[quote who="[quote who="Satrhan" reply="62" id="2994434"] Upgrading shouldn't be automatic...[/quote] Note that the "upgrading of equipment" noted in the OP only refers to the Unit Design, not the guys on the field. You have to train more units to reap the benefits of auto-upgrading. There IS a separate Upgrade feature for trained units, but it has a significant cost associated with it.
[quote who="Magog_AoW" reply="57" id="2994096"]Holy crap, I didn't expect any improvements to the editor. [/quote] Luckily (for those folks that use the editors) several changes to the game required updates to the editors, so yes, they did get some love. We also needed to weed out all old UI textures, so at the very least they received visual and organizational improvements.
[quote who="Sarudak" reply="23" id="2993342"]The new selection reticule is gorgeous.[/quote] Wait till you see it animated :) Very subtle, but very effective!
Redwind: That's pretty much how the group animations work in FE - even got the variance in deaths in! Good calls ;) Goon: That was our original ORIGINAL design, where guys would fight out in realtime until you told them to fall back/pick another target. I think, in the current design, that would make battles drag on too long :( But like you said, something to consider for 2nd expansion...the better we can make battles look, the more impact they'll have
Keep in mind that, so far, all marketing announcements have showcased how FE is different from WoM. While we're not wasting much breath on their similarities, E:FE will be a natural progression of streamlining and improving Elemental, and at it's core it IS still Elemental (4x city building, exploring, expanding, battling, etc). So don't worry about us flipping from Fantasy 4x to RTS or something ;)
Sorry everyone, there's a lot of internal testing going on that is pulling our focus inwards (towards an acceptable public beta build). I'm hoping to do a intro-cutscene related journal soon, but I know a gameplay journal is what you guys are looking for...so I'll try to slip some details in that ;)
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[quote who="Trojasmic" reply="4" id="2965843"]How many bugs are left?[/quote] As we transition from 'Implementation' to 'Iteration' I'm sure there are a solid 50+ bugs that need immediate attention then tons of polish bits that will need touched up. I don't think we've had issues with lockups in the new tactical system (but we do have communication issues to resolve).
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Animondays will be coming back proper once the Beta gets out...I'm doing cutscenes (which need to stay under wraps) and pre-beta bug fixing (100% not animation related). I know that Derek has a pretty cool design journal in the works about magic, but I shant steal his thunder :) I'm up to 3 journal entries on a side-project game that I've been making for my son ( http://www.indiedb.com/games
Dungeons?! So Awesome...great work, Heavenfall!
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lol Nice :)
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[quote who="onomastikon" reply="27" id="2958800"] and would much prefer that precious resource allocation go into implementing less suboptimal terrain functionality, tactical battles, unit abilities, and AI.[/quote] All of those tasks have been handed out to considerably more skilled developers than myself :) Plus the additional animation work takes so little time that it be a sin not to add that extra (and noticeable) polish.
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[quote who="Solymer89" reply="30" id="2958351"] but I always end up moving it back to the overhead slightly sloped angle where the camera lines up with the grid lines. [/quote] One of the first things we hooked up in FE was 'Camera Snapback' to do this by default. Disorientation happened way too easily in WoM (IMHO) :(
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Heavenfall & igoraki: What's nice about Anime Studio is that it allows for a full IK skeleton to be made over a 2d image (rastor OR vector)...something I haven't seen replicated in any other program (AE's Puppet tool is FK only, so it's jsut a bit more clunky than Anime Studio's system). I can post a quick tutroial vid if you guys ever want to see how it all works...it blew my mind the first time I saw it in action.
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[quote who="PanicWave" reply="8" id="2957860"]is there any chance that i see MY sovereign on the cutscene instead of a generic one?[/quote] Our Tech isn't quite there yet, but eventually that's what we want....maybe Expansion 2 :)
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OK, images moved...let me know if they show up now :)
Ages ago (or, at least, what FEELS like ages ago) when we were nailing down the art style for Elemental, one of the key factors was creating a world where the cutscenes weren't in glaring opposition to the in-game graphics. This was around the same time that Fable 2 was released, where a beautiful pre-rendered intro felt (IMHO) fairly out of place in comparison to the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?
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I think most of these new GFX improvements will be implemented alongside an option to turn it off...though I hope it won't ever come to that :)
Booooo....Bad form, Aaron! She'll be revisited, I promise ;) edit: At least link to the journal that had a working version of the game [e digicons]:beer:[/e]
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[quote who="flymar" reply="14" id="2954935"](isn't it actually decreasing the FPS?[/quote] Naw, any stuttering in the vid is form the fact that I was in debug with FOW completely uncovered (while recording)...the calulations for this effect are really minimal. [quote who="Magog_AoW" reply="16" id="2954959"]Are you making the cloth map prettier as well?[/quote] I believe we'll be tweaking the cloth map, but our main visual focus is on making the main game looking bett
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[quote who="Lantros" reply="10" id="2954840"] but where is the Blood and fantasy violence i was warned about in the first seconds?[/quote] ;) I'll make sure to make up for it in my next vid.
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More environmental particle effects should be easilly modable...they spawn based on some rare props that are based on the terrain type, so they can be modded in anywhere a tile design can be placed :)
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One of the 3 main design pillars being tackled for Fallen Enchantress is 'The World'. Wildlands, randomly generated maps, more quests/lairs/resources/creatures...we've taken all the feedback from WoM to ensure FE delivers with some really engaging worlds. When you start a new game, half the fun will be simply exploring the land! On the visual side, a simple piece of technology that we'll be utilizing to make the world feel more magical is the old-school trick of 
I have some vids recorded for them, but we have some milestones we're trying to hit and some of the content can't be shown until the next marketing push. I'll try to get something up next week :) Glad you guys dig them!
[quote who="Lord Xia" reply="5" id="2949425"]I am very curious of your opinion of the game now.[/quote] Same here...would love to hear how a fresh set of eyes view the current experience.
[quote who="Campaigner" reply="4" id="2947697"]Have Stardock ever been at E3 ?[/quote] Never in booth form but yeah, we've been there. Quite the spectacle :) I remember showing off GC2 to folks in the oddest corners of the expo hall. We'll probably do PAX again at some point, I'm sure.