Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

From the progress page:

Does having a Mac version means that it is officialy feature complete and there is only some balancing and debugging to do before the release (I don't know if Illwinter have something like "going gold" for their games) ?

Hum, if only it could be made available on android too ...

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I would suspect it just means he dug up a mac tester.

There will be a netbook version. But a phone version of ANY Illwinter game could be the end of our economy. Enough people get fired for playing Illwinter games at work now. :)

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

We actually have two of those now.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

A netbook version ? Thanks for the informationn but I wonder why a separate version would be needed for netbooks ?

I would expect that playing on a netbook would only need at best some low-resolution settings and maybe lowering a few other graphic settings like it did for dom 3.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

So, the game doesn't have a text chat? I really think you should add that if possible because it's a pretty important feature for multiplayer gamers.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

AFAIK there is no separate netbook version. CoE3 has been designed as a netbook version, which is why some UI solutions are what they are. It does have the option to use lower resolution settings, but the detail level is not handled the same way as it was in Dom3 (grass etc).

As far as coding a text chat into the game, why? It comes down to the distribution of resources, in this case meaning the distribution of time Johan has available to spend on the game. IRC or similar is a quite adequate way to communicate with other players in an MP game and that way the time that would otherwise be needed for the text chat can be used to do some other features instead.

It's a case of prioritization and given the scarcity of resources, at least for me a built in text chat is very low priority.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

While I do not know how exaclty tcp/ip in CoE3 works, in Dom3 you do your turn technically in offline mode and send it to the server when finished and then wait in lobby for others to do their turns etc.

Implementing a text chat for the lobby should be fairly trivial. I mean seriously, if you already have what dom3 tcp/ip has, adding text chat for that is not very hard. Anything that has the basic server-client architecture can do "Hey, client sends data with specific tag, let's send it to all clients!" without huge effort and I highly doubt the UI components would be that hard either.

That said a text chat in lobby only is pretty cumbersome and it's easier to use IRC or something else provided you use that stuff already anyway.

I do highly doubt it'd be that huge job to implement a game wide text chat either for when you are connected to a server, but unlike above that's totally a guess and depends highly on how stuff is implemented in the source code. That'd be a good thing in general even if I personally don't really give a crap due to using IRC anyway. Most people in dom3 community seem to communicate via forums and email though, so it would probably be a fairly useful feature for them seeing how CoE3 is supposedly a far faster pace game than Dom3.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

You know more about coding than I do, so I'll take your word for that chat thing, elmokki. For me it's not a priority, but I'll raise the issue with Johan.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I have strongly recommended it in the server discussions. Thats one of my main testing areas. So I am trying to get an impression of how an MP game would run, and how hosting would be done. IMHO the speed of play makes this more of an IRC game than Dom3 is (and even Dom3 does that a lot)

ON THE OTHER HAND I have always supported Illwinters stance that adding things which are already available by 3rd party programs is not good and fun use of our one programmer. Common requests like backup, restore, file cleanup, screenshots, video record, mp3 playing, alarms/timers to not overdo the playing, macros, editable keypress tables, winner ladders, spreadsheet calculators, in-game messaging, in-game chat, in-game voice, etc etc. I do make the request when I feel it will help the game, and we do get some of them. But if its not an easy add for Linux/Windows/Mac then I dont press the goodies.

But again, yes that is a good idea. And some simple chat window has been requested.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Why not have the same by-turn messaging Dom3 had? Sure it's ineffective when something has to be discussed and decided quickly, but sufficient for more basic communications.