You have my full support, Brad.  Sounds like a great idea and a good way to flesh out problems with the cloth map concept.

Another idea for you- how about doing the converse as a beta?  For example, can you play the game without the cloth map?  Maybe that's not possible, but it would also help to flesh out the details and see how useful/good the detailed view it.

Oh, and thanks for the update.  It's been a while (and I'm sure that has to do with Demigod).

I don't know what policies there are about multiple instalations of 1 purchased game, but just to make it stated. 

This means I WILL be installing at least 2 copies of the beta.  So that I can test it on my SH*ty laptop for testing purposes.   Right now I play dos-box games on it (namely MoM) and if you guys are actually able to replace MoM in that aspect as well, (will work on my laptop) you will be my heroes.

 (If its perfered I will buy a 2nd copy of the retail.  I kinda hope to have the situation addressed though)

I'll play with ASCII graphics. The more eye candy the better, but I just want it on my hard drive.

So cloth map = no tactical combat I guess? Does that mean combatr is going to be very GalCiv 2 ish where things are going to play out pretty much the same whether you just let it happen or you give orders to units? I hope not, I want the tactical game to make a difference...

Thanks for the screenie!

If you would kill to get into the beta, you might as well pre-order now. Assuming of course that a life is worth more than$49.95 to you 

(pre-order gives you beta, in case you didn't know   )

Well there is some talk about alpha something or other.  A "pre-beta", "alpha?", or "beta-0" as it were.  We don't really have much info on it other than apparently it might exist and not everybody who pre-order is guarenteed to get in the way the betas are.

@stowemobile -   well you should participate in my contest.  If this alpha? entry is karma based, it may be the karma boost you need to ensure you get in.   And you won't have to kill anybody either, just do something fun and exciting (please don't kill people.  That would be the wrong message)

Sounds like a solid idea. I like graphics but they aren't the main reason I play/buy games. So only having the game on the cloth map for a portion of the beta testing is a rather novel idea. 

Sweet! SIGN ME UP!

I actually quite like the way Stardock does its betas. Other than that one GalCiv beta, that is.

I can understand why people have trouble grasping it though. If you followed along through the Demigod betas there was one update where the Torchbearer was "removed" and "replaced" with a General Demigod. If you're unfamiliar with Stardock's process (or early betas in general) you might assume that change is permanent and the Torchbearer is gone for good, rather than (presumably) just kicking back for a patch or two and having his shoes shined.

But I much prefer getting the next update to the beta and feeling like the game is actually taking shape, sometimes even in response to what the general public is saying about the game. I was in the alpha and then beta for another game that shall remain nameless and about the most significant change was it not crashing quite as often. Glaring issues with player abilities were ignored - and persist even post-release.

With Stardock there's a much greater feeling of "rejected" feedback being because the developer disagrees or thinks a different direction is genuinely better for the game. Not that they're just too damn lazy to implement something, or too arrogant to admit they're wrong.

If I could pay for Elemental now and get into the beta when it's ready, I'd do so. But being in another country I am at the mercy of the exchange rates. Without a solid start date I could end up paying $400 in local currency for the game.

I haven't yet decided if what you're creating is worth quite that much.

As for the idea of a "cloth map" approach? Why the heck not? I'd even suggest holding onto that idea and maybe reusing it at another point in the beta, if it's not too much a stress on the development timeline. It'd be interesting to compare the first "cloth beta" to one a month or two on?

Looking forward to the next Demigod beta and the inevitable Elemental beta.

Then for once we could get people to fixate on the key features of the game rather than piddly details.

Let me know how that works out for ya. 

This is an SD product... I'll enjoy it whether it has the fancy graphics or not (assuming, of course, that the cloth map is functional...)

I'm all for the gimped painful mechanical action with a Zen approach. I think it is best for testing the core elements and getting people to focus on them and not the bling.

Agreed, its entirely possible to play chess and checkers with nothing but ripped up toilet paper just because the base mechanics are well known and easy to grasp. If those mechanics are not up to snuff, it wouldn't matter if your king and rook were made of solid gold, the game would still be crap.

Absolutely go for it... I'm a big fan of the smallest possible set of functionality being released for end-users to mess around with as soon as is humanly possible.

If it's a cloth map and stick figures, fine! Particularly considering most of Elemental's value will be in the gameplay mechanics which we could be testing from the get-go.

You could even release without a tactical battle system (altho from screenies I think you already have something there?) and just have beta 0 or 1 being purely strategic with auto-resolve.

Regards,

Kul

Well, GC2 allows you to play only with the tactical view, where everything is icon. Strangely, it makes easier to spot tiny enemy fighters than when using the 3D view. And it allows to have a better view about what is happening in the game.

I wonder how many regular GC2 players are playing essentially with the tactical view, since it allow a better overall view of the situation  And I wonder if the same won't be also true for Elemental, especially when using large/immense/insane map settings for epic game: A zoom out view that allows to play the whole game is invaluable to streamline gameplay on big maps.