Yesterday Kay, the boys and I went to the Reptile show. We didn’t come away empty handed:

My son Ryan got this Gecko.

Alex got an iguana.

My daughter Ashley got a baby Red footed tortoise:

And I got an adult red footed tortoise:

These were taken in the conservatory, don’t worry about the snow outside. The floor tiles are heated to 78 degrees.

Poor Deb (my wife). I always tell her that by marrying me she’d end up with a bunch of critter loving kids.

Ashley watering the plants.

Recently I had teased some friends of mine from Firaxis about Civ V not having a separate defeat screen if you lose because another civilization launches their space ship.

But then, last night, I’m playing Fallen Enchantress and another faction casts the Spell of Making (basically Elemental’s equivalent to the space ship victory).

And what screen comes up? Yep, the generic loss by conquest screen.

I suck.

(Alex – 16 year old son, Ryan – 12 year old son, Debbie – wife, me are looking out the window at all the mouse trails under the snow)

Debbie: That’s pretty cool

Ryan: You know, this family is pretty weird

Alex: Shut up and get ready to go to the Lizard show [we’re about to leave to go to a reptile show]

Lest you think Legendary Heroes is going to get all the fun, plain old Fallen Enchantress is getting a ton of love too.  We’re working on 1.3 and wow. I don’t want to oversell it but gameplay wise, this will be the biggest change since the pre-release builds IMO.

Where do I start? Let’s start with Diplomacy.

Diplomacy

IMO, the biggest weakness of Fallen Enchantress is the diplomacy system.  There’s still a lot of stuff that could be done here but my biggest beef has been the way the AIs interact with players and you.  One minute they’re your buddy and the next they’re declaring war.

Now, the schizophrenic behavior of AI players is nothing new. Heck, multiplayer games are much worse in that regard.  But it’s one area that single player games can be much better at. 

I tinkered around the edges in 1.1 and 1.2 but ultimately decided it had to be tossed out.  Sometimes, you have to nuke the system from orbit.  And so the 1.3 diplomacy system won’t really seem different at first glance but under the covers it’s a whole new world.  First, the AI no longer “calculates” relations. Instead, it fills a bucket of love (or hate) that gradually changes over time.  Because it’s now a bucket (that means your history with them matters) there’s a lot of interesting behind the scenes “stuff” I can do. 

Unfortunately, most users won’t even be aware of these changes but I think the expert players will.  For instance, AI players will be more inclined to offer peace even if they’re stronger. That’s because it’s not calculation relations, it’s looking at your history together and the history of others.  So it’ll look at what is in its best interests overall.

Smarter

The AI is quite a bit smarter.  The problem with these games is that it’s hard to have the AI be “smart” if the designer isn’t that good at the game.  I’ve gotten a lot better at the game thanks to those players who post YouTube videos of their strategies. I incorporate those into the AI (and use them myself).  For example, you very well may get creamed by the AI getting the Forge of the Overlord (spell of mastery victory) as a lot of players win that way and the AI focused too much on conquest.

Balance

We’re also doing a lot on the balance front.  One of my pet peeves is how many “empty” turns there are.  It’s a habit we brought over from GalCiv II that we’re curing (or starting to cure) with v1.3 of FE.  Things will definite “move” a bit faster.

For instance, the differences between Towns, Conclaves, and Fortresses has been significantly increased.  Towns provide a lot more gold. Conclaves a lot more research. And Fortresses a lot more production.  The AI has the advantage here because it’s able to calculate the right balance based on looking at other players (you can look at other players too but most human players don’t – but it’s fair game to the AI since we let you look at the other player stats).

World Generation

1.3 is the first version with procedural tile yield support.   That basically means that the map generator will look at a lot of other factors when deciding the tile yield of a given tile is.  The result is a lot more variance.

FUN!

Generally speaking, FE 1.3 is just a lot more fun.  That said, the best way to make the game more enjoyable is to get more units for each side.  The AI doesn’t design its own units. It uses what you create. The more units you give a faction, the smarter the AI gets.

Why?

So why are we putting so much effort (and hence $$$) into making Fallen Enchantress even better? Well first, it’s important that Legendary Heroes be distinct. Legendary Heroes is an expansion pack. It’s not supposed to make the game funner by “fixing” things in FE.  It’s about expanding on concepts already there and adding new ones. FE 1.3 is about taking an already fun game, taking feedback and what we’ve learned and polishing it. 

I’m pretty excited for 1.3 to get out. I don’t have a date yet. My guess is probably in 2 weeks.

Spell of Making: DEFEAT

Ultimately in my test game, Pariden won by casting the spell of making.  I’m requesting some tweaks so that there’s more warning when the various factions are constructing the towers leading up to it since this caught me by surprise and I only had 10 moves to do something about it.

I’ve seen a couple of articles that argue that real time strategy games (RTS’s) are “dying”.  They’re not. They’re waiting. Waiting for the adoption of the hardware to implement the next generation RTS designs.

Hardware drives innovation

It is easy to forget how closely tied video game innovation is to the technology that it runs on top of.  We didn’t even have “first person shooters” until Castle Wolfenstein 3D because the computing horsepower wasn’t there.  The hardware drove the creation of an entire new genre of game.

Another hot market is “MOBA” (mobile online battle arena). This first got started as an RTS mod called Defense of the Ancients (DOTA).  But this market only came into existence once low latency, high speed Internet became mainstream.  It’s not as if the concept for MOBA had eluded game designers.  Popular MOBAs like League of Legends, DOTA2 and of course the much anticipated Sins of a Dark Age are premised on players having high quality network connections.

We have done everything we can within 2 GB of memory and 2 cores

So what about real-time strategy games? Why has their design stagnated? The answer is that developers have pushed their designs about as far as they can go with the current hardware. We’ve been stuck with a 2GB memory limit for over a decade and limited to 2 or less processors (cores) for longer than that.

Strategy game designers regularly quip about first person shooters and MOBA game hardware requirements “Must be tough having to mange and render 4 units all at the same time…”

Demigod has amazing visuals because it can – as a MOBA, it doesn’t have to have as many units in the world

Gas Powered Games made one of the most ambitious RTSs of all time – Supreme Commander.  They also made the first stand-alone MOBA – Demigod.   The graphics of Demigod go far beyond what’s in Supreme Commander at a fraction of the budget. Why is that? Because Demigod didn’t have to deal with hundreds of independent units running around at once which reduces memory use.

The gorgeous visuals and detail in Ironclad’s Sins of a Dark Age also mean fewer units in the world in order to be compatible with most PCs

The bane of game developers: No matter how much memory you have installed on your computer, 32 bit games can only “see” 2GB.  That’s a limitation put on 32-bit processes in Microsoft Windows.

Ironclad’s Sins of a Solar Empire series pushes RTS’s about as far as they can go on the current hardware

I think most gamers would be shocked at how quickly memory gets consumed today.  The icon for your favorite game probably uses more visual memory than many DOS games did. 

What would a next-generation RTS be like?

Are you an RTS fan? Imagine what a truly ground breaking RTS would be like. Huge scale? Lots and lots of units? Huge armies battling it out on screen with amazing graphical fidelity? Throw in some innovative features to make managing these units really intuitive and compelling? It’s technically possible to do it, you would just have a hard time making money because most of the market wouldn’t be able to play it yet.

As a publisher, I get to see a lot of really innovative game designs cross my desk.  There’s no shortage of innovative RTS designs. They just can’t be made profitable yet – their design requirements revolve around a player with DirectX 11, a 64-bit Windows OS and 4 cores (minimum). They could do their innovative design with much lower visual fidelity and get most of what they want but then it becomes a “budget” title.

After all, can you imagine what would happen if you tried to make some sort of City simulation game today? People would expect to be able to zoom in on individual citizens and have breathtaking visuals but also expect it to take place on some giant map.  The designers would have to either have to make the map you play on be really small or cut down the amount of detail or cut down the visual fidelity of the world/buildings (or a combination of all 3). It would be very difficult and expensive to pull off right…

Chris Taylor’s Total Annihilation, arguably still the best RTS ever made

Third Phase RTSs

We’ve been through two phases of RTS’s already.  The first phase was the DOS and early Windows era games.  Dune, Warcraft 1/2, Dark Reign, Starcraft. Sprite Based.

The first game of the second phase I’d argue was Total Annihilation. Even though it didn’t make use of 3D hardware, it was the first game to deliver real-time rendered units.  Think of the second phase as the age of 32-bit, 3D RTSs. Supreme Commander, Warcraft 3, Sins of a Solar Empire, Starcraft 2.

In both phases, the hardware drove the design of the RTS.  Nothing highlighted the difference between Phase 1 and Phase 2 more than real-time Strategic Zoom. Strategic Zoom gave players the ability to zoom out and control their armies in a truly strategic way or zoom in and take control of individual groups. If Ender’s Game was, ironically, an RTS.  You can assume that players will expect these kinds of features at a minimum going forward.

The third phase games can be broadly described by the technology under them: 64-bit memory, massively multithreaded. And these 3rd phase RTSs will be breathtakingly beautiful to look at, have amazing scope and micro AI (sophisticated rules for units interacting with one another without human involvement) that is astounding. 

Publishers aren’t approving these designs not because there isn’t demand. There is. The problem is you can’t make a game that only a fraction of the player base can currently play.

They’re coming…

According to the Steam Hardware Survey of January 2013 over 40% of users now have 4-core (or more) machines. DirectX10/11 is mainstream and almost 70% of users have 64-bit machines.  Not good enough. Not yet. But almost.

Uber Entertainment is working on Planetary Annihilation which might be the start of 3rd phase of RTSs

Keep a close eye on the specs of games. Be looking for when games explicitly require a 64-bit PC and DirectX 10 or later as minimums. Once that has become mainstream, it’ll be a race by studios to position themselves. 

The RTS game concept is compelling. It works as a single player experience and can be played as a multiplayer game. Gamers want these games. They’ll pay for these games. But they also have to be measurably superior than what’s already out on the market. To do that, the hardware has to catch up. The good news is that it’s almost ready.

If you haven’t seen Jon Shafer’s new project, At The Gates, check out its Kick Starter page.

Here’s the basic concept:  The Roman Empire is failing. To those who have lived during the glory of Rome, it may seem like the end of the world. And they’re right – it is the end of their world but it is the beginning of our world.

To my knowledge, no game has tackled this very interesting time in western civilization.  You aren’t Rome. You’re a barbarian. Or more aptly, you are placed in the role of the overlord who will ultimately set mankind on the path that leads to the world we live in today. Of course, you’re not alone. Others see the fall of Rome as an opportunity to carve out their own empire.

For the purpose of full disclosure, Jon’s a friend of mine and has spent the last two years helping Stardock create a better game studio. For years, our company produced and published PC games but they were always in the shadow of our “real” business (PC software – things like Fences, WindowBlinds, Start8, ObjectDock, etc.). So the game studio at Stardock never evolved as a traditional game studio. That’s what Jon came in and helped do that.  Thanks to his help, we’ve delivered two solid hits in a row (Fallen Enchantress and Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion).

After Fallen Enchantress came out and was successful, Jon had the idea for a truly remarkable new game concept. At the same time, Jon was the leading voice here on a straight forward proposition: In the age of digital distribution and Kickstarter, can a guy and a few friends make a hit PC game independently?

Thus was born Conifer Games.

I could list many reasons why it’s important that this game be successful. But I’ll only list the one reason it will be successful: It’s going to be an awesome game!

Jon still does consulting with us and Stardockians are helping out on the project in our off-hours.   But think of the ramifications for potential game developers everywhere: If this project is successful, it’ll mean that the market has evolved back to being able to support games that live (and die) purely on their game design and not whether they have a multi-million dollar budget.   This will be a huge win for gamers.

So go check it out. If you’re remotely into history, you will almost certainly like what you see.

Without clicking on the thumbnail, what differences do you notice between the two? Not in terms of what units appear on what. But in terms of general visuals.  One of the things we’ve done with Legendary Heroes is revisit the underlying lighting and shadowing engine in Kumquat.

Earlier this year, we got a visit from Intel who brought forth many new tools that we’ve used to have our cake and eat it too – Legendary Heroes has a faster graphics engine than Fallen Enchantress does. We’ve backported as much as we could of this into what will become FE v1.3 but much of it is unique to Legendary Heroes.

These screenshots show how important lighting is not just in terms of making things "pretty" but in terms of controlling what game elements you want to have stand out.

Here are some screenshots we’ve taken for Legendary Heroes that I wanted to share with you guys:

In this one, we’re showing off the complex shadows. It’s really surprising how much easier it makes playing the game when you can see your units pop better.  This is still early but this is the direction we’re going.

It also shows the updated mini-map. We’re still thinking about what color the base map should be (it’s tan in this screenshot). We decided to stop showing terrain (forests/mountains) since what users mainly want to see is the relative position of units, towns and territories.

This is a fairly big game play change.  In FE, what traits you get to choose from are somewhat luck based.  Here, the player is presented with a tree that they can then choose to upgrade via different paths.

When a player’s faction gains enough fame, two champions will come forward and demand that you choose between them. The eventual goal here is to make sure every champion is very different from one another so that which ones you pick will significantly affect your overall strategy.

This is a screenshot that shows off the new lighting and shadow changes.  We’ve very much gone over to the point of view that we should focus on making the game elements obvious even if it’s at the cost of “art”. 

For example, we got rid of ground cover since it served no game play purpose.  The final game should look substantially better even still.

There are going to be riots about tactical battles. My answer is: Tough. Derek and I are doing them the way we want and not how we imagine other people want them.   They are vastly funner (IMO).  So why do I think some people will hate these? Because the tactical battles get going immediately. 

On most maps, there is melee contact in the first turn. the units aren’t spending 2+ turns trying to run to each other. If you don’t want your archers massacred, you better have melee protectors for them. They’re not going to get 4+ turns of free shots at them. Without melee guards, they’ll be getting hits within a turn or two.

Now, I think most players are going to very much like the changes to tactical battles. First, there’s a lot more strategic variety on each map.  More special abilities come into play and more of the skill will come from how you handle your units rather than feeling like you have to game the “first hit”. Initiative matters vastly more now too.

The tactical battle improvements are my personal favorite change over FE.  FE tactical battles are a form of torture now.

This screenshot is more polish than new.  It’s going to get more polish before release but the idea was to try to begin making each of the path choices more meaningful and fit a more distinct path than before.  To do that, we felt we needed to make sure players had a better understanding of the importance of that choice so that we could justify having these choices have more dramatic strengths (and weaknesses).

Full priced Stardock title releases of the last 5 years as measured on Metacritic.

One of these is not like the others.

Some people were reporting corrupted saves and other problems with v1.20. Others have complained about AI and performance.

So here's the build I made this weekend called v1.29frog. It's from my machine. It's not official but you can complain about stuff here in this post.

Update!

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8051911/FE-129toad.zip

Specifically, I am looking to see if it solves the problem with corrupt autosaves. The AI should be better too but hard to tell if people will notice.

NOTE: You unzip this into your existing FE directory (replacing the EXE already there).