Brit

The game doesn't have any dependencies on Direct X, DirectDraw, or DirectPlay. That's too bad.

Yeah, Steam is a little controversial among game developers. On one hand, it's a distribution platform that's everywhere, which means more sales. On the other, it would be bad for Valve to get too much control over digital distribution - in terms of being able to dictate the terms for game developers to sell their stuff. Big-box stores take 50% of each sale as revenue. iTunes and the iPhone App Store take 30% of each sale as revenue. From what I've heard, Steam takes 40%. I think Valve wants Steam to be the iTunes of digital game distribution. I'm sure it would be quite profitable if they could capture 40% of the money from every game that gets digital distribution. But, I digress, since Steam isn't really in the cards right now.

(nod) I think some other player had also suggested capital cities, as well. Yeah, I know what you mean. This issue with artillery is something I've been meaning to address.

(Copying these to my suggestions file.) About the PBEM games: I've been working on a system to help players to find other players to play against. There really aren't any security problems with allowing anybody to join the game. I just need to set it up so that one player can create the game, upload the data, and other players can come and grab a key to join the game. (The keys are only valid once, so there's never an issue with multiple people trying to join as player N.)

Hey guys. Just wanted to let you know - I had a hard-drive crash last night. Fortunately, I lost less than a day's worth of work, and I'm already up and running again. But, if you sent me an email or created a bug-report between April 20 and April 25th, I no longer have a copy of that information and can't respond to it.

Yeah, I understand. The long term plans are to remove the DRM, but not soon.

Yeah, that sounds reasonable.

Yeah, I try to take one day off a week so I'm not always working, but I always end up doing some work anyway.

You mean reduce the speed and attack values of damaged units by a third?

Notable changes/fixes: - Players can setup teams inside the New-Game window - Fixed a crash in the user-manual if you look at units or buildings while on the main-menu. - Reworked the team-formation code to work better with PBEM. - Fixed a bug in the food-calculation. (If unit-groups were inside cities, it gave the wrong food-consumption result.) - Fixed a mouse-wheel scrolling problem with some windows - Fixed a crash in the AI - Fixed a problem with AI peace offers - the offer expired on turn 0, so players could never accept it - The 'foreign relations' window now works in AI-vs-AI games - Fixed a bug in the AI that could sometimes cause it to be docile when it should be going to war - Fixed a bug with building airfields (orders occasionally get dropped when the unit arrives at the build location) - The ruleset editor let's users set a unit-repair rate for cities - Improvements to the EOS Messenger - Added PBEM functionality to the demo, but demo players can only play for 25 turns. - Fixed a crash in the ruleset editor

Interesting. I have to admit that I prefer single-player games myself. Even though I rarely play multiplayer, I think multiplayer functionality seems like a cool feature - despite the fact that I rarely use it myself. The only time I really play multiplayer is in first person shooters. What I'm saying is that I could see this being true: everyone (including me) thinks multiplayer is great, even though the actual use of multiplayer is quite a bit less frequent. Yeah, I've considered that I could've waited a bit longer and gotten the AI to be really good. By "second iteration" you mean a second product? No, I'm not offended. Any feedback you have is useful.

I'm using a special format with those files. You can add .wav files. Your _ImageDesc.unit will just have to reference the .wav file instead.

I was thinking about your comment later, and I started thinking: what if there was an option in the game to give players X free production right from the beginning of the game? For example, if players had 600 free production, then on the first turn, they could go and spend production points to choose their starting units and buildings. They could buy: - 12 Infantry (50 production points each) = 600 production - 2 transports (140 production points each) + 4 Infantry (50 production each) + 1 Barracks (40 production) + 2 Shipyards (40 production) = 600 production Or some other combination that the player comes up with. With the standard rules, players start with 1 transport, 2 infantry, 1 zeppelin, which adds up to 280 production points and some iron. I was just thinking that it might make for a more interesting start if players could choose their starting units, plus if players start off with a lot of free production it would speed up the start of the game and shorten the time until players run into each other. Maybe free research points could also be added into the system, so players could research factories and then buy factories with their initial free production.

Wow, thanks for all the input, everyone!

Someone sent in a bug report the other day about allowing cities to repair. Think I'll try to add it to the upcoming update.

Yeah, I originally envisioned the games taking less time. That sounds good. By FoW, I assume you mean more than the "map is known" option? You mean that everything on the map is visible?

Oh strange. I'll get that fixed for the next update.

I've had the Empires of Steel Facebook page setup for quite a while, but haven't mentioned it. I also setup a twitter account, and tied the Facebook feed to the twitter account. This means when I update on the Facebook page, the twitter account gets the same information. I'm hoping to keep the pages updated with what I'm working on. Here's the links: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Empires-of-Steel/6745172658 http://twitter.com/EmpiresOfSteel If you have RSS feeds setup, but not twitter, you can use this: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/134552327.rss

Thanks for the feedback. I'll be working on getting the PBEM system working smoothly - this week especially. I also started setting up a system for players to find other players who want to play. You'll be able to toggle a "looking to play a PBEM game" or "looking to play online" checkboxes, and other players will be able to send messages to you.

Hey, thanks.

I think I've come up with a good idea for a YouTube video tours as well. One of the problems I've had when putting together preview videos in the past is the fact that I wanted to talk about all the features, but thought that different people would be interested in different features. The problem was: "How do I show off the features and keep viewers interested in watching the video, even though they might not care about a particular game feature that I'm talking about at that moment?" Well, the other day, I saw a YouTube video where they used links to trigger one of five different videos, depending on what you were interested in learning about. Seemed like a really good way to use hyperlinks. So, if someone is just interested in single-player, or they want to know about play-by-email, there's a hyperlink to jump to whichever topic they want. Hope to have some new videos up before long.

Yes, they did. Gave it a 75%. He also dinged the game based on price (back when it was $45), and it wasn't as complex as he would've liked. Ah, well. I don't know if he'll eventually do another review, since the game is always being improved. Hm, I've never heard of it. Looking it up on google now.

Yeah, I've been meaning to add that "add your own units and animations" feature. I've been talking about it for a long time.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I was trying to add some features to help people find other players - like the chatroom note system (which allows you to leave a note for everyone visiting the chatroom within the next 7 days - so that you can meetup at a specific time). I haven't been tracking whether or not people have used it or even know about it, though. Yes, I've been meaning to bring PBEM to the demo. For the past few weeks, I've been telling myself that the next update will be the update when the PBEM system will be very solid. But then I get caught up doing other things. One other thing I'd like to add to the EOS Messenger is the ability to notify other users that you're interested in a multiplayer or PBEM game, to help people find each other. But, yeah, I need to add the EOS Messenger to the demo. I also need to update the demo that people are downloading off the Battlefront servers. Some people download the demo, and don't realize that they can update to the latest version. So, they end up playing some old version with fewer features.