New Dev Diary is up...

[Rantz]

Originally posted by Barshy
Maybe you should copy and paste it on your site? The gamespy link is down.

the article has been disabled as it wasn't supposed to go live until Sunday and it was discovered by intrepid fans poking about

sorry about that, it'll be back on Sunday.

and RE: combat, there is plenty to control, you are *not* just sitting back and watching it unless you choose to let the AI run it.

[Mahdimael]

I take it intrepid=nosy

Rantz, you make all my worries disappear like sand in the wind. Thanks for keeping us all updated.

Originally posted by Rantz


the article has been disabled as it wasn't supposed to go live until Sunday and it was discovered by intrepid fans poking about

sorry about that, it'll be back on Sunday.

and RE: combat, there is plenty to control, you are *not* just sitting back and watching it unless you choose to let the AI run it.

[Barshy]

Is the MOO3 combat going to be like Medieval: Total War real time combat, pace wise?

[The Rusty Gamer]

Firaxis were already onto this...

As we went through the assessment editing, adjusting and rework of the design in the beginning of the year, we shut up about what was going on. The truth being that we didn't want to say, "We're doing this," and then test it and find that it didn't solve the problem, so we'd have to say, "Sorry, that didn't work, we're now doing this." We wanted to get everything down to proven brass tacks before we started giving out details, so we could say, "This is going to be what you should expect in the game." The result was that we were too quiet for a while, and since nature abhors a vacuum, conspiracy theories ran amok.

So now perhaps we can understand how wise Firaxis has been when it comes to being quiet about Civ 3 changes.

[Rantz]

Originally posted by Barshy
Is the MOO3 combat going to be like Medieval: Total War real time combat, pace wise?

I haven't played medieval, but I have played shogun, and the pace is similar to that.

[Sarxis]

Could they possibly squeeze any more ads into Gamespy?

[mmurray821]

Rantz,

Definately try Medieval: Total War when you get a moment (after MOO3 goes gold). It is MUCH improved over shogun. Watching the walls of a castle come down one piece at a time is worth the price of the game! (Yes, I am a sadist. How could you tell?)

[Rantz]

I've been wanting to check out Med:TW, as well as a slew of other games like AoM, but time (obviously) simply hasn't been there.

I'm thinking after we ship I'm going to take a week off and do nothing but stay home and play games to catch up.

[Mongoose]

Sorry, Rantz, but that's nuts! If I were you, I would grab some honey and go play in the sun in the Caribean or Cancun or some such place for a week or so.

[Rantz]

Originally posted by Mongoose
Sorry, Rantz, but that's nuts! If I were you, I would grab some honey and go play in the sun in the Caribean or Cancun or some such place for a week or so.

I'd love for the wife and I to saddle up, go away to a tropical clime for a week or three, but with two other projects going alpha in january and 4 children age four and under, that is unlikely to happen for a while.

ah well, I'll console myself with some gaming mayhem

[mmurray821]

Sounds good Rantz, but if you play MTW, always, always remember to pillage BEFORE you burn.

[campfreddie]

>>but with two other projects going alpha in january

What else are you working on Rantz?

Or is it top secret?

[Rantz]

Originally posted by campfreddie
>>but with two other projects going alpha in january

What else are you working on Rantz?

Or is it top secret?

We're also working on a high-end company comand simulator for the US army, that allows commanders to train for commanding in assymteric incursions.

200-300 men moving around on your orders, plus OpFor, plus Civilians. Base spec is a 2 Ghz PIV and a Gig of ram with a GeForce 4.

It's a lot of fun, and we, as part of our deal with the army, actually own everything and can sell it as a retail piece of software after the project is complete (minus the security-level stuff) Hopefully, we'll find a smaller publisher that would be interested in bringing it to the public, since it is really a niche product. military enthusiasts and wargamers with really high end comp specs...

There's another project that hasn't been officially announced yet, and then we have the next round of projects that we're in the midst of negotiating.

busy busy busy...

[Ozymandous]

Well...

Better busy than not. The military simulator sounds really good, too bad I don't have a PC that would run it, but by the time it's on the market (assuming it makes it) a few years from now I probably would have upgraded.

[campfreddie]

Sound interesting. Army backing should make it nice and realistic, even once you've removed the 'security-level' CIA black helicopters and GM modified alien greys.


I hope I have a half decent computer by the time that gets released. I bet it'll make a change for people to complain about too high system requirements rather than too low ones

When can we expect an announcement on the other project? It's not MOM2 is it? (probably not, since Age of Wonder 2 is such a blatant rip-off of MOM...)