tetleytea

Reply to Save up to 80% on Stardock Games and Software in the Steam Summer Sale! in Stardock Games GalCiv3 Forums

Market the summer sale to the Phoenix market. It's not like there's a whole world of better things to do in the great outdoors than play games. :)

Reply to Are anomalies always this dull? in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

How about this: a new game. Develop an RPG game (a la Freelancer) where you are the captain of the starting survey ship. Your commander gave you the mission to auto-survey, which for you means to boldly go where no man has gone before, to explore anomalies, to run from Dread Lords, all that. It's time that the average Galciv3 player sees all the drama and life-risking that goes into that simple auto-survey command that gives them a few free credits. They think

Reply to Pick 2: Polish, low price, sophisticated gameplay in GalCiv III Dev Journals GalCiv3 Forums

A lot of polish is more about temperament than money. For example, Paradise tiles: the website says it gives an approval bonus, the (Crusade) game says it gives a Population bonus. It takes 2 minutes to update the website. But--do people care? That's what really keeps it from being updated. Whatever monetary investment it takes to get people to care, it's probably worth it for more reasons than just polish. I can hire a team of two custodians

Reply to Are anomalies always this dull? in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Totally. Granting ideology would be great. Coming up with diplomacy and tourism bonuses would not be too difficult--even Civ5 does that with archaeological sites.

Reply to Playing on a 4k TV in Galactic Civilizations Series GalCiv3 Forums

Galciv4 will probably be VR.

Reply to Are anomalies always this dull? in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

About the lack of decision-making searching anomalies--I have to disagree. Huge game-start decision you have to make: whether to build a second surveyor. And if so, how do you design it? Second, you are not just scouting for anomalies: you are scouting for planets and resources. I don't auto-survey until mid-game, minimum. Third, you have to deal with rivals--some of them steal that anomaly you just spent 3 turns travelling for, and other

Reply to Pick 2: Polish, low price, sophisticated gameplay in GalCiv III Dev Journals GalCiv3 Forums

The problem with polishing Galciv3 is that the games take so looooooooong. Finding and reproducing problems would be so much quicker if it was one of these games that was over in 2 minutes. Not an insurmountable problem, though--if you have good, motivated QA people to do it. You have to pay them to get that. And foster a good culture where QA people are respected (as in, not respected any less than the architects). <

Reply to I see Crusade is not part of the steam sale in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

[quote]Also, this is not the first time I have seen Stardock pilloried for Steam's decisions. [/quote] Actually, I see no issue with that. Stardock was highly anti-DRM way back around the Galciv2 vanilla days, and then they changed face and went to Steam. That was entirely of their own choosing. Anyway, I had a good time playing the tutorial.

Reply to I see Crusade is not part of the steam sale in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I finally bit and bought the Galciv3 gold package for $30. I've been a Galciv1 and Galciv2 fanatic over the years, but just now going through the Galciv3 tutorial. Did I miss part of the conversation?

Reply to 3 questions from Stardock to you in GalCiv III Dev Journals GalCiv3 Forums

My perspective as one who has NOT bought Galciv3 yet, but played the tar out I and II: [quote]1. What specific features of diplomacy do you traditionally like the most? I want you to be as specific as you can be. Which parts of diplomacy from any game do you like the most? What parts do you remember long after playing the most?[/quote] CONGRESS. Hands down. Lots of potential resolutions that can be passed, ways to garner votes. </

Reply to 5 things about Early Access you should know in PC Gaming GalCiv3 Forums

I never complained about the $100, I just didn't do it. But such is life: you put something on the store shelf, some people buy it, some don't.

Reply to The problem with fantasy games in Elemental Dev Journals GalCiv3 Forums

And it could be that's exactly what is meant by "magic is not fair." When you're a developer, coding magic is a lot of fun. You dream up all these spells that can do anything. And for the most part, balancing them is perceived to be a simple matter of changing the level or the mana of the spell. But then the AI guy along, and he has to abstract all this stuff out to a directed a cyclic graph. You explode the number of states the AI guy has to deal with e

Reply to 5 things about Early Access you should know in PC Gaming GalCiv3 Forums

I felt exactly as Borg did when I read that about beta testing. I beta tested Galciv2. Stardock called it beta, we bought it while it was beta, we played it while it was beta, we posted our feedback on galciv2.com while it was beta. Whatever you call it now, Stardock freely admitted it was paying to beta test at the time. This is nothing new. What is new, though, is moving it even further back in schedule to where you're trying to crowd-source your game archi

Reply to Non-humanoid Aliens in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Speaking of Darca and humanoid races: Cylons. The 1980 BG Cylons look like metallic men wearing black dresses.

Reply to The problem with fantasy games in Elemental Dev Journals GalCiv3 Forums

I can go along with points 1-3, but not the last line. In fact, I would also add Tic-Tac-Toe as evidence; that's as easy an AI as you're going to get. At the end of the day, there is really only one limitation to artificial intelligence: human intelligence. One need only turn on the TV to see that clearly we have a dearth of resources on that front.

Reply to Non-humanoid Aliens in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Don't you love how all the life forms In the movies look just like humans with just a mark on their necks or whatever, and that makes them aliens? As for a major non-humanoid race, here's my answer: Gonzo the Great, from "Muppets from Space." When all his alien friends contacted him through his breakfast cereal, that was a pivotal moment in scifi literature. As it says in Wikipedia, "Gonzo is the only character other than Kermit the frog to fe

Reply to The problem with fantasy games in Elemental Dev Journals GalCiv3 Forums

We'll have to agree to disagree there, Biz. AI is a very hard problem. I would in fact argue that the conspicuous lack of good AI in complicated games is due to the fact that AI doesn't get enough respect. AI is what powers things like facial recognition on Facebook or musical recognition on Shazam (...which, incidentally, runs on smartphones). Look at all the manpower thrown at a chess AI, and chess is a far simpler game than pretty much any

Reply to The problem with fantasy games in Elemental Dev Journals GalCiv3 Forums

Agreed, but I guess I don't understand what exactly Frogboy is saying, and he has a successful track record creating AI, stories, and entire worlds. I guess it's that the game community already has a software library of cookie-cutter 4X strategy games, with source code for cookie-cutter AI for it. But once you introduce magic, how much can you reuse your cookie cutters? You're not making cookies anymore.

Reply to The problem with fantasy games in Elemental Dev Journals GalCiv3 Forums

[quote] Magic isn’t fair[/quote] When I first read this, my initial reaction was to discount it. There is nothing unfair about magic: you only have to balance it, like everything else. But to do so is to discount the years of Frogboy's proven track record. So it's got me to thinking what he is really trying to say, or what perspective it is he is coming from. I remember an earlier analysis of magic way back ev

Reply to Naming real stars in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I would argue the IAU should in fact do the exact opposite: they should embrace the idea and support the naming of stars in their own registry, for profit. Since one of the major goals of the IAU is, in fact, to get the public more interested in astronomy--and the major goal of getting the public more interested in astronomy is, in fact, to secure more funding for the astronomers. I liken this to the central DNS registry (managed by ICANN), where it is easier for everybody t

Reply to Naming real stars in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

The legality of it hasn't been challenged in court. Mostly because...who's going to sue over this? Really?

Naming real stars in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Just putting this out there. No doubt Stardock got this idea of naming your own star because there are companies out there who claim you can name your own real star. Check out: Http://iau.org/public/themes/buying_star_names vs. Http://starnamer.net The official registry of names for real celestial bodies is maintained by an international scientific body calle

Reply to GalCiv III Founder's Vault! in GalCiv III Founders GalCiv3 Forums

[quote] We also recently brought Richard Gibbs on board to begin composing themes (Battlestar Galactica).[/quote] Richard Gibbs did the theme for the new BG. I like the new BG's theme music, but I absolutely love the original.

Reply to Evolution of Galactic Civilizations in GalCiv III Dev Journals GalCiv3 Forums

Oh, cool. That was on my Galciv2 wish list, too. I think it rocks because it makes you think about how to build your colony. Location matters. And not just for what you build: the bonus tiles' locations matter, too. Just when it got me to thinking about the proximity-to-other-colony bonuses.... :) I was thinking maybe ship-building bonuses for each neighboring alien planet, and improvement-building bonuses for each

Reply to GalCiv III and specialized planets. in GalCiv Beta Feedback GalCiv3 Forums

[quote] Also, something like this would make balance a little hard to achieve.[/quote] No argument there. I saw this in the Warlords/Warlords Battlecry series: tons of cool features, not always balanced. But still fun, because of all the features. I just like the idea of each planet having its own distinct personality. i.e. I don't want some vanilla build order I always do for all class-10 planet