(Shocking) News!!!!!

[Atrocities]

Well guys it’s been an amazing journey thus far and I have enjoyed it immensely. Shrapnel Games has earned my loyalty through superior games and fanatical customer support. I hate to see SE V going away, but I trust in life that all things change and that sometimes change hurts.

I look forward to many more years as a shrapnel games customer as they release more games and continue to provide excellent customer service.

As for Strategy First, well, they are not Shrapnel Games so I don't expect the same quality of customer service that I have seen with Shrapnel. As for the SE V forum, well that is a concern, but hopefully by then SE.net will be up and running stable.

I am optimistic about space empires future, as I am sure many of you are. However be it store shelf or internet sales, I believe that in the long hall, five to ten years down the road, many of us will look back at the time we have spent here, on the Space Empires IV forum, and miss it. Although SE V is not going to be a shrapnel product, perhaps SE VI will be. Remember SE V is not the end of SE IV so hopefully this forum will continue to have a healthy and long life.

Shrapnel Games has earned my loyalty and I hope the same is true for many of you. Kodos to Shrapnel Games for being more than just a place that sells games.

[Phoenix-D]

PS: As far as GalCiv and Strategy First goes Brad Wardell, creator of GalCiv broke off with SF awhile back. Once again, search for it and you'll find his take on the deal.

They did? The galciv website still has "Published by Strategy First" on it.

[Spoo]

Sounds like bad news to me. I hope I'm wrong.

[Suicide Junkie]

Joachim said:
What does this mean for the race to SEV tourney? What about the Beta slots and SEV copies?

The beta slots are given out by Aaron himself.
I'm one of the contributors to the SE5 copy prizes, and this dosen't change that.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

The reason SEIV uses bmps is for modding purposes (or so I believe). The Gold Manual even contained a Modding Guide, and there were some much-used mods on the Gold CD.

[Captain Kwok]

I'm not so worried anymore after speaking with David. Aaron is in 100% control and since he's put in all his own money for its development, there's not much the "publisher" can force on him in regards to changes etc.

I still feel for Shrapnel though - so perhaps I'll buy Salvo...

[NullAshton]

Space Empires needs to use .jpg files. Would reduce the size of mods and the game a lot, and allow more stuff to fit in. Imagine... THOUSANDS of system pictures! TENS OF THOUSANDS of component pictures!!!

Edit: Maybe he could also build a mod editor that creates compressed mod files, instead of the old text files that waste so much space. That way, we can utilize all those tens of thousands of component pictures

[Fyron]

NullAshton said:
Space Empires needs to use .jpg files. Would reduce the size of mods and the game a lot, and allow more stuff to fit in. Imagine... THOUSANDS of system pictures! TENS OF THOUSANDS of component pictures!!!

JPG is not a good format. It loses too much color information (even with those algorithms used by David Gervais...). PNG is far, far superior, and has no royalty fees involved to boot.

[geoschmo]

Joachim said:
What does this mean for the race to SEV tourney? What about the Beta slots and SEV copies?

All of the promised swag for the tourney was worked out between Tesco and Malfador. The publisher doesn't usually get involved in that stuff unless it's something they are setting up themselves, which Shrapnel was not in this case. It shouldn't have any affect at all.

[Joachim]

geoschmo said:

All of the promised swag for the tourney was worked out between Tesco and Malfador. The publisher doesn't usually get involved in that stuff unless it's something they are setting up themselves, which Shrapnel was not in this case. It shouldn't have any affect at all.

Cool, not that I dont have a major personal interest in the outcome of the Atull game....