CariElf

Reply to [CRASH] Failed to download data file in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

That's odd, it shouldn't be doing anything with UPNP at this point. It's using the same ports as web browsers use, so those should be open by default. Did you make sure that Elemental is unblocked in any firewall, security and anti-virus programs that you have installed? Also, sometimes Windows Update will turn the firewall or Windows Defender back on after updating so if you've had them turned off, check to make sure that they're still off.

Reply to Saturday build (1Z1) is available in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote who="EadTaes" reply="44" id="2592310"]Kapeman you where right. It is anti0aliacing causing the problem. I just tested it out and turn it off. The game worked at 1650*1080 resolution no problem on the first try. For the devs this is a DxDiag if it help you find the problem. http://www.mediafire.com/file/nmu4uwwktgn/DxDiag.txt[/quote] Hmm, there was a bug like this in older NVidia drivers that was causing too much memory to be used and the texture memory was

Reply to I don’t hate the console, I just like PC games more in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

Then there's the user controls. I can't imagine using an XBox 360 control for a strategy game. If the Wii was more powerful, the Wiimote would be great as a controller for a strategy game, but as it is now it'd be a very limited scope.

Reply to The iPad is Here, Will You Get One? in Personal Computing Elemental Forums

Maybe. But I'd also want an iMac so that I could develop for it. I'd take one as a wedding gift. :)

Reply to Elemental Multiplayer Revealed in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote]So does the game itself only run on the server then and the clients only display graphics and provide the interface? If that is the case then what I would consider great is if you could connect to a running game and not only to a newly started game. In so many games it happens that people lose connection or leave and the game gets bad from then on. With the possibility for people to rejoin a running game even if their client crashes or whatever that problem would be reduced.</p

Reply to Incredibuild is incredible in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote]@CariElf - but surely a pre-compiled header can still save you time? Otherwise every C++ file that includes (say) Windows.h has to recompile it, rather than just once per build?[/quote] I'll give it a shot. We actually have the code already setup so that everything is including a certain header file which has all our standard includes in it. Maybe the pre-compiled headers just weren't setup correctly before.

Reply to Incredibuild is incredible in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

We used to use a pre-compiled header with GalCiv2 but our policy is always to make a clean rebuild when we make a build that's going to the public, which pretty much negated that benefit because it would rebuild the pre-compiled header.

Treaties in Elemental in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

One of my tasks for this beta was getting in basic diplomacy, although it's still pretty primitive because the relations code is still pretty basic. You can bring up the Diplomacy screen by going to KingdomWnd and clicking on Foreign Relations. If you've encountered another player, you can click on their entry and click the speak to button or double click on the entry. This gives you 3 options, one of w

Reply to New movement code in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

At the very least we can probably turn off the teleportation code for multiplayer games.

Reply to New movement code in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote]Rather than teleport out of suddently enemy territory, couldn't you just set an auto-move destination out? That way, if the player wants to push the issue, their troops are still in the old player's territory. It makes for more interesting diplomacy, too: "I see your troops are within our, ahem, new borders. You see, our people need lebensraum..."[/quote] We could, but then we'd have to implement code to make them not able to divert their destination and then that complicates t

Reply to Oh I’ve got all year in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Regarding using the Elemental engine for an RPG, unless you're talking about a 1st person view RPG like Oblivion, the graphics code requirements aren't that different than for a strategy game, the main difference would be in the camera code. And we're huge Bioware fans here, so we'd be making a 3rd person view RPG.

Reply to Prrrogramming! in Personal Computing Elemental Forums

If you need to do a GUI app, you might be best off getting a book on C# and teaching yourself that. In C++ there's the Windows Presentation Forms (WPF) but the difference between managed and unmanaged code is pretty significant so you may as well learn it with C# which was made to be a managed language. The book will have little sample projects to teach you how to do stuff.

Reply to New movement code in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote]One thing that bothers me is that SD seems to be proceeding as if the current border-relations system is the final system, i.e. speding a lot of extra time and effort making sure that it works well. As one of the main ajitators for a more reasonable border system, this has me concerned.[/quote] Actually, the code that I did doesn't require the existing border system. All I did was make it so that you have to be at war with the other player before attacking them, and than

New movement code in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

We actually made a fairly major change to the code this week so I thought that I'd actually write a dev journal about it: CodeCritter and I gutted the movement code and re-implemented it. For the developers out there, that meant creating a branch which generally makes me a bit nervous because I always worry that merging the branch back into the trunk is going to go poorly. But making a branch was essential in case it took us longer than a week t

Reply to [0.25 + 0.255][CRASH] On startup in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

Please let us know if this still occurs with the new build

Reply to [CRASH] Strange crash in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

This should be fixed in today's build.

Reply to Elemental Beta 1-B update in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

ANd yes, this build should be much more stable.

Reply to Elemental team all twittered out in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote]Isn't there a way to aggregate all of the Elemental Team twittering into this Team Elemental location? I don't tweet, so I'm speculating here.[/quote] I'm not sure. It would be cool, though.

Update for Beta 1B in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

We lowered the wages of the units to 1 gold per turn. We've been working on the random crashes at startup, but we weren't able to eliminate it entirely. It's a crash while loading the data, but since it doesn't happen in the same spot twice it's not a specific file and so it's much harder to track down. If you get the crash, just try starting Elemental again. If it happens every time, rebooting may help. We didn't get a chance to look at the save

Reply to Elemental team all twittered out in War of Magic Elemental Forums

You guys can also follow me (CariElf) on Twitter. :)

Reply to New beta build today? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote]Mine still CTDs after splash screen[/quote] We're working on that. It appears to be related to loading the data. We're going to try changing it to loading all the data in the main thread again, which will be slower, but may fix the crash.

Reply to [Suggestion] Female friendly features in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

[quote] [sarcasm]P.S. - a female lead game developer? Next thing you'll be telling me Frogboy really does work at Stardock! [/sarcasm] [/quote] One of our newer developers, Raa00, is also female. She's an excellent programmer, and even after only 2 years of college was better than a lot of the graduates I've interviewed for entry level positions. She's going to be graduating in December and then she'll be full time here. And we just hired a femal

Reply to What are the supported screen resolutions in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

It currently requires a minimum resolution of 1024x768 but we're working on the interface code so that we can support netbooks.

Reply to [Suggestion] Female friendly features in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

[quote]Besides as husband to a gamer and father of two gamer girls, making a female friendly game isn't as simple as putting a female face on a character. My wife still creeps me out because she likes to roleplay male characters. The biggest draw to her is simply non-combat gameplay. My girls, being little girls don't care so much about boy or girl characters but the biggest attraction would be animorphic animal characters.[/quote] It's not that simple, but character custom

Reply to [Suggestion] Female friendly features in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

In case you didn't know, I'm Cari Begle, Stardock's Senior Game Developer, and I'm a woman. I'm not saying that makes me an authority on what all women want in games, but it gives us somewhat of an edge. 1-3 are definitely planned, although we don't yet know if we're going to have time to make female units (other than the sovereigns) before release. As for 4, I don't think that we've considered that. You'll be finding items that your sovereign can equip, so that wi