First impressions and first crash

The game can take a while to start the first time as it's doing some texture stuff. Windowed mode is available in the options.

Ok, French?  You're computer gave up on you..that sucks man.

Check your equivalent directory of

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrateur\Mes documents\My Games\Elemental

There is debug.err file, that one is more useful for crash reporting and can be read on notepad.

This file is overwriten every time you launch the game again.

I'm going to prefix with smileys each line so you know if it's good or bad.

Restarting I don't crash immediately. Only now do I see the 'brave adventurer' lines. They might be fun once, but I'm not even sure. you'd better get rid of them frankly they're going to be annoying pretty fast.:)

Load game shows no game, which is great since I saved none.

Skirmish: World name is limited in size but the text field is much wider. Weird. Anyway, I won't crash the game with a big name now. I will try somewhere else.

Clicking on a victory condition changes the World Name. That sucks. Why? If World Name appears first (on top), I shouldn't have to write it again if I change victory conditions afterwards.

After reading the various factions abilities, backgrounds, etc. and being impressed by the current diversity on the Empire side, I pick the Capitar.

Maybe I should be allowed to change the faction name?

Selected opponents: Where's my "random" option?

Add/Remove factions seem to work. I keep standard values.

Creating world looks like it's got a progress bar, but I'm not sure if it's one as it didn't progress much?

Zooming in and out, turning etc. are all fluid despite the enormous amount of details on the map.

Arrows move the selected unit. I expected to move the map around. I'm not sure exacttly how a unit gets selected. The channeler's level is indicated up there, but what's it for?

I click the Collapse sovereign data. No, wait. I click. I click. Now, ok, I'll manage to hit the friggin pixel. Yes! I've found the first mini-game of Elemental: Find the pixel which lets you expand/collapse the info. Trying hard again, I can't collapse it again. I'm either clicking through it on the map or not finding the pixel. Anyway, it's not usable.

I try to move diagonally. Ok, I've got a laptop, and I'm trying to use the numpad. 9 is also pgup, so I move up. 1 is also end so I move down. I don't understand anything. There is no compass indicating where North or up is (well, there's one, but it's zoomed far away on the edge of the map).

I click a fertile landd and get some info. Nice.

I read Empire of Kraxis 7 points in the icon in the middle of the lower bar. Wait. I'm not these guys am I?

I clikc Kingdom Info. I wait a bit before the screen appears. I'm afraid if it shows that slowly on this computer, it'll be worse when I try it on my other, older computer this week-end.

Unit design manager. I wonder why scouts cost so much more but it's not really an issue.

I move through the various menus, see techs, click options, then only can get back to the clothmap and not to the menu I was seeing (research tech).

At least here my Kingdom report tells me I'm Capitar. Good.

End turn. the button worked!

Confirmed that the numpad/pgup/end combo doesn't work correctly. 7 (home) is move up left but 9 (pgup) is move up. Only pgup/9 and end/1 are messed. Pgdwn/3 works fine.

Build new city. So I cannot select the whole name to replace it? I can't click cancel either. don't you ever make mistakes? Please put a cancel button there.

I choose no name, and get one generated for me. Good idea. Now how do I change it after the fact?

It  says the outpost has 2 tiles availble, but I can't see how/which one is the second one? Hopefully the fertile land I settled south of?

I build 1 unit and an inn.

My channeler just moves as I click end turn. I don't remmeber asking him to. He also uncovers a green thingy on the map but clicking it doesn't give me any info. It will appear later, maybe because I didn't see it fully or something? Unsettling anyway.

I have to zoom in a lot in order to be able to select the sovereign unit. Also, clicking on the map deselects him. Rather painful when typing text at the same time.

I get my guard built. Takes me 20 seconds to find out where he is and to get him to appear on the map. I'll send him scouting (I mean, I won't waut 18 more turns to get a scout that's only 50% faster and can't fight).

right clicking means go-to. Good. I also find nothing in a pouch, which is sad but nice to see there's already interaction with map features.

Is there going to be a 'Next unit" button or something?

Selection of units is a real pain.

I find a ring of fortitude. That's rather good except that the text doesn't read well: 'Its wearer will see thrin" or something, as the end of the sentence is cut by the window on the second line. First and last lines can be read fine.

Looks like my guard waded into water?

I see another land. Fine.

I stop moving my guard. It's a pain to handle more than one unit with no autoselect of next unit.

I conquer Ataia or what'sits name. Nice screens. I think I'll never use tactical combat so this panel looks functional and fine to me. I don't check too much since I suppose it'll change as beta advances.

Troop building: 1 or 10 with nothing in-between is a bit harsh. I wanted to build 2 or 3. Slider, counter + button, whatever?

Damn! Only after conquering my second city do I realise there are stuff other than inns to build! It was not obvious.

Band of fortitude doesn't seem to change anything to my health.

Looks like I've seen most of what can be done. I'll play a bit more but don't expect to have much more to say at this stage.

Too bad the err file got overwritten. I get lots of errors inside which don't seem to hinder the game in any way:

Debug Message:  ERROR: (CD3D9Renderer) Unable to create mesh during ::CreateTextMesh.

Debug Message:  ERROR: (CDrawManager) Failed to create text mesh in ::Reload3DFont.
Debug Message:  ERROR: (CMapTextGraphic) Failed to create 3D font wrapper for CMapTextGraphic 'Avihu'.

I'll try to crash the game again and send info if I manage.

The missing 3D stuff and other effects.

Conquering another city, it completes a guard the turn after I took it. Should probably have emptied construction queue?

Finally got that you must double click an item to get the benefit. It's ok for a potion but for a ring it should be automatic.

:(:(:(:(:(:( Turn movements are somewhat simultaneous. I move, I see things moving at the same time. Sucks. Either all moves are planned and resolved at the same time (really simultaneous like in Diplomacy boardgame or Dominions) or one after the other. This mode looks like Civ's MP mode which just leads to "Let's wait till the opponent has wasted his move and I can react intelligently before the timer runs out". I HATE IT.

Retreat when attacked. Yeah! I'm invulnerable. Don't allow that, please. Just kill my soldiers but don't let them flee when attacking. Or make it a special ability available to ranger units or faster units or whatever.

Road building from city to city: You should show a map with the city locations rather than hide it with the dialog. I don't know where Sesar is, I want to build a road to the city in the south east.

I get a different window when I'm attacked or when I attack? Even though my sovereign fought black widows in both fights? When I'm attacked, I don't see the widow in a red barred circle that I see when I attack. Did she flee?

Units stacking and selection is a bit unintuitive. Why are squadrons a single unit? Is there a way to group them together or some such?

Why does sight decrease each time I gain a level? And why does nothing happen when I defeat an opponent soevereign? I thought he was defeated but his nation remains.

How do you guess how much health a unit inside a city has? You only see its max health, not current, which is bad since I want to know id I'm healed or not.

I can't declare war on kingdom of Aldar and can't enter its territory.

Need a way to say one no longer wants to see the 'this jar heals you blah blah' when you've seen it 20 times alreaddy.

Clicking far away into the water doesn't move you there. It provides an exploit to find out where there is water, or at least to chart out your whole continent's shores if you want to spare the tedium.

Is there a way to pass items around? Or to have a squadron equip a magic ring?

On exit, I see lots of MLK messages in the debug.err. I believe you know them but they go like this:

Debug Message:  WARNING: World leaked city: Esarine  5748 Refs
Debug Message:  WARNING: Game Object Manager (Leaked Game Object) : Object Name: The Sovereign Object Type: 2 Object ID: 0  Refs: 52

with some additional

DebugMessage:  Unallocated Mem: 1404 bytes of memory from line 222 of F:\Projects\Kumquat3D\Source\AStarManager.cpp

afterwards.

Finally:

DebugMessage:  Not all memory has been freed from memory system AStar.
DebugMessage:     1889784 bytes of memory still allocated.