Elemental Beta 2 Gets Surprise

[Telefrog]

If you've been following Elemental: War of Magic, Stardock's Impulse-powered fusion of Master of Magic and Civilization, you know that the original plan was to keep the zoomed in graphic engine turned off until very close to launch. This meant that the game in beta would play only with the zoomed out "cloth map" view.

http://i41.tinypic.com/fel7wg.jpg

Brad Wardell announced (http://forums.elementalgame.com/382216) that beta 2 and 3 are going to be combined to keep network development costs down. This means that the stylized close-up appearance will be available very soon to everyone involved in the beta!

http://i43.tinypic.com/4idcud.jpg

The revised Elemental development schedule (http://forums.elementalgame.com/363845) is available here.

Preordering (http://www.elementalgame.com/purchase.aspx) now will allow you into beta 2 in a couple of weeks time.

[Telefrog]

Of note in the revised schedule are these tidbits for us old folks:

Multiplayer: Arena mode (remember Archon?).
New Game Mode: Battlefield (internally called "XCom meets Myth mode")

[CappinCanuck]

Fantastic news! I am really looking forward to seeing what the game actually looks like. The cloth map just didn't do it justice IMO. I'll have to check out the timeline now. Beta 2 should have been out a while ago, but this explains why it was not.

[CappinCanuck]

For the sake of ease for all others, here it is. Interestingly, it looks like it's definitely coming very soon. Spring is soon to be done and all the stuff I really wanted to see got pushed into Beta 2, huzzah.

BETA 2: Game Play Beta (Spring 2010)

1. Initial: Caravans enabled, 3D Engine enabled, Multiplayer enabled, shops enabled, sieges enabled, visual battles enabled.
2. Beta 2A: Beta Fixes. Gameplay updates. Naval transports enabled. Master Quest enabled. Spell of Making enabled.

BETA 3: War & Peace Beta. (Summer 2010)

1. Initial: Tactical Battles options enabled. Finalized Diplomacy enabled. Naval warfare enabled.
2. Beta 3A: Combat Magic enabled. The Hiergamenon enabled.
3. Beta 3B: Morale and Tactical Battle AI enabled. MP: Wars of Magic.

[Lekon]

Damn you Telefrog. That little quote just made me pre-order the game. Versions that are like Archon, Myth, and Xcom? Yes, you can have my money.

[CappinCanuck]

Damn you Telefrog. That little quote just made me pre-order the game. Versions that are like Archon, Myth, and Xcom? Yes, you can have my money.

You should check out the thread "Elemental Developer Interview." There's plenty more reason to preorder in that interview.

[MagGnome]

As I've said many times, I cannot wait for this game. This and Civ V will eat up all of my free time for months.

I'm actively avoiding the beta, but I'm glad to hear that they keep rolling out features!

[jpublic]

For those of you wanting a fairly fun fix of similar gameplay, go download the Fall From Heaven 2 Mod for Civ 4.

Wow this is good.

[Rune_74]

For those of you wanting a fairly fun fix of similar gameplay, go download the Fall From Heaven 2 Mod for Civ 4.

Wow this is good.

It crashes my laptop all the time...doesn't seem to like windows 7

[jpublic]

Odd.

I'm finding it impossible to actually finish a game on FFH2, to the extent I've given up. The difficulty is *way* higher than the vanilla game. Even on Chieftan I'm getting hosed, especially late game when the opponents start throwing out stacks of invading units that are 50-deep at least.

Also, the bedamned half-assedness of it, where they steal graphics and music from dozens of other sources is getting on my nerves.

I'm currently waiting for the update to my Elemental Beta to finish downloading, I haven't tried it since 1H or something.

[CappinCanuck]

I'm not having many crash problems running it in windows 7 on this end. Couldn't tell you why though. Hopefully beta 2 will be more stable for you Rune.

And blech! I always check for updates to this thread from the thread list... I was so sure the three new posts meant that Beta 2 was out :P

[Rune_74]

Sorry Cappin I was off topic, I was talking about civ 4

[jpublic]

Yeah, my fault, sorry, I brought up the FFH2 mod.

Back to Elemental, does anyone have a 'what the hell is going on' guide to the game? I have no freaking clue what I'm doing.

[Telefrog]

Awesome news from Stardock:

Tactical Battles. Tactical battles haven’t been part of the beta but they’ve been heavily discussed. Originally, tactical battles were designed to be RTS. Then Continuous turns. But as time has gone on, it’s become clear that the gameplay that people (and frankly that we enjoyed the most) was more closest to XCom. That is, turn based. Tile based. Moving units to the best spots. And eventually working to have your units in spots that are easy to spot the enemy while they themselves are hard to find.

[CappinCanuck]

I just gave up the King Arthur pack @ $14 in anticipation of this... I hope it comes soon. I need something to fill the TBS void.

[Telefrog]

Brad shows off the map editor!

AEdXvqUG5dI

[MagGnome]

Map editors used to really excite me, but not anymore. Too many games have shipped with map editors only to receive little post-release content.

I love that he mentioned Age of Wonders! Hopefully Stardock has been influenced by that under appreciated gem of a series.

[SilentScreams]

Beta gameplay video. (http://www.viddler.com/explore/Joystiq/videos/3493/1.556)

I'm not sure if this has been posted before, but I've just seen it on Joystiq and thought I'd share.

[CappinCanuck]

Beta gameplay video. (http://www.viddler.com/explore/Joystiq/videos/3493/1.556)

I'm not sure if this has been posted before, but I've just seen it on Joystiq and thought I'd share.

Deft'ly new! It just popped up on my Feedly late last night. This gameplay is based on the next client update (Beta 2), which should be coming next week or thereabouts according to the updates on the Elemental Forums.

[Hotcod]

danm that video has tempted me so...

[MagGnome]

Thanks for the link, CappinCanuck! This game has somewhat faded from my radar given the long development time, but that video has reignited my interest. I love the idea of people being attracted to your city as it grows. That reminds me of Dungeon Keeper, which I always thought had a lot of good ideas that have rarely shown up in other games.

[Rune_74]

So I preordered it but no serial number or beta info was given...anyone know how that works?

[SilentScreams]

Thanks for the link, CappinCanuck!

*ahem*

:D


So I preordered it but no serial number or beta info was given...anyone know how that works?

The site says that beta access is currently closed but they will be starting it again with the next major release.

[MagGnome]

*ahem*

:D

Oops, my bad! :o

[CappinCanuck]

So I preordered it but no serial number or beta info was given...anyone know how that works?

Hey Rune, click the menu button and make sure "Show alpha or beta releases or unreleased games (can't remember which it says)." That might be why. Or, as someone said, they let you in at every major client release. If that's the case, I don't think you'll have to wait more than a week or two for Beta 2. Just check that box and wait. You'll get your serial # when they charge you I believe, which is when you get the beta. It'll all come at once and be nicely automated for you.

[CappinCanuck]

Oops, my bad! :o

Hehe. I don't blame you for mistaking the awesome as mine, Mags. It usually is :p.

If you are interested though, pick it up the next time they release coupons for % off all things in the store. That's what I did, I think I paid $37. They will probably have this at full price for a long time but great deals if you're willing to wait (I'm not).

[jpublic]

Do we know when Beta 2 is released? That one looks like it has the some of the fun installed.

[MagGnome]

Hehe. I don't blame you for mistaking the awesome as mine, Mags. It usually is :p.

If you are interested though, pick it up the next time they release coupons for % off all things in the store. That's what I did, I think I paid $37. They will probably have this at full price for a long time but great deals if you're willing to wait (I'm not).

For some reason I never get those coupons. It seems like they only send them to people who purchased Demigod. I know several people who bought Demigod and receive those coupons on a regular basis, yet since I've "only" bought Sins of a Solar Empire, Gal Civ 1, and a few other games I haven't ever received one. :/

I'm not complaining, per se, just pointing out that for some reason I've never gotten one of those in my e-mail.

[CappinCanuck]

Do we know when Beta 2 is released? That one looks like it has the some of the fun installed.

Next week according to the latest info.

For some reason I never get those coupons. It seems like they only send them to people who purchased Demigod. I know several people who bought Demigod and receive those coupons on a regular basis, yet since I've "only" bought Sins of a Solar Empire, Gal Civ 1, and a few other games I haven't ever received one. :/

I'm not complaining, per se, just pointing out that for some reason I've never gotten one of those in my e-mail.

They come if you have been actively playing their games. I'm sure someone will post em when they come. You can also get them by doing surveys on their site of signing up for their publications. They do 2 or so reports per year, shareholder type reports, and they usually include a coupon code. Those usually get around though so you shouldn't have a problem by the release date.

[MagGnome]

It probably doesn't help that I tend to delete most of the e-mails I get from various companies (Stardock included) after only skimming them.

[CappinCanuck]

Frogboy, unhappy with the other walkthrough video, has posted another (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/55179/Elemental-War-Of-Magic-Walkthrough-Video-Redux)on including game creation and the editor.

[SilentScreams]

So I took the plunge and pre-ordered the digital + boxed version option. I was going to get the LE, but the extras don't sound all that great, and I think the standard box is prettier. :)

[ShivaX]

Frogboy, unhappy with the other walkthrough video, has posted another (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/55179/Elemental-War-Of-Magic-Walkthrough-Video-Redux)on including game creation and the editor.

GAAHASDFASDASDAS

Seriously its not part one and part two!!!

Its part 1 and another part 1!

I'm about ready to burn down the internet everytime I see these things at this point.

Heres the timeline:

Brad releases a video.
Couple days later Brad releases another video thats "two parts"!
The second part is the first fucking video.
Everyone on the entire internet calls the second movie part one and the first movie part two.

It wouldn't be so bad if at the end of the second video he didn't say shit about showing off the midgame. Instead we get two movies of the beginning showing the same shit and having Brad talk about it twice.

[AFeastForCrows]

GAAHASDFASDASDAS

Seriously its not part one and part two!!!

Its part 1 and another part 1!

I'm about ready to burn down the internet everytime I see these things at this point.

Heres the timeline:

Brad releases a video.
Couple days later Brad releases another video thats "two parts"!
The second part is the first fucking video.
Everyone on the entire internet calls the second movie part one and the first movie part two.

It wouldn't be so bad if at the end of the second video he didn't say shit about showing off the midgame. Instead we get two movies of the beginning showing the same shit and having Brad talk about it twice.

Yeah, this whole "second video" is garbage, and has been a thorn in my paw all weekend. I think Brad actually recorded THREE videos detailing the first 10 or so turns of the game, and goes to great lengths explaining the games core concepts (NPCs, Building a City with Essense, Research, etc.) in all three of them.

[CappinCanuck]

So I took the plunge and pre-ordered the digital + boxed version option. I was going to get the LE, but the extras don't sound all that great, and I think the standard box is prettier. :)

Boo, I wish I had ordered a box copy too. I only got the digital version for cheapness. I think it'll look very pretty and majestic on my shelf :D

[MagGnome]

I don't bother with boxed copies anymore. Too much clutter.

[Ghostbear]

August 24th is the official release date now.

[MagGnome]

That's great! I really need to finish some games before this hits.

I think that's also the first day I start the fall semester. Great timing there. :p

[Telefrog]

August 24th is the official release date now.

Brace yourself because Brad has said that if the release slips because gameplay is not up to snuff, the date will drop back to the second week of February.

No, that's not a joke or a misprint. The second week of February 2011! :eek: It's the next retail slot available on the schedule.

[CappinCanuck]

Brace yourself because Brad has said that if the release slips because gameplay is not up to snuff, the date will drop back to the second week of February.

No, that's not a joke or a misprint. The second week of February 2011! :eek: It's the next retail slot available on the schedule.

Well, let's hope that doesn't happen. That's quite the delay! I wonder why they can't release it at Christmas, this isn't the type of game that will have burst sales. It'd be more like Civ and offer a steady stream of revenue.

[ShivaX]

Well, let's hope that doesn't happen. That's quite the delay! I wonder why they can't release it at Christmas, this isn't the type of game that will have burst sales. It'd be more like Civ and offer a steady stream of revenue.

Like he said its the next retail slot available.

[SilentScreams]

What does that mean? I thought it might mean dates when stores will put the game on their shelves, but I imagine most of Elemental's sales will be coming through Impulse anyway.

[MagGnome]

The majority of the game's sales will still be at retail, as is the case with most PC titles.

Still, that does seem like rather odd reasoning. Although I can see not wanting to go up against Civilization IV, so I don't blame them for either releasing before that game or waiting several months.

[SilentScreams]

There's a video on the site now of Brad playing around on some islands. Not a lot of new info, but he does seem to be throwing down cities a lot more frequently than I expected you would do in a game like this. Perhaps I'm just too used to Civ 4, where you generally build 3-6 cities and that's all you have for quite a while in the early game because you simply can't sustain any more.

[ShivaX]

What does that mean? I thought it might mean dates when stores will put the game on their shelves, but I imagine most of Elemental's sales will be coming through Impulse anyway.

What it means is that getting a game on the shelves around Christmas time is stupid expensive. Its also extremely likely they have contracts and deals that prevent them from releasing the game on Impulse and then later in the stores.

The only game that I know of that pulled that off was Blood Bowl and they didn't technically release in the US. When they did go retail they called it "Blood Bowl- Dark Elf Edition" which is probably how they got around it (assuming they even got any real shelf space anywhere in the first place).

There's a video on the site now of Brad playing around on some islands. Not a lot of new info, but he does seem to be throwing down cities a lot more frequently than I expected you would do in a game like this. Perhaps I'm just too used to Civ 4, where you generally build 3-6 cities and that's all you have for quite a while in the early game because you simply can't sustain any more.

Hes testing stuff as well though. And you could have a ton of cities on an island heavy map in civ. Plus who says its early in the game? I think his reason for doing it is to see how the AI reacts to those cities. From what I understand you don't want to spam cities since it lowers your magical power permanently.

[AFeastForCrows]

From what I understand you don't want to spam cities since it lowers your magical power permanently.

He also mentioned that every subsequent city is more expensive to build than the previous one, in that little 2 min video I linked earlier.

[Telefrog]

Join the Elemental Army! (http://www.elementalgame.com/army)

Yeah, it's grassroots viral marketing. Still, it's pretty clever, and they ask you to not be spammy.

[CappinCanuck]

Beta 2 is released :) Giggity!



----------------------------------------------------------------
----------------- Beta 2 Change Log (v0.802) -------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------


******************
* 3D Graphics Enabled *
Overview: The game has been taken out of perma-Cloth Map mode and 3d mode has been enabled!!!!! Watch in awe as your troops battle, cities grow, and spells defile the world.

+ Added in the hooks for particles and on-hit annotations to play in tactical battles
+ The loser in a quick battle no longer plays an attack animation if they dealt zero damage to the attacker, either through defense or zero attack rating.
+ Fixed bug where the wrong attack animations would be used for a unit when loading a game, because the weapon type of the item types weren't being saved out
+ Fixed a problem with water environment colors not getting set correctly on maps loaded from XML.
+ Fixed a bug where animations would not blend correctly when using the RandomAnimationLoopQueueEntry with multiple animations
+ Fixed a bug where blended out animations could still trigger annotations (although I'm not certain this was actually happening, this will certainly prevent it)
+ Improvement ModifyGfx function now updates the color of the tactical icon
+ Added CCity::UpdateCityWallColors function to update the color of the wall icons and the selection gfx
+ Unit markers now update their colors when SetColors function is used after creating the unit marker gfx
+ To save memory, models have had their skeleton data and mesh data split into separate files
+ This allows us to save the data we need from the mesh (like hit detection data and mesh binding data) then flush the raw havok data out of memory
+ This also means we no longer have to duplicate the skeleton data in every mesh file and keep it in memory
+ There is one skeleton hkb file for each type of skeleton and it gets shared across multiple models
+ This required some re-engineering the inner workings of the animation system
+ Animation Node now takes two parameters: mesh file and skeleton file
+ Mesh file data is not kept in memory after loading the file and creating the resources for it (except for hit detection data and binding data, which is copied)
+ Skeleton data is kept in memory
+ Animations are also kept in memory
+ The LoadHKB function now uses a new "hkb file reader" class to manage the file's data in memory
+ The LoadHKB function now takes a bKeepReaderInMemory parameter and flushes out the reader if FALSE. If true, it stays in memory until the file data is released
+ Fixed issue with world props not showing up after loading a saved game.


***********
* Multiplayer *
Overview: You can now jump online to enjoy a 1v1 game of Elemental using our hosted servers.

+ Changed to load game data zip immediately after core data, so that the user doesn't see a wait time while server is getting ready to make save game
+ Can now build city that should be the same on server and clients
+ Changed PostEvent_StartSettlement to call new event for building town hall
+ Changed RemoveSubUnit to call CancelDestination event instead of set destination event
+ Moved checks in UpdateTurn for if the owner is the wild creatures or NPC unit up so that it's not checking twice
+ Added a goodie hut intersect event.
+ Made the goodie hut encounter event able to spawn encounters for goodie hut clear events.
+ Goodie huts should now save and load their levels.
+ Changed these functions to set the sender player ID to be the local player rather than the unit's owner: SendFindPathEvent, SendMoveEvent, SendMoveStatusEvent, SendCollisionDetectionEvent
+ Fixed bug where AI's moves were not being sent to the clients
+ Made joining and leaving armies event-driven, so that it works in multiplayer now


*****
* AI *
Overview: AI officially begins its fearful march towards sentience.

+ Combat Rating tweaks
m_ulBattleRank = ( fAttackStrength * fSpeed) + fDefense + GetHPCurrent_ForBattle()/2;
+ AI slightly smarter (but still stupid) about going to war
+ AI will attack targets of opportunity
+ AI Relation Manager skeleton implemented
+ AI slightly more intelligent about city placement
+ AI much better about targeting units
+ AI slightly better at building up cities
+ AI a bit better at defending cities
+ AI looks at who owns a tile before moving (AI won't just walk around on your controlled territory)
+ New paramter for deciding whether to ignore who owns a given tile when evaluating "closest" things (like goodie huts)
+ added code in CanIAttack() so that NPCs don't have to be at war with the other player
+ in DeclareWarOnPlayer(), added code to leave early if it's the npc player
+ Fixed some places where the AI would set the destinatation of a unit to a tile they are already at, causing an assert in CUnit::SetDestination from trying to move within a tile
+ In AIManageChampions, won't look for a city to set a spouse's destination for if they are already stationed in a city
+ In AIGoToRallyPoint, won't set destination to a rally point if the unit is already at that rally point
+ Changed UpdateAutoPatrolDestination to use GetRandomTileNear, checking for a valid destination
+ Unit Types can now be "retired"
+ Call SetRetired to retire a unit type
+ When a unit is retired, it sets a flag that the retired unit types need to be purged
+ At the end of a turn, if the "purge retired units" flag is set, it will go through the unit types list and release all the retired unit types
+ They only get removed from the list if no units are currently using that unit type
+ a new IsAnyUnitUsingUnitType function was added to CWorld for this purpose
+ AIManageChampions added
+ AIRecruitUnitsInArea added (AI will now try to recruit NPCs)
+ AI is much smarter about building new cities
+ AI somewhat better at designing units
+ AI better at training units
+ AI better at scouting
+ AI Difficulty Levels
- CPlayer::GetAIDifficultyLevel- returns any available DifficultyLevel, if the player is actually owned by the AI
- hooked up StartingFundsRatio to test usability of the difficulty levels
- DifficultyLevels saving out, reading in (before a reload defaulted to NORMAL difficulty)
+ AIManageSovereign method added
+ Sovereign looks at a number of world conditions to determine whether a new city should be founded
+ Rewrote AIChooseFutureCityLocations to use new algorithms
+ AIFindGoodieHut method added
+ AIScoutWorld method added
+ AIGotoRallyPoint method added
+ New File: CoreDifficultyLevels.xml defines difficulty levels
+ New #define: VERY_FAR (0xffff..) to help set comparisons
+ Follow selected unit option OFF by default
+ Zoom to cursor OFF by default
+ AIFindClosestResourceHoard now has option to look at cities nearby.


****************
* Seafaring Vessels *
Overview: You can now build harbos on beaches and then build Frigates or Transports to move your units on water tiles.

+ Can build harbors after you get the Naval tech in the Warfare track
+ After you build a harbor on a beach or a cliff, can build a transport or a frigate
+ For now they just get stationed in the city once training is done, will automatically unstation into the ocean later
+ Selection and destination cursors show up above sea level no matter what, lets them be seen for boats
+ Can load units onto a boat at a beach or through a city, and disembark them at a beach or city
+ Uses similar UI as armies already use, but boats don't show up as one of the entries
+ Boats also can't form fleets, can only take on and deposit units
+ Theoretically can have boats attack each other, though since no one else builds boats yet I haven't tested it yet
+ During attack, the units on a boat won't participate, but when one boat dies all of the units on it die, too
+ Boats don't show up in unit design list, nor in the training list until a harbor is built
+ Boats are also in the master CWorld unit list, along with the smaller boat list
+ Increased the DeltaZ of the transport and frigate run animations to 1000


*************
* Ranged Units *
Overview: Armies that have a ranged unit (catapult, archers, etc) can now attack from a distance on the main map, using moves to deal damage from afar.

+ Can add a ranged action to a unit by putting a "UnlockRangedAction" unit game modifier in the game item type xml, with the StrVal set to the internal name of animation to be cast when that unit action is selected
+ If the action is available, meaning the unit can perform that action under some circumstances, there is an entry made for it, but if the unit doesn't have enough moves or something it will put a cross over the entry and set the tooltip explaining why the action can't be done
+ When a ranged action is selected, the spellcasting mode comes up, letting the user select the target of the ranged attack, plays animation and applies the damage, if a valid target is selected

****************
* Gameplay Tweaks *
Overview: A significanly abridged version of the gameplay tweaks made since the last update. Glimmers of enjoyment should start to poke through the wall of pain built by Beta 1.

+ If sovereign dies in enemy territory or doesn't have enough essence to revive, they die permanently, otherwise they are given a chance to retreat to a city and, if successful, deduct that essence cost to stay alive
+ If the player doesn't have enough gold to build a city, the tooltip for the build action says so, and they are prevented from building the city
+ Only sovereigns have essence now. This is being enforced by making CreateRandomizedUnitType clear out the essence stat for any unit type created (ensuring spouses and children don't have any essence, as well as any unit types created on the fly for any other reason), unless asked explicitly to not clear the essence stat (as is the case when creating a random sovereign for an opponent faction if they have the same sovereign as you do)
+ New Option "Smart Player Colors": Your local player will appear as blue, neutral players yellow, and enemies red.
+ Changed the sovereign's effect on the spell point cap for their player to be wisdom x 1.0
+ And changed fortification bonus to x 1.5
+ added map modifiers, with attribute "UpdateSpawnRating" (with one modifier for StrVal CREATURE and another for QUEST), to techs Exploration_Kingdom, Ruin_Delving_Kingdom, and Dungeoneering_Kingdom
+ added map modifiers, with attribute "UpdateSpawnRating" (with one modifier for StrVal CREATURE and another for NPC), to techs Recruiting_Kingdom, Heroes_Kingdom, Legends_Kingdom and Titans_Kingdom
+ Technologies now have non-test descriptions
+ Game objects now have their own short and long descriptions that help the player know the role of a given world object.
+ The shards have short and long descriptions (that are different) to help guide the player.

*******************
* UI Changes / Additions *

+ LoreBookWnd: several changes so that you can view active/completed/failed quests, and flip through them with the turn page buttons
+ Turn button glow now should only show up when all your moveable units (except the ones on auto move) have moved
+ No spells tab in the main UI when a unit without any max mana (no essence) is selected
+ When a unit is selected, their attack and defense for battle is now displayed, meaning fortification, city, and terrain bonuses show up in the short value in the main details context wnd
+ Says "No Spell Knowledge" when the player has no spell points
+ Made it so that spells with no requirements don't get shown in the spellbook
+ Spell list for a selected unit now crosses out spell entries for more reasons (like not having enough mana or shards) and adds the reason to the info card for the spell rather than popping up a message box when the user tries to cast the spell, making it more like the city and unit actions behave
+ Fixed a bug in the Level Up window where the unit was getting cleared too early and the window would not display properly
+ Random crest will be set when making a new faction
+ Added a message box popup for when a player revists an inn telling him that it no longer has quests.
+ Fixed a bug in citybuilding where if you had no available tiles AND all your city tiles were full, the game would not allow you to go into building mode.
+ Kingdom wnd shortcut list now displayed when nothing is selected, instead of as a tab when a unit is selected
+ World setup screen now (reliably) defaults to tiny single continent, other victory conditions are disabled, and hooked up the pacing options to affect the research times as specified
okWnd.cpp
+ when displaying city resources, will not display resources with a value of 0. If all resources we plan to display are all 0, the resources header is also not displayed

******************
* Keyboard Shortcuts *
Overview: You can now edit and set major keyboard shortcuts in the Options window.

+ Added the code that will add entries for keyboard shortcuts to the "Keyboard" tab on the Options window.
+ Added the Shop, Details, Fortify and Attack keyboard shortcuts to the unit code.
+ Added the ElementalCityKeys enum that defines the city hotkeys and the kiCityKeys struct that holds them.
+ Defined the kiCityKeys structure with the information for the city hotkeys. Added the MainMapCityKeyCallback() function that passes keys to the city callback function.
+ Added the MainMapCityKeyCallback() to handle the city hotkeys.
+ Added the ActivateCityKeyCallback() function that actually activates the city key callback.
+ Added code to OnSelectBasicGameObject() to call ActivateCityKeyCallback() when the object is a city.
+ Updated the options screen to correctly show the most common keyboard shortcuts and what they are currently mapped to. Changed TranslateVKOrVKEYToString() in BasicGameShell to return NULL if it has no matching string.
+ Made the city shortcuts compatible with the overall shortcuts. This required me to disable three main map shortcuts that either weren't implemented or weren't used: Goto, Display and Build Road Mode. This fixes using main shortcuts and cheat shortcuts when cities are selected and allows you to tab select between units and cities again.
+ fix for a bug: once a city was selected, its shortcuts were overriding the unit shortcuts.
+ Added tooltip info to both the unit and city action buttons.



***********
* Bug Fixes *

+ Fixed stuck turn button when loading a game from any save other than an auto-save
+ At the start of MoveUnits, if the player is an AI player, hasn't requested auto-move units yet, and has no moveable units, it will set that it is ready for autoturn; fixes a stuck turn button when loading a game from a quicksave rather than an autosave
+ Fixed bug where spouses, children, and any other randomly-generated unit type would have the same medallion picture
+ Fixed bug in SetNewOwner where the units in the city were getting set to the index of the for loop instead of the new owner, causing a crash because of a null player
+ The minimap no longer updates itself while hidden.
+ fixed bug where NPC characters had the "at war" icon and a faction medallion
+ Only 'Revive Land' spell is available on game start
+ Fixed hanging game when AI (or other quickmove) units tried to teleport through a city when they can move more than one tile per turn, and didn't reach the city until at least one tile into the path, caused by endlessly teleporting to the start of their path outside of the city again
+ Fixed a bug when the AI attacked a city, causing a stuck turn button due to the attackers being unable to move into position
+ Fixed bug where, when a city was conquered, the defenders would be traded over to the conquering player before being killed, meaning, for example, if your sovereign was defending a captured city it would actually kill the conquering player when they were destroyed, and leave you with no sovereign at all. And maybe other fun stuff I didn't see.
+ Fixed bug where the guy carrying a sack that a horse and wagon caravan turns into when setting up a short trade route wasn't rendering, because the unit type was missing model and skeleton information
+ Fixed crash when starting up a new game (m_pMapData was NULL)
+ Battles now set a flag in CWorld. End of turn cannot occur when this flag is set.
+ Fixed a bug that could potentially cause a stuck turn, or other untended consequences, related to a quick battle happening as the result of an auto-turn move.
+ Fixed an issue where attacking a city hub would cause quick battles to stall.
+ Fixed a bug that caused a sovereign to die in a city he was defending rather than be teleported to safety to another of his cities.
+ Fixed a bug where tactical units were not getting their object ID set correctly.
+ Fixed bug where creating an army, moving a few tiles, and then taking the leader out of the army would cause the remaining subarmy to teleport back to where they joined the army and start following the same path again
+ Fixed crash when anyone with an arrow equipped tried to cast a spell
+ Fixed a bug which caused attacking defended cities to cause multiple battles, leading to unexpected results.
+ Fixed crash when training a set of units, unstationing them from the city at the same time, and then making them join an existing army, caused in a really roundabout way by a typo in CCity::ReleaseStationedUnit
+ Fixed bug where having multiple friendly units converge on a tile with another unit on it during automove, if one of them was a champion, would cause any other units that tried to join the army after the champion joined it to just stack on that tile and not form an army correctly


*******
* Misc *

+ changed the way the portraits are handled in the game so they won't take up as much memory
+ Fixed bug where lighting data wasn't being set in overflow model batches ( batches that are created when another batch reaches capacity )
+ Diplomacy disabled in actions tab for Beta 2
+ Added some flavor text to be used on the game over wnd.
+ More Music implemented...randomly chosen, though the barren themes will only play at the start of a game
+ Click SFX Hooked up to resources and goodie huts
+ Added game modifier that, when applied, adds a tech def to a player's tech manager (if it isn't already there) and unlocks it, so that anything requiring that tech as a prereq is now unlocked

Player
UnlockTech
Phantom_Caravans_Kingdom

+ This game modifier can be used for the various sovereign and faction bonuses from the June 8th list that involve giving that player some special improvement type or unit type at the beginning of the game

[Sandman]

So yeah....I pre-ordered Elemental because they didn't charge me at the time of pre-order and all I saw about when I'd be charged was this:

NOTICE: Your order contains at least one Pre-Order item that will not be charged to you at this time. You will only be charged for the items in your cart that are available at this time. Your preorder will be saved in our system, and when the product becomes available, you will be charged and notified.Now when I read that I expect to be charged on the release date of August 31st when the product becomes available. Today I get an e-mail from Stardock saying I've been charged the full $79.95 for beta 2 access. WTF. Beta 2 access is not when I was expecting to be charged. In fact, this is the first I've heard of a company charging full price upon beta entry. I've heard of charging full price upon pre-order and upon shipping but for beta entry? I've e-mailed Stardock but from what I've read I'm not expecting to be able to cancel my pre-order. Surprise charges like that are not cool. If Stardock considers beta access as making the product available it should be specified.

Edit: I have since discovered that the info is elsewhere on the site and the shock of being charged $80 almost 2 months ahead of time has died down a bit. Still, this information that you will be charged upon receiving access to the beta should be on their pre-order page, not just in the beta wiki or hidden in their refund policy....people don't always look at that when ordering a game.

[Telefrog]

In fact, this is the first I've heard of a company charging full price upon beta entry. I've heard of charging full price upon pre-order and upon shipping but for beta entry?

I understand your confusion regarding the beta access, but I'm unclear on this point. You'd be okay with a charge if it was a pre-order and you received nothing for months?

Also, the new intro is even funnier!

http://i45.tinypic.com/24b9cvc.jpg

[Sandman]

I'm only saying I've heard of it.....IE Steam with Civ V.

[MagGnome]

Edit: I have since discovered that the info is elsewhere on the site and the shock of being charged $80 almost 2 months ahead of time has died down a bit. Still, this information that you will be charged upon receiving access to the beta should be on their pre-order page, not just in the beta wiki or hidden in their refund policy....people don't always look at that when ordering a game.

Why is it $80?

[Clark]

That is a very good question. I fear the answer.

[Jackel]

That is a very good question. I fear the answer.

He bought the CE edition.

[MagGnome]

Oh, of course! That makes sense.

[Sandman]

A nice dragon would look good with my Eddie Riggs statue.

[CappinCanuck]

I'm only saying I've heard of it.....IE Steam with Civ V.

You probably missed it somewhere, it's pretty explicit in a lot of spots. Not a big deal though, I think you've realized :). Most games in the last year have been charging at the beta release. You can probably get them to refund it though, stardock's pretty fantastic. If they won't, go on their IRC channel and ask Froggy or another of their higher ups. Or if you see Froggy and tell him Elemental is "suxor" and you want a refund, he'll give it to you.

[Sly Marbo]

I'm terrible at this. Who wants to play?

[c0m3d14n]

so whats the verdict till now? i am on the edge of buying the game ;)

[CappinCanuck]

so whats the verdict till now? i am on the edge of buying the game ;)

Judging by the way it's shaping up, it'll be a must-buy.

It's up to you whether to drop coin early for the beta or not. I'd wait until you see some Stardock deal and jump on it.

[c0m3d14n]

Judging by the way it's shaping up, it'll be a must-buy.

It's up to you whether to drop coin early for the beta or not. I'd wait until you see some Stardock deal and jump on it.

i watched a few videos from beta 2 today and it seems the people playing dont know the mechanics fully since they are not really explained in-game. not surprising for a beta, but that has me leaning toward waiting just a bit more, for the next phase or till it is released. i dont want to get frustrated with the beta and than not play the finished product ;)

[SilentScreams]

Good call. I've played the new beta a few times but I don't really know what I'm doing and it's killing my enthusiasm for the game. I think I'm going to hold off playing until the final release.

[Rune_74]

I love the fact you can mix and match and make your own units with parts as you research....

[jpublic]

Good call. I've played the new beta a few times but I don't really know what I'm doing and it's killing my enthusiasm for the game. I think I'm going to hold off playing until the final release.

I load it up every few months and play a bit. It's fun to see how the game changes.

[Hotcod]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTwiYIrilEw

that's part one of 6 for a 60 minute walk through that i ran in to that i found rather good. Cleared up a lot of stuff for me about how the game works and seems to give you a good idea of the civ play unlike the other videos i've seen.

[CappinCanuck]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTwiYIrilEw

that's part one of 6 for a 60 minute walk through that i ran in to that i found rather good. Cleared up a lot of stuff for me about how the game works and seems to give you a good idea of the civ play unlike the other videos i've seen.

Thx Cod, this should help with the aimless stumbling that my games have been.

[DiBiddilyBop]

So I pre-ordered this a few weeks ago and haven't seen how to get into the beta. I loaded my registration key into the Impulse thing that came up and thought that would automatically do it but no go. Now I can't seem to find the email confirming my pre-order and impulse doesn't seem to show it under my software, so I'm hoping I'm not out of luck until release...

Edit: Found my order date and it looks like it was the 11th... I guess I must have ordered the same day that beta 2 was released so I must have to wait until the next beta cycle... woo...

[jpublic]

DBB: Did you turn on 'show prerelease and betas' in impulse? It's in the options.

[DiBiddilyBop]

I didn't and you're awesome. Downloading now! Thanks, jpublic.

[jpublic]

Make sure you turn off 'cloth map only' in the options when you start the game.

[DiBiddilyBop]

After playing around with it the last day, I definitely see the potential here to be an amazing game. It's definitely still a beta as I experience regular crashes, glitches and most of the tech trees are blocked out (as well as some buildings that should unlock units going up and not unlocking anything), but I see where they're going with this and I think it very potentially could be a worthy successor to MoM.

[Rune_74]

They still have not implemented the battle engine...but the one patch I have installed since the start of beta 2 has made a huge impact already.

[CappinCanuck]

They still have not implemented the battle engine...but the one patch I have installed since the start of beta 2 has made a huge impact already.

Woot, thx for the heads up, updated and ready to roll.

[Telefrog]

Beta 3 starts in a couple of hours.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/386062

[Rune_74]

hmm whats in beta 3??

nvm saw the list...damn was hoping for tactical battles.

[CappinCanuck]

hmm whats in beta 3??

nvm saw the list...damn was hoping for tactical battles.


"Multiplayer was disabled for Beta 3 and will continue to be disabled until Beta 4. Beta 3A will enable tactical battles."

[Rune_74]

"Multiplayer was disabled for Beta 3 and will continue to be disabled until Beta 4. Beta 3A will enable tactical battles."

Yeah, I read that...been having issues with my toshiba qosmio where it goes to a black screen in alot of games(this being one of them) it will work one time then not another and it isn't a heat issue....driving me crazy....

[CappinCanuck]

Yeah, I read that...been having issues with my toshiba qosmio where it goes to a black screen in alot of games(this being one of them) it will work one time then not another and it isn't a heat issue....driving me crazy....

It sounds like a Display driver failure. The problem is always caused by a fault in the driver, but the cause can be almost endless. I'm guessing this because of 1) the black screen, 2) in many games but not all. At the very least you can diagnose this by going into your logs and seeing if the display driver had an error.

[CappinCanuck]

New 3A update is live. Lots of new goodies... looks like the gameplay can finally be a bit more fun rather than a test.

Some noteworthy goodies: minor factions active, activated new animations, new maps, and (better) AI opponents.


---------------------------------------------------
----------------- Beta 3A Change Log -------------
---------------------------------------------------

************
* Gameplay *
+ Implemented new City Level Upgrade dialog
- Pops up when one of the local player's cities grows a level, and offers them to pick an ability bonus to grant their city
- These bonuses are whatever AbilityBonusOptions of type "City_Level" found in the xml files, I added a file CityLevelUpBonuses.xml with 5 ability bonuses that Brad said he wanted as options
+ Implemented new spell learned dialog
- This includes having spell costs set by a tag in their def xml now, having the spell point cap for a player no longer affected by bonuses from techs or buildings or by the sovereign's wisdom (just uses the spell knowledge level now), and adding the ability to research more spell knowledge levels
- I also added an entry for reaching the next spell knowledge level to the spellbook wnd, which double-clicking will either put in the learning queue or remove from the learning queue, depending on if the player is trying to reach it or not
- Added some UI refreshes for learning new spells and moving spells around in the queue, so that it doesn't take a turn for spell research changes to show up in the tray
- Fixed a bug where starting spells given by the faction weren't getting removed from the researchable spells list when the players were initialized, causing them to have all their starting spells listed twice in the spellbook, once under Known and once under Available or Unavailable
+ Monsters respawn over time.
+ Monsters will attack one another if they are of a different species and in their "territory"
+ Monster aggression based on intelligence of monster
+ Monsters of same type will gradually band together into packs
+ Monsters are spawned with a randomized amount of territory that they consider "theirs"
+ Minor Factions are now in
+ Number of Minor factions generated dependent on map size
+ Minor factions get a NON channeling sovereign
+ Minor factions get a guardian unit
+ Minor factions get a recruitment resource nearby
+ Fixed berserk effect to not be infinite
+ Janusk conversations increased
+ Increased number of Imperial conversation types
+ Additional minor faction types implemented
+ New hubs created for certain minor factions
+ Tech tree cleaned up
+ Fixed possible crash in EffectManager.cpp
+ Re-designed the minimum distance calculation such that the game looks at Number of empty landtiles to determine the minimum distance. The more land tiles, the more distance between players.
+ Added a note to the info cards on resources if a given resource just can't be used by that faction.
+ Some clean up to the various improvements
+ Additional NPC units added
+ Lots of new goodie hut, quest, and hubs added
+ Reveal spell effect no longer infite
+ Re-did design of how minor races are spawned. Mostly moved to AI code
+ Re-did how goodie huts are spawned to ensure there is a good amount of them based on number of land tiles
+ Players, by default, spawn with a fertile land tile nearby along with goodie huts nearby
+ Re-designed how resources are spawned so that the number is based on the number of land tiles on the map
+ New world function: GetDistanceInTiles()
+ New world function: FindNearestCityDistance()
+ Used FindNearestCityDistance to determine better spawning locations for things (i.e. away from towns)
+ New world function: GetNumLandTiles() [That's right, we didn't actually have a function that told us how many land tiles we had. We had ones for water, forest, mountains but not land].
+ Fixed it so that goodie huts respect their spawn level when being ...spawend
+ Renamed GetSpawnRatingQuest (and similar functions) to GetWorldSpawnRatingQuest to conform to established naming conventions
+ New CMapdDAta function added FindLandTiles (just counts up number of land tiles and stores it)
+ Eliminated use of ForceTileMargins(which we may regret) as it was resulting in players and AI to spawn in the water.
+ Made necessary changes to unit.cpp to allow monstes to attack one another without wanting to attack all monsters in general
+ New CUnitType function ::GetAllMonsterUniteTypes. Fills a vector with monsters. If a unit does not have a NPCSawnLikelihood that's greater than 0 then it's a monster.
+ Undid the civilized change I had requested (if you choose civilized you get your city again).
+ AI now using relations weights from coreAIDefs.xml to determine how they feel about you. Still have a few of them to hook up, but most are in.
+ Updating of existing map seeds (removing "Brad" maps)
+ Commented out "IsMobileObject" in BasicGameObject.cpp. I don't think this works as designed.
+ Level 2 Goodie Huts added
+ Level 3 Goodie Huts added
+ Level 4 Goodie Huts added
+ Several new potions added
+ Clean up of monster goodie huts which were being used often as regular goodie huts.
+ Major cleanup and balancing of monsters
+ New secret spell books added
+ Secret spells to go with secret spell books added (quest items)
+ Starting funds increased to 1000
+ Re-balancing of city levels
+ Several new maps added
+ Several new quests
+ Eliminated randomization of spawn ratings of quests as one goes up. I.e. if a player reaches level 4 quests, level 4 quests are going to be spawned, not rand()%4.
+ Warning system to players added to the Trigger manager
+ Fixed the trigger system to work with our finalized design
+ Added Cloth Armor Helmet, Breastpiece, Armlets, and Greaves
+ Replaced/Removed Stone Walls, Platoon, Batallion, Regiment, Melee Weaponry, Longswords, Battle Hammers, War Hammers, Katanas, Claymores, Master Cutting Weapons, Greatswords, Refined Melee Weaponry, Missile Weaponry, Longbows, Archiving, Higher Education, Caravans, Administration, Taxation, Orchards, Beekeeping, Crystal Mining, Forges, Construction, Quarries, Earth Shard Understanding, Fire Shard Understanding, Air Shard Understanding, Water Shard Understanding, Metal Trading, Crystal Trading, Economic Treaties, Research Treaties, Non-Aggression Pacts, Technology Trading, Military Trading, Dynasty Building, Master Cutting Weapons, Archers, Guardians, Monuments, Greater Lore Technologies for the Kingdom and Empire
+ Created Barracks, Cutting Weapons, Superior Cutting Weapons, Blunt Weapons, Superior Blunt Weapons, Ranged Weapons, Literacy, Shard Domination, Refined Enchantment, Summoning, Book of Restoration, Resource Trading, Treaties, Kingdom Swords, Empire Swords, Ranged Weapons, Archery, Specialists, Refined Majesty, Sorcerers, Lore Masters, Refined Enchantment, Summoning Technologies for the Kingdom and Empire
+ Frigate now unlocked with Navies technology
+ Caravans now unlocked through Civics and Bartering technologies
+ added code to hook up AI relations weights for YouKilledMySpouse, MyChildDiedInYourCare, MutualFamily, and MutualGrandChildren
+ You can now use the bow attack on main map to fire at NPCs (before NPCs were not allowed to be targets)
+ Raze city action now unlocked by the fortification technologies in the kingdom/empire trees
+ Refreshed some of the quest destinations to make them stand out more
+ Fixed issue where Peons were showing up for Kingdom, and Peasants showing up for Fallen
+ Embassy now unlocked through Influencing Technology
+ New Tactical Icons hooked up to Claimed Ogre Camp


*******************
* AI Improvements *
+ AI smarter about where to build new cities
+ AI economic handling improved
+ AI handling of pioneers improved
+ AI much better at expanding
+ Advisors will inform you when better notable locations have become available
+ Monster AI now able to handle spawning of groups of monsters (like a TON of Darklings) rather than individuals only.
+ Fixed idiotic AI bugs.
+ If you have champions, they will begin warning you of world events they know of
+ implemented AI Relations Weight, Treaties Together.


*************
* Bug Fixes *
+ Fixed bug where factions created during the game (like when creating a new faction) wouldn't have the default player abilities values, causing specifically new factions to not have a 0 mana regen ability.
Starting a new game using one of these custom factions would still work, just the first game they were played with would not set the defaults.
+ SetCityConstructionImprovement: does not create decal for improvement being placed
+ Fixed a crash caused by dereferencing null in CWorld::SavePlayer( ) in World_SavingLoading.cpp. It saves all 32 players (whether they are initialized or not), and on uninitialized players, the faction config is NULL, and the function was accessing members without checking to see if it was valid.
+ Fixed a bug in CTerrainGraphic that was causing the fog of war to break on the terrain (it was setting a null texture, rather than the current active fog of war map texture).
+ Fixed problem that was preventing the rotations of world props placed in the map editor from properly being applied to the tile designs when the map is loaded.
+ Fixed bug where new empire factions got no techs, they were setting an invalid tech tree as their tech tree
+ Regarding the bug that causes units to not regenerate their mana, the only time I saw this happen was when creating a new custom faction and immediately continuing on to a game playing as that faction, caused by their mana regen ability not getting set to the default in the player ability xml. I fixed this on Thursday night right after the build, and haven't seen it happen since, so I'm pretty sure that was the cause of any inability to regen mana the forum users are talking about. However, if anyone sees this happen again, let me (us) know.
+ From http://forums.elementalgame.com/386332, straightened out the behavior of showing and performing unit actions in an army more to prevent the weird behavior people were seeing when building towns with pioneers in an army
- Now, when you select an army, it shows all of the actions that are available to any subunit in that army, and when you choose to perform one of those actions, it finds the first unit in the army capable of individually doing so and has them perform the action. If any single subunit is selected, only the actions they can individually perform are shown and they are the unit that performs the action when asked to.
+ If a pioneer builds a city from within an army, the surviving units move off of the new city tile like sovereigns used to do when founding a city
+ When an army has SetPositionTile called on it, it now calls SetPositionTile on all its subunits, too. This fixes several bugs, such as being able to build a city with an army with a pioneer in it selected but not being able to when selecting the pioneer subunit individually (because it thought it was at an old tile), and having spells like Mass Heal that affect all units at a tile actually affect all the subunits of an army that has moved since it was formed
+ Fixed bug where moveable units list was being used outside of a critical section and caused a crash
+ Fixed bug when casting spells where it would try to attach particles even if spell did not have a projectile particle effect
+ Fixed bug when casting spells where it would try to detach particles even if spell did not have a projectile particle effect
+ Fixed bug where attach effect annotation would sometimes be executed after processing an "OnHit" annotation
+ Fixed MEMORY LEAK: There was a case where animation controllers were not getting cleaned up in some animation queue entries
+ Fixed bug where death flyback would cause the unit to fly back in the wrong direction if it was part of a grou
+ Buildable tiles were not getting properly regenerated after save/load, leading to tiles not being buildable when they should be.
+ Fixed crash on exit from not checking for g_pSectorMapper being NULL
+ CRASH FIX: fixed a NULL pointer crash
+ Fixed blending issues with various animations
+ Fixed ranged attack and cast spell animations so they animate the correct character in a group
+ Fixed bug where switching a unit from one mount to another in a unit scene view window wouldn't refresh the graphics to show the new mount until something else was refreshed
+ Fixed bug in create sovereign screen where switching the gender of the unit type wouldn't set the eyes back to their default, causing men to have female eyes and vice versa until new eyes were picked
+ Fixed a bug that was causing CQuestManager::SpawnQuestLocations( ) to spawn locations at a level higher than the current world quest spawn rating.


******
* UI *
+ Cleaned up the info cards to display the same stats as the details sub-window
+ Made the "cannot cast tactical spells" message only show up in the popup spellbook
+ changed relations sub wnd to display how other races feel about you, not how you feel towards them.
+ The "Improvement" page of the Hiergamenon now shows what tech's are required
+ Allows for clicking on entries in the hiergamenon to launch a new hiergamenon page
+ Event List: Animated effect to draw the eye when a new entry is added
+ Pruned Tech and City spam in the event list
+ Fixed Events in the Event list to fade away quicker (2 turns, not the old default of 6)
+ Got rid of the details action in both the city and unit actions lists
+ In unit item context, single-clicking now equips/unequips and item, instead of double-clicking
+ Fixed Arcane Weaponry and Drain Life spells not using enchantment slots
+ Clicking on "Go to Spellbook" in the new spell level up popup now brings up the spellbook popup instead of the kingdom wnd in spellbook mode
+ When the city level up dialog pops up, the camera moves to the city that is leveling up
+ Fixed typo in arcane lab xml that gave it an invalid tech prereq, so that it was never unlocked
+ Made it so the "Treaties" subject on the diplomacy wnd is available right from the start, by setting the non-agression (safe passage) treaty to have no tech prereqs. this also inadvertently led me to discover that the treaty was actually requiring techs that no longer existed, so you'd never be able to access it.


**********
* Engine *
+ Faction XML now supports field
+ Added entries for every race (all default to CityWalls_Fence)
+ Changed "Throttle Frame Rate" option to "Limit Frame Rate"
- This option allows you to set a frame rate limit and the desired number of frames are spread across the 1 sec time frame
- This allows us to scale down how many frames we render to keep graphic cards from overheating
- The default limit is 150 fps
- The option will still sleep during the frame to throttle the frame rate like before
+ Added support for city modifier "SummonRandomGuardian", creates a random creature unit of spawn rating equal to the value of the modifier and stations them in the city, saves the selected unit type as the (which can be used as an override if desired) so that in multiplayer, only the server chooses the unit type and the clients just use the override unit type
+ Added support for "TargetCity" value calculator owner when applying city modifiers
- Because I didn't want to have to make cities inherit from non ref counted IPropertyBucket in order to be used in the value calculator owners, I added support to CElementalGameModifierInstance to just have individual variables for a given value owner set, by keeping a list of custom property buckets that the code can fill with whatever variable value replacements it wants
+ If a player tries to access a quest location with a spawn rating higher than their current quest spawn rating ability, then a message will pop-up saying they are not ready to undertake that quest. The default message can be overridden on a per-quest basis by adding a string with the desired text to the QuestDef XML with the “ReqsNotMetText” tag. As an example, this string has been defined in the Quest_EscoreNobleman1 XML (although, as the spawn rating for the quest is 1, it the player will always be able to accept it).
+ Quests now use the player’s personal quest spawn rating ability, rather than the global spawn rating, to see if they’re able to accept a quest.
+ Set the default values for the NPC, goodie hut and quest ability ratings to 1, so the player can access the lowest-level quests from the start of the game.
+ Fixed an issue that was causing the wrong quests to be placed on the map (it was always choosing a random quest, rather than only when a random quest was specified).
+ If a quest has a preferred quest location defined, but it cannot be found, the game will now randomly select a different quest location.
+ Units no longer need to keep track of what character is ranged unit using an index because this is done in the characer gfx data table now
+ When units are added to an army, the army is set to idle animation status
- This fixes bug where units would play an attack animation again if they hadn't reset their animation status when the unit was added
+ New Animation handling system
- Mounted units now play a better death animation and actually fall off of their mount
- Mounted units can now animate ranged attacks
- Mounted units can now play cast spell animations
- Mixed unit armies now display at least one ranged attack unit if one is present in the army
- When using a ranged attack, only the ranged unit characters will animate firing
- This allows groups of ranged units to attack all at once, or if there are more than one in a group, to fire together
- Mounted units and on foot units animate properly when mixed together in a group
- Mounted units now use a constant for their attachment point rather than a hard-coded string
- Added new bow attack animation file from Auri
- Death Flyback Animation is now hooked up so that all characters will animate flying backward if needed
- Fixed bug where flyback animation would be herky-jerky sometimes
- Fixed bug where mountee units would not detach from the mounted unit unless the combat ranking difference was high enough
- Mounted units always do death flyback animation now
- New CUnit::GetCharacterFromMultiCharacterGraphic function returns the specified character graphic or its mountee (if its a mounted unit)
+ Tile Design Pedestrians now support custom textures
+ When you recruit an NPC unit, it plays the greeting animation so he/she bows and waves
+ City HUD hovers higher now
+ Fixed bug where if city HUD was disabled, and new city was built, the city HUD would appear

[DiBiddilyBop]

I'm getting really excited for this. It seems like exactly my kind of game.

[Island Dog]

Beta 3B should be a goodie. :)

First off, there are the major features being enabled in the public beta:

Tactical Battles
Master Quests
Near Final technology tree
Near final city improvement list
Tons of game play tweaks
Lots of bug fixes

[CappinCanuck]

Beta 3B should be a goodie. :)

Woot, thx for the update ID. Any word on when that might be coming?

[Island Dog]

Should be soon, but don't have a definite time.

[CappinCanuck]

Should be soon, but don't have a definite time.

Poopycock. Oh well, I check for updates daily so it's not like I'll be missing it :)

[DiBiddilyBop]

3B is out and tactical battles are in!

Here’s what’s new:

---------------------------------------------------
----------------- Beta 3B Change Log -------------
---------------------------------------------------
********************
* Tactical Battles *
Overview: Can now enter tactical battles if the unit threshold is within a certain number (defaults to 4). Battles are turn based, you can cast spells, traverse the battlefield, or even run away if you just don’t feel like fighting that turn.
+ Halved the texture tile rate in tactical battles to make the texture repeating less obvious.
+ Implemented the final bit of functionality for the tactical combat system: terrain prop-based bonuses and penalties.
+ Cleaned up some more malformed XML in CoreSpells.xml
+ All damage combat text in tactical battles rounds up to the nearest integer.
+ Turns don’t automatically progress in tactical battles if an animation is still playing on one of the participants.
+ Fixed an issue where selecting units on the tactical map via the unit cards would cause the highlight graphic to malfunction.
+ Fixed an issue with spell targeting in tactical battles that was disallowing spells with a radius from hitting targets that weren’t at the center of the burst.
+ Tactical battles no longer end until all units are done animating.
+ When detaching cast spell effects from tactical units, it looks for tactical units to target rather than regular units
+ The next allied unit with moves left is selected when the selected unit runs out of moves in tactical battles.
+ Units play their battle idle instead of their regular idle in tactical battles.
+ Attack animations now scale by combat speed in quick and tactical battles.
+ The Battle Resolution window now appears if after battles in cloth map mode.
+ Added a new tag to SpellDefEffect called PlayOnAllTargets. This will play the spell effect on all targets hit by the spell (for spells with a radius).
+ Fixed the unit cards in tactical battles so they now grow vertically instead of horizontally.
+ Removed a duplicate effect from the chain lightning spell, flagged the spell to cast on all targets.
+ Made sure spell defs could read in the flag for casting on all targets.
+ Added a process to handle applying tactical spell modifiers, as well as firing off spell effects and sound effects for spells.
+ Slight fixes to the ApplyModifiersAtTile logic to return a more accurate list of affected tiles.
+ Changed several constructors for CSpellTarget to be sure to initialize all values.
+ Morale is now initialized to BASE_MORALE instead of 0 to stop the first turn of tactical battles from showing all units as panicking.
+ Tactical spell modifiers will now be applied at the attach annotation for non-projectiles, and at the detach notation (and after the projectile process has ended) for projectile spells.
+ Fixed a validation error which allowed units to move outside of their range in tactical battles.
+ Added color defines (at the top of TacticalUnit.h) for all combat text colors.
+ Added differentiation to combat text for spell damage, spell healing, ranged damage, and spell effects (positive and negative).
+ Tile highlight should now update properly once a spell is done casting.
+ Units will now play an OnHit animation when hit with spells in tactical battles.
+ Added an IsCastingSpell bit of logic to tactical units to help see if any unit is currently casting a spell in a tactical battle.
+ Fixed some odd cases when a highlight would be drawn while a unit was casting a spell in tactical battles.
+ Fixed some odd cases when a highlight would not redraw after casting a spell in tactical battles.
+ Fixed a bug where old units were still "selected" at the start of tactical battles.
+ Fixed a bug where not all units were properly added to the battle results window after a tactical battle.
+ Disabled LOD levels in the tactical screen
+ The grid is now always on in tactical battles.
+ Stopped tactical units from calling their idle animation if their currently being hit.
+ Cleaned up logic in OnModifierBegin and OnModifierEnd to make things more deterministic.
+ Fixed an issue where the unit cards in tactical battles could resize beyond the current display height.
+ Fixed the camera bounds during tactical battles to be more accurate to the sector width/height.
+ Added support for TacticalUnit modifiers, for spells that need to effect the tactical unit and not its parent unit. Stuff like knockbacks, stuns, morale stuff, etc.
+ Refactored the logic to add to the tactical battle report, now requires a call by the tactical unit (or someone who "knows" the tactical unit) when something changes in that units local report.
+ Added a timeout test process to use with spells casting application for instances when it appears modifiers are never being applied. Not currently used, as it might cause weird behavior when not used for testing.
+ Added code to apply spells modifiers when a spell annotation never gets properly attached.
+ Units in a tactical battle should no longer be able to move onto invalid tiles (mountains, water, blocked tiles, etc).
+ Added a function to world to check if a tile was invalid, currently only has logic for tactical battles.
+ When tactical units are destroyed they now set their sector mappers to be NULL.
+ The check to see if units are animating or moving in tactical battles now takes spell effects into account.
************
* Gameplay *
+ Arcane Lab should now be buildable from start of game (ie. don't need a tech for it)
+ Changed cities to allow building diagonally to existing improvements.
+ Resourceful talent changed to provide 10 metal, 10 materials
+ More monsters will be present in the wild
+ Settlements no longer require a special building to train units
+ Pioneer Kits add 5 turns to the training of units that have them.
+ Replaced "Spell Points" with "Arcane Knowledge" in game
+ Removed a number of improvements, added to "Extra Improvements" for future use.
+ Major overhaul of the improvements both in terms of balance and what they do
+ Resources now only provide bonuses to the entire faction (i.e. Quarries improve overall production)
+ Resources no longer have to be connected to a settlement
+ Pioneer improvements (improvements outside of a city) now update which player they belong to at the end of each turn, as well as link to a city if one is close enough
+ If a pioneer improvement moves from being in the ZOC of one player to another's, they move to that player's list of pioneer improvements instead
+ If a pioneer improvement isn't in anyone's ZOC, it gets destroyed
+ Also finds the closest city belonging to the player whose ZOC they are in, and links to them (gets affected by their multipliers) if it is within the min distance that must be between cities
+ Starting essence for a new sovereign = wisdom
+ Can associate a city with a pioneer improvement (improvement built outside of a city), and when querying that pioneer improvement's resource production, it will take the harvest multiplier from the associated city and apply it to its regular harvest
+ Nothing is associating cities with pioneer improvements yet, though, this is just an intermediate check-in
+ Added the ability to build improvements by clicking on a resource hoard within your territory.
+ Minor races get their special monster friends again
+ Added Ancient Temple to Core Resources
+ General overhaul of improvements and resources. Resources provide (duh) resources. Improvements provide (duh) improvements to those resource rather than vice versa.
+ Created tiles for lost library and ancient temple
+ General tweaking of seeding of the world with resources.
+ Now only champions and sovereigns can access quest locations and goodie huts; if a non-champion unit attempts to access one, a message box will pop-up explaining this.
+ Dragons added to quests
+ Tactical battle maps smaller
+ Cleaned up quest locations
+ Cleaned up starting resources
+ Level 4 Quest added
+ intelligent creatures now have names
+ Made sure that all players start out with a quest location relatively near their starting position
+ World size defaults to small, not tiny
+ Decreased the chance of having a kid each turn to 1 in 250
+ Caravans can now set up trade routes with foreign cities that they aren't at war with
+ Removed food bonus from city bonus xml, so that it isn't offered as a level bonus anymore
+ Sovereign more aggressive at goodie hut finding
+ AI now makes use of external resources
+ Bandits: Brigands and other thugs are now spawned into the world (this will eventually be event driven so that different games have different environmental bad guys)
+ Bandits: Interacts with player
+ Bandits: Will target for destruction undefended cities eventually.
+ The technology breakthru window doesn't default to continuing down the same path anymore
+ First attempt to get the events to play tones in
+ Made changs to CanOwnCity() such that Monsters can destroy cities
+ Treasures can now have their own distinct sounds when found
+ Rewrote ::FindRandomGoodieHutTypeByTerrain() to have it take into account how rare the goodie hut is and make sure it is following the world spawn rating rules.
+ Hooked up Influence Ability. Every 100 points of Influence will increase the max radius of a player's zone of control by a full tile. By very careful with this.
+ MessageBoxWnd no longer hard coded to that treasure found sound.
+ Message Window can now play sounds when brought up.
+ Lots of changews to MobileObject.cpp to allow monsters to be monsters. BETA TESTERS: Be on the look out for stuck turns.
+ CPlayer::SetABility() added (seriously, we didn't have this)!
+ Beginnings of the AI designing units for the human player put in.
- AI will try to design a unit every time they go up a level on the warfare/combat tree. If it is better than any existing unit the player can build, it will add it to their list. In theory.
+ By default, spawn ratings on quests are now -1
+ Fixed bug where quests were hard coded to 1.
+ Events should be playing sounds
+ If a monster manages to "conquer" a city it will destroy it (they're monsters afterall)
+ Changed the way Goodie Hut spawns work such that the higher level goodie huts will mainly spawn around the player who triggered the spawn rather than spamming it randomly around the map. In addition, players who do go up a goodie hut level will still be able to get some goodie huts placed near them.
+ First balance attempt to try to make the monster upgrading not go up so fast
+ Updated CWorld:laceRandomGoodieHuts() so that we can now optionally specify a player we want them to be spawned near
+ Tactical Maps for all terrain types created (13 new maps)
+ Fixed Core Accessories to work with new tech trees
+ Sound effects added to many treasures found in goodie huts
+ Lots of new items added (sick of healing nectar)
+ Sand Golem nerfed
+ Wild Game now extremely rare (will have to have it spawn only near hunters in the future)
+ Gave bandidts and other humanoid monsters intelligence of 10.
+ Started crated "gang" monster groups
+ Players now start out knowing certain spells. In addition, each spell book now has some spells that a caster knows by having that spell book.
+ Veteran troops can now be trained by Amarians
+ The default Pioneer is now unarmed (and cheaper)
+ Brought some of the Imperial improvement costs in line with the Kingdom equivalents
+ TONS of new Quest items to get
+ Started adding template quests that are easily modded to create other quests
+ Lots of new quest destinations
+ THE MASTER QUEST IS IN!
+ Dave Stern's writing in the Master Quest
+ NEW TECHNOLOGY TREE: TechTree_Amarian
+ All Kingdom factions temporarily are using the Amarian Tech Tree
+ Tech Trees for Kraxis and Trogs started (but not used)
+ Settlement tile limits removed. No more artificial limits.
+ Fixed Ancient Temple (for Kingdom and Empire)
+ Fixed Old Growth Forest (for Kingdom)
+ Various tweaks to monster goodie huts
*******************
* AI Improvements *
+ AI designs better weapons and armor based units
+ AI now differentiates equipment based on what part of the body it is worn
+ AI smarter about starting new cities
+ Intelligent creatures, monsters, thugs, etc. will occasionally interact with the player
+ AI's now explicitly can support turn 0 so that they can get their strategy started
+ Fixed some memory leaks in the AI MoveUnit area
+ AI designs better units
+ AI Difficulty levels hooked up
******
* UI *
+ Buttons for popping units out of cities that now work much better.
+ Fixed bug where city HUD graphics were not rendering properly after loading a saved game
+ Players always will be brought back to main research screen after a breakthru
+ Fixed bug where razing a city wouldn't remove it from the local player's empire tree
+ Fixed bug where razing a capital city wouldn't recalculate a new capital for the player
+ Adapted CAIMessageWnd to be able to display generic messages like CMessageBoxWnd. This can be called using the UnhideAIMessageGenericWnd( ) function, which takes only the title, text and image to be displayed in the message.
+ When you get a pop-up message saying that you cannot yet access a quest or goodie hut due to your quest/goodie hut level being too low, it now tells you what your current level is, the required level, and what branch of research you need to focus on to increase your level (Adventure for Kingdom factions, Domination for Empire factions). It also uses the generic version of CAIMessageWnd to display the message, as it was getting a bit lengthy for CMessageBoxWnd.
+ Updated the Notable Location and Quest Location info cards to display their level and yours
+ Added the ability to launch the hiergamenon page for an object by holding shift and left clicking on the item
+ Updated/created some hiergamenon entry pages
+ Fixed a crash in the empire tree when an AI player got one of the local player's city (though conquest or a cheat)
+ Fixed typo in the map list that caused a chance of a map to be generated completely randomly without a seed
+ Removed likelihood data on tech screens if it was 100%
+ Added new data to the Unit page in the hiergamenon
+ Changed "Quest Inaccessible" to "Quest Unavailable"
+ Changed "Notable Location Inaccessible" to "Notable Location Unavailable"
+ TWEAK: when a unit is selected, now displaying moves tooltip as cur/max instead of just cur.
+ Tooltips on resource hoards now tell you why you can or cannot build on them and how many resources it costs if you do.
+ No "Station unit" dialog comes up when hitting a foreign city you aren't at war with, just blocks your units now
+ Found kingdom dialog includes info about using pioneers to build more cities, don't have a bigger dialog with yes/no hooked up, yet
+ Eliminated the spell tab from the unit context wnd, trigger to hide/unhide this tab now just hides/unhides the spellbook shortcut in the unit actions list
+ New buttons on the Main Game Window to help launch the hiergamenon and equipment pages
+ Revamped the equipment page to eliminate tabs and unnecessary text (hiergamenon is better for that info)
+ Some hiergamenon changes for the unit page
+ Notable locations and Quest locations now display their battle rank in their context area
+ New improvement text in the hiergamenon
+ Minor cleanup to some list entry types
*************
* Bug Fixes *
+ Fixed an issue with flavor text saving that would occur if you saved the game before any flavor text was used (there would be unsorted conversation flavor text, which wouldn’t get saved). Now all unsorted flavor text is sorted before saving.
+ Fixed a problem with loading tile trigger data from a saved game in CTriggerManager, which was causing each subsequent tile to receive the trigger data from all previous tiles.
+ Fixed bug where if unit casts spell or attacks a unit, and you zoom out to cloth map, then back in, unit would get stuck playing an animation
+ Fixed UpdateMWinNode crash
+ Fixed the function used by caravans to set up their trade route to use the same astar stuff as mobile game objects use; they were using slightly different flags, and as a result failing their pathfinding more often than they should have been
+ Added new animation for casting spells (new export fixes missing annotations)
+ Fixed a problem with CQuestLocation not saving the name of the quest assigned to it when the game is saved. After loading a saved game and attempting to access a quest location, this was causing CQuestManager to go through every available quest location quest in an attempt to find one the player could accept. If it randomly hit on one with a spawn rating above the player’s quest level, it would pop up the “Quest Unavailable” message. If it happened to hit more than one of these quests, it would pop up the message once for each one.
+ Added some sanity checks to the UpdateFOWTexture( ) method in CFogOfWarMap in an attempt to alleviate possible crashes.
+ Fixed "Ruined House" tile design not showing up on map
+ BUG FIX: after building a city, it was giving you 1 back to moves, instead of 1*MOVE_SCALE, to convert it to movement points. This fixes the issue where you'd see your moves as 1.1 instead of 2, for example, when starting the game as procipinee, who builds a city upon game start as her ability.
+ Fixed a bug where city improvements could be built over global improvements of the same type.
+ Fixed bug where one of the ambient tracts wasn't playing (BarrenForest)
+ running sfx fixed (UnitAnimationhelper now has a play3dsound wrapper)
+ Fixed hang when a summoned unit died, and its caster already had some other spell effects on them
+ fixed upgraded units not clearing their starting unit status, causing them to not be available for designing or training after being saved
+ fixed being unable to build any different unit grouping types than individual in the train unit screen as an empire faction
+ Fixed a crash when equipping any new forearm equipment on either Kul-Al-Kulan or Warlord Verga
+ Fixed unit grouping types and unit quality types that didn't have updated prerequisites to point to the new Amarian tech tree instead of the kingdom tech tree, caused all of the kingdom factions to not be able to train different grouping or quality types
+ Fixed bug where armies couldn't get on a ship all a once
+ added some missing animations for mounted units, so that horses don't T-pose in the level up wnd and conversation wnds, and wargs don't T-pose in the conversation wnds
+ Cleaned up some found kingdom/build town stuff
+ Fixed bug where using a pioneer leading an army to found a city would cause the left over units to not all move off the city, not form an army, and be invisible
- This should also fix any other cases where the leader of an army is destroyed on the main map with surviving subunits left behind
+ If the unit moves off of the tile they are building a town on before it is completed, the town is still built where they first asked it to be, and they won't have to move off the tile
+ Fixed potential problems I saw with the pioneer build town stuff working in multiplayer
+ Removed building prereqs from Granary, so that one can be built in a city just linking to a pioneer improvement producing food and it can still provide a bonus
+ Fixed bug where diplomacy didn't work at all with minor factions, since they had no diplomacy logic and so just said no to everything
+ Fixed bug where pioneer improvements not linked to a city weren't getting faction-wide resource production bonuses
+ ModifyGfx isn't called on each subunit of an army when the army moves anymore, fixes some bugs when trying to remove them from an army later caused by them already having tried to fade in, and doesn't waste time on it anymore
**********
* Engine *
+ added some code to easily get at the coreAIDefs.xml information for designing units
+ Increased the number of generated starting points from 10 to 32, which should help with starting location issues when a large number of players (including minor factions) are on the map at once.
+ Made some changes to the creature spawning code in CMapData and CTriggerManager that may have caused creatures with undefined spawn ratings (such as dragons) to show up on the map.
+ Changed to use a task so that the mwin data does not change between the time it is set and the time it is rendered
+ When recruiting NPCs they return to Idle animation rather than battle idle
+ Added list of additional unit IDs to CEventData_LeaveArmySetDestination, used when removing multiple units at once from an army to remove them all at once, put them in an army, and send them on their way instead of using separate events for each, and not putting them in the same army unless they were moving to an adjacent tile
+ Disallowed going into attack mode with a selected subunit of an army, can only tell an entire army to go into attack mode now. This is per skype conversations about weird behavior of subunits leaving armies when being told to attack separately from their army
+ Fixed a bug where every tile design created and loaded in the tile design editor would get its particle effects duplicated on each load (which would then be reflected in the next save of that tile design), caused by two xml loading threads loading the same tile design directories
+ Added "H" as a hot key in the tile editor to toggle the selected object between fitting to the terrain or not
+ Made the particle entries in the tile editor use entries with text in them, so that they don't require reading the tooltip to see what they are
+ Fixed bug where particle effects wouldn't get cleared from the tile design when it was asked to clear itself
+ Fixed graphical artifacts showing up in non-advanced lighting mode
+ Changed the “City” terrain type’s min and max height to 50, so there will be no height variation between city tiles.
+ When a new city hub or improvement is placed on the map, and the terrain type of the tile it’s in is changed to “City”, the tile vertex heights are now recalculated. With the min and max height for City terrain set to the same value, this causes cities to flatten the terrain under them. Whenever a new tile is set to “City” by placing an improvement, it causes the improvement graphics for the entire city to update, to ensure that the tile designs and decals are using the correct heights.
+ When a tile with a world prop is updated (as happens when the tile vertex heights change), the world prop’s graphics are now recreated, so that the tile design heights stay lined up with the terrain.
+ Added support for map modifiers with a finite duration, to support the Wall of Fire spell (and possibly other spells)
- To make a map modifier have a set duration, give it a non-zero duration tag, and it will expire after that many turns
+ Can now specify the display name for goodie huts created using the CreateGoodieHut game modifier; simply set the desired display name inside the “StrVal” tags, and it will replace the default display name for the goodie hut.
+ Units only set their animation to idle when cancelling destination only if they were previously walking or running
+ Cleaned up more code in UnitAnimationHelper library
+ Modified CEncounterDef so that it can be flagged to force a tactical battle to start when the encounter is activated as part
of a quest. This flag can be set in XML using the “ForceTacticalBattle” tag, and setting it to 1 (the value defaults to 0, which does not force a tactical battle). When true and the encounter is activated, it immediately enters into a tactical battle. Additionally, the tactical battle map that gets used may be specified using the “TacticalBattleMap” tag. If no map is specified, it will select one based on the world location of the attacking and defending units. If one is specified, it will use that map instead.
+ Added an overloaded version of UITacticalBattle( ) that takes in the name of a map in addition to the attacking and defending units, which will be loaded instead of randomly selecting one based on the tile positions of the attacker and defender.
+ Added a new method to CWorld, GenerateTacticalMap( ), which takes in the name of the map you want to load, and generates a tactical battle from it.
+ Disabled move within tile on main map and tactical map
+ New music and sfx (evil music, item shop music, etc)
+ Cutscene window now supports Music Cues: plays on for marrage and 'slain hero' events
+ The Conversation Popup wnd will play the speaking factions theme if they are a Major faction
+ <NotInSetupLists> now supported by unittypes and factionconfigs for ones we want to keep hidden in the setup windows
+ Changed the default value for ForceTacticalBattle in CEncounterDef to 1, so that forcing tactical battles is the default, and must be explicitly disabled.
+ UNIT SCALING TWEAKS
- Disabled Scale on Zoom in Tactical Battles
- Commented out the "scale bound box to tile" code
- Added <MaxScaleMainMap> and <MaxScaleTacticalMap> fields to <UnitType> XML data
- This clips the scale of the unit to the specified max scale
- Allows artists to choose the max scale of certain units

[MagGnome]

tl;dr :p

.......

[DiBiddilyBop]

This is exactly like old school Master of Magic. Right when things get exciting and I'm starting to have fun, it crashes and I can't recover my last save.

I'd say we're off to a great start. In all seriousness, if they clear up crashing and lockups for the release, this is going to be an amazing game.

[Hotcod]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6e0y-jaQfM

ooooo i like the changes with the resources greatly. It was the only real issue I had with the game that you had to expand your city out to resources and that you could just spam cites to provide some of them.

[CappinCanuck]

This is exactly like old school Master of Magic. Right when things get exciting and I'm starting to have fun, it crashes and I can't recover my last save.

I'd say we're off to a great start. In all seriousness, if they clear up crashing and lockups for the release, this is going to be an amazing game.

Oh they will. They fix crashes regularly and it's all good until the next patch that introduces new features. Then there's crashing and they fix em again. It's a process and we're in it :)

Should be able to fully enjoy the new features in 3C... unless they introduce more things. Heh.

[Rune_74]

Like the new update...game is getting quite good...and very deep.


Fixed my crashes too...by using rivatuner to force 3d performance can you believe it? no more black screens.

[DiBiddilyBop]

Yup, newest release fixed my crashing problems. I can't wait for the final release.

[CappinCanuck]

Like the new update...game is getting quite good...and very deep.


Fixed my crashes too...by using rivatuner to force 3d performance can you believe it? no more black screens.

Rivatuner is a godsend for fan control and general tweaks to offset driver problems. I dunno what I would do without it.

[Rune_74]

Rivatuner is a godsend for fan control and general tweaks to offset driver problems. I dunno what I would do without it.

fixed what toshiba could not.

[CappinCanuck]

fixed what toshiba could not.

On another note, I had my first romp with the game since 3A. Wow it's expanded a lot in two versions. It's shaping up to be exactly what I was hoping for: a MoM successor.

Edit: For anyone else who's been waiting for a better state of the game to jump into betaing... now's the time. It barely resembles Beta2 or 3a.

[Rune_74]

New beta out: 4. Includes editor for maps and tiles....pretty cool.

[DiBiddilyBop]

I want to go back and play this to see what the new beta has brought but... SC2...

[SilentScreams]

Just played for the first time since Beta 2 and what a difference a couple of months makes! The game is fun now. :)

It ended with a random crash as per usual, but until then I was actually having fun, even if I started in a location with very limited food .

[Island Dog]

There are several videos on GameTrailers of Elemental gameplay I think you might enjoy. :)

http://www.gametrailers.com/game/elemental-war-of-magic/12076

[SilentScreams]

I'm having fun with beta 4 for however long it works. I've only managed a couple of hours without a crash though, and most games don't make it past the half hour mark. Still very much a beta, but there's a fun game in there too.

[jpublic]

I still have no clue what the heck I'm doing. I started my first city, and expand it out, but at what point do I look at a second city? How close is too close to build?

[Clark]

Man. I got an email about this game coming on the 24th. I've been very fired up for it, but the trailer included in the email.....yikes. Very unimpressed. I may actually have to hold off and hear what people think now.

[Rune_74]

It was quite interesting in beta 4...check out this thread for some info on the campaign.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/390719

[SilentScreams]

Beta 4 minus the constant crashes is a game I could happily play for a long time. I have faith that the finished product will be well worth the price.

[jpublic]

Beta 4 is awesome, but they need some big-time tutorials in-game. Maybe some automatic advisors like Civ does. Or, they could do like GalCiv with the campaign and keep things simple for the first parts.

[Stoke]

Bleh, I'm as ambivalent about the game now as I was excited 3 months ago. I tried to cancel my preorder a week or so ago but they wouldn't let me. There are just too many games and too little time for me to generate a lot of interest in Elemental.

[MagGnome]

I'm still very interested in this game. I won't be buying it at launch anymore as I simply have too many things going on during that time, but I will hopefully be picking it up before the end of the year. This and Civ V are my two biggies of the fall/winter.

[SilentScreams]

I pre-ordered a few months ago. Got the Impulse version plus a boxed copy. Turn based strategy is my favourite genre, and the beta convinced me that this game will be awesome, so I'll make time for it. All my other games can step aside for a few months. :)

[Rune_74]

Have an update that beta testers may get the game early to mid next week

http://forums.elementalgame.com/390764/#2713391

Look at this pic, quite nice I say.

http://www.draginol.com/images2009/BigFatPicturesandDay0reporting_12559/20100814_2025.png

[MagGnome]

This game is just plain gorgeous.

[MagGnome]

The trailer that Stardock e-mailed me was terrible. Did anyone else watch it? I was bored to tears.

Edit - Somehow I missed Clark's post. Apparently I'm not alone in my feelings for that trailer.

[SilentScreams]

I haven't watched it, but a trailer for a turn based strategy game is never going to be thrilling. Go and watch some Civ trailers sometime. :D

All I know is that playing the game is fun.

[MagGnome]

Age of Wonders had some pretty interesting trailers:

9Eh8sdfhUxY

:p

[Rune_74]

Come on Gnome...that had no gameplay at all.

[DiBiddilyBop]

I played for a few hours today and have to say I'm really excited at the possibility of playing the retail version this week.

[MagGnome]

Come on Gnome...that had no gameplay at all.

Yes, and the Elemental trailer was brimming with gameplay. :p

Here then, this is a better comparison:

63fKU1MfuBs


I'm not saying anything about whether or not Elemental is going to be a good game (I think it will be great), I was just pointing out that e-mailing a terrible trailer out to thousands of people a week before the game releases is not a good idea.

[SilentScreams]

I'm not saying anything about whether or not Elemental is going to be a good game (I think it will be great), I was just pointing out that e-mailing a terrible trailer out to thousands of people a week before the game releases is not a good idea.

Woah...I hadn't even realised that it was so close.
I knew it was coming out towards the end of August, and I knew that it was now mid-August...but my brain hadn't combined the two bits of knowledge to form the thought that Elemental is out in about a week.

Did I mention that sometimes my brain works (or doesn't) in strange ways? :D

[Rune_74]

Yes, and the Elemental trailer was brimming with gameplay. :p

Here then, this is a better comparison:

63fKU1MfuBs


I'm not saying anything about whether or not Elemental is going to be a good game (I think it will be great), I was just pointing out that e-mailing a terrible trailer out to thousands of people a week before the game releases is not a good idea.

Ok, correct me if I'm wrong but the trailor you got mailed to you is the launch trailor that is on their site right?

This one?

http://www.elementalgame.com/launchtrailer

If so, yes it is brimming with gameplay, all the graphics you see(minus the obvious text over) is gameplay graphics. Its not CGI.

[MagGnome]

Woah...I hadn't even realised that it was so close.
I knew it was coming out towards the end of August, and I knew that it was now mid-August...but my brain hadn't combined the two bits of knowledge to form the thought that Elemental is out in about a week.

Did I mention that sometimes my brain works (or doesn't) in strange ways? :D

The game comes out on August 24th, which is a week from this Tuesday. It's hard to believe that it's so close after such a long wait! I wish I could pick it up that day, but I start school on the 23rd, and I am going to be VERY busy for the foreseeable future. It's really bad timing. :(


Ok, correct me if I'm wrong but the trailor you got mailed to you is the launch trailor that is on their site right?

This one?

http://www.elementalgame.com/launchtrailer

If so, yes it is brimming with gameplay, all the graphics you see(minus the obvious text over) is gameplay graphics. Its not CGI.

Yes, it is the same trailer. My point had nothing to do with whether or not the trailer was CGI or in-game footage. You brought that up after I posted the AoW: SM intro. My point was that the launch trailer for Elemental is terrible. It looks like something from some low-budget studio that I would see on Steam and think "WTF?" Stardock should know better than to release something like that. I guess it serves as a stark reminder of what a small company they really are. Elemental is only the third game they've developed in house (GalCiv 1, GalCiv 2, & Elemental) that I am aware of. Of course they have also released many PC applications, which are their bread & butter.

[Hotcod]

Ok I thought mags might be over reacting but really that trailer is a joke. It looks like they let the intern do it.

[MagGnome]

Ok I thought mags might be over reacting but really that trailer is a joke. It looks like they let the intern do it.

I'm glad you actually watched it before jumping all over me. :p

[jpublic]

Yeah, not the best trailer, but then, Galciv II's wasn't much better.

[CappinCanuck]

Ok I thought mags might be over reacting but really that trailer is a joke. It looks like they let the intern do it.

I'm glad you actually watched it before jumping all over me. :p

I was just about to say the same thing... I thought you guys must be crazy but wow, it was bad. Even the guy saying the rating was bad. Anyway, I played enough of the game recently not to be worried :).

[Rune_74]

Here is an update of what the new version has added and changed. Also, a list of all the beta's, quite interesting.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/390858

[CappinCanuck]

Here is an update of what the new version has added and changed. Also, a list of all the beta's, quite interesting.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/390858

Woot, thx for the posting Rune. I was hoping there would be more cosmetic changes.

[SilentScreams]

One thing that is concerning me is that when I asked for confirmation that they had fixed all the random crashes, Frogboy told me that those fixes had been done before beta 4.
Not the beta 4 I played. The beta 4 I played was a fun but buggy, unoptimised and unstable mess.

[Rune_74]

One thing that is concerning me is that when I asked for confirmation that they had fixed all the random crashes, Frogboy told me that those fixes had been done before beta 4.
Not the beta 4 I played. The beta 4 I played was a fun but buggy, unoptimised and unstable mess.

Um....if you read his last few posts he said they had found the memory leak crashes....

[CappinCanuck]

One thing that is concerning me is that when I asked for confirmation that they had fixed all the random crashes, Frogboy told me that those fixes had been done before beta 4.
Not the beta 4 I played. The beta 4 I played was a fun but buggy, unoptimised and unstable mess.

Um....if you read his last few posts he said they had found the memory leak crashes....

His reply to your random crash query was hilarious though...

We added tons of new random crashes. Rather than thinking of them as bugs, they're now documented as "random events".

[SilentScreams]

Heh, yeah I laughed at that.
I've already bought the game, so I guess there's no harm in loading it up when it comes out and finding out for myself.

[Rune_74]

I will help you guys out again...if this doesn't get you excited....

http://forums.elementalgame.com/390900

[MagGnome]

I really wish I wasn't starting school on Monday. I'll be grabbing this soon, but I'll probably wait a week or two at least.

[CappinCanuck]

I still can't believe that trailer was so bad though... lol. Like, so bad. I don't know how anyone would O.K. that in any marketing dept. Oh well :D. I'm sure better stuff will come out once they're not working toward the release deadline. Stardock's still one of those companies that works on the game till the very end trying to squeeze every bit of awesome in before the release. (Yes, I'm jaded by 0-day DLC)

[MagGnome]

I would guess that Stardock has a pretty small marketing department. They don't exactly do a lot of advertising, at least not that I've seen.

[jpublic]

Like I said, their in-house trailers have *never* been any good.

[MagGnome]

Sins had some good trailers, but I suppose those were made by Ironclad.

[Telefrog]

Regarding the trailer with the hilariously bad voicework:

FYI, the voice over is stand in.

Not that it really matters.

[MagGnome]

Stand in for what? The "real" trailer that they are going to e-mail everyone...

Oops. ;)

[Telefrog]

Stand in for what? The "real" trailer that they are going to e-mail everyone...

Oops. ;)

Exactly. I know Brad has the best of intentions here, but the goofy bad trailer is already out in the wild. That's what people will see (and hear) when they look up the Elemental trailer.

I have to wonder why they even recorded such a terrible trailer?

[NotJeff]

Stan Din does not appreciate your mockery of his voice work.

[CappinCanuck]

Stan Din does not appreciate your mockery of his voice work.

I was only talking about the gentleman voicing the rating at the start. Butttt... if that's Stan Din (who?) then he deserves the mocking :p.

[MagGnome]

I was only talking about the gentleman voicing the rating at the start. Butttt... if that's Stan Din (who?) then he deserves the mocking :p.

Pronounce the name really slowly and perhaps you'll figure out who he is. ;)

[Lima Beans]

Man Im really on the fence with this game, I just cant decide what to do =/

[Rune_74]

Um pretty easy, buy it....it is good and hey its stardock so it will get even better:)

[MagGnome]

I recommend watching the trailer and then deciding. :D

[Rune_74]

I recommend watching the trailer and then deciding. :D

It wasn't that bad, but you know Mag, when you get something in your head its pretty much game over.

[SilentScreams]

Do you like fun turn based strategy games? If so, Elemental is a no-brainer. We aren't exactly spoilt for choice with this genre, unless you count Civ 3 or Civ 4 as a choice.

[Rune_74]

Day 3 of play...

http://forums.elementalgame.com/391011

[MagGnome]

Do you like fun turn based strategy games? If so, Elemental is a no-brainer. We aren't exactly spoilt for choice with this genre, unless you count Civ 3 or Civ 4 as a choice.

Like I said in another thread, the next six-eight months are looking great for strategy fans such as myself. Between Elemental, the re-release of Age of Wonders on Steam, Civilization V, and that new Dungeons came from Kalypso, I'm looking forward to a lot of good strategy gaming!

[jpublic]

Apparently they queued up the Gold install. You can't update to it, as they disabled all the license keys, but hopefully pre-orders will get early access Soon (tm).

[Hotcod]

so i installed impulse since I'll be pick this up buuuuut impulse starts, get the splash screen it loads get the impulse window and then it just closes it's self.... and can't find any fixes... wooo

[CappinCanuck]

so i installed impulse since I'll be pick this up buuuuut impulse starts, get the splash screen it loads get the impulse window and then it just closes it's self.... and can't find any fixes... wooo

Shitty. I can't say I've ever heard of that before. I hate having rare tech/software issues since Google tends to be my main saviour. I assume you've tried to reinstall?

[CappinCanuck]

Apparently they queued up the Gold install. You can't update to it, as they disabled all the license keys, but hopefully pre-orders will get early access Soon (tm).

Holy crap was I excited when I saw the D/L lol. The history info indicated that it was the final product but bam, invalid registration. I'm guessing it'll be out today. There's only a few days left... not much of a bonus for preorders anymore heh.

[SilentScreams]

You mean apart from playing the beta for months? :)

Ideally, it'll be out in 3-4 hours, which is when I get home and have the whole evening to play games. Crossing fingers.

[Island Dog]

We are hoping for late weekend, or Monday by the latest. It won't be before that though.

If you haven't pre-ordered and want early access, time is running out. ;)

[Xydarc]

We are hoping for late weekend, or Monday by the latest. It won't be before that though.

If you haven't pre-ordered and want early access, time is running out. ;)
I just pre-ordered the Limited Edition. I had to. Cloth map and pewter dragon? My Kryptonite, they are.

[Sandman]

So I saw last night they put v1.0 on the server...I thought yes, we get it super early.....nah, the bastards just lock out all cd keys till they want you to have it. Bastards.

[CappinCanuck]

We are hoping for late weekend, or Monday by the latest. It won't be before that though.

If you haven't pre-ordered and want early access, time is running out. ;)

24 hours? Boo...

[Xydarc]

Well, that was a mistake. Just spent the past 2 hours reading up on the game and Frogboy's gameplay walkthrough. I want this game...badly. I can hardly stand it.

[Rune_74]

There is a part 4 of the walkthrough talking about children, kind of interesting.

[Xydarc]

There is a part 4 of the walkthrough talking about children, kind of interesting.
I wonder how many kids you can have? Plus, does your child become your avatar when your first character dies?

[Rune_74]

I wonder how many kids you can have? Plus, does your child become your avatar when your first character dies?

Not sure on the amount...but I think no to becoming the avatar...but I think he wants to expand on that post release....

[Xydarc]

Not sure on the amount...but I think no to becoming the avatar...but I think he wants to expand on that post release....
After reading through Frogboy's dev posts, it looks like you are right. Your Channeler is immortal. They should include that option, to allow your son or daughter to take over for you when you die.

[jpublic]

I think kids are just Hero generation. But they happen to come pre-set as Channellers.

[Xydarc]

I think kids are just Hero generation. But they happen to come pre-set as Channellers.
So, if you are a female Channeler and get married, you turn into a walking Hero Generator!:eek:

"Milady, we are outnumbered! If only we had another Hero..."

"Give me...ugghh...a...grrhhh...minute...gaaaugh!" *POP* "There we go!"

[Hotcod]

I did manage to impulse working which is good news... now I just need to not spend all my money at the music festival next week

[jpublic]

So, apparently some retailer broke the street date, and Stardock is going to be releasing Day 0 to beta and pre-order players today.

[SilentScreams]

So, apparently some retailer broke the street date, and Stardock is going to be releasing Day 0 to beta and pre-order players today.

This would make me very happy. Of course, I'm in the UK so I'm a little ahead and "today" could mean stupid-o'clock tomorrow morning for me. :D

[DiBiddilyBop]

I hope this is true. I've been out of town for the weekend and am headed back today, so this would make a nice little treat for when I get back to my PC.

[OrangePulp]

That's awesome; preordered last night on stardock. Wanted to get it on monday, but today would be even better.

[SilentScreams]

I probably won't end up playing until Monday anyway, due to the aforementioned time difference, and the fact that their servers will get hammered when the game drops. I can't imagine it being a quick download, although I've never not hit my speed cap with Impulse before...so who knows?

[CappinCanuck]

We shall see... they still have 2 more hours of the workday left... but it's a Sunday so who knows if 8-5 even fits. The "version history" thing is back though, it was gone when they took off the update on Saturday. So something is being worked on.

[SilentScreams]

Hmm...when I try to start the beta build up now, it asks me for my email addy and product key and then tells me the key is already registered to another account. Anyone else getting this?

[Stoke]

Hmm...when I try to start the beta build up now, it asks me for my email addy and product key and then tells me the key is already registered to another account. Anyone else getting this?

Just tried to install a second ago and it told me my key was invalid. Maybe they're getting ready to release it and it's causing some problems with their registration server.

[jpublic]

Hmm...when I try to start the beta build up now, it asks me for my email addy and product key and then tells me the key is already registered to another account. Anyone else getting this?

Nope, I just get invalid key.

[CappinCanuck]

Hmm...when I try to start the beta build up now, it asks me for my email addy and product key and then tells me the key is already registered to another account. Anyone else getting this?

I wouldn't worry or do anything until they release the game, it might be a result of how they've locked the game down like the invalid key tihng.

[IIntrude]

Frogboy has said that they are playtesting a new version right this second and that it will be released within a few hours.

[Rune_74]

What about this second?

[Xydarc]

So, apparently some retailer broke the street date, and Stardock is going to be releasing Day 0 to beta and pre-order players today.
Again!? What do retailers have against Stardock?

[SilentScreams]

Going live very soon.

[DiBiddilyBop]

Word on the forums is the next 45 or so minutes it'll get released to beta testers.

[Xydarc]

Anticipation is making me wait...

[CappinCanuck]

Hmm, the game launches now and it says there's a major update but nothing in Impulse... I guess the update is still ongoing... *waits*.

[Xydarc]

It's not showing up in my Impulse yet. Probably because I just pre-ordered and wasn't a beta tester.

[SilentScreams]

2:42am

I can't stay up much longer. Wish they'd hurry up. I want to start the download before I go to bed if nothing else, just in case the servers are getting hammered and it's going to take a while.

[Xydarc]

Word from the forums states it'll be released 11 pm EST.

[jpublic]

Again!? What do retailers have against Stardock?

I can explain this, I have intimate knowledge of things from a similar retailer.

Basically, there are two things working against Stardock:

1) The moment the box hits the store, the staff is under pressure to get it out. Having a 'strict on sale' date causes them irritation because it takes up room in the back and hangs over their head. They hate it, and tend to be surprisingly willing to break those on-sale dates if there's little risk.
2) Stardock is a nothing company. They're not EA, they're not Activision, they're not Take2, or Ubisoft, or whomever. They don't have the ability or power to really enforce ostrong penalties on the retailer's corporation.


So, faced with Staff who don't care, a master corporation who goes 'screw 'em, we'll make more money than breaking the date will cost us' they're screwed.

What really surprises me is that Stardock hasn't LEARNED by now. Demigod was high-profile, but it happened on Galciv2 and I think SoaSE too.

[SilentScreams]

Frogboy actually said they were prepared this time. It's why the game isn't working for the people who bought it early.

[Sandman]

Elemental is up, I'm downloading.

[Rune_74]

As am i....500k a second...anyone getting better?

[Sandman]

As am i....500k a second...anyone getting better?

That's my average....and it's only people who were in the beta that are up now, so if you can dl I advise to dl. They are saying it could take 5 hours to activate all non-beta pre-orders.....that's a hell of alot of pre-orders.

[Stoke]

As am i....500k a second...anyone getting better?

1.67Mbps here.

[Xydarc]

Knew I should have pre-ordered earlier.

[DiBiddilyBop]

My internet here sucks... looks like I won't be playing tonight. Slowing counting up from 21%...

[Xydarc]

My internet here sucks... looks like I won't be playing tonight. Slowing counting up from 21%...
At least you're downloading it. Still waiting for it to show up in Impulse.

[Stoke]

Uh, I understand the lack of some kind of tutorial in the alpha (the last time I played) but I'm not seeing one in this either. Is there anyone that played a recent version that can tell me if I'm just missing something?

EDIT: And it crashed...

[Sandman]

Uh, I understand the lack of some kind of tutorial in the alpha (the last time I played) but I'm not seeing one in this either. Is there anyone that played a recent version that can tell me if I'm just missing something?

EDIT: And it crashed...

Start with the campaign, it will teach you things there.

[Stoke]

Start with the campaign, it will teach you things there.

I wandered around in the campaign for a few minutes before I gave up and decided that I was supposed to click "New Game." I guess I'm just not seeing where the help is displaying.

[Sandman]

I wandered around in the campaign for a few minutes before I gave up and decided that I was supposed to click "New Game." I guess I'm just not seeing where the help is displaying.

I dunno, I started the campaign and played for about 30 min and it directed me to recruiting people, building cities, shopkeepers and other things.

[Rune_74]

I wandered around in the campaign for a few minutes before I gave up and decided that I was supposed to click "New Game." I guess I'm just not seeing where the help is displaying.

The help comes as you play, it tells you to do things....takes a few minutes to figure out things but just clicking on the buttons and such helps, its not that difficult.

[Stoke]

I dunno, I started the campaign and played for about 30 min and it directed me to recruiting people, building cities, shopkeepers and other things.

The help comes as you play, it tells you to do things....takes a few minutes to figure out things but just clicking on the buttons and such helps, its not that difficult.

Yeah I see it now. That first time, before it crashed, I couldn't talk to anyone. All I could do was move my guy around. The second time it seemed to work alright though.

[OrangePulp]

Really wishing I had pre-ordered early enough to get in the beta now. Hopefully I'll get access to it before the night is out, so that at least it's dl'ed and ready to go for tomorrow.

[Serapth]

Tiered release dates is just begging for people to pirate your game.


"I REALY WANT TO TRY THIS GAME, BUT I CAN'T BUY IT. AHHH FUCKIT, ILL JUST TORRENT IT!"

Frankly the only games I ever pirate are games I can't purchase. Normally that means older games, sometimes it means games that aren't released here. That said I am a horribke sufferer of "gotta have it now " syndrome.

[OrangePulp]

Talking with folks in IRC, apparently they have to manually activate all the accounts? Thus it taking time. Which, I dunno, does that sound insane to anyone else? Why not automate?

[Dark Acre Jack]

I was wondering why I just got an activation E-mail. Downloading now, should be good to go by morning.

[Farsight]

People looking for a deal - Amazon is currently giving a $10 credit w/ this game (either edition).

[Xydarc]

Tiered release dates is just begging for people to pirate your game.


"I REALY WANT TO TRY THIS GAME, BUT I CAN'T BUY IT. AHHH FUCKIT, ILL JUST TORRENT IT!"

Frankly the only games I ever pirate are games I can't purchase. Normally that means older games, sometimes it means games that aren't released here. That said I am a horribke sufferer of "gotta have it now " syndrome.
Read the thread. A retailer broke the street date, pretty much forcing Stardock to do an early release. Although, originally, beta testers and pre-orders were going to be able to get "early access" tomorrow. Regardless, Stardock's policy towards DRM really needs our support. Show yours by purchasing.

Talking with folks in IRC, apparently they have to manually activate all the accounts? Thus it taking time. Which, I dunno, does that sound insane to anyone else? Why not automate?
If it wasn't for the broken street date, I'm sure the automated system that was in place would have been put to use.

[Xydarc]

They are finally processing the LE box + download orders, which is what I did. Once I get the d/l started, it's time for sleep.

[Lekon]

They are finally processing the LE box + download orders, which is what I did. Once I get the d/l started, it's time for sleep.

I didn't get an activation email, but mine is now downloading happily and quickly, so give it a shot anyways.

[SilentScreams]

Downloading now. 1.2mb/s. Even under load the Impulse servers kick Steam's ass. :D

Should be done in about 10 minutes.

[Serapth]

Tiered release dates is just begging for people to pirate your game.


"I REALY WANT TO TRY THIS GAME, BUT I CAN'T BUY IT. AHHH FUCKIT, ILL JUST T
Read the thread. A retailer broke the street date, pretty much forcing Stardock to do an early release. Although, originally, beta testers and pre-orders were going to be able to get "early access" tomorrow. Regardless, Stardock's policy towards DRM really needs our support. Show yours by purchasing.

Talking with folks in IRC, apparently they have to manually activate all the accounts? Thus it taking time. Which, I dunno, does that sound insane to
If it wasn't for the broken street date, I'm sure the automated system that was in place would have been put to use.

I read the thread and still hold my opinion. If I didn't have to preorder to get it online I would have a different opinion.

[Rune_74]

So boohoo you had to wait a few hours? Should have bought it sooner if it was that big a deal.

[Serapth]

So boohoo you had to wait a few hours? Should have bought it sooner if it was that big a deal.

I am saying having a game available, but not for sale to everyone, is a stupid move and will encourage otherwise honest people to steal it.

I am not one of those people, I have far too much shit on my plate to worry about new releases, I am just pointing out their tactical error in not just opening it up to everyone on Impulse.

[Rune_74]

Oh ok, I think they tride but got screwed by the retailer.

[CappinCanuck]

I am saying having a game available, but not for sale to everyone, is a stupid move and will encourage otherwise honest people to steal it.

I am not one of those people, I have far too much shit on my plate to worry about new releases, I am just pointing out their tactical error in not just opening it up to everyone on Impulse.

Well, the thing is that they're doing the exact opposite of that. They're trying to mitigate the damage from an incidental tiered release. The game was already available thanks to that particular retailer and most certainly already being cracked by Saturday afternoon. Them releasing the digital orders is just trying to make the game more "for sale to everyone." I think they made the right move.

And I thought they did open it up to everyone on Impulse? There was only like a 2-3 hour wait for people that ordered the game hours before the release?

[Serapth]

Well, the thing is that they're doing the exact opposite of that. They're trying to mitigate the damage from an incidental tiered release. The game was already available thanks to that particular retailer and most certainly already being cracked by Saturday afternoon. Them releasing the digital orders is just trying to make the game more "for sale to everyone." I think they made the right move.

And I thought they did open it up to everyone on Impulse? There was only like a 2-3 hour wait for people that ordered the game hours before the release?

No actually, apparently they did open it up to everyone.

This was the issue I had. Initially, they only opened it up to people with pre-orders, which was a huge mistake imho. They apparently agreed and made it available for purchase.

[CappinCanuck]

No actually, apparently they did open it up to everyone.

This was the issue I had. Initially, they only opened it up to people with pre-orders, which was a huge mistake imho. They apparently agreed and made it available for purchase.

All around good handling for them considering the force timetable push. They need to litigate the shit out of that retailer. I am betting it's the same chain that broke the street date for Demigod by like 2 weeks.

[Lima Beans]

so my PC crapped out, and is in the shop now.. Frusterating.
Thinking of picking this up for my workmachine in the meantime, but will probably just wait till I get my pc back.

[Savok]

I want this but I'm rather afraid of buying it for the time being.

[Rune_74]

I want this but I'm rather afraid of buying it for the time being.

Why? It runs fine.

[RandoM51]

Why? It runs fine.

not what I'm reading elsewhere.

[Rune_74]

not what I'm reading elsewhere.

Well, it runs fine for me...the vocal complainers are always louder.

[RandoM51]

Well, it runs fine for me...the vocal complainers are always louder.

They exist, and it isn't just one person with a crappy PC. As far as I can tell their anecdotes are just as valuable as yours when it comes to trying to judge the state of the game 2nd hand at release.

Then again, it is a PC game. If there weren't people having problems with it hell would probably freeze over.

[SilentScreams]

It doesn't crash anymore, but it runs like crap.

I'm sorry, but my quad core, dual GPU rig with 6gb of DDR3 should not be chugging on the smallest map the game allows, even with all the settings turned up.

[RandoM51]

http://forums.stardock.com/391534

Memory leaks thread, might want to check your debug log file, SilentScreams.

It is debug.err and can be found in: My Documents\My Games\Elemental

[Rune_74]

It doesn't crash anymore, but it runs like crap.

I'm sorry, but my quad core, dual GPU rig with 6gb of DDR3 should not be chugging on the smallest map the game allows, even with all the settings turned up.

Hmm I noticed this one runs better then any other for me so far....what brand of GPU do you have?

[SilentScreams]

Intel Q9550.

Edit: Checking that out now. Thanks, Random.

Edit 2: Definitely sounds like the problem I had. I didn't notice any slowdown at the start, but it got worse and worse. I'll bookmark that thread in case they post a fix.

[Rune_74]

I meant your graphics card...is it ATI by any chance?

[SilentScreams]

I meant your graphics card...is it ATI by any chance?

Woops. Reading ability after lots of beer = non-existent. :)

Yeah, my GPU is a 4870X2.

[RandoM51]

Edit 2: Definitely sounds like the problem I had. I didn't notice any slowdown at the start, but it got worse and worse. I'll bookmark that thread in case they post a fix.

That is almost always a memory leak or leaks. Good news is that they'll probably fix those pretty quickly now that they've got a larger group of testers to find them. :D

[Rune_74]

Woops. Reading ability after lots of beer = non-existent. :)

Yeah, my GPU is a 4870X2.

Yeah ATI is still having alot of problems...not surprising since they suck at making drivers at least in my experience.

[jpublic]

The game runs okay for me, but my standard complaint with Wardell's game still applies - not enough hand-holding at the start. Don't just tell me I need to go talk to the merchant to buy some weapons, TELL ME HOW TO DO THAT, Y'IDJIT.

[IIntrude]

ATI 5800 2GB
2.8 QC i7
4GB RAM
Clean HDs

After I first started a campaign, I was getting 200-300 fps. Immediately after building my first town it plummeted to 25, now it sits at 14 when near a city and 20-30ish elsewhere.

As for the learning curve, they tutorials should be in-game tomorrow they say.

[Rune_74]

Just so you guys know there is a patch on the way tonight that fixes a bunch of things, read on:
http://forums.elementalgame.com/391632

[CappinCanuck]

The game runs okay for me, but my standard complaint with Wardell's game still applies - not enough hand-holding at the start. Don't just tell me I need to go talk to the merchant to buy some weapons, TELL ME HOW TO DO THAT, Y'IDJIT.

A valid complaint after spending a few hours with the campaign but it's already been addressed. Wardell posted a week or so ago that the tutorials and teaching lessons were going to come in with the release candidate that was supposed to be released tomorrow. I guess they couldn't rush the patch through QA/QC as fast as they could push up the digital launch but I'll be happy with 1 day earlier if it gets out today.

Apparently they're patching all the placeholder images too. I noticed a few on the spells not being in and such.

I was getting 15fps as well SilentScreams. Apparently it was just cuz I finaggled the Atlas Texture size during my usual startup config. I'm running everything up and 8x now at 60fps after putting the Atlas setting down. Not sure if you changed that but if you did, that might cause it. It may also be this from the Pre-launch patch:

Enemy Unit caching modified so that they are released from the game after death (this should address the “game gets slower over time” issue some have reported)

I'm glad their changelog is nicely detailed though for some of us who understand the mechanics.

[Xydarc]

Thankfully all I'm getting is the slowdown. I haven't had any CTDs and the game has run pretty well so far. That learning curve...man. Reminds me of this:

http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/221858705_5BFXM-L-2.jpg

[Rune_74]

heheh funny comic....in some ways its a blast to the past in that it makes you use your brain instead of doing the thinking for you. I know this will be a bit hard for my american neighbors;) (that was a joke)

[Telefrog]

I like the gameplay so far and any CTDs, UI inefficiencies, math errors, or balance bugs are par for the course with any 4x game launch. I can't think of a single 4x game that launched in a form that didn't need one or two patches to straighten stuff out. Hell, even the vaunted MOM or MOO needed patching before they became the stuff of legends. Civ IV was a bit of a slog for the first few weeks.

Since I've been playing Elemental since Beta 1, the mechanics of research, the sovereign importance, and the basic gameplay are well known to me. I knew what I was getting into.

Except for one very important thing.

No random maps.

Let me say that again, because I find the lack of this feature to be completely dumbfounding in a 4x turn based strategy game PC release.

NO RANDOM MAPS.

Brad and Stardock say that preset seed maps with shuffled landmarks are "random maps" which is absolutely not what I believe most people would take that phrase to mean. At launch there are the following varieties of maps:

6 Tiny Maps
7 Small Maps
4 Medium Maps
2 Large Maps

That's it. 19 different maps.

Brad says they will add more seeds (some are even included in tomorrow's patch) but is that good enough in a genre that almost demands random maps? Part of the fun of the 4x genre is dealing with the unkown. It's the first X for Pete's sake!

Oh, and what about the random map generator for Elemental?

Originally, (pre-beta 1) we randomly generated the land masses as well as the map itself and the maps just weren't balanced or "fantasy" at all not to mention you could end up with players stuck on relatively small land masses and such.

So that was when the seed land masses were made to be used to create the random maps with.

In the long term, a better solution is the stamp feature. That is, we create "pieces" of maps that we are happy with and then let the game put them together.

And if you really. Really. REALLY want fractically generated land masses, you can go into the maps directory and delete the seed files. I don't recommend it though.

Unfortunately, I find it very hard to recommend Elemental to 4x fans at this point. Maybe when enough seed maps get added, I can change my opinion, but even then preset maps are such a crushing disappointment.

[Rune_74]

You did forget to mention that you can have totally random unbalanced maps(at least acording to some of the topics on there...) by deleting the seeds.

Also, you can download maps that people have made already...theoretically with enough seeds you won't see repeats.

[MagGnome]

A valid complaint after spending a few hours with the campaign but it's already been addressed. Wardell posted a week or so ago that the tutorials and teaching lessons were going to come in with the release candidate that was supposed to be released tomorrow. I guess they couldn't rush the patch through QA/QC as fast as they could push up the digital launch but I'll be happy with 1 day earlier if it gets out today.

Apparently they're patching all the placeholder images too. I noticed a few on the spells not being in and such.

So were these placeholder images and the lack of a tutorial present in the retail (DVD) release as well? That's pretty shoddy if so.


NO RANDOM MAPS.

Please tell me you're joking. 0_o


You did forget to mention that you can have totally random unbalanced maps(at least acording to some of the topics on there...) by deleting the seeds.

No, actually he did mention that, but it's a pretty poor solution to a glaring omission.

[Pale Ale]

Soooo.....


I can only increase my enjoyment by procrastinating?

Done

[Farsight]

Ah, this brings back memories. I can tell you from firsthand experience: making a random map generator that works is hard. :)

But it seems odd to make a game that doesn't appear to have a strong scripted element, and also doesn't have true randomness.

I'm going to wait on some reviews to make up my mind on this one. Maybe take a deeper look at it after Civ5. :)

[Rune_74]

Just so you know, a pre 0 day patch is live now.

Also, the game ships with a map editor, so theoretically if enough people make maps there will be alot of maps out there. They are fairly easy to do as well.

I will bet though, with the outcry they are working on a solution.

[iHap]

Just so you know, a pre 0 day patch is live now.

Also, the game ships with a map editor, so theoretically if enough people make maps there will be alot of maps out there. They are fairly easy to do as well.

I will bet though, with the outcry they are working on a solution.
I saw there was already a middle earth map, may have to give that a try.

This game will get more interesting if user made races come out (I haven't read up on anything so i don't know if that's possible or not, just seems like it is.)

[Rune_74]

I saw there was already a middle earth map, may have to give that a try.

This game will get more interesting if user made races come out (I haven't read up on anything so i don't know if that's possible or not, just seems like it is.)

It is possible, just not with in game tools at the moment...however, in time. There is a fanmade editor out there.

Here is some comments on the 0day patch for tomorrow:

http://forums.elementalgame.com/391747/#2725586

[iHap]

It is possible, just not with in game tools at the moment...however, in time. There is a fanmade editor out there.

Here is some comments on the 0day patch for tomorrow:

http://forums.elementalgame.com/391747/#2725586
Cool, thanks for the info.

BTW, Impulse ID list here if you people haven't see it yet.

http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showpost.php?p=638401&postcount=1

[Rune_74]

Oh and with the latest version, I have this janusk(sp) character that keeps spouting tips when you're playing. Like click and drag to move the screen, and what to build...so I would say it is a little bit like a tutorial.

[jpublic]

My only response to that is that Sid Meier has been doing it for more than 5 games. Why can't you, Brad?

[CappinCanuck]

So were these placeholder images and the lack of a tutorial present in the retail (DVD) release as well? That's pretty shoddy if so.



The retail release is tomorrow so we'll see what gets added today and tomorrow.


Anyway, I'm hoping the Day 1 patch will be a biggy. They got a lot done for today's 0-day patch.

[Serapth]

So were these placeholder images and the lack of a tutorial present in the retail (DVD) release as well? That's pretty shoddy if so.

The retail release is tomorrow so we'll see what gets added today and tomorrow.


Anyway, I'm hoping the Day 1 patch will be a biggy. They got a lot done for today's 0-day patch.

So I broke down and bought it, even with my massive backlog and complete lack of gaming time. Actually that's why I bought it, I have lots of blips of time, but not huge consecutive blocks to play in and a turn based game fits the bill perfectly.

Problem is, the performance is abysmal on my netbook, which can handle DoW2 and other rts games without a hiccup. Not patched yet though.

[Telefrog]

Please tell me you're joking. 0_o

Nope. You can open your file folder and see the seed files. There are more thanks to today's patch, but it's still not enough at launch IMO, and I really don't think Stardock appreciates the difference between procedurally generated random terrain maps and maps with preset terrain and randomized landmarks.

No, actually he did mention that, but it's a pretty poor solution to a glaring omission.

Keep in mind that Brad Wardell himself realizes that it's an unsatisfactory solution, which is why it's unsupported. I tried it by the way. To say the generated map is "unbalanced" would be pretty charitable.

I'm not asking for perfectly balanced random maps. Part of the fun of a 4x game is overcoming a less than ideal start. Civ maps aren't perfectly balanced either, but they are playable. You may get a start that leaves you resource poor or puts you in a difficult choke point, but you aren't going to get a start that places you in a completely unwinnable position.

I realize that players will make a ton of maps for the game, but frankly I've grown really tired of wading through user-made crap to get the rare gem in PC games. Let's face it, there's a reason why most of us are not employed as game designers.

[SilentScreams]

Well he said they couldn't get random maps working well enough, and deleting the seeds pretty much proves that. I'd rather have a bunch of pre-made maps that work than be forced to play on unbalanced random ones.

I won't deny that random would have been better, but at least they recognised the problem and didn't try to force the feature in.
Let's just hope they don't abandon this game like they did with Demigod. If they keep supporting it with new maps then I'm not too worried. Worst case scenario; it only has to last me until Civ V anyway. :D