ScottTykoski

[quote]Just when is a unit really "in" the city? [/quote]The moment it enters a world-tile that has an improvement on it (even if it's just taking up 1/4th of the space). [quote]Can enemy units destroy buildings without invading the town square? (or whatever we call that initial city square)[/quote] Current plan is: if you attack one part of the city, then you're attackign the ENTIRE city. [quote]Are garrisoned troops considered to be everywhere in the city? (strongly related

Hortz: I'll look forward to seeing if we meet the standards of such a avid champion of quality animation. And, more to the point, if anyone has an XBox I highly suggest checking out this little gem on the Indie channel... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-R_w8UYB_A&feature=related Amazingly fun little title that basically has no animation but keeps you hooked. A nice example of how gameplay

*deep breaths...deep breaths* Hortz, No. I am not confusing the two. We're talking about what makes a GAME FUN (read that again) fun . Fun != animation. Fun != high-quality graphics. Fun != sound effects. What makes a GAME is...wait for it...GAMEPLAY! It even has the word 'game' in it. Amazing!!! The above production values certainly help mass market appeal, but I've played HORRIBLY ugly indie ga

This is the first time I've ever done this, but this constant (and unfaltering) argument of the importance of graphics over gameplay just raises my blood pressure too much, so I'm going to just lock this thread. Hortz: We'll be putting up videos of the battle stuff in a few months. You're welcome to come critique them once up, but I have a sinking feeling that a 4x game may not be for you. ;)

[quote]Well, that's just a false dichotomy, animations enrich every aspect of every game, remember Resident Evil 4,5, Mass Effect, Plants vs Zombies, Gyromancer.... Every game that failed had some fundamental flaws in the quality of animation.[/quote] Oh jeeze, and I just saw that declaration. There are several experts in the industry that would disagree with you...many of them being the minds behind the above titles. Gfx, animation, sound, music...th

[quote]I'm not worried about graphics card, nor should you.[/quote] Did you just make that statement to a PC developer? [e digicons]:rolleyes:[/e] Come back in May, watch whatever video footage provided and we can talk about things less abstract.

A lot of the visual impact of the battles really relies on your video card. We're in the process of tweaking the batching for Shader 2 cards, but it looks like drawing skinned meshes (animated characters) is going to be significanly more costly when on older cards. This means that you're not going to get the full effect of your giant armies (unlike Shader 3 cards, where batching will allow more units to be rendered at a time). The system will scale, but the overall feel of battles will lessen

Marketing has requested Battle videos in May, so I wouldn't expect anything before then [e digicons]:ninja:[/e]

[quote]But I remain convinced that the whole question is best postponed until we see roughly-finished versions of the canon factions.[/quote] This is all we ask :) The race design screens are currently being implemented and I think you'll be astounded by the amount of options to play with (both visual and statistical) to make a the non-canon races of your liking. We've also held off on introducing the 12 different factions that you can play as out-of-the-box. Just know t

It's the top ten games that the PC Gamer staff members are looking forward to in 2010, not the official 'Best of 2010' list [e digicons]8|[/e]

kyogre: Glad you saw that some new posts went up. Keeping up with our twitter account was one of my NYR's. One of my other resolutions was to use less emoticons ( ** resists urge to wink ** ). wintersong: Michgian spirits...cold and fragile due to the sub-teen temps we've been 'enjoying' over break. :( DAMNIT, one slipped in!!!

kyogre: Zelda is fun, but I died 4 times in the first village after knocking down bees from a tree. Turns out 'run into the water' means you have to jump off a cliff into the water, not run into the water from the beach. :( I'm sure there's a game design lesson to learn there, but I'm to embarissed to really think about it. And yeah, that car is the 30th anniversary version of the little tikes Cozy Coupe. He opened the rest of his gifts while sitting in it :) jinksy

Remember Christmas-time back in grade school? You'd wrap up your assignments, have some parties, then go home for TWO STRAIGHT WEEKS of toys and relaxation? Well, because of the way things fell this year, the staff at Stardock was also granted the gift of 14 days of off-time over the holidays. It's been great, and while visions of Elemental still dance in our heads (I have some new ideas about population growth for next Monday) we're all thoroughly enjoying t

Yeah, that is a new design choice. You have to be adjacent to another improvement to build the city in a given direction.

Can you name those folders for us...there are some that are intentionally empty (with the main-engine 3d assets)? With all other missing data, 'Verifying Installation' really should have done the trick. ALso, can you post you degbu.err so we get an idea of what it's failing on. Thanks! :)

As you guys encounter this, can you be keeping a mental log of what 'big actions' you've done (Signed treaties, killed off a player, etc)? Also (and I beleive there should be a popup that reminds you of this) but until the game is about 90% gameplay feature complete, you probbaly won't be able to load games from previous versions :( sorry.

You'll be seeing a major update to the city building UI in the next update And yup, it's along these lines ;)

So bizarre. You seem to have the old version ofthe research screen. I'll ask the team if there's a way to forcably refresh the TextureAtlas (our generated UI files) to make sure it has the setup for the correct screen.

I seem to be getting that on my laptop as well. We'll try and get that fixed ASAP (once we're back from Christmas break, that is).

This research screen actually appears to be the old one...if you have a fast connection, can you reinstall and see what happens? Thanks!

vandenburg: can we get your latest debug.err? There's some semi-fancy display code in place to mask those images properly, so I'd like to see what specs are causing the failure. Thanks!

As of now, the Cities in Elemental are traditional TBS fare. You build them up, train units, harvest resources and give the AI key locations on which to focus their invasions. Building improvements on the map is kinda unique, but in general it's currently what you'd expect from settlements in any Turn-Based Strategy title. To you they are production centers...to your neighbors they're obstacles. &nbs

I bet that was a unit designed previously...the new stat's system tracks moves as a string now, so yeah, cleaning out your 'my games' directory should do the trick :) Sorry about that one.

Not anymore ;)

As we move forward we're keeping your request in mind so this sort of thing can be modded. Note that it will not be a 'canon' feature and may have to wait until a post-release update to be properly implemented.