Sigh... so I take it you are married to this idea.

Well, guess that means that caster sovereigns will be useless unless and until the modsquad gets ahold of the game.

Edit: Just clarifying why:  If essence is the only way to boost max mana, and essence is spendable, the only truely effective way to play the game will be to spend your sovereing down to a certain minimum of essence and ignore the spellcasting part of the game beyond city enchants entirely.

   I completely love you designers showing us what you do!!!!   Please keep up the journals even after the game releases.   You guys have enlightened me so much about the innerworkings of video game programming.   I (since) 1996 have studied teir 1 c & C++ programming and conceptualized how to get a game together and what you guys tell us is a ray of light.... I haven't written any code because I have never seen how to save data to a file and then load it back in, just because it's a hidden part of programming doesn't mean i'm not a puesedo codest.   I would die for the chance to try learning MODING.   I have visual studio 2008 is it going to be enough to code it?   Well thanks and good work guys!!!!  thanks for expanding my dreams.  - Jeremy Sr. 

When I was in Westwood Game Design college, I keep telling my self two things I conceptualized : 1.) Interface of Interfaces and 2.) People love interfaces.   

Especially when bestowing essence on a unit only gives it 1 essence.  May as well not give the essence and save it for powerful, game changing spells, 1 or 2 of them anyway.

Best regards,
Steven. 

Awesome. Was just playing some Elemental and then saw your post .

Appreciate your teams efforts in the MOD areas. This will (we all hope and I know) keep the game alive and allow you to capitalize on it  - to sate your evil $$$ side - as well as NwN has for Bioware.

Funnily enough I still do some modding and creating in NWN just for fun. Still play with a group even. MODs for that have included:

• Star Wars
• Serenity
• XCOM
• Modern

and more.,

With the add-on packs it made it a long-term game that has lasted.

I can see EWoM having the same legacy. Looking forward to some amazing MODs as well as the expansions you and the DEVs will bring.

Actually I bought Medieval2 Total War just for the Third Age (LOTR) mod...

And, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO on the Essence = Mana Cap ONLY!  There are way too many good ideas floating around on some threads on what Essence could be.  Essence was one of the distinguishing mechanics-- you might as well just make Wisdom = Mana cap or Intel = Mana Cap....and bid a fond farewell to Essence altogether.

Frogboy, will how essence works be able to be modded?  If a number of people have great ideas on a better way to use it, why not let them have a try at devising a more varied and interesting system?  IMHO, essence is too boring and uninteresting the way it is now, and I must say I feel a little downhearted.

Best regards,
Steven.

I bought the Civ4 upgrades just to play Fall from Heaven. And it is looking like Elemental will be like nothing a mod community has seen. Sounds like it is going to be relatively easy to make a massive impact via the XML yet still have the capacity to make a complete mod as well.

I found your latest video on YouTube where you play with modding tools (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edF9levolUc).

wow good to hear that this game can be turned into a total co-op RPG or table top game. I dont have any friends that play geek games, so it will be nice to see modders create dungeons and other maps to have adventures in.

Still would like to see the screenshots of the mod you did.

I agree with your capitalism side. You do want to have a good initial review to boost sales and popularity. Reviewers will most likely go off your initial release. So you cant really depend on modders or updates to be your saving grace. Unless they are kind enough to consider that there is a toolkit with unlimited possibilities built into the game.

But once you give it to them, they too can earn it as they level up.

*sigh* Quotng broke, can't quote Brads OP...

[Draginol] At heart, I’m a modder. So part of me really hates shipping games. I prefer them to stay in beta. Forever. But eventually, products have to be shipped and judged based on their state when they’re shipped.

As a modder, the ship date is irrelevant. As a capitalist, I need the game to be good enough to get sufficiently positive buzz to generate the sales to continue my modding.

Ostensibly, my main coding job on Elemental is supposed to just be AI. But that’s because all our previous games weren’t very moddable.

With Elemental, the world is very moddable.  For instance, tactical battles have a lot of modding opportunities I’ve made use of.

Example: I made a quest today where your group is attacked in a huge temple.  Well, the quest xml lets me specify a map. So I made a series of tiles with the tile editor and then a map that used those tiles to create a temple where my guys were attacked by a bunch of Crypt Warriors. I could even name the individual monsters in the room (I named one Dennis, sorry, I can’t help myself). [ End Quote]

That's actually really Awesome News . So we'll be able to open a map I.E. a Dungeon to wander around in, while in game. That's really awesome as it's something I'll need to incorporate into the DL Mod. Well done.

 [Draginol]I’m at home right now or I’d show you a bunch of a screenshots of the crazy amounts of stuff.[End Quote]

You're an evil, Evil, man, Brad. You're what's known as a "Game-Tease", which any true male gamer will tell you is even worse then a case of blue balls.

For those of us making Mods based off copyrighted stories we'd have to go get permission to sell them from the copyright holders and they'd want a cut of the money too or they could flat out say "NO". As such the only way for those of us doing Mods based on books is to do them as "Fan Faction" or something which is free. It would be illegal for us to charge for them without the explicit permission of the copyright holders...I think.

Well as you had hinted at, in the past. Create a place for people to come to eat, and then once they are there, give them the option to join the franchise as it were.

In this case.. you've created an incredibly robust game engine, and will be presenting those efforts in the form of Elemental: War of Magic.

That being said.. once people realize the strength of the game engine, and how easy it is to mod in a great number of games, and genre's and the equivalent IP related stuff. Then eventually it'll push the sales heavier in that direction but I also believe it'll open the door to new opportunities for say boardgame companies, to get their hands into the digital arena, without having to fund an entire company as they make the project. Instead now that all the initial hard work has been placed. The rest is just the equivalent of unlocking the door to the new flavors of gameplay.

I could see a partnership between Privateer Press, and their beautiful IP's (Warmachine, Iron Kingdoms, Hordes), going into making a licensed published game using Elemental. Which in turn feeds back into the Elemental machine, in an ongoing recursive loop, as more begin to realize the strengths of such an idea.

Not to mention all those arm chair designers out there who make their own games in the garage. Well now they could make that same game as a mod, or work in partnership with you on it, and see the doors unlock again.

To me I see a lot of great business opportunities for other IP's to grow with Elemental. While also getting to enjoy the purity of the gameplay IN Elemental. While also building my own gameworld into a mod for myself, and eventually others.

The evil capitalist in you is just trying to be rational. Cost vs. Benefit. But let's be honest here.. all those tools in the hands of the modder's. Well that means they'll get seen... but depending on popularity of the mod. Then again with all those assets in place, it'll make it easier to add them into the game over time as well with new expansion packs in many cases.

Another thing to consider is comments about flying ships. And how they won't be in Elemental. Well.. that's cause it's the first blush version of Elemental. Remember you started off this game with a Real time tactical battles. And stripped it out. Now imagine Elemental. But much further in it's gameworld future. Magic isn't as scarce, now there are many more magical beings again.. but all of that.. is what story designers are for. You said it yourself, you've got very little creativity for gameworld imaginings. Enough to be a gamer and enjoy modding stuff, to make it your own.. but there are many others out there who are great at world design and story telling. And the game it creates. Don't just limit yourself so early. I would encourage you to go with the best philosophy of 4th Edition D&D. "Say Yes to the Players."

They encourage it. If it's great for the story, say yes. So in that context, embrace the idea... instead of saying no, to something because it doesn't fit your immediate version of Elemental. Give it some time... sure the modder's will do it most certainly. But maybe in another iteration of Elemental: War of Magic.. it's several hundred years later... and there are Air Ships, and Griffon Cavalry, and it's still a fun RPG style game. There really are some awesome ideas out there.. and now with the game being presented as you have... you'll finally get to see that evolution. (Have another evil capitalist look into this other side.. looking for IP's that are ready to join the digital leagues, with Stardock. And it'll have all been because of Elemental: War of Magic.)

Oh? Morrowind wouldn't have sold as well as it did, for as long as it did with out all those mods. Same with Oblivion. Come to think of it...I'm pretty sure Bethesda's entire business model is centered on the community making their okay games into great ones.

Now this is incredibly exciting. And the direct honesty, is as always refreshing.

The idea that some ideas could be put in the game that were mentioned a while ago! Awesome.

Beta 3A, was different. It really was. But it also felt empty. Which I just attributed to the very nature of it being a beta. But, you're right.. if you watched my video's.. building stuff in towns just became bland. It didn't do anything or feel interesting. And I could only get so excited by the process before I was noting to myself that it was missing a lot of the fun.

So hearing that there are incredible changes, on a gigantic level will be a good thing in my book.

And your right about games ... it's the same way with world creation for campaign settings. People keep looking at the same thing. And then wonder why it doesn't feel organic. And in a lot of cases it goes back to the progenitor. 

Look at Minas Tirith and Os-giliath. Those two massive cities right? Where are the villages? You know to feed them, all. It was like someone just plopped them down, and that was that. No one asked about the empty plains outside of it, or how they were fed. It was just glossed over.

~~~

Medieval towns tended to grow around areas where people could easily meet, such as crossroads or rivers. Towns needed more water than villages, so a nearby water supply was vital. Rivers would provide the water used for washing and drinking and they were used for the disposal of sewage (if it had not been simply thrown into the streets).

Village people came to towns to trade therefore those who were in charge of a town had to do what was needed to ensure that their town was safe. Many towns had large fences built around them and the gates of these fences were locked at night to keep out undesirables. Cities such as York and Canterbury had city walls that served the same purpose - but a town would not have had enough wealth to build such an expensive protection.

A successful town attracted many merchants to it. Many towns were owned by a lord and it was in his interest to ensure that his town was popular with merchants as they paid tax. The more merchants in a town, the more tax a lord could collect. Taxes were collected by a sheriff. As many people could not read or write, the system was open to abuse and corruption. This is why many people in towns wanted to get a charter. 

A charter gave people in a town certain rights that were clearly stated in the charter that town had. Many charters gave towns the right to collect their own taxes thus removing corrupt sheriffs from doing so. It was also common for a town to ask for its own law court so that legal problems could be settled quickly.

~~~

Here is an interesting link that supports Brad's comments about food, as it in this case pertains to civilizations. 

http://www.history.ac.uk/resources/e-seminars/keene-paper

And here is another good link for fantasy lands... especially as it pertains to ideas of civlizations.

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

That one above there is a great link. 

I guess the one thing is a matter of abstraction, as a key piece to the story. And whether something feels fun to play based upon testing.

So I'm totally looking forward to the changes, and see how everything really begins to feel with this upcoming 3B/4. Myself, I'm particularly happy about resources just needing to be within the influence of the nation. That is a gigantic step in the right direction. And it has taken until 3B for it to get in. But the wait was worth it! So on that note, I'm looking for other things that make us go ... damn... sweet! Cool! (Cartman voice optional!)

?

Even if you do a mod based on your own IP (and with your own art assests and such), does Elemental EULA allow you to sell your mod? I'm not planning on that but your comment made me curious. At best I'd expect Premium Modules or something like that.

Oh, dear Stardock: ancient Greece equipment/buildings, please. I have always wanted some hoplites and that "classical" feeling of the greek temples/cities. (some Roman touch is good too)