Sins of a solar empire save location update#
Sins of a solar empire save location full#

While the core tech worked great, the game was beginning to show its age. One new ability allows players to destroy whole planets, drastically altering the map We knew from the start that switching engines or making major overhauls was out of scope for the time and budget we had to work with (as is usually the case with expansions). If we weren't confident in the existing tech, the project would have likely been cancelled before it got off the ground.

Sins of a solar empire save location update#

The ability to update art and design content and see the results on the fly was invaluable, especially in a game where single play sessions can last in the tens of hours. It may be odd to have a complaint from reviewers and fans alike in the 'What Went Right' section of a postmortem, but we feel we made the right decision to ensure what we did deliver fans was of the highest quality.Дespite the Iron Engine nearing five years old, it's solid and proven technology that our engineers loved to work with. We decided to cut the feature, while leaving in the underlying tech for modders to experiment with post-release. Still falling short of user's desire for a story-driven Sins experience.Pulling design resources and attention from core features.

Though a traditional campaign was off the table, we did design a 'Scenarios' feature to address a player's desire for more controlled and deliberately paced gameplay challenges.ДЄbout eight months into development, we took a hard look at the work remaining on the project and realized that moving forward on the Scenarios feature would likely result in: Our sandbox style games also tend to last as long as most single player campaigns. We'd always felt that a campaign wasn't a good fit for the type of gameplay that Sins of a Solar Empire offered. One of the complaints that showed up consistently in reviews of the original game was its lack of a campaign. This paid dividends in reinvigorating the gameplay and was the high point of many reviews. The MVP program combined with our team's strategy design expertise and long experience with the franchise allowed us to walk that fine line of making big new changes without breaking the core of what fans had grown to love. Through this program we invite some of our most active community members to receive regular builds throughout development and give feedback on the balance of new gameplay features. Since the development of the original Sins, an 'MVP' program was used to mitigate these problems. We also needed to balance the needs of hardcore competitive multiplayer fans with our larger single-player focused audience. Gameplay balancing to avoid these risks quickly becomes a time sink when a complete match lasts 5-plus hours.

Features like destroying entire planets or players abandoning their homeworld and 'going mobile' added new strategies, but also could have upset the balance of the entire game if implemented poorly. With this in mind, the design of the game followed the approach of adding unique and game-changing technology, ships, and victory conditions.

Sins of a solar empire save location full#

We ended up taking a quality over quantity approach, both as an intentional design choice and out of necessity.Д¬oncept for one of the six new Titan warships (click for full size)Д¬areful gameplay balance was needed to make these units game-changers, without overpowering other strategic options. Additionally, engine memory constraints limited the number of assets that could be added. Stardock's other internal projects limited the number of art staff that would be available to us. After two additional expansions, simply adding more ship variants or weapon buff technologies would have been adding content without purpose. The original Sins of a Solar Empire was a game of considerable scope and depth when it was initially released. Stardock's staffing peaked at 11 developers, as shown below. Sins: Rebellion was developed with a small team over 13 months, including about a week of crunch (mostly individual late nights clustered around the various beta and final releases). With Ironclad Games working on the forthcoming Sins of a Dark Age, Stardock took a greater role in the development of the stand-alone expansion Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion to do just that. Staffing breakdown for Stardock developers on Sins: RebellionД®ven after two expansions, the teams felt the definitive version of the game had not yet been realized.