Re: Did Space Empires V kill Space Empires?
 

Of course its not wrong. Its just different with its own pros and cons. Its a money-chasing template which makes many other things secondary. Shrapnel would have to change alot to pursue it.

Re: Did Space Empires V kill Space Empires?
 

Actually DNF is a unique situation. For the most part they will self-funded until I believe near the end, where they then needed a cash influx from Take 2. If DNF hadn't been self-funded there's a good chance it may have actually come out years ago, since the problem was 3DR constantly tearing it down and rebuilding it every six months. A publisher would have just said, "Screw it, ship what you got." Sure, it would have tanked and would probably have been crap, but at least it would have shipped and everyone would have moved on.

Re: Did Space Empires V kill Space Empires?
 

It wasn't entirely self funding, Take2 poured a lot of money into its development and things came to a head recently when 3dRealms asked for another chunk of change to bring it to market. The problem with DNF's development was exactly that, the guys in charge of development kept scrapping it to go with the latest game engine or redoing entire sections of the game because of something visually neat they wanted to use from another game. Also known as Feature Creep.

Take2, which had supposedly sunk well over 30 million into the project, was fed up and naturally refused. This in turn caused 3drealms to self-destruct in a rage-quit and fold. It went to court and a few dramatic episodes later, the capable people at GearBox (many who are former 3drealm staffers) got a hold of it and they are bringing it to market now.

But the game's development was an unmitigated disaster. 10 years ago, it might've been a huge hit, but now. i don't know.

Re: Did Space Empires V kill Space Empires?
 

Unfortunately many game sequels take this poor direction even with successful games... instead of improving a successful game developers will create a new game. The sequel of a successful game merely needs to fix previous bugs, add more game content, improve AI design/coding, increase map sizes and add more strategy.

While it didn't happen with SE5... the biggest mistake made by game developers is the extreme focus with providing the most recent high-end graphics.

Re: Did Space Empires V kill Space Empires?
 

Disagree about the high-end graphics
It used DX8.1 which was already outdated by 5 years (and mostly replaced in the gaming market also)
Which is why many people had problems with the game in Vista, due to DX8 not being installed with it, meaning it was emulated

Re: Did Space Empires V kill Space Empires?
 

You obviously read my statement incorrectly. I said it "didn't" happen with SE5. :rolleyes:

Re: Did Space Empires V kill Space Empires?
 

I did, oops lol

Re: Did Space Empires V kill Space Empires?
 

Well, when I bought my laptop, it had Vista, and I had no problems loading up SEV and playing it. I really like SEV compared to SEIV, but I seem to be in the minority. I don't really need a grahpics hog of a game, and SEV seems to have pretty good graphics. But it plays very well on my laptop, and that's all I need to know about the issue.

Re: Did Space Empires V kill Space Empires?
 

I still think going 3D was a stupid move by Aaron( or publisher?). Can't even imagine how much work he must have spent on that, and then bug-fixing it and probably having to re-implement every feature from SEIV. Even if he had outside help, that's still a tremendous amount of work just to get where the previous game is already at.

And all that time and resources could instead have been used to improve upon SEIV's gameplay and updating it with some nicer 2D graphics from a decent artist. Distant Worlds is an excellent example of how 2D graphics still work just great for this type of games, being pretty much the best 4x game to come out the last decade or so, especially now with its expansion.

Sad really, as Space Empires was definitely one of the 4x games with the most potential.

Re: Did Space Empires V kill Space Empires?
 

I gotta stop posting drunk. I read this thread backwards and was surprised to discover I started it.

I love the look of Distant Worlds but my one campaign attempt left me pretty dissatisfied. I gave it a weekend but I started automating more and more until it was virtually playing itself. Mustn't have the attention span to micromanage any longer. Kind of an expensive mistake and makes me question Matrix Games demo policy. I may go back to it.

If SE5 had just stuck to 2D graphics it would have addressed the bulk of my criticism and looked far better, potentially.