question regarding Elemental to Stardock

they've answered the 1st question.   Yes, Both versions will be on 1 disc.   So no worries about having to buy them apart.

I'm curious to know in which beta stage they expect to provide both versions.

Personally I thought it was pretty clear that Python will be the programming language to create their own scripts.

Last thing I saw, the 64 bit version was having some issues due to Havok not having a 64 bit library yet. Hopefully they work that out, I'd love to see a map using 4GB of RAM.

in theory (I think anyway) the 64-bit version would be without havok physics until that part is fixed.  I mean, I can't imagine the benifit of having havok in a map-only version of the game, for example. 

Of course, I don't know all the complications.  To me it seems like you should be able to create some sort of emulated environment to hold the 32-bit havok (perhaps a 32-bit *video processes that only renders the game on the screen and handles havok related physics and such) and have another program actually handling the back-end map and AI features that would need 64-bit memory access.  

I'm sure I'm over simplifying it, since I'm not sure the complications in creating a x86 graphics program that pulls from a 64-bit "backend program"

I die a little every time people bring up the E.G. 

No, the Epic Generator will not be in Elemental, but we'll definatly have some robust event logging to help AAR writers do their thing.

As for the others...

64-bit is waiting on Havok's libraries....I'll see if Jesse has heard any progress from our friends over there.

Python will definatly be used for alot of our more intricate stuff, though you'll really just need to learn our editors for the more obvious modding (items, maps, spells, etc).

Boogie- I know the Epic Generator was something you worked long and hard on for GalCiv2 and ended up scrapping a lot of it.  But, don't feel bad, as it was probably a good learning experience.  And here's my take away- if you can create a rather detailed, filterable logging feature, the community can attempt to create a story-ized version of those logs.  Without the logs, though, it can't happen.  Plus, the advanced logging will help SD and the community with trouble-shooting bugs, I'd imagine.

I would suggest some easy method to capture points in time to an HTML file that can include screenshots, though.  All you'd have to do is choose to perform a screen capture with a caption of text and/or highlight a particular log event and send it to the HTML.  Heck, you could integrate this into your blogging features in Impulse as an easy way to post game progress.  That would be amazing!

Have you considered doing something like a web generating log file?  It would make sharing tales of games really easy, fun, and educational as people share strategies, bugs, and tales of success/failure.

Why would a cartoon looking game need native 64bit support? Is there an advantage? cheers.

Faugh. It was and is a fine idea, even if it does demand some long and horrible romance between a DBA and a novelist.

Bigger maps. The technical limit to map size is RAM - whatever the graphics may be. 32-bit places stringent limitations on map size, while 64-bit basically gets rid of a limit all-together (provided you actually have the RAM to go with the 64-bit OS and game). 

32-bit systems can use up to 3.25 GB of ram, right? What enourmous maps would you use to even scratch that limit... Even if ram would be a limiting factor, I am sure they could make it so that huge maps are not needed for a full experience. CivIV works perfectly fine with standard sized maps, and the game does not scale very well to the arger map types.

A 32bit process can address 2GB of RAM. That amount is used for the game engine, art, map data, AI, etc. It gets eaten up pretty quickly these days. (Most games are running well over 1GB active memory usage, in fact some games have actually hit the 2GB limit and had problems.)

A 64 bit process can address more RAM then you can physically jam into any computer on the planet today.

In Civ IV, playing on a map much larger than Huge would probably strain any 32 bit system for memory. And yes, gameplay in Civ IV wouldn't scale well beyond that anyways, but Elemental is not going to be Civ IV (if it were, why would anyone buy it?). We've already been told that the standard huge map size in Elemental will be ~4x the size of Civ IV's. Elemental's gameplay will hopefully scale much better with map size than Civ IV's (and GC2's).

Bah.  I second Reliant and Swicord in saying you really shouldn't be beating on yourself for that -- in fact, I demand you knock it off.     It was a wonderful idea; the fact that it ended up not working out does nothing to take away from the effort you put into it.

For myself, merely having a good event-logging feature would be more than sufficient for my wants/needs; anything else after that is simply gravy.  In fact, having an event-logger *is* gravy.   

ROFLMAO