So much going on this week and at the same time, so little. A lot of vacations here at Stardock pop up in June since this is one of the prime months here in terms of weather.
On a sad note, Trent (Mittens) had his last day today. He’s off to Salt Lake City to take a position as a designer at a new game studio. We’ll miss him. Combined with the people on vacation, the studio area feels like a ghost town.
My executive planner and marketing manager gave me a “CEO make over” today with a bunch of new clothes. I guess trade show shirts and ratty shorts just aren’t good enough anymore.
Right now, we’re looking at dozens of issues that need to be addressed before we can even do the alpha build of the game. Everything from the fonts looking crummy to setting priority on what should be on the setup.
For instance, if someone wants to create a custom civilization and in there choose “good” or “evil” that’s fine. But I’m having them get rid of being able to have pre-existing factions be good or evil because it would literally double the writing involved for each faction’s back story. While that’s interesting to have, I would rather have more depth per faction rather than half the depth but a mirror universe version of each one.
The screen you see here will likely be significantly altered between now and release. But this gives you an idea of how iterative the process is. I’ll probably eliminate the appearance area and put that into the custom race area. Right now, “design your race” is the only option. There isn’t a formal “choose your faction” area. Elemental comes with 2 built in races and 12 factions but we plan to let people create their own races and factions as well, but that should be a separate area that is a lot richer. If you try to mash too much stuff together, it’s confusing to new players but still too weak for experienced users.
Another thing to consider - in MoM the channeler could often cast powerful and decisive spells during Tactical Combat, whether he was physically present or not. How can you not have at least a tactical option in a game like this - I assume auto resolve is going to remove the capability of the channeler to cast during combat, or if not how would a channeler cast spells during an autoresolve battle?
Presumably the AI channelers will be able to cast spells as well. That means the AI will have some way to determine when to use spells. In auto-resolve, the AI is controlling your side too, so it'd use spells just like the computer.
If auto-resolve really just runs the battle normally (only without the graphics), it's not really a huge problem.
Assuming you are only allowed to cast a certain amount of magic as a channeler per turn, it would suck if auto-resolve burned your points on an insignificant battle leaving your tank empty for a more important one (in the same turn)...
That actually opens up a big can of worms, though. We already know some spells will cost essense, which is supposed to be finite. And I'd certainly not want the AI to cast these spells without my express direction.
But I suppose for that there could also be a spellcast setting. Neverwinter Nights has pretty decent controls for this. You can set the AI into "Overkill" spellcast mode where they'll just fling anything at anything. Then it scales down to more conservative casting and to manual only.
I like this a LOT.
Sammual
Not to beat a dying horse, but again, look at Dominions. You could specify what spells to cast during the battle. There was synergy if you lined up your troops correctly and cast certain spells and set up your orders correctly. Auto-resolve does NOT have to mean zero control of the battle.
This is just one of the problems with auto-resolve. If it loses a fight it could have won because it won't use your spells, people will complain. If it wins a fight by using spells, people will complain. If it wins a fight by using essence, people will really complain (probably with some justification in that case).
Again, bingo. If we don't control when important strategic resources (essence) is used, the player is goign to be very, veyr angry. And with good reason -- win or loose.
Auto-resolve questions aside, I think it might be a good idea to limit essence-using spells to the main map and have only mana used in tactical combat. (Of course that would be a moot point if essence use is limited entirely to imbueing places, people, and things--an idea I like even better.)
Well, if the only thing essence is used for is imbues, doesn't that kind of remove the idea of a strong combat channeler woh keeps that essence to use in combat? Or would just *having* essence boost your combat magic, even if it doesn't consume it?
duh
Oh. I like that very much. I'd be happy with that.
It isn't much harder to deal with Auto-Casting than Auto-Combat (it might even be easier). It would be very simple to allow players to set a limit for how much mana can be used in a battle, and even which spells to allow or forbid from casting. The AI would then use those criteria to decide which spells, if any, to cast. I'd be surprised if many in-battle spells would require essence, but if there are then it needs a "DO NOT USE MY ESSENCE" button (probably on by default).
My impression is that having the essence boosts your channeler's strength (not just combat magic - his overall durability and power).
The latter's closer to how I'm imagining essence the moment--essence as a sort of stat that determines how much mana you can channel at once and maybe also affects your physical combat stats.
Wasn't it always described as basically you can use your essense to get lots of populated cities and things of that nature at the cost of your personal power, or keep it all and have a weaker overall empire but remain a strong individual channeler?
So yeah, that seems to fit.
This is why auto-resolve is gay.
In a game with tactical combat, people whine about how auto-resolve will suck. To make it not suck, you make it complicated. Then the people, that don't want tactical combat to begin, with complain about how it's too complicated to use the auto resolve. Then you make it simple by taking all the complicated stuff out, and they bitch about how it uses a spell, or doesn't use a spell, or loses too many troops. Basically, everyone whines regardless and you can't win.
Meanwhile, someone else makes a game with no tactical combat that does horribly gay shit, like killing high level units off at 99% odds, and everything is right with the world.
Think about it.
woah, you ok psychoak? I'm not used to hearing such harsh words from you.
gay as in happy?
Tactical designed for those who will use it and autoresolve designed for those who will use it. No crossing ideas except when real improvements can be done.
Wow, this post is so full of fail. Starting with the use of gay like a drunk 19 year old douchey frat boy, continuing with the rant about how doomed tactical combat is, then saying at least it's not gay shit like auto-resolve. Then backs up his stellar arguments with "think about it", which is again the drunk frat boy equivalent of "Am I right? Am I right? Yea, damn right I'm right."
Yes, your post is full of fail. To start with, about half about what you bitch about psychoak saying he didn't even say.
Yeah, although I think psychoak's word choice and temperament in that post is rather poor (ckessel's description in that respect is pretty good ), I actually agree with his actual point completely.
All he's saying is this. You put in Tactical Combat - people complain about not liking tactical combat. So you add auto-resolve. Then people complain about auto-resolve sucking - it overvalues/devalues units and doesn't use spells intelligently. So they make auto-resolve more complicated and give you some indirect control over it via scripting or constraints - then they say it's too complicated, it takes too much time and they don't want to spend time on battles.
Then someone comes along with a game without tactical combat, but with the exact same simple auto-resolve and they love it.
There is no way around it, and to me it's even worse than the normal "you can't please everyone" problem. In this case, there are just some people you can't please at all, no matter what you do. And the problem isn't with the game mechanics or features, it's in people's heads.
About the autoresolve, can there be a middle ground between useless and so horribly convulated that you're better off fighting every battle manually?A 'stance' setting (defensive/aggressive) and a 'use magic' switch is more than enough for autoresolve. Most people are perfectly fine with TW autoresolve, which does not provide any kind of control at all after all. Well just my 2c.
Denryu wins. My response is thus; Moo.
Seriously, learn to read, even a frat brat can do that.
After you do that, read back through the recent posts regarding how auto-resolve is handled versus tactical combat. If you can't figure it out then, go find a 19 year old frat brat to tutor you.
Huh? That was... sarcasm? Please?
My reputation is in shards, I'll never recover from this terrible slander.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
