VicenteCartas

[quote who="psychoak" reply="28" id="2343958"]While nice for Kohan, I'd rather forts not be magical army producers, and they'd need to produce a good sized army to do anything against another army.[/quote] I agree that forts producing units from air is not good for Elemental (it worked in Kohan, but they are different). But forts don't need a big army at all to do something against another army. As long as it has some cavalry, it's really easy for them to make exists and rai

[quote who="Lomion Agarwaen" reply="13" id="2341783"]What about building towers, forts, etc. outside of cities? I was hoping that you could build one in the pass through which enemies might easily come. That way you have the bonuses the tower grants? I guess this is similar to Starbases in GC2. [/quote] I like the idea of forts outside cities, but I haven't found a game yet that implements this well. Outside forts and castles were meant as early warning posts and also to pi

[quote who="Shadowhal" reply="92" id="2342400"] thank you for those numbers, it's always good to have a sound factual basis for agreement. I also see that here finally my country's numbers are in too. Austria is - as I expected - close to Germany with some 9.6% cost in terms of GPD. and let me tell you, from a service point of view it absolutely rocks and is generally regarded as one of the best world-wide. so, for me culturally, a system of mandatory government-provided health insurance

[quote who="ZehDon" reply="88" id="2341744"]Well, I understand the leveling is implemented in a way which encourages you to experiment and such, which is something I love doing. No one's mentioned that it's lengthened by vast amounts of leveling requirements - I mean, really, what JRPG doesn't require some form of level grind? - however I'll keep it in mind, might hit some forums and see what other people think. I don't want to sit in front of my TV for 2,000 hours watching an XP bar slowly m

[quote who="LDiCesare" reply="92" id="2342029"] If the method name doesn't reflect the functionality then it's a bad name. So it should be the same. You make a distinction I don't. [/quote] You guessed the class.forName because that's a pretty easy case in general. With the ASP.NET class you just decided the class was badly designed instead (so I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have guessed which methods were static or not). But we can go further, in .NET the Object

[quote who="ZehDon" reply="84" id="2341286"]Disgaea, like Final Fantasy Tactics, is a game I've been wanting to get into for a long while. I love games that are punishingly difficult and require some serious thought. Finishing them feels like one hell of an achievement and I love being tested to my mental limits. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was a little weak for my liking, and I've been wanting to grab FFTA2 however they're both aimed at much younger gamers so I probably won't. Disgaea on t

[quote who="ZehDon" reply="73" id="2340367"]1. Do Playstation 2's work on LCD Widescreen TV's ok with the packaged in stuff, or do I need to buy adapters and stuff to get the best out of it? 2. Apart from the usuals - Final Fantasy, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus - are there any games I should be on the look out for? [/quote] 1) I have a second hand PS2 and I use it with the standard AV cable that comes with it on a Samsumg LCD TV and no problems (42"). 2) If you

[quote who="LDiCesare" reply="90" id="2339955"] If you know the method and what it does it's pretty clear it's static. Class.forName() doesn't make sense as an instance method for instance.[/quote] So it's not related to the method name at all as you were defending, but to the method functionality. [quote who="LDiCesare" reply="90" id="2339955"] Regarding Java API, the first non static method I looked up was this one: public Class as

If you want to learn game AI, nothing beats this website: http://aigamedev.com/ Lot of people on the industry post on those forums. I don't know if the premium accounts are open or not, but the content they produce is well worth paying if you like game AI. As for books, I think one the best ones to start is "Programming Game AI by Example", by Mat Buckland <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Game-Example-Mat-Buckland/d

[quote who="Nesrie" reply="85" id="2337738"] god, why do people say other people are whining when they simply disagree with them? I think a trailer would be good for elemental. I, as in me personally, never said anything about a blockbuster sized trailer. god, if only people would stop and listen for a moment. A good trailer could help Elemnetal sell better. (keyword is could. I didn't say it was for certain). And a good trailer doesn't have to be an expensive one. Showing off a few spel

[quote who="RalphT" reply="79" id="2334106"] I disagree with this rule. If you're doing decent design, most of the access should be to local variables/functions, so this is going to clutter up the code 90% of the time to help with the 10% case. That's completely backwards. Everytime that I see this., I figure that it was written by someone that wanted to invoke intellisense. In that case, the class or method is probably too complicated and needs to be refactored. [/quote] I

[quote who="LDiCesare" reply="78" id="2333048"] What I mean is that it should be clear reading f name that the method is static. If not, it is badly named, but it doesn't need to have additional stuff on it. Adding "this." in front of all non static methods is what I call cluttering. I'd rather add ClassName in front of all static method calls than this. in front of all non static method calls. [/quote] A method name should indicate what the method does, not if it's static o

[quote who="Hortz" reply="51" id="2332390"] Well, I think that's just a false dichotomy fallacy, breaking the game like that into such inherently codependent elements and than opposing them to each other. It doesn't make any sense. [/quote] It's not, graphics cost a lot of money and time to develop. Time and money that could be used for the gameplay. It's a trade-off, and in TBS people tend to prefer more gameplay and less graphics.

[quote who="Hortz"] I'm pretty sure that King's Bounty: The Legend broke some barriers in that department and tapped into a whole new market, even my 8 year old arcadey nephew liked it a lot. So if Elemental is going to be like I get the impression(Civilization 4+King's Bounty: The Legend) it will be, those graphical/animation/tactic elements of KB will function as a lure and overall strategy will be icing for us experienced players. Really, it's silly to say that t

[quote who="AgentNihilist" reply="15" id="2331097"]Another fault of photorealistic graphics is that they tend to age poorly. When a game uses stylized art it tend to have its own defination of "this is how it should be". When realism is the driving factor of a games art design you constantly have new definitions of how something should look. After a year or two it starts to look noticably dated as you've seen newer and shinier graphics. Where the stylized art will still

[quote who="LDiCesare" reply="76" id="2330675"]My bad, I had forgotten about static methods. I must say that I think there's no reason to state explicitly this.f() vs. Class.f() because f() name should be obvious enough that it's clear whether it is static or not. I don't think the distinction is worth typing and reading the many additional "this.". I think they clutter the code for little or no added value.[/quote] Why f() name should make obvious it's static? What's the value of tha

[quote who="ZehDon" reply="55" id="2330764"]It's so much the travel time that bothers me - moving through the Castle in Ico initally was quite amazing. Going over the same ground again and again and having little to no change in texture work destroyed the usual "look while you walk" feeling that large scale environments create and indeed encourage. You can only look at the same brick wall for so long before it no longer interests you. From what I can tell from reviews, each of the

[quote who="Hortz" reply="17" id="2330856"] My dream has always been to play a game that has a a deep strategic layer of Galactic Civilizations/Civilization 4 (with factions being far more unique, visually, and mechanics wise) with real time battle aspect with graphics/animation/physics on the level of Company of Heroes/Dawn of War 2 and Star Wars: Empire At War style detailed space battles.[/quote] That's why it's a dream, because taking 2 top games (Civ 4 and CoH) and say

It will have high-production values, but more importantly, based on other Stardock games, it will have a ton of developer support after launch.

The .NET part it's interesting. If I may ask: that's for games (I suppose it would be for tools) or for your windows applications part of the company?

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="79" id="2329702"] The games initial release is important, but game patches play a huge role because all games have major bugs causing not only crashes, but even permanently stuck where the only way out is starting over. The quality of patches not only improve stability, but some even add game content. [/quote] It's more than important. BG2 can be played without a single patch and we should encourage games that can be played without patches (l

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="75" id="2329444"] By that statement even patches should not measure a games quality because they too come from the internet. Any games quality is measured by what's provided from the whole package. Just because someone has to connect with the internet to pickup a game patch or a game module doesn't mean it should be ignored. [/quote] Except for MMORPGs that are neary assumed to come out in "beta" status, if a game

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="72" id="2329147"] I estimate you haven't tried any of the popular singleplayer campaigns created by community members which have really enhanced the adventuring even better than those released from Bioware. [/quote] The quality of the single player experience of NWN should be meassured by the quality of the single player campaign that came in the box, as that's what the majority of buyers are going to experience, not by the quality of othe

While I think it's out of Stardock control (as Paradox it's probably the one fixing those prices), I agree regional pricing (or region locking) is totally idiotic, and even more on a digital download. I'll pass on those too even if I really wanted to try HoI3 :(

[quote who="LDiCesare" reply="73" id="2329193"] I think in java or C# this is not a useful rule at all. If you see f() you know it cannot be something different from this.f(), so adding this is just typing more characters and making the code less readable imo. In C++, f() can be this->f() or ::f() so it's interesting to make the difference. In fact, prefixing globals with :: (or namespace) is usually a good idea and maybe better than requiring this-> in terms of ease to