We just put together the final icon in CorelDraw or Photoshop, so there's no reason we can't upload all our icon assets for the modders to use...it'd lend ALOT to artistic continuity.
[quote]I guess the next question then is if you make a mod that only has one piece of art for the thing in question, will it try to show that thing all the time? How many scaled levels are required?[/quote] The engine spoorts DDS and PNG's by default (it'll look for a file's *.DDS first, then look for the PNG version). If it reads in a PNG, then DirectX will be in charge of the MipMaps...the DDS file's we've been making have been using 4 levels of detail.
This is a sample of the Icon Sheet we make for the various Cloth Icons. Our task was to make images that 'look like something Aragorn would draw', and we've found it suprisingly hard to make quality assets that look sloppy (the two being obviously contridictory). I think our current pipline will result in
[quote]Are we discussing mipmapping here?[/quote] Yeah, with the zoom level required for Elemental, we've had to really dig in and process the images by hand. A huge part of the image used is the zoom distance, so as you pan back the images get more and more iconic to the point that a fallen circle of castles, overgrown with grass and vines becomes a simple X at the furthhest zoom (representing it's game type...an artifact). Also, if you zoomed out all the way, you'd see that fe
[quote]Is stealth/invisiblity/cloaking off the table for the Elemental base game?[/quote] At this point nothing is off the tabe (besides making Elemental an FPS)...it's all a matter of time and per-feature importance.
ckessel: lol@pa Yeah, Conan has a Twitter Tracker segment where the 'cream of the tweats' are filtered out (punchline: they all suck) but hopefully our posts provive SOME interesting insight into the daily Elemental workflow.
[quote]will there be some sort of an "auto-pilot" system in place using the mouse?[/quote] Definatly...that's our de facto, with the keyboard commands being for people who want that as a secondary movement option.
[quote]Here's hoping that 'arrow keys' really means 'num pad' so we can move in eight directions,[/quote] It does. [quote]Yay for looking into stealth functionality![/quote] You misread 'found' as 'looking into', whereas I ment 'accidentally and randomly stumbled upon a dusty peice of unused code'. But yeah, steath in GC3 would be awesome. And weekly update threads sound good...I'll probably post around 5 updates a day, so by friday there'd be 25 posts worth of text in th
GW: http://sd.stardock.com/Elemental/Intro_Storyboard1.jpg But http://twitter.com/teamelemental has the full link right on top...as well as links to other things. You know you want to check the site out...don't feel dirty, it's all in good fun [e digicons]*_*[/e]
kyogre: Thanks man, this is a good idea...I'll try to keep the posts interesting [e digicons]O:)[/e]
[quote]Don't worry, BoogieBac, effort apreciated.[/quote] Your appreciation is appreciated ;)
Jeeze, people, it's seriously just a webpage! Why all the hate!? [e digicons]:S[/e] [quote]Umm... couldn't you have made a special dev post to record what you have done each day?[/quote] I could have, but that's still 5 minutes at the end of the day when I'm wrappin stuff up and trying to make the rounds to check tasks. Plus, I don't find a list of 'what got done' to be particularily special ...the point of this is to keep people informed on the day-to-day as things happ
We'll try and get back on there...it's just that other tools have come along that really step 'communications' up a notch (Skype's group converstations, forinstance, which auto-log and can be accessed from any machine). Once the alpha is out we'll all have more to chat about :D
CaesarsGhost: I can't use IRC...I get sucked into conversations too easilly :( This let's me post info between builds without feeling like I'm ignoring people in a chat room
[quote]Is there some way to get twitter to send it's updates to my IM client?[/quote] Not sure, but there must be something that taps into the popular IM apps. I'm new to this too, so we can all learn together :)
[quote]Any word on that Alpha?[/quote] Just that we're plugging away at it :) For the last few months we've been just getting features into the game without really taking a step back to play from the users' perspective (read: not much polish was going on). Brad has come in and changed focus to polishing a very simple core that we can give out to you guys, then reintroduce features and polish them up. So far it's going very well...this week it's all about getting
No, I think you can view via that web link! I mean, the more followers the better, but this is more to keep players in the loop, not to get a trillion-zillion followers . Though, if we ever get a Trillion-Zillion followers, I wouldn't complain :) 'Cause that's a big number.
I really like writing journals for you guys, but I have a problem where, if I dont have time to construct something interesting (with videos or picts), I tend to focus on other tasks. This isn't a lazyman excuse, I jsut don't want to shortchange our fans. <
The firey-orb is a 'Flare' spell that was cast to open FOW. That wall arond the city is the basic 'Hedge' fencing...it gives no defensive bonuses. You'll be able to place 'Guard Towers' to upgrade your wall's defensive level (which will upgrade the gfx as well). Mini Map is in the upper-right corner...it's just rolled up. You can also collapse your Channeler's stats in the upper left corner.
In 2 weeks, eh? I'll ask around but it may just come down to how much of a crunch mode we're in, unfortunatly :( Thanks for the offer, Glasyra! I'll keep ya posted!
Touching on the MOO3's 'putting AI in charge' concerns... In Elemental, no matter what system is implemented and what degree of automation/AI control is put in, rest assured that if the player overrides it, the AI will NOT re-prioritize it's own agenda the next turn. In MOO3, the main problem players had with the 'AI' was that player-set commands were often overruled y the computers logic, which we will NEVER allow. If the player wants to make a decision (no matter how st
Editor has been put on the backburner until all map features are in (we just added zone of control lines and it broke things in the editor). edit: Hence the underwater resources and forests :)
Luckman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_Frontier A Stardock game from 1997 that can no longer be purchased , but just got a server update a few months ago. And trust us, if fo some crazy reason we go bust, we'd put the server side code out for anyone to use.
That thread is up to 254 posts!!!! Defintly alot of good points all around...it's nice to go from two opposing fronts on the topic to a single vision that has everyone (internally, at least) really excited.
[quote]2. Let's say I have twenty towns with barracks. How does it divide up the resources appropriately to those locations? [/quote] It will weigh several factors...what's being trained at a given moment, whos closest, whost connected via road, who may have top priority for a resource, etc. In the end, I would say 20 barracks training 'Magic Dragoons' is a bad idea if only one city can make 'Magic Dragoon Spears'. [quote]3. How will the user be able to tell what their shipping lines