Let me cut to the bad news right off. Beta 1B isn’t ready to go yet. It needs to be pushed. But for your convenience, I’m going to walk through the problems with the current internal build. Now, before someone who isn’t paying attention closely sends me a flame PM, please read this: I work at Stardock. It’s my job to be critical of the game. The only thing unusual is that I’m airing our internal dirty laundry to the public – but there’s a point to that too and that is so that beta testers can participate in those discussions.
So let’s walk through the things that are in our current build that need to be addressed before we release a public beta 1B which is known as the “economic” beta.
Bees and wheat are in.
Or more specifically, we are starting to add a lot more resources into the game. The reason this is important is that we want to begin populating the world with resources that can share city improvements OR have their own improvements.
Info Card system is in
A UI convention pioneered in Sins of a Solar Empire by Ironclad is in Elemental now. If you hover over something of interest, an info card comes up – except here we have decided to go with an actual playing card motify ala Magic the Gathering.
The City UI is cleaned up
Managing cities has gotten a bit easier. the buttons have gotten moved over.
A lot of under the covers stuff has gotten fixed/improved
Performance is vastly better. The economy is technically in there.
While the economy is in there now, it’s no use to the beta testers if the user interface doesn’t convey the information to them. As Tom Chick would say “show me!” and right now we’re not and without that, beta testers can’t give feedback on whether they think the economic system is worthwhile.
Economics are hard to see in action.
Besides the fact that the info cards are way too big, they don’t convey useful information presently. Why does it take 5 turns to complete an Inn? I dunno. What could I do to make Inns build faster? I dunno. Why does the Inn cost $100? I dunno.
Under the covers:
The time and money to build an improvement = Labor + Materials.
The cost of the labor and materials determines the cost and the time to gather the materials and for the labor to execute determines the time.
Now, the card doesn’t need to display all of that. But it should display how much wood is required.
The info card (not shown here) should display what the Inn does and what it requires to be built. The player should be able to see the city data on the right (not a duplicate of the Inn here) so that they can decide what improvement to build and what resources they have on hand to build them with. How much wood do they have? How good is their labor? Do they need the benefit the chosen improvement provides? Without this information, the player is left guessing.
There’s been a lot of overall progress. But Beta 1B is a specific milestone for the economics so we have to be able to display this kind of “stuff” very clearly to players. So it’s looking like it’ll be another week.
Of course, that also buys me a little more time on the AI (which has been improving with these builds as well though it’s all C++ right now and not Python yet).
Stay tuned.
Yeah we understand that the beta wasn't delayed because of features of the actual economic system, but because the UI hasn't been made to include relevant economic information.. And of course releasing an "economy" beta with a UI that doesn't really tell us what's going on wouldn't be very helpful for you and would be needlessly frustrating for us!
However, the discussion that started up here is just a tangent... We haven't seen the economy model that's currently in the game, but you and boogiebac have dropped some hints - and all some of us are saying is we're afraid that the current model might be too simple. Sure it's all hypothetical because we've never actually seen it, let alone played with it, and in a week or so we'll get to. But you can't expect us to not talk about what we want from it even before we know what you plan on giving us!
and raising volcanoes is realistic?
The problem SD seems to be having with a complex system like what we've proposed is that with so many resources, at any time you're going to have a huge amount of stuff in the game unbuildable unless resources are everywhere. People will have a hard time tracking just what they can and can't build.
In effect it'll be like trying to manufacture the really complex items in Capitalism. Which is to say that it's fun, if you enjoy looking through reports and manufacturing plans to figure out what in the world is going on. Unless there is going to be a significant reduction in the proposed number of resources to something more managable, some level of resource abstraction is going to be required to keep it fun for mere mortals.
From reading through the comments I'm glad to see people are starting to really understand the objectives of the beta program.
When you guys pre-order the game early -- paying money -- and get these early betas the game is obviously not "fun" or even close to it and won't be for months. But, the beta program ensures only those who are seriously interested in this type of game in the first place are involved.
Over the next few weeks, we'll be debating and discussing a great deal different ways of handling the economics and based on that feedback be making changes.
Now, some might argue that the self-selection process of the beta tends to bias it away from the "mainstream" of gamers but my personal feeling is that the "mainstream" has had plenty of options for games over the past few years. We're not looking to produce a dumbed down console-like strategy game.
As the intro screen joke implies, our goal is to make a game with the kind of solid, good fun game mechanics that used to be common a decade ago but combine it with the technology capabilities of today's hardware to create something new.
Personally, I'm delighted to have the chance to weigh in on the game mechanics in this way. I've been waiting until 1B is available before giving any detailed suggestions about the economics mechanics or UI. I suspect the weight in the threads will start shifting from bugs to suggestions now.
So, let's get back on the debate you asked for : what should we see about the underlying system.
I think that too much info kills the info. Maybe there should be three levels (or maybe more?) or information.
The info cards could display critical information (like how many tirns it will take and maybe the most important thing : if it takes 8 turns I don't really need to know that's because of 4 turns to get the materials, 2 turns to assemble it and 2 turns to train the soldiers. Maybe, just knowing that the most time-consuming thing are turns where we're waiting for the resources)
The economic report could give a list of what we havecaravans, how many turns they need to reach their destination, that sort of things.
And the Elementum Compendium that would give the exact formulae used by the engine.
And why not an info card ON the info card ?
Idea : I select a town and see in the info card that my soldiers need 8 more turns to get trained. I clic on the soldier, then the info card won't fade away. I see "8 turns" in red. I hover the mouse on it, and see a new info card that says (8 turns with 4 turns to get : iron, leather). If i clic on the 8 turns I get an info card that explains the mechanics better with something like "Turns to train = squareroot[(blahblahblah + blabhblah blah - blahblahblah) X blahblahblah / log (blahblahblah) and so on]"
Brad, I am glad that I read something like this. Thanks for this post.
Frogboy...you have no idea how happy reading that just made me.
Me too.
I'm really happy that there are still a few developers who make good games for the PC, instead of dumbed down console shit which is then ported to the PC.
deleted
Frogboy, you just gave me a happy.
I pre-ordered a little later than I would have liked to, thanks to Council Tax and Bursaries not coming through on time, so I haven't been able to experience anything yet. I am loving the community, and the way Stardock are approaching this.
I'm sick and tired of crap strategy games. I'm still playing the old Master of Magic, simply because no other Turn Based Strategy has been worth playing. I tried Age of Wonders, but it's awful. I tried Civ, but the combat makes me cry. I've got a huge amount of hope for this game, as it's being developed by someone who isn't afraid to take risks. I won't mention any names. I think you all know to whom I refer.
I'm really looking forward to getting my hands dirty with the engine that's being used for Elemental. It's going to be fun putting it through its paces.
And out of curiosity, since I pre-ordered a little later, will I be dropped in on Beta 1B, or Beta Phase 2?
If you're not in it now, the next group getting in is beta 2.
I agree we should be able to see the behind the curtain mechanics and numbers of "why", but that it should be in the manual or somewhere deep in the game. I usually just jump into a game and play for a while until I get a feel for the structure of a game. Then I RTFM and figure out why things happen the way they do. So a bit of fun first, with a fair amount of getting hammered at the game, then research. I also want a game that is not necessarily for the masses of twitch gamers, but I don't want to feel llike and overwhelmed micromanager, either.
What the hell?! AoW 2. - SM was awesome. [Well the AI wasn't that good but ah well.] I agree on Civ4, the primitive combat system sucked. [Not only because it never had a tactical battle map, but because of the primitive unit mechanics = ATT/DEF/promotions. It's way too simple, and because of this, the combat results are very random...] This is why I say, that we need lot of unit attributes and/or abilities, because ATT/DEF/SPEED won't be enough.
AoW 2 just felt so barren. Each sphere had what, 7 spells? At least one of which was just a copy of another (Direct damage, I think). Each race pretty much felt the same. I'm guessing there were some pretty good mods out there, though.
Civ's combat system was fantastic sometimes. Warrior vs. Tank? Warrior wins without a scratch!
ATT/DEF/SPEED might be enough, depending upon how it's handled. I haven't actually managed to play it yet, but I imagine Stardock are working on adding in a good amount of unit abilities.
I hope that this was a sarcastic comment.
It was, don't worry. Although I've seen really silly things beat a tank before.
From the way the UI looks at the moment, it's more informative than some games. I can understand your wishes to postpone the economic beta for now, if you're wanting to polish the UI some more. Nothing destroys a fantastic game like a dire interface.
Frogboy,
Having just read this, you put a huge smile on my face. Having been a gamer since the early days of apple IIs, you have no idea how many times i have discussed this issue.
Keep up the good work.
-Zanzibar
Tell me about it. I would probably buy the game just for the "free" Temple of Apshai mod that Frogboy is going to distro.
So what your saying is Stardock Labor Force + User Interface Resourses = Time to Beta 1B
ummm....
That equation doesn't resolve the way you think it does. your equation suggests that The more labor force for example stardock has the greater the time to beta 1b is.
I just wish life, work, and my health hadn't all critted me at once so I could be more active.
Sammual
Brad,
It may be useful, as part of the beta, to have a screen where the calculations ARE explicitly called out. Not on the info card, and if you want to pull it out as the game gets polished, I can understand that. But at this point, as a beta tester, I would want to see how the software is arriving at its calculations in all the gory detail, as that helps me find bugs.
As an example, if I'm just seeing that it takes 25 turns to build an inn, and I need 15 lumber and 10 labor, even I can add 15 and 10. But if I spend 3 turns waiting, and my labor pool grows to 13. Now it should take 22 turns, for example. If the game still says 25 turns, then two things could be happening; either the software isn't taking into account my labor pool (or accounting for it incorrectly), or there is something else limiting my build time that I have no idea about, if I don't see the nitty gritty of the calculation. I can be more specific if you show me the data. Maybe a subscreen on a icon click that just brings up a listing of the equation used to do the calculation? You guys did this a little bit in GCII over some of the calculations, and it allowed for a lot better understanding of the drivers.
Winni
Agreeing with Winnihym, it would be very good if all displayed numbers had some sort of mouseover or other interface-accessible explanation that tells you exactly how the number was computed.
Basically just have a stream parameter (which may be null) or something on the computation functions and have those functions write their steps out to that stream if it's not null. I've seen game code do that before and it works pretty well and has a negligible impact on cpu time for the null-stream calls because the extra conditional checks are so many orders of magnitude lower than, say, graphics processing, pathfinding, etc.
I will add that having a robust 'cheat/debug mode' is also extremely useful for modding. So if you build it for the beta testers you can leave it in for the modders.
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