keithLamothe

Reply to Beta 1 Update in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Many thanks, activating fly-swatting modules...

Reply to [CRASH] Game will not go past title sceen in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

Kryo, FYI I can confirm that deleting familytreesubwnd.dxpack does not fix the issue for at least one of us (just reported as bug 70304). It's my alternate (ancient) laptop so I can still play fine on my primary, just fyi.

Reply to Elemental: BETA OBJECTIVES AND SCHEDULE in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Excellent :)

Reply to Single Player only games in Ready to Play Stardock Forums

I meant the list of games I had on this particular machine, which only included one multiplayer game registered via impulse. I thought maybe it was trying to give me a hit that I don't really need RtP ;) [quote]well, with the number of SD fanatics it shouldn't be too hard to round up 5 or 10 that will go through newly-released games and edit whether they are singleplayer only for free D:[/quote]Ah, but if a mistake is made? There'll have to be some function

Reply to Single Player only games in Ready to Play Stardock Forums

Yea, my list includes GC2 GC2:DA GC2:TA Light of Altair Mount & Blade Space Rangers 2 Titan Quest Only the last of which has any multiplayer capacity ;) There may not be a good solution other than leaving it as is due to the problems inherent in "guessing" about non-Stardock games and the presumably high cost-to-benefit ratio of implementing a "ignore specific game" feature just for the r

Reply to Elemental: PAX Preview Part 2 in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Boogie, I was hoping for pretty much exactly that, thanks :) A tremendous amount of the fun in MoM was how different the game could be based on those picks, and tossing race customization and sovereign-unit buffs into that mix could really take it to a new level. Massively strong sovereign unit with strong magic and really weak followers, or a mighty civilization with an only-slightly-above-mortal king, or anything in between... cool :)

Reply to Elemental: PAX Preview Part 2 in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

"If you’ve ever played Master of Magic or Master of Orion, you probably have an inkling of the kind of race customization we have in mind." Iirc, neither MoM or MoO1 had race customization at all ;) ... but I know what you meant, cool :) edit, also the last line: ". But they are of the same genre. The point is, even today, that game is pretty fun" looks like an artifact from a previous version of the post By the way, thanks very muc

Reply to Stardock coding practices in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Consistent indentation ;) Every now and then I have to fix up some old script from programmers long past, and the indentation is often completely chaotic. I just have to go through the file and reformat everything before I can even begin to make sense of it.

Reply to Could the beta program be an experience unto itself? in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

I'm all for a long open beta because those who don't want to wait can simply join the beta (paying for it, of course, but you can't have everything). After the initial burst of feedback I've just been hanging back until we actually have a beta to work with, I'll pipe up more when we do. Thanks, Keith

Reply to Elemental: Updated screenshots in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Brad, thanks for keeping us fed ;) Y'all keep saying not to take the screenshots as indicating the final visual quality, and I understand, but honestly they look wonderful to me already. I'm a bit easy to please, I suppose, but you still get a sale either way.

Reply to Elemental: AI designing in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

This (the AI moddability) is looking very good thus far. And I'd really like to pit AIs against each other in AI-only matches too, Brad. Hint, hint ;) I'll consider my custom built AIs a success when they don't get eaten by yours every time.

Reply to Elemental multiplayer evolves in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Thanks for the info, Brad. Particularly thank you for answering the LAN question, as we hope to play some in-house multiplayer and it would be a little silly for all our packets to be running halfway across the country to your servers and then all the way back to our house (through the same network drop they went out) and into a different computer.

Reply to A strategy game that is also a world in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Great stuff, looks like we'll be expanding the definition of awesomeness in both quality and quantity. :)

Reply to Armies of Elemental in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Brad, Brad, we get the point. It's going to be a ridiculously cool game... Just kidding, give us as much detail and teasers as you can ;) And I wouldn't be worried about the they've-got-a-dragon-it's-game-over problem. Sure, if they get a dragon it might be game over, or you might have just finished researching your world-wrecking spell and your armies just barely manage to keep that dragon from blasting your tower so you have time to cast the spell

Reply to Elemental: Internal debates made external in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

A decent camp 1 UI (and AI for computer players and human-assistance) could be designed and implemented and maintained through the hundreds of changes to related stuff throughout development... But it would take what, 500 developer-hours? 1000? 2000? Remember, there's only a certain number of hours budgeted for this game, in terms of salary spent on the project. If they do a really sophisticated model for this piece it will take away from what is available for: -

Reply to Making your own worlds in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote]If there's an internal debate on planes/moons/whatever, I'd love to see a companion thread to the one on the econ mechanics. Or at least a semi-firm dev reply to this question that's been around pretty much since the boards opened.[/quote]Indeed, this is mighty important, at least to me. I thought it had already been answered and was asking to be pointed to it, but I guess not.

Reply to Elemental: Internal debates made external in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

@Shayde - Yes, I understood that you meant "without compromising your vision", I just wanted to bring out that distinction. Since we agree on that, the question for any proposed simplification is "is this a compromise of the vision?" And yes, many games make many things optional, like MoM's allowing auto-resolve-combat as an option. I wanted to go into more detail on my "options are bad" spiel but I try to not write a book in every comment (despite appearances). <

Reply to Elemental: Internal debates made external in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote]You want to reach the widest audience possible - so simplistic is the way to go.[/quote]It's a spectrum with tradeoffs. Widest audience possible? Then it shouldn't be TBS, for starters. On the other hand, it'd be going overboard if proper use of the interface required knowing how to write SQL queries (which I'd be just fine with personally). The trick is to find what parts of the sophisticated model are the real killers in terms of model/UI/AI complexity and f

Reply to Elemental: Internal debates made external in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

To echo one of PeacePhoenix's concerns, take this scenario and question: Assume I have X iron mines in operation and 10 cities with 1 iron-using-building each. Assume none of my cities have any of the bonuses Brad talked about in the camp 4 proposal (roads, caravans, etc). Therefore each city is getting an equal amount Y of iron per turn. Assume I then build an iron-using-building in an 11th city (also no bonuses) How much iron does each of my citie

Reply to Elemental: Internal debates made external in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Brad, Thanks for keeping this discussion going. I think camp 3 is significantly superior to camp 4, for example: [quote]as soon as I build 1 Alchemist lab in any town, then any town can build magic swords at a base level[/quote] Doesn't sound fun because: 1) There's no way I can disrupt that "base level" of production of an enemy city even if he only has one city with an alchemist lab and a Aegeon crystal mine (does the mine have to be at the same city?),

Reply to I'm curious. How many people who are complaining about Stardock's handling of the connectivity situation have never bought a Stardock game before? in Demigod Stardock Forums

[quote]And Stardock will make sure there's a good MP population to sustain it one way or the other.[/quote]Ah, the real nefarious plan is revealed: cloning! ;)

Reply to Getting back to Elemental in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Direct IP, at least, would be really nice for those of us who find ourselves in no-internet situations. Just grab a router and a few ethernet cables, run ipconfig to check all the IPs and go. Quick question: Direct IP gaming is *usually* based on one machine hosting and all the others connecting directly to that computer, right? At least I only remember having to enter the IP of the host, perhaps the host passes along all the other player IPs so it's fully P2P. <br

Reply to Making your own worlds in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

On dungeons/planes/underground/etc, do we have any confirmed information that there will actually be more than one map in a game? As in MoM's Myrror or HoMM's underground? Dungeons are confirmed, but do we have any info about how they are actually represented spatially or how a "dungeon crawl" is represented temporally (i.e. one turn or more than that)? The map editor looks really nice, Brad, thanks for sharing that. I'll get a good bit of fun out of just making cool

Reply to Elemental: Internal debates made external in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Sorry, just noticed the camp #3 update in the OP, so my most recent comment is probably unnecessary. For what it's worth, I prefer 3 to 1.

Reply to Demigod Proxy Servers & Responses in Demigod Journals Stardock Forums

"That said, I also believe strongly that when a product or service has problems in some area that the company who produces (or publishes) it should be very up front with their customers. Maybe I’m wrong and people are sick of these journal entries but that’s my view on it." No, I absolutely agree with you, Stardock's openness about mistakes or other unpopular issues is one of the main reasons I think you actually care about customer satisfaction apart from t