I'm just not sure what they can giveus in the SDK, its already beeen made clear we won't be getting a model converter for anything, so what is left to go in the SDK other than guides on what does what?

Mike

It's a good question, I have no idea either. There must be something there that is delaying it from being rolled out with 1.2. Perhaps they will open up more than just the LUA scripts. If it is nothing more than documentation I'll be dissapointed.

Hooray! http://forums.demigodthegame.com/369372

This makes me a very happy puppy!

I think the SDK might include the map editor. That would be a great help, editing those files in Notepad++ is work for droids...

Good on Frogboy. Those favor items were his idea, it's good to see him take the criticism in stride and react appropriately. I agree with the new direction 100%. Let's work on making more of the existing favor items viable.

I fully agree with this, good for him. +karma.

The SDK I'm imagining will include mainly comprehensive documentation, and a quick How-To-Lua5.0.1

Define Map editor, cause that can mean something as small as editing the maps script...actually thats more it less all it can be as maps are pretty much 3D models with some texture telling the game where the demigods can go and such.

And map without the model would be....awkward to play on, and seeing as we don't seem to be receiving any kind of model converter I don't see how we can expect a map editor.

Mike

In beta 1a we had a map editor, it was pretty much the SupCom editor with some updates. Unfortunately it stopped working with the new maps at some point.

heh.

Ever realised you're delusional? It's a computer game, no reason for despair!

Despair? Where?

I'm not the one dripping with doom and gloom in every post.

Nor am I buddy, I'm just calling it how I see it. You're being unreasonably optimistic and forgiving. imo

Going off what I've seen from you, you're negative by default, no matter what. I am optimistic and slow to hold a grudge, unreasonably so? I don't think so, but hey, I don't know how others generally perceive me here.

Anyways, my current optimism and forgiveness is rooted in a certain publisher and their vocal CEO. The guy has his company as involved as possible, listens to feedback, acts on feedback, actually plays the game and hangs out with the community. Just when it looked like they were going to completely screw up 1.2 with some ill conceived favor items, they reverse coarse.

If this were a GPG/THQ game, I'd be echoing your sentiments right now. Instead I'm seeing a game with a terrible launch slowly being built and rebuilt up by a company with a track record of stellar, long term, post launch support. So until I see signs that point otherwise I'll continue my unreasonably optimistic view.

I have a somewhat different opinion on Brad Wardell.

*edit* During beta there were many arguing ways to increase depth, none of which was implemented. Leaving us with a clicky action game thats fun for a few weeks then gets dull. Then add on to that, the fact that modding has been so heavily restricted, and you begin to see why I'm so disheartened with what we've ended up with.

I would have loved to see what scathis had planned for the game. As it was his premise of the game that I bought my preorder on. You know rpg AND rts.

I also remember what impulse was planned to be. Broken promises. I expect more

Yeah, I agree that Scathis' departure had a dramatic impact on the game. Who knows where this would have ended up if he had remained.

I think the points you raise are more a product of internal problems at GPG than anything to do with Stardock. Not only did the games creator depart mid development, but the game was supposed to be self published.

Stardock came on board very late in the project and there was no online system at all at that point. Being so late coming on they opted for a 3rd party solution that was supposed to just plug in and work. As we all know, it didn't. It worked fine in beta, but the damn thing didn't scale and it flat out broke at launch. So instead of the early months post launch being dedicated normal bug fixing and following the initial road map for new features and heroes, the publisher literally had to come up with something from scratch. I can't think of any other game where something like this had to be done.

The whole impulse community system was not ready for this either. Brad was blunt about that. All the community features they plugged in (barely working) were originally meant for Elemental. They figured something was better than nothing so we basically got early beta/alpha features that were meant for a game much further out.

So here we are months later and they are finally getting around to the features that were planned months ago. Looking at games like SoaSE & GalCiv2, I expect Demigod to receive the same kind of long term support those games got. So the way I see it the promises that were made are being delivered, just much later than expected.

Now I do have a good share of criticism to level at GPG, because this really seems to be a side project for them. The way things are going, you'd think Stardock was the dev and GPG the publisher with how the roles have reversed. Brad seems to want modding in very badly so Stardock can directly contribute to the gameplay via "official mods." Right now they have only been able to contribute to areas that don't directly touch the games code, because that belongs to GPG.

If this game were in any other publishers hands it would probably have been written off by now. I have seen no wavering in its support yet so as long as that continues I'll remain positive that this game will continue to improve. Really the whole situation is unprecedented. I've never seen a publisher going to the lengths Stardock went to make things right. They actually seem to care that their name is on the box, even if they didn't make the game. I mean hell, they pulled their main devs off of their own game (Elemental) delaying it by several months, so they could rewrite the netcode basically from the ground up.

Crap, I just created a big ol' wall o' text.

Summary: I probably sound like a huge fanboy, but I swear this is not normal for me to sit here and sing praises for a company. With the EA's of the world being the rule and not the exception, when I see a company stand up and take responsibility for a screw up then put everything they reasonably can into trying to make it right, I gotta give them props. That's what I see from them, as long as that continues they've got my support.

Weird. It's almost like Brad just made a post to address some of what I had just written, even though his post went up well before mine.

This is an interesting read.
http://forums.demigodthegame.com/369417

Basically you're letting stardock off the hook because of their lateness to the project. They said they could deliver and they didn't, where I come from that isn't acceptable.

Kudos on trying to fix it, but granny really does kill any interesting mods, and without decent mods or maps, this game has grown old.

Techubus, I appreciate your point of view, I'm just presenting my own. If it's any consolation, I hope I'm wrong.

Indeed.

Mike

Just my two cents but there is probably going to be a way around it. There always is.

You wanta pay for my granny license so i can give it a go?

Google turns up nothing relevant. You're retarded.

So far everything is being delivered and will be delivered that was promised. Keep in mind that Demigod is only out for 6 months.


Most of the interesting and most used mods of Supreme Commander do not require any new units. However, new maps would require granny files and that is a problem indeed. We'll have to wait and see how it turns out, especially for Supreme Commander 2.


It was actually Frogboy who increased the depth of the game with citadel upgrades and flags. And you should love him for that . If Demigod wasn't the game as it is now, I probably would not find it so addicting.

Spooky what is granny? My google search turned up a supergranny website granny from looney toones and a search for granny software turned up a website where a very old woman was doing things to another girl.

If you don't know something about a particular topic, don't call other people retarded because of it. That's very bad behavior from your side.

Anyway Granny is many things, it's a 3D modelling SDK. But most importantly in this case: Demigod uses Granny2 as the model format for all 3D objects. There are converters from GR2 to other things, but you can't simply create Granny2 files just like that. You would need Granny 3D. And its license costs $ 12500 US.

Ok, so when's a freeware version going to be created?

Prolly not until theres something bigger and better that lots of developpers use....

Mike