So all notable locations will be visible from turn 1? I think that's really going to change the feel of the game. In a good way. I was going to wait til Fallen Enchantress, but 1.3 might be the patch where I give Elemental a second shot...
Love them all, want to see them all included. I wanted to point out that "Subjugate Wizard" could also be used offensively. Run into a significantly more powerful opponent? Cast it on him to bring him down to your size, and force him to spend extra mana while doing so! Might want to make it a temporary effect or be somehow dispellable in such a case though.
[quote who="Folcik009" reply="1" id="2701088"] Also, I do believe that savegames are independent from recent code changes. I've been having to start new games to test everything.[/quote] Funnily enough it doesn't seem to be related to saves. I tried starting a dozen new games in a row and the sizing seemed to differ randomly. No extra strain noticed, afaik there shouldn't be as I didn't actually add anything, just changed the scaling of the images.
So I've been wanting to play with the environment art for a while and now that Beta 4 is out I figured I'd pull up some of the related xml and see what I could do. All I did for starters was load up \Core Tiles\CoreForests.xml and double the value of most of the entries, with the hope of making forests be larger, fuller, and have more of a presence. Here are the results: <a href="http://www.copernicanstudios.com/elemental/07312010/Elemental_1280615506.jp
I like the scaling.
+1 for ditching decimals in leveling. It's tedious and not very fulfilling, I usually just put them all into one or two stats anyway.
Do cities ever cost more than 100? When I was playing last night I wanted to build a city but was poor so canceled some buildings under construction which put me at like 115. After placing the city I dropped to something around -87.
[bug] - After winning a combat where both heroes leveled, one of my heroes was teleported to the edge of the map (selectable in sidebars but hidden from view) and then removed completely next turn. This is repeatable. Here is the save file, if you can load it attack the lesser of the three Skaths and you should see: http://www.copernicanstudios.com/elemental/06122010/lookout.EleSav [glit
Is it the same map as beta one? I was getting pretty tired of that one, would be nice to have something bigger...
Some people might find it confusing that factions and races are different. Kraxis is a faction that is made up of men that is part of the Empire. Umber is a faction that is made up of Urxen, a Fallen Race that is also part of the Empire. ^this Custom races are just sounding too much like a coolness factor and I'm not seeing enough argument for them gameplay-wise. Why add *another* customization screen? You already can customize your
Update: Turning off Advanced Lighting, as someone suggested in another thread, resulted in being able to see animated characters such as in the sovereign or unit creation screens, however the round static portraits in the main game screen were still whited out. I then disabled "Transform and..." and that fixed the round static portraits. This also seemed to make the game much more stable as I was able to play for 50+ turns before CTD, whereas before I rarely got to turn 10.
I have this problem. Turning off anti-aliasing fixes it. Unit portraits, however, are also white (although sometimes I can see some moving lines like the edge of a polygon in blown-out colors - see link) and this seems unaffected by anti-aliasing. Will play with settings some more and update if I get more results. Screenshot System Specs: AMD Athlon 64
[quote]Since that will push back our internal schedule, we’re going to let new people into beta 1Z next week so that they’re not stuck waiting.[/quote] Huzzah! I re-did my preorder with a credit card that should work this time, so hopefully I will actually be able to play finally!
Oh gash dang it, one of the things on my to-do list this GDC was track down Brad and drill him for Elemental tidbits and there I go wandering by in the background of this video completely oblivious that you're just a few feet behind me. >.
[quote who="ABOMB11" reply="43" id="2557445"] Quoting Nosrick, reply 34I've got a slight problem. My wallet was stolen last week, and I only just got my new card today, so I couldn't change the details (I honestly don't know who to contact, either). Am I going to have to wait until next Beta? I've been excited about this game since its announcement, but I can wait if need be. Just got an e-mail that told me the transaction failed. Had a similar
[quote]San Franscico was a Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Phenomena. It benefited from a huge population influx driven by a mad rush for riches. This population the was soon sustained by California being granted statehood, major banks moving to San Fransico to set up shop and US
My initial reaction is a big negative for the governors idea, at least as described. No offense meant, Boogie, but I think you totally missed Sid's point. It sounds complex and non-intuitive and would be very hard to describe to new players, as I think is evidenced by the amount of confusion in the replies already in this thread. Something similar could work but I think it should be a lot simpler, like say a hero could either be an adventurer/war leader or a governor
[quote who="Aractain" reply="78" id="2541026"] I'd much prefer fantasies to keep the creation myths at a minimum, or better make them vague and contradictory. Damn right! I hate how the first thing about a world is how it was created by a tear drop from a crying ellephant held in space by the mistress of magic that started out as a cloud of godlike gas. I just want some refrence or lore in the world that explains that "Our salvation comes from the first, the One. The joyu
[quote who="Splitshadow" reply="47" id="2540484"] People give organized, well thought out, constructive criticism, and you just shoot it down with your fanboy antics. Considering Elemental is in beta, maybe Stardock would like constructive criticism to make sure the game is as successful as possible. That's not to say you shouldn't laud SD for its achievements, but dear sir, if you could stop drooling it would help. [/quote] Err, fanboy antics? I was
I really like the look and names for all factions so far and I wouldn't listen to the haters. The only thing I'd be concerned about is each faction having two, sometimes three or more names. This could make diplomacy very confusing for first time players.
So just to clarify, the "we're" in "we're getting bumped" is beta 1G? And to further clarify, this is the last beta version before beta 2, which is when those of us who aren't in yet but want to be should pre-order to get?
[quote who="Denryu" reply="44" id="2431353"]-snip- I would liek to suggest a fourth tech color - grey. And I think that it should be used just as it is used in an MMO (when an opponent is so far beneath you that killing it does not give you experience. My suggestion is that 3 or 4 (or whatever you guys deem appropriate) tech levels beyond when a tech "goes green" that it goes grey. It can still be selected when a breakthrough is made. However, each tech on the grey list has a 10% chance of be
If roads have a strategic importance liked described I definitely do not want them to be auto-built over time. I'm not in the current round of beta so not sure what the current procedure is, but... 1. Select City 2. Click "build road" button 3. Select target city/location/etc. 4. Road gradually appears over next few turns, longer if target is farther away. Smart pathfinding so that if your target is near an existing road a T is created. Ther
[quote]Over the past 15 years I’ve built up an increasing library of algorithms I’ve doodled together for how computer players could play more like expert humans. Elemental will be my first real chance to see them come to life. I’m very excited.[/quote] As someone who plays 4x games almost exclusively single player, with the occasional hot-seat game with 1 or 2 friends and a load of AI players, I also am excited.
[quote quoting="post"] I still worry it’s not…happy and friendly enough. But I’m not sure. What do you think? [/quote] I agree, it looks pretty gloomy on all three accounts. I think it's more due to the dim, desaturated coloring of your textures more than the lighting that's at fault though. A small shift towards green and marginal saturation boost to soft100 and I got this: <a href="http://www.copernicanstudios.com/elemental_sa