Joel Billings
Posts: 32265
Joined: 9/20/2000
From: Santa Rosa, CA
Status: offline
|
We appreciate that players want to improve the game and take the time to post their suggestions. The reason I generally don't respond to this forum is because we do not currently have the resources to work on improvements to the game. We are still in the phase where we are dealing mostly with bugs. Most suggestions have to do with the interface, and we really only have one person, Pavel, that can improve the interface. Currently almost all of his time is being spent adding in-game scaling to the game. After that, there are some changes needed in the editor, both for modders and for our own use on future expansions. Gary can work on the AI and some parts of the game code, but he's very limited with what he can do re the interface. As for game balance issues, these may be split between Gary and Pavel, but we'll need to see more game results before we dive into major changes there.
How fast Pavel is able to get through the scaling and editor work is also dependent on how many important bugs get revealed over the next month or two. Once he's done with those items, we can start looking at suggestions, although there's a backlog of lessor bugs that have built up over the past few months so I can't really say when we can get to suggestions. Pavel is very interested in making improvements in the UI. He's already done major enhancements (check out the air transport system as a recent example). He's really the best person to go through the suggestion list and identify what is possible and desirable given the way the code is structured. By having a place for users to post suggestions, they won't get lost, and he will know where to go once he has time to focus on them. So far the bug reports and AAR (important for game balance) posts are enough to keep my occupied, and since I know that we can't focus on improvements for some time, it doesn't make sense for me to go through them now. Also, so much will depend on how the code is set up, so having Pavel review the suggestions is most efficient.
With WitE1, IIRC, we spent 1-2 years making changes to WitE1 before we were lucky to have morvael (Dominik) volunteer to continue work supporting the game. Although WitE2 is more complicated, we think it is in much better shape than WitE1 when it was first released. Dominik spent years improving WitE1, but since we had split the code to work on WitW, that work didn't translate to WitE2. Inspired by Dominik's work on WitE1 we brought some of his changes over to WitE2, although in many areas we had already moved on and couldn't easily go back. In some areas, and I hope most of you agree, we've already made major improvements over WitE1. We hope we'll have time to continue improving WitE2 for some time going forward, but without another Dominik, I don't want to over promise re future changes and when they might happen. I hope this gives you a better idea of where things stand.
_____________________________
All understanding comes after the fact.
-- Soren Kierkegaard
|
Printable Version
Would be nice to get Devs response in this subforum - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread