TCores

Races & Factions - my short guide in War of Magic Elemental Forums

I guess that there has been some confusion in the community about races and factions. It's important to realize (if you're not in the beta, you may not realize this) that factions are not races. The Gilden and the Krax and the Capitar (in the game, these are factions) could all be best thought of as a country, or an ethnicity, of the race of Men. A faction is what you control in the game, it's your "empire." In your faction, you'll have an allegiance to the Kingdoms or the Empire

Reply to You Need to Re-Think Your Decision on Race Customization (Here's Why) in War of Magic Elemental Forums

I read your post and there are some points I would like to say. I don't want to spend a long time "making" my enemies when I first start the game. I'd rather just hit play and be in the game after a cursory build-my-own-sov. Obviously there is a need for default races you can just click and drop. In your post, you say that every game will be the same if there are default factions. Later, you say that in GalCiv, the factions you created, the Borg and the Wra

Reply to More discussion of Factions and Races (long) in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Lastly I still really think you can get a lot of milleage out of the factions/races as AI players. Even though we players want to make our own, we still want our enemies to seem alive, have flavour, have characteristics. It's difficult to have that if they're all randomly generated.

Reply to More discussion of Factions and Races (long) in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Frogboy, To the player, it doesn't matter what the enemies are. Are they sentient brocolli descended from the Rivencrack of Auberon? Doesn't matter, they are my enemy. Are they hyperstrong bear-men from the west? Doesn't matter, still my enemy. A player that doesn't care about lore, or doesn't care to take the time to understand it, is not negatively impacted by the lore being in the game. In an action movie you don't need to understand that Nazi Germany was at war with Commun

Reply to Rethinking factions… in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

I should note: 1) I am not suggesting coding a different AI for each faction. One AI for all factions, but the same AI is aware of its special abilities. 2) I am totally in favour of allowing us to conquer "Fallen" cities and feel the factions should not quite be "races" but rather thought of Kingdoms. If it looks like a man, walks like a man, it is a man! Stick it in the platemail suit and send 'er out. Vary the initial stats if you must. : ) 3) Right now, n

Reply to Rethinking factions… in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Frogboy, I hope you will consider this. The factions aren't there for us. They're there for the AI, to give the AI a set of known strengths and weaknesses, and specific traits. The AI that plays the Krax will know what tactics the Krax use best, what units work the best with them. They won't know how to play "random mishmash #9912." They're there to give the enemies we face in Elemental life, and a difference between enemy #1, and enemy #2. The horsemen from the st

Reply to E:EE - Elemental Expanded Edition (Working Title) - Now "Hiring" in WOM Mods Elemental Forums

I'll bite. I may do some modelling and scripting.

Reply to Elemental – Beta 1Z4 is coming in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

I don't know if my forum account is even linked to my impulse account. I didn't use the same name, but I don't think I ever visited the /journals page. How about adding support for polls directly to Impulse instead? That way developers with impulse can release polls to their userbase on just about anything. "How do you feel the latest patch is working." Actually it'd also make a neat feature for Impulse:Reactor for game devs to be able to leave announcements and polls for thei

Reply to Are you crashing like crazy still? Let's compare hardware. in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote who="knworld" reply="19" id="2603029"]Not sure if this is a general cause for the crashes, but I just noticed that I stopped crashing if I unchecked the "Enable Event Music" and "Enable layered music." [/quote] I disabled these and made it to turn 100 without crashing. Anyone else to confirm?

Reply to Pre-order now, beta key sent when available? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

The semblance of a game is starting to emerge! I'm glad you're excited about Elemental too. : ) But keep in mind, the beta is not fun! It is an agony of agonies, a torturous wench that we love and hate. She crashes on our desktop, fries our hard drives and ends the fun time swifter than you can say frozen popsicles. Actually, the customization options, building your sovereign up and playing with the stats and feats appearances is getting better all the time. I like that Stardo

Reply to Religion in Elemental in War of Magic Elemental Forums

As soon as I mod in the "God-King" civilization option, that is.

Reply to Religion in Elemental in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Not every religion is about control. Some things we call religions were communal stories shared by people of what came before, and what their reckoning of how things could be. Later, we told parables to get our children to behave. - my Soveriegn worshipping religion will be ALL about control.

Reply to Pre-order now, beta key sent when available? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

If you want in the next Beta, preorder now. I preordered in advance and was only charged when I was let into the Beta weeks later. The game periodically opens up to new Beta users, and usually when it opens everyone who has preordered is let in.

Reply to Elemental intro? [nop! :)] in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Those are class examples of TERRIBLE narration. They sound like wrestling announcers that have swallowed cats.

Reply to The current tech system will lead to big imbalances in tech trading in War of Magic Elemental Forums

In addition to the problem you identify, 2big2fail, which is that 1) if trading tech has a huge advantage, everyone will trade, because if they don't trade, their neighbors will and they will fall behind, causing tech to be homogenous There's also 2) The island problem: players starting in locations with fewer neighbors will have greatly reduced ability to acquire tech, resulting in regions of areas falling behind the larger regions 3) The gamep

Reply to The current tech system will lead to big imbalances in tech trading in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote]Overall though your argument sounds more like a reason against tech trading at all.[/quote] I assure you I don't want tech trading removed from Elemental. It's an analysis of how a straight-off tradeoff in Elemental would be badly broken, and how to make it work. Turning off tech trading for the game should be the very last design choice. Actually I came up with the same thought you had, increasing the R&D project level for each te

Reply to The current tech system will lead to big imbalances in tech trading in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote who="leeboy26" reply="2" id="2601713"]I suppose we have to ask ourselves 'what does trading tech mean?' Is tech trading something you whisper to a foriegn diplomat and he says 'of course! It's so simple!' or perhaps you hand them a few diagrams describing how to build a mine? It's abstractly dealt with, certainly, for the sake of simplicity but if it were not, if perhaps you gave them mining tech and it was a physical thing like a caravan with mining engineers, scrolls and materia

Reply to Elemental intro? [nop! :)] in War of Magic Elemental Forums

I'd prefer the lines be read in a much more natural way myself, the style of voicing in this video has this "i'm trying to sound epic," ring to it. Not everyone will know what I mean but it's there. That's no disrespect to the voice actress. To me, Good narration has feeling that the person voicing it is genuine, and part of the world they are describing. Good narration should be suggestive, have a viewpoint, and sound much more natural. Morgan Freeman in "The S

Reply to The current tech system will lead to big imbalances in tech trading in War of Magic Elemental Forums

There are a lot of ways to deal with this and I haven't come up with a solid idea yet. One way is that the techs translate directly into points, and you can only trade the amount of effort you put in. Another way is each time you trade, your research breakthrough increases by one for each tech you gain, and your research halts for a turn or two to implement the new knowledge. Another way is preventing direct trading and allowing "research pacts" to accel

The current tech system will lead to big imbalances in tech trading in War of Magic Elemental Forums

The tech brookering thread reminded me about this. I've been meaning to bring it up for a while now. At some point we need to stop a second and reanalyze technology trading in general. Two civilizations that trade technologies will be MUCH further ahead than those that don't, by a lot, not just by twice as much but exponentially ahead. Example: Civilization A researches "Farming" right away and it costs him four turns. Civilization B researc

Reply to Are you crashing like crazy still? Let's compare hardware. in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote who="BoogieBac" reply="2" id="2601403"]I beleive all the DXDiag info can also be found at the top of your DEBUG.ERR files. Thanks for starting this thread, TCores Good idea! A few thoughts... - We don't do much XP testing...i'll be curious how many people are running that OS. - We only have a handfull of AMD machines...will have ot test more on there. - 3DNow...is that an intergrated video card that is being ignored in favor of the ATI card?

Reply to Are you crashing like crazy still? Let's compare hardware. in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Note that I'm only including the "System Information" section and the "Display Devices" section. Just include those, otherwise the thread becomes too painful to read through. ------------------ System Information ------------------ Time of this report: 4/22/2010, 20:56:00 Machine name: Machine001 Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.090206-1234)<b

Are you crashing like crazy still? Let's compare hardware. in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Some of us, and we seem to be in the minority, have started crashing every couple of turns since 1Z1 or 1Z2. On the off chance that we have some kind of hardware fault in common, let's compare and see what we can come up with something. Post your specs here and make a note of whether you've always crashed, whether you get crashes before the game loads, or whether it happens during the game. You should use the spces provided by clicking Start > Run, and typing dxdiag <p

Reply to Elemental Beta 1-Z3 Changelog in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

I hate to say it, but I'm still crashing so often I can barely get more than a handful of turns in. I don't think I'm in the majority. Oddly, I seemed to get a lot further in the .298 build.

Reply to Elemental intro? [nop! :)] in War of Magic Elemental Forums

That voice sounds very familiar.