Tridus

[quote who="Tamren" reply="24" id="2307196"] Which is why we don't. Humans can only proccess so much information at one time. It is pointless to include any more information than we can handle. In a battle involving thousands of soldiers at once the only way we can take in the whole spectacle is a gods eye view from up above. When all of your soldiers look like ants what does it matter what happens to the individual? Lets say one soldier out of 5000 loses a finger. Even if the detail is

If you add 300 varities of swords, some developer has to sit there and create 300 varities of swords. In order to actually make 300 varities distinct, they need enough stats to differentiate them (and the other weapon types). There will need to be several sword models so they look different, otherwise people will complain about that. Someone will need to check that sword #247 didn't accidentally get scores that are too high and is thus clearly the strongest sword in the game. On top o

[quote who="Tamren" reply="13" id="2299468"]A pair of rapiers might both be piercing swords, but if one is bladed and the other is just a spike you have to differentiate between them. While that might seem to be a trivial detail it could affect combat in a variety of ways. A bladed rapier might not be able to cut very well, but it could still say... sever a bowstring. [/quote] That's getting too complicated for a game. Saying "swords behave differently from axes behave differentl

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="5" id="2302907"]I suppose you guys are not looking for statisticians you should apply anyway. I remember a guy from Valve saying that they have hired a guy for a position they never considered would be needed for a game company (I remember it was a very silly and extremely specific position, though I don't recall exactly what it was) but now they feel they couldn't do without him. [/quote] One of the current lead

If you email [email protected] and explain this to them, they can probably help you out. :)

Yeah, at this point the alpha will largely be a "does it actually work on a wider array of configurations then we have in office?" type of check. :) People who get that should expect a lot of bugs and things not working terribly well, not a fun game. Honestly if you're just eager to play and don't want to deal with problems, alpha is not good for you anyway.

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="4" id="2298026"]Quoting ckessel, reply 3... Even if you don't take that kind of approach and instead just play the game and report any bugs, you'll want to stress the game by avoiding ruts. ... Your post in general seems very sensible to me, but I wonder if there isn't also value in having some of us work our little ruts as hard as we can, especially if that more or less just means getting as far along in a very large map as you can before the next b

[quote who="Zubaz" reply="8" id="2297502"]Well, I dont know about anyone else here, but I don't exactly play a 4x game for the reason that all the female characters have nipples on them.Sadly, female nipples aren't the issue. [/quote] Well, that raises the question: are there going to be female channelers? (and other units for that matter)

[quote who="Shurdus" reply="9" id="2297067"]32-bit systems can use up to 3.25 GB of ram, right? What enourmous maps would you use to even scratch that limit... Even if ram would be a limiting factor, I am sure they could make it so that huge maps are not needed for a full experience. CivIV works perfectly fine with standard sized maps, and the game does not scale very well to the arger map types. [/quote] A 32bit process can address 2GB of RAM. That amount is used for the game en

A rating system that makes sense would use a multiple-axis system to show the different levels of things in different categories, and let people lock them out individually. That of course is far too complicated for the morons that do the most complaining about this stuff, so what we wind up with is systems that try to distill everything down to a single age number. Such a level of simplification is ALWAYS going to be faulty in some way or another.

Debit cards and credit cards are fundamentally not the same thing. Debit cards work on money that you actually have, credit cards work on credit. Having the MasterCard logo on it just means you can use it at places that take credit cards, not that it functions like one. What would appear as a hold on a credit card probably looks like a withdrawl because you can't put a hold on a debit card. We've explained what is going on about 15 times now, call your bank and sort it out.</p

Okay, I talked to a friend who works in the industry and has some ESRB experience, and he talked to other people about it. The answer was that they weren't sure, but they believe any official addon that has a different rating would also change the rating of the base game (for parental control reasons). They also said that Stardock should have an ESRB contact, so Boogie and crew can get a real answer if they need one.

[quote who="Campaigner" reply="23" id="2295815"]Why are some stores lapdogs to ESRB ? Is it to be able to have some stupid "children safety store" sign or something dumb like that ?? [/quote] Marketing. Lots of Americans are of the "protect the children from the terrible sin that is human sexuality" mindset. This is capitalism at work, stores see a market and try to foster a "family friendly" image to cater to that market.

The Witcher EE had a European and North American release. The NA one was the censored one, but it wasn't hard to find information on how to revert it back to the European version. But yeah, a seperate application that converts the game rating would probably be the best way, so the main game maintains a friendlier rating. Though really, I'm not sure how much this particular game would gain by being M instead of T.

[quote who="Spartan" reply="19" id="2293765"]I hope that we can have nipples on our females in game. All this religious based censorship really irks the hell out of me. If, for whatever bullshit reason, it is not possible with the inital release at least offer a correct DLC pack after-the-fact. [/quote] That would almost certainly change the rating to mature real fast, which they likely don't want. Isn't it great to be stuck with such a ridiculous s

Last thing I saw, the 64 bit version was having some issues due to Havok not having a 64 bit library yet. Hopefully they work that out, I'd love to see a map using 4GB of RAM.

[quote who="mojoman2" reply="6" id="2293144"]Quoting MannanMackie, reply 5I have pre-ordered and my money 'seemed' to have been taken out of my account for a few days but was restored. It is just put on a temporary hold and not withdrawn (i.e. Stardock never touched it). If stardock didn't request the large amount in the first place then the bank wouldn't of taken it. This happened to me with demigod preorder as well. [/quote] You may not want to rent a car or book a h

"Researchers, I command you to develop improved bows." "Oh dear leader, we have researched away and developed what you asked for: improved wheels!"

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="15" id="2291829"]The problem with blind systems is that after the first time, they are no longer blind. You know what to expect, and research accordingly. ...Only if it's a retarded blind research system. There is absolutely no point whatsoever to have a blind system with a fixed linear research tree. But once you add randomness or take away the linearity all together, no matter how many times you play you won't be able to tell beforehand what will

Art style is one of those like it or hate it things. That's just how it is. The upside to it is that it's much less hardware intensive then trying to make a good looking realistic style. A ton of games wind up with really bad looking realistic style due to the hardware problem, or they just only work on a tiny fragment of the PC audience (those with high end gamer rigs). Overall I like the style, though I'm hoping that the art is refined as time goes on. :)

Some limits on the randomness can really help, yeah. What bugs me about it is when you get totally screwed, which could happen in AoW. There was a maxinum number of spells, and in some cases there was more spells then that limit. So you could get to a point where the really strong spells (the only reason to go as a pure school rathern then a hybrid) just don't appear at all. Other games you get them fast, and it lets you totally mow down everything in your path.

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AoW:SM did that with spell research, giving you some options at a time out of all the spells, based on what your chosen schools were. The problem that caused was the same as with really randomized tech trees or "blind research": the Random Number Generator. Not all spells (or techs) are created equal. Sometimes you'd get lucky and the really good ones would appear early, and sometimes you'd get unlucky and they'd appear really late (or not at all). A couple of the spells were game alt

Front page/Impulse updates are often a problem for some reason. I'm not sure if the web team just isn't in communication with the dev team, or what it is. Entrenchment had the same thing happen several times, to the point where it actually went up on Impulse as a release (ie not beta) product for a while because the delay hadn't been entered. Several other times they had a date on the Impulse store that everybody on the forums knew was off, and had known for weeks. The one exception t

I don't see how a weak player could actually pull off an ascention victory. A strong player can take the bases that hold the crystals from a weak player without a lot of difficulty.