As we move towards release many of the assets in the beta make their exit. We shall miss them (well, maybe not).
The finished quests start to get put into place, the finalized notable locations begin to be inserted and the unreleased spell books and special abilities start to get implemented.
The beta program has largely been about testing out systems and mechanics. Some mechanics, like the per city level building limiter, didn’t survive. Others, like influence based resource control, replaced them.
Memory Problems
The area we need the most help on right now has to do with out of memory issues. This is something we’re very concerned about because it’s not easily repeatable (but very easy for those who run into it). So we’ll be asking users who run out of memory to get us their debug.err and their saved games so we can look at it. It could be as simple as some building in the game taking up some crazy amount. It shouldn’t be hard to track down something that eats up over 100 megabytes per turn (or so you’d think anyway).
The other area we’d like to hear from you are all your ideas, suggestions and wish lists. We want to make sure Elemental is something really special on day 1 as well as set the game on the path to evolving over time.
New Quests
One of the types of quests that I’m enjoying are the ones where you have to collect various items and bring them back to someone to get them made into a special item. I’m looking at adding the ability to trade these items between players so if the AI players have found Midnight Stones (for instance) and you need one more to get the boots of eternal dodging then you can trade with them for that midnight stone (and vice versa if they need something the AI can come to you and try to trade for it).
Special Abilities
Here’s a sampling of some of the special abilities we’re putting in:
Poison Shot Tangled Web Vengeance Sanctuary Deadly Bite Immunity Blink Rain of Stone Flame Strike Maul Sprint Savage Strike Confusion Drowning Strike Crushing Blow Dominate Hurricance Backstab Tremor Searing Attack Agonizing Fear
But if you have your own special abilities you’d like to see, go ahead and post them and explain what they do. Keep in mind, the more convoluted they are, the less likely they are to go in (e.g. Moonlit Dance – if full moon, target unit has a chance of doing a special dance that causes adjacent units to mimic dance draining them of their will to live if they have an intelligence less than 8 but greater than 4).
Anyway, we’re pleased with how the game is turning out. The only thing we’re sweating right now really is the out of memory issue.
I may hate myself for agreeing with him but I do ...
Sorry, I should have been more clear. Buffs of the same name (even different tiers. Eg, "Restoration I" and "Restoration II") should not stack. Buffs with similar effects should ("Restoration II" and "Protection", maybe they both give health regen, but Protection also does a defense bonus).
Again, 10 rings is a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE idea. No, it is not realistic. We are talking about magical rings that do crazy things like make you move faster. There is no realism involved. If you are a typical power-whore and seeking greater and greater power, yes, you might try to cram as many rings onto your hands as possible. That is an "in character" descition to make. However, there are "Rings of Power" and cannot simply be worn in massive amounts.
See:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PhlebotinumOverload
"No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head."
— Rule 22, The Evil Overlord List
The following abilities are basically the same except each 'Path' produces a certain land type when the unit moves around the main map. Thes are passive abilities. They are from AOW:SM
Path of Life - Where ever the unit moves the land around them spring life.
Path of Death - Where ever the unit moves the land around them dies
These are just two examples but you could put in more.
Also
Seduce - Ability to make the opposite sex do your bidding. Not as powerful as Dominate.
Flame Strike - unit struck takes fire damage and burns for 3 combat rounds
Holy Strike - Unit takes Holy damage
Death Strike - Unit takes Death damage
Poison Strike - Unit takes poison damage. Poison for 3 rounds. Weaken an ability of devs choice
Physical Stike - Normal physical damage
Cold Strike - Does cold damage. Chance to freeze the target hit for 3 rounds.
Also using the same types of damage above you can put into breath weapons that are short range cone attacks that has an area affect.
Fire Breath
Cold Breath
Death Breath
Holy Breath
Poison Breath
Other abilities:
Different degrees of healing. You can name them what you want but a primitive break down can be as follows:
Healing 1, Healing 2, and so on. Each one more powerful than the last. You can add Mass Healing for healing a whole stack. And this could also go like, Mass Healing 1, Mass Healing 2 etc.
Entangle - Plants hold the unit for 3 turns. Unit can do anything. This can of coarse be adjusted as Devs see fit.
Web - Same as above except that it can be easily burned and cannot be used with creatures on fire.
Trap - Similar to the above two abilities except after the 3 turns creature/unit trapped has a chance of becoming enslaved.
All the abilities that I listed above come from AOW:SM and I suspect that there were similar abilities in MOM. These as well as many more abilities in these games for hero's and units made the game very very fun to play and made tactical combat very memorable.
You know, what might be interesting is that the more rings (or maybe magical items in general you're wearing) the higher the chance of some random negative effect (similar to the randomness of the Clumsy trait). So there would be a risk/reward to piling on the magical items. Say maybe your essence takes a perma-drop, you lose all your mana, you lose some points off a stat, etc.
That way, there may not be a limit needed, but instead there's a built in scaling risk/reward effect after, say, 2 rings.
A better way to do that is just having forging or being able to combine or improve upon enchanted items (this is a feature coming in the Expansion being released in a year since it's following up on Forge of Making or whatever).
You can combine two rings together to get the combined bonuses (or 3/4ths the combined bonuses, or whatever). However there is a % chance of the forging just failing and losing the rings all together. If a person makes the risk and fails, they can always save-game rinse.
It's also probably easier to program 8D
% failure is also a dangerous game to play. Unless it is very very small it's more likely to fail then it is to not. Say, 5% chance of failure? By 14 turns you're more likely to fail than you are to not.
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