It has been one week since the last public build.
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
Screenshots:
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Tomorrow we’ll be putting up a list of what we’re looking for from the beta group. There’s still quite a bit to do here, I noticed, for instance, that Imperials can’t train their teams and raids and such (typo in XML) but hopefully beta testers will see a significant improvement from Beta 3A in terms of stability and game play.
The Beta should be up within the next hour.
You have not mentioned this imporant fix in the change log, but you corrected something and so I was able to start the game and do several turns on my NVidia GeForce 7800 GTX card. Tactical combat is still unusable on my computer (I see controls around the screen and white area instead of the map and units (if I click on autoresolve, the combat works and I get the summary dialog)), but it is great achievment in my eyes and I am more than happy you did such tremendous job.
Only at character creation. They're uncoupled once the game is going (at least they were before, but I didn't see anything in the notes to suggset that's changed, and I don't have 3b here).
That's the whole idea, yes. Getting a pool to spend on powerful stuff and being able to spend it is a lot more fun then getting a pool to spend on powerful stuff and needing to hoard it in order to not be a gimpy caster.
Warriors are already gimpy casters by having low Int and most likely not a lot of focused research in the magic tree (why do that if you're not focused on building a caster?). The problem is that a warrior spending essence is penalized less then a caster spending essence because spells are more important to the caster. Spells are a support tool for a warrior, and while that gets weakened, they can go cleave skulls without any penalty. Casters are focused primarily on casting, and they get worse at it by spending essence.
It's been talkd about so many times in so many different threads already that I just don't think you're paying attention. But here's one.
Fundamentally, the choice they gave us is easier for one type of sovereign then the other, and in both cases isn't very fun. Changing it would make the choices more interesting.
If warriors blow a bunch of essence early... so what? They still have some left to defend with, and really why would a game even get to those debilitating spells at all if I can take the army I just empowered (and grew by imbuing some farms to grow my cities) and come flatten you. Since you have to hoard your essence or be gimped as a caster you can't empower an army to counter mine... and my sword still works just fine.
It's not a matter of blowing all essence, it's a matter of warriors being able to blow some of it with no real detriment, which isn't true for casters.
It doesn't support several play styles. Casters can't go around spending it. If it was a pool of "big things" you can do that isn't tied to anything else, THEN it supports several play styles. Do you spend it on champions, farms, or hopefully volcanoes later? That's a more interesting and fun choice then "do I dare spend this at all and become gimpy?"
I could say the same thing.
This is a ridiculous comparison. You take one extreme and compare it to a non-extreme, then use that flawed comparison to say there's no problem.
The Warrior could also "INVEST a little essence in some intelligent champions to grow a crop of useful spellcasters" and not suffer any penalty to his combat ability for doing so. That result is flat out better then the exact same one made by the caster.
Furthermore, the choice being made isn't a fun one. The mechanic right now creates decisions, but for casters the best decision and the one the system encourages is the hoarding not-fun one. That's bad. Decisions should be between differnet fun and cool things, not between the cool fun thing and the "boring but required to be effective at your job" thing. Players like to make cool things happen. Untying essence just gives every sovereign a small pool they're encouraged to unleash in several interesting ways.
That's a better choice to give people if your goal is a fun game.
I've seen that happen, but I've also seen it work, where I could cast spells just fine. In any case, tactical battles in their current state I don't consider worth doing, no real gain over just letting the AI do it, and not visually impressive enough to serve as eye candy most of the time. Just going to assume (hope) this is just an early version and is still going to be worked on a lot.
Anyways, the game seems more stable now, with less crashes and no repeats of the crashing when I boot up the autosave, but I'm finding performance has gone to hell. with the UI suddenly being "laggy" and unresponsive a bit too often.
Well I founded my Kingdom, but cannot build a hut because I do not have 1 food production. This prevents me from expanding my city beyond a population of 10, and thus I can't expand my area of influence in order to build on the fertile land that is quite close to my capital.
Am I completely screwed if I don't build my capital right next to a food source?
Also, where can I even see my city's current food production level now?
I think unless you have farms or a building of some kind to produce food it is 0.
I think they ought to either make cities able to grow to size 2 by default, or add a building like "town center" which allows the city to grow to size 2 without requiring food. If the concern is spamming cities or cities growing too fast it can be made to require a certain number of turns worth of building materials.
I *do* like the fact food isn't flowing in the streets. I think the first city needs a tiny bump for those cities that don't have access to food supplies. I think there is a way to make land around your city fertile also.
With all the greenery though, the world doesn't look very barren or particularly infertile though. I guess its magic contamination.
I reported 3 different CTDs, 1 lock-up & 1 save-reload problem so far...0.9 is kinda unstable.
Anyone else notice you can build on all the resources whether you've got the technology to or not?
.9 seems very unstable. Bad memory leaks. More than half the time when I'm trying to load a save game, it will not load.
I was wondering about the tactical [battle] maps....I hope that the size of them are dynamic. -> Example:
Number of units [or groups] on the battlefield / size of the map -> <=10 / 12x12 ; <= 25 15x15 ; <= 50 20x20 etc.
Thank you Tridus for fielding Saije's latest 'it works fine' post.
Still playing around with 3b, but like I said, I will later post the math as to why the current system is nonfunctional in regards to essence(and several other things, you reeeeeeally need to take a numbers pass Brad).
I'm glad to see that everyone is finding tons of bugs and glitches etc. I know how great it makes me feel when testers for my mods report bugs to me upon testing my latest build. Good jorb elemental dev team, and all you testers aswell! With a bit of perseverance,blood,sweat and seldom(or not so seldom, depending on whether or not your emotions are about as stable as the current Elemental build) shed tears, this round of testing will usher on another great addition to the game!
uhg. Crashing tons but not generating any dump files.
I thought i had the same issue thing is my dump files were at the top of my folder and not at the bottom like normal. Kinda odd, but be sure sort your folder by date. May not fix it, I"m just saying i thought i had the same issue turns out i had looked right over them
As far as the wisdom change, it's a nerf for both casters and melees, hard to judge who will be affected more. Prepatch you could get 15 int (either as a melee or a caster), and it gave you three effects - stronger spells, more essence, more mana. It was such a powerful stat that any competitive player all but had to max it; it was imbalanced. Meanwhile wisdom could safely be ignored. Now int has only one effect (stronger spells) and wisdom two (more essence, more mana) - wisdom itself still does very little - which still leaves the problem of what the stat is there for, anyway, you could just let players raise essence directly instead of wisdom at character creation and get much the same effect.
So basically instead of getting 15 int and be done with it, you now need to get an extra stat (wis) to 15 for the same effect - it's a good change, int is less mandatory and wis is important (at least at character creation), a step in the right direction. Unfortunately it doesn't help wisdom after character creation, who will want to ever raise wisdom past 15? Meanwhile int is a bit weak now, its only effect being scaling of some spells - certainly a good thing for a caster to have, but I'm not sure it'll be worth raising when you level up (as opposed to essence, or hp/movement/other random stat).. hard to tell though, it's a close call. At worst int needs a bit better spell scaling now, it's close to balanced. Essence is still something casters can not afford to lose, and wisdom is still something you'll probably never want to raise when you level up, but at least you have a reason to get it at character creation now.
I expect melees will want to skip int now and max wisdom instead - gives them plenty of mana for buffs, essence to spare for spells that use it, and with so many buffs not scaling you won't be missing the int much. Casters will have to spend more points to get both int and wisdom, you could say it's a bit more of a nerf to them, but really they didn't have much to buy at character creation before anyway (with int being the end-all stat it was) - their problem is more one of scaling with levels and essence loss*, not lack of points at character creation.
[*Going to avoid getting back into the "essence loss as it affects melees and casters differently" debate, as it's been discussed to death before and Tridus just summed it up anyway.]
ya i have the same problem playing prolonged games where i basically run out of memory
1) Stardock rocks for that epic all-nighter they pulled to get the Beta out there. It speaks volumes that Brad himself stayed to the very end.
2) I still can't play the game, just hangs and devours CPU.
3) RE: essence
We came up with a pretty comprehensive list of where we wanted to see Essence go here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/383086 - by comprehensive I mean we even included the ideas we didn't like.
I am also fond of the essence suggestions that arose out of this thread, such as:
Delink it from the mana cap. Mana is separate from Essence and your cap is determined by other stats.Spell power is determined by the spell cast * (1 + Essence/20). Every five points of essence could increase damage by 25% (adjust as necessary). Casters without essence obviously can still cast spells, but they are weak spells. Do this with duration and other factors as necessary.
I also really like "Essence is the points" for building characters.
glad to see it isnt just me, im crashing more now than in B2 and theyre pretty random crashes too
I'd like an easier way to submit bug reports... something small and built-into the forums that lets me upload the log and type a small blurb. Creating new posts on the forums, installing Dropbox (which I refuse to use) and so on is a high barrier when it's a decent amount of work.
If you let me submit a bug report in 30 seconds, I'll do it.
Yeah, it was very much a "just one more bugfix" scenario last night.
Ok I downloaded the Beta yesterday when it it came out, and it worked fine... (by fine I mean it crashed alot but I can deal with that it was WORKING). For whatever reason I got it into my head that today I was going to upgrade to windows 7. So I formated my computer and installed windows 7. One of the first things I did once I was done was to download Impulse and then the Beta... Now when I try to launch it it goes to the loading screen and then a message pops up saying "Failed to download file. Please make sure your computer is connected to internet and you are logged onto Impulse and there is no firewall or anti-virus program blocking the game" I'll hit ok and the game will close... What should I do I tried turning off my firewall, I've made sure I'm on impulse and obviously I am connected to the internet.
Wouldn't the solution to not wanting to raise wisdom be to buff essence, make certain uberpowerful spells require multiple essence?
And yeah , this build is very unstable, and I don't think the balance is there at all yet overall. I do think you guys still got a bunch of work left to do- stability is probably the most important thing right now though- there's a fun game at the core, and patching will improve that- bugginess tends to leave a worst first impression.
Played for ~3hrs this morn with no crashes, and no slow-down until about the last half hour, so for me, this is the best build yet.
Also, I have to say that dragons are very cool, especially when you get one early in the game when everyone else is fighting with clubs and leather armour
Thanks for all your hardwork putting BETA 3-B. You guys will nail down stability issues for the final game, so I will not act like a jerk here.
All of my windows XP SP3 systems (two different machine) having the same "unknown application error" as it creating a world (same thing happened with BETA 3-A.) So, it does not run at all basically. I am wondering what version of Direct X you guys use to create the game. All of my windows XP SP3 systems have the latest graphic drivers and direct X SDK. I check them every month. And they do have better spec than "Minimum recommeded spec" for Elemental.
For Vista SP2, it either crashes or graphic gets not readable only when it enters a tactical battle.
As far as the Main game play goes, it works great !!. No random crashes so far. Good work Stardock !! Thanks for changing the "Spell" UI. I am very happy that you guys actually listen what we say here.
I will test it at windows 7 (x86) in couple of days.
Any plan on chaging "Equipment" UI to look like a Diablo III or WOW by any chance?
For me, this build has been the most stable, less memmory leaked build for the last month or so.. I've been able to play for over an hour with out no "turn off my computer crashes".. Not even a CTD!! Good job guys.. This is just getting better and better.. I would call Elemental: War of Magic.. Not only a game, but a GEM!!!
some feedback from my 3b games
- i think there is way too much loot in the world...there is so much stuff lying around (and especially also popping up newly) that you hardly have the time to collect that all...and i really didnt care anymore... treasures should be something special, scarce, something you are really happy to find in the beginning because it gives you some starting ressources - as was in mom...i also dont like at all that new treasures pop up during the game...sometimes every spot around my city was crowded with a new treasure...
- tactical battles in their current state - waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to slow and boring...there were a lot of battles when autoresolving didnt cost me 1 life point but in tactical battles i died every time...besides tactical battle takes for hours to kill a simple bear...thats just extremly boring
- i like the way the new city building works but get the feeling it still needs improvement... in its current state its rather important to build a lot of cities to get the nice spots early on and not really important what you really build in the cities, in my last game i had like 5 or 6 cities, for the first 2 i cared what to build, for the others i just expanded as quickly as possible to get the bonus... i dont really like the bonus you get when a city gains a lvl.. doesnt seem to make a lot of sense to me - why would you recieve this certain bonus? a general bonus because of the increased poupulation would make more sense and IF you want to keep that system, you should always show what the last bonus was you choose (i dont get anyway if the chosen bonuses stack or not) - the thing i dont like about the new process is, that building and expanding the city should be rewarding by its own more, now its mostly rewarding by the landscape around you
- magic system - needs a lot of improvement...first of all, i think it is buggy, to gain a lvl or learn a spell - sometimes it says it takes 20 rounds, but the counter moves back and forth 20, 19, 18, 22, 17, 23, 22...????? it sometimes took over 50 rounds when it said 20 and i did never learn some spells... the whole spell learning and gaining lvls feels way to technical right now and not mystical enough... i also dont like that you can only have 1 summoning of a type - i would like a system like mom better that a summoning is associated with certain upkeep costs. I also think there should be some kind of bonus if you specialize in only 1 spell book over dividing your knowledge onto several spellbooks - by gaining access to better higher lvl spells... there should also be more options regarding a spellcaster for the customization of your sovereign
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