For those wondering about resources, here's what were shooting for.... NATURAL Early Game: 3-7 Mid Game: 8-12 Late Game: 13-20 MANUFACTURED Early Game: 6-12 (2 Levels of Basic Helmet, Armor, Weapon, Shield, Greives, and Boots to equip on your units) Mid Game: 12-30 (4 level of above + some Accessories) Late Game: 31-50 (6 levels of above + more Accessories) AND these manufactuing numbers are bare-bone
What it comes down to is this: People dont play MP to play the computer. We can put the saved time into a better in-game AI, but developing the external bot architecture, just to have people complain that they end up playing AI in MP, is a waste of resources. As for the streamlined economic model, dont worry about there not being enough depth...we're floating a few systems around ,but it wont be a complete departure from what was originally proposed.
[quote]what will be required in making custom animations? [/quote] Knowing Maya and how to animate ;) Or knowing how to transfer a rig to 3dsMax and animate in there. Unfortunatly there are some processes that we just can't simplify :(
I bow before the word of Brad...sorry folks, but ScottT never fights to have less time to work on a release.
[quote]Mana is what a channeler can channel; essence is part of what a channeler *is*.[/quote] Yes, and Flare would be a perminent thing (unless someone uses magic to snuff it out)...Sublime harvest certainly could just cost Life and Earth Mana (which is fairly rare). These values can be tweaked, but from a gameplay mechanic, Essence lets us give the player cool options without allowing too much cheese. [quote]is it still the intention to only have the cloth map in beta0 to play
[quote]Talking about editors, have you planned if we will be able to try/test during the beta? Or will they be reserved for release?[/quote] Dunno...since they're being used by the artists were getting A LOT of stability and usabilty feedback. You'll probably see them tricke out around beta 3. [quote]Editors galore will be nice, but my lack of artistic experience (And skill, for that matter) will probably leave me staring at them for hours while my empire crumbles. [/quote] Most of th
[quote]If a simple "more food" spell looks that nice, I can just imagine what your artists will come up with for the end-game mass destruction spells![/quote] One of our goals will be to make just as many 'passive' and 'defensive' spells as 'offensive' ones. If we can actually make it exciting to play the peaceful magician, healing the land and saving the weak races, then we've done our job! [quote]its going to follow me across the web i just know it[/quote] O
Welcome to the first of several 'Countdown' journals leading up to the release of Beta 0. While we don't have a firm date for the release (several folks need to recoup from weeks of Demigod all-nighters ), we still plan on getting Elemental's first playable form into your hands for June!
ws: We're still shooting for Beta0 in June. Posting a Journal as we speak :)
What we're planning on doing is releasing the Skeletons and Rigs that we create for other people to use when modeling their own creations...this way, any animations that are in the game can be automaticially applied.
For the sake of keeping things simple, I would just have 'Plauge Catapults' be a type of unit (catapult that can inflict posion or something) that get's unlocked at a certain point in the 'War Engines' tech. As for the OP, I think we've devised a method of dealing with technologies, milestones, and incremental ability improvements that will be pleasant (no more 'you've researed X, now your diplomatic ability is 3points better').
Yeah, Demigod multipayer has become a blackhole of pain for several Elemental devs, so the rest of us are diligantly working to keep on schedule. I'll try and start posting more, though :) I know it's getting exciting as that Beta 0 draws closer (for both you guys AND us).
Yeah, GC2's setup screens got REALLY unweildy as we continued adding setup options, so with the downloadable content and other new features we felt this was best added as its own section of the setup process (and not just shoved into the 'world setup' area).
One of the last setup screens for starting a game is the 'Rulebook' screen, where special options like this can be toggled, as well as the 'Item Index' (disabling/enabling items that appear in game), the 'Beastiary' (toggling creatures in the game) and 'Quest Guide' where quests and events can be adjusted. There'll be LOTS of room for different tweakable settings for players to mess with :)
You definatly will need a Shader2 compatable card (if the Political machine 2008 demo don't run, either will Elemental). We're hoping that, even on a crappy box, you'll be able to play with 'Cloth Map' mode almost always on...but no official specs are known yet :(
[quote] I only see them being used in caravans in your City A and City B example[/quote] Any city that has a farm connected to it will be fine (rations wise). Its the cities that are build away from 'fertile ground' that will need food transported to them. Most of this process will be automated: cities with a surplus in any resource will automaticially send that off to a the neighboring settlement that is most lacking. If a 'Trade' treaty has been established, food (or w
Hey Vordrak, (i): You gain more essence as you go up in levels, but once you spend some essence, that bit is gone forever. The real trade-off is, in later game, the guy that freely spent his essence building an army and spreading his control will be a shirivled weakling compared to the guy that horded it and only spent is as necessary. (ii): You can cutstomize and name any type of unit you'd like, but we'll probably save army-wide leadership bonuses for heroes (
Yes, an even log will be 100x easier to implement than a story generator....and the notes ides should be doable (just add an empty 'Event' wher eyou get to fill in the details...then you even get the timeline of when the note was posted).
I can see us locking some of the larger maps until the basic mechanics are ironed out (making sure 'huge' and 'epic' maps randomize in interesting ways will take some internal work).
I dont know if I mentoned this in another thread, but one idea I had (again, ideas are the easy part) would be to allow certain dungeons (catagorized into caverns, ruins, and towers), once cleared, and a spell of control is cast upon them, to be 'tapped' for recruitable creatures. Almost like our current setup...you need an Archery to train Bowmen, Stable to train Calvary...here, each controlled dungeon would unlock various creatures that could be trained as 'units' in y
Ack...I was hoping that 'feature' of GC2 had been forgotten. No, we'll not be attempting the Epic Generator for Elemental. It was a hellish ordeal to try and create an interesting, readable story from pure data. After reading 'The Silmarillion', however, I think I have a considerably better idea as to the 'feel' a generated story should have...but yeah, any time spent on a story generator is, in the end, time not spent on the game . ANd right now, we have WAY too many fun
;) No problem...we love to talk about the game. For a while we were playing a bit of catch-up: with work being engine-centric the gameplay features weren't getting in. But now Brad say's were up to speed, perhaps even a little AHEAD of schedule....though we can never rest TOO much, or we'll feel the crunch-time pain later in the year. You'll be hearning more and more as new details get worked out and we get closer to Beta 0!
b0rsuk: We're comparing apples-to-apples here. I'm sure yo can find lots of other games with 'larger' game worlds. ;) Also, I'd argue that the 'elephant in the room' is the footprint of 'land-based' maps in a tbs setting. Civ4 was originally going to be a 2d sprite based game for this reason. GalCiv2:Twilight of the Arnor (a 3d space-based tbs game) had 'Immense' maps that were 384x384 tiles...that Ultima 5 map (<a href="http://www.geocities.com/xenerkes/MapPics/U5/U5tileb4.gif"
[quote]Will players be able to create maps with external tools and import them into Elemental ?[/quote] You'll be able to create maps with INTERNAL tools and upload them to the central library for everyone to enjoy :)
Besides a obvious 'lore' reasoning, one stumbling block we've found is in the equipable armor. When you're out there, exploring the world and collecting treasure, much of your loot comes in the form of Helmets, Armor, Gauntlets, Shields, and Weaponry to equip your character with. This equipment needs to show up on your character for gameplay reasons...we want players to visually identify strengths and weaknesses with a simple glance at an opposing army. So at this point