Just want to keep people's expectations in line.
We are talking about a beta so let me walk you through some of the pain you can expect:
There will be crashes
The team has been working hard on making FE the most stable beta release we’ve done before. However, it will crash as this is the first build that will get widely tested in “release” mode as opposed to “debug” mode.
In particular:
(1) Loading games within games.
(2) Starting a new game within a game.
I spent today recoding parts of this and it “works on my machine” but accounting won’t let me ship my machine with the game.
Balance Balance Balance
We have a long list of balance changes that still need to be made. And let’s face it, a little balance change can change the game dramatically.
Performance
Anyone coming from War of Magic will be happy but we still have a lot of areas to go. If you want to maximize your performance, you’ll want to turn off pedestrians (the little people in the cities) and disable outlines. Those two cosmetics eat up a lot of frames. However, if you have the horsepower, you’ll be good. Make sure you update your video drivers just to be safe.
Anti-aliasing will definitely also slow things down horrendously depending on your config and resolution. The game is going to default to your desktop resolution. So if you’re like me at 2560x1440, think twice about turning on 8x anti aliasing.
Graphical Glitches
Anyone who has bought a PC game in the past few months knows this is an issue that has gotten a lot worse in recent times. Until we all jettison DirectX 9 (this is likely going to be our last DirectX 9 game, sorry XP users) you’re going to have a lot of people with unusual issues that we hope we’ll nail down with this beta as opposed to with WOM when the first “release” mode distribution was the release version (the beta versions all had debugging code which covered up various issues). With FE, the betas are going to all be release mode distributions which means it’ll be like you just got the “real” version. It’ll be harder for us to debug but we’ll manage.
MEMORY
This is a tough one but we really want to keep an eye on memory use. If you can keep task manager up and look at committed memory in the process list, we want to make sure it stays under 2GB so that people running Windows XP don’t have problems (if you’re running 64-bit the game will use 4GB). The game is large address aware.
Content
DO NOT judge the final game based on the content of the beta. New spells, monsters, goodie huts and quests get added in every day.
However: We absolutely want to reduce the number of city improvements in the game. Fewer, more interesting city improvements is the goal so feel free to suggest how we can consolidate what we have to improve on city differentiation.
PLAYER differentiation
The tech trees are pretty similar between different factions. As modders can tell you, this is a content issue, not a game issue. Right now, the objective of the base game is to keep both sides reasonably balanced and let modders go nuts if they want. However, we do plan to provide more tech tree differentiation as long as it makes sense (i.e. no different for the same of different). This has been one of Derek’s battle cries that he has convinced me on over the months.
The AI
The AI plays the game 100X better than say what it did in WOM. But I’ve barely touched the tactical battle code (which is still enough to make the tactical battles 10X better than in WOM since they were totally horrible in that game imo).
What we’ll need help on is strategies you’d like to see each player take. Like in GalCiv, each player in FE has its own strategy. We’ll be talking a lot about how to make it so Altar plays differently than Pariden in a way that players will easily observe. If armies end up similar on all sides, we did something wrong and will have to work at it.
There will be NO multiplayer
While internally we have multiplayer, we’ve turned it off. The release game won’t have it either. The reason is that tactical battles would have to be rewritten to support it (MP code needs to be message based but the tactical battles all call directly to internal variables which makes it easier to have greater performance but it means no MP). We decided it would be better to have no MP than gimpy MP for FE. Don’t bother arguing this point as it’s already been hashed out endlessly internally and it’s decided. We may bring it back in some future expansion but no promises because rewriting tactical is a non-trivial endeavor.
Lots of UI stuff is not in still
We have a victory screen still to go in that’s a pretty big deal. There’s a bunch of other stuff that will go in but by all means, if you have a UI request, post.
Modding and Campaigns are disabled
The beta is a sandbox beta. You will have to have an Internet connection to play the beta because we plan to be updating the XML data online so that players don’t have to download an update to the game just to get a balance tweak. It is not copy protection or anything like that. It’s for our convenience. The end result though is that modding won’t work because it’ll be using our online data.
Beta Reporting will be provided
We will be providing how to report problems here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/forum/1010
There is no NDA
The fate of the game is in your hands in the most literal sense. Because Elemental: War of Magic got such a bad rap (fairly or unfairly is irrelevant), we realistically cannot do a lot of marketing because every article is going to start with “After the ‘disastrous’ Elemental: War of Magic, Stardock hopes to make up lost ground, is it too late?” type stuff followed by comments like “Elemental? Stardock should just give up and make GalCiv III!” The only hope FE has is for people who actually have the game to spread the word IF THE GAME IS GOOD.
There’s no NDA so you can do whatever video you want or post about it or whatever. Do with it what you will.
Now, gotta get back to trying to figure out why particle effects are showing up in the FOW.
See you Thursday!
It is cruel and inhuman of you to dredge up these painful memories for me.
So we are going to have to buy an expansion to get multiplayer? Seems kind of like a cheap way to make money off people who already stuck around this long or am I just reading the OP wrong?
id already argued about this, the main reason i can explain you is this: the company decisions influence the ppl decisions
so KNOWING that civ is a mainly single player game make competitive players and team players not much interested in the first moment, then knowing the net and the code and everything in the multi part of the game sux make single players strategy lovers not interested in trying
no one was born loving multi gaming, you have to try, find something you like and then you become addicted and understand it
but since there was NEVER a user friendly civ enviroment ppl can never try withouth a long suffering
ofc then most the player base can not be interested in playing online
its like going in a hospital where there are injured soldiers withouth a leg and asking "would you prefer a tv to watch football games or a field to play it?"
we never had a good field of civ, so why would neutral players be interested in it?
there are many other reasons but its totally OT so lets not make this thread a civ
ps for guys talking about civ multi NO i told this so many times, i played since day 1 and it was a TOTAL MESS for nearly 1 year it was nearly unplayable, all hosted on crap gamespy, REALLY hard to just connect with 80% of players (in fact the common use was exchanging ip and trying a direct conn ) lag everywhere, random disconnect everywhere etc etc, only after the first expansion and with later patches it started to be playable
this talking just about basic things like joining a game then balance and interface and lobby etc was totaly absent too
There may or may not be MP in some future expansion. I'd like there to be a MP expansion since a lot of work (i.e. money) was spent on the multiplayer subsystems. Right now, we're concentrating on Fallen Enchantress and making sure our finite resources are focused on making that the best game we can.
brad responded.
Frogboy, can we have more cancer-inducing screenshots and videos while we wait?
I'm happy Stardock is dropping multiplayer support for FE in favor of devoting more time and resources to the overall experience. I generally dislike TBS MP; I doubt I would've even tried it. Now, for FPS and RTS games I love human opponents, just not for TBS.
After the tech demonstrations I prefer playing against Brad's AI rather than other people.
I'm pretty sure most of my friends are not multi-threaded!
Hi, 1991 called, they would like their post back!
Nope, brings back the good old days when I had all my hair and it was all original color.
I'm Not sure how I feel about no multiplayer. Though I don't really mind since most of my friend aren't in to TBS games, this is going to turn alot of people off. Specifically, reviewers. One of the only complaints about GalCiv2 after everything was said and done was that there was no multiplayer, and I think reviewers are going to remember that and you might get racked over the coals for that one. Not sure if that matters too much, and I'm sure you've thought about it, but I can just about guarantee that is what will happen. I actually think it might be a good move for the game for a few reasons:
1) I'd rather have an awesome single player game than a mediocre multilayer game( EWOM ) 2) TBS strategy game with multilayer almost have to be completely designed around the multiplayer aspect to work well. A good example of this is Civ III and Civ IV. Both games had multiplayer, but Civ IV was designed from the ground up for the multiplayer (from what I understand). It had excellent multilayer, but as a result the game was almost too streamlined for a single player experience. If FE hasn't been designed from the ground up for multiplayer then it might not be too great of a multiplayer experience.3) GalCiv II didn't have multiplayer and is still one of my favorite games
That being said. I have had incredible amounts of fun with multiplayer TBS games like the civilization series and some other, and my most memorable moments from TBS games are all from multiplayer. Something about conquering the world with a few buddies, and then turning on each other for an brutally fun late game provides a pretty unparalleled experience. I'm interested to see how this pans out. While I'm sure it will lend itself to better single player experience, it might turn some would be players off by not having multiplayer. And again, I expect you to take a big hit from reviews for no multiplayer, especially since EWOM did have multiplayer.
Can I execute the game from the floppy? Coz I don't have a harddrive...
Also could you consider adding EGA support? Kthanks.
I completely understand devoting resources to FE to make the game good, I was just concerned that if I ever wanted to play multiplayer that I would have to buy an expansion which would be very sad.
I feel that would be an unfair criticism. Stardock is making a single player game, not a multiplayer one; I don't see turning around and saying, "You don't have multiplayer thus you will be marked down," as being valid. It would be like criticizing TF2 or an MMORPG for not having a single player experience.
Of course, I agree that at least some reviewers will do this anyway.
“Elemental? Stardock should just give up and make GalCiv III!”
I still like GalCiv II, played it yesterday for old times sake.
My biggest problem with no MP part is, that I have pre ordered Elemental a year before release, I was here from first beta and also at release which was disappointing to say the least.
I do remember all the dev jurnals, and frogboy posts about MP, different leagues (which I have found stupid idea anyway) etc, but point is. I bought this game because it ment to have MP, but I have never really experienced it. And now, when I have waited another year and a half for FE which finally looks like as it might be game I wanted to play for a long time, I will not be able to.
I do feel a bit cheated. Now I suppose to get another expansion for free, which is great, but I would not mind to pay for it, if it was worth it. If that expansion would get MP in, I would be happy and fine with that. But simply saying maybe makes me sad.
And please if you ever include MP. Do not change game from SP experience. Simply make it work, and leave rest to players.
I'd gladly pay 1000 dollars for a mp exp of this game, if it turns out so good as it seems. And no reasons to change the gameplay because of mp. It's the SP gameplay we all want to see in MP too. No reason to superbalance everything, or make tactical battles be over in no time. Slow paced MP is delicious! I play Europa Universalis MP on slow speed. I have time to make food, going out for a cigarette etc. from time to time while playing, it's just great.
I am actually very happy with the no multiplayer decision. I for myself do not want to single player experience diluted.
As exited as everyone about the upcoming beta and planning to be on "sick-leave" next week
Since we (my spouse and I ) like to play together (hotseat, always allied) i am not that happy with no multiplayer. But then, maybe this is an option to implement which could be done without rewriting tactical combat?
I hoped the same for LAN too. Plz give us LAN and hotseat at least......
1. Jeez, no gravy?
2. Ah the good old days of Commander Keen. How keenly I miss them.
3. This might have been a problem in the good old days of commander keen and dial up.
4. Seems a bit high... maybe 1 frame per second, but I'm afraid we'd end up with less than 1 frame per second.
5. What? No Gravis Ultrasound support? BOOO! THIS GAME IS SH*T!
6. I have 604 KB free, is that enough?
7. Not touching that. It screws up my Doom.
8. Same, but Dune 2.
9. Mmm, no barracks? I guess its the war of the Librarians then.
10. No humans? Jeez. Again.
I am more concerned wit the general lack of Brothels and Taverns also no Dorfs that will take advantage of said institutions, plus the ones already mentioned.
also, why libraries? they have no booze in them... well, maybe the lamps but that is stretching and lamp oil leaves an ugly aftertaste.
Regarding Hardware, will there be support for CGA graphics? and will my game run on 640Kb of RAM?
2) TBS strategy game with multilayer almost have to be completely designed around the multiplayer aspect to work well. A good example of this is Civ III and Civ IV. Both games had multiplayer, but Civ IV was designed from the ground up for the multiplayer (from what I understand).
what the fuck are you talking about?
why you NEVER EVER played a online game and start telling about things you have no idea how they works?
civ was the SAME IDENTICAL GAME, only difference in gameplay was the turn chance to make all players move at the same time to make games faster, it was just an option anyway
apart from that the game was the same, and multi was crap as hell, with no care at all from developers with a shit net (gamespy hosted the worst on earth) and lot of problems
plz abstain from talking when you dont know a shit about arguments
. Stardock is making a single player game
well i dont want to interfere with stardock market strategies so lets remove stardock from the sentence
the point imo is that there is NO single player or multi player game
there is nothing like that
there is A GAME, stat
a game should work single player AND multi, always
even in a MMO there is usually a tutorial, or small starting campaign where you play alone to learn your skill or something
in fps or moba sometimes there are bot maps
and in supposed being single player games there has to be the chance to play with your friends or with random guys on the internet
its just how the world is now, its not a feature, its not like supporting a new OS, its just how it should, you want to play alone you play with ai
you want to play with friends you go online and play with them
also no one EVER asked for a different game with different balance or anything, everyone wants just the same game just not played with ais
Uh... are you talking about Civilization 4? Because its multiplayer aspects seemed to be solid and well received...
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