Announced feature cuts

[Stormhound]

I can't think of anything in the game where Ethos was the only influencing factor. At least, not anything aside from certain parts of the Ethos system. Alan and I had a fair number of brainstorming sessions where we'd sit down and talk about "everything that affects 'X'" (whichever subsystem we were designing) and we generally did a thorough job. The game would've been better with Ethos, to be sure, but there was just not time enough to be sure it'd be done right, especially when it came to the "ethos combat" system.

There are other factors, though. The system by which government policies are changed reflects a good measure both of your race and the internal differences of need and opinion therein, and while it's not quite the same as Ethos, it should still give you a bit of a taste of social engineering.

[Xeovar]

Yeah, I understand all of these, but still, I found ethos and all things along it (ideals, tradition) very appealing, new and really improving the game.
A vision of creating a real race, with ethos was for me VERY interesting. I even pre-designed based on ethos information a very proud, traditionalistic and militiaristic race (based on ST Klingons). And now I found out it's no longer possible to that extent. Pity

[TCO]

Originally posted by GP


Alan: What did you say about my design? grrr!!

Stormpup: Err....well Alan...maybe it was a little ambit....

Alan: Shut up! How dare you say that about my masterpiece. I just got back from eating crow with the money boys. They said I'm a lousy project manager...that I need to learn what Gant chart are. ( ) They even said one of our guys is telling all the Netrats to bug Mr. Big with whiney e-mails...

Stromie: Well Alan, actually it was a lousy project plan...

Alan: AAAAAGGGGGHHHH!!! KILLLLL!!!!

(Alan chases Stormen around the desk)

project managment...

[Straybow]

Coding

Originally posted by Stormhound
(As an ex-programmer, I wince every time someone says "oh, that'd be EASY to program", but be that as it may...)

Ethos, on the other hand, had had extensive design work, but touched practically everything and was proving a bear to model, let alone test…


I was rather fond of Ethos too, for what it's worth.

Yes, that's exactly why I winced the first time I read Alan's description of Ethos. I've done just enough programming to know what a pain it can be to get this to work with that. Making some intangible set of factors affect nearly everything is asking for trouble. Even if the effects are intended to be secondary they will have to be balanced. The time required to balance features is not linear but some higher order function of the number of processes affecting the feature.

To me, the Ethos system was the only thing that was truly eXperiential, fulfilling the promise fifth X. However much they want to hype other features as "fifth X" they can't ever be what Ethos could have been.

Ahhh, there's always hope for MOO4…

[vishniac]

Let's hope Alan will keep the faith, and actually do MOO4!

[TCO]

project management...

[Grumbold]

pharming?