cephalo

Ok, there's something visible in the screenshot that has really been bugging me. Normal forest trees are billboards for performance reasons I guess, and there's nothing wrong with that except they absolutely do not go with the 3D trees that you see in tile props. Both tree types look fine individually, but together they look horrible. The resource 'Old growth forest' looks as out of place near the forest tiles as they do out in the desert. Some consistency with the way trees ar

[quote who="Black-Knight" reply="57" id="2810650"] How can the option of removing a feature be "doubling" the work???? I am not saying that there is no work involved... but... double? Read all the complications these guys came up with in order to address what they, obviously, have finally recognized as being a possible game breaker! ...While instead I just suggest to make it optional!! [/quote] I think that teleporting is such a far reaching question that if you want to incl

Elemental is the only game in town when it comes to fantasy TBS. There's nowhere to go but forward.

As much as you guys talked about 'teething problems' with your new game engine, I would say that its a darn good engine. I think the engine and the art style were always very good. (could use some more color though) There's nothing engine-wise that would prevent a true classic fantasy game being made. The only problem was that you took the game design portion of the project for granted, when really it's the hard part. Brad even said game production is '90% technical and %10 percent game

I think teleporting is too fundamental to have as an 'option'. At that point you are talking about doubling the work that needs to be done designing two different games. I say one at a time! lol.

[quote who="Grallonsphere" reply="209" id="2810032"]http://img143.imageshack.us/i/endor1.jpg/ http://img264.imageshack.us/f/endor3.jpg/ http://img35.imageshack.us/i/endor4.jpg/ I usually polish them in the Cartographer - adding some key resources. Pity we can't deactivate the automatic seeding though. G. [/quote] For some reason I can't see these in high res. They l

[quote who="Black-Knight" reply="47" id="2809905"] It takes a long time to build but still it has been agreed in that forum by many players that it is spoils the strategy. So you see that also in AOW teleport is theoretically defensive (from tower to tower) but it ends up being used offensively. [/quote] This does worry me. Teleport is really the most powerful ever ability in any game. It's actually pretty hard to make it influence the game in a controlled manner. I

If teleportation is in the lore, then it should be in somehow... BUT It's alot easier to write a book or a movie about things like teleportation (or time travel) than to include it into a game. In the former case, you simply don't need to explain alot of stuff. People enjoy the story and move on. In a game however, you can easily end up having to actually deal with the real consequences of this alternative reality! I have a funny example of this actually... Many years

One thing that is probably not very clear is that the Noise Control contributes the random bumpyness, while the Turbulence Control adds the snakyness. If you turn the weight down all the way on one or the other, you can see how they behave on their own and imagine how you can combine them. I try to use the Noise Control to determine the shape and distribution of continents, and then I use the Turbulence to add some snakeyness to the mountain ranges.

[quote who="Lord Xia" reply="18" id="2808851"]Does taking 100 turns to move an army across the map make for fun gameplay? No. [/quote] In an ideal world.... The answer to that question *should* be an emphatic YES. You have to examine why you are including teleporting. If you are adding it because your game is boring and people want to bypass your content, then it is unlikely to be fixed by adding teleportation. You're only fixing a symptom of a deeper pro

[quote who="CHiZZoPs" reply="114" id="2808697"] However, I think players would get much more satisfaction learning new spells of entirely unique design than the same old thing just a level higher. This is what always drives me never complete RPGs such as Final Fantasy. [/quote] I think this is a very important point. This kind of 'upgrade' adds nothing to the discovery process. I would say that it is a complete waste of labor to put in numerous spells that function the

In my opinion, teleporting is a very dangerous thing to put into medieval fantasy games. Just think of how the automobile changed economics, but times a million. No matter how big of a map you make, and no matter how much you fill it with amazing content, players will use teleporting to bypass all of your good work to get straight to the cheese. They will instantly break down your game into the most basic parts and then complain that its over too quickly. To sum up the issue perf

[quote who="Sunjah_Kahn" reply="202" id="2807847"] Hmm, I wonder if that is what I am doing; having the mountain, but then telling underneath the mountain to be way too high? [/quote] Actually, I'm telling it to be way too high. :) It's hard coded for now.

One more thing I'd like to say on the issue of having a bunch of obsolete spells in the spellbook is that there was one game that handled this brilliantly. In MOO2 your old weapons would get a miniaturization bonus as you teched up, so that they became cheaper and you could fit more of them into the same amount of space. They eventually became obsolete, but more slowly. A typical progression was that when you attained the latest weapon, it could potentially do more damage, but by fitting out

[quote who="Tridus" reply="103" id="2808040"] Instead of that, I should be researching higher level spells because they can do more things. I could get Flame Dart, Forge Blast (halts production in a city), Banish Summon, and Flame Shield (unit enchantment that sets any melee units that attack the enchanted unit on fire). IMO that's a lot better then having six direct damage spells, where five of them are obsolete due to not scaling. [/quote] <

[quote who="Gazz_" reply="68" id="2807435"] The only change (and that's a good one) is that you can't just stop researching spells when you have the one damage spell you'll ever want to use. You will want bigger ones... [/quote] But if you lose your casters for some reason you are back to where you can just stop researching. Actually you can't really stop researching, you just have to keep going for nothing.

The actual height of mountains and hills and flatland is kinda set. If I know that a tile is considered a 'mountain' it will have a minimum height that is outrageously tall, plus the random amount from the original elevation map.

I'm a bit concerned about flat spell damage. It sounds a bit clunky to first have to research a spell, then need a caster with high enough int to cast it. It is then possible to have a situation where %80 of your known spells can't be cast by anyone! If you lose some important heroes you may reach a point when the whole spell research process is a waste of time for you to deal with, because you will never until the end of the game have someone to cast any of these future s

I need to think about how I should address these questions in the OP. I'm sure you aren't the only one with these questions. As a quick attempt at making sense of it, each set of three 'percent below' sliders are linked. For example, the elevation sliders, (sea level etc.) are functions of altitude (kinda...), so if the 'percent below mountain' slider is equal to the 'percent below hills' slider, then you will have no hills. Hills exist in the 'gap' between these two sliders. So the three sli

[quote who="Sunjah_Kahn" reply="188" id="2805626"]Is there some type of instructions anywhere save the opening post? I LOVE this, excellent work, but myself I have made some maps that I love, and some that stunk! I feel like everytime I am going to do a new one, it is just a guessing game. I think the ones I got that I liked were high frequency and low roughness...but am having trouble tracking it. Are there detailed instructions anywhere? (besides the f

[quote who="Goontrooper" reply="189" id="2805633"] Nope...trust me, I'm using the right map and I have mods turned on. I'm doing quite a bit of my own modding, and my own work is showing up just fine. I just recetnly did a fresh install of Elemental to the latest version, and updated Windows, .net, etc. to make sure there wasn't something silly going on. No luck though... I'll keep playing with it because I may be doing something stupid on my end, or maybe there is a bug

[quote who="Derek Paxton" reply="187" id="2805354"] Beautiful work on this Cephalo! [/quote] Thanks Kael! Very exciting to see you join the team! And.... for my super easy wish list... I would like to be able to place resources and shards on the map, without any additional random placement. Leave it to the map designer what is to be placed, and leave it to them to do it properly. This goes for maps made in the cartography room also. I

[quote who="Goontrooper" reply="185" id="2804346"]I was able to download it. The connection I was using at that time was having trouble with the link or it was just down when I tried. Seems easy to use but my maps still have cliffs. Dug through the thread and didn't see anyone else having this problem. I'm using the latest version of Elemental and Elementerra. [/quote] If there are cliffs then you're probably using the wrong map. (I may put some cliff

Personally, I wouldn't mind messing with the engine source code.

[quote who="Goontrooper" reply="183" id="2803558"]I don't know why I have never tried this, it looks great. Really want to check it out. Are the links still working? I can't get them to work. [/quote] They seem to be working for me. Anyone else having trouble?