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[Xantalos]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa~~~~~

[Jalak]

Just saw the video and thought it was great!

I do, however, have a small issue, in that I think that the music you had in the background was a bit too loud. It became a bit distracting at times and I sometimes had to reverse the video when the music started drowning out what you were saying every now and again.

[Shadowgandor]

I think the loud music might actually be the reason why this video hasn't been posted by websites yet; If you're not already interested in the game, it's quite hard to actually finish the entire dev log. As I was already a fan of the game, I finished it and loved it, but you really have to focus in order to hear what you are saying. Otherwise a great job though!

[ERICdb]

First of all, thanks for keep showing the awesomeness of the game. Those birds are really cool!

On a side note, I agree with the OP. We already know that the music is great, and since the point of those videos is to show us how the game works, I also have to say that it may have been a little too loud. In my case, English is not my first language and sometimes I found it hard to follow your voice during the explanations.

Nevertheless, good job! Now we just need more coverage and some crowdfunding! 

[Jalak]

Heh, I was looking through one of the older reddit forums about the game and noticed a thread about what sort of scenarios players would like to see. I find the one about Rome particularly funny because the first thing I remember thinking when finding out about the game's map/level editor was "I'm totally going to mod in the fall of the Roman Empire". Hell, the fact that the fall of Rome was due to various mad kings/dictators, an unstable economy and hordes of migrating barbarians fits the theme of the game perfectly. You could even argue that the elder god was summoned by a cabal of druid shamans specifically to smack down this bastion of European "civilization" then went back to sleep, where it still waits to this very day...

[Puzzlemaker]

I for one an excited for this!  Good show!

[Cthulhu]

Aaaah this video was such a tease!  A Rome God could be cool, more of just a passive discord god with infertility and stupidity and unrest.

[sjm9876]

Hmm.... a few comments/questions.

1) The map feels rather dead. The wagons and the like on roads would be a rather important difference if you can get them.

2) Would it be possible to make the POI names on permanently? I feel it would improve clarity somewhat for someone new to the map to at least have the option.

3) Is it possible to view which towns the cities are drawing resources from?

4) Not sure I'm too keen on the Enclave idea, but personal taste.

5) Music was a touch loud.

All in all, looking good though

[KingDinosaurGames]

Glad you guys liked it - Combat video and Trailer are next up on the list to show.

Bad Mic, Loud Music - eventually I'll get this right...

Map feeling Dead - It's a concern to us, and we do have some plans to alleviate it but they're on the backburner for now

POI Name Displays - Their is a setting to make them permanent, as well as a setting to show the relevant value when a unit is selected (Military
Units shows defense for every POI, Agent selected shows Order)

We did add showing the amount of resources being delivered onto the city screen, we had it that way originally but reversed it so that instead it shows on the Village Screen (where it's being sent from) vs Domestic consumption on the City screen - but just recently we decided to show it both places (in the tooltips) - so for example Aventura would not show -2 Food it would show +1 (+4 from villages, -1 to Supply the Border Guard).

You aren't the only one to dislike the Enclave, it's split about 50/50 - you either love it or you hate it.  Personally I love the idea of tricking their neighbors into provoking the Enclave and creating a real problem, the other element is that the Enclave produces a LOT of lore and has a Cabal of which their leader is the only Master of Portals at the start of the game which has a very powerful teleportation-like ability.  However if you don't like the Enclave you can choose the 'smite their homeland' origin choice and that entire island is gone from the game.

[Jalak]

So, what are the plans for the next video release? Is the demo/kickstarter still going according to (relative) plan?

[nenjin]

Really enjoyed the video.

There's just so much to like about what you're dong here. Here's my critiques and praise in no particular order:

-You're right in that the game presents much better than stills. Everything does blend a little nicer, the birds, the pulsing shields and the banners help break up the stillness of the landscape. But more can be done, as you say. Grass and trees swaying, sand, snow and dust blowing. The smoke from towns animated instead of static.

-I like the cloud borders at the edges of the map. IMO, you could go full opacity with them to fully conceal the map edge.

-On the topic of clouds, some drifting ones over the main game space might be nice, and again help bring some life to the map. Maybe even add cloud shadows. But because you need to see the map at all times, you'd need to be able to mouse over the clouds and suppress them and the cloud shadows so you can see what's there.

-The water is begging for some animations and detailing.

-The very hand-drawn nature of the land masses both works and kinda doesn't work. (I've drawn a lot of maps in my day so those lines are familiar to me.) They're not so sharp when you're watching it at 1920 x 1080, but they're still noticable. And in screen shots they really stand out starkly. I think you need to soften a lot of the edges, points and wedges down.

-Your reason for going with hand-crafted scenarios is now apparent, and bravo. The question is, how can the player get plugged into this knowledge to exploit it. It's great if you have all this intricate detail to explain why the world is in the state it is at the beginning. But that's a lot of history to sort through. Will all this be part of some scenario synopsis, or revealed through game? How will this information be retained once you do know about it? It seems like playing off different Kingdoms' historical hatred of each other is going to be a big part of strategy.

-I wasn't able to really see the movement controls, or whatever you were aiming at, when you were showing the Prophet moving. Not sure what was up with that.

-The music was a little loud at times, as others have said. No problem for a fan, a bit much for a new person.

All in all, very exciting, much hype, such wow. You're managing the complexity of it extremely well, and I think the boardgame-esqe nature of it helps a lot with that. But I love how you've gone a step beyond what a lot of strategy games do and added an entire sub layer of AI and world activity, and come back around to give the player many options to stick their nose into that simulation in fun and thematic ways. I'm the kind of gamer that often wants more open-ended interactions than highly abstracted ones, because highly abstracted choices don't work as well on the imagination. And it would probably be the same here, if it weren't for all the reactivity that plays off your narrower set of choices. I guess what I'm trying to say is, each piece by itself doesn't carry all of the interest. But when you string them all together, it becomes pretty magical.

The money cannons are loaded and ready to fire.

[KingDinosaurGames]

Next Video - combat - we'll be pending a bit, but not as long as last time - still hopeful to get picked up by something that will give us more press for our KS.  We've been locking down features and fixing bugs for the demo, when I can give a concrete ETA I'll let you know.

As for the map - yeah there's a lot of little extra that could go into it to make it more living map but we won't really be revisiting those extra effects for some time.  I do believe that with a few extra "Bells and whistles" it will get us to that next level.

It's hard for us to do anything too special with the water because it's all part of that "single sprite" that makes up the background due to the licensing restrictions of using Campaign Cartographer.  We examined a few extra steps to give it a little depth and we'll probably review it when we review effects on the map as well.

We did play with softening the edges even further, but it's another one of those QOL issues that you can play with forever so we won't be returning to that for some time - the feedback is definitely appreciated though because we do need to know what direction to move in.

The big question of "how does the player gain the immersive history" is addressed by three methods, one of them is 'custom actions' that we add in for the scenario for specific cultures, nations, or guilds - another is "event intercepts" that turn a regular action or event into a special event (think of them as the descriptive events that pop up in Europa Universalis) which contains history and more specific intent..  The third way is simply through mechanics of the game, by designing a world with these cultural issues, consisting of particular nations with leaders that have well-defined personalities a player will develop, through repeat plays, a sense for the world that a dynamic map can never achieve.

I was showing when the Prophet moved two things, one is the marker for movement (not that interesting but some agents can make multiple moves per turn, sometimes specific to naval or flight) and the other was that the bar of actions at the bottom changed based on the POI he entered.  Depending on where you are, you have different challenges available to you based on the POI - and you'll see that inside the challenge type you have a variety of actions you can take based on what is present inside of the POI.  There's a guild here?  Infiltrate it.  Already infiltrated it?  Overthrow it. 

Glad you liked the feel of it, hopefully you'll see even more to like in the upcoming weeks.

[lemon10]

Awesome video, some thoughts on my part:

On the ancient one overview screen, the abilities all look visually the same whether you have unlocked them or not (besides the small icon on them). It seems to me that it would be better if you changed the color depending on if you had unlocked them (eg. locked abilities are grayscale instead of full color), or did something else more visually distinctive (eg. make the icon cover almost all of the ability if you have it locked). Similarly you have the full red bars with the abilities, it also seems like it would be better they filled up as you gained more power.

It would also be neat to have different mapviews (eg. one that lets you see the map as broken up into nations, one that lets you see the map broken up by nations types (eg. Uncivilized, civilized, orcs), by their relation to you (eg. controlled by you, have no knowledge of you, wary of you, part of the alliance), one that shows you areas where guilds are powerful, ect). I am aware this might be a problem, as I am unsure if the nations in the game actually own any territory besides the POI's, but if it was possible it would be very nice to be able to take all that information in just by looking at the various map states.

[Xantalos]

Or if the above would be trouble, have a map mode that colors the POIs with a specific color depending on what they are.

[KingDinosaurGames]

You guys give the best feedback - I love the subjects that come up.  COMPLIMENTS ASIDE....

Ok so the idea about dulling out the locked abilities sounds great, but I don't think I'll be adding in the bar increasing - there's just too many little things to perfect that (given variant percentages for both abilities) that I'll probably just leave it as is. 

Mapviews is the big one - we actually have a LOT of ways to vary what you see on the screen that simply aren't represented on the GUI.  I could put together a quick preview video of it if you're curious.  The big thing that DOESNT exist is shading the entire map in different regions, the POI system makes it really easy to add/remove/move POIs, to create mods, and make use of any resource to make a map - adding in regions would take a step back from that ease.  A few of things that you can do right now:

 - When you click on an agent, show Order on all POIs, when click on HEro show Danger on all POIs, when click on Military Unit show Defenses
 - Show all Institutions(cabals, guilds, orders) on top of the POI on the map
 - Show all effects (unrest) on top of the POI on the map
 - Show cultural or population percentages on the map
 - Show all travel connections on the map separated by color for different types
 - Show trade routes and flow of resources separated by color/number for different types
 - Show the level of Infiltration on a given POI
 - Show the POI awareness/suspicion of your rising

I'm sure I'm forgetting some - we're trying to integrate them "smoothly" into the game wherever possible, but I'm guessing many will rest on top of the minimap when the game launches similar to how most modern strategy games handle map overlays.

As to what you specifically were saying about showing if a POI is in the alliance or under your control, the shields that pulsate a light black pulsate a brighter white when that POI joins the alliance, and when a POI joins your side it gains a dark black border.  This seems to work well, but then again I am very partial to the Shields representing the POIs and I know at least a few testers preferred our earlier "regional" maps.  There's something about looking over the POIs that makes me really want to destroy the world, moreso than an EU style of regions.

The other thing you brought up was a way to see which nations are Uncivilized, Civilized, Monstrous - this is actually something in the works.  You may notice that the banners and shields do NOT match up.  We originally were doing 64x64 shields based off a template back in the Alpha, because it was easy to do and we needed 50+ shields.  However, once we started throwing money at the art assets we starting getting some high quality 1024x1024 textures for the banners.  The idea was to take these and render them onto one of four shields types, the shield shape you see all over the place would be for Civilized, a Circular Wooden type shape would be for Uncivilized, and a Hawk Wing shield for Monstrous.  It really won't take us that long to do this, but we haven't really seen it as a priority until post-demo.

I also wanted to point out, because I failed to do so in the video, that the Alliance and those who Ally with you operate under different structures depending on certain actions.  How formal your "alliance" is can be determined due to events and challenges and it will change not just superficially the name (which you can modify) but the level of integration the nations will have as well as some other bonuses/penalties.