Aeon221

Reply to HIJACKED INTO AN INTERESTING TELEPORT DISCUSSION: I Missed the Latest About 1.1 - Any News? When Are We Gonna Be Delighted? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Books don't often include teleportation because it entirely eliminates that most fundamental of story mechanisms: the journey. It's a trope that turns up in story after story, from Pilgrim's Progress to the Canterbury Tales to, yes, the Lord of the Rings. The challenges the characters face in the traveling itself are what creates a compelling evolution of both the character of the characters and the story itself. Being able to just go from journey.start() to journey.end() th

Reply to Civ5/Elemental: Modding Perspective in Life, the Universe and Everything Elemental Forums

Since things in this thread have mostly focused on being boring and including the same lame-o smiley in every post -- seriously what is going on with that, smilies are so 1990 -- I think I'll talk about what I'm excited about in Elemental. First off, there's no doubt that seeing what Mr. Wardell will do with Mr. Wardell's idea of active neutrals is amazingly cool. If anything, Stardock will exceed Civ5's level of open and accessible file structure, possibly by doing a lot -- or

Reply to Civ5/Elemental: Modding Perspective in Life, the Universe and Everything Elemental Forums

[quote who="Fuzzy Logic" reply="5" id="2650366"]Elemental is in such an early beta stage I don't know how you can make any kind of comparison at all.[/quote] Duh. That's why it's called speculation. As in, what forums are for. If I intended it to be SRS BZNZ I'd have posted it in the main elemental forum with a poll and said OMG WE NEED ANZAR NAO.

Reply to Tactical Battles -- How to make them the bestest! in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

I'm tempted to make a movie called "I WUZ RIGHT: THE MUSICAL" which would be something along the lines of two hours of me yelling "AH WAZ RIGHT YA YA YA". http://www.draginol.com/images2009/ElementalBETA2Tour_E9E7/image_7.png http://www.draginol.com/images2009/ElementalBETA2Tour_E9E7/image_5.png </p

Reply to Civ5/Elemental: Modding Perspective in Life, the Universe and Everything Elemental Forums

Minor request, but this thread isn't about Steam. I ask that anyone who feels the need to talk about Steam do it somewhere else -- such as one of the may Steam OMG I H8 U threads already available. Speaking to tactical battles, I've never particularly cared for them. They're on the same level as playing skirmish mode in any RTS against the AI -- in other words, easy, overlengthy and not prone to fits of tactical brilliance. You'll find, if you wander the internets

Reply to Avoiding Late Game Tedium (LGT) in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

I GOT MY (LBGT) EYE ON YOU THREAD. Despite myself being a big ol' windbag, I really think a lot of you could cut fifty, maybe eighty-five percent of your posts without really losing the ability to be understood. I've always liked games messing things about at the end, but, really, it's pretty much inevitable that

Reply to Hexes in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

OH OH OH OH OH HEXES RULE! LIVE THEIR LIVES FROM INSIDE OF YOUR MIND HIDE THEIR AWESOME WHEN YOU'RE GOOFIN AROUND OH OH HEXES, ROCKIN THAT TOWN UNLIKE THOSE SQUARES WITH THEIR LAMEO STYLE YOU GIVE AN INCH BUT THEY MOVE A MILE THEY NEVER SEEM TO GIVE QUITE ENOUGH TO MAKE UP FOR ALL THEIR AWFUL SUCK OH OH OH FROGGY BOY WHAT'S A GAME MAN IF YOU NEVER LOSE ASK A WINNER AND YOU'LL PROBABLY

Civ5/Elemental: Modding Perspective in Life, the Universe and Everything Elemental Forums

Now, obviously most of the folks on here are going to be saying Elemental out of loyalty, but this is actually a pretty even matchup. Elemental is, without a doubt, going to have the better visual editing tools. No questions asked, what Stardock is saying they've done is pretty brilliant, and that's a huge favorable point. And the AI being fully exposed? Well that's just boner inducing. If we can link maps and map scripts within maps, that's also gonna be hot, but I'm s

Reply to Weather effects in Tactical Battles in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

As a flavor effect, or as a serious impediment? I'm not a big fan of losing because I was forced to fight in inclement weather. Almost certainly, if it were real life, my troopers would have just gone back to bed. At the very least, if inclement weather is in the offing I should have a chance to delay the battle -- either by waiting in a camp or running around -- until conditions improve. Obviously that wouldn't hold for ambushes or magically induced

Reply to Elemental Beta 2 Update Schedule in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Mr Wardell: If you've played a modern MMO -- which I'm just about certain I recall you having done -- you'll know exactly what the HUD needs to be. The default should have sufficient information that the player can play the game, but the rest should be entirely the choice of the player -- maybe not to the point of including in game scripting and macro-capabilities and such, but everything else f'sho. It should be easy as pie to remove an element from the main bar, move it to a

Reply to Parallax Mapping in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

[quote who="BoogieBac" reply="3" id="2643153"]Ships that feel HUUUUUUUGGGGEEEE!!!! [/quote] ... in bed!

Reply to being king, making decisions and earning experience. in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

Well of course. That's what making someone eat your chicken really [i]means[/i] when you get right down to it. Setting them on fire. And stuff. But us vegetarians think chicken is pretty foul, so you might not interpret it the way I did. You probably thought a penis was involved! Filthy minded perverts! Just because I wanted to feed them some co... oh.

Reply to What is the point of the "Army"? - Marketing Genius in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote who="Kestral2040" reply="53" id="2647044"] Quoting Tridus, reply 52 (I will say that another concern about doing this now is that it puts pressure on them for an August release that didn't exist before. If it turns out they're wrong and the game isn't ready for that release, do they have to push it anyway because the hype created by the army has forced the issue?) No, this will not happen. The game will come out when Brad decides its r

Reply to being king, making decisions and earning experience. in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

I was going to link that iconic Henry VIII tossing chicken behind his back image. But then I found this: And now I pretty much want being sovereign to be like that. Making people eat my chicken. As for events, it'd be nice to have a really complain-y electorate, and, hones

Reply to Where's the beef? errrr Magic? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Beef is discriminatory towards both cows and vegetarians. I demand a more appropriate and less polarized noun, such as "Stuffing". I think we can all agree that stuffing, when prepared without meat or meat byproducts, is fairly delicious without excluding those of us opposed to the wanton mutilation of other species for fun and food. More seriously, it _does_ seem rather odd to be excluding a flagship system from beta views. I'm of the opinion that there's an element of

Reply to What is the point of the "Army"? - Marketing Genius in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Or go back in time and never initiate the contest to begin with! But, more seriously, if I were wearing the Big Hat, I'd just let the thing go on without promoting it anymore in the hope that people would forget about it -- possibly removing or reducing the size of the forum icon over some pretext or other -- with damage control statements prepped (along the lines of "OH GOD IT'S A MONSTER AND WE HAD NO IDEA, WE'LL KILL IT NOW, KK SOZ" if general feedback and pres

Reply to What is the point of the "Army"? - Marketing Genius in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Plenty of people have the best of intentions, and I've at no point suggested that I thought Stardock's motives were anything less than totally honest. Yet often those with the best of intentions can, due to that particular form of blindness caused by the assumption that honesty and good faith is universal rather than extremely limited, cause the worst things to happen. In this case, Stardock has created a contest that gives incentives for word of mouth publicity f

Reply to Hate to encourage: Release via steam in War of Magic Elemental Forums

I'm not a big fan of this whole drafting people into the Elemental Army thing, but I AM a big fan of numbers and such. And, so, hey, I see you spitting out some interesting numbers! Mind if I ask a few simple questions, you know, to kill some time that you'd otherwise spend just pimping out the AI? Aren't you under-representing the importance of your non-game sales with reg

Reply to Hate to encourage: Release via steam in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote who="killer105" reply="21" id="2645278"]I use steam, but I regret purchasing a number of Indie titles on it because I have to wait several extra weeks after patch releases to get it on steam versions of the game. Steam has become fat and bloated, which makes Impulse look better and better. Still waiting on the latest Sword of the Stars patch on Steam...[/quote] You are aware that bitching about the lack of a patch to support is an essential eleme

Reply to Turbans? in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

I'd hope that there will be a large variety of legitimate and silly hats available at launch, with modders and players able to add more as the game gets long in the tooth. I can't be the only one who imagines the Sov as similar to the T. H. White Merlin, conjuring ridiculously anachronistic hats into being due to a series of miscommunications with his familiar.

Reply to Multiple Maps in a Single Session in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

Figured I'd bump this again just to make sure that nobody forgets about important things like making sure mods can use lots of maps in a single game. I mean, eventually someone is going to want to make a space mod, and not having different maps for sectors, systems, planets, and cities will just seem downright silly. So, like, make sure it'll be possible to have all those different levels of maps in mods!

Reply to What is the point of the "Army"? - Marketing Genius in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote who="Kestral2040" reply="25" id="2645072"]I think that if you look at the submissions so far they haven't been just baseless talking up of an unknown product. They have been forwarding of information put out already about Elemental to people that may not have otherwise seen it. Also because of what the prizes entail (copies of the game you are talking about) I think it implicitly shows that the people saying good things about Elemental for the Army are behind what they say

Reply to What is the point of the "Army"? - Marketing Genius in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote who="BerkeleyBoi" reply="19" id="2644563"] Whoa... Aeon from the Mount and Blade forums? If so, I love your Pike and Blade mod. Anyway, I have to disagree. I think this campaign is great. It gets people motivated to go out there and spread the word about this game. While other companies like Blizzard can have huge media coverage of whatever it is they release, Stardock, though not a small company, doesn't get nearly as much coverage. For example, Strategy Informer doesn

Reply to What is the point of the "Army"? - Marketing Genius in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Actually, I think this is a terrible idea, marketing wise. People are going to wonder if positive feedback about Elemental is being driven by an honest appreciation for both the game and the company making it, or merely for the mercenary goal of acquiring points to get free stuff. And that's never a good thing when your entire business model is based around appearing honest and seeming interested in the opinions of customers. There's the additional risk that forum communiti

Food and Food Transportation and Suchlike and Sundry in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

Why not have food transport effectiveness be the inverse of city level? So, say you've got a level 5 city, and three level 1 cities, all hooked together. The 5 transports at 10% efficiency, while all the level 1s transport at 50% efficiency. The idea being that higher level (and thus larger) cities consume more of the food they grow and generally dedicate a smaller percentage of total resources to agriculture, while lower level (and thus smaller) cities are more agriculturally b