This next week we are hoping (but not promising) to put out the 4th beta of Fallen Enchantress.  Beta 4 will be focusing on overall gameplay with special attention to the underlying city mechanics and user interface.  We expect this beta to last approximately a month at which point we’ll be releasing Beta 5 which will be all about balance, fixing any remaining bugs, polish, etc.

Here’s a video I did yesterday that shows how the start of the game has changed:

 

The most delicate balancing act we perform in Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is the starting position.  How close should monsters be? How powerful should those monsters be? How near should we place more powerful monsters? How many resources should be near? How many goodie huts should be near? What about quests?

The user has considerable control over this based on their start-up settings. However, we all know that most people will go by the default settings – at least at first.  So we spend a lot of time playing around with these values along.

Here I’ve unhidden the map and turned on the grid in the cloth map view.  As you can see, there are lots of monsters here but they have all been carefully balanced such that a player should be able to defeat them if they are careful and don’t try to mow them all down (i.e. defeat means player is at full health).

Since the maps are randomly generated, including the continents themselves, it can be pretty tricky making sure that the resource placement and map itself remains fair. In a traditional land based 4X, there’s no magic. By adding magic, we significantly increase the challenge. 

However, when successful, the reward is great: unprecedented replay ability. 

Sometimes the local politics of Higgins Lake Michigan can be very frustrating.  The latest example has to be the "save the dam" advocates.

Briefly, MSU in cooperation with the DNR are conducting a study of the effect the dam has on Higgins Lake. The dam is used to help control the lake water level.

Many decades ago, a dam was put on the lake to keep the water level high enough to use the lake effectively for for boats. As more people bought cottages on the lake, the demand to raise the water level ever higher grew.

The issue came to a head some years ago when the water level got so high that huge swaths of the shore, complete with their trees, began falling into the lake. Many people began to build sea walls or fortified their shorelines with stones which resulted in the erosion problem being exacerbated for everyone else.

To put things in perspective, our family has been on the lake for decades. We've lost nearly 40 feet of beach since the 1940s. Moreover, the erosion of the sea shore resulted in a massive increase in the amount of organic matter in the lake which caused an explosion in the number of snails in the lake which in turn helped bring "Swimmer's Itch" to the lake for the first time in its history.

As a result of all the erosion and the corresponding hassles it entails, people have begun to ask "what should the water level be?" One of the local foundations raised sufficient funds to get that question answered scientifically -- the creation of a study. The study will take a couple years to complete.

However, the study is violently opposed by those who fear that this will lead to the loss of the dam and convenient (for them) access to their boats. No one has actually seriously proposed getting rid of the dam. Personally, I do not want to see the dam go.  I boat on this lake as well and if the water level was significantly lower than it is today, it would be quite a hassle to navigate the lake.

The problem is, no one really knows what lower lake levels would do. We can only speculate. Hence, the study: The study is the result of years of squabbling by the residents up there as to what the lake level should be kept at.  Now, at least, there would be a study that outlines what the consequences of different water levels would be.

What's funny about this, at least from an "outsider", "city-slicker", point of view, is that those who are so up in arms about this are ultimately concerned about the ease of getting their boats out into the lake and having to be more careful in navigating certain areas. They don't seem to be aware that the north east shore of the lake is disappearing (high water + winds from the south west year after year).  It's enough to make someone want to yell "Lazy hicks!" at those who put their convenience over someone else's property.

Every time I've seen this issue debated, it ultimately boils down to convenience -- for them. Never mind that other people are seeing their shores, trees, decks, porches, washed away or that all the organic material being washed into the lake is damaging the lake quality. No, it's about their bloody pontoon boats.

I don't have an opinion on what the lake level should be. If I were the weather god, I'd prefer much lower winter and spring levels and keep the current summer levels.  It's the Spring storms that are destroying us.

I do know, however, that if one party is losing their trees and patios to the enriching water caused by an artificially high lake level and the other party just doesn't want to have to buy another 8 foot dock section or have to pay attention to rocks which party's concerns are valid and which party's concerns are unreasonable imo.

Just curious, how serious would you take the views of someone who made their money by winning the lottery when it comes to economics and business?

So picture this, 40 some year old couple with a yearly household income of around $200k suddenly has a windfall of over a million dollars in one year. Not from their job. Not from a business. Not from meeting some life long goal. The money just suddenly showed up.

What do you think their attitude would be towards other people who were rich? 

I see a lot of people in politics support the concept of "local control".  But as a dogma, it falls apart at a certain point. Let me present you the example of Higgins Lake, Michigan.

Higgins Lake is a beautiful lake in the northern part of the lower peninsula. It has two large state parks, a couple first class marinas and several public boat launches.  The lake itself is beautiful. Shallow and sandy by the shore and very deep (over 100 feet deep) in the middle.

So what problems could it have? Answer: Boat parking.

If you own a boat, you can park it on the lake if you use one of the licensed marinas or if you have property on the lake.

However, a lot of the locals who don't own property on the lake and don't want to pay to keep their boat at the marina, think they should be allowed to hoist their boat in the water at a road end. Their argument is that road ends are public land and therefore, they, the public, should be able to leave their boats out in the water for the Summer.

Think about that for a moment. Most roads are public. Imagine if they lived on a public road and suddenly hundreds of campers parked out in front of their houses for the Summer.  It would be obnoxious. More than obnoxious, it would prevent other people from being able to park there temporarily.

For some years, people did just as I described and it was a disaster. Every road end on the lake was filled with boats that made it virtually impossible for other people to get out onto the lake from those road ends. It was also a nightmare for people who lived near road ends since their homes now bordered on make-shift marinas -- something they certainly hadn't signed up for when they bought their house.

The courts ruled that it was illegal to park boats on the water for non-transient uses (for the reasons I mentioned earlier - you can park your car the side of a road for a bit but that doesn't mean you get to turn the road end into your personal camping spot for the summer). Eventually, the Michigan legislature codified this in law.

In the last couple of years, the people who want to put their boats in at road ends have come up with a new tactic - try to make the issue decided at "the local level".  That is, let the people in the township vote how the road ends are used. Isn't that nice? Of course, there's a lot more people off the lake than on the lake so it's pretty obvious how that vote would go - which is precisely why property rights aren't determined at the local level -- if Peter and Paul think they should be able to use your stuff and it's put to a vote where they're the only two voters, guess how that's going to go?

The issue even skirts some class warfare rhetoric.  You see, most people with houses on the lake don't live there all year. Which, thank to "local control" on who gets to vote, means they don't get to vote on anything. They're taxed heavily (Higgins Lake residents get the standard non-homesteaded tax and a special non-resident tax on top).  So the people most directly affected by a vote of "local control" wouldn't even get to vote on the matter, which is pretty convenient for those proposing the bill.

As you can imagine, the local politicians are inclined to support the "local control" side of things since the majority of the people near Higgins Lake certainly would like to have free (or nearly free) rights to park their boat on the lake. And the people most likely to passionately oppose them can't even vote.

My wife's 3 year old laptop is a ThinkPad T200.  She's been having trouble with it "slowing down" and I finally had a chance to look at it.

Good...gravy. First, 3 years of letting the kids use it (and under her ID instead of making them logon to the accounts I made for them) had taken their toll. Her machine booted up using 3GB of memory.

Second, the ThinkPad coders over at Lenovo should just...knock off the insane amounts of home made junk they throw on there.  I usually wipe out the various "ThinkAdvantage" stuff but hers is the standard setup and 3 years hadn't aged those apps well.

And lastly, and most seriously, is the WinSXS directory.  Her 60 GB hard drive, adequate 3 years ago for her light use (Office, mail, and web surfing) was filled the the brim by a 22 gigabyte WinSXS directory.

Let me tell you right now to save you some pain: There's nothing you can do about it. There is no utility out there that will noticeably shrink it. You shouldn't delete stuff in it. If it bugs you enough, get a new hard drive and start from scratch.  It's a terrible design that remains in Windows 7 and 8.

Fallen Enchantress Beta 4 is still a couple weeks away.  But I thought I’d share a brief game play example.

It was Summer

The black sorcerer had been wandering for some time…

The world was healing from its wounds but was now dominated by monsters, demons, and men who would prey on the defenseless. 

He didn’t know what specific event finally made him decide to take a stand. Travelers slaughtered on the plains by bandits? A helpless proto-village overrun by dire bears? Ultimately, it did not matter. What mattered was that Macros had taken a stand and with it, civilization would return to these parts…

Essence

Most of the land remained inhospitable for life. But Macros had scouted far and wide and had at last come to a river basin.

Here he found a land that would support crops, production and most importantly to the warlock, retained trace remnants of essence from the fallen Titans of old.  This essence would serve as a means for him to perfect his arts.

With the construction of Athica,  people began to immediately migrate to the city. The little village meant hope, opportunity and most importantly, safety. It was rumored that Macros the Black was a powerful sorcerer. A warlock. He would protect them.

The first order of business was to begin exploring and expanding the resources available to the village. To this end, Macros put out a call for a pioneer.

Aera, who had just arrived, volunteered. Macros escorted her to a place he had seen during his travels.

With the outpost completed, the Kingdom of Athica’s influence now reached a rich metal deposit and one of the powerful magical shards, rooted to the earth itself.

The capital city of Athica was very busing constructing the shard shrine, iron mine and a tower of dominion (designed to act as a beacon to bring people to the village faster).

Inslow

That Fall, Macros met Inslow. While not fond of battle, he was well liked by the village.  Inslow was a friendly but most importantly, he was trustworthy. To that end, Macros put him in town to act as its mayor while he continued to explore the area.

The area, like most of the world, was filled with danger. Macros, however, was not defenseless.

His spell book contained many enchantments that had made him a force to be reckoned with in the wilds. Now, as the leader of a growing kingdom, he would use this might to clear away the dangers and make it safe for his people to expand.

Progress

Before the cataclysm, civilization had mastered technologies such as metallurgy, crop rotation, arcane arts and much more.  But with 99% of the population wiped out, few specialists remained. What did remain, however was lore. Soon, sages began to recover this lost knowledge. Each recovered technology might only take a few months to put into place.

The War

The Kingdom of Tarth had come from the north without warning.  Rather than pursuing a policy of open conquest, they instead aggressively constructed outposts throughout the land. Outposts that Macros quickly captured and turned to the purposes of Altar.

This proved to be a mistake. Lady Irane had already made good use of her time with those resources and had amassed a potent, focused, force.

To save the capital, Macros traveled by road and into the city.

Irane…was not impressed.

Soon, all that was left was the capital. With a huge enemy army laying siege.

The end returns to the beginning…

With all his forces destroyed, his towns conquered, his allies dispersed, Macros finds himself alone.

As daylight drains from his vision, his last sight is Irane pointing her mighty bow at his head.

Maybe…he shouldn’t have started a war after all.

Around a campfire tonight my 5 year old daughter started singing to the moon.

It went something like this:

I love you moon

I wish you were part of my family

I love you moon

If I could breath in space I would run out and hug you

I love you moon

If you were a human I would kiss you on the cheek

I love you moon

I wish you could live with us or at least near the sun

But I wouldn't look directly at you if you were too close to it 

Because it would make me go blind

I love you moon

I wish I could ride my bike and come visit you

You have a really beautiful glow like a big ball of ice cream if the ice cream also glowed

I love you moon

So why do people demonize companies that outsource to China but it's perfectly acceptable for individuals to go and buy things made in China?

Next time someone wants to rant about company X outsourcing, they should, at least, start trying to buy American if they feel that way.

As some of you know, I'm politically conservative.  This is fairly meaningless since my interest in politics is much like my interest in professional Starcraft. I'm kinda interested and follow it probably more than is healthy but I don't get particularly fired up about it.

But I do like to debate. I will debate anything, no matter how mind numbing.  I am thinking that this is why I tend to have mostly liberal friends. I enjoy talking to people who disagree with my views more than people who will say "Amen".