So far is to run it via Parallels on the Mac. In that setup, on a MacBook Pro with the way MacOS X Mountain Lion handles full screen it actually almost works. Now if there was only a way to make the charms bar less obnoxious.
If you're running a 32-bit Windows XP machine and would like to significantly improve the performance of Fallen Enchantress (and probably other games as well) you can configure it to see more memory than the default 2GB.
Here's how:
http://www.gidhome.com/gid3gb/index.html
Specifically:
Configuring MS Windows XP: add the flag /3GB to the Boot.ini file. To do this just open the Control panel, click on the System icon, on the Advanced options panel, then press the Configuration button of the Start and recuperation section. In this window click on the Edit button inside the System start section and the Notepad will pop-up with the Boot.ini file opened. In this file there should be a line like this:
Before:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
just add the /3GB flag at the end, like:
After:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /3GB
Now save file and reboot
Greetings! With release comes a lot of new people to the forums. We've created quite a community here over the past couple of years we hope to keep the forums a fun and interesting place for people to discuss topics related to the Elemental game universe.
Below are the rules in no particular order that we ask people to respect and with my own commentary with them as to why they exist.
That's it. Just 5 things. We reserve to lock posts or even hide posts that violate these rules. We'll also occasionally rename post titles in order to make them more specific.
Only 4 days left!
So let's talk about..The Fallen Enchantress.
Originally, we were going to have a button that said "campaign" and the user would play through it and that would be that. But instead, we've renamed it "Scenarios" for two reasons.
First, because we wanted to pave the way for additional scenarios in the future that could be added in without needing some "expansion pack". After all, the Fallen Enchantress campaign was created using the built in modding tools. There's nothing stopping modders from making and sharing their own scenarios and we wanted a UI that would support that.
Second, because the campaign plays so differently from the sand box game, we didn't want new players to think of the campaign as some introduction to the game. The Fallen Enchantress plays far more RPG-ish (it's all about your champions and characters). It's very fun but very different from the main game.
A long long time ago...
There was born a young girl who could tell the future. So powerful was she that the Magi put her in a secure place where great kings could come to ask her advice. When the Titans came, they destroyed her temple and put her into a deep sleep for the day when all their foes were vanquished and they could exploit her power for themselves.
Of course, the Titans were eventually defeated resulting in the cataclysm that broke the world. But the curse on the Oracle remained and so she has slept for an entire age of the world.
In the west, Queen Procipinee, heir of the King of all the Western realm, recognized the signs that pointed to an old prophecy of the rise the Empire of Sorcery.
Procipinee seeks to unite the realms of the world under her banner and fears the rise of any rival powers. To thwart this prophecy, she has sent her greatest champion, Relias, into the East to find the Oracle, release her from the curse and find a way to avoid the world being ruled by an Empire of Sorcery. She has told him to seek our her vassal, Kraxis for aid as well.
Stardock's Jon Shafer is the designer of the campaign and fantasy author, Dave Stern, wrote it. And here is a preview of it, shown publicly for the very first time...
As someone who has played PC strategy games since, well, since there's been PC strategy games to play, the thing that often stifles me is the late game.
Often times, strategy games will bog down due to sheer wait time between turns or just collapsing under their own weight in micro management.
Fallen Enchantress attempts to solve this through the use of a multithreaded game state architecture. What this means is that while you're taking your turn, a bunch of different things get spun off into their own threads. That is, the game multitasks within itself to speed things up.
We did this with Galactic Civilizations to a degree -- there was a background thread that handled the computer players turns. But in the age where people have multiple CPU cores, we can do so much more.
So each turn, the game will create a thread for each player which includes all their stat updating, AI strategizing and general garbage collection. The more cores you have, the faster it'll get.
Below is a video of very late game. If you're familiar with 4X strategy games, note how fast turns move despite there being hundreds of turns and 3 other players in the game.
Fallen Enchantress will be released on October 23rd.
Headline: Obama has a 3 point lead over Romney in the latest ABC/Washington post poll.
As a stat nut, I like to look at the internals. So here they are:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postabcpoll_20121013.html
Lots of interesting stuff in there. Especially when you get to the bottom:
Wait a second. So they changed their sample size since the September (pre debate) poll to give Democrats a +9 point advantage in likely voters versus a 3 point advantage of LV in September?
That seems odd.
Series of games with AI vs. AI. Special map (Arena) where each player has an equal shot.
Game and Winner.
More testing to come..
When games come out, one of the things that helps them pass the test of time is modding. It's a big deal to us and in 20 years of making games, we've never put so much effort into modding as we have in Fallen Enchantress.
Here's a video of me playing with the map editor today which comes with the game.
Elemental: Fallen Enchantress will be released on October 23rd.
Visit www.elementalgame.com to learn more.
There's only a week left! That's just so hard to believe that we're almost there.
Looks like there's going to be another public update tonight. They want to test out some installer improvements and...well since they were doing that, we snuck in some tweaks, fixes and I ninja-checked in some AI improvements.
The team that started Fallen Enchantress includes virtually everyone who made Galactic Civilizations II (and expansions). It's been a real joy seeing the team together again and teaming them up with Derek (Kael) and Jon (Shafer).
For me, it's been a much more enjoyable experience than anything I've worked on before. Having someone dedicated to the design and to the project itself has made a huge difference to both team morale and the quality of the game.
Just after lunch today, with my iPhone in hand, I went through Studio A's lab area and talked to some of the coders and artists. Here's the video:
One of the changes we've made for the final public build is that we've greatly reduced the costs or raising and lowering land.
Now, you can't use these spells to create mountains or make islands. That's not their purpose. What they can do, however is create shorter routes through mountain regions (lower land) and connect players to other parts of the world that aren't normally accessible (raise land).
This will become a particularly big deal after release when we start releasing map packs to supplement the random maps. In these map packs, the players (AI and human) will be able to explore larger areas if they make use of these spells (i.e. goodies and special quests hidden behind mountains OR by island hopping).
Here's a video that shows this off:
Elemental: Fallen Enchantress will be released on October 23!