited by the amount of RAM the gamer had available. Considering that many players' computers now exceed 2GB of RAM, disposing of a 64-bit OS, I wonder why we are currently limited to those so-called "la
I am glad, ydejin , that you started a thread on the problematic subject of casting strategic spells on a city. I reinstalled the game, yesterday, and started a new game. My capital had grown to many tiles ("squares"), on the map. My Sovereign, an enchanter who had 15 mana and who had learned 2 strategic city-enchantments, was located within the city. I opened the spell book, like the previous poster wrote, but the cast-spell button was not there!? I moved my Sovereign
[quote who="Archonsod" reply="111" id="2721277"] In general I think of Windows code in the same way I think of the Necronomicon ; it's full of things man was not meant to know and meddling with it is never a good thing to do. [/quote] Which reminds us of a deep and dark Johnny Depp movie : the one with the Delomelanicon book.
[quote who="Sinij" reply="84" id="2720822"] There is no doubt - the game is confusing when you start playing it and has very steep learning curve. Back when I started with Beta, It took me good 4+ hours playing to figure out how things work, and I am gamer with decade+ of experience. Interface, resource system, building, combat system - they are not at all intuitive, but they are learn-able. Some of it could have been solved by in-game tutorial or starter campaign where game walks you through
Thanks for the info, guys. I'm still with a 32-bit XP (works fine), but I was toying with the idea of buying a new rig, in 2009. Thanks to this thread's great tech discussion, it will be a 64-bit Vista system. Like Ron Lugge, I would want to try those extremely vast maps Frogboy has promised for 64-bit users with a lot of RAM. By the way, to run old DOS classics like Master of Orion ('93) and Master of Magic ('94), I prefer to use VDM Sound (rather than DOS Box). My