tejondour

M-M-M-MONSTER POST!!!!!

TRIPLE POST!!!

Multi-

DOUBLE POST

Speaking of leveling up your specialists, it sure would be nice if their specialty bonus was affected by their level. (...unless this has already happened. It occurs to me that I may not have leveled up a specialist since 2A.)

[quote who="kyogre12" reply="3" id="2667196"]I don't think any sort of rating system will be necissary, because the good mods will be pretty self-evident.[/quote] This is amazingly untrue. Sure, many of the good mods will be recognized as such. But many amazing ones will be completely ignored, for any number of reasons. I've seen this in more than one modding community. Chances are good that if the scene really gets going, the Ne

Point 1: pretty trivial compared to the rest of the engine, especially since most of the existing code can be adapted. Point 2: many editors support Lisp. Even if they don't, the only critical function is parenthesis matching. Point 3: S-expression validation pretty much IS parenthesis matching. ;) Yes, it would take a little more work... a little more time spent building your own tools. But that seems to be par for the course in Elemental development. When it comes do

...and you could reduce the size of the S-expression even more with short names and no indentation. But long element names and clean indentation are a good thing for readability, and you're right that this isn't the most important concern. From the code-efficiency side, it's less about raw size than it is about the efficiency of both the data structure and the parser. You don't have to remember the text name of a tag while scanning the file, much less the names of an entire t

Different song entirely, yep.

I hadn't actually done any real work with XML until I was doing a mod (of a mod) for Civilization 4. However, I had some knowledge of Lisp and S-expressions, and right from the start I found myself maddened by the wanton inefficiency of XML's reinvented wheel. Diving right in, here's a piece of it: <span style="font-family: 'courier

I don't understand the distinction between a per-turn magic cost, and a reduction in magic regeneration. Kind of the exact same thing, isn't it? In any case: it seems to me that this world's lore supports no upkeep. Consider: the fallen were originally altered from men (etc.), but nobody's expending any energy to keep them different. I think essence and shard requirements on certain spells are enough to keep the resource management meaningful but not tedious.

[quote who="John_Hughes" reply="29" id="2660970"]Elemental runs on a RTS engine.[/quote] Ah yes, now I remember that exchange. (Obviously I'm not being a very good fanboy... too busy, heh!) Awesome. :D

You know, this excites me as much as the game itself. Possibly more. I'm an active Oblivion modder (and modded Morrowind as well), and the tools they gave us are clunky and lack any automation, making for many long and repetitive tasks. We're told, "These were the tools we needed to implement the game -- little more, that's why they're kind of rough." I wonder sometimes if anyone at Bethesda has ever used good tools , because if they'd spent a few dozen hours refining them, t

I'd like to underscore the previous post. This is the reason that every argument I've seen on this page in favor of squares over hexes (with the sole exception of "I like using right angles") is completely bogus, and that includes Frogboy's own. If we were actually talking about squares, they'd all be valid, but we're not. If diagonals are treated the same as orthagonals, every argument against hexes can be made more strongly against squares. Square-root-of-two math on moveme

Simple enough to reproduce: take an army and move adjacent to an inn. Select a unit from the army which is not a Champion. Try to move onto the inn. The unit gets split out of the army, but doesn't move. It's still visible in the square, but the army is "on top" of it so it can't be selected by clicking. I couldn't tab to it either but that could have been due to no moves left. Moving the army off the tile leaves that unit behind, at which point it can be re-merged or moved independen

[quote who="Ron Lugge" reply="33" id="2656035"]Ringworld was made of unobtanium,[/quote] To pointlessly extend this even more pointless quibbling, I'm pretty sure Niven's Ringworld was made of neutronium, which differs from unobtanium in that it is actually a specific material predicted to exist in certain well-defined conditions. I assume you meant Niven's, because he invented it and you capitalized it without any qualifiers. If you meant Halo or some other, disregard -- I'm not

Do the shards have any meaningful effect other than powering those top-end spells? If not, I don't quite understand the logic behind having sovereigns possess specific spell books in the first place. It seems like just a MoM holdover at this point, and as has been commented, the mechanics right now make them a gamble (which is very different from a calculated risk). On the other hand, it makes sense to have a mechanic whereby certain sovereigns have aptitude for certain types

Why not just apply a multiplier to the weapon's abilities according to the unit's level? Say, 20% per level-up: Green (rank 0) troops with +5 flaming sword: +5 damage. Regular (rank 1) troops with +5 flaming sword: +6 damage. Elite (rank 5) troops with +5 flaming sword: +10 damage. BTW, for those worried about the grind, why not take another page from MoM: troops gained experience just sitting in a garrison. 1 point per turn, no matter what. Fielding your troop

Yeah, I do have to try that one. Still having fun fiddling with Rise of Mankind, tho. Kyogre: You should still be able to install it by hand, no?

I remember when this came out, a friend picked it up for XBox. Suffice to say, my own review is less positive. :) Might have been more challenging if you couldn't steal your opponent's mana crystals (which the AI never does). But even 2-player mode got pretty old pretty fast. YMMV.

It's not quite Smalltalk, but on the other hand, you can actually make games with it...

Brad, right at the end you mention that you've never seen a demo... there actually was one, way back when. It's what made me buy the game in the first place! Merlin vs. Kali, I think there was a turn limit or somesuch. I wonder if it's just vanished since everyone has access to the abandonware version these days? I'm pretty sure MoM was the very first game I ever played with detailed in-game info on absolutely everything , through their right-click pop up system. The prod

I thought it wouldn't be as good after reading five posts ranting over it... but yeah, the chicken scene is just awesome. Edit: Ooh! I has a karma! When'd that happen? :D

This is the part where I bleed envy all over the map.

Holy crap, now I wish I'd spent more time recently playtesting this, and less time doing absolutely everything else (like running pen-and-paper games, heh). Probably no way I can get myself in on this one. But I'll officially volunteer, anyway! And in any case: I'd love to see a transcript of the game, at some point.