Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.
Published on December 15, 2011 By Draginol In FE Sneak Peeks

For those of you who really like video journals, here are some quickie videos I’ve  done this week.

Part 1: Around my fledgling Kingdom

http://screencast.com/t/Zi0XvYku0pWP

more to come.


Comments (Page 2)
2 Pages1 2 
on Dec 17, 2011

Wow. Just wow.

I've been patiently waiting for my cancer to start, and now I'm getting suspicious. Are you trying to hide a good game there behind you, Brad? Better not let me down again, I'm waiting for cancer, so you better deliver!

on Dec 17, 2011

I want to see combat.

on Dec 17, 2011

 

I guess the bakery does not reduce monthly maintenance cost by 1 Gildar, so please change the tooltip description.

+1 Maintenance

-1 Gildar per turn

...

 

I am back playing GalCiv2 right now (Dark Avatar, as long as Frogboy didn't find the time fixing the completely broken Twilight A.I.) and it seems that inconsistent or irritating descriptions have a long history in Stardock games. In GalCiv +10 for example can mean anything from +10 credits or whatever once, +10 monthly, +10% on a planetary base to even +10% galaxy wide. I hope someone takes a journey through all the descriptions in Fallen Enchantress when it is feature complete to get them coherent and unambiguous.

 

No offense, not even regarding broken Twilight. I trust in Stardock and am pretty sure Brad fixes the show stoppers as soon as Fallen Enchantress is out and shining.

 

on Dec 17, 2011

"A case holds an old spear, a veteran of many battles. Despite it's age..."

Typo - its not it's.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/its

on Dec 18, 2011

Sir_Linque
DsRaider, I think the resource bonus displayed on the tiles is actually the cumulative bonus you get from the tiles around that tile.

Ah, that makes sense.

on Dec 20, 2011

Nice job. Can we see it in HD?

on Dec 21, 2011


uhm... time for a part two? I've watched this one many, many, many times now

on Dec 22, 2011

I'm on PTO for six days, need beta or some new videos please!

on Dec 22, 2011

boy stop  ing!

on Dec 22, 2011

My Reply #14  is quite constructive... but no one has comment.   It means... it is good?  It is bad? or no body cares?

Curious!

on Dec 22, 2011

Climber
My Reply #14  is quite constructive... but no one has comment.   It means... it is good?  It is bad? or no body cares?

Curious!

I don't really care too much about these nitpicky details myself, but your feedback is indeed constructive and deserves discussion.  So I'll toss in my two cents worth:

Climber

1. In the video, the OK button is clicked many times due to new discovery (of itmes) and what not. This UI should be improved, by removing this OK buttom completely. Founding an item (and along with many other notication) need not stop the game flow at all. Obviously, the battle initiation box saying "Lord Relias is under attack!" is superfluous, remove it ASAP.

I don't mind message pop-ups if they are truly informative and tell me useful stuff.  But I do agree with you about the "Lord Relias is under attack!" pop-up.  To ease the transition into combat, this could be replaced with the map zooming to focus on the two opposing armies, along with a quick animation of the two sides initiating battle, followed by the pop-up asking if you want to auto-resolve or go to the tactical battle screen. 

Climber

At the bare minimium, this OK dialogue (or any notification) box should auto-fade after a few seconds. And there is option to customize how many seconds it should be.

I don't agree with this.  I like to take the time to read things, especially new messages that I haven't seen before.  Auto-fade is annoying if I haven't had time to finish looking at something yet.

Climber

Ideally, all kinds of notification should be presented as (pinnable) Event log. If not pinned (either by the game automatically or player manually) the notification will auto fade after a few seconds. The event log should either roll up/down one by one on the right hand side vertically on the right.

I like the War of Magic style event log where you click the event's icon to make it go away.  This is the same style as Civ 5, which I find works quite well.  No changes needed here.

Climber

2. Even the "Your Forces have Been attacked" should be consider auto-faded. But this need futher discussion/thought. I think this important dialogue is really still in 'alpha' stage. So, let's disucss.

No.  Why should this auto-fade? You need to make an important decision here: auto-resolve or fight manually. The grayed out cancel button is kind of weird though.

Climber

Certain mechanism for gamer ignoring unimportant battles is needed. Unimportant battle should just become pinned events in the event log, without player involvement. This make the game flows. I was always annoyed by time spent by unimportant battle.

That's the whole point of auto-resolve.

Climber

3. The Terrian inspector at the top-right is clutter. Move it to bottom right around the Map area. Offer more info, like what kind of "Grain/Material:: bonus it offers.

4. Fraction power panel is another clutter. Move it to where the Map is. Have a button called "Fraction Power", mouse over about that button will shows the power statistic.

I like all these, but I guess it depends on your point of view. I can see how some people might get annoyed by the "clutter".  There should be an option to hide these sorts of boxes, like in Civ 5.

Climber

5. About that "at least we got the cool spear"... It is more fair to have your cool spear dropped to the ground, when the champion got killed this turn by the spider. Otherwise, it is an cheesy expliot. Just send my cheap level1 champion to grab the Almightly Sword of the Moon Gods, let him kill by the gaurds but the sword will somehow get teleported back to my town.

Agreed.  This seems like it could be exploited by the player, and is not the type of strategy an AI would think of.  When champions get defeated, they should be forced to drop most (if not all) of their equipment as they make a hasty escape back to town.  To the victor go the spoils!  This would make people think twice about sending their champions on suicide missions.

on Dec 22, 2011

Climber
My Reply #14  is quite constructive... but no one has comment.   It means... it is good?  It is bad? or no body cares?Curious!

Don't take it personally. Everyone's too busy stuffing themselves full of food during the one month of the year it's socially acceptable to gain fifteen pounds. 

on Dec 23, 2011

ErikCurre, cool!

ErikCurre

Quoting Climber, reply 14
2. Even the "Your Forces have Been attacked" should be consider auto-faded. But this need futher discussion/thought. I think this important dialogue is really still in 'alpha' stage. So, let's disucss.

No. Why should this auto-fade? You need to make an important decision here: auto-resolve or fight manually. The grayed out cancel button is kind of weird though.

Quoting Climber, reply 14
Certain mechanism for gamer ignoring unimportant battles is needed. Unimportant battle should just become pinned events in the event log, without player involvement. This make the game flows. I was always annoyed by time spent by unimportant battle.

That's the whole point of auto-resolve.

First, to summarize my main point here. There are a lot of dialogue box is just 'informational'. As long as they are informational, I do not want to 'click' them in any way. I assume gamer will always notice it because gamer is watching the screen, so these dialogue should auto-fade itself without me reacting to it. If in some cases that I need to look back at what has already been faded away, I can browse the event log to take a closer look.

For why I want some of the "Your Forces have Been attacked" dialogue boxes to get the auto-faded treatment, it basis on the same principal above. There should be some unimportant battles that I don't really care about, e.g. some wandering spider is attacking my elder dragon. I should not even need to click the auto-resolve button at all. The outcome of the battle is just informational, not even worth my time to click auto-resolve.

The crux about this design is what is important, what is not.

on Jan 05, 2012

I have not been around for some time, so I have a question. When pinier was about to settle, one could see that each tile has some properties (I do not remember what are those, food and manufacturing?). So, it looks very Civilization-ish. However, I do not see people working tiles or tile improvements as in Civilization. So can someone explain mechanics behind those?

on Jan 05, 2012

MxM111, the way it works is that wherever you settle, your town gets a permanent food & material production bonus based on the 9 surrounding tiles. Different kind of tiles give different bonuses. Apparently rivers are especially good tiles. The properties you see on the tiles are the summed up bonus that you get if you settle on that tile.

Apart from this base bonus, to our knowledge the different tiles do not yield any other specific bonuses (but buildings might require to be on a river tile etc). So there are no tile improvements that you need to do after settling.

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