Randomized research is more like playing the lottery then a strategy game. The RNG can be infamously streaky, there will be games where you can do no wrong, and other games where you get thrown ridiculously behind due to things totally out of your control. It's the antithesis of fun.
The forums age is 13 because of a specific law about people under 13, which I think was actually killed by the supreme court anyway. It's not the same as the age of signing a contract.
Didn't Annatar have a dev chat earlier where it said there wouldn't be an NDA? I wonder what changed.
[quote who="Jalicos" reply="13" id="2323650"]Aren't you blurring the line between beta and release? If anyone who preorders gets the game right away, is it still a preorder? Seems to me like this whole thread is just arguing semantics. [/quote] "preorder" doesn't mean the same thing in Stardock lingo then it does elsewhere, yeah. I kind of wish they'd use a different term, every now and then someone comes in confused by it.
I'd be pretty shocked if it doesn't work in Windows 7, yeah.
I was watching this for a while due to the apparent death of the Simcity franchise, but I'm not sold on paying a subscription for it. How is it if you're just playing offline compared to Simcity 4?
DRM (like what EA foisted on us in Mass Effect) is the digital equivalent of trying to stop chocolate bar theft by running criminal background checks on everybody who tries to buy chocolate bars from you. That fiasco was NOT Bioware's idea. They said as much, it came from above them and they couldn't do anything about it until a massive forum outcry erupted. EA then backed down and gave us the version we got, instead of the "hey if you're not online every week you can't play" nonsense. <
[quote who="wilebill" reply="14" id="2322652"]Tages in Dawn of Discovery Demo? Seems to be. In the top directory of the demo there is a file called TagesClient.exe. Perhaps Tages is so integrated that even the demo has to have it along, or maybe Tages is what sets the playtime limit with the demo. Not hurting anything, since it is just a demo, but maybe there should have been a DRM warning with the demo too. [/quote] That's normal, rather then the exception. If you rel
[quote who="PurplePaladin" reply="20" id="2322927"]This is what I've always wanted to know, and never understood about computer games the last 5+ years. They release a game way too early; get negative reveiws and negative posts on so many forums, and then spend months & months working on patchest/updates to try to undo and "negate" how imperfetly the game was released. I was always wondering, why not spend the exact amout of time that a complany would be working on patche
[quote who="Zakath" reply="17" id="2322566"]Interesting post, but some of your practices would make me cry out in horror. For instance the much abused Hungarian notation, works fine as long as you don't change your type. But what happens when someone changes the type of lShipCount to unsigned long and forgets to update the variable name? Not terribly fond of the m_ prefix either, but that one doesn't have the same potential of producing Coding Horror.[/quote] <a href="http://www.joelo
[quote who="ckessel" reply="1" id="2322660"]It's not "a single archer" conquering a city of 5000. That archer represents a unit with lots of men. It doesn't take a lot of armed soldiers to occupy or take over a fairly large population.[/quote] Since all your units are coming by taking population and training them, it may actually be one archer. We don't know what the minimum numbers are right now. [quote]It's biased towards helping those that leave defenses thin or non-exis
[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="12" id="2322097"]Not likely. Usually with this stuff the email you get will be Impulse telling you that your order was processed, and if you get in that will happen once the game goes up for download. I mean they could send out emails to tell you that you got in early, but it doesn't seem like something they need to do. This assumes that everyone on the alpha list is going to be running Impulse in the background. I was in the Stardock beta
[quote who="ckessel" reply="21" id="2322128"]I'm not keen on the idea of conscripting an army, but I like the idea of pulling leader figures from citizenry. Hinterland had a neat tradeoff between having a guy at home in his house doing something useful (alchemist, blacksmith, whatever) versus bringing him out into the field with you to adventure. I think Age of Wonders might have had something along those lines as well where someone sitting in a city could cast spells that affected
[quote who="Tourresh" reply="18" id="2322397"] I'd advise a system as seen from the original AgeofWonders where you could explore dungeon type sites. In the original AgeofWonders there was only one single level, but for Elemental I would advise many dungeon type sites having multiple levels... 5, 10, and even 20 levels. It's much more intensely scary entering Level 17 of an evil dungeon as compared to Level 2. No thanks. I'd rather just play a roguelike or classic RPG if I wante
[quote who="DeadMG" reply="15" id="2321815"]No beta testing for non-preorders/ [/quote] That's right. Stardock treats betas as "get the game out to the most dedicated of the fanbase and use their opnions to make a better game". They don't use beta as a demo, which is what it turns into if you open it up to anybody.
[quote who="landisaurus" reply="17" id="2321852"]I was always frustrated by not hardcoding strings. I guess I don't like keeping track of several files at once, though I can see how it would be easier to track down problems with strings later. [/quote] Translation is where it really shines. We write bilingual (English/French) software where I work. I only speak English. So, when I write the software, I'm writing in English. At some point later on in the development cycle, w
[quote who="ckessel" reply="9" id="2321782"] I'm sure Stardock has it well under control , but the Joel Spolsky article certainly made me rethink about Hungarian differently, in a good way. [/quote] yeah, me too. Thanks for posting that! [e digicons]k1[/e]
That was neat, thanks. :) edit - Ron, I'm graduated and I didn't understand all of it either. Don't worry about that, if you start working a lot in C++ you'll pick it up. :) (I've got a significantly different set of guidelines to work with, this being a .net shop.) edit 2 - fixed the name, too many people with similar avatars is confusing. (Well, that and I'm dizzy from blowing up baloons all day.)
double post, sorry. Forums are wonky today.
[quote quoting="post"] And that brings me to a question I wanted to pose to you folks. Would you be interested in us extending the beta? Since anyone can join betas by pre-ordering, we could try something that really hasn’t been done before as far as I know – make the beta experience something truly outstanding unto itself. Right now, the schedule is this: Beta 1 in August Beta 2 in October (adds tactical battles) Beta 3 in
[quote who="Haree78" reply="6" id="2321532"]The meaning isn't lost, it's as clear as day. It means any attempts by a company selling software to enforce the Licensing agreement they are selling for it.[/quote] No it doesn't. You can enforce licenses by suiing the people breaking them (which happens to companies that pirate business software and get caught). That fits no definition of DRM on the planet. It's also not DRM if you need an account to get in, ala W
[quote who="ChongLi" reply="24" id="2321527"] So what is the point of training your troops if it reduces the number of them that you're allowed to field? Essentially, you're trading 50 peasants in for 9 paladins and if the equation is not equal, you'll always do one thing or the other. [/quote] Well trained troops only cost one person (people are themselves a resource) and one set of gear. Poorly trained troops are cheaper, but you're going to need more of them. <p
Well, this came up before. When I was in the Entrenchment beta, it was pretty helpful to have a post explaining where to find the minidump files and what to do with them (they were well hidden in Vista). For Demigod there was a lot of log files with connection stuff, but it took a while before someone explained which ones they wanted to see. So I figured having a single thread for that info (once we get it) would be helpful for testers. :)
AFAIK both are welcome. Beta 1 (and the alpha for those lucky enough to get in) are going to be pretty rough, and things aren't finalized in terms of a lot of the balance and even some of the mechanics. If there's things that the testers find just don't work out that well in practice, good feedback on that should be useful too. Color on the rally flag might not be a high priority item though. ;)
Before the feeding frenzy starts, I'd like to get this information out of the way. :) Unfortunately we don't know anything yet. So Froboy, Boogie... how do you want bug reports sent? Are there minidumps or log files you want, and where are they located? Thanks. :)