Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log

[Gandalf Parker]

Heehee. Im too slow. Edi has already started a new thread in the beta forum about the combat suggestions. With a long and well written explanation of what has been brought up so far

[Gandalf Parker]

Desura looks to be shelfware/marketing style.
Im not sure that Illwinter is ready yet to go that route but I will mention it.

[Thilock_Dominus]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Desura looks to be shelfware/marketing style.
Im not sure that Illwinter is ready yet to go that route but I will mention it.

The good thing to do this, is that you get the game out to a bigger audience

[Edi]

The issue of the combat sequence has been raised. We'll see what the answer is, though likely as not I'll only learn the results after the 13th, since I'm out of the country from 4th to 13th of January.

Like Gandalf said, anything that has a label of "lots of work and requires lots of time" is unlikely for exactly the reasons he listed.

A sequential 3 phase combat with spellcaster, missile and melee phases would probably only alter combat sequence mechanics (basically the order in which who does what they already do now) and I don't have any objection if the current system is changed to something like that. I don't have a vested interest in the outcome from a personal point of view.


However, anything like adding an initiative system would require some or all of the following:

- unit structure changes (and making them to all 650 (as of now) monsters)
- significant AI rewriting for 17 (as of now) separate AIs
- complete rewrite of the existing combat sequence code aside from damage mechanis
- significant rewrites of magic mechanics and spell structures, if magic initiative was to be spell-based rather than unit based
- integrating unit initiative of spellcasters with spell initiative of the spells they know
- since weapon and spell mechanics are essentially identical, initiative for weapons? And same problems there as above.

And then you would need to debug the whole shebang, which would be definitely be a non-trivial and very time-consuming task on top of all the time consumption that goes to the bullet points above.

Yes, there would be enrichment. But at what cost in time and effort required? Going "This would be awesome" is easy enough but making it a reality is another thing entirely.

[nordlys]

Originally Posted by Edi

A sequential 3 phase combat with spellcaster, missile and melee phases would probably only alter combat sequence mechanics (basically the order in which who does what they already do now) and I don't have any objection if the current system is changed to something like that.

However, anything like adding an initiative system would require some or all of the following:

That's understandable, if attack speeds weren't written into the system to begin with, retrofitting them in would be a royal pain in the ***.

However, how about some plain old random factor affecting the order of units within a phase? That shouldn't be any big deal to implement. The way I imagine it, all units about to participate in a given phase are enumerated, sorted randomly and act in that order. The defending units could get some bonus in order to keep some of that "defenders go first" advantage (which *is* reasonable when not taken to such extremes as in COE2), like all shifting a couple of positions up the sorted list.

[Gandalf Parker]

Yes but shelfware and marketing requires a substantial layout by the company. To convince them to take you on usually means signing away rights. And then there is a year or two of payback before any profits get sent to the devs.

Its a good plan. But it is a gamble in hopes of higher returns. Which isnt such a big thing for them.

Of course players like those companies because when sales slow down the game ends up in a bargain bin while the company tries to recoup its costs.

[elmokki]

I'm not really sold with CoE3 at all due to it looking like it'll be far too simple, especially in terms of combat, but seriously, if you release your game in Steam/Desura you can still sell it on your own website and those two services, especially Steam allow a much larger audience.

Dominions 3 scene is small and slowly dying. If the game was a 5 euro/dollar sale game in Steam for the holiday seasons, you can bet there would be many new people trying it out. Right now the price is so ludicrously high and there's absolutely no visibility for the game that influx of new players is far lower than what it could be.

I believe that it'd be a terrible business decision for Illwinter guys to release CoE3 like Dominions 3. Having the game easily accessible with a cheap price of maximum of about 20 dollars / euros makes people buy it just because they are interested and it's cheap.

If on the way to get the game is to buy it for closer 50 euros / dollars from some fairly obscure web site, you won't get that many random people buying it after just trying the demo. After all, for 50 euros you can get a big distributor main stream game. Sure, that game could be worse, but people do regardless seem to feel like that game is worth more - and in economical terms the price is more justified since the production costs are probably hundredfold or even thousandfold.

Also underestimating the marketing potential of those distribution platforms, especially Steam since it's by far the largest, is not a good idea.

So, really, I see no logical arguments against at least asking what it would take to get the game published on Desura/Steam/Gamersgate/Whatever.

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by elmokki

Dominions 3 scene is small and slowly dying. If the game was a 5 euro/dollar sale game in Steam for the holiday seasons, you can bet there would be many new people trying it out. Right now the price is so ludicrously high and there's absolutely no visibility for the game that influx of new players is far lower than what it could be.

Even if it were $5 instead of $50 (and we pretended that was profit), do you think there would actually be 10x sales? And, would there be ten times as many content Dom players? I doubt it.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by JonBrave

Even if it were $5 instead of $50 (and we pretended that was profit), do you think there would actually be 10x sales? And, would there be ten times as many content Dom players? I doubt it.

On steam, yes. Steam is odd, it is the amazon of selling games. (What works, only works for them, and it works great. But copying their business model will fail, and if you compete with them you will always have to deal with them).

So if dom3 was on sale on steam it would sell like a ... thing that sells. Because steam has a huge impulse buying community. Sadly shrapnel doesn't have this.

[elmokki]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

On steam, yes. Steam is odd, it is the amazon of selling games. (What works, only works for them, and it works great. But copying their business model will fail, and if you compete with them you will always have to deal with them).

So if dom3 was on sale on steam it would sell like a ... thing that sells. Because steam has a huge impulse buying community. Sadly shrapnel doesn't have this.

Yes. Tenfold sales aren't impossible in any way. $5 is a price where people pick it up at the price just to try it and with Steam it's like three clicks for any Steam user to do that. $50 is a price where very few people buy it before trying it and even then it probably takes some consideration to pay the price of a full AAA game for it (yes, dom3 is better game than many of those, but those games did still cost a lot more to make so they do feel more entitled to get $50 if I happen to buy them in the first place). As a bonus buying from a random site usually requires you to do more than just click three or so times.

As for tenfold content, obviously not. Probably still more content than with $50 price though.

Minecraft is a good example of a game that got huge exposure with just spreading the game on their own site. It's not really something you can compare CoE3 with at all though. Minecraft was revolutionary in terms of gameplay. It's also very easy to access even if you aren't really a gamer. It also cost just 10 euros at start which is why I bothered to buy it in the first place back when I did. CoE3 doesn't have those selling points and is bound to be more of a niche game. The game mechanics aren't probably going to be revolutionary for more than small parts really, and more than that, it's going to be a turnbased strategy game. A genre that you need to streamline really well to appeal to casual gamers.