In preparation for the Windows 8 launch, Stardock has released a near-final version of its highly anticipated Start8 utility.

Start8 is a program that adds the Start button back to the Windows 8 desktop as well as provides a fully function post-Windows 7 style Start menu.

 

What’s New:

• Windows 7 style Start menu with Windows 8 enhancements
• Users can search for Windows 8-style (Metro) apps with it
• Users can pin Metro apps to it
• Full support for Jump Lists
• Unified Search
• Automatically matches color to the color of the taskbar
• Start button is now skinnable
• Users can boot directly to the Windows 8 desktop
• Optionally disable the desktop “hot spots”.
• Fast access to shut down, devices, music, documents, videos
• Supports WindowFX 5.1 startmenu animations (currently in beta)
• The Windows 8 Start screen becomes accessible from the Start menu
• Start menu size fully configurable
• Adds option for WinKey to show fullscreen Metro desktop.

 

Screenshots:

Post Windows 7-style start menu: Can “see” and interact with Windows 8 style apps.

Start button orb image can be changed

All installed Windows 8 style apps can be found by typing “Metro”.

Users can quickly access all their programs and shut down options

 

Download at https://www.stardock.com/products/start8

Hi guys,

We plan to release a 0.952 before heading to Beta 5.  Beta 5 will be purely about bug fixing and polish but we do have a number of significant bugs on our list that we plan to address prior to leaving Beta 4.

Here are a few selected ones that I've seen others report that are type 0 (prevent playing of the game).

1. Missing unit display in the sovereign screen and other areas.  This is a video card issue but we have worked around it in 0.951. Turn off anti-aliasing in the settings and it should work. Make sure you update your drivers.

2. Slow down in tactical battles.  This has not yet been fixed but we know what causes it. It's high on our list to fix. It is caused by a model leak in the terrain that causes each rendering to take longer and longer. We expect to have this fixed before we leave Beta 4.

3. Crashes (in general). These are an ongoing thing.  As we improve performance in the game, we expose bugswith the multicore engine we've developed. The more cores your system has, the faster Fallen Enchantress runs. Compare the end turn perf of FE to any other strategy game of similar scope and you can see the benefits (there's no "please wait" screen in FE)  However, if multiple threads are modifying a piece of memory at the same time, it will crash the game. This is a bug on our part for not correctly making a copy of the vector that was being modified. There aren't many of these bugs but they're in there.

4. Save game corruption. This should be fixed in 0.951. If you run into any problems, let us know.

All other bugs would fall under "need to fix in beta 5" such as balance or stupid AI tricks or stupid animation bugs.  However, if you are experiencing something NOT on the above list that is detrimental to the game functioning, post here.

As a reminder, the key bits of information we need are:

1. What OS you are running.

2. What video card you are using.

If you can share with us any other data, such as debug.err or a saved game (saved games are really helpful in balancing things btw), please share them with us.

I highly recommend using DropBox. If you don't already have it, you can get it here.

Just as we did with Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, the late stage betas of Elemental: Fallen Enchantress will be appearing on third-party digital distribution channels such as Steam and Impulse (GameStop PC Downloads).

We anticipate (but don’t promise) that the betas should go live on those services by this evening, EST.

For those of you just joining us, here’s  a video walkthrough:

 

For those of you in the beta already, here’s what’s new over Beta 4:

Features

• Added the Road Building unit design ability (Mancer only, Mancer Pioneer's start with it)
• Added the Road Building champion ability (requires Path of the Governor)
• Cities get 10% Unrest penalty if they aren't connected to the capital's ZoC
• New spell display when you mouseover spell perks on the levelup screen
• New Tactical Combat screen
• Auto-turn will no longer activate if you have an idle city
• Added the Arcane Veil spell (strategic, unit enchantment, the unit resists all spells)
• Added the Diamondskin spell (tactical, makes the unit immune to all physical damage for 5 turns)
• Added the Glory spell (raises faction prestige by 1, can be cast multiple times)
• Added the Heart of Fire spell (city enchantment, all units traied in this city get bonus fire attack)
• Added the Kill spell (high casting cost and casting time, victim has to save or die)

Fixes

• Memory fixes/optomization
• Fixed an issue with the Haunter quest
• Fixed an issue with Arneson not having a weapon
• Fixed an issue causing Alchemy Labs to give extra materials
• Fixed an issue where Slave Pens didn't have the benefits of earlier improvements
• Fixed an issue where melee attack effects (like poison) were applied even if the attack missed
• Fixed a 0 labor cost on Ereog's Tower
• Fixed the Guild Gorcer
• Added a default skin color to the monster faction so units spawned on quests aren't white
• Fixed an issue causing improvement auto-placement to sprawl out in a single direction instead of wrapping around the city
• Fixed an issue allowing players to skip movement costs if they right clicked in the tile during movement
• Fixed deadlock issues
• Fixed stuck turn problem caused by animation not syncing with moveable status
• Fixed bug where units would be running in place at the end of a turn
• Fixed bug where AI units would just be standing there running in place
• Fixed bug where a monster would be running to another tile when the player attacked
• Fixed the crash bug in tactical battles where the opposing unit had no defense
• Fixed path finding bug where a unit would move through a resource improvement (destroying it) to get to what was on the other side
• Re-did turns so that AI players move 1 player at a time (instead of all at once) which improves frame rate and eliminates weird chasing
• Fixed bug that caused a unit to think it was done moving before its animation was complete
• Fixed an issue where ruffians lair upgraded to umberdroth lairs
• Fixed some missing category issues on some spells
• Fixed an issue causing Ai only units to show up in the tech tree
• Fixed a crash in the tutorial
• Fixed crash related to the build queue being updated from multiple threads
• Fixed lockup due to multiple threads hogging the resource semaphore too long
• Fixed crash due to multiple threads looking at the resource improvement costs at the same time
• Fixed crash due to multiple threads counting the # of outposts for a given player.
• Units of the same player will pass through one another in path finding rather than try to go around
• Units will pass through friendly foreign player caravans.
• Path finding generally improved
• General performance improvements (update processes moved to twice a second instead of every frame)
• Fixed an issue with corrupted saves
• Path finding fixes
• Fixed an issue where Inspiration and Meditation wouldn’t update if the city gained more Essence

Balance

• Removed maintenance from some improvements
• Reduced the labor cost on the Towers of Sorcery
• Increased the Archivist to +50% research when the city is idle instead of +20%
• Guild Lendinghouse gives 200 Gildar when it is constructed instead of interest
• Added a 2nd level upgrade to warg kennels and stables that provides more wargs/horses
• Increased the Scroll Scribe research bonus form +10% to +20%
• Added a reward to the Diseased Livestock quest
• Reduce the mana cost of the Avarice spell
• Increased the effect of the Destiny's Gift spell
• Sweep now does the units full attack in damage instead of half (and the cooldown is increased form 3 to 5)
• Aliiance tech doesn't require Economics anymore
• Reduced the research cost of Education, King of the Wastes and Literacy
• Administration tech requires Knowledge
• Lombard Desert wildland now requires Torax to be killed instead of clearing the goodie huts
• Increased the free defenders on Villages
• Limited the Theater of the Wind to 1 per faction (and fixed the icon on it)
• Sovereign's Call is now available form the beginning (instead of requiring Sorcery)
• Nature's Bounty now requires Sorcery
• Default difficulty is Easy instead of Normal
• Occupation Unrest will drop to 0 if it's given enough time
• Increased distance from starting location requirement on more powerful monster lairs
• Increased damage on Blizzard
• Burning Hands does 8 (+4 per fire shard) damage instead of the casters level (+4 per fire shard)
• Increased damage on Touch of Entropy
• Increased the level 1 spell rank abilities form 1 to 2 cost in sovereign customization
• Inspiration does 2 research per essence instead of 1
• Reduced the value of influence during wartime from 100X normal to 10X normal
• Wage Mulitplier now affects the turns required to train a unit for different group sizes
• Rebalanced metal costs on weapons (generally down)
• Takes less XP to go up levels
• XP from monsters is now relatively greater than the XP players get from other players
• Frostborn trait gives -3 init to units that are struck instead of -1
• Ice Elementals lose the ability to cast Slow and gain the Frostborn trait instead
• Darkling and Wilding camps give 3 units instead of 5
• Reduced the init of the Elemental lords
• Horses increase init by 3, dodge vs ranged by 25 (instead of 15) and gives 2 moves (instead of 1)
• Wargs give +6 init (instead of +3, and +10 dodge (instead of +5)
• Reduced the casting cost of Antipathy and Wall of Fire
• Sacrifice gives 1 mana per pop sacrificed (instead of 1 mana per 2 pop sacrificed)
• Increased the attack on the Shadow Dagger and the Sharp Dagger

AI

• AI less likely to build pioneers and instead focus on improving cities
• AI less likely to declare war on player after peace is made
• AI now takes into account essence when deciding where to build a city
• AI is less likely to offer a non-aggression pact to a player of a different alignment
• AI more likely to upgrade their equipment
• AI more aggressive about building research improving city improvements
• AI fixed bug that caused AI to build pioneers instead of city defenders
• AI a bit less likely to declare war on player
• AI more likely to pay others to declare war on those at war with them
• AI more likely to surrender
• AI now razes city when they surrender (scorched earth)
• AI will value player influence more when evaluating relations
• Wargs cost more to trade
• AI values its money more when it has less of it when it is trading
• AI values influence more during trading
• Influence now greatly affects the overall value of things in trading (the more you have, the better the deal you can cut)
• Horses valued a lot more in trading
• Knowledge now valued significantly more during trading
• AI a bit smarter regarding expansion
• AI hooked up to new city enchantment system
• AI a LOT smarter about determining what spells it should cast and when

Cosmetic

• Fixed the provides tag on Earth Mage
• Lots of new sfx when discovering goodie huts
• Improved the quest desc on the Dragongate quest
• Fixed lots of spell descs to have + in the bonus
• Fixed lots of typos
• Added sage hints for the Henchmen, Juggernauts, Spellsbooks and Immortal Codex techs
• Updated the Siege Weapons tech desc
• New tile design added
• New Drake textures
• Added V/O to the intro for all the default sovereigns
• Defending units don't move between an attack and a backswing
• Main menu displays total play time
• Save games display the total tiem that game was played
• Victory screen shows the total play time of that game
• Clicking on a resource shows a line to the attached city
• Unit dots on Empire tree now color coded (purple = sovereign, green = pioneer, red = normal unit, yellow = champion)
• Glow color of cities on empire tree color coded. Green means city is growing. Dark means it has reached its max population.
• Glow color of units on empire tree color coded. Green means they have moves left. Dark means they don't.
• When foreign cities are conquered, the player is notified
• Opposing player explains why they won't accept tribute
• Fixed bug that caused mouse clicks to be lost when a player clicked an item on the empire tree or unit in a city
• Edge scrolling made smoother
• Empire tree colors brighter
• Fixed that annoying double click sound when opening the train unit window
• Changed and reprioritized some actions (attack isnt in the unit list anymore, rename comes before raze in the city list)

Screenshots

We’ve improved the overall visual performance (plus lots of bug fixes from beta 4)

We’ve tweaked the pioneering system to encourage more thoughtful expansion (beta 4B will do more in this area)

 

Started implementation of more tool tips on level up screens.

 

New tactical battle screen provides hot key support, context sensitive attack analysis.

Just saw this in tonight’s build:

Next week we expect to release an update to Fallen Enchantress. That update will be available to existing users of Fallen Enchantress and it will also be the first version available for sale on Steam (Beta 4-A).

The plan is to put out Beta 4A and then collect as much feedback as we can. Seriously, NOW is the time to ask for stuff (within reason) because when Beta 5 comes out (next month) we’ll be in feature lock-down. No new features until after release.

Now, we have a few questions for you guys:

(1) How do you think we should refer to this game? Elemental: Fallen Enchantress or just Fallen Enchantress?

(2) You can already go to www.fallenenchantress.com btw to go right to the page.

(3) What sorts of additional magical spells would you like to see us add before release that aren’t already in the game?

(4) What sorts of additional quests would you like to see?

(5) Random events – yes, we have them but we don’t have a lot. Now is the time to suggest them.  Ideally, ones that don’t require crazy amounts of work.

(6) I will be needing your help on strategy for the AI.  When you play Fallen Enchantress on Challenging (anything below challenging has the AI gimped to various degrees) you’re basically playing me. As some of you know, Fallen Enchantress (like GalCiv but unlike WOM) will make use of your multi-core processor. Every AI player gets their own thread. Long story short, I can do some terrible, evil things with the AI.  But I know there are players who are just far better at this game than I am.  Please feel free to make posts discussing your strategies. I am not ashamed to steal from you.

(7) If you have not already voted, please please vote in the journal poll: https://www.elementalgame.com/journals We use this data.

(8) Modding time is almost here. We have tried to make it hard to mod so far but the time to turn off the network data stuff is nearing.  Here is what I’m thinking: http://screencast.com/t/5IyRz7XY.  

(9) Before anyone asks, no, you can’t transfer your FE serial to Steam. I can’t go into the details on why this is so don’t ask. Just assume it has something to do with gold plated rocket cars or something.

(10) The Fallen Enchantress budget is 2.2X the budget of War of Magic.  We hope people like what we’ve been doing here. I know it’s been a long journey but it was important to us that our most loyal customers, you guys, knew that we were dedicated to making sure our fantasy strategy game was nothing short of awesome.  Beta 4A has a lot of nice things but I think you guys will be surprised how much we were holding back for Beta 5 (for testing purposes mind you).

(11) I can’t tell you who the Fallen Enchantress is. But you can probably guess.

(12) The campaign, which isn’t in the beta (for spoiler reasons) was designed by Jon Shafer and written by fantasy author Dave Stern. It plays quite a bit differently from the sand box game. The idea was to give players an idea of what could be done via mods as well as give players a fun campaign experience that wasn’t just a bunch of sandbox scenarios.  I do want to emphasize that the campaign is made with the same tools players will be given and they will be able to make their own and share them.

(13) While Fallen Enchantress will be available on Steam, it won’t require it.

(14) If you don’t have War of Magic, skip it.  We’re going to discontinue it (we’ll still support it for existing customers for the long haul and may put out another update later this year). Fallen Enchantress is a lot closer to what we had in mind.

(15) If you have Windows XP 32-bit, you can get better performance if you enable large address awareness.

This past year I had a 20KW solar array put in.

For the month of July my electrical bill looked like this:

To translate this, my house uses a lot of juice, especially in the Summer months (air conditioning and such).  I’m not proud of the power use. But in essence, the solar array covered 2,685KWh of electrical use.

Plus, I had an excess of 640KWh.

The DTE program (heavily subsidized by the government) pays me for the energy I produce so I end up with a negative electrical bill.

So does it pay off?  Well, without the solar array, rather than getting about $360 back I’d have paid $286.  That’s a difference of about $650 a month.  Now, the summer months are better than the Winter months.  So let’s assume about $6,000 per year.  The array cost me (out of pocket) around $100,000 (a chunk of that being the clearing of the area and the necessary grading).  So it’ll take a bit less than 20 years for it to pay off. 

I'm impressed.

I can blog to the stardock ecosystem with the iPhone app
Blog Writer.

I just use my forum user Id and pw with the metaweblog URL: https://www.joeuser.com/api/MetaWeblog.axd

I discovered something interesting. Unless I’m mistaken, large address aware 32-bit games may be able access up to 8TB of memory.  I don’t know what tricks the OS is using to do this (a 32-bit process should only be able to see 4GB) but a cursory look indicates when running on 64-bit version of Windows 8, a 32-bit process that is using large address aware is “seeing” 8TB.

Take that with a grain of salt since my guys are skeptical about whether you can actually use any of that. 

If you have Windows 8 and you’re finding it annoying to get around the desktop, you can download Tiles (it’s free). This has been a life saver for me as it lets me quickly get to the things I want to and manage them as such. It’s also completely compatible with the charms bar and the Metro (Modern UI) experience.