DerekPaxton

[quote who="Sarudak" reply="7" id="2861029"]Is the 1.11 going to increase the resources available like in Brad's build? I find the 1.1 no resources world rather depressing...[/quote] I'm glad you mentioned that, I'll update the list. By default the game placed 1 random resource per 200 tiles. Brad changed it to 1 per 100 tiles and we tuned it back to 1 per 150 tiles. What's needed here is a better resource allocation system (than just random placement) which is bei

It's great to have Jeff on the team!

*** 1.11 is scheduled for release on 01/06/2011 *** 1.11 is a stability patch based on the feedback given since 1.1's release. It resolves crashes and improves the AI. Changes: 1. AI is much better at casting strategic spells. 2. AI better at queuing units to be trained. 3. AI unit design improved. 4. Crash fixes in the battle engine. 5. Resolved an end of turn crash. 6. Fixed a m

Toby and I were making fun of each other in skype today until one of the new hires laughed at both of us for all the back in forth in skype when we were sitting right beside each other at adjacent desks. Welcome to Stardock. BtW, I had a great day. All three of the new folks are amazing, and we are lucky to have them.

A crash during a save probably isn't a memory leak. Its a ref issue. Some object is marked as no longer used even though something is still referencing it. So when the save happens the referencing object tries to write all its values (one of which is a pointer to a deleted object) and we get a crash. Memory leaks are the opposite issue. We are keeping references to object we don't need anymore. Every reference kept c

[quote who="kapeman" reply="27" id="2857337"] Quoting Derek Paxton, reply 25 In my opinion the first fix for caravans is to get a warning indicator in the game for when enemy units are in your lands. By biggest problem with caravan attacks is that its a surprise that monster was there at all, requiring me to scan my lands every turn (not going to happen) or have monster attacks seem effectively random. If we still have problems af

The heart of the game is in the sandbox mode. Create your own sovereign, create your armies, and play random games. Elemental isn't a role playing game with some TBS aspects, it is a TBS game with some role playing aspects. So the campaign is more similar to the scenarios provided with Civilization (before Civ5) than an intent to be the main game.

In my opinion the first fix for caravans is to get a warning indicator in the game for when enemy units are in your lands. By biggest problem with caravan attacks is that its a surprise that monster was there at all, requiring me to scan my lands every turn (not going to happen) or have monster attacks seem effectively random. If we still have problems after that fix is in then we will adjust. But I think we can fix this without makin

[quote who="Rune_74" reply="57" id="2852133"]I would love a spell that raises the dead on the battle field to join you...[/quote] There are no undead in Elemental. Our challenge is to create new interesting creatures and archetypes without dipping into typical fantasy tropes. I love that Elemental doesn't have skeletons, elves and dwarves. But I understand when people ask for them, they want flavor, they want a wide variety of allies and enemies. And we want to

[quote who="troglyte" reply="21" id="2856978"]Except if everyone is doing the exact same strategy of expanding, then there's no one in a position to take advantage of all those undefended towns.[/quote] Other players shouldn't be threatening early cities, monsters should be.

Although new features are certainly sexier, all the greatest features in the world don't mean anything if the game isn't stable. It is the #1 priority in my book too. And although 64bit is awesome for larger maps, more textures (therefor better graphics) and more factions/monsters/etc. It doesn't help with stability that much. Sure we have more memory to leak into for memory leak issues so some players may go longer before a lea

In 1.1 cities prestige is penalized for every city you have. So the more cities you have, the slower they all grow. Its not a true equalizer (5 cities will still grow more pop than 2 cities) but it is a part of the anti-ICS balance. The other major part of the balance, as others have already noted, is that you have to defend all these cities you place. The primary reason not to ICS in Elemental should be that it is to dangerous

All good suggestions. We do have to prioritize all the things we want to do (and several of the issues Xia points out are already on the list) and figure out what the order is and where we should be focusing. One of the biggest challenges for me is to figure out where to start and what to address first. I'm sure 100 different people would start in a 100 different things (balance vs new quests vs global mana vs faction differentiation). Not to

Soon.

I was running the spell design finalists by the programmers (who loved all the ideas and think we should put them all in). They were commenting at how cool and creative they are, and asking if they were all this good. After having red 330 spell submissions I said that no, there were spell ides that were bad nd there were spell ides that were bd, but funny to red. My favorite example of the latter was the Summon Dinosaur spell, whose text was simply "summons a dinosaur!". I told the team

"I'm not dead yet!"

[quote who="TheProgress" reply="25" id="2844996"]Will this update make the game hotter and meltier?[/quote] Hey now, none of that!

Thank you to everyone who submitted ideas for the spell contest. We are trying to cut down to our favorite five, but before we post the finalists I wanted to take a minute to go over a few of my favorites and what I liked about them. Shadow World by unacomn This spell opens up a rift to a shadow plane from which creatures of shadow will randomly spawn on the map for the duration of the spell's upkeep. These shadow creatures will attack anyt

Full details here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/402305 The big change between 1.1 and the 1.09w is that we tracked down the problem with creatures not spawning in the mid to late game and that is fixed for 1.1.

[quote who="Trojasmic" reply="23" id="2844989"]Derek, where does cleaning up the text so we know what we're researching in the adventure / domination track fall under? a ) changes in 1.1x? b ) known issues? c ) future features? d) go jump in a lake ... we ain't fixing it.[/quote] Can you give me an example of what you mean?

Jansk's values are randomized so he isn't supposed to be anything in particular. You are running into a known issue where unit portraits revert to the base unit type portrait. But that won't be fixed until after 1.1 (it is on the post 1.1 list) because we have to redo the way unit portraits are referenced.

Do you have a save of this?

[quote who="Werewindlefr" reply="8" id="2844730"]Is a fix to the "roaming monsters not spawning mid-game" in the work ? And is the ability to cancel treaties something that will be added post-1.1, or is it still something that can slip under the lockdown ?[/quote] We don't know the cause of that. We haven't been able to reproduce here (it isn't simply that monsters don't spawn in the late game). We did have a player here that encountered the same thing (so

[quote who="Alstein" reply="6" id="2844721"]Future Features= not in 1.1 right? [/quote] Yeap, bounced by lockdown.

*** 1.09w is scheduled for release on 12/13/2010 *** Changes: 1. OOM fixes. 2. Fixed the Destiny's Tutor quest. 3. Fixed a stuck turn bug. 4. Fixed a bug where wild improvements wouldn't be upgraded unless they were adjacent to a city. 5. Fixed a bug that was keeping dynasty kids from starting as channelers. 6. Fixed a bug where dynasty children wouldnt have a new name reflected in the family tree. <p