Kael has nearly finished implementing the stat system for FE.
It's like that line from Star Wars "The last vestiges of the Old Republic have been swept away."
You want the good news or the bad news?
Oh, you want the good news right? Of course. You want that? You want that first anyway? I’m not brave enough to do it the other way.
Well, the good news is that next week, I’ll be traveling to California to visit with the gaming media to talk about Elemental: Fallen Enchantress and Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. So hopefully we’ll be able to get some coverage and I won’t lie to you, WE WILL NEED YOUR HELP.
I say that because if you’re reading this, you are familiar with the whole Internet thing. Here’s how it goes:
Website X will write a preview of Fallen Enchantress.
First comment will be “Elemental sucked, they should give up on it! I doubt this is going to make any difference”
Hopefully, you, reading this, have played the beta and hopefully you agree that, Fallen Enchantress is turning out to be very very good, especially when you consider our current estimated target release date is this Fall (think of where War of Magic was at this stage). So we’re going to need all the help we can get to get the word out that Fallen Enchantress is turning out really well.
Because without positive confirmation from actual people playing the beta, it is, as GamersWithJobs’s podcast recently put it, “doomed”.
Now, the bad news…
There won’t be a beta update this week. The team is trying to get the build ready for Beta 3 which is what I’ll be showing next week. When I get back, we’ll be putting it together for you guys. It’ll have the dramatically changed Quendar and Gilden factions. We think you’re really going to like what we’re doing with faction differentiation and can’t wait to get your feedback.
As some of you may know, 32-bit Windows XP users only see 2GB of memory no matter how much memory they have installed.
Windows 7 users see 3GB of memory IF they're running a 32-bit version and 4GB if they're running 64-bit -- as far as Fallen Enchantress is concerned (native 64-bit programs can see effectively unlimited amounts of memory).
The #1 thing holding us back on having "more" stuff is memory. We've been optimizing memory a lot in the past month so that we can stuff more but it sure would be nice to have even another 500 megs to play with.
If you are using Windows XP, I would really recommend upgrading to Windows 7 soon. FE will probably be the last game we make that supports XP.
When people play the FE campaign, they’re going to freak that there’s no special c++ code. Anyone could make it if they were as insane as Jon Shafer is anyway.
In Windows 8, you can create a column of tiles in it and label the tile. This is Microsoft’s idea of a “group”.
Here’s a couple of videos showing off the pain:
Windows 7: The Start Menu
and…
Windows 8: The Start “page”:
And a follow-up to show you about column headers (what Microsoft is calling groups):
Now, I’ve gotten a lot of email from people saying that I’m “obviously” a Microsoft hater or an “Apple zealot”. This is obviously a change from the traditional charge that I’m an Apple basher and a Microsoft apologist.
So let me be clear: My livelihood depends on the success of Microsoft Windows. It is the only platform I write for. I have a vested (i.e. not emotional) interest in the success of Windows. I’ve been a Microsoft MVP for years, have worked with Microsoft on many different projects over the years. And Windows 8 is very good, technologically, under the hood. The problem is strictly with the insanity that is the Windows 8 user experience and that if unaddressed will result in a lot of people migrating.
I don’t think that many people in 2012 realize how close we are to the next phase computing. It’s not tablets vs. desktops. It’s decoupled computing. It’s AirPlay vs. WiDi. That’s the next battle and it’s one that Microsoft could very lose if they splinter their developer and user base.
Got to play around with the February beta of Windows 8. It is terrible. It is beyond terrible. It is so bad that I’m a little panicked about the future of Windows. People won’t use this.
I could have teams of people working full time to develop products to fix it but we’re not in the business of making a terrible experience good. We’re in the business of making a good experience better.
No sane person, will consider the user experience of this beta acceptable. Even a die hard Windows advocate cannot be pleased. It’s that bad.
I’m all over adapting to new UI conventions if they’re as good or better. But that’s not the case here. This is just terrible.
I have confidence in Microsoft in delivering innovative technology (Windows Phone is excellent). But something went terribly wrong here.
Start button: Gone.
Everything is in a corner. Type in top right, move to far left.
This is the new “Start” menu. Note: Fresh install. Luckily, no one installs anything right?
Click… 
and…be taken here: 
But someday, everything will be metro right?
That’ll be the world of:
The 2560x1440 weather widget. Microsoft Window 9 (we can dispense with “Windows”).
Everything requires lots of clickity click click and lots of mouse drag. Less of an issue on a mobile device but on a desktop? If they didn’t force you to live in-between worlds (you’re not allowed to live in just the desktop remember, you have to come back to the Metro-tablet like experience).
What’s really a bummer is that Windows 8’s desktop is really good. Better than Windows 7. But you’re not allowed to live here. They treat the desktop as a kind of DOS box equivalent even though, for desktop users, it’s a vastly more productive experience.
Update 1:
It's not just that they got rid of the Start button -- on the classic desktop. Navigating around is just a pain. Getting to your stuff is a pain. It's lots of clicks and drags to do anything, even basic stuff.
Remember how annoying the UAC prompt can be when it darkens the screen interrupting your flow? Well going back and forth between Metro and classic is far worse and far more frequent.
Let me put it this way, this is bad enough that there will almost certainly be YouTube videos demonstrating some of the absurdities of use. We're not talking nit-picking type issues here, we're talking fundamental, baffling user experience choices. And that's without touching on performance (10 seconds to load up the mail program?).
Update 2:
You be the judge:
Bear in mind, this is on a clean system. Imagine how this system falls apart when you have dozens of programs installed -- some metro and some Win32. I can't even imagine trying to explain how this works to a typical enterprise customer or worse..my mom.
Update 3:
Here’s a quick stop gap solution for the Start menu issue:
https://www.stardock.com/products/start8
I was reading on the forums today people complaining that even in a post-civilization world (one where people are basically getting together from the ruins) that they would “know” how to do all kinds of things like make bows, swords, etc.
I have a lot of friends who are active in the Renaissance and Medieval communities out there who always laugh at this kind of thing. The conversation goes something like this:
“Really, you think you can make a spear? Ok. Let’s see you do it. Let’s see you actually make a weapons-grade spear. In fact, tell me how you would do it. Do you really think you can just get a stick and sharpen it?”
Some is true about agriculture. It’s amazing that people who can’t manage to keep their house plants alive think that farming is technologically trivial. Gardening isn’t that hard but unless you’ve actually farmed some real acreage, involving a plow and doing a real harvest, it’s not something one just inherently knows how to do.
Or how about making bows and arrows. Not the kind for shooting a bird or something but a weapons-grade bow, one that could kill a soldier. It requires a level of knowledge that the average lay person, even a medieval peasant, would have no idea how to do.
As someone into this stuff, I can tell you the mechanics of how to make a bow (lots of ash trees around here). But could I make one that would be actually useful in a battle – i.e. where I’d use it over a good club? I don’t know.
And that’s before we even talk about metallurgy…
As some of you know, the latest iPhone update caves into AT&T’s request to have their HSPA+ connections labeled at 4G.
AT&T: I’ve used 4G. I’ve spent lots of time with it. You sir, are not 4G.
When I use my iPhone for data and I’m using AT&T’s “4G” network, it is note terrible. It’s definitely a fast 3G. I get typically 3 to 5 Mb/sec.
However, when I use my LTE hotspot with it, I get 15 to 20 MB/sec. THAT, to me, is 4G. It is a huge experience difference too.