To recap:

Elemental is an upcoming turn-based strategy game set in a magical world that is recovering from a great magical battle known as the cataclysm. The world has been devastated and most of the magic of the world is gone.

Fortunately, a handful of beings have risen from the ashes with the ability to channel magic. These great Sorcerers are the sovereigns who must build new kingdoms (or empires) from the ground up.

When you start the game, there is only 1 person.

This is one of their stories.

Note: BETA 1 of Elemental strips out the graphics engine to allow us to focus purely on the game mechanics. The 3D engine will be added back into beta 3. NOTE that all these screenshots are works in progress and not representative of the final graphics.

BETA 1 Game Play Example 

Chapter 1: Of the migration

Procipinee is the only daughter of Emperor Amarian III. Like her father, she is a channeler – a sorcerer capable of casting spells of great power.

Amarian is himself the son of the evil Morrigan who had wrought great sorrow for the men of the East. Amarian has done his best to undo the damage but he and his line will always be tainted by Morrigan’s dark deeds.

Procipinee is unique amongst the sovereigns of Elemental in that she was born to rule. In this new world, however, she is an outcast from the other kingdoms of men.

 

As ruler of the Kingdom of Pariden, Procipinee does enjoy some advantages. Pariden, being a direct line from the old Empire of men in the east, maintains the largest archive of lore giving her access to far more spells of power than her rivals.

Unfortunately, Pariden is also distrusted making diplomatic relations more perilous.

The long migration from the east left Procipinee’s people scattered but not gone.

Chapter 2: New Pariden

 

Procipinee searched long and hard for a place to found her new kingdom. The world was desolate but channelers have a way of being able to see the potential of the land.

Seeing that the land in the area is potentially fertile, she casts the one spell that her father made her memorize: Restoration.

With restoration, the land around her begins to bloom again. While it cost her a third of her life essence, it is her hope that her gift will encourage the dwindling populations of man to flock to her new city.

With the outpost of New Pariden founded, she begins to consier what to do next.

Nearby, the scattered remains of treasures, equipment and ancient lore from the cataclysm awaits. In addition, other beings of value explore the land as well…

Old Myrimahus was a well known collector of magical artifacts. Unfortunately, Procipinee cannot recruit him as few men trust the line of Morrigan. She will endeavor to raise her persuasive abilities for the future.

 

 Immediately I am confronted with some decisions on how to build my city and where I should go. Procipinee’s royalty allows her to bring new people in faster but does she dare stay in town to do that?

While her royalty allows her to attract new citizens faster when she inhabits a town, her wandering spirit urges her to explore the area.

But first, New Pariden needs to get underway. 

The first thing we build is a workshop.  This lets us get into the concept of city building. In Elemental, a city goes through 5 stages: Outpost, Village, Town, City, Metropolis.  These 5 levels matter a lot because many types of city improvements require a certain city level. The level also determines the number of a given improvement in many cases. For instance, our new outpost of New Pariden can only support 1 Workshop (hence the 0/1 at the top right).

My worksh0p provides 1 piece of material per turn.  Takes 2 turns to build and 10 gold to build and uses up 1 city tile. I’m going to build it on the north side of my city because I’m looking to cut off access to the east (I’ll show you what I mean shortly).

Procipinee begins exploring and finds a ring of agility:

In the aftermath of the cataclysm, the world itself is filled with the trappings of the Titans of old who were vanquished in their final battle. Now it’s a bit of a race to find it all and claim it. Of course, there are many races taking place as we know that other Kingdoms of men are rising out there somewhere.

Chapter 3: Growing my Kingdom

Here we are on turn 3.

My workshop is completed. I’ve started on a Command Post and blocked entrance to the east. This way, my opponents (and NPCs) can’t easily get in and grab the loot and such on the east.

On turn 5, I get my first technology breakthru.

Researching in Elemental works a bit differently than we’ve seen in other games. The Kingdoms have 5 categories of research: Civilization, Magic, Adventuring, Diplomacy and Warfare. Each level in a given category costs more and more.  Technologies are labeled by green, yellow and red based on how likely they are to be available upon reaching the next level of technology. Green means it definitely will. Yellow means it might be available. Red means it probably won’t.

Upon achieving level 1 in civilization, I am presented with 4 technologies to choose from. 1 of them is solid green (farming). 2 of them are nearly green (civics and engineering) and one of them is yellowish (Mining). Right now though, I really want farming so that I can start to increase my population.

Ironically, I can’t yet build a farm because I need more materials. It takes 10 materials to build a farm and I only have 5 right now.

I’m going to build a watch tower so that I can increase my vision of the area instead.

Chapter 4: The world beyond

My Watchtower has vastly increased my line of sight (a bit too much, nerfing..).

But now I an see both the possibilities and the dangers of my world.

News of my new Kingdom has started to attract various notables including Eldmyre the Trader. Unfortunately, Procipinee will need to go up a level because she is distrusted thus making it harder to recruit.

To go up levels, Procipinee will need some battle experience. First, she’s going to start a second city. This will use up another third of her life essence.  Essence is ones mana cap. She started with 15, now she has 5 left.  Essence can be transferred to Champions as well so that they can cast spells (and once they have essence, they too will be able to increase it as they go up levels).

Speaking of experience…

Those crates you see above provided me with a dexterity potion!

Combat speed matters a lot. Each turn of combat is made up of 10 phases. Your combat speed determines how many attacks you get per turn. This matters a lot since Procipinee is pretty awful at combat.

I also lucked out because wheat farms are much cheaper than the general farm to build in terms of materials (i.e. the wheat is already there). So I quickly get Amarian (named after her father) up and going.

Chapter 5: Building a Kingdom

Thus far, Procipinee has founded two cities from the forsaken wastes of the post cataclysm world. By turn 11, there are a total of 32 people living in her two cities.

In Elemental, people matter. When you send people off to war, those people came from somewhere – your cities.

I can train two different types of people from my 32 citizen kingdom. I have a Peasant who is just a random citizen who has been handed a club and a Pioneer. Pioneers are interesting because they can go out and (as their name suggests) settle on special tiles. They don’t bring in quite as much in terms of resources as if they were in a city proper, but they are absolutely crucial to building up an early economy.

Chapter 6: Rats in the Ruins

Procipinee has traveled to an Inn on the western edge of her kingdom.

What would Mincs do? Kind of a lowly thing for the Queen of Pariden right? Of course, Pariden has 36 people in it so she’ll need to keep some perspective.

Upon choosing yes, a new tile appears displaying the object of my quest. Luckily, this simple adventure doesn’t involve me going very far.

Lucky me, I got the rats.

Now to return it and get my reward (which better be good).

On the way back to the Inn that the distressed family was staying at, Procipinee has been studying the old manuscripts that were passed down to her from her father. She’s been focusing on rebuilding a civilization and finally made a breakthrough.

I’m going to choose to have her breakthrough be engineering because we need to build a lumber yard so that we can get materials faster.

Now it’s time to decide what Procipinee and her small (but growing) team of loremasters are going to try to recover next.

To get to level 3 of civilization, it will take 19 turns because Pariden is only producing 4 research per turn (3 by Procipinee herself and 1 by a study that has since been build in New Pariden). By contrast, going to level 1 in the other categories will only take 5 turns and let’s face it, some of those other techs matter.

With warfare, I could start to get some equipment for soldiers. With magic, I could start learning spells. With adventure, I could start recognizing better loot, encounter more powerful NPCs and access more interesting quests (not that rats are terrible but…well…yea, they’re terrible) and with Diplomacy I could start trading and negotiating.  Of course, so far, I haven’t encountered anyone so no point with diplomacy. I think I’ll go with magic.

The lady from the Inn gave Procipinee 250 gold for helper her with the rats. This is enough to start being able to train a small defense force and begin expanding into the west.

Chapter 7: Decisions

On turn 20, I have two cities. My first city has been grown to cut off entry into that eastern valley. My second city (Amarian) is producing a great deal of food that is allowing expansion.

Now I need to make some tough choices.

First, while my kingdom has access to 13 food to feed its growing (now 41) population, I will soon need to start investing in roads (unfortunately, in beta 1, our road system is about to be tossed out in favor of a more fun way to implement roads that won’t show up until beta 3).

Second, my outposts are still small enough that they haven’t really attracted the attention of the various bandits or notable outlaws. Two cities averaging 20 people each is just not worth the effort. Especially since neither one is producing any money (Procipinee is the one generating the money through quests and abstracted trade of heirlooms and other deals).  I will soon be attracting unwanted attention and that means spending money on a defense force.

Third, I still haven’t found out where my opponents are.  For all I know, they’re coming in with an army (it would almost be certainly an army of peasants but still).

For now, Procipinee will put her focus on getting some magic going. She is a channeler and sorcery is her birthright.

Chapter 8: Arcania

What use is being a Sorcerer if you have no spells? With Arcane Research, I can now get loremasters to start studying the ancient spell books. With any luck, soon Procipinee will be able to be taught some of the spells in there.

In the meantime, I will put some effort into warfare tech. If I’m going to clean out the west, Procipinee will need soldiers to help her and peasants won’t cut it.

 

I have also put a little time into warfare research and gotten better armor and weaponry.

Since I am currently not mining any metla, I will stick with clubs for now even if it does wimp out my unit a bit.

Now it is time to expand.

Chapter 9: We are not alone

Lord Capitar’s emissary has made it to us. Capitar, unlike Procipinee, is a native of the west. Procipinee, with her father, had traveled the dangerous paths of the east to flee the rising hordes of the Fallen. Capitar, like the other western nobles, are suspicious of Procipinee because of her grandfather (Morrigan) who was the enforcer for the Titans during his time.

Chapter 10: Wealth & Poverty

Capitar is going to be a major threat. Fighting wars means paying soldiers and that means having money.

The first step to do that is to build a palace so that I can declare a capital for my fledgling kingdom. I also need to start cleaning the west so that I can safely send out pioneers.

After the battle, Procipinee has leveled up.

I ultimately decide to put the points into essence so that she can build cities and has more mana available.

 

Chapter 11: Moving out

With two arcane labs, Procipinee learns Teleport. This is a very useful spell because with it, she and her army can zip around anywhere in friendly territory.

The Kingdom of Altar has finally arrived to try to wipe out my capital city of Amarian. Luckily, they fail thanks to my soldier being far better equipped than their peasant duo.

But I definitely need to get better stuff and I need to start connecting my cities with roads to increase my resources. With that in mind, I found a new city in the north, Royeker next to a metal deposit. The time to get new technologies is starting to become fairly painful since I’m still only producing 5 research per turn in my kingdom. But at least now we can get some metal and have some superior soldiers.

The problem with roads (in beta 1 anyway) is they cost a lot to build but that’s another story.

At turn 100, here is how things look.

The nice thing is, with teleport, Procipinee can teleport anywhere within friendly territory.

With metal, now I can build better units.

However, I may have waited too long.

Lord Relias along with a party of soldiers is coming.

Yea, that’s going to be the end of me I’m afraid.  I dithered too much.

Epilogue

So what game improvements we learned here?

Lots.

First off, soldiers cost too much. Right now, they’re 1 gold per turn per unit. 

Let’s look at my civilization just as Lord Relias and his 3 goons took me out.

• Population: 305 citizens
• Income: 8.0g per turn
• Expenses: 3.0g per turn (3 soldiers)

Lord Relias and Altar’s situation was basically the same except he had more soldiers.

With a population of 305 people, I should be able to support easily 30 soldiers.  So we need to do some balancing there.

Moreover, I’m spending too much time building housing still which also eats up valuable tiles. In my build an outpost gets 16 tiles, a village 24.

But I’m using 8 – a third of my tiles – on huts and that’s not enough to get my city to level 3 unless I upgrade them to houses which would require 27 more turns which is an eternity.  If I wasn’t using so many tiles on huts I’d be building more research buildings which would help that.  So huts need to house more people so that fewer need to be built.

There’s plenty of other stuff but to put things in perspective, Beta 1Z is the first beta of Elemental that can actually be played as a game. There’s still a lot more to go.  Pacing matters.

BTW, in the comments section someone noted how closely I had built my cities together. You can’t connect cities into one big city (there’s always a full 4x4 tile between them but they were right.

This is what the above screenshot looks like with the graphics engine on. It really highlights what too many huts looks like (cities look like a bunch of straw from all the huts).

A century has passed since the cataclysm.

Tar-Thela is slain. Curgen the Dred’nir is gone. Talax is gone. The combined armies of the west aided by the last Emperor of men in the east, Amarian were successful in stopping the Titans from opening a passageway to their native world. However, the breaking of such a powerful spell broke the world.

In the aftermath of the cataclysm, nearly all life on Elemental perished. A century later, life has begun to return to the world. Scattered groups of people bravely work to rebuild. Patches of viable land are quickly claimed and defended. It is a time of chaos and lawlessness.

Emperor Amarian survived the cataclysm along with his 8 year old daughter, Procipinee. Amarian discovered the ability for Channelers like himself to sacrifice some of their own life force to restore the land thus being able to control the time and place of the rise of a new kingdom. This knowledge was passed on far and wide so that any surviving Channelers could help restore the world.

The five Kingdoms of men in the west – Pariden, Altar, Gilden, Capitar and Tarth, led by Channelers have taken the first steps. With their key insights, they recognize which places are best suited to be restored and from there order things as they see fit.

Across the landscape, people hear of the new kingdoms and flock to their banners, searching for a better life. Still, in the wilds, there are lonely manors, estates, fortresses and even petty kingdoms that have laid claim to the patches of land where life was not extinguished utterly.

I am very much enjoying Starcraft 2.  I think Blizzard’s concept on leagues is very cool too.  I just wish I understood the execution of said leagues.

I was originally placed in copper because heck, I had no idea what I was doing during my original placement matches.  Clearly, I played a lot and eventually figured out how to play and got to #1. Then they reset it.

The second time around, I won 3 of my 5 placements and got into bronze (I lost against people in “Platinum” league). That’s cool though except for one thing: How it determines an “even” match.  An “even” match for me is playing against someone in silver. If I play against someone in bronze I’m slightly favored and if I play against someone in copper I’m obviously favored. If I play against someone in gold they tend to be “slightly favored”.

Now, I think their system of determining this works pretty well. The bummer has to do with league promotions. Call me a nerdite but there’s a bit of a stigma being in copper or even bronze when you’re talking to your friends (it doesn’t help if a lot of your friends are in the game industry who are in silver and gold).  But if the game has clearly decided that I have to be placed against silver people to be evenly matched why not just bump me up there?

Here’s my profile for what it’s worth (feel free to friend me).

Anyway, I must say that I am incredibly impressed with Starcraft 2. Admittedly, I was a Starcraft 1 fanatic back in the day (I even got Blizzard to let us make an authorized expansion pack Starcraft: Retribution).

Starcraft 2 at first seems just like Starcraft 1 warmed over. But that’s not true at all.  The balance, while always in flux and never quite perfect, is better than any other game I’ve played. This is important because once you know the game well, you always know why and how you lost and what you should have done (in my case, I need to suck less).

I can’t believe it’s been 9 years since WinCustomize.com first launched.

Today I’m taking a look at the 4th iteration of WinCustomize during that time.  The iterations have tended to reflect the particular skinning age they were developed in.  Let’s look at them.

The First Age of Skinning

 This was the age of “Skinz”. It was literally a cottage-sized community. Mian. Toasty. Shoggot. Doreen. These were just a few of the names from back then. Skinning was such a niche back then that there were only a handful of skinners. The tech was primitive, buggy and often unusable. But it was fun.

WinCustomize launched at the first age was ending. The original skinz.org went down along with other skinning sites as the “dot com bomb” went off taking out the means to pay for these sites.  Software developer Stardock decided to create a site and hand it over to the community. That was the original WinCustomize concept launched at the end of March 2001.

The first WinCustomize was designed as a quick way to get to a ton of different skinning libraries and had a major focus on the skinners themselves.  When you came to WinCustomize.com, the home page focused a great deal on the skinners themselves.

The Second Age of Skinning

The Second age was the era of intense competition. Some might call it the golden age of skinning. Skinning had gotten popular and there were lots of people making skinnable programs.

We had widget wars (DesktopX vs. Konfabulator vs. Samurize vs. etc.).  We had skinning wars (WindowBlinds vs. Msstyles). Media player skinning wars (Winamp vs Media Player).

This was the period of the GUI Olympics where the popular skinning sites (back when there were several) got together and competed in making skins of various types.

The Second age was the noontide of diversity in skinning. The second WinCustomize focused much more on the world of skinning itself rather than on the people who made it. It still had quick access to all the libraries but the focus now was on the skins themselves.

Skinning had gotten mainstream. It also came to an abrupt end on January 30, 2007.

The Third Age of Skinning

The the age could be described as the twilight of skinning. I’m just calling a spade a spade.  Windows Vista had begun to make skinning seem quaint and retro. Who are these weirdos taking a perfectly clean, nice OS and adding a bunch of crap to it?

The number of actively developed apps started to drop quickly. By the end of it, Stardock was the only company with full time developers still making programs for the express purpose of skinning things. Konfabulator had been bought by Yahoo. Hoverdesk was gone. TGT Soft had closed down.

There were still people out there making skins professionally. WinStep continues forward.  The Skins Factory created Hyperdesk and updated it to support Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

There was also a GUI Championships in 2008 where China emerged as a leader in skinning.

The skinning community had changed drastically. It moved from being a community of skinners to being a community of consumers. The expectations on the quality of the software and quality of the skins had increased to the point that only full time professionals could really produce the king of “assets” that were acceptable to consumers. Part of this was because Windows Vista/7 had become so good on their own that the bar had been raised beyond most casual skinners.

In the beginning, skins were made by guys like me:

Early skins were easy to make: This screen shot represents all of the art assets in the whole skin

Today’s skins require a great deal of time and effort.

The software, when it ran, tended to crash often. The skins were simple. But compared to Windows itself, it was all an improvement.

By the end of 2009, skinning, which had started out as a niche techie hobby had become a niche consumer hobby. Nothing highlighted this more than the recent updates to DesktopX and ObjectDock where users complained loudly at various aspects of how the beta was handled. They weren’t users anymore. They were customers of a product.

The challenge to skinning in this new age remains daunting. Producing high quality software and content in which people expect to pay nothing or virtually nothing for. In a world where a 500 line iPhone game sells for $0.99 and can sell 50,000 copies easily, it becomes harder to produce a 250,0000 line program that people are outraged to pay $20 for – even it if includes professionally created skins and themes.

And so that’s how the third age ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper.

The Fourth Age of Skinning

The goal of the fourth age is to get back to skinning’s roots: Appealing to techies who want to do interesting things to their computer. The new website tilts very much back over to skinners. The home page provides quick access to the top skinners (the age 3 site didn’t even list skin authors on the home page). It’s also designed to be much cleaner and more approachable.

There is a definite migration away from commercialization and back into grassroots. While “Master skins” and such are here to stay, there’s a lot less advertising on the site. The subscriptions will soon be changed to only be $19.95 but no longer provide “premium suites” as part of the subscription but instead site specific services and features.

The site will increasingly return to the original mission of being a community site for the customization of things.  The site’s new design lends itself to a lot more user customization (for subscribers anyway). We’ll talk more about that in the coming weeks.

We are pretty excited about the new site and the new era for skinning.  Over the coming months, we expect to be able to introduce more and more features that allow skinners and the community to interact and share creations.

The Fourth Age is scheduled to begin this month. But you can see a sneak peek at www.wincustomizetest.com.

For Beta 1Z we are going to do something different. We are hard-coding it to a particular map so that we can better debug any problems players encounter with it.

This is the cloth map of beta 1Z. It’s designed with 4 players in mind and is very tiny. But it should let players “play” through the basic game mechanics of Elemental.

I whipped this up in the map editor.  This Summer, players will be able to take a crack at making their own worlds. I hate to say this but I found making the world a bit too fun. It was not really our intention to make the map editor a game unto itself but being able to create maps with quests and naming mountain ranges and forests and such has proven to be a game unto itself.  I made

For fun, I made the Ultima III map:

More to come…

Great article:  What the Top US companies pay in taxes.

The reader is meant to get fired up by the fact that these hugely profitable corporations aren’t paying Uncle Sam taxes.

Oh, they’re still paying taxes. Billions of taxes. Just not in the United States. That’s because companies liek Wal-Mart, General Electric, AT&T and so forth have overseas divisions and can have the profits show up in any of those countries – countries with lower tax rates.

How did this happen? It's complicated. GE's tax return is the largest the IRS deals with each year--some 24,000 pages if printed out. Its annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission weighs in at more than 700 pages.

Inside you'll find that GE in effect consists of two divisions: General Electric Capital and everything else. The everything else--maker of engines, power plants, TV shows and the like--would have paid a 22% tax rate if it was a standalone company.

It's GE Capital that keeps the overall tax bill so low. Over the last two years, GE Capital has displayed an uncanny ability to lose lots of money in the U.S. (posting a $6.5 billion loss in 2009), and make lots of money overseas (a $4.3 billion gain). Not only do the U.S. losses balance out the overseas gains, but GE can defer taxes on that overseas income indefinitely. The timing of big deductions for depreciation in GE Capital's equipment leasing business also provides a tax benefit, as will loan losses left over from the credit crunch.

I’ve written before on this issue: The people who do stuff are in control.  If the government overtaxes them, they will find another way. 

This is why time and time again we have seen that when you lower taxes you see higher tax revenue. 

Read the whole article: What the Top US companies pay in taxes.

I’ve been playing the beta 1Z candidate all day today and it’s around 9pm as I write this and while it is a vast improvement over beta 1G, it just isn’t put together enough for the public.

The criteria for beta 1Z is that it has to be good enough where we think it’s ready to go to beta 2.

So new date is sometime next week.  Since that will push back our internal schedule, we’re going to let new people into beta 1Z next week so that they’re not stuck waiting.

To get a scope of how much has changed since beta 1G here is the change log we have so far:

 

- Elemental 1Z Change Log - *********************************************** ** New Features ** *********************************************** - Economy Overhaul - Overview: The major resources in the game have been switched over to being GLOBAL (per- player opposed to per-city). Building materials, metal, and crystal are added, per-turn, into their pool overall pool, while food is stored as a players 'net-food', whch gets spent on housing as the player wishes to expand it's cities. + Improvements now use ConstructionResourceCost modifiers for their up front costs when placed, and refunds when destroyed + Started cleaning up old code for gathering resources for constructing improvements + Added support for improvements having a <PerTurn>0</PerTurn> resource game modifier that they apply, but only for global resources (for now).  They will apply it when construction is completed, and apply the reverse when the improvement is destroyed. + Fixed bug where one-time resource modifiers would be used for per-turn city resource calculations after the resource data had been refreshed more than once + Started making construction cost refunds on improvements more flexible, so some costs can be refunded even if the building isn't under construction + added entries in the global pool area for population and for food.   + Entries with a value of 0 are not added. + global pool listgrid is resized based on total entry width, and then the global pool area is sized just big enough to fit that listgrid and the buttons + One-time resource modifiers now displayed in a city's resource list + Added food construction costs to the housing improvements that upgrade from hut + Switched food to be a non-stored global resource acted on by per-turn food modifiers in improvements again + This way, food can be acted on by trade and ability modifiers + Added ability for player to refresh their non-stored resource values in the middle of a turn, and called for a refresh at various times when improvements are being placed, destroyed, or finishing construction, to ensure it stays up to date + Fixed some bugs where the global resource amounts for non-stored resources and the global pool UI wouldn't update in certain cases, like when housing is upgraded mid-turn by choosing a tech breakthrough + Player values for per-turn resources should be up to date whenever they are asked for + Removed trade through capital city bonus for the capital city itself, though the resources produced by the capital city are still taken into account for other cities connected to it through a road + Fixed bug where pioneer improvements would be placed in the bottom left corner of the tile you built them in + Fixed bug where the graphics of loaded improvements under construction would not show up on the map at all + If cities' net resource production is less than or equal to 0, it will still be displayed in the city details screen, so you can tell if your city is actually being a drain on some global resource + Added pioneer improvements to the kingdom details screen + Global resource pool UI now shows the net per-turn production of a given resource when you mouse over its entry + Added calculation of per-turn amounts of each global resource alongside the calculations that were already being done for non-stored resources, though if the player already had and was using a different per-turn calculation function, I just call that instead to set the per-turn value + Fixed bug where global resources spent training a unit weren't reflected immediately in the UI + AddUnitBeingTrained refreshes global resource display if any global resources are spent + Added net tooltip for mousing over global resource pool entries+ Added m_apPerturnResources (and saving/loading of it) and m_csPerTurnResources + Added GetPerTurnResourceProduction + RecalculateDirtyPerTurnResources now calculates a per-turn value for all resource, not just non-stored ones, but uses existing net calculation function if they already exist (like for gold and research points) - Pioneer Units - Overview: Players can now build 'Pioneers', who can place improvements on the major resources to feed into the global pool. + 'BuildOnResource' Unit Action - when an improvement is done, it will not exude ZOC for the player - in basic mode, completed improvement icons will show up no matter what zoom level - action will build the best possible improvement on the resource the unit is standing on - improvmeent takes the appropriate number of turns to build - hide resource being tapped - for testing, readded the action for all units...will remove next - improvement will take the required resources when built - Update the main ui when resoruces are used - if a trained unit builds: destroy that unit - allowed pioneers to tap shards (needed a special IF cause for resources that were of a shard type) - tweak pioneer kit to cost 50 gold and 5 materials + Resources from pioneer improvements are now taken into account in the player's global pool of stored resources, and their calculations of non-stored resources per turn + Fixed asserts when trying to select a pioneer improvement and broken info cards when mousing over them, the info cards now work completely and selecting a pioneer improvement shows the generic context used by goodie huts and such, though it's lacking in anything but a name right now + Fixed bug where calling DeductConstructionCosts on a pioneer improvement with a non-stored construction resource cost would have kept the player's pool from updating, actual deduction code should take care of it now + Fixed some leaked refs in the generic context wnd + Added saving/loading of a player's pioneer improvements + Added info to pioneer improvement generic context when selected about turns to finish building and resources produced + Resources should store wether or not they can be built upon without a city + All 'BonusTile' resources should be off-limits to pioneer units + remove the weird mine that gets build by pioneers if Mining has not been researched (Mine_Improvement)...needed to remove MINING.XML file + Pioneers are a default unit for all factions, like Peasants + Added Kingdom_Pioneer unit type that's available to all factions by default, has a pioneer's kit equipped - Minimap - Overview: A resizable and movable minimap is now available for the player to utilize. +Minimap can be dragged +Minimap can be clicked to move the camera +Minimap can be zoomed in on to move the camera AND zoom in + Fixed dragging on the minimap. Dragging on the top bar now moves the whole map, dragging on the minimap itself moves the camera as expected. + Blended in a parchment texture to the minimap so it looks more aesthetically pleasing. + The minimap updates when fog of war tiles get revealed now. + The minimap can now be hidden and unhidden using the hide arrow in the upper-right of the minimap and the main window. + The minimap can now be docked in the upper-right part of the main window by dragging it there - Bonus Tiles - Overview: Various bonus resources (that require an adjacent city) will improve different aspects of any city that claims them. + Senic View (Prestige Bonus) + Wild Game (Food Bonus) + Oasis (Food Bonus) + Lost Library (Research Bonus) + Gold Deposit (Income Bonus) + Rematched Bonus Types for Claimed Tile Improvements and Special Resources + Special Tiles now have proper Medallions attached to them - Event List Started - Overview: As events occur, small pips will appear on the right hand side of the screen and will disappear after 2 turns (still needs polish). + Make, clean up MainGameWnd_EventList.cpp for all event list code + make CMainGameEventEntryWnd class + hook up to ReportItems...when a report item is added, add an event entry as well + entries time out after 2 turns + right clicking removes entries from the list *********************************************** ** Fixes ** *********************************************** - Units - + Fixed bug where caravans would move to the next tile between turns, then drift to the bottom-left corner of the tile - AI - + fixed some issues with AI not building cities, I had them trying to use AUTO_EXPLORE when they can't find anything else to do, so they can clear some FOW, but it doesnt' actually work for AI, so I just wrote my own wandering code. + AI-controlled sovereigns now get sent to their closest city if they are defeated in battle. If they have no cities left, they are killed, and their faction is destroyed. - Battles - +  Fixed a divide-by-zero crash in the battle engine - Cities - +  Fixed improvements appearing to be buildable on resource hoards when the player has no tiles. +  Fixed tooltips to now show in red the reason the player cannot build an improvement. +  Added many more icons to tooltips to make the benefits and costs of each improvement more explicit. + Implemented more resource flags to show improvement costs and benefits in the citybuilding menu. The remaining improvements that do not have benefits showing do not have benefits in their XML yet. +  Improved the citybuilding screen's "Cost" and "Provides" entries. - All entries that can be XML driven are.  Entries that cannot at least have detailed tooltips. - If an entry does not have an icon, the space for that icon is used for text instead. - The spacing between entries has been tweaked so that even the longest entry list will not go outside the space provided. +  Fixed placing improvements across rivers, the player can no longer do so. + You may now demolish a four-tile improvement by clicking anywhere on it. +  Fixed some four-tile improvements being slightly offset after building, causing them to overlap other improvements. +  Suppressed the notification of auto-upgraded improvements building so the player doesn't get 20 "Construction completed on our house" notifications when their city levels up. +  Fixed Jakob's broken city walls case.  The size of the buffer was not getting calculated correctly, leading it to not have enough room to store the improvements before building the walls. + Fixed bug where improvements would still attempt to gather resources after placing them and pressing turn, causing them to take longer than advertised to build - UI - + Right clicking the center medallion will now focus the camera on the selected unit + SHIFT-S will not select the sovereign, and focus the camera on him + Change the calculation of Might to Power Rating and changed it to use Brad’s formula from the Beta 1-Z document. + Train unit screen lists the resource requirements and population requirements of the highlighted unit, coloring a requirement red if it is not satisfied by the city and therefore keeping the unit from being trainable + Costs for items now show up in a separate string that's easier to see, hidden if the item doesn't cost anything (like skin or hair) + Player can now select more than one stationed unit. + When multiple stationed units are selected they can be unstationed as one. +  Put in strings for improvements with non-standard bonuses so that they can be customized yet data-driven + Added strings for tooltips when mousing over the new per-turn points displays for research and spell points in the main UI + Fixed bug where changing the skin color in the create sovereign screen and customize faction screen would not update the skin color in the preview unit scene view graphic + Spell points and research points per-turn displayed near the buttons, says it's a per-turn value on mouseover + Fixed issue where unit scene view windows were "blowing out" the lighting on characters - Gameplay - + Updated Improvement Quantity Limits + Watchtower no longer costs materials to build + City Hubs store 20 Pop + Huts/Houses now cost 4 food + Market no longer costs materials to build + Improved starting gold to 500 + Created "the Dark Concoction" Quest + Updated various improvement tile designs + Removed K_Apartment from the repository + Updated Quest "Strange Noises" trigger chance + Updated Wild Wheat Production Value to 1.0 + New Medallion png's for the special tiles, claimed tile improvements, and work camp + Resource gathering improvements now ignore duplicate imp limit + Only one wall improvement is allowed per city + Quarries now reduce build times + Resources and special tiles now have descriptions for tooltips + Created Granary Improvement to boost food production + Checked in a number of new medallions for the new bonus tiles + Updated Granary improvement to only allow one per city + Created Equipment Cache Goody Hut that Rewards Equipment + Items/Weapons/Accessories no longer give more than .25 Combat Speed + Meditative talent now produces 1 SP per turn instead of 4 + Armory Improvement now decreases troop training time instead of multiplying IronOre resource + Created List of Champion Names + goodie huts that do not disappear from the map after being cleared now have their icons set to semi-transparent to differentiate them from unvisited goodie huts. + marrages should no longer happen randomly...have to go on quests to get proposals to prompt + City Improvement Limits adjusted + Removed Siege_Workshop.xml, added Siege_Foundry.xml as replacement + Updated Materials output for Lumbermill + Created Workshop Improvement to generate Materials + Added IgnoreDuplicateImpLimit tag to Garden + Outposts now store 20 Pop + Can now only build 1 Command Post per City + Market no longer costs materials to build + Updated Tax Office and Arcane Society improvement tile designs + Added a limit to the maximum number of active quests a player can have at any one time. The limit is defined in ElementalDefs.xml as MaxActiveQuests, and is currently set to 3. When the quest limit is reached, no new quests  will be presented to the player, and they will not be able to acquire new ones by visiting quest locations until they complete some of their active quests. Visiting a quest location while at the quest limit will not clear the quest location. + A number of quest locations are spawned for each player in the turn after they get their first city, to give them access to quests early on. The number of quest locations that get spawned is set via NumStartingQuestLocations in ElementalDefs.xml, and is currently set to 1. + Upon completing a quest spawned from a quest location, the quest location is removed from the map to reduce clutter. - Memory Leaks - + MainStatsSubWnd.cpp - fixed leaked ref for population resource in FillWithCityStats() + KingdomReportSubWnd.cpp - in AddTextForPlayer(), fixed leaked refs in a while loop of resources and some more in that same function but further down in a forloop of resources + ItemModTypeManager .h/.cpp - added function VOID ClearItemModTypes() which is called from the dtor() + ImprovementType.cpp - fixed a leaked ref in some commented out code within GetTurnsToConstructInCity(), in case it gets uncommented + ImprovementConstruction.cpp - in ConstructionCostHelper(), fixed leaked refs in a for loop of resources + Improvement.cpp - in DetermineImprovementContiguity(), fixed leaked refs when leaving the function early + GameItemType.cpp - in UnloadGameItemTypes(), cleared the vector after safe releasing its contents + FlavorTextManager.cpp - in dtr(), now calling Clear() to clean things up + DungeonType.cpp - in UnloadDungeonTypes, now clearing the vector after safe releasing the contents + CityTradeInfo.cpp - in RecalculateAllTradeInfo(), fixed leaked refs to resource types in a for loop and calling FindResourceTypeByTypeName() each time - in CheckTradeRoadConnection(), fixed leaked refs to resoruce types while iterating and calling FindResourceTypeByTypeName() each time + CityResourceData.cpp - in Load(), before setting value of m_pResourceType to a new value, fixed leak ref by calling SAFE_RELASE on it so it will release any previous value + Fixed a number of memory leaks in CMainMapViewWindow::CreateLODGroundcover( ) (multiple return cases where objects were not being released, though this function is not currently being called, as the LOD ground cover is disabled), and CWorld::IsTileEmpty( ) (wasn’t releasing the unit). - Engine - + Goodie huts can now be assigned a preferred terrain, which is the only terrain it will be randomly placed on. + Hooked up the ground cover spinner in the options window to the new world prop ground cover system. + Fixed an issue with the ground cover spinner that was preventing it from saving your setting. + Ground cover props now get placed when terrain is modified in the map editor, to give a better idea of how things will look in the main game. + Changed the ground cover prop density so that on the highest level every unoccupied tile will get a piece of ground cover. + Fixed bug where restarting the game from within a game (in basic mode) caused the main map not to render + Implemented new CAnimatedLeafNode class to render a single animated tree leaf - Use CSceneNodeUtil::CreateAnimatedLeafNode to create the node - This gets us one step closer to forests using tile designs + Fixed issue that was preventing the terrain and water from rendering when starting a new game up after one has already been created. + CMapData is now reference-counted, and gets passed along to terrain graphics objects (currently CTerrainGraphic and   CCliffGraphic, and will be expanded to include CWaterGraphic, CRoadGraphic and CRiverGraphic) that need to access information   about the map. These objects will now use their pointer to CMapData to access the required information rather than the access   functions in Elemental.cpp or CWorld. + Fixed some crashes that would occur when attempting to exit the game via the main menu after having used the map editor. + Fixed problem with ground cover world props that was preventing goodie huts and resources from being placed if the ground cover spinner was set to the highest level. + Changed rendering order in main map and map editor so props and characters render under the water + Re-wrote CDecalGraphic’s vertex and index buffer code to be much more efficient, in terms of both memory footprint and processing time (it was allocating four times as many vertices as were needed).

 

Stay tuned.

One of my big frustrations with the environmentalist community (that I like to think I’m part of) is jus how ideological they are.

Today’s big hub-bug on TreeHugger.com is that apparently Sarah Palin is hosting a show on TLC about Alaska’s natural wonders.

Personally, I don’t care much for Palin one way or the other. I think there’s much ado about nothing with regards to her. She’s a conservative politician.

But the Treehuggers are absolutely going bonkers about it because she supports hunting (and in particular, killing wolves), drilling in ANWR.  But let’s face it, when it comes to environmentalism, most people, including environmentalists are only “green” when it’s really convenient for them.

Here’s what I wrote:

The hatred towards Palin is breathtaking.

I don't really care about her one way or the other. But the hypocrisy in this thread is just astounding.
Reading (http://www.grizzlybay.org/SarahPalinInfoPage.htm) she's evil because essentially she favors hunting and building in the ANWR.

Meanwhile, I suspect most Americans when confronted with animals they consider "pests" -- even if they're mammals -- routinely kill them.

Sure, it's easy to feel about for wolves now that they're all dead where we live. Just like it's easy to feel good about opposing ANWR while most people live in suburban sprawl in the lower 48 that wiped out a wetland or woodland.

Some of you might really benefit from talking to actual real human beings to have to deal with actual real wolves and hear their perspective. I know I've met plenty of vegans who laughed at the lengths I've gone to in order to capture mice in our house alive to take them out to a distant field to let go rather than "just killing them".

There are also plenty of posts here supporting the wholesale destruction of vast amounts of untouched ecosystem to build solar farms and what not.

I'm just really disappointed at how quickly our environmental principles get flushed in favor of political ideology. If Discovery thinks more people will watch the show because Palin is hosting, then I think that's a great way to help educate people to some of the natural wonders that are out there.

You can see the full thread here.

The answer is almost always: No, actually it doesn’t.

In almost any debate, we’ll hear about how the “United States is the only X that does Y [or doesn’t do]”.

Except that’s not the case when you compare apples and apples.

One of the constant, long-time, ongoing debates in the United States is one that Europeans now find themselves in as well – where do the “states” stop and the “union” start?

When you dig into countless numbers of political topics, you find that opposition to a given policy starts to melt away when it is suggested that the issue be left to the states.

The reason for that is because the United States, like the European Union, is made up of demographically very different members.

The living standards, culture and priorities of someone in say New York or Massachusetts are very different from someone in Utah or Iowa or Mississippi.  So when someone looks to impose a new federal program – whether it be education, health care, welfare, etc. you get into quite a bit of debate on the issue.

Europeans often enter these debates without realizing that what they advocate for us they would very much likely oppose if forced upon them.

Let me give you an example: Welfare.

We should help the poor right?  Only the greedy oppose helping the poor.  Europeans have great social welfare programs right? No. They do not.  Some EU member states have generous welfare programs just as some US states have generous welfare programs.

The EU advocacy site, Europa, has a lot of useful information on the wealth of Europeans that you may find very enlightening.

For instance, the per person GDP in Denmark is 29,600.  Bulgaria’s is 8,600.  Should the EU start adopting laws that transfer massive amounts of wealth from Denmark to Bulgaria?  In the US, anything less than 15,000 per person is considered poverty level.  In the United States, the average person in Bulgaria would qualify for Medicaid (the US’s already existing “universal health insurance”). 

Consider the reaction of the Dutch, Danes, English, and Swedes if they were asked to endure a massive tax increase in order to pay for new anti-poverty programs that would go entirely to 10 EU members? I suspect there’d be riots.  But wait, the Dutch are “rich”. They average 28,200 a year.  Meanwhile, those poor people in Portugal are only living on about half as much.  What about compassion? What about caring for your fellow man?

I happen to agree with Europeans on that issue, there shouldn’t be massive “entitlement” programs imposed on the entire EU as a whole. Blanket policies are bad policies.  The same is true of the United States.

Found this on KnowYourMeme