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Thanks, I have a friend likes the game and would buy Demigod if it was around $20. Hopefully more discounted offers will shop up.

Napster, Kazaa, Oink, Grokster.... now The Pirate Bay. The efforts of record companies are nothing else than [b]Whack-A-Mole[/b] strategy. When will they learn ? The world has changed. Technology advances made old business models obsolete and there's no going back. That copyright ifringement is currently illegal changes little. It won't stop technological progress. Law is not for it's own sake, law is made to serve the people.Data from 18th April: [quote] Socialdemokraterna (s

I see RTS games as an evolutionary dead-end. They barely evolve at all. Starcraft in particular is closer to an arcade game than to strategy. I used to like C&C a lot before EA bought it and made a mockery of it. In Starcraft and Warcraft3: - units are very fast, vision range very short. By the time you discover enemy units you're already fighting them. - ranged units are distinguished by having arbitrary damage modifiers, not by dealing damage before enemy r

One issue I'd like to bring is randomisation and fairness/balance. Cutthroat competitive multiplayer commuties generally use 'random' as a swearword. I have a different definition of fun, and it's strongly related to variety. Cuttroat multiplayer gamers like everything to be as symmetric and balanced as possible, they keep complaining how unfair it is to lose because of some random event. They like symmetric starting locations, resource placement etc. True, it does result in more even

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="18" id="2155032"] I'm not a coder, so I'm not much more sure about what I mean than what I said about wanting it meaningfully connected to the story content and past player actions. (I'm singleplayer focused.) [/quote] Oh, I see. This is a real concern, because I have yet to see a randomly generated story that is even remotely interesting. People have been granted randomly generated patents, though. I think good story and ramdomisati

[quote who="Darkodinplus" reply="11" id="2153462"] A guy making 500 word posts and referencing Machiavelli that doesn't want a fantasy game to sound pompous? That's kind of like snow calling milk white. At any rate I like the general idea but the actual system is up for debate. Also, Honor / Awe would be more grayish than love / hate or fear / popularity since you could be in awe of an arch-nemesis and still have some level of respect for him. [/quote] I

GW Swicord: I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'rich' randomisation. What the distinction is. If you're concerned that merely random levels or maps may look bland, that's not quite the case. Random levels can look quite interesting : http://www.freefilehostingnow.com/image.aspx?code=9d526f53a112aa434baacd8a9c7fa5e48c16&large=1 <a href="http://groups.

[quote who="arstal" reply="5" id="2136299"]Simply put, it's impossible- all SP games start to dull when you play them enough. [/quote] Simply put, incorrect. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup achieves high replayability through heavy use of randomisation, avoidance of no-brainers and grinding. I have slightly over 16 wins in that game, and want more. Levels are randomly generated, monsters, items and traps are placed randomly. Entrances to other branches can appear on random levels

A commentary from Techdirt.com : [quote]Lots of folks have been submitting variations on the story about how Stardock's new game, Demigod, has been widely pirated , and that's resulted in server troubles for the company, as many of these unauthorized users try to connect t

(moved to post above. Please let me message me if you know how to delete posts)

[quote who="Zyxpsilon" reply="23" id="2150702"] And... you're calling retarded for switching gears on some historical events (current, btw) or whatever drastic measures are used to prevent *it* again? This board has something called a community, advocates of illegality can only strike a sensitive chord of rational minds. Ignoring me or anybody else won't help you either. [/quote] I'm calling that sentence/argument retarded. That's why i used [i]that[/i] inst

What I had in mind is a cumulative system. Something that you gain or lose over time and with your actions, and preferably not mutually exclusive. With a simple alignment system, you could probably say I'm neutral, at least in traditional fantasy-style meaning. What this fame system would do is distinguish between me and someone like Hannibal. For the sake of argument let's say Machiavelli was 100% right and Hannibal was both feared and loved. In a classical alignment system, he'd be more les

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="9" id="2150325"]I would hardly agree with that: if the events were programmed to appear when specific conditions were met, they would always show up no matter how many times you re-loaded.[/quote] They would also cease to be [i]random[/i], and you could probably plan around them. Taken to the extreme, this approach is used in IVAN roguelike (Iter Vehemens ad Necem) . In the name of countering scumming and grinding, it punishes player for be

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="1" id="2136305"]Would be nice, except for two things: 2) When the devs introduced mega events into GC2, the forum people largely rejected them because they could whap you just as you are getting ready to win. I personally don't mind them, but Stardock does want to please everyone...[/quote] Ah, the joys of Save/Load game design. Such things are effectively impossible in games designed this way. But the only realistic solution seems to be Save/Continue

[quote] Coming now to the other qualities mentioned above, I say that every prince ought to desire to be considered clement and not cruel. Nevertheless he ought to take care not to misuse this clemency. Cesare Borgia was considered cruel; notwithstanding, his cruelty reconciled the Romagna, unified it, and restored it to peace and loyalty. And if this be rightly considered, he will be seen to have been much more merciful than the Florentine people, who, to avoid a reputation for cruel

[quote who="Zyxpsilon" reply="2" id="2148203"] Fourth; AND FOR THE LAST DAMN TIME: pirating ISN'T stealing. Go tell that to the crews of parked boats off the coast of Somalia and they'll shoot you on site - if armed enough to fight back.[/quote] Wow, that's retarded, low, and a strawman. Equating rape, murder and armed robbery with unauthorised copying. Does this board come with an /ignore function ? By sentencing these guys to 1 year they're mostly do

[quote]In high school, this one A-hole would say "that's Jewish" in regards to things he didn't like.[/quote] I'm an atheist, too, but I never miss an opportunity to say Jesus was also jewish. Speaking of Killzone 2, I don't care who plays it, but how can people like it ? It's slooooooooooooooow. When people say a game is realistic, they actually mean it's slow enough for a casual player to catch up. When they say it's team-oriented, they actually mean it's a deathmatch game w

One area where I think Dominions 3 is unsurpassed is the atmosphere, amount and quality of flavour text. Spell, item, nation, unit descriptions are just incredible. If you're on linux, you can use [i]strings[/i] tool to extract the text from game's executable, like this: strings dom3 > somefilename.txt

[quote who="makeshiftwings" reply="19" id="2143960"] Every national and international scientific body on the planet agrees that global warming is man-made. [/quote] Not true. Freeman Dyson doesn't. http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge219.html#dysonf Please read this article. It's also about other things, like the need for heretics in science. He brings up many good points, like Sah

[quote who="Tamren" reply="18" id="2055702"]Speaking of picking it up where can it be found nowadays? I played it a long time ago off of HOTU but then later I never got it working with XP and forgot about it.[/quote] Fantasy General works just fine in Dosbox. So does MOM, Dune2 and many others. http://www.dosbox.com/

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="19" id="2140407"]That too. I realised a while back that there are actually TWO ways to survive (if not thrive) in a pirate-filled world. The status quo and your idea. The problem with the status quo is that, while it regulates the system fairly well, nobody in it is at all happy. Your method wou.ld work, but it is hard toget people to give stuff away, even if they can sell expansions later.[/quote] I don't take credit for this idea because it's not mine. I

[quote who="Serik55" reply="24" id="2142645"] Good point. One of my favorite aspects of 4X games is eXploration. Certain Civ IV map scripts can generate "new world" continents and islands. The first civ to explore and settle them can become extremely powerful from the additional cities and overseas trade routes. [/quote] I'm mostly familiar with Master of Magic and not Civilisation games, but if the same is true for all of these games it indicates a deeper problem. Apparently eXp

I think AI players forming an alliance against the strongest power in the game makes a lot of sense. It's an elegant, natural and logical solution. Human players naturally do that in multiplayer. So, it would be like this: as long as no nation is very far ahead, it's free for all and there's usually no ganging on some other player. But as soon as a player becomes so strong that things are spiralling out of control, AI form an alliance and even share some technology, information and ot

Scoutdog: You will only be 'completely destroyed' if you insist on keeping current business model. Sooner or later game developers will need to change. I own a legitimate copy of DROD:Journey To Rooted Hold and it contains no copy protection. Actually it's open-source. But the last time I checked, DROD sells very well for an indie game. A sequel was released and multiple paid level packs were released (typically one per season). This is interesting because DROD demo not only h

One workaround could be something like Spell of Mastery. A player who's in much much better position than other should be able to legitemately just skip the rest of the game if he wishes. Another approach is like in Dominions3, where you can set a variety of victory conditions, like capture X out of Y capitols, or XY percent of provinces to win. But that would require campaign designers to specify such victory conditions. Ideally, AI would always be potentially dangerous, but