Dominions 3 has gone GOLD
Gandalf Parker
Dom3 has announced that its gone gold. That means that a finished CD
master-image has been sent to the publishers for release. The full article
is here.....
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/News/pr_01.htm
Gandalf Parker
littlemute
DENMARK BE PRAISED!
Carl Lundstedt
Um...shades of Derek He-who-must-not-be-named on the Dominions 3 Website:
"Dominions 3: The Awakening could very easily be the last fantasy 4X game
you ever need."
I wonder about the sanity of a developer who borrows marketing tips from
BC3K's days of yore.
Carl Lundstedt
UNL
littlemute
Goddamit man. This is an indy developer (it's 2 guys with some help
here and there from a few others). There is no marketing team in shirts
and ties walking around making up silly slogans or trademarking
catchphrases (like SUCK IT DOWN from Diakatana), and Shrapnel is a
distributor of all independent wargames, so cut them some slack. The
game gets it's sales from VIRAL word of mouth because it's simply
awesome in scope, multiplayer, replayability and customizability, even
though it's graphics, hardcore gameplay and interface make it not the
game for everyone.
As for the statement itself, it would be cheesey if it wasn't entirely
true. The game eats it's competitors for lunch. Though this is the age
when every game release has "BEST GAME EVER" from some obscure webZine,
I would rephrase to use less waffling language to: "Dominions 3: The
Awakening is the last fantasy 4X game you will ever need."
littlemute
guy in a shirt and tie that sometimes gets paid to make up silly
slogans
Gandalf Parker
news:vusoe29eufs4gq8md...@4ax.com:
> On 23 Aug 2006 13:51:50 GMT, Gandalf Parker
> <gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net> wrote:
>
>>http://www.shrapnelgames.com/News/pr_01.htm
>
> well, from the link "Dominions 3: The Awakening is available through
> the Shrapnel Games' online-store, the Gamers Front at
> www.gamersfront.com/xcart/home.php [1] for only $54.95."
>
> Actualy, It's more expensive than civ 4...
>
> I've bought dom1 but the so called "UI" was so bad that I've give
> up...
>
> The improvments of Dom2 was far from be sufisant for me, so where is
> the demo, that we can se the UI improvments?
Gold comes before demo. The demo has to be trimmed down from the gold
version. But you are correct. I have ALWAYS recommended the demo first
to new dominions players. Its not a game that everyone can get into. You
shoudl definetly wait for the demo if you arent a Dom2 player.
On the other hand those who can get thru the demo have rarely regretted
the price. Dom1 and Dom2 both lived for years on my machine while others
of the same price lasted about a month.
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
news:pan.2006.08.23....@lundstedt1.unl.edu:
> On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 13:51:50 +0000, Gandalf Parker wrote:
>
>> Finally.
>> Dom3 has announced that its gone gold. That means that a finished CD
>> master-image has been sent to the publishers for release. The full
>> article is here.....
>> http://www.shrapnelgames.com/News/pr_01.htm
> Um...shades of Derek He-who-must-not-be-named on the Dominions 3
> Website:
>
> "Dominions 3: The Awakening could very easily be the last fantasy 4X
> game you ever need."
>
> I wonder about the sanity of a developer who borrows marketing tips
> from BC3K's days of yore.
Yeah I noted that also. But read down to the bottom..
> For press related information please contact Scott R. Krol at:
The article you read was done by the publishers press relations guy. Cant
knock that TOO hard. He was just doing his job. :)
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
news:1156350424.4...@74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com:
> As for the statement itself, it would be cheesey if it wasn't entirely
> true. The game eats it's competitors for lunch. Though this is the age
> when every game release has "BEST GAME EVER" from some obscure webZine,
> I would rephrase to use less waffling language to: "Dominions 3: The
> Awakening is the last fantasy 4X game you will ever need."
Awww come on. You had me with you up until that last part. THAT would be an
impossible statement to live up to.
How about....
> "Dominions 3: The Awakening is the last fantasy 4X game you will ever
need. Until Dominions 4." >:)
I want
"Dominions 10: the Holodeck program"
Or
"Dominions 20: the Matrix plugin"
Gandalf Parker
Carl Lundstedt
My post was 'tongue firmly implanted in cheek'.
I'm not sure how you indicate that in UseNet markup language.
Carl Lundstedt
UNL
Gandalf Parker
news:pan.2006.08.23....@lundstedt1.unl.edu:
> On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:36:40 +0000, Gandalf Parker wrote:
>
>> Carl Lundstedt <clu...@lundstedt1.unl.edu> contributed wisdom to
>> news:pan.2006.08.23....@lundstedt1.unl.edu:
>>
>>> On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 13:51:50 +0000, Gandalf Parker wrote:
>>>
>>>> Finally.
>>>> Dom3 has announced that its gone gold. That means that a finished
>>>> CD master-image has been sent to the publishers for release. The
>>>> full article is here.....
>>>> http://www.shrapnelgames.com/News/pr_01.htm
>>> Um...shades of Derek He-who-must-not-be-named on the Dominions 3
>>> Website:
>>>
>>> "Dominions 3: The Awakening could very easily be the last fantasy 4X
>>> game you ever need."
>>>
>>> I wonder about the sanity of a developer who borrows marketing tips
>>> from BC3K's days of yore.
>>
>> Yeah I noted that also. But read down to the bottom..
>>> For press related information please contact Scott R. Krol at:
>>
>> The article you read was done by the publishers press relations guy.
>> Cant knock that TOO hard. He was just doing his job. :)
>
> My post was 'tongue firmly implanted in cheek'.
> I'm not sure how you indicate that in UseNet markup language.
Ahhh ok. Actually I didnt disagree with what you said. If a developer had
said that then I would have laughed. But from a PR guy it made sense.
As it is I get irritated at programmers who think you never will want to
shell out of their game. That you want it iconed 3 times to desktop,
start, and quick bar. And no uninstall. (luckily Illwinter doesnt do
those to its games so far). Not to mention the new habit of burying it
beneath subdirectories of the publisher, then the developer, then the
game.
Gandalf Parker
JHawk
skeptical.
They need a good tutorial.
Peter Huebner
littl...@woodenmen.org says...
Denmark? Have they moved?
-P.
--
=========================================
firstname dot lastname at gmail fullstop com
Peter Huebner
gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net says...
>
> As it is I get irritated at programmers who think you never will want to
> shell out of their game. That you want it iconed 3 times to desktop,
> start, and quick bar. And no uninstall. (luckily Illwinter doesnt do
> those to its games so far). Not to mention the new habit of burying it
> beneath subdirectories of the publisher, then the developer, then the
> game.
>
> Gandalf Parker
Not to mention burying the save game files 5 layers deep on my system drive
Which I Do Not Want To Be Fragmented, Thank You!. Hate that, absolutely hate
that.
-Peter
Gandalf Parker
news:1156363053.2...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
> "less threatening to newcomers" is what intrigued me. But I am
> skeptical.
>
> They need a good tutorial.
As I understand it the tutorial, some maps, and the manual, are all being
worked on by players that did the versions everyone loved for Dom2. Good
move!
Gandalf Parker
Frank E
>"less threatening to newcomers" is what intrigued me. But I am
>skeptical.
It would be pretty difficult to NOT make it less threatening to
newcomers. <g>
Rgds, Frank
magnate
Er, I thought you said it had gone gold? So are you saying that the
manual and the tutorial are not part of the gold version?? Or did you
mean they're ready too? 'Cos if the Tutorial is not part of the
installed game, and is instead a savegame you have to install
separately and load while reading a PDF, that won't really cut it as
"less threatening to newcomers" ...
CC
Philippe Duchon
> Gandalf Parker wrote:
> >
> > As I understand it the tutorial, some maps, and the manual, are all being
> > worked on by players that did the versions everyone loved for Dom2. Good
> > move!
>
> Er, I thought you said it had gone gold? So are you saying that the
> manual and the tutorial are not part of the gold version?? Or did you
> mean they're ready too? 'Cos if the Tutorial is not part of the
> installed game, and is instead a savegame you have to install
> separately and load while reading a PDF, that won't really cut it as
> "less threatening to newcomers" ...
>
> CC
>
I may be wrong here (not part of the beta process, I don't have any
privileged information), but my guess is that the "tutorial" will not
be some in-game tip-giving tool; rather, it will be some pages in the
printed manual that leads you through the interface and a few turns of
the game. I haven't checked the Dom2 tutorial in some time, but it was
done as an after-release thing, and by someone not related to the devs
or the publisher. This time around, it's similar, only this time the
guy probably got beta versions and has been involved in the manual
writing.
The only bad thing this means is, if the manual isn't finished while
the game has gone gold, the manual won't be included as a file on the
CD. Minor annoyance - my Dom2 manual is still around, so unless
Shrapnel tried to cut corners on costs with Dom3, I can expect the
printed manual to be durable enough for my needs.
--
Philippe Duchon
Gandalf Parker
news:lortRNjpi3q+r9...@4ax.com:
Oh I dont know about that. I know you were making a funny but...
The number of nations has more than tripled, the starting choices for
nation creation has increased, the game start options include many new
varaibles such as a bunch of things for random map generation, new units,
new spells, new equipment, new information buttons on the screen.
If they havent improved the UI...
well from what I see so far I think it will be better. But it seems kindof
like "The game has improved the UI by 10 times. Unfortunately it increased
the compexity by 8. Overall imrpovement 2." :)
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
news:1156420700.5...@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
Im pretty sure its part of the gold version. But Im not sure what form it
takes. Since the programmer is still the same programmer Im not
particularly expecting an written-into-game-code tutorial but I do expect
it to install on the CD.
The fact that the menu choices in Dom1 and Dom2 could be done in the
wrong order was bad. It should have come with pre-made choices on each
item. Some maps, a junky pre-made god, a tutorial game you could load,
etc. So if that part is fixed then I will be happy for the newbies.
Gandalf Parker
Frank E
<gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net> wrote:
>Frank E <fakea...@hotmail.com> contributed wisdom to
>news:lortRNjpi3q+r9...@4ax.com:
>
>> On 23 Aug 2006 12:57:33 -0700, "JHawk" <bry...@truman.edu> wrote:
>>
>>>"less threatening to newcomers" is what intrigued me. But I am
>>>skeptical.
>>
>> It would be pretty difficult to NOT make it less threatening to
>> newcomers. <g>
>
>Oh I dont know about that. I know you were making a funny but...
>The number of nations has more than tripled, the starting choices for
>nation creation has increased, the game start options include many new
>varaibles such as a bunch of things for random map generation, new units,
>new spells, new equipment, new information buttons on the screen.
Still, just something as simple as offering pre-defined pretenders for
each race would drop the 'intimidation factor' for new players by a
lot. There was enough bitching about it back when I kept up with the
Dom2 forums that one would hope Illwinter caught a clue and
implemented some of the simpler features to help out newbies.
I would think that most of the things you mentioned above won't affect
a true newbie all that much. You don't need to worry about optimizing
things until you graduate from playing the AI to multiplayer. And in
some ways, the new players will have a more level playing field for a
while. Everyone is going to have to figure out what the new benchmark
spells and items are for their new builds.
>If they havent improved the UI...
>well from what I see so far I think it will be better. But it seems kindof
>like "The game has improved the UI by 10 times. Unfortunately it increased
>the compexity by 8. Overall imrpovement 2." :)
That does kinda worry me. I don't think Dominions needed to have more
stuff, just better balance in what was already there but at least now
we can mod anything that we don't like. I'm not really holding my
breath when it comes to UI improvements, it just doesn't appear to be
something the Illwinter program is willing to spend time on.
Rgds, Frank
David
"Frank E" <fakea...@hotmail.com> wrote in message > That does kinda worry
> stuff, just better balance in what was already there but at least now
> we can mod anything that we don't like. I'm not really holding my
> breath when it comes to UI improvements, it just doesn't appear to be
> something the Illwinter program is willing to spend time on.
>
> Rgds, Frank
Re: UI improvements, I'm just glad that it will be improved some. The lead
programmer has stated that he doesn't like to program UI, and programming an
easy UI for a game this complex and making it user friendly takes a lot of
work and a lot of programming time. Illwinter is not trying to get rich
here by selling to the soft core kids, they are doing it as a labor of love
by making the game they would want to play. At least, that's the impression
I get.
Ross Ridge
> Gold comes before demo. The demo has to be trimmed down from the gold
> version.
Maybe in a ideal world, but this is seldom true.
Ross Ridge
Frank E
>
>Re: UI improvements, I'm just glad that it will be improved some. The lead
>programmer has stated that he doesn't like to program UI, and programming an
>easy UI for a game this complex and making it user friendly takes a lot of
>work and a lot of programming time. Illwinter is not trying to get rich
>here by selling to the soft core kids, they are doing it as a labor of love
>by making the game they would want to play. At least, that's the impression
>I get.
I've heard that but I tend to ignore it. Whether he enjoys programming
the UI or not becomes irrelevant (to me) when they charge $55 for the
game. I'm willing to put up with the shitty AI since I like the rest
of the game but I'm not willing to excuse it just because it isn't fun
for the programmer to write.
Rgds, Frank
David Short
>
> That does kinda worry me. I don't think Dominions needed to have more
> stuff, just better balance in what was already there but at least now
> we can mod anything that we don't like. I'm not really holding my
> breath when it comes to UI improvements, it just doesn't appear to be
> something the Illwinter program is willing to spend time on.
Just thought enough of what's written here to quote it in agreement. I'll
check out the demo and I'm sure I'll hear user comments. There's a lot of
meat on that bone, it's just a matter of seeing if it's fully cooked or raw.
Dom2 didn't need more stuff is an absolute understatement, but that doesn't
seem to be Illwinter's path.
dfs
alexti
Nothing is too difficult for Illwinter. They have managed it. Few years
back with Dominions I :)
Alex.
Steve Andrewartha
And I'll quote all of that in full agreement. I played a lot of both
Dom1 and Dom2, but new content remains at the bottom of my wishlist. All
that's needed (in my view) is to fix the things that finally led me to
shelve the game, and those things were:
1) Mid-game quitting is understandable and common, but it ruins the game
for those still playing.
2) Certain strategies (like castle spamming) are so powerful that you
*must* employ them to remain competitive, which reduces the game's
strategic depth and sometimes (as in this case) leads to an endless and
tedious endgame.
3) The order validation system used leaves the game vulnerable to
*cough*Norfleet*cough* cheating.
magnate
> David Short wrote:
> > "Frank E" <fakea...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > >
> >> stuff, just better balance in what was already there but at least now
> >> we can mod anything that we don't like. I'm not really holding my
> >> breath when it comes to UI improvements, it just doesn't appear to be
> >> something the Illwinter program is willing to spend time on.
> >
> > Just thought enough of what's written here to quote it in agreement. I'll
> > check out the demo and I'm sure I'll hear user comments. There's a lot of
> > meat on that bone, it's just a matter of seeing if it's fully cooked or raw.
> > Dom2 didn't need more stuff is an absolute understatement, but that doesn't
> > seem to be Illwinter's path.
>
> And I'll quote all of that in full agreement. I played a lot of both
> Dom1 and Dom2, but new content remains at the bottom of my wishlist. All
Fourthed. It's at the bottom of mine as well, and while I love the
richness and quantity of stuff in Dom2 I can't understand people who
think it's important to have yet more without dev time spent fixing
these:
> 1) Mid-game quitting is understandable and common, but it ruins the game
> for those still playing.
To be fair this problem is not specific to Dom2 - it's common to many
MP TBS games (MoO2 and VGAP off the top of my head). Once you realise
you're no longer in a competitive position (which can be a long way off
being eliminated), it's very tempting to drop out because it's not
really any fun putting time into doing turns when you have no hope of
winning. Decent folk would at least continue to spend a few mins doing
turns and putting up a bit of resistance until they're eliminated, but
many just quit. Ironically the difference between the two is quite
small, as far as the outcome of the game is concerned, but it's
psychologically pretty big.
I don't know if there is actually a solution to this - in an
empire-building game it wouldn't be right if everyone managed to remain
competitive right to the end, it would genuinely take ages to take a
losing empire out completely. I guess more interesting VCs are the
answer, instead of complete hegemony. Dom2 has maps with VP provinces
in, and games which focus on controlling these can often encourage more
people to stay in longer (maybe as part of a faction with a chance of
victory). So I think this problem is really about the concept of wiping
out all other players, and will feature in all such games.
> 2) Certain strategies (like castle spamming) are so powerful that you
> *must* employ them to remain competitive, which reduces the game's
> strategic depth and sometimes (as in this case) leads to an endless and
> tedious endgame.
Again, lots of games have strategies which are so unbalanced as to be
almost "exploits". But yes, the madcastling issue does spoil Dom2 quite
badly. I think the devs took on board feedback about it, and hopefully
it will have been rebalanced. I wouldn't mind if they expanded the
whole provincial development side of the game (eg. buildings to provide
extra money, or resources, or different troops etc. etc.).
> 3) The order validation system used leaves the game vulnerable to
> *cough*Norfleet*cough* cheating.
This one I'm not so fussed about. Cheaters tend to get found out
eventually. Mind you, it can't be hard to write a checking algorithm -
I have never heard of cheating in VGAP and it has a *very* basic turn
checker. So yes, they should sort this out.
You didn't touch on what is imho the most important problem with Dom2:
the UI. It really needs much better access to strategic info: I want to
see no more than one click from the main screen stuff like items
carried, waypoints, previous moves or builds, etc. etc. I want a
recruitment summary, queueable recruitment and forging (and casting), a
dominion history (so I can see how my and enemy dom is spreading) etc.
etc.
Gandalf keeps telling me a lot of this has been addressed, but also
that they have not (and will not) provided access to historic turn
data. To me this is a huge problem, but nobody else seems to mind.
CC
Gerry Quinn
chr...@dbass.demon.co.uk says...
> Steve Andrewartha wrote:
> > 1) Mid-game quitting is understandable and common, but it ruins the game
> > for those still playing.
>
> To be fair this problem is not specific to Dom2 - it's common to many
> MP TBS games (MoO2 and VGAP off the top of my head). Once you realise
> you're no longer in a competitive position (which can be a long way off
> being eliminated), it's very tempting to drop out because it's not
> really any fun putting time into doing turns when you have no hope of
> winning. Decent folk would at least continue to spend a few mins doing
> turns and putting up a bit of resistance until they're eliminated, but
> many just quit. Ironically the difference between the two is quite
> small, as far as the outcome of the game is concerned, but it's
> psychologically pretty big.
>
> I don't know if there is actually a solution to this - in an
> empire-building game it wouldn't be right if everyone managed to remain
> competitive right to the end, it would genuinely take ages to take a
> losing empire out completely.
The only real fix is an AI that can take over.
- Gerry Quinn
Gandalf Parker
I dont think he actually ignored any suggestions. Most of the really
detailed UI suggestions Ive ever seen were either non-PbEM capable or
were Windows specific so they wouldnt be possible in the mac, or linux,
or solaris unix versions. So basically those were tossed out.
Most of the other suggestions got put into Dom2 unless they needed a full
rewrite (which Im guessing the creation of Dom3 took care of). I also see
that Solaris Unix was dropped from the support list so that would have
opened up alot of areas for consistent GUI with just windows, mac, linux
to worry about.
Gandalf Parker
littlemute
Gol'fleme wrote:
> On 25 Aug 2006 03:11:46 -0700, "magnate" <chr...@dbass.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> Even worse, now the price is the same as games like civ4!
> When we'll be able to compare the graphics and the UI of civ 4 to ones of
> the incoming dom3 I quite sure we'll be shocked!
>
But then sit down and really compare the gameplay to Civ 4.
Undeniably, CIV is a good game, but the COMBAT IS SHIT. For all the
advances in the game, the culture, the tech trees, religion, the
diplomacy and graphics CIV4's combat engine is still catastrophically
boring and lame and doesn't take into account combined arms whatsoever.
Gandalf Parker
news:1156433924.2...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
No I thin its usually true. A demo cant be created until the game is free
of bugs. I dont think Ive seen too many games where they seemed to only
program the demo part of it, then finish the game.
However, with large publishers it can seem like the demo came first. Thats
because the gold master CD image takes a long time to get published and
sent to market. Plenty of time to put in some locks and turn a demo loose
on the internet before the game is seen on the shelves.
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
news:44ee7968@herald:
> David Short wrote:
>
> 1) Mid-game quitting is understandable and common, but it ruins the
> game for those still playing.
The improved AI is the only thing I can think of that would fix that.
Thats supposed to be in.
That was dumb anyway. Any player that quit in the expansion phase was
stupid. Even if they lost their god all they had to do was switch to
defensive and pray him back. Heavy researching for some of the killer
summons was a good plan-B also.
> 2) Certain strategies (like castle spamming) are so powerful that you
> *must* employ them to remain competitive, which reduces the game's
> strategic depth and sometimes (as in this case) leads to an endless
> and tedious endgame.
Since you cannot select your castle Im suspecting thats no longer a
problem.
> 3) The order validation system used leaves the game vulnerable to
> *cough*Norfleet*cough* cheating.
I know that alot more cheat-checking is in but we wont know how it holds
up to hacking efforts until the hackers try. It is now possible to play
the game without a copy of the maps .map file so thats going to fix some
cheats.
Gandalf Parker
Ross Ridge
> Gold comes before demo. The demo has to be trimmed down from the gold
> version.
"Ross Ridge" <rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> contributed wisdom to
> Maybe in a ideal world, but this is seldom true.
Gandalf Parker wrote:
> No I thin its usually true.
If it were usually true most game demos would have to include the same
copy protection as on the gold master. A few do, but most don't.
> A demo cant be created until the game is free of bugs.
Heh. You're definately not in the real wold. No game is ever free of
bugs.
Ross Ridge
Gandalf Parker
> Gandalf Parker wrote:
>> Gold comes before demo. The demo has to be trimmed down from the gold
>> version.
>
> "Ross Ridge" <rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> contributed wisdom to
>> Maybe in a ideal world, but this is seldom true.
>
>> No I thin its usually true.
>
> If it were usually true most game demos would have to include the same
> copy protection as on the gold master. A few do, but most don't.
Youve got to be kidding. Why, when they are trimming a demo for the
tiniest release, would they include copy protection? That would be the
first thing trimmed.
>> A demo cant be created until the game is free of bugs.
>
> Heh. You're definately not in the real wold. No game is ever free of
> bugs.
No shit. But since Ive worked for game publishers I hope you dont mind if
Im not convinced by you.
Gandalf Parker
Ross Ridge
> A demo cant be created until the game is free of bugs.
"Ross Ridge" <rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> writes:
> Heh. You're definately not in the real wold. No game is ever free of
> bugs.
Gandalf Parker wrote:
> No shit. But since Ive worked for game publishers I hope you dont mind if
> Im not convinced by you.
Obviously, trying to convince some fool who was naive enough to say
that "a demo can't be created until the game is free of bugs" of
anything is pretty much hopeless. No, I'm simply pointing out your
mistake so that other people reading this thread might not be fooled
into thinking your idealized view of how game demos are produced is
true.
Ross Ridge
Ross Ridge
Jim Vieira wrote:
> But instead, you've only convinced me to finally killfile you, you
> pompous, hostile ass.
Yay!
Ross Ridge
Gandalf Parker
news:civve2938p9mao23q...@4ax.com:
> On 25 Aug 2006 14:38:03 GMT, Gandalf Parker
> <gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net> wrote:
>
>>I dont think he actually ignored any suggestions. Most of the really
>>detailed UI suggestions Ive ever seen were either non-PbEM capable or
>>were Windows specific so they wouldnt be possible in the mac, or
>>linux, or solaris unix versions. So basically those were tossed out.
>
> Sorry, but it's wrong!
> Around 2001-2002 I've suggested to have a persistent history, to
> incorporate a persistent notepad into the game...
> At this date we have even talked here (but my alias was not this one
> ;-)
>
> This have never been done for dom1, and I've never seen this into the
> dom2 demo...
Well that one I would put into the "nice to have but not high on the
list" category. Like screenshots, or user selectable music, or game
saves, or timer alarms so you dont miss an important appointment. Its all
stuff that you can already do.
We kepy their one programmer busy enough with game balance fixes and
increased tactic options. The game was small on machine load and willing
to play in a window so why spend alot of time and effort putting stuff
into the game that you could already do using other programs. Putting all
that stuff in would just make it a program too big to share the machine
nicely with other programs.
They did add the rename feature which helped alot on the notetaking
thing. In Dom3 they have made it much easier to see the searches done,
and the magic, gems, equipment on commanders which takes care of much
more note needs. We are still discussing messages and province notes.
Gandalf Parker
Jukka I Seppänen
>> To be fair this problem is not specific to Dom2 - it's common to many
>> MP TBS games (MoO2 and VGAP off the top of my head). Once you realise
>> you're no longer in a competitive position (which can be a long way off
>> being eliminated), it's very tempting to drop out because it's not
>> really any fun putting time into doing turns when you have no hope of
>> winning. Decent folk would at least continue to spend a few mins doing
>> turns and putting up a bit of resistance until they're eliminated, but
>> many just quit. Ironically the difference between the two is quite
>> small, as far as the outcome of the game is concerned, but it's
>> psychologically pretty big.
>>
>> I don't know if there is actually a solution to this - in an
>> empire-building game it wouldn't be right if everyone managed to remain
>> competitive right to the end, it would genuinely take ages to take a
>> losing empire out completely.
>
> The only real fix is an AI that can take over.
What AI should do after take over?
Change loosing position to winning position with some überAI or just plain
traditional AI-tied bonustroops,
or massacre its troops in some stupid battles and hand over its
treasures/recourses to winner or something else in between?
Both scenarios seems to have drawbacks.
Just plain racekill which in Dom's case could be faction transformation to
independant provinces (hopefully with some nasty things) may be one solution.
Jukka
Freddie Clark
"Gandalf Parker" <gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net> wrote in message
news:Xns982A5005C14...@199.245.68.61...
thought I would check things out. Seems many were put off by the increasing
Micromanagement in the earlier games and were wondering if this was going to
continue. I do love this type of game, but sometimes get annoyed as the
micromanagement increases and start looking for ways to end it early, rather
than transfer to my laptop and play for my six weeks break or six weeks
work, whichever schedule I am on. How does DOM3 rate on this??
regards
Freddie
Gerry Quinn
says...
> Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie> writes:
> >> I don't know if there is actually a solution to this - in an
> >> empire-building game it wouldn't be right if everyone managed to remain
> >> competitive right to the end, it would genuinely take ages to take a
> >> losing empire out completely.
> >
> > The only real fix is an AI that can take over.
>
> What AI should do after take over?
>
> Change loosing position to winning position with some überAI or just plain
> traditional AI-tied bonustroops,
> or massacre its troops in some stupid battles and hand over its
> treasures/recourses to winner or something else in between?
>
> Both scenarios seems to have drawbacks.
It should do its best to survive, or at least sell itself dearly - just
as the human player would do.
- Gerry Quinn
Gandalf Parker
news:ecq6nf$l6b$1...@news.loxinfo.co.th:
> havnt played DOM 1/2 Gandalf, and after getting the flyer from
> Shrapnel thought I would check things out. Seems many were put off by
> the increasing Micromanagement in the earlier games and were wondering
> if this was going to continue. I do love this type of game, but
> sometimes get annoyed as the micromanagement increases and start
> looking for ways to end it early, rather than transfer to my laptop
> and play for my six weeks break or six weeks work, whichever schedule
> I am on. How does DOM3 rate on this?? regards
> Freddie
Keep in mind that its a PbEM game (play by email). Its usually meant to
be played by doing one turn a day and turning it in. It CAN be played in
a hotseat or blitz mode but thats not what its built around. Playing
games such as solo hotseat magnifies the feel of micromanagement to
unbearable levels.
They have made great advances there however. Most of the player
suggestions got put into Dom2 unless they required major game rewrite.
And many of those got written into Dom3.
But until its released, as a beta-tester I cant get more specific unless
you go to the Shrapnel forums for Illwinter/Dominons 3.
www.shrapnelgames.com
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
news:MPG.1f5abeb93...@news1.eircom.net:
Thats what Dominions does. It gets no special abilities at all. In fact
the easy-hard settings on the AI only decide how many points it gets in
creating its pretender at the beginning of the game. So if it takes over
for a player then thats what it has to play with.
But we are talking about a player who has decided that they wont win. The
AI doesnt have to take over and win. It only has to keep it from being a
total surrender to the first player it meets. An AI that takes over for a
losing player only has to be as good at losing. :)
Gandalf Parker
Jukka I Seppänen
>> It should do its best to survive, or at least sell itself dearly -
>> just as the human player would do.
>
> Thats what Dominions does. It gets no special abilities at all. In fact
> the easy-hard settings on the AI only decide how many points it gets in
> creating its pretender at the beginning of the game. So if it takes over
> for a player then thats what it has to play with.
No optional adjustable changeover points?
> But we are talking about a player who has decided that they wont win. The
> AI doesnt have to take over and win. It only has to keep it from being a
> total surrender to the first player it meets. An AI that takes over for a
> losing player only has to be as good at losing. :)
Some variability could be good after AI takeover: possible traditional
loser-alliance with other AI's or indies, pretender boosting (in soul
selling-storyline/penalty points), pretender change with new abilities,
some random worldwide disaster (RWWD) every time when some pretender/AI
goes down (permanently), new stock of hirable mercenaries with
abilities somewhat tracable to former "career".
Also; spin-ups either random-beforehand set line of newcomer pretenders
could make some game-worlds never-ending.
Possible RWWD's: rampaging nomad tribes (Mongols, Huns, etc.), Dinos
(T-Rexes :)), Robots (Von Neumann machines-Terminators),
Armageddon/Ragnarok-incident/call-up, etc.
Jukka
Gandalf Parker
news:mnvwt8u...@vipunen.hut.fi:
> Gandalf Parker <gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net> writes:
>
>> But we are talking about a player who has decided that they wont win.
>> The AI doesnt have to take over and win. It only has to keep it from
>> being a total surrender to the first player it meets. An AI that
>> takes over for a losing player only has to be as good at losing. :)
>
> Some variability could be good after AI takeover: possible traditional
> loser-alliance with other AI's or indies, pretender boosting (in soul
> selling-storyline/penalty points), pretender change with new
> abilities, some random worldwide disaster (RWWD) every time when some
> pretender/AI goes down (permanently), new stock of hirable mercenaries
> with abilities somewhat tracable to former "career".
>
> Also; spin-ups either random-beforehand set line of newcomer
> pretenders could make some game-worlds never-ending.
>
> Possible RWWD's: rampaging nomad tribes (Mongols, Huns, etc.), Dinos
> (T-Rexes :)), Robots (Von Neumann machines-Terminators),
> Armageddon/Ragnarok-incident/call-up, etc.
I think that the logic so far was that an AI should not rewrite the
pretender and scales that its given. Since I often manually assign those
to AIs when I create scenarios I wouldnt want the AI to change them.
But maybe in the case of an AI taking over a human player then it should
know the difference and your ideas for making it game-logical are ones
that I had never thought about. They are good ideas. You should mention
them to the developers. Not right away. Lets let this release settle in.
:)
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
to news:Xns982BADA984E...@199.245.68.61:
> But until its released, as a beta-tester I cant get more specific unless
> you go to the Shrapnel forums for Illwinter/Dominons 3.
> www.shrapnelgames.com
I take that back. Shrapnel has (quite unusual for a publisher) pre-released
the NDA on beta testers to allow talking about the games features.
So in the area of micromanagement:
I can mention that the displays now make it very easy to see who has
special equipment, gems, etc. Also the ability to put your mages on repeat
casting (every month) has been extended to include spells that search for
magic sites. And the casting will switch to unsearched provinces for as
long as there are some.
Gandalf Parker
alexti
news:44ee7968@herald:
> David Short wrote:
>> "Frank E" <fakea...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:47ftRDnuV5gLTA...@4ax.com...
>> >
>>> That does kinda worry me. I don't think Dominions needed to have more
>>> stuff, just better balance in what was already there but at least now
>>> we can mod anything that we don't like. I'm not really holding my
>>> breath when it comes to UI improvements, it just doesn't appear to be
>>> something the Illwinter program is willing to spend time on.
>>
>> Just thought enough of what's written here to quote it in agreement.
>> I'll check out the demo and I'm sure I'll hear user comments. There's
>> a lot of meat on that bone, it's just a matter of seeing if it's fully
>> cooked or raw. Dom2 didn't need more stuff is an absolute
>> understatement, but that doesn't seem to be Illwinter's path.
>
> And I'll quote all of that in full agreement. I played a lot of both
> Dom1 and Dom2, but new content remains at the bottom of my wishlist.
> All that's needed (in my view) is to fix the things that finally led me
> to shelve the game, and those things were:
>
> 1) Mid-game quitting is understandable and common, but it ruins the
> game for those still playing.
I agree with (1), but I don't see how the game can solve it other than
switching the player to AI. Perhaps in this case AI should respect formal
alliances, but what else other than that?
>
> 2) Certain strategies (like castle spamming) are so powerful that you
> *must* employ them to remain competitive, which reduces the game's
> strategic depth and sometimes (as in this case) leads to an endless and
> tedious endgame.
>
> 3) The order validation system used leaves the game vulnerable to
> *cough*Norfleet*cough* cheating.
I've seen many players employing castle spamming, but Norfleet was the only
I've seen winning with that strategy (most likely because of (3)). (2) is
much less of a problem in Dom II in comparison to other games. There're
certain components of the strategy that are usually required
(SC,summons,gem generators), but their exact choice and how they fit into
the overall strategy is pretty much open.
Alex.
alexti
news:ovote2d15ug1cclmf...@4ax.com:
> Even worse, now the price is the same as games like civ4!
Considering rather appalling UI in Civ4, we should be happy that DomIII is
not more expensive ;)
alexti
> So in the area of micromanagement:
> I can mention that the displays now make it very easy to see who has
> special equipment, gems, etc. Also the ability to put your mages on
> repeat casting (every month) has been extended to include spells that
> search for magic sites. And the casting will switch to unsearched
> provinces for as long as there are some.
Do they allow to save/reload mage scripts/army orders between the games
now?
Thanks,
Alex.
Gandalf Parker
news:Xns982CB259F75FEsf...@64.59.135.159:
You mean saving the scripts locally then allowing you to load them when you
start a new game? No.
Gandalf Parker
alexti
> QQale...@videotron.few.useless.chars.ca (alexti) contributed wisdom
> to news:Xns982CB259F75FEsf...@64.59.135.159:
>
>> Do they allow to save/reload mage scripts/army orders between the
>> games now?
>
> You mean saving the scripts locally then allowing you to load them when
> you start a new game? No.
Yeah, in the early game I usually have pretty standard scripts, nothing too
fancy. SCs tends to have the same set of scripts to choose from as well. I
think being able to reuse them from game to game would be useful, but
that's not a big issue.
Alex.
Frank E
<s_andr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>David Short wrote:
>> "Frank E" <fakea...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:47ftRDnuV5gLTA...@4ax.com...
>> >
>>> That does kinda worry me. I don't think Dominions needed to have more
>>> stuff, just better balance in what was already there but at least now
>>> we can mod anything that we don't like. I'm not really holding my
>>> breath when it comes to UI improvements, it just doesn't appear to be
>>> something the Illwinter program is willing to spend time on.
>>
>> Just thought enough of what's written here to quote it in agreement. I'll
>> check out the demo and I'm sure I'll hear user comments. There's a lot of
>> meat on that bone, it's just a matter of seeing if it's fully cooked or raw.
>> Dom2 didn't need more stuff is an absolute understatement, but that doesn't
>> seem to be Illwinter's path.
>
>And I'll quote all of that in full agreement. I played a lot of both
>Dom1 and Dom2, but new content remains at the bottom of my wishlist. All
>that's needed (in my view) is to fix the things that finally led me to
>shelve the game, and those things were:
>
>1) Mid-game quitting is understandable and common, but it ruins the game
>for those still playing.
The solution to that isn't specific to Dom2, you just need to find a
group of dependable players. You don't invite the ones that drop
quickly to play in future games.
>
>2) Certain strategies (like castle spamming) are so powerful that you
>*must* employ them to remain competitive, which reduces the game's
>strategic depth and sometimes (as in this case) leads to an endless and
>tedious endgame.
That was always more hype than substance imo. Castle spamming was a
loosing proposition in every game I saw. I do think that Dom2 had
serious balancing problems but it wasn't on that level. It was more
the fact that 80%+ of all units were useless and never built. It was
the fact that every school had 2 or 3 spells that everyone congregated
to because the others just weren't as powerful.
>3) The order validation system used leaves the game vulnerable to
>*cough*Norfleet*cough* cheating.
Same solution as 1 above, play with people you trust. You have to
assume that people can cheat at any game if they try hard enough.
Rgds, Frank
David Short
> Gol'fleme <gol'fl...@private.invalid> wrote in
>> *) civ 4 is a good game with a *real* UI user friendly.
> On every turn you have to open diplomacy screen and check what deals each
> AI can offer and for how much. Every turn you have to go into the city and
> readjust tiles to make sure that the right building/unit will be ready in
> time (they made it better than Civ3 by allowing overruns, but it still
> doesn't help much on difficult). Checking over bunch of potentially
> promising units to evaluate chances (several times per turn including
> several time on the same unit per turn - because odds are changing after
> every attack) - that's I call user-friendly :)
>
> For me poor UI really spoiled Civ4, which could have been a great SP game
> otherwise.
....wow. My guess is that you should give Dominions a pass.
dfs
alexti
news:ecv9a0$f93$1...@posting.glorb.com:
That doesn't sound good :( I've already preordered it though. Are you on
beta team or are you guessing about their new UI? I think in Dom2 UI was
quite decent, looking for who owns a dwarven hammer or who has an empty
slot for new gem generator was somewhat annoying, but at least in majority
of cases I could remember it. I saw screenshots showing items and gems on
the main screen, which looked promising, but, of course, I don't know if
there're some new problems in UI.
Alex.
Steve Andrewartha
remove the quitting player's assets from the game. In a territorial
game, this means making the outgoing territorial assets inaccessible to
the remaining players.
This would be a disadvantage to the player that was on the verge of
capturing those assets but, to my mind, that's better than the huge
advantage gained when those assets are presented to someone on a platter.
Mother Farquhar
"alexti" <QQale...@videotron.few.useless.chars.ca> wrote in message
news:Xns982CB0C86114sf...@64.59.135.159...
Appalling?
magnate
> Gol'fleme <gol'fl...@private.invalid> contributed wisdom to
> >
> >>detailed UI suggestions Ive ever seen were either non-PbEM capable or
> >>were Windows specific so they wouldnt be possible in the mac, or
> >>linux, or solaris unix versions. So basically those were tossed out.
> >
> > Sorry, but it's wrong!
> > Around 2001-2002 I've suggested to have a persistent history, to
> > incorporate a persistent notepad into the game...
>
> list" category. Like screenshots, or user selectable music, or game
> saves, or timer alarms so you dont miss an important appointment. Its all
> stuff that you can already do.
Only with disproportionate effort. Seeing your empire as it was last
turn should be a matter of pressing a single key, NOT starting up a
3rd-party program, navigating to the correct save dir, and loading up
last turn's data.
Sure, if somebody had written an Echoview type utility for Dom2 then
Gol'fleme and I wouldn't have anything to complain about, but such a
thing does not exist.
It's funny, I got an email from a friend this morning who said he'd
pre-ordered Dom3, his first pre-order in years. I for one will not be
shelling out $55 for this game if it does not have a ton of convenience
features like this one.
> They did add the rename feature which helped alot on the notetaking
> thing. In Dom3 they have made it much easier to see the searches done,
> and the magic, gems, equipment on commanders which takes care of much
> more note needs. We are still discussing messages and province notes.
The need to take notes is indicative of a crappy UI!! With a good UI,
all the information is available, and you only need to make notes for
future plans.
I am really worried about the Dom3 UI. I think this is another case of
"it's not interesting to code this stuff so the devs don't focus on
it". There were a ton of ways the Dom2 UI could have been improved
without a great deal of coding, and they were all discussed at length
on the Dom2 forum. If the devs haven't bothered to implement them, the
game does not deserve to succeed.
CC
magnate
>
> >> Do they allow to save/reload mage scripts/army orders between the
> >> games now?
> >
> > You mean saving the scripts locally then allowing you to load them when
> > you start a new game? No.
>
> Yeah, in the early game I usually have pretty standard scripts, nothing too
> fancy. SCs tends to have the same set of scripts to choose from as well. I
> think being able to reuse them from game to game would be useful, but
> that's not a big issue.
On its own it's not a big issue, but it is yet another example of a
really simple, easy-to-code improvement that they have not bothered to
make. It would be really handy to be able to save all your scripts and
load them up each game instead of having to re-make them. It really
wouldn't have taken many hours to code the save/load functionality. But
it was obviously "not interesting to code" so they didn't bother.
CC
David Short
> "David Short" <David.n...@Wright.spam.Edu.please> wrote in
Curiouser and curiouser.
I gave up beta-testing software years ago. I see nothing in the released
comments or in the screen shots that suggest to me that the UI has been
seriously improved to make game more accessible. I have seen where some of
the searching will be reduced, but I was hoping for more, far more.
I mean no offense, but I simply cannot imagine anyone thinking the Dom2 user
interface was quite decent also thinking Civ4 was spoiled by it's interface.
That's really pretty shocking to me. I think the Civ4 UI is spectacularly
good. Good enough that the interface alone makes it worth the upgrade from
III and in my mind probably the best civ since the original. OTOH I was a
very reluctant Dom2 player precisely because of the UI. It took several
tries for me to get up the learning curve and I found the pace of the PBEM
game such that I was never really happy with it.
dfs
Kevin O'Donovan
"Gandalf Parker" <gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net> wrote in message
news:Xns982B418EFC5...@199.245.68.61...
I wonder if your perspective is coloured by the fact that you only really
play single player, so the stuff people are complaining about tends to be
fresh in your memory. Playing a multiplayer game it can easilly be several
days between turns, and anything that gets you back up and running in the
game (and don't forget you may have several on the go at once) as quickly as
possible is a huge benefit, certainly more important than adding an extra
race or two. I've played in games before when turns have come up while I'm
on holiday, and I've got five minutes to get a turn in before my wife kills
me :-).
Not sure if this has been addressed elsewhere, but one thing I'd like to see
would be a facility to give my units orders which span more than one turn.
For example, if I'm sending armies somewhere far away I want to send them
there as one action, not needing to check each turn which armies I'd
intended to send where, and issue the next step on the route as a new order.
Or if I have an army doing searches on my conquered provinces, it would be
great if I could set up a list of provinces for it to search in one go, and
have it move through that list each turn unless I interrupt it. The system
would of course let me know if that unit had completed its list of orders
and was waiting for something to do.
Kev
Gandalf Parker
There is never a best answer, there is only pros and cons.
That would have advantages. But some drawbacks would be:
If you blanked the provinces that the others owned then its a free
walkthru.
If you blocked off the provinces then they become roadblocks and
choke-points to other players. It could be abused.
Resetting them back to game-start settings as independents might not be
bad but by mid-game those amount to a walkthru also. A free for all to
grab the new easy territories.
All of those might have been good idea for Dom2 but Ive played the DOm3
AI and I think setting it to AI is good. IMHO But keep thinking
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
news:1156845404....@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
> Gandalf Parker wrote:
>> Gol'fleme <gol'fl...@private.invalid> contributed wisdom to
>> > On 25 Aug 2006 14:38:03 GMT, Gandalf Parker
>>
>> Well that one I would put into the "nice to have but not high on the
>> list" category. Like screenshots, or user selectable music, or game
>> saves, or timer alarms so you dont miss an important appointment. Its
>> all stuff that you can already do.
>
> Only with disproportionate effort. Seeing your empire as it was last
> turn should be a matter of pressing a single key, NOT starting up a
> 3rd-party program, navigating to the correct save dir, and loading up
> last turn's data.
Actually it just uses the -preexec switch to copy the turn file to a
backup copy. Or it can copy the game to a backup game so that you can
just load the previous game and look at everything you had going on.
> It's funny, I got an email from a friend this morning who said he'd
> pre-ordered Dom3, his first pre-order in years. I for one will not be
> shelling out $55 for this game if it does not have a ton of
> convenience features like this one.
OK. Sounds like a good idea. Go ahead. But the logs show that the
programer added multiple things nearly every day. Pretty good for one guy
doing it as a sideline. Im going to be happy that he worked on the
strategy part of my favorite strategy game. :)
> I am really worried about the Dom3 UI. I think this is another case of
> "it's not interesting to code this stuff so the devs don't focus on
> it". There were a ton of ways the Dom2 UI could have been improved
> without a great deal of coding, and they were all discussed at length
> on the Dom2 forum. If the devs haven't bothered to implement them, the
> game does not deserve to succeed.
Oh bullshit. Not enough people agree with your view for it to fly. Its
not just that it wasnt interesting enough to the programmer. Its also not
interesting enough to most of the people playing the game. Im willing to
allow your desire for your little toy but not if I had to trade off
anything else the game got.
Your suggestion falls into the "not a PbEM supported feature". It is not
simple or a good idea to add locally saved carry-over files that
continually grow on the top of a small footprint pbem game. If you want
to keep notes then play DOm3 in a window and use notepad to keep notes.
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
NO you are talking about creating local files in a directory different
than the game-save directory so that it can be loaded into every game. On
a game that supports multi user linux environment that involves
permissions, ownerships, controls, and file cleanup. This is not a
windows program.
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
news:KJmdnbR9kp5bomnZ...@giganews.com:
> Not sure if this has been addressed elsewhere, but one thing I'd like
> to see would be a facility to give my units orders which span more
> than one turn.
It comes up quite abit. But it would involve crossing that line to
locally created multi-turn files. Thats a big door for a PbEM game to go
thru. It would allow alot of neat features but involves alot of headaches
to be worked out also. Just some that come to mind would are move future,
move history, notes, history of messages, tracking spells that can take
multiple turns to cast or have a growing effect, and game triggers that
can change the actions of the AI based on things in the game. Id like to
see it done but I know that once he starts down that road it will tie him
up for quite awhile.
> For example, if I'm sending armies somewhere far away I
> want to send them there as one action, not needing to check each turn
> which armies I'd intended to send where, and issue the next step on
> the route as a new order.
Thats not in. Some sloppy methods to achieve it are:
Using the rename function to name the leader something to remind you what
you wanted them to do.
Or to play the game in a window and have a notepad open.
Or a mix of both, assigning a unique name to the leader in order to keep
clearer notes.
I know that those arent the easiest answer but I mention them in case
someone really wants to keep notes.
> Or if I have an army doing searches on my
> conquered provinces, it would be great if I could set up a list of
> provinces for it to search in one go, and have it move through that
> list each turn unless I interrupt it. The system would of course let
> me know if that unit had completed its list of orders and was waiting
> for something to do.
In a way this one has been handled. Not by setting up a list Im afraid
but it still cuts the micromanagment quite abit. YOu can now set the
"monthly casting" to include search spells. It will select a new province
each month and will avoid prvinces already searched. If you run out of
provinces or gems then that mage will fall to "defend" which means it
will come up as you click thru all of the commanders needing orders.
Its maybe not the best answer but it does keep it inside the one-turn
arrangment without going to locally kept mutli-turn files.
Gandalf Parker
Frank E
<gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net> wrote:
>"Kevin O'Donovan" <not....@nowhere.com> contributed wisdom to
>news:KJmdnbR9kp5bomnZ...@giganews.com:
>
>> Not sure if this has been addressed elsewhere, but one thing I'd like
>> to see would be a facility to give my units orders which span more
>> than one turn.
>
>It comes up quite abit. But it would involve crossing that line to
>locally created multi-turn files. Thats a big door for a PbEM game to go
>thru. It would allow alot of neat features but involves alot of headaches
>to be worked out also. Just some that come to mind would are move future,
>move history, notes, history of messages, tracking spells that can take
>multiple turns to cast or have a growing effect, and game triggers that
>can change the actions of the AI based on things in the game. Id like to
>see it done but I know that once he starts down that road it will tie him
>up for quite awhile.
You're making things a lot more complicated than they need to be. It
should be relatively trivial to implement, doesn't matter whether it's
single or multiplayer. There really is no excuse, other than laziness
on the part of the programmer, not to have it.
Rgds, Frank
Gandalf Parker
news:2lP0RMDd3jBF9hSUMP9W8Lkm=o...@4ax.com:
Well arent you a person to come out and state your opinion as a fact. OK.
I disagree. I consider it a major item to add for a trivial reason and it
would have the capability of ruining the game for new players. There are
far more important items which were added to the game to want to slip
this into it.
But thats just my opinion. :)
Gandalf Parker
Kevin O'Donovan
> "Kevin O'Donovan" <not....@nowhere.com> contributed wisdom to
> news:KJmdnbR9kp5bomnZ...@giganews.com:
>
>> Not sure if this has been addressed elsewhere, but one thing I'd like
>> to see would be a facility to give my units orders which span more
>> than one turn.
>
> It comes up quite abit. But it would involve crossing that line to
> locally created multi-turn files. Thats a big door for a PbEM game to go
> thru. It would allow alot of neat features but involves alot of headaches
> to be worked out also. Just some that come to mind would are move future,
> move history, notes, history of messages, tracking spells that can take
> multiple turns to cast or have a growing effect, and game triggers that
> can change the actions of the AI based on things in the game. Id like to
> see it done but I know that once he starts down that road it will tie him
> up for quite awhile.
>
but for specific instances, such as the move to distant province example it
doesn't need to be anything like that complicated. For example:
1) Select the province the army should move to - this should be recorded in
the turn file and persisted on the next turn
2) Display on the screen the current routing for that army, perhaps only
when that army is selected, or only when routing is asked for
No need to plan future turns, or record the users intentions for coming
turns, just an extra bit of drawing on the map screen, and an extra record
to store in the turn file, along with some code to recognise this record
should be set for the next turn as well if the destination has not been
reached. OS generic and simple.
Your workarounds only go so far, IMHO. If I were a real general ordering my
units about I wouldn't be expecting them to report in every few miles asking
me to remind them were they were going, after all. Surely it's better to
concentrate on the strategy other than the trivia?
> In a way this one has been handled. Not by setting up a list Im afraid
> but it still cuts the micromanagment quite abit. YOu can now set the
> "monthly casting" to include search spells. It will select a new province
> each month and will avoid prvinces already searched. If you run out of
> provinces or gems then that mage will fall to "defend" which means it
> will come up as you click thru all of the commanders needing orders.
>
That's certainly an improvement. Not as much help in the early game when
those spells aren't researched. Perhaps a similar order could do the same
though - set a mage to move between all unsearched friendly provinces
searching until no more exist to search
Kev
Kevin O'Donovan
"Gandalf Parker" <gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net> wrote in message
news:Xns982E4AE4BD1...@199.245.68.61...
home directory, so why not give the user a fileselector (or even a simple
text prompt) and let him choose where to save/load the files. No need to
worry about file system security at all (other than telling the user he's
chosen a daft place if the file write returns an error). As for file
cleanup, why would this be an issue for the game? Surely it's up to the user
to maintain the files himself - I certainly wouldn't want the game deciding
to delete my lovingly crafted scripts.
Frank E
<gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net> wrote:
>>>It comes up quite abit. But it would involve crossing that line to
>>>locally created multi-turn files. Thats a big door for a PbEM game to
>>>go thru. It would allow alot of neat features but involves alot of
>>>headaches to be worked out also. Just some that come to mind would are
>>>move future, move history, notes, history of messages, tracking spells
>>>that can take multiple turns to cast or have a growing effect, and
>>>game triggers that can change the actions of the AI based on things in
>>>the game. Id like to see it done but I know that once he starts down
>>>that road it will tie him up for quite awhile.
>>
>> You're making things a lot more complicated than they need to be. It
>> should be relatively trivial to implement, doesn't matter whether it's
>> single or multiplayer. There really is no excuse, other than laziness
>> on the part of the programmer, not to have it.
>
>Well arent you a person to come out and state your opinion as a fact. OK.
You're confusing opinions and facts. I was stating a fact. If you have
a mechanism in place that lets you plot orders for one turn (and you
need that for Dom2), expanding it to multiple turns is either trivial
or they've written some seriously screwed up code. I don't think
there's a middle ground here. .
>I disagree. I consider it a major item to add for a trivial reason and it
>would have the capability of ruining the game for new players. There are
>far more important items which were added to the game to want to slip
>this into it.
>But thats just my opinion. :)
The ability to plot units over several turns would ruin the game for
new players?
Rgds, Frank
Kevin O'Donovan
necessity to store entire game turns. For example, provinces have various
scalar stats which change each turn (for example, someone mentioned dominion
level in another post). It would be useful and inexpensive to keep a record
of these per province each turn in a locally held file, with a facility when
viewing that province to display them in a quick graph or something similar.
Absolute doddle to code, yet puts a lot of extra info at the players finger
tips. Of course you could do a similar thing with a notepad or a spreadsheet
or what have you, but you lose the tight integration. If you have to go
searching through a spreadsheet for the info you're less likely to look at
it that if it just a click away.
I think it's too easy to use PBEM or not wanting to be tied to a specific OS
as an excuse for omitting a lot of useful features.
Kevin O'Donovan
> Steve Andrewartha <s_andr...@hotmail.com> contributed wisdom to
> news:44f3b558$1@herald:
>
>> A possibility that doesn't involve writing good AI is to effectively
>> remove the quitting player's assets from the game. In a territorial
>> game, this means making the outgoing territorial assets inaccessible
>> to the remaining players.
>>
>> This would be a disadvantage to the player that was on the verge of
>> capturing those assets but, to my mind, that's better than the huge
>> advantage gained when those assets are presented to someone on a
>> platter.
>
> There is never a best answer, there is only pros and cons.
> That would have advantages. But some drawbacks would be:
>
expended to capture those provinces evaporate with no return whatsoever,
possibly leaving you in what seems an unrecoverable situation where pulling
out of the game yourself has some appeal
Gandalf Parker
Sounds good. Im not sure if simple is simple enough to toss it in but the
logic sounds good. The "mage continues to search by spell" feature has
certainly broken ground for such things.
>> In a way this one has been handled. Not by setting up a list Im
>> afraid but it still cuts the micromanagment quite abit. YOu can now
>> set the "monthly casting" to include search spells. It will select a
>> new province each month and will avoid prvinces already searched. If
>> you run out of provinces or gems then that mage will fall to "defend"
>> which means it will come up as you click thru all of the commanders
>> needing orders.
>>
> That's certainly an improvement. Not as much help in the early game
> when those spells aren't researched. Perhaps a similar order could do
> the same though - set a mage to move between all unsearched friendly
> provinces searching until no more exist to search
That might also be possible. After all, the AI already has movement so
its basically just adding movement decisions to your own pieces. I dont
think they would be capable of creating a logical maze. They might get
stuck or they might accidentally send two mages to the same province. But
it could probably be programmed in without being too long.
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
> I think that's an overcomplication, to be honest. Unix has the concept
> of a home directory, so why not give the user a fileselector (or even
> a simple text prompt) and let him choose where to save/load the files.
> No need to worry about file system security at all (other than telling
> the user he's chosen a daft place if the file write returns an error).
> As for file cleanup, why would this be an issue for the game? Surely
> it's up to the user to maintain the files himself - I certainly
> wouldn't want the game deciding to delete my lovingly crafted scripts.
Hmmmm well it does do that now. The user gets a dominions 3 directory for
save games, and for mods, and for maps. I guess saving scripts locally
wouldnt be too bad. It would get cluttered and involve file-cleanup which
would be the users problem. I could see it getting added to the wishlist.
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
>
> "Gandalf Parker" <gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net> wrote in
> message news:Xns982E4A405C6...@199.245.68.61...
>> "magnate" <chr...@dbass.demon.co.uk> contributed wisdom to
>> news:1156845404....@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
You are correct. But Im not saying its a reason to omit. Just that its a
good response to comments about it being simple, or necessary, and
referring to its lack as laziness or stupidity.
But come on! To see what his dominion level was last turn? Ive never seen
that asked. That takes it down to "you might as well save the entire
game". I can see things like what spell was cast or province I came from.
Even what you suggest is doable but its not like it would be popped in on
one day with 5 other improvments when he got home from his real job.
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
> On 29 Aug 2006 15:53:53 GMT, Gandalf Parker
> <gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net> wrote:
>
>>> There really is no excuse, other than
>>> laziness on the part of the programmer, not to have it.
>>
>>Well arent you a person to come out and state your opinion as a fact.
>>OK.
>
> You're confusing opinions and facts. I was stating a fact.
That was a fact?
> If you have
> a mechanism in place that lets you plot orders for one turn (and you
> need that for Dom2), expanding it to multiple turns is either trivial
> or they've written some seriously screwed up code. I don't think
> there's a middle ground here. .
Exactly. You dont think there is middle ground. Even if you are a
programmer, what you said is still an opinion. I wouldnt call myself a
programmer but Ive written code. If you want to discuss this you will
need to talk to a programmer and convince them that its important enough
and trivial enough to add.
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
> On 29 Aug 2006 18:05:16 GMT, Gandalf Parker
> <gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net> wrote:
>
>>But come on! To see what his dominion level was last turn? Ive never
>>seen that asked.
>
> BUZZ!
> look this "old" thread :
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic/browse_f
> rm/thread/a1d487ebfd35229a/a628f7417868391b?tvc=1&hl=en#a628f7417868391
> b
>
> or
> http://notlong.com/stats/?nickname=golfleme&password=rbv-zkvj
OK I guess its...
Ive never seen that asked of the developers.
Gandalf Parker
alexti
news:KJmdnbR9kp5bomnZ...@giganews.com:
I like this idea. It's not needed often, but when you need it, you really
need it. For me the typical scenario is that I know I'm going to miss
hosting or too, so the choice is either to find a sub (kind of a trouble
for a couple of turns) or try to minimize the damage from the missed turns.
Unfortunately, there isn't much options to schedule ahead in Dom2. Some
features, like continuous forging or pre-scheduled recruiting shouldn't be
too hard to implement, but often I'd do something like "send some small
force to the provinces lost on the previous turn due to raiders".
Implementing such scheduling is not going to be easy :(
Alex.
alexti
I'm not sure I understand your opinion. My reasoning is that every moment I
spent clicking to do something mechanical is a waste due to lacking UI.
Civ4 has a lot of that. Most of the thinking in Civ4 is probably done
before the game, during the game itself, the actions are mostly obvious and
mechanical with maybe 2-3 turning points during the game when you really
need to think what to do. While I agree that Civ4 is a big improvement over
Civ3 I believe it's due to a better game mechanics rather than better UI.
In some aspects Civ4 UI got worse (like it's harder to tell units apart
from the far zoom). More interesting combat mechanics unfortunately didn't
get an adequate UI either. Dom2 has much less mechanical clicking and my
feeling is that one big reason of complains about its UI is because it's
kind of free form (in Civ4 you're getting reminders when something is
completed or when you need to schedule building something etc...). Dom2 has
nothing of it (on a good side it has very few multi-turn actions), but the
player still need to establish some sort of order in which he performs his
turns.
Let's compare required actions turn-by-turn.
1) Civ4 - schedule production in the cities and rearrange worked tiles
Dom2 - recruit, order forging and casting
2) Civ4 - move units/give non-combat orders to the units
Dom2 - move units/give non-combat orders/equip units
3) Civ4 - adjust research (if needed)
Dom2 - adjust research (if needed)
4) Civ4 - perform attacks
Dom2 - schedule battle scripts
5) Civ4 - do trading/diplomacy
6) Dom2 - watching the battles
(1),(2) and (3) are quite similar and take about the same effort to
perform. (4) is very different. In Dom2 it usually takes longer, especially
in the late game, but mostly because of required thinking, while in Civ4
these actions are pretty much mechanical, while still quite time-consuming.
(5) is really a time sink in Civ4, while Dom2 has no equivalent. (6) only
exists in Dom2 and it's primarily analytic work.
Besides, Dom2 game is over in much fewer turns then Civ4. So overall the
ratio of thinking/wrestling with UI is much better in Dom2 (at least for
me, I suppose one can just click without thinking much in any game).
Alex.
alexti
>
> If you want to play "in the same backyard" (sorry it's a word-to-word
> translation of a French locution) that civ4 you have to be, like civ4,
> "polished"...
>
> Is dom3 a game for "hardcore gamers only" or for a broader public ?
I'm sure its the former. It's too complex for a broader public and the
developers don't seem to have any intentions on simplifying it.
> In my case, now, I can only play about 1 hour (straight, leveled on the
> whole the week) the week...
> With civ4, at the WE, I can open my "current" game, play 1 hour and
> "forget it till the next week. I DO NOT EVEN IMAGINE THIS with dom2!
If you have 1 hour per week, forget about Dom2, you won't learn to play it
in your lifetime ;) It sometimes takes me an hour to plan just one single
major battle and I'm quite experienced in that :)
Alex.
Gandalf Parker
news:Xns982ECC589AA9Dsf...@64.59.135.159:
> Gol'fleme <gol'fl...@private.invalid> wrote in
> news:hlu8f2pfuacscgj8m...@4ax.com:
>
>> Is dom3 a game for "hardcore gamers only" or for a broader public ?
>
> I'm sure its the former. It's too complex for a broader public and the
> developers don't seem to have any intentions on simplifying it.
Id have to agree with that. If anything its getting more complicated.
>> In my case, now, I can only play about 1 hour (straight, leveled on
>> the whole the week) the week...
>> With civ4, at the WE, I can open my "current" game, play 1 hour and
>> "forget it till the next week. I DO NOT EVEN IMAGINE THIS with dom2!
>
> If you have 1 hour per week, forget about Dom2, you won't learn to
> play it in your lifetime ;) It sometimes takes me an hour to plan just
> one single major battle and I'm quite experienced in that :)
Agreed on that also. After a year of it I finally felt I was able to
judge which nation I had the best chance at playing properly. And Dom3
has 3 times that many?!?
Its a great PbEM game in that I do not feel deprived at all with games
that are set for 1 turn a day. Deciding all of my nations actions and
sending in my turn is about as much as I want for one day.
As for comparing it to other games.. most games at this price range last
about a month on my machine. With Dom3 kicking the maps up from 500
province max to 1500 provinces? I think I will get my moneys worth from
this game. :)
Gandalf Parker
Philippe Duchon
> "Kevin O'Donovan" <not....@nowhere.com> contributed wisdom to
> news:KJmdnbR9kp5bomnZ...@giganews.com:
>
> > Not sure if this has been addressed elsewhere, but one thing I'd like
> > to see would be a facility to give my units orders which span more
> > than one turn.
>
> It comes up quite abit. But it would involve crossing that line to
> locally created multi-turn files. Thats a big door for a PbEM game to go
> thru. It would allow alot of neat features but involves alot of headaches
> to be worked out also. Just some that come to mind would are move future,
> move history, notes, history of messages, tracking spells that can take
> multiple turns to cast or have a growing effect, and game triggers that
> can change the actions of the AI based on things in the game. Id like to
> see it done but I know that once he starts down that road it will tie him
> up for quite awhile.
Not true. Instead of allowing a single order to each commander, make
it a queue of orders; "repeat" orders can be included in this. Now,
when you give a multiple-turn order, it's automatically translated
into a whole queue.
Add a system to send a message to the player if one of the future
orders is currently known to be impossible to carry out or province
ownership has changed ("Commander X has an order to move through
province Y, but that province was captured by nation Z"; "Commander X
has an order to build item Y in province Z, but the lab at province Z
has been destroyed") with an option to go to the commander's orders
queue. There may be a few things I'm missing, but this would make it
quite possible. I mean, the repeat orders currently exist, and
recruitment orders can be around for more than one turn, so the
currently existing file format does carry some information about
ongoing orders.
>
> > For example, if I'm sending armies somewhere far away I
> > want to send them there as one action, not needing to check each turn
> > which armies I'd intended to send where, and issue the next step on
> > the route as a new order.
>
> Thats not in. Some sloppy methods to achieve it are:
> Using the rename function to name the leader something to remind you what
> you wanted them to do.
> Or to play the game in a window and have a notepad open.
> Or a mix of both, assigning a unique name to the leader in order to keep
> clearer notes.
>
> I know that those arent the easiest answer but I mention them in case
> someone really wants to keep notes.
>
Sure, but all this makes for more micromanagement than would be really
needed if the UI was actually programmed with "making it easier" in
mind.
Making boring things easier to DO, would save some time for actually
planning moves (for the real strategist) or getting the turn done
faster (for the quick, not-too-serious solo player).
--
Philippe Duchon (duc...@labri.fr)
Kevin O'Donovan
> "Kevin O'Donovan" <not....@nowhere.com> contributed wisdom to
> news:6sWdncgLyMqq8mnZ...@giganews.com:
>
>>
>> "Gandalf Parker" <gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net> wrote in
>> message news:Xns982E4D8C3FB...@199.245.68.61...
>>> "Kevin O'Donovan" <not....@nowhere.com> contributed wisdom to
>>> news:KJmdnbR9kp5bomnZ...@giganews.com:
>>>
>> when those spells aren't researched. Perhaps a similar order could do
>> the same though - set a mage to move between all unsearched friendly
>> provinces searching until no more exist to search
>
> That might also be possible. After all, the AI already has movement so
> its basically just adding movement decisions to your own pieces. I dont
> think they would be capable of creating a logical maze. They might get
> stuck or they might accidentally send two mages to the same province. But
> it could probably be programmed in without being too long.
>
Sending two mages to the same province is probably quite realistic - I've
certainly accidentally done it before as a human player, so I can't really
complain if the AI occasionally does it too :-)
Kevin O'Donovan
since you might want to see what the trend has been if you suspect somebody
has been trying to increase theirs/lower yours in that area), but it's more
the principal - when we're talking about simple scalar values that change
once per turn, we might as well just bundle them all in for completeness and
consistency. If you're on the province screen and have text fields
displaying the current value of a number of properties of the province then
from a consistent user interface point of view if you can view a history of
one of them by clicking on it, it would make sense to view a history of any
of them. This is a long way from keeping all of the save games - let's say
(at random) there were 30 integer values to store about a province, 12 per
commander, and maybe (just trying to think of things that might be
interesting to look at) we kept a count of the number of each type of unit
in an army each turn. That would be 120 bytes per province, 48 bytes per
commander, and maybe an average of about 64 bytes per army (8 different
units, an int to store the unit type, and an int for the count of that
unit). Even after a few hundred turns we are not talking about a huge file,
and if someone was really concerned they could always disable it. To be
honest, I think this would be potentially better than saving the entire
turns - I can't see myself flicking back through a turn just to see how many
units I lost in a major battle last turn, but if I can click on the army and
see the info...
Finally, I understand what you are saying about his real job, but I'm not
sure I see the relevance. I have a full time job developing software as an
employee, and I also have my own software company. I made the decision to
sell software I'd written through that company, and consequently I have a
responsibility to support that software, and that means listening to user
requests and no just implementing the ones that I think I can fit in without
inconveniencing myself. Sometimes it's a major pain in the bum (having two
kids aged almost 5 and almost 2 doesn't help) but that comes with the
territory. When I was at university I release several hobby projects as
freeware or shareware, and as such expected people to cut me some slack if I
was too busy to look at something, and people understood that. I wouldn't
expect that same slack from my current customers as I'm supposed to be
running a business. I hope that doesn't sound like I'm getting at the guys,
because I don't intend to, I just don't think that can be used as an excuse
once you start charging commercial rates for the game.
Kev
Kevin O'Donovan
"Gol'fleme" <gol'fl...@private.invalid> wrote in message
news:hlu8f2pfuacscgj8m...@4ax.com...
> The real point is that the coder is more willing to do some things and
> more
> reluctant for the others. Sadly, UI stuff is not on the "good side" of the
> coin...
>
Rightly or wrongly that certainly seems to be the impression they're making.
Perhaps it's unproductive to make such comments here were the developers may
not be seeing them and enable to engage in discussion over them.
> IMO, it's honorable for a release 1, but, when you're at the release 3,
> selling it the same price that a product like civ4, this is NOT!
>
Exactly my feeling, by version 3 I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a
bit of polish
Kevin O'Donovan
"Gandalf Parker" <gan...@the.dead.ISP.of.Community.net> wrote in message
news:Xns982EC353198...@199.245.68.61...
> QQale...@videotron.few.useless.chars.ca (alexti) contributed wisdom to
> news:Xns982ECC589AA9Dsf...@64.59.135.159:
>
>> Gol'fleme <gol'fl...@private.invalid> wrote in
>> news:hlu8f2pfuacscgj8m...@4ax.com:
>>
>> play it in your lifetime ;) It sometimes takes me an hour to plan just
>> one single major battle and I'm quite experienced in that :)
>
> Agreed on that also. After a year of it I finally felt I was able to
> judge which nation I had the best chance at playing properly. And Dom3
> has 3 times that many?!?
>
and adding unneccesary micromanagement, and reducing the latter would be
beneficial to both new players and experienced players alike
magnate
> >>
> >> Well that one I would put into the "nice to have but not high on the
> >> list" category. Like screenshots, or user selectable music, or game
> >> saves, or timer alarms so you dont miss an important appointment. Its
> >> all stuff that you can already do.
> >
> > turn should be a matter of pressing a single key, NOT starting up a
> > 3rd-party program, navigating to the correct save dir, and loading up
> > last turn's data.
>
> Actually it just uses the -preexec switch to copy the turn file to a
> backup copy. Or it can copy the game to a backup game so that you can
> just load the previous game and look at everything you had going on.
You have deliberately failed to address my point. Opening a second
instance of the game to look at a backup of a previous turn is not a
solution. It's pathetic - if I want to look at the last ten turns, I
need ten instances of Dom3 running??
> > It's funny, I got an email from a friend this morning who said he'd
> > pre-ordered Dom3, his first pre-order in years. I for one will not be
> > shelling out $55 for this game if it does not have a ton of
> > convenience features like this one.
>
> OK. Sounds like a good idea. Go ahead. But the logs show that the
> programer added multiple things nearly every day. Pretty good for one guy
> doing it as a sideline. Im going to be happy that he worked on the
> strategy part of my favorite strategy game. :)
The strategy part, which he finds interesting to develop, is already
excellent. It needs little if any further improvement. The UI needs a
lot of work.
> > I am really worried about the Dom3 UI. I think this is another case of
> > "it's not interesting to code this stuff so the devs don't focus on
> > it". There were a ton of ways the Dom2 UI could have been improved
> > without a great deal of coding, and they were all discussed at length
> > on the Dom2 forum. If the devs haven't bothered to implement them, the
> > game does not deserve to succeed.
>
> Oh bullshit. Not enough people agree with your view for it to fly. Its
> not just that it wasnt interesting enough to the programmer. Its also not
> interesting enough to most of the people playing the game. Im willing to
> allow your desire for your little toy but not if I had to trade off
> anything else the game got.
Wow, Gandalf, you really can't stand anyone criticising anything to do
with Dominions can you? You're civil as long as everybody's positive,
and you get all in a tizz when someone has something negative to say.
I think this thread alone rebuts your claim that not enough people
share my view (of the UI). Deep down you KNOW that the Dom2 UI is shit,
and you're bleating because it's actually only marginally better in
Dom3. You prattle on about taking notes when you know full well that
any decent strategy game UI keeps all the information for you so that
you don't need to take notes. You drone on and on and on about how it's
just one guy in a basement (doing the coding, and another doing the
design) - we all know that, and they've done fantastically well to
create such brilliant games - but they're asking top whack for this
game, the same price you pay for commercial games with thousands of
man-hours of coding, filmed cutscenes, bleeding edge 3D graphics, the
works. If they were asking for $20 then I wouldn't have a leg to stand
on, but for $55 they damn well ought to make all the crappy
boring-to-code UI improvements that I and hundreds of other people have
been on about for three years (or however long it is since Dom2 was
released). Last time I looked the Dom3 wishlist thread on the forum had
about a thousand suggestions in it, split roughly equally between UI
and gameplay.
You might be happy taking notes - you might have nothing better to do
than hold game info in your head all day long - but most of us need
info at our fingertips to get back into a game after a day or two away.
It is *extremely* important to be able to see how Dom has spread over
the previous 5-10 turns, and that's just one example. You need game
messages from previous turns, you need army location and movement info.
You need all sorts of stuff, and none of your rebuttals hold up. It is
NOT difficult to code, if you do it right from the beginning (and if
Dom3 was a complete rewrite then he had an opportunity to get it right
even having got it wrong in Dom2). You do NOT need a massive local
footprint - just a single database file will do - a 100-turn game would
result in a database of a few megs at most.
Your rebuttal to the saving of scripts between games was equally
pathetic - in one post you rant at me that "this is not a windows
game", and about two posts later you reply to someone else "er, yeah, I
guess it would be possible".
Stop disagreeing with me just because I don't share your fanboy view of
Dominions. You know full well that there is no excuse not to have done
either of these improvements for Dom3, apart from the "he's only doing
this in his spare time" version. Well if he's so busy holding down a
full-time job, he doesn't need $55 per game.
>From what you have revealed so far of Dom2, he's chosen to concentrate
on the improvements that will appeal to all his hardcore beta testers
like you, and not focus on the improvements that would actually make
the game more playable and accessible for a wider audience (of strategy
gamers I mean - I can't see my wife getting into Dominions however good
the UI gets). Sounds like he picked a bunch of hopeless losers for his
beta testers - how could they not have made sure he did the saving
scripts thing?? That's SO simple, and so valuable.
Whatever. I'll try it when it comes out. If it's worth $55, I'll buy
it.
CC
Gandalf Parker
> I made the decision to
> sell software I'd written through that company, and consequently I
> have a responsibility to support that software, and that means
> listening to user requests and no just implementing the ones that I
> think I can fit in without inconveniencing myself.
I dont get that impression actually. There is a large player community at
Shrapnels forums and items that were added to the wishlist were very
regularly added as patches. It didnt include ALL of the player requests but
it was a steady flow. And I fully expect it will be with this reelease
also.
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
I agree. And much of that was done.
Keep in mind that there are 2 developers. Johan is a programmer and
Kristoffer teaches historical religions and mythology. What Kristoffer
does in adding substance doesnt affect Johan adding features.
Gandalf Parker
Gandalf Parker
> Gandalf Parker wrote:
>> "magnate" <chr...@dbass.demon.co.uk> contributed wisdom to
>> > Gandalf Parker wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Well that one I would put into the "nice to have but not high on
>> >> the list" category. Like screenshots, or user selectable music, or
>> >> game saves, or timer alarms so you dont miss an important
>> >> appointment. Its all stuff that you can already do.
>> >
>> > Only with disproportionate effort. Seeing your empire as it was
>> > last turn should be a matter of pressing a single key, NOT starting
>> > up a 3rd-party program, navigating to the correct save dir, and
>> > loading up last turn's data.
>>
>> Actually it just uses the -preexec switch to copy the turn file to a
>> backup copy. Or it can copy the game to a backup game so that you can
>> just load the previous game and look at everything you had going on.
>
> You have deliberately failed to address my point. Opening a second
> instance of the game to look at a backup of a previous turn is not a
> solution. It's pathetic - if I want to look at the last ten turns, I
> need ten instances of Dom3 running??
You told me to specifically say how you do it. If you really feel that
you need to see everything about the 10 previous turns then thats the way
to do it. Actually if thats what you wanted then Id say that handles it
better than most games. Autosaves are a common way of handling such
needs.
Of course you could also "save without ending turn" and reload the
previous game save, then when you are done checking switch back to the
current game. You would have to bring up 10 copies of it at once. But if
thats what you want then you can.
>> OK. Sounds like a good idea. Go ahead. But the logs show that the
>> programer added multiple things nearly every day. Pretty good for one
>> guy doing it as a sideline. Im going to be happy that he worked on
>> the strategy part of my favorite strategy game. :)
>
> The strategy part, which he finds interesting to develop, is already
> excellent. It needs little if any further improvement. The UI needs a
> lot of work.
A lot of work? :) Well feel free to let them know that. Oh and be sure
to let him know what he is and isnt interested in.
>> > I am really worried about the Dom3 UI. I think this is another case
>> > of "it's not interesting to code this stuff so the devs don't focus
>> > on it". There were a ton of ways the Dom2 UI could have been
>> > improved without a great deal of coding, and they were all
>> > discussed at length on the Dom2 forum. If the devs haven't bothered
>> > to implement them, the game does not deserve to succeed.
>>
>> Oh bullshit. Not enough people agree with your view for it to fly.
>> Its not just that it wasnt interesting enough to the programmer. Its
>> also not interesting enough to most of the people playing the game.
>> Im willing to allow your desire for your little toy but not if I had
>> to trade off anything else the game got.
>
> Wow, Gandalf, you really can't stand anyone criticising anything to do
> with Dominions can you? You're civil as long as everybody's positive,
> and you get all in a tizz when someone has something negative to say.
Actually Im fine as long as people are discussing things but when they
state their opinion as a fact then I tend to say things like bullshit.
> I think this thread alone rebuts your claim that not enough people
> share my view (of the UI).
Not particularly. Ive seen 3 or 4 people agree with you. Thats not like
the hundreds who have participated in recommending adds on the forums.
Ive never said that no one felt that way. In fact, I never said that I
didnt in a general way.
> Deep down you KNOW that the Dom2 UI is
> shit, and you're bleating because it's actually only marginally better
> in Dom3.
If you check back I have always recommended that people play the demos of
dominions before buying it because not everyone could get past the
learning curve. Im sorry if that confused you because I didnt use
descriptive words like shit.
> You prattle on about taking notes when you know full well
> that any decent strategy game UI keeps all the information for you so
> that you don't need to take notes.
I did not say that taking notes was better. Only that its possible if
people need it. You would prattle on that a sportscar has no trunkspace.
> Your rebuttal to the saving of scripts between games was equally
> pathetic - in one post you rant at me that "this is not a windows
> game", and about two posts later you reply to someone else "er, yeah,
> I guess it would be possible".
You are correct. He got me to agree. Did you notice any difference
between his post and yours?
> Stop disagreeing with me just because I don't share your fanboy view
> of Dominions.
Thats not at all why Im disagreeing with you. You are not trying for an
agreement.
> From what you have revealed so far of Dom2, he's chosen to concentrate
> on the improvements that will appeal to all his hardcore beta testers
> like you,
HAHAHA. Im not a hardcore dominions player. And the beta team included
people who were brand new to the game. Im sorry if I didnt give you their
impressions. Just because that wasnt my area of interest doesnt mean it
wasnt looked at.
> Sounds like he picked a bunch of hopeless
> losers for his beta testers - how could they not have made sure he did
> the saving scripts thing?? That's SO simple, and so valuable.
You want me to agree with you on things like this? You have to be
kidding. First you say its hardcore gamers then ask why they didnt push
for script saves? Macro it if its such a big deal.
> Whatever. I'll try it when it comes out. If it's worth $55, I'll buy
> it.
Great. You might even find that it fits your needs even if my impression
of it doesnt.
Gandalf Parker
magnate
> "magnate" <chr...@dbass.demon.co.uk> contributed wisdom to
> > Gandalf Parker wrote:
> >> "magnate" <chr...@dbass.demon.co.uk> contributed wisdom to
> >> > Gandalf Parker wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> Well that one I would put into the "nice to have but not high on
> >> >> the list" category. Like screenshots, or user selectable music, or
> >> >> game saves, or timer alarms so you dont miss an important
> >> >> appointment. Its all stuff that you can already do.
> >> >
> >> > Only with disproportionate effort. Seeing your empire as it was
> >> > last turn should be a matter of pressing a single key, NOT starting
> >> > up a 3rd-party program, navigating to the correct save dir, and
> >> > loading up last turn's data.
> >>
> >> Actually it just uses the -preexec switch to copy the turn file to a
> >> backup copy. Or it can copy the game to a backup game so that you can
> >> just load the previous game and look at everything you had going on.
> >
> > You have deliberately failed to address my point. Opening a second
> > instance of the game to look at a backup of a previous turn is not a
> > solution. It's pathetic - if I want to look at the last ten turns, I
> > need ten instances of Dom3 running??
>
> You told me to specifically say how you do it. If you really feel that
Er, yeah. In another thread I did! Sorry, I didn't have both in my head
at once.
> you need to see everything about the 10 previous turns then thats the way
> to do it. Actually if thats what you wanted then Id say that handles it
> better than most games. Autosaves are a common way of handling such
> needs.
>
> Of course you could also "save without ending turn" and reload the
> previous game save, then when you are done checking switch back to the
> current game. You would have to bring up 10 copies of it at once. But if
> thats what you want then you can.
Ok, I'll just have to leave this. You must play your games one at a
time and have the ability to hold a huge amount in your head. I like my
strategy games to give me better access to information than Dom2 does.
Never mind, if Dom3 is good enough I'll use notepad like I did for
Dom2.
> >> OK. Sounds like a good idea. Go ahead. But the logs show that the
> >> programer added multiple things nearly every day. Pretty good for one
> >> guy doing it as a sideline. Im going to be happy that he worked on
> >> the strategy part of my favorite strategy game. :)
> >
> > The strategy part, which he finds interesting to develop, is already
> > excellent. It needs little if any further improvement. The UI needs a
> > lot of work.
>
> A lot of work? :) Well feel free to let them know that. Oh and be sure
> to let him know what he is and isnt interested in.
Actually I'm just quoting from your previous posts about what he is and
isn't interested in. I'm not adding any spin of my own. As for needing
a lot of work, I would have thought a few thousand posts on the
official forum about it was a strong enough message.
> >> > I am really worried about the Dom3 UI. I think this is another case
> >> > of "it's not interesting to code this stuff so the devs don't focus
> >> > on it". There were a ton of ways the Dom2 UI could have been
> >> > improved without a great deal of coding, and they were all
> >> > discussed at length on the Dom2 forum. If the devs haven't bothered
> >> > to implement them, the game does not deserve to succeed.
> >>
> >> Oh bullshit. Not enough people agree with your view for it to fly.
> >> Its not just that it wasnt interesting enough to the programmer. Its
> >> also not interesting enough to most of the people playing the game.
> >> Im willing to allow your desire for your little toy but not if I had
> >> to trade off anything else the game got.
> >
> > Wow, Gandalf, you really can't stand anyone criticising anything to do
> > with Dominions can you? You're civil as long as everybody's positive,
> > and you get all in a tizz when someone has something negative to say.
>
> Actually Im fine as long as people are discussing things but when they
> state their opinion as a fact then I tend to say things like bullshit.
Well, I can't claim that I never state my opinion as fact, but I don't
think I've done too badly in the paragraph to which you replied
"bullshit". The first two sentences begin "I am worried" and "I think",
which I doubt you would dispute. The last sentence is an if statement,
which I guess could be construed as a statement of fact, but I'd be
surprised if that's what you were crying "bullshit" about. So I guess
it's the third sentence, which is a statement of fact, that you don't
like. Again, I refer you to the "Dom3 wishlist" thread as evidence.
> > I think this thread alone rebuts your claim that not enough people
> > share my view (of the UI).
>
> Not particularly. Ive seen 3 or 4 people agree with you. Thats not like
> the hundreds who have participated in recommending adds on the forums.
Well I count 18 contributors to the two latest Dom threads excluding
thee & me. While I can't claim that they all agree with my UI concerns,
I've not seen any of them post anything along the lines of "no Chris,
the UI is fine, what we need is MORE STUFF".
Besides, the hundreds you refer to are precisely those I was claiming
have agreed with me: there are, I repeat, many hundred posts on the
official boards about various UI issues with Dom2. I don't share them
all, but they add up to a fairly strong consensus that the Dom2 UI
needs quite a lot of work. That's why I started to explore it when you
started these threads. You have given the impression that a few
improvements have been made, but (imo) not enough.
> > Deep down you KNOW that the Dom2 UI is
> > shit, and you're bleating because it's actually only marginally better
> > in Dom3.
>
> If you check back I have always recommended that people play the demos of
> dominions before buying it because not everyone could get past the
> learning curve. Im sorry if that confused you because I didnt use
> descriptive words like shit.
... because it's so much more eloquent when you put "Bull" on the
front. Don't claim any moral high ground Gandalf, it doesn't suit you.
For the record, yes, you are always diligent about warning people to
try the demo, I'll give you that. You are also pretty good about
acknowledging the shortcomings of Dom2's UI as well. You're just overly
defensive about Dom3.
> > You prattle on about taking notes when you know full well
> > that any decent strategy game UI keeps all the information for you so
> > that you don't need to take notes.
>
> I did not say that taking notes was better. Only that its possible if
> people need it. You would prattle on that a sportscar has no trunkspace.
Touché! That's a good line. Yes, I probably would. But rather than
liken the access to historic strategic information to trunk space, I'd
liken it to acceleration or traction. A sports cars needs those.
> > Your rebuttal to the saving of scripts between games was equally
> > pathetic - in one post you rant at me that "this is not a windows
> > game", and about two posts later you reply to someone else "er, yeah,
> > I guess it would be possible".
>
> You are correct. He got me to agree. Did you notice any difference
> between his post and yours?
Yeah, he was less negative about your precious Dom3 than I was. You
made the mistake of responding to tone rather than content - the
content of his reply was no different to mine (other than that it was
made after yours and could therefore refer to things you had said).
There was absolutely no reason for you to respond to me in the way you
did, given that you ended up doing a complete volte-face and agreeing
with me as soon as it was pointed out that it's not actually very
difficult to give people a dialog box asking them where they want to
save something.
> > Stop disagreeing with me just because I don't share your fanboy view
> > of Dominions.
>
> Thats not at all why Im disagreeing with you. You are not trying for an
> agreement.
It is true that I have got progressively more frustrated and offensive
over the course of several Dom3 threads, but you have consistently
disagreed with me from well before that. It seems to me that you simply
will not accept that Dom3's UI is anything short of perfect - which I
guess you can't, since you want the game to be a success, and it's a
bit sucky to say that a brand new game is shipping with a still-sub-par
UI. I of course have not seen the game, but my suspicions are now quite
firm that the UI, while better than Dom2, will not be up to the
required standard. (Note that UI design is not about technology or
glitz - the MoO1 UI is considerably better than that of Civ 4, and
VPA's UI is better still.)
> > From what you have revealed so far of Dom2, he's chosen to concentrate
> > on the improvements that will appeal to all his hardcore beta testers
> > like you,
>
> HAHAHA. Im not a hardcore dominions player. And the beta team included
> people who were brand new to the game. Im sorry if I didnt give you their
> impressions. Just because that wasnt my area of interest doesnt mean it
> wasnt looked at.
Actually that rings a bell, I think I did know that the beta team
included brand new players. I forgot.
> > Sounds like he picked a bunch of hopeless
> > losers for his beta testers - how could they not have made sure he did
> > the saving scripts thing?? That's SO simple, and so valuable.
>
> You want me to agree with you on things like this? You have to be
> kidding. First you say its hardcore gamers then ask why they didnt push
> for script saves? Macro it if its such a big deal.
But you can't even save and reload macros!!!
I think we have a different definition of "hardcore" btw. I do not mean
people so into gaming that they don't mind re-typing the same scripts
every game. I mean people so experienced that they know there is a
better way - namely being able to save and reload scripts. But the beta
testers obviously don't fit that definition, because they didn't know
(or didn't say anything).
> > Whatever. I'll try it when it comes out. If it's worth $55, I'll buy
> > it.
>
> Great. You might even find that it fits your needs even if my impression
> of it doesnt.
I will definitely try the demo first. That's one great thing about a
demo - you get the whole UI to play with, even if you don't get the
whole content. So I should easily be able to make a decision based on
the demo.
Sorry I got a bit stroppy back there. We're just a loooong way apart on
priorities.
CC
Gandalf Parker
> Gandalf Parker wrote:
>
>> Of course you could also "save without ending turn" and reload the
>> previous game save, then when you are done checking switch back to
>> the current game. You would have to bring up 10 copies of it at once.
>> But if thats what you want then you can.
>
> Ok, I'll just have to leave this. You must play your games one at a
> time and have the ability to hold a huge amount in your head. I like
> my strategy games to give me better access to information than Dom2
> does. Never mind, if Dom3 is good enough I'll use notepad like I did
> for Dom2.
Actually I play strategic games very badly and I should take more notes.
>> If you check back I have always recommended that people play the
>> demos of dominions before buying it because not everyone could get
>> past the learning curve. Im sorry if that confused you because I
>> didnt use descriptive words like shit.
>
> ... because it's so much more eloquent when you put "Bull" on the
> front. Don't claim any moral high ground Gandalf, it doesn't suit you.
> For the record, yes, you are always diligent about warning people to
> try the demo, I'll give you that. You are also pretty good about
> acknowledging the shortcomings of Dom2's UI as well. You're just
> overly defensive about Dom3.
Maybe you missed the initial post of this thread. The non-disclosure
agreement for the beta testers has been lifted for the features of the
game that people will discover when they get the game. I am not able to
discuss the methods of beta testing, what was or was not considered, why
something is in or not in. Ive already been drawn out to the point that I
should probably just stop answering any questions at all. Its not worth
it.
>> You want me to agree with you on things like this? You have to be
>> kidding. First you say its hardcore gamers then ask why they didnt
>> push for script saves? Macro it if its such a big deal.
>
> But you can't even save and reload macros!!!
There are keypress-macro programs which I think can be used with Dom. A
third-party answer I know but its all I have if you want to save scripts
in one game to use in another.
> Sorry I got a bit stroppy back there. We're just a loooong way apart
> on priorities.
Actually, new player impressions and useablity is one of my priorities. I
couldnt care less about advanced players if I tried. Well, except for
linux. Im also heavily into advanced linux use such as command line
switches and friendly hosting.
Gandalf Parker
David Short
news:hlu8f2pfuacscgj8m...@4ax.com...
> If you want to play "in the same backyard" (sorry it's a word-to-word
> translation of a French locution) that civ4 you have to be, like civ4,
> "polished"...
>
> In my case, now, I can only play about 1 hour (straight, leveled on the
> whole the week) the week...
> With civ4, at the WE, I can open my "current" game, play 1 hour and
> "forget
> it till the next week. I DO NOT EVEN IMAGINE THIS with dom2! I'll have to
> keep updated and very minute notes... the time to manage my notes are
> taken
> on my time used to play!
>
> I can *NOT* bear keeping updated notes "outside" the game just to
> compensate the "laziness" of a coder!
> If you want a "professional" price for your product, provide a
> "professional" stuff.
> Dom have a very *BIG* potential in my mind, but, the UI spoiled the game.
well, I don't know about that.
I think the UI could be adjusted to make the game much easier and fun to
play as a solo experience and that's very clearly not what they are after.
dfs
Gandalf Parker
to news:ed4bi7$lqd$1...@posting.glorb.com:
Actually, many solo-play features were added in Dom3. I definetly felt
left out in Dom1 and Dom2. I still enjoyed it solo but it was obviously
focused as a multi-player game. I ended up creating a web site to support
solo things like random map creation and random game variables. I used to
draw some funny comments out of Johan and Kristoffer about the insanity
of my stuff. :)
I feel in a small part that the popularity of my site might have led to
some recognition of it in Dom3 and maybe why I was added to the test team
but thats just guesswork.
Dom3 has excellent random maps (much better than mine), challenging AI,
and random variables for things like opponents and their AI mood.
Of course I have noticed some areas that I can still increase that. But I
will be nice to the developers and wait awhile for people to play the
game their way before I start adding chaos. >:)
Gandalf Parker
Kevin O'Donovan
Sorry, that was specifically in response to your comment that about the
developer not wanting to find the time to do inconvenient changes after
coming back from a day at work (sorry if I've changed the sense of your
comment at all - I'm being too lazy to dig out the original message, and
you've pruned that bit from your reply :-)
Having said that, when I do occasionally scan dominions forums I tend to get
a feeling of UI change requests not being taken on board. It could be that
I've been unlucky enough to scan on days when these messages are common, of
course