I've done that before!!! LoL After I hit a certain "Viewer Base" I was approached by a company called ACS-Advertising through MySpace and another small company who's name I can't recall atm, both wanting to pay me to write "possitive" reviews of their products on my Blog to get people to buy them.

Another "Top Blogger" on Myspace named AwesomeZara does the same thing. She will often slip in a product review on her site and what most of her readers and "fans" don't realize is that she's being paid to say those good things about what-ever it is she reviewed. It was actually after a collaboration poem her and I did together that we started chatting and she turned me on to the whole process. We originally started out as "enemies" as I had a Weekly Column I called "Raven's Attention Whore of the Week", which I would do every week on one or another of MySpace's so called "Top Bloggers" and I would call them out for being shallow douchebags and only there to increase their "friend count". Some of them (and their followers) got quite upset over the matter and even tried to have me banned. I've had a blog or two deleted by Admins in the past, which as you know is pretty hard to do on MySpace unless you're blatantly posting nudity or something, which I wasn't.

As I've said. Being practically disabled as I am now, my sources of income (our sources actually, my wife and myself) come from three places. I make money playing the stock markets, I make money from doing random free-lance jobs from time to time partly just from still having contacts in the Industry. I get in on the "Real" beta-testing gigs. Not the kind where you buy your way in by pre-ordering a game in advanced. I also do work for the "Home Testing Institute". On top of that we have my wife's income from working part-time at Lowes (building/hardware store). Sometimes I bring in more then she does, other times she brings in a little more then I do. When we couple that with the fact that my mother and grandmother both live with us and they help out with bills too, we get by....barely. We live pay-check to pay-check like most of the people I know do these days. 

(no offense SD, you have done a truly Unique and Wonderful thing with the community and this beta, I mean other beta's where you buy your way in, not the Elemental Beta).

EDIT: Lets get Back on Topic .

Who agrees that the "Empire Tree" needs work?

I AM reading it on the Elemental forums. Even here, it's painful and distracting.

Not trying to be a jerk about it, but it's just making the post harder to read. 58% of the text is bolded or hilighted (I counted). If that much is the key part, you'd be better off doing a rewrite pass to chop out the other 42%, and not bold anything.

Most of the posters here are pretty good, people read and comment on feedback every day without the eye-searing formatting.

As for the Elemental empire tree... well it's a first iteration. Sure it can be refined, but as I said the Sins one isn't actually as bad as your post makes it out to be. Unit stacking would cut down on the icons by a rather dramatic amount (10 Illuminators would be collapsed into a single icon, at least I think those are Illuminators, it's been a while). The goal should be a way to convey that events are happening the player might want to see, and to make it easy to find where their armies are on a huge map. I think it does that goal fairly well.

I Bolded that part there to show you something, my friend. The ONLY Reason Elemental's current tree isn't as Messy as SoaSE's was is because at this Early Stage of the Beta a lot of things that WILL be filling up that "Empire Tree" haven't been added to the game yet. Imagine how it will look when it displays ALL your Cities, ALL your Armies, and then also Shows the Champions Leading those Armies again shown by them-selves. It will be just as messy and hard to manage as Sins is in that picture above (note: that pic I show above is a direct Copy of one of Frogboy's post on Sins, I just changed the text in the bubble with Jing). You can bet on that, brother. If some refinement and tweaking isn't done before launch, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about first hand.

Agreed. I also just had another idea which is based on one of Stardocks most tried and true programs, Fences. Imagine a "Mini Version" of "Fences" Implemented into the Elemental UI. Double left click and the WHOLE UI can disappear. The only part of the UI that should up show after that will be the individual Units, Items, or Cities (or other stuff on the map) that the player clicks on. When the player clicks on it, the normal "Selected Ring" that goes around what-ever you selected should appear, and maybe the unit's "Card" should pop-up. When you select a City the Normal City UI should pop-up, but then disapear again once you de-select the city in question.

I think that kind of UI, one you could configure or make "Go Away" entirely would KICK SERIOUS ASS!!! How's that sound?

Off Topic Part:

Note: For those of you like me who tend to have a messy desktop, I HIGHLY Recommend using Star docks Free Version of Fences. It's AWESOME!!!, Even the parts and functionality they GIVE YOU FOR FREE are kick-ass. If you're not using it, you have nothing to loose by trying it out. If you Really Like It, you can up-grade to the paid version and get a TON of cooler stuff and tweaks you can do. Honestly, if I could afford it right now, I'd buy Fences Pro, and the Full Version of Object Desktop Suite. Right now I'm using the limited trial of Windowblinds along with the free version of Fancies Basic. I am wondering however, how much of the Demo's Functionality in Windowblinds will be retained after the 30 Day Trial run out.

If I could get a slightly off topic Dev reply about what to expect when my 30 day trial runs out it would be Much Appreciated.

Back on Topic:

Who's with me, anyone? Shall I stand alone against the tied of Sins Fanboys (J/K bros, I Love Sins too, Minus that one feature) . If anyone else would like to see this part of the system Tweaked in ANY WAY shape-or-form, NOW is the time to speak up, while they have a little time on their hands while the mighty Frogster finishes the AI. Honestly, to set up a "simple option" for this would only take a day or so in man hours. We're talking 8 hours tops Worth of coding as long as no UN-foreseen problems pop-up. RIGHT NOW would be the best time for us to speak up and hopefully have a chance at this getting added it some time soon, if not to be looked at for a first or second update or patch.

I agree. I need a better formatting which I can use and "Feel" that I'm stressing certain points more and non important words less. Also, no worries, I didn't think you were coming off as a jerk at all, brother. We might be on a different wave-length where this is concerned, but for the most part you and I seem to be on "the same page" as it were when it comes to a Lot of our ideas.

;) 

I'll work on the whole "post Formatting and Coloring" thing. I'm not trying to throw up any excuses, but right this second I've been up all night in pain, I just took the meds I'm supposed to take to knock my-self out so I can get to sleep despite the pain, so these last couple posts I've made this-morning may not come out quite...right...as I would want them too. My meds are kicking in and it's getting harder by the second to see what I'm typing.

  <---Me Now / Me in about ten more minutes---> ---> Me in 30-45 Minutes--->

Quite right, this is the first run through, still early in the beta...with enough time on their hands to fix it If enough people think it needs work. This whole "Empire Tree on the Side of the Screen" thing is a "relatively new idea" in gaming as a whole. Sure other games in the past before Sins have tried it, and some of them pulled it off decently, and yet others were a complete mess like Sin's Tree gets when you're trying to play a HUGE, Custom Made Epic Battle with Hundreds of Star Systems and as many enemy/ally factions as you can Possibly fit into game. It Gert's too big and too unwieldy, Waaaay Toooo Fast.

I know for a Fact it does work good on Small Maps and Medium Maps, but for the bigger Epic ones, in my humble Opinion, it looks like a complete clusterf'k and seriously subtracts from the over-all game experience which as we all know Really Kicks Ass.

MY EYES!!!!  I LOOKED DIRECTLY AT THE BLUE HIGHLIGHTING!  

The reason why it (the Sins empire tree) got cluttered on large maps is because things get auto-pinned by default. You can turn that off, and only add the planets/fleets you really care about to it. At that point it functions like it does on a small map even on a large one.

I see I wasn't the only person surprised by the highlighting.  A little bit of a tangent, but when the beta's further along, say in Beta 3, it might be useful if we had a way to start an advanced game.  Starting with 20-30 cities and a mass of units.  It could be as simple as Stardock providing a save for us to use.

It seems to me that the beginning portions of the game will naturally get the most testing because everyone has to start a new game in order to test.  So the majority of the interface feedback will occur when there isn't much going on.  If we had a way to test the later stages without needing to play an entire game it might be easier to avoid what RavenX is worried about.

Later,
LAR

This is a bit of an odd statement since having to spend all your time in a separate "Armies" screen that takes up the display area is much more intrusive to the view of the world. I've actually spoken to BoogieBac about it way back during the last PAX 'cause I wanted to see an empire tree in Elemental, and he basically just told me they were already planning on it because they wanted to keep the player looking at the game world, not 10s of different screens. I like that they are able to get away with relatively few big pop-up screens (research, magic, dynasty, diplomacy, unit design).

That said, clutter in big games is an issue because for an empire tree to be good, it has to be customizeable, filterable (is that a word?) and all that good stuff. The Sins tree had plenty of options on minimizing clutter, to the point where it didn't have to show anything you didn't put there yourself. It was technically limited in that it had to show the whole planet, rather than an individual structure or unit, but Elemental will not have that limitation.

All it needs is a little dropdown menu to select what you want to display (Sovereign, Cities, Champions, Armies, etc), and allow you to customize some settings to filter stuff out. The main appeal to the tree in Sins was that you could expand a planet, and see what it had. The same would be awesome for Elemental. Wouldn't it be amazing if you could display your cities, then expand the "tree" of one and it would show all stationed units, then you can just select one right off the tree and move it on the map without having to change your view?

Bottom line of what I'm trying to say: the empire tree itself is only guaranteed to cause clutter if it's not properly implemented and not customizeable. If you can tweak it, everyone is able to get it to show just what they want, which can certainly be "nothing"

Yeap, I tweaked it every way possible that I saw at the time and kept it minimized at all times because I couldn't stand it. I used the bigger pop-up interfaces on the planets to go from planet to planet. Also the "Find Idle Unit" button helped me a lot. Still, even minimized as much as possible, I didn't like it and wanted even that to go away.

There are many games out that simply allow you to turn off the whole UI, (like for when you want to take a screen shot). The game still function this way, but for most players many actions are straight up Impossible without turning the UI back on. I try my best in games I want to dive into to learn the hot key shortcuts and play as much of what-ever game it is without the UI at all.

I still think Elemental needs to shy away from this particular mechanism or to refine it even more then Sins does.

LoL...ok, cross Light Blue off the list of possible Highlight colors to use Thanks, Man.

This is true, a saved game on a bigger map with a substantial starting empire might be useful for testing. Then again it's quite possible (if the current system stays the way it is) that we won't even be able to have Maps large enough to support Huge Games without either Modding it in, or waiting for the 64Bit version of Elemental to hit. The "Clutter" as I call it might not bother some people. Some people might even think I'm bad-mouthing Sins, which I'm not, I love Sins just as much as the other Sins fans here. I just didn't like that aspect of it, the "Empire Tree". I prefer the old school, you got your own screen for it, Empire Status Screen, like Gal Civ 2 had. I could pull it up and then list it by Planets, or Fleets, or by Population, or by etc etc, and you could set it up that way. THAT'S THE WAY I'd like to see us go with Elemental. I should have brought all this up a month or two ago but I knew it would be premature then. Now it seems I may be too late entirely without having to rely on my (and others) modding skills to kill the dreaded "Huge Empire Mess Tree", as I've dubbed it.

When we are further along in Beta 2 or maybe even starting Beta 3 someone should politely request they give us a saved game to start from with a substantial Kingdom/Empire already founded so we can test later stages of play. I agree %100. Also though, we have to wait until all the proper content is added, which we may never see until release. They do have a Internal Testing Team and their "Jobs" are Quite Different then ours. They have their own "Internal Vision" of the game they want Elemental to be. As such, I'm sure there are some "Core mechanics" (as there have been in the past I.E. Sov Death = Game Over) that None Of Us here on the forums will get Any Choice on the metter because it goes against their set plan for their vision of Elemental. I respect Stardock for that. They have a Vision and they will put out That Vision, while still taking what we say into "consideration". A lot of companies wouldn't do that, or they'd just pretend through a couple PR guys to be "really listening" to us. Stardock has PROVEN that they DO LISTEN to us. So, we always have hope.

Also, I want to see a game with a Truly Epic sized Map. A randomly generated world with enough space and resources that every faction could support a large-ish empire of up to 10 cities with each empire/kingdom having a standing army of at least 50,000 troops each. Show me a map like that (because those are the maps I play the most, that take weeks to beat) that I will play the most after I made the Dragonlance Mod and then make my "Raven's Personal Fantasy Wars" Mod which will include all the more famous factions/races from as much fantasy literature and TV shows as I can find.

Off Topic:

Imagine a game where one Faction is all the Evil Side from Lott, another faction is all the Good Side forces from LotR, it will also have the the Dragon Armies from Dragonlance as a faction, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as a good faction, Mordred, Arthurs son, will lead the Evil Arthurian faction, the Skexis from the Dark Crystal will be a faction, the Solamnic Knights from Dragonlance will have a faction. I'll be taking suggestions of more famouse fantasy empires and kingdoms to use. Maybe a faction made of Disney Kingdoms, one for Good and one for Evil. The good one can be lead by Sovereign Mickey the Wizard while the evil faction can be lead by the Dark Queen from Sleeping Beauty. The Ultimate mish-mash of fantasy kingdoms and empires going at it to see who's the best of the best. This is what I did with my private mod for Gal Civ 2. I was fighting the Borg (Star Trek), the Asgard (Stargate) , the Shadows (Babylon5), and a bunch of others from various TV series, all in the same game, all behaving realistically as their TV counterparts. I want to do the same thing only with Fantasy Kingdoms for Elemental. Technically I'll be making two mods, but the Dragonlance Mod will be my first (and Major) project. My "Private Mod" I will describe here on the forums when it's done and IF people are interested I will release through the game for people to download.

If you're lucky I might not charge $1 through Pay-Pal for it...hehe J/K about the Pay Pal part. I doubt Stardock wants their customers making money selling Mods they make for Elemental.

I guess that could come off as a bit "odd" sounding. It all depends on how the UI is done and what the players perceptions of it are. Was it "intrusive" when you clicked the "Planet" screen/tab in Gal Civ 2? Some players might say "Yes", I'd say "No", I thought it was handled extremely well in Gal Civ 2 and actually helped add depth to the game, at least for me anyway.

I can completely agree, and I too heard Boogie mention that (though in writen form). Just because they want to move the "Display Area" though doesn't mean they need to clutter up my view of the landscape and units and spells going off because I got a bunch of small unit icons in my way.

"All it needs is a little dropdown menu to select what you want to display (Sovereign, Cities, Champions, Armies, etc), and allow you to customize some settings to filter stuff out. The main appeal to the tree in Sins was that you could expand a planet, and see what it had. The same would be awesome for Elemental."

That I can agree with, But, WHY does it have to be a line down the left side of the screen? It could just as easily be a "slightly hidden" button that you press and have a small radial menu pop up showing you the info you need. It doesn't need to clutter up half the screen to get the job done. I agree with your premise though.

I'm going to have to agree with Annatar, that doesn't make sense to me. You don't want stuff cluttering the UI, but you do want an entirely seperate screen to try and figure out where stuff is? How is taking over the whole screen with a modal dialog army list less intrusive then a minimizable empire tree?

Given the option of opening up a screen, clicking a guy, then going over to him, or just pinning him to the HUD and being able to find him again with a single click... I just don't get where you're coming from. The Empire Tree is so much more effecient.

That's what I tried to point out to Annatar in a post above. It doesn't need to be a "Whole Screen". Gal Civ 2 did it with a box that was less the size of Half the Screen. There was ALSO a whole separate screen for those who wanted. But when you used the "Planet Browser" or what-ever it was called, it opened a box on the left hand side of the screen and that box was about half a sreen wide. In it you could "sort" your collonies by Construction Output/Industrial Capability, by Population, By Name in Alphabetical Order, there were lots of ways to do it. All of which were cleaned and Intuitive WITHOUT cluttering up the screen. See what I'm talking about now, brother? I'm not necessarily saying it should "ONLY" be a Full Other Screen. Gal Civ 2 did it much better then Sins in that department if you ask me. Also, going just by planet and unit populations, you could create and play a game of CG 2 that was twice as big as the BIGGEST maps on Sins.

I hope that makes it a little clearer for you bro. Don't take what I'm saying to the "Extreme" in one direction or the other. As has been stated here and in many other threads, it all boils down to "Options" so we can tweak it the way we want, and the Players Perceptions of those "options".

If someone doesn't want to mess with the options and thinks that's too much "micromanagement" then they Don't Have Too, they can ignore them and still have a fun game-play experience. Without those options though for those of us who want them, then for a part of the games player base the game just got a lot less "Fun".

It all comes down to Options, and how the UI for those Options is done, that's all.

A lot of it Us Modders are already going to have to "Fix" things to suite our own needs. The reason I keep pushing for options is to make things Easier, on Modders AND Non-Modders alike who just want to tweak as much as possible Through the In-Game options because they don't want to Dig Into Files and Code, not even something simple like XML. To some-one who's never done XML or is a computer "noobie" even that can be a daunting and scary experience.

Note: No offense to any Noobies out there. We're all Noobies at one point or another. Even those of us who have been to college and had jobs in the industry can still be "Noobies" when it comes to some things. Hell, even now at 32 years old from time to time I learn something COMPLETELY NEW almost every day.

Just think about it and think about the "options" guys, that's all Im asking. A lot of these will be working behind the scenes and won't even have much of a effect on game-play, But, they will affect the enjoyment of the game (and increase Longevity) for many, Many, people, me included.

Anyway, who is Annetta?

In my opinion, it;s ONLY more efficient on Small Maps or maybe Medium Maps without a Ton of Planets or Fleets to worry about. Once you get all that on screen at one time, picking the right group of fighters out of a massive line that represents your fleet (and let's be honest, in battle these ships can be destroyed and disapear from the list before you can even click on them).

Tell ya what, if you have Sins installed right now. Create a custom game. Make the Biggest Map you Possibly can and fill it with As Many AI Empires as you possibly can (even if you have to repeat a few) and play the game. Give it a good 3 hour or 4 hour go. Make trade pacts and share map information with as many races as you can, then get alliances so you see their ships in your empire tree as well. When you've got 500 things up there, and only 200 things up there when it's minimized to The Max, you'll SE exactly what I'm talking about. It becomes UN-manageable through the current Sins/Elemental Empire Tree with all those icons so close together.

I don't want playing one of those HUGE bit Maps to turn into a Lag Fest because I'm seeing every unit in the game. I also don't want selecting my own damn units when I have over 500 units to choose from to be a hassle. 

I certainly can't object to a quick "hide/unhide" button for the tree. That way you can unhide it when you need it, and hide it when you don't. Sounds like a pretty fine solution.

And at the same time you can tell Sins not to add *anything* to the tree automatically, and keep it completely manual. What you describe only happens if you leave all "Auto pin ..." checked in the settings. I always played having only "Capital ships" pinned, that way only planets where I have capital ships on would show up on the tree. If I wanted anything else, I'd pin it manually (like my planet with all the ship factories). So regardless of map size, I'd only ever have a couple of planets showing up.

Anetta? I don't know, unless you think I somehow miss-spelled Annatars name. I did work with a woman named "Anetta" back in UO days...um...what was her last name?!!?! I can't remember right now, but it'll come to me. Too many drugs trying to put me to sleep atm....so I'm going to bed. Been awake for too long into the daylight hours for my tastes. I'm only going to get 4 or 5 sleep at most anyway.

So, until I return this evening. Please everyone, read the thread, look over the points of views, and just "think" about the possibilities of How of this system would work better with some slight UI Adjustments or maybe some slight Option Additions.

I'll be back to re-join the debate this evening after my rest. Have a nice Day slaving away in that Hot Sun everyone, I'll be sleeping in the cooled AC darkness. J/K, I been there. I know working out in the sun sucks ass. Catch you all tonight brothers and sisters. Please, consider things until then and post more refining ideas. Maybe we can boil this down to a new system that will make EVERYONE happy and will be Easy for SD to implement.

I could of swore I unchecked ALL those pins to show nothing but the "bare bones" of what it had too and it still showed so much on a Large map that it got in the way. :/

Ok..Ok...I'm really going to sleep nmow...lol.

Agreed. I think it kinda goes along with what I say here (below) in Reply 29 of this thread.

"Agreed. I also just had another idea which is based on one of Stardocks most tried and true programs, Fences. Imagine a "Mini Version" of "Fences" Implemented into the Elemental UI. Double left click and the WHOLE UI can disappear. The only part of the UI that should up show after that will be the individual Units, Items, or Cities (or other stuff on the map) that the player clicks on. When the player clicks on it, the normal "Selected Ring" that goes around what-ever you selected should appear, and maybe the unit's "Card" should pop-up. When you select a City the Normal City UI should pop-up, but then disapear again once you de-select the city in question."

OK....Sleep now....prmoise.

I'm at work right now, but I have done that before. Aeolian Sector, I think that huge 63 planet map is called? Couple of points:

- The lag isn't caused by stuff being on the empire tree. It's caused by Sins being a single threaded game, and all the calculations going on to move all those units around pegging one CPU (even if you can't see them on screen, it's still going on). You should have seen what the Entrenchment beta mines did to performance when the AI put thousands in every sector.

- Trying to find something in it is a problem when everything is pinned. But as we've mentioned, there's no need or reason to do that. Pin the stuff you care about, like Fleets (since I definitely care where my fleets are and want to rapidly select the whole fleet). I don't pin some backwater planet 5 planets behind the front line, there's just no need to have it on the tree. You could also improve it by having a sort/filter option on the tree itself, making it really quick to find certain units, cities, or what have you.

It seems to me like the answer here is improvements to the concept, rather then scrapping it and going back to the older style menu. I've used the Galciv 2 one, and the Civ 4 millitary listing screen. I <3 the Empire tree in comparison.

Needless to say, I really hope that you will fully recover Raven. Btw I think it's a good thing that you can make enough money from home.

PS. I like the way as you make these posts. Highlighting the most important stuff is also a cool stuff "in my book".

Sweet dreams Raven.

I have two ideas, one feasible, one probably not so much.

First is why not use the cloth map for uncluttered status updates.  I see this working in two ways.  Some kind of marker, like a circle, on units that have completed their tasks and are waiting for instructions.  Then, while in cloth map mode, the active status icons would move next to the location they're referencing.  When you go back to 3D mode they pop back on the right side of the screen.

As for the other idea.  I admit that it's probably too late to implement this and I have absolutely no idea how difficult it is to do, but I've always like the idea of games that support two monitors.  You could give a very detailed status of your empire on a second monitor without having to worry about cluttering up the main interface.

Later,
LAR 

Elemental DS?

Sweet. I can get an Elemental: War of Magic command center.

TL:DR version.

Raven wants to be able to play without any sorts of visual UI