Thank you for good work so far!

I will definitely keep the shadows and appreciate them

Eagerly awaiting LH Beta announcement:)

Shadows is cool when you have a good system. Estetics have its value.

I'm also glad the Frog now see the value of MP in turn based strategy. Hopefully we can get that coder hired.

This game would be in the Civilization IV-V league when it comes to multiplayer fun. I'd play the hell out of it, and it would reach those 1000's upon 1000's of hours I've spent on Civilization and Europa Universalis MP.

NB! This also promises well for the future GalCiv3. I bet Stardock will make sure it has good working MP from day 1. Please remember to keep all those good features that makes the SP game so great; like the ingame unit designer. Just positive that people have some other stash to do while waiting for others to finish their turns, and it's pretty original to see such things in MP-games. Rule number 1: we want the great singleplayer game, just playable in multiplayer as well.

That's a bit strong, don't you think? Customers are expressing their opinion, and at the end of the day, you have to make the customer happy.

Sure, some people (including myself) could have been more tactful, but this is valuable feedback that any smart businessman would, at least, take into consideration. 

Every single soul claim they represent the customers when they voice their opinion here. What the common customer really wants can't be decided by the people with the highest voices at the forum. A wise developer listens to those things they think can improve the current game design (within the economical limits), and lends a deaf ear to most other things.

Better make a great game based on your visions. Trying to please everybody only results in a messy soup of a product. Just look at american familiy comedy shows.... Quality has gone out of the window a long time ago, if it ever was there.

Now you're going a bit overboard here. I never claimed my voice represented the view of all customers. If you look at the current responses, far more are are saying that shadows aren't a significant factor in game-play than those who say it's vital. Sure, people on forums are the loudest voices, but they are also the most "invested" customers, and it's reasonable to extrapolate the views here to the general customer base.

I'm certainly going to purchase LH when it's released, as will most others, but there is already a thread on the board discussing whether to wait for LH or purchase other games. 

I guess we can agree to disagree, but IMO, a business that doesn't listen to it's customers does so at it peril, in the long run. 

I appreciate the work you guys do. But if it might help, I want to make it clear:

Couldn't care less about shadows. I, too, instantly turn them off. I'd love to see you add more random events, more DLC, diplomacy changes...anything over shadows. 

That said, looking forward to what you make, shadows and all. 

I hate to sound negative, you can check my comment history, because I'm usually a very positive commenter, but are you guys trolling us our are you really THAT focused on shadows and not getting this out for balance and feedback purposes?

You guys really do need a reality check. I couldn't care less about shadows. I only care about decent visuals and superb gameplay.

It seems as though I'm certainly not the only one. Worry about the shadows later.

Thought I should post to defend the shadows. If you have a good system they can really add to the atmosphere of a game.

Maybe in a strategy game they are less important than in a game like Skyrim, but they still add something.

Looking forward to the beta.

I'd sooner want pedestrians for 32-bit machines than shadows for 32-bit machines. Honestly, throughout all of FE, I never once thought "wow...this game could/should really have shadows".

I'm concerned that's gotten sidetracked playing Starcraft2  

What Brad's getting at is the uncanny valley.  Where things don't quite look real enough to be comfortable to look at.  That's why you need shadows.

I think the thing to consider here is, do you know where your main lighting is going to be at all times?  If so, you can save a bit of CPU time because light is blocked (and therefore generates a shadow) in a predictable fashion, creating a sort of shadow table.  It's like how Minecraft saves time by knowing exactly how the sun lights the landscape ahead of time, but more detailed.

On the other hand, dynamic lighting from spells, smaller local light sources and so on is too variable, too close to the subject to just look up a shadow table.  They can in fact illuminate places that are otherwise dark, thereby softening shadows from the main light source.

Of course you don't want to go nuts here because not only does this kind of lighting eat a lot of CPU in real time or otherwise, making it too detailed for the model gets you to another uncanny valley.  For low-level light sources that flicker you can get away with quick and dirty or no shadows because in main lighting they're going to be washed away.  On the other hand if there's a situation where main lighting is low, even a low-level light source like a campfire is going to have a bigger effect than during daytime conditions.

And yes, you have to think about how much time the thing being shadowed is going to be close enough to the camera for the player to even see these things.  The further away the camera is, the lower the resolution of shadow you can get away with, because the model itself appears much smaller.

Also, have some Shadows.

I've been a programmer for a long time, and one of the things I've noticed about people in this industry is that there's a powerful desire to make things "correct" - except "correct" is usually an ideological thing, like the way a very old English teacher will tell you that you MUST NOT use the word "quote" to refer to a quotation, but only as a verb.  ("To quote", yes, "a quote", no)

I'd like to suggest that maybe shadows are something like this.  Maybe not!  Maybe you've got some data that shows that it's a big deal.  But like, guys, one of the best games I ever played was this thing called Chrono Trigger that you might have heard of once upon a time.  It's shadows consisted of little round black circles underneath character's feet.  And there's this game called Planescape: Torment whose spiritual successor just managed to raise millions of dollars on Kickstarter; it also used little round circles under a character's feet.

Those were really fun games.

OK, read the first page of comments, and regardless of where people stand on shadows (use them or not), my bigger question is... are they worth delaying a beta over?  They could already be gathering lots of feedback on gameplay, crash errors, typos, etc.  To have it be delayed over shadows seems silly.  

I realize, of course, that they also want feedback on how the shadows might be causing glitches, etc, etc, but there are ONLY 2 reasons I can see that they would delay the beta over shadows:  Loss of perspective and empathy for all those players who want to be trying the game NOW, and/or concerns over the cost of all the bandwidth (if they did a version now, and another version with working shadows in a week or whenever).  But if the game is gong to be over Steam now, isn't bandwidth cost not an issue?

I realize some people don't care.  But it's clear that some people, myself included, do.  I had a few weeks with very little work on my plate, and I was anxiously awaiting a chance to get to find lots of glitches and report them (and enjoy the game play, of course), and it looks like I'm going to miss out on that chance... because of a graphical setting.  Sigh.

That was inevitable.  It's something that could not have been avoided.

Seriously, though, he can't work all the time.  He'd go crazy.  Then we'd get weird things like 4-dimensional shadows and a new clown race.

And that's were the problem lies....

~ K