Here are some screenshots we’ve taken for Legendary Heroes that I wanted to share with you guys: In this one, we’re showing off the complex shadows. It’s really surprising how much easier it makes playing the game when you can see your units pop better.  This is still early but this is the direction we’re going. It also shows the updated mini-map. We’re still thinking about what color the base map should be (it’s tan in this screenshot). We decided to stop showing terrain...

Tactical battle, fought by me vs. AI. and… Auto Resolve:   It was raining today so I thought I’d peek in on how the auto resolve code worked.  The idea behind auto resolve is to provide a *fast* perf wise estimate of going through the motions of a full tactical battle.  It’s not the same and can’t be by design because otherwise, the time between turns could get ridiculous. However, some smart beta testers (who we’ll refer to as evil overl...

Ok, sorry we didn’t get this out. So I’m play testing this week’s update. Just a few things I thought I would share with you guys. This is just my personal view: Performance is much better. I mean in terms of framerate. Part of that is the optimized font handling and other tweaks. But the result is a lot smoother experience. The elimination of the old sound effects made a big difference. I didn’t really notice how bad the old sound effects were until the new Dolby 5.1 ones go...

Ugh. So I’m making the monsters move at a different phase than the players so that they do a better job attacking one another. Pain. I have it working. But there’s a cosmetic problem. When the little guys run back to their spot, they get stuck with the running animation. We’ve all seen cases of this before.  And we had stomped it out. But this change brings it back with a vengeance. So I’m still working on it.

Just saw this in tonight’s build:

One thing that will have to be video-shown (i.e. a screenshot obviously can't show animation) is the new animation system in Beta 4. In Beta 3, animation has worked like in all Stardock games in the past - unit is moving West. If they turn around, they instantly turn around.  When they stop moving, they instantly enter the stop animation. Animations were recorded at 24FPS also. But in Beta 4, the animation speed has been increased to 30FPS (hardware is better now) and the new a...

  After the cataclysm, the mortal races with sufficient numbers organized themselves between Kingdoms and Empires. Broadly speaking, the biggest difference in the ideologies comes down to the source of magical power their rulers subscribe to. The Channelers of the Kingdom gain their power from life – the ambient life energy. The Channelers of the Empire gain their power from death – when things die. Men refer to “Fallen” races as those races that started out as men b...

As you may imagine, with each iteration, we internally pepper Kael with our own ideas and suggestions.  In no particular order these are some of the ones I’ve put in so you get a flavor of the feedback that poor Kael has to deal with daily. Every champion should have a unique ability – ex: give Baco “Destiny’s Gambler” spell where the player can spend 50 mana and get a random result, mostly good but some bad. Move random events away from being random and into being “choice...

Let’s see how much the results change based on how we fight this battle against a bone ogre:     Auto Resolve results:   Next: Into Tactical and just hitting the auto-play:   Next: I personally play the tactical battle to see if I can do better Now, I burned a ton of mana in my battle but suffered no damage at all.   So the question is, why did auto-resolve do so poorly? We’ll have to...

bug hunting   I’ve been working a lot on the AI and I re-did the way the monsters target things. People should find the AI in beta 3 quite a bit tougher than in beta 2. The build above was to verify that the new monster AI attacks players. I even found a bug with regards to the AI going after "goodie huts” (which is ironic because the AI is supposed to look at whether there’s danger around it).

This fine, Sunday afternoon I'm messing around with making animation run smoother.  In the process, I discovered something -- the AI's moves can get aborted in some instances due to framerate. Just fixed this. Should make a big difference in AI quality, especially late game.

Had a great day demoing Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion and Elemental: Fallen Enchantress.  The updated game mechanics, graphics, and new magical spells like Tidal Wave, Fire Storm, and Grip of Winter demoed really well. So far, what demoed the best was the upcoming counter-strategies available due to recent changes in how weapons and defenses work (this won't be fully available to beta testers until late Beta 3).   Feedback was very positive. Given the...difficulties we ha...