v1.08 Friday Slipstream running post
By Frogboy Posted September 17, 2010 16:07:12

V1.08 is up as well as v1.08B which turns on MP. The MP version is only listed as "beta" because we want players to know that we're going to be adding AI players as an option in custom games which should be enabled in v1.09 (next week).

Here's a running tally of what we're tweaking for Friday's (today) update:

1. NPC Recruiting behavior change better communicated
2. Organized talent is being removed
3. New talent: Green Thumb: +2 food per turn
4. New talent: Wealthy: +1 gildar per turn
5. More consistent starting resources
6. Look at why custom made maps aren't showing up
7. See about the tiny maps always being the default (I think it's a MP thing)
8. Reduction of equipment costs in shops (the eco balance is the first step to having weapons and equipment more consistent in cost)
9. Tweak of monster spawning
10. Option for animation removal in tactical battles
11. Pathfinding/Terrain tweak/fix
12. Longbow costs 40 not 4 now.

Friday update
By Frogboy Posted September 18, 2010 1:56:54

We don't normally release a Friday update but given the significant improvements in 1.08 we didn't want them marred by a few oversights.

Here's what's new in Friday's update to v1.08 that should be live by 10pm EST.

Friday update:

******
* Gameplay / Balance *

+ New Sovereign Ability: Wealthy +1 gildar per turn
+ New Sovereign Ability: Green Thumb +2 food per turn
+ Organized Sovereign Ability removed
+ Shop Costs moved to be a formula (unless specified in the XML)
+ Research costs increased
+ More balancing of initial resource seeding
+ Fertile land availability increased
+ Long Bows now cost 40 gildar to construct
+ Default shop values on weapons and armor removed from XML (you can overrride the formula still)
+ Teleport/Blink mana cost increased from 5 to 15.
+ Eliminated criminal adventurers (caused confusion amongst players)
+ Pioneer Kit Gold cost reduced from 10 to 5, Materials cost increased from 1 to 10.
+ Organized ability added to general special abilities
+ Late game monster respawning reduced.
+ Increased movement speed of units in tactical battles
+ Lots of spell damage tweaks.


******
* Bug Fixes *

+ Added logic to stop spells from dealing max damage every time.
+ Restored old terrain/tile movement costs until that can be better addressed.
+ Adjusted the combat speed from 2 to 3 for the base male/female sov units.
+ Fixed bug where Karavox, Magnar, and Verga sovs only had 1.0 for combat speed.
+ Fixed bug that made it not load any maps except mp maps
+ Fixed bug resetting default map size to tiny
+ Fixed bug where rapidly clicking the fortify action for a unit twice or more would cause the game to hang
+ Fixed bug where, after unhiding the game lobby wnd once, human players would get assigned team 1 when joining a custom game, instead of an unused team ID
+ Fixed crash when restarting new campaign after you load a saved campaign game
+ Fixed bug where Cancel button would not show up on mutliplayer Join Game with Password screen
+ Fixed an error where old saves with old data had logic conflicts with new code that made spells miss.

By Frogboy Posted September 30, 2010 19:20:18

We expect to make this available either this evening or tomorrow. Here’s what’s new:

---------------------------------------------------
----------- Elemental v1.09 Change Log -----------
---------------------------------------------------

* Gameplay / Balance *
+ AI sovereigns take more care about where they are doing their attacking
+ Added code so that AIBasic is smarter about attacking units in cities
+ ‘Equipment Cache’ goodie hut now hands out cloth armor, instead of the patchwork armor that should not be in the game anymore
+ You can no longer train *groups* of Dragons, Catapults, or Giant Demons
+ New option: Players can choose not to have monsters spawn
+ New option: Players can disable minor factions
+ Loot given by monsters increased
+ Fixed bug where some AI-controlled caravans that had already established trade routes would wander off those routes while delivering their stuff at a city
+ Fixed a bug where caravan pathfinding through territory owned by anyone other than their owner would still have a penalty, even through caravans can always move freely through any territory
+ Changed dynasty kids to determine their essence based on the BASE essence of their parents (ignoring equipment, player ability bonuses, etc.) This should keep kids from double-dipping from things like player-wide essence bonuses and keep their max mana at more reasonable levels
+ fixed several armor and special ability xml issues (that were either pointed out on the forums or that I discovered while fixing others)
***********
* Battles *
+ The starting side in a tactical battle is now chosen randomly. The attacker and the defender have an equal chance to go first. This is a short-term change. In the longer term, we are moving to an initiative system (individual units moving based on their combat speed rather than each side taking a turn together).
+ Added shorter animations for bow attacks and spell attacks
+ Fixed a divide by zero error in spell damage.
+ Fixed some logic to determine whether or not a tactical unit was moving.
+ Added code to make sure a unit cancels its destination when it skips a turn.
+ Added some additional checks to skip turn logic in tacatical battles to stop a turn from being skipped in the middle of other actions.
+ Fix to be sure ranged attacks don't always do max damage in tactical battles.
+ Fix to experience display for battles, and fixed a bug where auto resolve was only rewarding experience for killing the leader unit.
+ The AI does not take its first turn immediately after the window loads. This will prevent cases where the AI takes its turn before the window finishes rendering.
+ Fixed a spell type tag for Quicken (now shows up in Tactical Battles)
+ Fixed an issue where a single unit might lose its mana after attacking and killing a defending team.
+ Added the UsableInBattle tag for item types, will help to determine if an item should be displayed during a tactical battle. This defaults to FALSE.
+ Items in a tactical battle will now properly stack in the UI.
******
* UI *
+ NEW! City List window which can be brought up via a tab on the kingdom screen
- this will list all your current cities, along with vital information about resource, training, and building being done there (ie: it's a city spreadsheet)
+ New icons hooked up for sovereign talents
+ Got rid of trailing decimal zeros for the global resource pool tooltips, to clean up the display of resources that are always integers
+ Fixed bug where the global resources for a player didn't refresh when a city was lost through razing until the next turn
+ Tweaked the spell info card to get the stats to show up in the grey bar at the bottom of the info card, and to support multiple text entries of varying sizes
+ Item Shop now shows change in Combat Speed, Defense, and Attack for the highlighted item
+ Message Box input field now limited to 20 chars
+ Made auto-select next moveable unit code not select caravans
+ Fixed City HUDs clipping at the end (now they all get rounded edges)
***************************
* Performance / Stability *
+ Moved clean up code around so that game within a game cleans up better
+ Fixed mem leak in Trigger Manager, city wall nodes, destination and selection cursors for destroyed objects
+ Removed code in CTreeGraphic that was causing a leak on Win7-64.
+ Fixed big leak in DecalGraphicGraphicManager where every decal in the game was leaking on Win7-64bit when starting a new game within a game
+ Fixed leak in CUnitSceneViewWindow (which is used on lots of screens)
+ Fixed random crash in kingdom screen with the filling of the Lore Book
+ Tile Designs now flush out the graphics for their "base graphic" (the one that the graphic instances use to render) once the instances for that base graphic are released
+ Fixed crash if a spellcaster ever had to cancel more than one enchantment at a time from losing 2 or more available enchantment slots
+ Fixed memory leak in UnitAnimationHelper that caused unit gfx to leak after the unit was destroyed
+ Fixed memory leak in TreeGraphic that caused tree batches to leak on game within a game or destruction of the forest object
*************
* Bug Fixes *
+ Fixed bug where mini map would sometimes not update itself after starting a new game from within a game
+ Hooked up renaming cities and units to use events (for MP)
+ Fixed cheat flag bug where you could go into the enchants tab for any unit and cancel their enchantments, whether that unit belonged to you or not even when cheat flag was not used.
+ Fixed bug where destination cursor would disappear if the unit it belonged to was off-screen
+ Added support for Resource modifier types in unit ability bonus options to be taken into account in what resources a unit always provides, without needing to be stationed in a city
+ Fixed Bug When reload a game with Wild Shard Improvements, the game now properly relinks them to their resource hoards (fixed issue where destroyed shrines would not regenerate shard resource)
+ Fixed particle effect render order on main map screen for better visuals
+ Fixed graphical bug where mounted units in an army did not scale properly
+ CalculateAbilities now uses champions for ability modifiers (this fixes NPCs that should give bonuses but didn’t, such as ‘Royalty’)
+ Fixed bug where the NPC AI player would spawn new NPCs based off of the unit types of dynasty kids. This would cause champions wandering around with the same name, and with baby portraits if they hadn't grown up yet.
+ Attacking cities or lone improvements while in attack cursor mode now works properly in all cases
- hooked up the cursor to change to the crossed swords at the right time for cities/improvements when one of your units is selected
+ Fixed comment in CityLevelUpBonuses.xml that caused malformed xml
+ Fixed merge error in QuestUnits.xml for Talax
+ Fixed end tags in CoreCityWalls
+ Fixed game modifiers and ending tag after Magnar_Staff in CoreSpecialWeapons.xml
+ Fixed end tag for Thumb in SpecialUnitProps.xml
+ Fixed comments in UnitSoundPacks.xml
+ note: thanks to ‘kenata’ and ‘heavenfall’ for helping us hunt down those above XML issues down and pointing us to some cool data checking tools


***********
* Modding *

+ Tile Editor: Fixed bug where large silhouette figure would render in the middle of a tile design when placing pedestrians
+ Map Editor: when using the creature placement tool, defaults to giving the creature a random wander radius, which can be changed with the tool's third spinner in the bottom left corner
- Also changed the wander radius 0 item to say "Don't Wander" instead, does what the default used to do, cause the unit to not even go into auto-patrol mode
+ Added new data def type, CSpellResourceCost, which can be used in spell def xml to specify resource costs on casting a spell, as well as any persistent maintenance costs if this spell is an enchantment
- <PerTurn> tag used in the SpellResourceCost xml object to say whether the cost is deducted at time of casting (Per-Turn is 0), or if it is a continued maintenance cost that exists as long as the spell is in effect through an enchantment (Per-Turn is non-zero)
- Note: maintenance resource costs can only be per-turn if the spell is an enchantment; there's no one-time cut to per-turn resource production from an instant, non-enchantment spell
- Here's an example of some xml to put in a spell def, making this spell cost 5 metal immediately when cast, and having a maintenance cost of 1 material per turn until the enchantment is cancelled:
<SpellResourceCost>
<Resource>Metal</Resource>
<Amount>5</Amount>
</SpellResourceCost>
<SpellResourceCost>
<Resource>Materials</Resource>
<Amount>1</Amount>
<PerTurn>1</PerTurn>
</SpellResourceCost>
+ MODs folders now creatured for the user in their My Games/Elemental folder
+ Fixed Bug: Quests read in from XML (after loading the Data.zip) no longer override QuestDefIDs
+ Images and models now read in from the Mods/GFX folder properly
+ Mods are now enabled by default in Prefs.ini
+ Overlay: Implement tile upload/download

***************
* Multiplayer *
+ Added code to prefer a random map that supports the max players
+ Cloud saving/loading enabled
+ AI opponents enabled
+ Added handling for if firewall is turned off
+ Added check for if player is disconnected before starting turn timer when the end turn is requested
+ Added check to prevent player from going to multiplayer menu if it's still checking for an update

We are still deciding whether we are going to flag multiplayer as “beta” or release for this build. It’s a subjective call but given recent events we are tending to try to be extra careful on this determinations so that the unwary do not encounter unexpected behavior.

Elemental: v1.09E Changelog
Laying the Groundwork for v1.1
By BoogieBac on October 7, 2010 21:58:19 from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Hey Everyone,

Tonight you’ll be able to update to v1.09E of Elemental. There are several bugfixes and tweaks in it, but the major change is the shift to a public Multiplayer build. If you’ve been playing the ‘release candidate’ MP builds, we suggest turning off ‘Show Pre-Release’ versions for anyone that has it selected that ONLY wants the official updates).

After 1.09E we’ll be shifting all our energies onto v1.1, where you’ll start to see the major gameplay shifts be officially implemented (a lot of the necessary code is actually in the builds you’re playing, to switch just hasn’t been flipped). I’m sure you’ve seen Brad’s posts on our plans, but the major items being addressed in 1.1 are:

+ Tactical Battles: Working on a seperate branch, the guys have the new battle system implemented and are playtesting it as we speak. You’ll be seeing a new UI, new system for using special abilities, and the new streamlined ‘Initative’ based turn ordering system. Rumor has it it’s ‘considerably better’, but I’ll settle for ‘much better’.

+ Magic: Universal mana pool and cleaned up spellbook management are what 1.1 will bring to the wizards table. No more enchantment slot cheese-tactics and summon spamming. Now each enchantment results in a per-turn drain on that global pool, so you’re going to have to make some serious choices when casting those high level spells. And I think we can all agree...the more interesting choices, the better!

+ Cities, Population management, and the AI: These are Brad’s big areas atm, so I wont steal his thunder, but I’ve been told the City changes will result in a more competent AI, so get excited to...lose more?

And of course bug fixes, memory fixes, performance improvements, UI improvements...but that’s v1.1. Today, we have 1.09e, which should be available in the next few hours!

Enjoy!


---------------------------------------------------
----------- Elemental v1.09e Change Log -----------
---------------------------------------------------

********************
** Fixes / Tweaks **

+ Fixed a bug where loot could go nuts (pioneers giving millions of Gildar)
+ Grand kids should no longer defect to dead factions
+ Map list now has tooltips & lists the map size
+ When you load a map from the world setup screen, it now updates the world size spinner
+ Fix: Minor Water Elemental summon (from Lord of Sea spell) and Storm Giant now have their “Drowning Strike” abilities
+ Heal spell working properly (Unit “CurHealth” modifiers now work with Min/Max value calculations)
+ City List now features tooltip explaining red popupation
+ Bug Fixed: ‘Resource Changed’ event not firing when the resource was already in the player’s pool (broke chapter 5 of the campaign)
+ Trigger for ‘Resource Ammount Met’ no longer requires the player to have been BELOW the required amount the turn before
+ Consolidated most of the SP/MP xml files, eliminating discrepencies between MP and SP files
+ fixed leaked ref with starting spellbook spells.
+ on new unit design screen, when hovering over or selecting an item that has no "attributes" or "costs", those labels in the selection context area will not be shown. An example is when you hover or select a hairstyle from the [OTHER] tab, equipping hair has no benefits or costs, but the labels were still showing up, which looked dumb.
+ Fixed bug where mounted units did not generate their portraits properly
+ Fixed bug where after renaming a city, the old name would still be displayed on the cloth map
+ AI being limited by the UnitType “AllowGrouping” tag (won’t groups catapults to assult the player)
+ City List: RED population when there’s not enough housing
+ City List: doubleclicking an entry acts the same as seleting it and pressing “Details”
+ City Building Mode
- turn off camera bounds clipping (fixed bug where the camera would jerk around,causing improvements to be oddly placed)
- selecting a friendly city in city-build mode selects it for city building
- doubleclicking a city-details improvement entry will auto-place it

*****************
** Multiplayer **

+ Multiplayer enabled in public build
+ Removed checks for duplicate factions in the choose sovereign screen so that cycling through all the AI players doesn’t leave you with no choices
+ You can now right click on the team, faction, and sovereign buttons in the game lobby to cycle backwards. (for non-AI players, right clicking does the same thing as left clicking for faction and sovereign)
+ Fixed bug where map size was always tiny in the available games list
+ Fixed bug where minor factions were picking player colors
+ Fixed bug where if there were duplicate factions, they would get all the AI designed units from the other faction
+ Fixed bug where you wouldn’t have a faction if you finished or quit out of a game (now keeps the one that was previously set)
+ If you change the world size, the map name is now cleared so that a new random map will be picked.
+ Fixed stuck turn bug caused by caravans with invalid destinations
+ I believe that I have fixed the bug where if you clicked fast enough you could build multiple instances of a limited improvement, or build two improvements on one resource
+ Fixed bug where the learning queue was not saved in mp save games
+ Fixed bug with learning spells twice by spam clicking
+ Fixed bug when choosing a spell level not getting saved