Re: what about the future?
 

WL: Actually, if it has an ASCII mode I'm vastly more likely to be interested...

Yes, I'm weird. I like my rogue-likes with colored letters.

Re: what about the future?
 

I heard somebody tried to make a Dominions Rogue somewhen close to a year ago. Don't know what happened to the project since then, though...

Re: what about the future?
 

Yeah, I d/led and played a bit with it. I don't think anything got update since.

ASCII is awesome, but good old 2d RPG with good artwork and dominions content would be great as well.

IW, throw us a bone will ya now?- Some shred of info on your nemesis project please.
please please? :)

Re: what about the future?
 

I'm pretty sure Kristoffer wouldn't be satisfied with ASCII after all those years of perfecting his sprite making skills.

I'm biased, I can't get into ASCII games.

Re: what about the future?
 

That's because the person that worked on this project has been banned on these forums. Twice, actually, he got banned again when he posted about new progress on it under a new login that he registered, since administration found out that it's him with a new account name by that.

I've been bugging him about this for weeks and months, but so far he mostly worked on the libraries that he is going to use for this game. You can follow the development at http://sourceforge.net/users/omnirizon and you can check on the progress and nag him to continue with the Rogue (read: "encourage him to work") at http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/...?showtopic=145

Re: what about the future?
 

It should be noted that he was banned for a significantly more pathetic reason than the other guys, since basically he was banned for proving that manual piracy exists.

Re: what about the future?
 

As opposed to automatic piracy?

Omnirizons project looks promising I think, he seems serious about it.

Re: what about the future?
 

Yes, I hear omni is biased because he drives a stick.

Re: what about the future?
 

It would be nice if the community could provide ideas, inspiration and advice so the game can be more successful. I remember Triumph Studios did the same thing and silently created AgeofWonders:ShadowMagic which resulted in the terrifying "surrender" feature. The community had to work together and constantly beg for this "surrender" to be removed. In the end the developers finally agreed to make "surrender" an option and 99.8% remove the surrender option for games. It's not easy for developers to admit and correct bad design... such as pretenders entering the arena death match.
Perhaps Illwinter could release a demo version of the game before releasing the final version thus identify&preventing any terrifying features.

Re: what about the future?
 

You mean for your birthday? (happy birthday)

But thats not really Illwinters style in the past. It will be silence, alpha group, then beta group, then announcement and release. I dont see any likelihood of a change.

Besides, the "share the development" tends to only work for corporations with teams of developers where a developer can be told what to do without getting pissed off.

Re: what about the future?
 

It might not be the style of Illwinter, and they can do it however they wish, but open development is up and coming. And it works work many kind of teams. Overgrowth and Natural selection are two nice indie titles in open development right now. And they both have small teams working on their own.

I certainly respect if Illwinter wants to play stuff close to the chest, but please don't confuse that with making uneducated generalisations about what works and for whom. There are plenty of good ways to do develop games, and open development is one of them.

Re: what about the future?
 

I agree it was a generalization. But I wouldnt call it uneducated.
Im all for Open Source. I love SourceForge and other project organizing sites.
If you spent some time there you would quickly find out some of the pros and cons of it. A small percentage of open source projects finish. And the ones that do are often very very large projects with many developers coming and going from the pros/cons of open source development :)

Actually Ive been involved with open sourcing for decades. Im presently involved in two (both are games). I wouldnt call it up and coming. On the other hand I make most of my side monies nowadays involved with CrowdSourcing projects which is currently very hot (but beginning to peak).

And btw I definitely am not saying that something like Dom3 cannot be done as an open source project. Just that it wouldnt be done with Johan and even more Kristoffer.

Re: what about the future?
 

Man, I'm new here, but it seems you don't say anything without massive backpedaling and extraneous qualifications. Do you actually have solid opinions about anything?

Re: what about the future?
 

Occassionally :) But it would be very rare that you would get to find it out.

For decades its usually been part of my job skills to avoid such. To give everyone in a conversation with some wins and seek to move a conversation further. Other words for such a skill might be mediation, moderating, diplomacy, or if you want to minimum wage it I guess customer support is another example. Particularly if opinions are those of the management.

Its the other side of the coin from people whose job it is to bring a discussion to an end.

Re: what about the future?
 

Somebody got homesick.

Re: what about the future?
 

Eh?

Re: what about the future?
 

Is this your job? Although I'll admit. My job is usually to win discussions.

Re: what about the future?
 

Not at the moment. But it has been.
Its even been my job here. For Shrapnel.

But not at the moment. Now its just a natural tendency. And no reason to poison the waters as far as resume, referrals, and references.

Re: what about the future?
 

Failing to distinguish between the terms "open development" and "open source" seems rather uneducated to me.

Re: what about the future?
 

My apologies. It was an assumption on my part that you had confused the two.
Open Source as something up and coming is a wrong statement, but open development even more so. I was giving you the benefit of a doubt.
My error.

After all, open development is where we started.

Re: what about the future?
 

So, where are we with the Dominions franchise? Johan and Kristoffer still care about it or not?

Reason I ask is that while the game has potential it's still unnecessarily tedious and tiring to play. But why bother making UI suggestions when there there is no further development planned.

Consolidating the lab activities would help a lot. Years ago I suggested that there be a status for commanders for needing new orders, never done.

The most dangerous things my army faces in battle are still my own archers and mages. My battalions still line up horizontally twelve deep on trivial targets instead of attacking the obvious threat just in front. And they all still blithely walk into obvious hazards. There's no point in in vesting in a single shot sure kill weapon when it's used on orcs.

The change in the magic system from Dom1 to Dom2 and retained in Dom3, that is the consolidation of the spell casting types into a global point system really killed the idea of specialized mages. You just throw point at it till you know everything.

I have what I think are thoughtful suggestions on the UI and magic issues but, again, is there anyone there to listen?

Other things I'd like are more fully realized, and growing, independent provinces, a better divine political system than just 'there will be only one', and more ways to develop your kingdom beyond just filling the map with your standard and candles.

Always potentially, a great game. But it's never going to be more than a nitch product until the UI is more responsive to the needs of the player.

Re: what about the future?
 

Yes, they still care. In the sense that they are still patching the game to fix bugs and add new content. They also sometimes make minor improvements to mechanics, like adding new mod commands.

In this case you are right, there is no use demanding big changes like a revamped UI. The game was essentially finished years ago, and the developers are working at a new game of a different type. (as the rumors go) We will unfortunately have to live with most of the major design flaws.

Pressing the N key cycles between idle commanders.

There are other shortcuts and mechanics that help too. Like monthly cast etc. Learning the shortcuts, using F1 for overview and so on makes a big difference.

With all due respect. The placement and scripting system is certainly a bit unintuitive, but you CAN do quite a lot with it. It is certainly not impossible to avoid the problems you mention.

I don't quite follow here. I find the mages extremely specialized, to the point where most mages are suited for widely different tactics. Some strategies are only possible with a special type of mage. In fact, the highly complex and specialized magic system is what makes the great for me.

I'd like those things too, but I wouldn't have high expectations for anything to change in this game. I'm just happy to fit into the niche that loves it.

Re: what about the future?
 

I agree with Fantomen that large scale changes in the game are extremely unlikely (I actually can't recall any UI changes since D3 was released). But that doesn't mean feedback isn't good. It may not have any impact on D3 but perhaps it can be incorporated into IW's new project and, who knows, maybe one day there will even be a D4 (I think this thread is a good example such feedback helping other projects).

As far as the devs taking notice, they aren't as active in the forum as they once were but even if they don't see your post I think good ideas might be pointed out to them by some members of the forum that have contact with them.

So, I think you should make your suggestions!

Having never played D1 I'm curious what you mean here. How did the magic system used to work?

Re: what about the future?
 

I played D1 quite a lot and not sure I dig what you mean buy that comment.

Bless was different, there were no themes nor eras, maps dynamically changed according to dom effects and the GUI was much more limited. Magic system was more or less the same minus new spells if memory serves.

Re: what about the future?
 

Gandalf is very good at this, and does deserve a lot of credit for it. It's a lot easier to tear a conversation apart than it is to keep it together, nor is it always very satisfying to maintain
a politic disposition towards someone, or several someones, that don't give you a great many reasons to want to get along with them.

I imagine that it's resulted in more than one emotional sacrifice for him. I can't recall ever witnessing the guy get really angry. As someone with anger issues, I can only suppose he hides it well.

What does that sacrifice get him? Well, on the positive side, the Forum is a more pleasant place than it might otherwise be, especially for new people. Gandalf can also definitely say that he's personally responsible for atleast some of Illwinter's good reputation. And he's got my respect.

I'm not sure it's a trade I'd make, and continue to make on a pretty much daily basis.

Re: what about the future?
 

I think the problem is that when you become the voice box of "the man" everyone knows that you're just saying what is expected of you. I don't recall anyone having warm feelings for Metatron either, you know?

You also have this consistent habit of playing devil's advocate for inscrutable reasons. I don't think you've ever just agreed with anyone about anything. Kind of makes it hard to be amiable when you always take the opposite point of view just because.

I intend no offense, I just think that Gandalf's online personality is not a great match with your average opinionated passionate forum visitor. Possibly others feel the same, although I don't want to speak for them.

Re: what about the future?
 

I agree, it's hard to talk much about Gandalf and be polite.

Re: what about the future?
 

LLOL
Literally Laughed Out Loud

Re: what about the future?
 

No, it cycles between commanders defending. If there are 40 defending commanders and another 40 doing something else but only 10 you want to give new orders you still have to find and look at all 80 of them unless you can keep track of them in your head from turn to turn or start up the next day. There is no dedicated status to indicate which ones YOU want to give orders to next. This is a non issue, for decades of development, in all other games, I can't even begin to understand why it's a problem here.

In Dom1 the Mages had to be individually targeted on each spell casting method. But instead of evolving to where the mages had to learn the methods individually (like the gem stuff) the method mutated into a general pool of point buckets when everyone instantly learned everything. Have your mage farm fill the buckets to level 9 and you get to do everything.

Yes there are existing some specialized mages and early in the game they make a difference but the most common thing to do is make rainbow mages.

There is no advantage to specialize. There are no real difficult choices when you can just research a method and all you mages can use it instantly.

The opportunity was to make the mages learn the methods individually even as you acquire the technology. The second thing to have done was to give mages who specialize in, method and gem, special related abilities and titles, which go away if they stray from the path. Getting a new, meaningful, title for your commander would be interesting.

Going further you could have specialized labs for, say, researching 'Alteration' or making potions or items.

Doing this give the player exclusive choices, which makes the choices both difficult and meaningful. It makes the 'rainbow' mage far less powerful and more difficult to come by.

Yes there is complexity, but it lacks an 'economy', rules that force choices. I want mages that learn and act like mages not magic mushrooms.

I know all those. It doesn't substitute for poor design. Keeping all relevant information and actions together is what the design philosophy should be. But even in something as simple as casting a spell the amount of gems scrolls up out of sight as you scroll down the spell list.

Often, when doing something magical, you need to do some alchemy but then you have to back out of the lab and re-enter it to do that. Or put some rock in some mage's pocket to help with the lab activity.

The Gem information, Alchemy, Spell Casting, Item Production and list of available mages should all be right there. Available mages includes ALL mages with Lab access, not just the ones in the province.

Then you can do everything you need to do very quickly without jumping in and out of screens each and very time for each and every step of each and every activity.

For that matter, there's no reason why something the Alchemy Stone has to leave to lab to function as all alchemy occurs within the player turn.

I understand placement and scripting well. What happens is that if an orc runs up to my commanders on the right side of the field my mage on the left side of the field drops a nuke on them to kill the orc. And usually misses the orc while he blows up everyone else. Instead of aiming at the mass of archers far in the rear of the front line he drops bombs on the guys in melee. Which would be not horrible if he would center of the rear so undershoots don't wipe out the line. And there is no script that tells troops not to stack up.

There's a Paradox game, Chariots of War, which also does program resolved battles that you set up. Their algorithms don't exhibit this behavior, it it is possible to do.

----

There have been some minor tweaks to the GUI from D2 to D3, including making the background dark so un-highlighted units fade into it but it hasn't really changed in a way that makes communicating with the program less difficult. It was behind the times when it was originally written and it's ten years older.

---
Misc.
Have the ability to tell commanders how many gems they should be carrying and let them pick up or drop gems based upon that.

This is the idea of 'automating' micromanagement. Same with the build queues, state how many of what should be in production and for how long.

Allow complex plotting of movement, beyond one turn. As a good example HoI2 AoD, or Trade Empires. Those are RTS but it should be simple to do in a TBS.
---

I love the complexity but there has to be a way to manage it without burn out. And complexity alone doesn't give you the kind of meaningful choices that are needed.

The game isn't nitch because it is complex, it is nitch because the interface discourages participation by all but the most dedicated and pain tolerant.

Solving these problems instead of excusing them will make the difference between the effort being a hobby and something that can earn money for the authors.

Re: what about the future?
 

Sorry, I'm missing something here. You have 80 commanders. 40 are idle (because defend=idle - defend is the default behaviour for commanders with no orders) and 40 are following orders already. Do you want to assign new orders to 10 of the 80, or just 10 of the 40 who are otherwise unassigned?

Either way, this 'I want to give this commander orders' status is a little confusing to me. Is it something you set manually?

Re: what about the future?
 

If it's any help on the combat, here's an interesting discussion of AI development.

Re: what about the future?
 

10 of the 80.

"Defend" is an activity. And in a province with a castle it is a choice between patrol the province or sit in the keep. So it really isn't indicative of whether you want that commander to continue doing what he's doing or not.

There's a monthly command for the mages casting, that's it. You can't say cast 'x' for ten months and wave at me for new instructions.

I need to mark those commanders who need orders next turn. And I need to find them too.

Again, whether a commander is defending or not, has nothing to do with if he needs a new order. That may be his order. That may be exactly what he should be doing.

I need to find the guys who need orders. Next turn or next week.

The 'I need attention' status could be manual or a default status at the end of some directed activity such as spell casting. You could even specify when it is the default. It is a status, not an activity. Defending is an activity.

You could search for other status's too, like find all commanders with a disease. Etc.

Re: what about the future?
 

So... you want to manually specify 10 of the 80 one turn in advance? I like the idea that it could occur at the end of a fixed-duration activity though.

Re: what about the future?
 

I have to agree on the Next commander thing. Commanders on defend, siege and hide stay in the rotation, which is good because those are the default orders in their situation, but it's bad because when you have a lot who should be doing that it makes it hard to find the ones who should be doing something else. Scouts are the one that drive me crazy. It would be nice to have a way to specify, "I'm done with this guy. I want him to stay hiding/defending/seiging and not show up again." Even if it's just for a turn. That way I know I haven't missed anyone when 'n' doesn't cycle anymore, not when I think there isn't anyone in the cycle but the ~50 scouts.

As for individual mage research, that sounds neat but ridiculously complex. In a good size game, you may have hundreds of mages, with dozens of different path combinations. You want to have each of them learn spells individually? And keep track of who knows what when you're sending armies out? And new summoned uber-mages have to spend months studying before they can cast anything useful? Was Dom1 really like that? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Most of the other micro issues are well known and generally agreed on. The game is micro hell.

Re: what about the future?
 

I propose a lvl 10 blood ritual called "micro hell" that disables cntl-n, f1 and other key shortcuts for the other players.
ssj

Re: what about the future?
 

No they didn't. The magic system hasn't changed a bit from Dominions 1. Every mage has always had access to every spell your nation has researched.

Re: what about the future?
 

What they did (in D1) was contribute research points individually to the types of casting method rather than pool the points.

----

Having the mages have to learn to cast and having reasons not to multi-train will mean more complexity, and choices. But this isn't an RTS. And yes, it means not having 'do everything/anything' mages. It makes finding those special mages really valuable.

Re: what about the future?
 

And? The result is the same, and the micromanagement is less.

This isn't a feasible game design decision (ie the resulting mess would be unplayable) unless you are going to limit players to about ten or twenty mages per game.

Re: what about the future?
 

Couple of small points.
The game wasnt designed. It evolved gradually. From a BASIC game on an Atari, thru C on Unix, thru C+ on Linux. For that its not a bad result. Some "design flaws" have been acknowledged by the devs as items which would require a complete rewrite.

And, the goal here was never to move from hobby to money-maker. That does have a part in understanding why some things got fixed and others didnt.

Re: what about the future?
 

If I'm not mistaken that is in fact one of the (main?) reasons Illwinter aren't actively planning on making a Dom4: They feel they have taken the current system as far as it can go, and improving it - amongst other things with various of the suggestions you make - would pretty much require them to rewrite the entire code from the ground up. Something they have no intrest in doing, since it isn't "fun" to remake something they have already made once before.

Unfortunately for us, of course...

Re: what about the future?
 

How much time is necessary for the program to evolve? It's been ten years.

That mean I get my 50 back?

Besides money, how can I motivate a change to the UI to make it less painful and more helpful?

---

If they are not interested in evolving a D4, would they turn it over to another development group?

---

That's an exaggeration. Mages would be more focused, but more effective in their specialty.

---

How far is their office from the Paradox office?

Re: what about the future?
 

I don't think they have any offices.

50 bucks is because of Shrapnel, they are morons and know **** about doing business.

You don't have to motivate - Amhazair is right, not much can be done to dom3 without writing it from scratch. And tbh there are many things devs have no idea about and I've heard code is not documented and is quite chaotic.

And no, don't count on them parting with rights, so a community can make dom4 [even though it'd be great]. At least not any time soon.

Re: what about the future?
 

I think it evolved great. Your little personal gripes seem very minor compared to where it came from. Also keep in mind that it goes real job, family, self time, hobby work on little game thing. :)

Well they are giving away their first game for free now. Which isnt really a bad little time killer. But no I think that the cost of outsourcing limited pressings has the cost of Dom3 fairly frozen.

3rd party programs, macro recorders, etc.

Or if you mean getting Illwinter to break off of their latest fun project to drudge back into the Dom3 code, didnt your mommy ever teach you about please and thank you? Some people here have a knack for reviving the devs love for certain nations or game aspects and then casually mention a slight irritation while praising most of the game. Others have a habit of insulting the game, the developers, the publishers, and then whining about things dont ever get changed. Its not too hard to trace back thru the games progress page and compare it to the threads that got things done to see.

Im not sure why they would want to do that. Generally that creates a bad taste to the original developers or authors when they see what a new company does with it.

But we arent sure they arent interested in a D4. Maybe the new project is one (I personally doubt it) or maybe they will swing back that direction down the road.

Illwinters? No real "offices" but it operates mostly in Lund, Sweden

Re: what about the future?
 

No real need for that. Someone could just make a dom-like(but improved) game, change a few things here and there and call it something else. Just a thought.

Also could someone link me to the thread where that guy(who got banned) proved that "manual piracy"(whatever that is) exists?

Re: what about the future?
 

Actually, this seems quite fun to me. Maybe somewhat more than 10-20 mages, but not too much. I find that adding mages and troops adds to my enjoyment of the game up until somewhere in the midgame. At that point, each additional unit detracts from my enjoyment - more micromanagement, less fun. But I can see how some people would find this too small a scale: more like bickering petty kingdoms than vast empires battling to decide the next pantokrator.

But I think this touches on a key issue relating to micromanagement: that as the number of units and resources you need to manage grows, so does the micro. A good UI is of course very helpful (especially when it comes to streamlining how resources are handled) but I don't think you can get around this fact.

Ideally I'd like to see a system that reduced the escalation in the number of units in play. So instead of having a hundred times more units in the end game you'd have ten times more. And of course ideally this would be adjustable so that people who enjoy (or at least can tolerate) managing huge numbers of units would have that option.

Re: what about the future?
 

.... what?

Cost of the disc: <10 cents. Ok, its probably ~1 cent (a disc is a disc, they can buy in bulk and use them for multiple different titles) but we might assume they don't order enough discs total to get quite that good a price. But *I* can buy writeable discs for <10 cents, so a game publisher certainly can.

Which leaves the manual, which honestly, they could just put the pdf on the disc and reduce their materials cost/unit to the cost of the disc. However, the manual itself can't cost them more than a few bucks to print.

Most of a cost for a game is to account for development time. After a while (usually a year or less for computer games) the price starts dropping because the publisher understands that if more units move, then they'll see more total income and thus more profits, since the development cost/unit is not a fixed amount. (Rather, its a total that needs to be made up by all sales). Basic economics teaches us that reducing price increases sales.

That dom3's price hasn't moved is pure stupidity on Shrapnel's part.

----------------------

Re: "Dom 4". Now, IANAL, but, at least in the US, game mechanics aren't copyrightable or patentable. The description of the mechanics (in the manual or game help) is copyrightable, but not the mechanics themselves. So if someone wanted to make a Dominions 3 clone, they very well could. Of course, the creative content that is original to Dom3 is all copyrightable, so that couldn't be reproduced, but since much of the source material is mythological, factions derived from the same source material are perfectly permissible.

Of course, you wouldn't even want to use Dom3's exact mechanics, since that's where a lot of the problems are. So what you end up with is a game that's inspired by Dom3. What you lose is the factions that have the most creative work put into them - Abysia and Agartha (not the names, but the nature of the factions) for example. Other factions are pretty much straight up conversions of myth to faction, so while there would be changes, a Vanir inspired faction would still be recognizably Vanheim for example. And various gradations in-between.

The magic system's divisions are, for the most part, stolen straight from D+D (1st/2nd ed. AD+D specifically), so that's not a problem. The gem spending mechanic seems to be derivative of MoM in form (which would be the only arguably 'creative' aspect - function being the mechanic itself which is not copyrightable). The actual spells would need changing in many cases (although 'fireball' is certainly not intellectual property, some of them certainly are).

Not that Dom3 is without legal problems of its own... (Illithids and Aboleths are WotC's intellectual property, and used without permission afaict.)

Now, obviously it couldn't be *called* dom4...

Re: what about the future?
 

Yes, I've got to think that would be the point of purchasing the rights to Dominions, since it is always mentioned that the code will be rewritten. But I wonder how long it would be before TNN would be changed to elves, Ulm to dwarves, etc. I like traditional fantasy but one of the things I like about Dominions is that it takes a different approach. It seems to me you could make a good argument that you'd sell more copies if you changed nations to the archetypes most people would expect. And while that argument might not do much to sway IW (something I've always liked about them) I would expect for most developers that would, understandably, be a big factor. In short, I wonder if Dominions would retain its spirit with IW out of the picture.

I recall reading that Ars Magica, an RPG with a wonderfully realized medieval setting, was an influence on the magic system.

Re: what about the future?
 

TNN/Eriu *is* elves. Or at least one version of elves. (Arguably Vanheim is also elves). Its just that IW has retained the mythological rather than fantasy pop-cultural envisioning of them. (Also, we have dwarves. They're just called Svartalfar - literally 'dark elf', but elves and dwarves are kind of indistinguishable in norse mythology...).

Re: what about the future?
 

NO!

No bloody elves,
No blooming dwarves,
The game is so much richer for it.

Re: what about the future?
 

I think professional discs are a bit more expensive. Iirc you need to make a master disc, and make professional copies from that one. For both you need specialized equipment. Which tend to be expensive. Sure the costs of one disc is cheap. But the whole setup tends to have large costs up front. Sure, after a certain amound of games sold you get the expense back. But still.

(And lets not forget that when buying a game you normally not only pay for the physical disk, you also pay for development, tech support, shipping, housing, websites, shrapnel also wants to eat, etc). People tend to forget these costs, which usually amount to a lot.

And while I personally think 50$ is still a bit much. I doubt more sales would be made if the price is lower. (I think the specials do improve sales, but that has to do with buyers psychology). Dom3 isn't a real impulse buy kind of game. It is a niche game, those tend to be more expensive. (And tend to draw a more 'select' crowd).