We went to the reptile show this weekend.  We picked up a male and female Panther Chameleon.  The female, I believe is already ready to lay eggs. So I’m scrambling (no pun intended) to learn how to deal with that.

So the male (left) is like a peacock. It’s all colorful and impressive to attract females.  The female (right) I think is pregnant.  The question is how to tell if she’s ready to lay eggs or not.

I was on this week’s episode of Windows Weekly with Mary Jo Foley, Leo Laporte and Ed Bott.

You can listen to our antics here:

http://twit.tv/show/windows-weekly/323

Been playing a lot of Company of Heroes lately.  One feature I really really like is the Automatch  vs. AI feature.  So it gathers a random group to go up against a set of AI players. It’s remarkably fun.

Anyone have this yet? What are your thoughts?

I wish I could take credit for this but I saw the loot back DLC for Legendary Heroes today.

What astonished me most was just how much better the game can look just with improved artwork.  That is, give units better (visually) armor, weapons, and other goodies and it really shows off how advanced the engine is.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-08-07-john-carmack-joins-oculus-as-chief-technology-officer

If you’re no familiar with the Oculus Rift, it’s essentially a headset that allows the viewer to see a true 3D virtual world.  We have one here and it is a very neat thing to demo.  You can, while wearing it, look in all directions and see a true virtual world. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Unfortunately, right now, it makes a great demo but everyone who has tried it gets a distinct sense of motion sickness. You definitely wouldn’t want to wear it for more than a few minutes.  Perhaps whatever causes that is something that John Carmack can help solve since it is extremely interesting technology with a lot of potential use beyond gaming.  It’s cool enough that it’s one of the things we always show it to people when they come visit it.

I so do love the Internet. I really do. 

Only on the Internet can “some guy” tell you how you should be doing a job that you have obviously succeeded at far beyond their wildest dreams.

Ok, saw this.  Was surprisingly good.

3.5 out of 5.

Much better than the original Wolverine Origin movie. 

Have you seen it? What do you think?

My gift and curse is that I don’t require a “normal” amount of sleep. After 4 or so hours, I wake up, full of energy for the next day.  It’s come in handy when it comes to being productive but it's gotten me into a lot of trouble as well as I can almost always respond more in a “debate” than someone else giving the impression that I’m obsessing on something when in fact I just have…well, more time available to invest in something.

With that introduction, let me introduce you to one of my favorite sites of all time:

http://www.politicsforum.org/images/flame_warriors/

Which flame warrior are you?

Greetings!

So here we are! July 2013.  Next month will mark the 3 year anniversary of the launch of the first Elemental game!

2010: Elemental: War of Magic

2012: Elemental: Fallen Enchantress

2013: Elemental: Fallen Enchantress – Legendary Heroes

Could we worse. Could be like Star War: Episode 2: Attack of the Clones!

So where do we stand?

Legendary Heroes v1.3

We are still working on v1.3.  The AI got a major overhaul for v1.3 and so there’s a lot of play testing in this.  In hindsight, redoing the monster behavior and the player AI for the same version probably was a bad idea. But in the long run, it’s better to get this out of the way so that players can feel like the world makes more sense.

One nice little touch in 1.3 is that the AI will inform you when it’s cast an offensive spell (see below):

A lot of the AI updates in v1.3 have to do with handling path finding and massing of troops.  There’s been some new internal APIs programmed in that have made it a lot easier for the AI to put together more effective armies.  The AI will also interact more with the player.

For those who play on below normal difficulty levels, have no fear. While the AI will be more “intelligent” we are lowering the resources that they get a bit and making them make fewer decisions per turn so that they aren’t so overwhelming.

Next up for Fallen Enchantress

We have some stuff in the works but it’ll be awhile before we’re ready to announce it.  Fallen Enchantress will continue to go forward with meaningful updates that we’re funding with the DLC purchases.  The DLC system turns out to be a good system as players are able to get more optional content which in turn lets us keep adding new features to the game itself.

v1.4 will probably focus on some UI and performance related items and v1.5 will (I hope) be the big diplomacy update. 

Beyond Fallen Enchantress

There’s a lot more we want to do with the Elemental world.  We debate regularly about what we should name future things.

I.e. Elemental II? Fallen Enchantress II? Elemental: Something New? Or a completely new series?  Tell us in the comments what you think.

Multiplayer

We have a lot of requests for this.  Here’s the basic issue.  The tactical battle system in the Elemental games was not written in a way that allows for multiplayer. All the actions in it happen within its own box. The short version is that all the tactical battle stuff would have to be rewritten, from scratch, to have the tactical battles happen in multiplayer and that’s just not going to happen. That would be extremely expensive for us.  It’s not that we don’t think there should be multiplayer. It’s just a cost/benefit ratio (not just in terms of dollars but in terms of human assets that would have to be taken from other projects). It’s not something I’m happy about either.

More DLC

The DLC has been doing extremely well. Thank you for your continued support! We have more on the way.  The next one we have in mind is called the “Loot pack” which is just adding a ton of new items to the world.  If that does well, there’s more spells and equipment that could be added to the game world as well. 

It would be amazing if we could keep making free Fallen Enchantress updates for years to come with optional DLC paying for it. Talk about a good deal for players.  I’d like to see the kinds of feature improvements to Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes that you’d normally see in an expansion.  The biggest problem then comes down to naming (i.e. do we need to come up with Fallen Enchantress: Infinite Edition or something someday? Give us your opinions there).

Anyway, we are just beginning still with the Elemental universe! Stay tuned!  We would love to hear your thoughts on the game name issues (in terms of making it straight forward to new players).

There's a great line in Atlas Shrugs that goes like this: "You concluded I was the safest person in the world to spit on because I have power over you and that I would be tied by the fear of hurting your feelings by reminding you of it."

Our society seems to have taken that view en-masse in recent years.