Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.

As some of you know, we had to assign quite a few members of the Elemental team to help with Demigod after it was released.  Most of them are back on Elemental but a couple of our developers are still attached to Demigod to refine the multiplayer system in that game.  It’s been particularly challenging since initially there was virtually no “Stardock code” involved and now it’s thousands of lines.  So we have definitely “gotten involved”.

The good news is that it will likely benefit Elemental in the long run.  While Elemental is being designed to focus on the single-player experience, there are some multiplayer features that we feel Demigod must have that we’re going to develop that will be put back into Elemental too.

For example, personally speaking, I’m convinced that the only sure-fire way of totally making these games 100% reliable online is for us to just host the games.  I’ve asked our guys to look into finding ways to do that for Demigod in a future update that won’t require Gas Powered Games to change their code (so it will seem peer to peer to Demigod but it’ll actually be our servers doing it all).  This will be helpful for Elemental because we’ll have a lot of additional experience in this area.

Another feature we’re going to look at developing is letting groups of friends join into randomly generated skirmish games.  Right now, in Demigod, you can’t get a group of friends into skirmish games.  We want that to change in there and in turn it will be available for people who want to play Elemental.

Another idea we’ve had is for Elemental to have various game modes.  Basicially, vastly increase the number of winning conditions that people can put together in order to set up games that could be played in less than an hour. 

Some of the aforementioned flexibility is only possible because of the way the computer AI is being designed for Elemental.  Like in Galactic Civilizations, I’ll be coding the AI in Elemental. But this time, it’ll be moddable and I plan to make a lot of this available to the community during the beta to see if they can do certain game modes better than I can.

All in all, I’m definitely looking forward to all the options.


Comments (Page 5)
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on Jun 04, 2009

Luckmann

Did we just missunderstand you, or did you somehow completely miss all the ravings about multiplayer?

That's common to happen at this stage, unless you go and read all the previous journals. It happened to me as well. Having that in mind, I'd say to just point people in the right direction, since what would be obvious to some isn't for others.

on Jun 04, 2009

That's common to happen at this stage, unless you go and read all the previous journals. It happened to me as well. Having that in mind, I'd say to just point people in the right direction, since what would be obvious to some isn't for others.
Yeah, but you are.. aLap. Spartan is.. well.. Spartan!

on Jun 05, 2009

pigeonpigeon

Quoting Spartan, reply 8A nice update to be sure.

 Anyway, I think it would be nice to play against friends for this title however such a feature would surely be an x-pack thing in my mind.
Uhh... Spartan, multiplayer has been planned for Elemental from the get-go, and even with the Demigod fiasco they haven't threatened to remove it...

I know it was; I was happy it was removed to be honest. I agree with Frogboy that this type of game should a single player game first -  hense my x-pack comment. I figure a well polished SP system with a MP added on would be the best situation for the community in the long run.

 

Luckmann

Quoting Spartan, reply 8A nice update to be sure.

Anyway, I think it would be nice to play against friends for this title however such a feature would surely be an x-pack thing in my mind.Did we just missunderstand you, or did you somehow completely miss all the ravings about multiplayer?

 

Nope I did not miss anything that I know of.

Maybe I simply was not clear enough in my prior post. I hope this post has cleared things up. 

on Jun 05, 2009

I know it was; I was happy it was removed to be honest. I agree with Frogboy that this type of game should a single player game first - hense my x-pack comment. I figure a well polished SP system with a MP added on would be the best situation for the community in the long run.

 

OK, the surrealism is increasing.  Elemental has never had MP removed from it; all they've done is decided 100% to avoid anything even remotely P2P or end-user hosting for internet play.

on Jun 05, 2009

We need a hibernation chamber for Spartan, stat!

on Jun 05, 2009

Ron Lugge

I know it was; I was happy it was removed to be honest. I agree with Frogboy that this type of game should a single player game first - hense my x-pack comment. I figure a well polished SP system with a MP added on would be the best situation for the community in the long run.
 

OK, the surrealism is increasing.  Elemental has never had MP removed from it; all they've done is decided 100% to avoid anything even remotely P2P or end-user hosting for internet play.
Maybe "removed" was a poor choice of words or I now find myself in some alternate universe...

on Jun 05, 2009

or I now find myself in some alternate universe...

Look around you, are there hot bear cavalry chicks around?

on Jun 05, 2009

Annatar11
We need a hibernation chamber for Spartan, stat!

Mmmmm... hibernation.

on Jun 06, 2009

pigeonpigeon

I actually bought Demigod a few days ago, and it's pretty addicting. I haven't played online yet, though... I'm honestly not the biggest fan of playing games with random people, especially when they're most likely to be annoying little shits . I'm sure I'll give multiplayer a whirl at some point but for now I'm happy with single-player, and at least I probably won't be too terrible when I make the leap.

Making a demo for a game like Demogod shouldn't take so long, I've almost lost interest in the game at this point. Demos in my opinion should come out before the game is released everything else be damned. I wonder if Elemental is going to have a Demo pre-release? Either way Elemental's multiple game modes sound very interesting. I'm hoping for a king of the hill type game mode where you have to capture and hold some city or location for X amount of time. 

on Jun 06, 2009

I wonder if Elemental is going to have a Demo pre-release?

I am pretty sure that Elemental demo will be after release. It is always the case with Stardock published games.

on Jun 06, 2009

Just don't make multiplayer so important that the game loses it's solo player fizz. This is what Triumph did to AOW:SM it is so multiplayer oriented the AI is pitiful and the solo game both campaign and random suks royally. The only players left for that game on the forum are the multiplayers as they ruined the game so much for all the solo players. The community made mods (they call them patches haha) are so multiplayer oriented it's sickening 1.04 and soon 1.05 all geared toward what the multiplayers want on Gamespy.

Personally I could care less if you make a multiplayer addition or element to the game or not. The only one I would ever be interested in playing would be hotseat. I liked, no in fact I LOVED the way you LEFT IT OUT in GC and GC2 and applaud you for it. You could leave it out in this game and I'd be just as happy an elated.

Multiplayer games seem to draw away from the solo fun of the game because of whinners about BALANCE in the multiplayer aspects. Then as developers try to stop the crying of the whinners about BALANCE they ruin the solo playing game. You can't win and there's only 2% of the people out there that actually play everything multiplayer anyways. There's been polls after polls to prove that solo content is the MAIN reason players buy games. So, keep that in mind when the multiplayers start crying for BALANCE.

The other great aspect about MOM is it wasn't balanced for multiplayer because it didn't have a multiplayer feature. At least that way solo players could have challenging games playing a lesser race over the more powerful ones. Gnolls come to mind here. MOM is the greatest fantasy turn based game made so far. If you want that title for this one then you better take a hard look at what MOM offered and made it the best over the rest.

on Jun 07, 2009

psychoravin
Just don't make multiplayer so important that the game loses it's solo player fizz. 

Brad has already stated that he isn't willing to sacrifice even the tiniest bit of the single-player experience for multiplayer, so I don't think you have anything to worry about.

on Jun 07, 2009

HOMM5 had multiplayer implemented on a patch after the game was shipped. This is no big issue as long as the dev team have time to work on both sides, one at a time.

on Jun 08, 2009

Excited about all of this.  I know this game is aimed at SP, but I'm really 99% excited about it for MP. 

 

Teams of friends is good.  Strong online is good.  Short game options is good.  One worry about many options is... will that make it harder to find a game online because so many variants?

 

I can echo what someone else said.. how to balance units that are much better in tactical combat vs. in automated combat, as in age of wonders.  Also from Age of Wonders, I thought the simultaneous turns in a turn based game (as well as optional turn time limit) was awesome.  I just dont see how MP can work without rediculously long times unless turns are simultaneous.  It's especially a huge speedup in larger games. 

 

Excited!

on Jun 08, 2009

happy_panda
One worry about many options is... will that make it harder to find a game online because so many variants?

Why? The same number of games would still be there (assuming the same number of people would play MP). You just look for a game with settings you like and join. Or host your own. 

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