Tamren

Tamren

Joined Member # 3089516
11 Posts 285 Replies 813 Reputation
Reply to Can a 6 year old computer be cheaply updated? in Personal Computing Elemental Forums

I went through this process about a year ago and I ended up deciding to just build a new box. PC hardware is either ridiculously expensive or rapidly approaching dirt cheap. The only factor is how far behind the bleeding edge you look for your hardware. What is top of the line now will be second generation in 3 months or less, but in the meantime its possible to pay more than double for less than a 10% increase in performance.

51 Replies 156,751 Views
Reply to EWOM: A case against real-time in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Essentially yes. The scope of your control is narrowed down into set intervals, "arbitrary time limits", turns, whatever you want to call them. Instead of being "can you click faster than the other guy", its more like "do you know what you want to do next?". The real difficulty with anything to do with "turns" is deciding who gets to go first. If two identical units both get one action point and the first unit uses that point to get rid of the other unit, then how is that fair? This i

32 Replies 119,371 Views
Reply to EWOM: A case against real-time in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Realtime is like listening to a podcast, you listen to speech as it is played. You are allowed to stop, rewind and pause whenever you want unless someone else is also listening. Turn based is like reading a book. You have all the time in the world to read and digest each page, and you decide when to move on. Continuous turn based is like reading a book, but having someone else flip the pages every 30 seconds or so. If 30 seconds isn't enough to read and digest that page, then its too

32 Replies 119,371 Views
Reply to Concerns I am starting to have in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Speaking of MoM the race you pick at the start didn't really affect the endgame because you could capture other cities and produce units from other races. There were a handful of things that picking races would affect but they were invisible and most players didn't even know they existed. For example the amount of unrest in conquered cities was measured against your original race. Everyone gets along with halflings but dark elves are hated by everyone. Klackons in particular are almost imposs

109 Replies 357,384 Views
Reply to Concerns I am starting to have in War of Magic Elemental Forums

One of my biggest worries is that the combat will be overly strategic. The combat in Galciv 2 could be described as entirely strategic. You basically send your fleets against another fleet, hear some dice rolling in the background and then get told what happened the next day. The combat in Sins is a bit more tactical but everything happens at such a slow pace that "twitch" controls are not needed. For the combat in elemental, I don't mind having to throw dice by hand. I just want the

109 Replies 357,384 Views
Reply to OnLive to change the way we game? in PC Gaming Elemental Forums

Its an interesting concept but I can only see it working locally. Like you said, tuck away the noisy hardware into another room and stream it to the room in your house you play the game. Over the internet "as with TV" is probably a pipe dream. Movies already require ridiculous amounts of bandwidth and there is talk of the internet "running out".

25 Replies 68,724 Views
Reply to Why squares instead of hexes? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Well the idea was that units wouldn't have to mesh exactly, once the "octagons" that each puts down overlap they are in range to attack each other. The victor doesn't move into the tile its opponent occupied because there are no tiles. But its ackward all the same, we might as well stick witht he 7 and 5 square tile system.

54 Replies 173,800 Views
Reply to Why squares instead of hexes? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

What if we did use octagons but scrapped the grid. Think of it this way, you stand in the middle of the octagon. 1 point of movement will take you to the edge of any face on the octagon. You have 8 directions to move in and one movement point will make you travel the exact same distance no matter which direction you pick. Once you have moved you place down another octagon at which point you can pick another face to move towards or simply keep going in the same direction. This allows f

54 Replies 173,800 Views
Reply to The OverSeer (DM_Player) in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

Exactly. The DM would control the flow of the story. His skill as a DM would be the ability to keep the story going, period, until it reaches is destination. For example the DM says : "the players must move from A to B" and a mountain is in the way. The job of the player is to reach the end of the story and the DM's job is to make the process interesting. When the players say "we dig a tunnel" the DM does NOT say "rocks fall, everyone dies" . Not only is that being a

14 Replies 44,299 Views
Reply to Elemental beta in spring? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote who="BoogieBac" reply="14" id="2095282"]- Why are starting settlements being created on dungeons?!?!?! [/quote] Maybe someone tripped and spilled a bit of Dwarf Fortress spice into the Elemental soup.

24 Replies 40,129 Views
Reply to Elemental: scale of power in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="2" id="2104264"]We're not sure what percentage you mean by saying, "rare"... but I hope 98% of my battles won't be just humans verses humans. Ideally the gamer should have a setting where he can choose the percentage of fantasy creatures available on the map before starting each game.[/quote] I wouldn't mind the rarity, at least in the beginning. If humans are the main focus then they would recieve the most attention and detail. Ev

53 Replies 125,220 Views
Reply to Why squares instead of hexes? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

Hexes are better at games with a much larger scale like fantasy general where units travel large distances over land before fighting. In more "tactical" battle spaces squares are superior.

54 Replies 173,800 Views
Reply to The OverSeer (DM_Player) in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

The beauty of a DM controlled story is that the story ends when the DM says it ends. If the players derail the story and make it crash and burn that doesn't count. If the quest scripting engine is robust enough the DM could drop down various story conditions during a normal game. There could be a big invasion from another continent and a story based quest to repel it. IE kill the general/head honcho guy of the invading civilization. The player who manages to pull it off gets the prest

14 Replies 44,299 Views
Reply to The mechanics of warfare: Weapons in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

Heh, I always get tempted to become frothy mouthed whenever anyone compares modern sports fencing to medieval combat. I mean just consider the following: The swords used are bendy, blunt and have no blades. "wounds" are limited to very specific legal touch zones and slashing hits are ignored entirely. The participants must stand on a linear track and can't leave it. Eye protection. As soon as someone hits the other guy, the ma

131 Replies 440,386 Views