It all depends on what you wish to achieve with 1.1.  Will it be just another patch?  John Q Public will download said patch, play for a bit, find out that some obvious bugs have been fixed but ultimately realise that the game is still rather "broken".

Reasoning:

Too many issues surrounding balance, tactical combat, diplomacy, dynasty system etc.  All of these systems and mechanics need far more polish for the general public to finally say "yes this is awesome now".

Truth be told, Civ V is the standard gamers will compare against, and though Civ V has had its teething problems, the game just flat out has more polish.

Solution:

Take a break over the holidays, come back fresh, and really nail down the game polish.  Re-release to public sometime in January, perhaps even early February.

Seriously consider hiring a usability expert.  Someone who will take the time to do ABX testing, double-blind, click tracking, eye movement studies etc.  Nail down the polish.  If you get this right, then all those who left in digust may in fact return with delight.

My vote is for a release of 1.1.  Stability is a go for me.

Exactly the point I've been trying to bring up.   The core gameplay is nailed down and the feature set is great.   There is every reason to be in feature lockdown for 1.1 right now.  But the presentation hasn't been brought up to the same standard.   Simple things!  Like text descriptions and little UI bugs.

That part of the game still just feels sloppy.

I'm not talking completely redoing things like the pop-up notification system; I'm talking about giving the current version a few polish passes before release.   I do think getting 1.1 out before Christmas is an important priority, but it needs some love on the presentation side.

While moving on, releasing, and going to work on 1.2 is, I am sure, definitely a tempting thing, I think that's exactly the wrong thing the game needs right now.  We don't need to be piling features on top of a game that hasn't polished up the work on the ones it has right now.   Let's get what we have correct before we go adding to it and making more of a mess.

Well, I finally made it to turn 164 before the game slowed down and finally crashed. Never made it that far I think lol.

I will post the debug.err in support.

As far as releasing 1.1.. I just want a playable game with minimal crashing even if it means waiting for 1.1 until after Christmas.

Don't get me wrong, I want to see all the goodies of 1.1 just as much as the next guy. But if it crashes then it is useless.

Santa says "polish and release it." Here's one little boy who asked Santa for v1.1. Please don't make me cry.

Hi Frog,

I see you asking a couple of different questions here.

1.  Do we want to move onto 1.2 so we can start working on features, game mechanics, etc. again?  Yes, of course!  We're as anxious as you.

2.  Is 1.1 ready to go so that people won't complain about it in the forum or in game reviews?  No, it's not.  And you keep asking, "What bugs are left?  How come the forum has gone quiet?"  Dude, are we reading the same forum?  There are bugs all over this forum.  Maybe it's a disconnect...remember the design flaw vs. defect vs. enhancement request discussion we had? 

Since I can't win the design flaw vs. defect debate, let's compromise and let the crashes settle it.  I will vote "Go" the first beta release we have no crashes posted in this forum.  Fair enough?

I just tried the latest release, and the game locked up after around 50(?) turns.  I had to use task manager to exit from it.

Here is an out of memory error with latest opencl drivers for my video card:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8710134/debug.err

EDIT: Zip file for this was empty (0KB).

I also had out of memory errors with previous drivers, here's a summary of previous drivers installed:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8710134/CCC%20Old%20Drivers%20Installed%20on%2012%20Dev%202010.jpg

Best regards,
Steven.

Few games get a second chance, none that I know of have gotten a third or fourth! Is it really worth it to release 1.1 before everything is fixed?

From my (very!) limited understanding of the game industry, I have to say that I think that the release of 1.1 isn't as do-or-die as some people are making it out to be. Yes, it is very important that Stardock demonstrates their committment to making this game great. The release wasn't ideal, I understand, and it's very important that the market realizes that this game is much improved.

But.

This game will be re-reviewed with the release of the expansions. I, personally, didn't buy GCII until ToA. Each expansion release is going to re-expose this game to the public. Hell, I don't even remember how good or bad the original GCII was said to be.

Anyway, my two cents.

After loading a reasonable number of games, a crash when loading:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8710134/LoadGameDebug.err

EDIT: Added zip.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8710134/Elemental1_09t-2010-12-12T12-16-16-274.zip

Best regards,
Steven.

You make a good point.  Anyway, Frogboy, Kael et al, have a last look at the two crash logs I reported in this thread and the other crash logs reported recently, see what you can fix and make a decision after that, my two cents.

Best regards,
Steven.

Thanks. Just as an addendum, I do think that it's important that v1.1 is stable. I don't want to give the impression that I didn't.

Hi

Let's talk impressions for a minute.....

Game is opened on Xmas morning .... installed.... patched .... (to either 1.09e or 1.1)..... Gamer starts playing Campaign (Because that is where the Manual tells him to start)..... Notices things are not quite the same so looks in the manual for guidance and sees the manual no longer deals in the reality of what the game is..... So they throw the worthless Manual againist the wall and, try to play the game using the new UI and Low and Behold they find numerous Tool tip errors and Tech descriptions from apparently a differnent game..... Not to mention the popup Windows Stacking up ...... One after another.... Sighs thinks to themselves nice idea but a waste of time B game, uninstalls it ..... and goes off to play with the pink bunny slippers Aunt Sally gave them for the 3rd year in a row..... 

The Question is not If 1.1 is ready it's how to keep the newcomers arouund for 1.2?

And i might add all the Goodness after that.....

My suggestion at least give them an updated Manual so they have a fighting chance......

That is a good point too.

Best regards,
Steven.

(PS: I've added the zip file above for the crash that had a non-empty one.)

• I am experiencing a few crashes also from time to time. Nothing like before though.
• Could someone post a easy tutorial on how to post this info, or a simple link to the thread in question for the info, please. I've tried to do it, but it keeps crashing. Been trying to search the forums on solutions/bug guide and havnt found anything..

I've seen the Daring Strike happen, at first I thought it was some ability that the daughter had, but now that I think about it, she was doing some really massive damage consistently because of it. I would hold my troops back and send my daughter in to slaughter everything haha.

Are we really having this conversation? Seriously?

Of course you will release 1.1 before Christmas. It would be moronic not to. There is no comparison between 1.09 and what you have now. 

Hell, there's no comparison between 1.09 and what you had two weeks ago. It's night and day. 

What the f*ck are some of you smoking? Second chance? It's a goddam patch. It's not going to get a re review. It's a patch. A massive; huge; wonderful patch but still a patch.

This isn't some close call thing. Why is 'the community' even being posed this question? You're just going to attract the hardest core players who would have you futzing with it for another 2 years.  

The average gamer who gets Elemental right now is going to think it sucks because the reviews of the game are pretty spot on. But the 1.1 betas actually make this program into a game. A pretty decent game at that.

Polish up in the next few days and release it before Christmas. God god's sake nothing will end this game and this community faster if you leave the turd that is 1.09 out there for the holidays.

The second chance for Elemental in the wider world will be your expansion. If you want that second chance, you better get 1.1 out there soon and I mean real soon. 

That's probably a good idea, still work on it hard, but release 1.1 final on the 21st (Tuesday).   Gives yourself a couple days if you need to hotfix something at the last minute.

Try hard to fix bugs/polish this last week.  One more hell week for you guys. 

Then take the holidays off with a stable game, then 1.2/expansion work can start in January.

I think what Alstein says sounds good, and I would tend to agree with it.

Best regards,
Steven.

Well I will say this. This is the most stable build I have seen. The game crashes very very infrequently. I got an OOM but it took a long time to happen. Not like before. And I had one hang up in a tactical combat. This is a much improved product right now. Some of these crashes have persisted for so along I assumed that Stardock could not fix them, but some of them are gone.

Game is playable now. And I see another patch went out "u". I'll test tomorrow and see.

Yep and i think that is exactly the mistake. If Stardock has the options to release 1.1 now and 1.2 in January it would be better to wait until January and release 1.1 and 1.2 together, because the game will be more polished and balanced.

If you know that version 1.1 needs more polish and refined game mechanics and if version 1.1 will be THE NEW Elemental you should not rush the game to get more sales and take the time to release 1.1 and 1.2 together, because the game will be more polished and balanced.

Interestingly, I had been manually clicking the end turn button, but just today I decided to try auto-turn.  As soon as I turned it on I started to experience random crashes.  Before I turned it on I did not experience any crashes since the first beta of 1.09.

Brad,

First off, great work so far on all the updates. This is actually a game now whereas the release version was a complete mess. I'll be honest, after about 2-3 play throughs of the initial release version I simply gave up and stopped playing. The added features and stability have actually made this a game worth playing past the first few turns. 1.1 is by far a better game than 1.09 or the release version. Hands down, no question.

However, if your question is whether or not 1.09t is a 'good' game that I would in good conscious recommend to someone then I have to say no. However, this has nothing to do with stability/bugs at this point. This first problem, as many others have already addressed is simply polish. Little annoyances hear and there that add up to a massive annoyance overall: messed up descriptions, updating character cards, outdated and useless manual (manual was useless on release, even more so now). This first problem is what will break the game for someone just getting their hands on it.

The second problem is something far deeper that is not going to get fixed in 1.1. This problem centers on lack of balance in many areas, lack of strategic depth at multiple levels, etc. I've written about it in a number of posts since coming back to the game. This is a critical problem to be addressed in latter patches and expansions, but this IS the critical problem. It the problem that will break the game for someone willing to push past some of the polish issues and dive deeper. It is this problem that really keeps elemental from being a good game, and this is what keeps me from recommending it to anyone as it currently stands. 

Thus if the question is do we release 1.1, the answer for me is an obvious yes. As I said before, 1.1 as it currently stands is FAR superior to anything that came out at release date. However, in the pretend world where 1.1 would get re-reviewed it would still be destroyed by the critics. Not for stability issues as it was before but for the two other issues I just mentioned: one superficial, one deep. If waiting to achieve another incremental level of stability in v 1.09x is holding you back from addressing these problems then you can rest assured, 1.01 is stable enough. Focus on the real issues that are holding Elemental back from its potential. Its that potential thing that is keeping me around.