As some of you know, the Elemental Beta 0 got nixed due to us needing to throw developers onto Demigod to help GPG and Raknet with the online experience.  The team is starting to migrate back and we’re all glad to be back on Elemental but we did lose some time. But we are still pushing to have an Alpha build on June 25th to give out.  It’ll be cloth map only (so what you see in the above screenshot won’t be in the alpha series and the betas will look a lot better than what...

The Elemental alpha continues to move forward now that the team is back on it full time. The first alpha that any users will see will look a bit like this screenshot. It's the game's cloth map (the strategic zoom mode). The idea for the alpha builds will be to nail down some of the basic game mechanics. Elemental is primarily a single player game. However, our intention is for the first public alpha to have Internet multiplayer in it. This may seem odd but we are thinki...

One of the cooler technologies that has really come of age in the past few years is level of detail. It doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves. But it’s a big, big deal in terms of letting us make a game that scales seamlessly from an old laptop all the way up to a Core I7 system with a monster video card. Level of detail lets us seamlessly use different models and assets depending on the level of detail a user needs. To illustrate this, let me use something as simple and ...

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 likel...

The more I work with the beta of Elemental the more I think we need to integrate info cards into it.  Those of you who have played Sins of a Solar Empire know what info cards are. They are one of the major game UI innovations that Ironclad has introduced to the genre. The idea is that when you mouse over something, a “card” appears on the screen that gives detailed information about it. They’re kind of like super tooltips. Well, for Elemental, that’s what we’re looking to do too. ...

Ah, vacation is over.  So much to do.  The next public beta is scheduled for Thursday, February 4th.  That build should have the dynasties and quests in it.  Don’t worry, it will NOT be fun yet, I promise. I try to suck out all the fun in the betas. I need to.  Below is a picture of me at work that might help:

There’s a big Impulse announcement on Wednesday so we’re going to get bumped to the following Thursday. I guess we’ll just be that much more polished. Sorry about the wait guys.  The Impulse announcement is pretty cool though. I’ve been watching what they have in store. It’s one of those “Duh, why isn’t everyone doing this already?” type things. But IT can’t handle us, this and the Sins of a Solar Empire update next week too. On the bright side, there will be a TOOONNN of new ...

Greetings! Today we released beta 1Z.  There are a number of stability hicups that will need to addressed with an update this weekend but overall we’re pleased with the results so far. However, it is our determination that beta 1Z is not sufficiently stable enough yet to proceed to beta 2. Sorry guys we just want to make sure we aren’t rushing anything. What’s next The remainder of Beta 1 will be about stability.  Making game mechanic changes and the process of tu...

"Flattened forums" option now available. The flattened forums option is simply another way of viewing the forums.  The layout and design won't change, but what posts you see will.  What it does is "flatten" all of the posts in a specific forum so that it includes the posts in all of its sub-forums.  For example, you can go to the Elemental forum and it will automatically show you the newest posts from any of its sub-forums. It makes it a lot quicker to v...

While the vast majority of users who actually have Beta 1Z voted for moving forward (the publicly displayed poll isn’t designed to filter based on downloads but rather whether they have an Impulse account) we believe another Beta 1 is still in order. There are some Windows XP issues we want to nail down in particular with regards to stability and memory and there were a bunch of fixes that got finished that didn’t get checked in in time for beta 1Z3. We are probably going to dispense w...

Random House announced its new initiative (see this Wallstreet Journal article) today to collaborate with game developers to improve their in-game stories as well as present those stories in other mediums (books, movies, etc.).

The first result of this initiative comes from Elemental. The universe created through a collaboration of writers at Stardock and Random House is seeing itself presented first in the upcoming book, Elemental: Destiny's Embers (August release date) and then followed up by the PC strategy game, Elemental: War of Magic.

What does this mean to gamers and readers?

For gamers, it means that the quality of the writing in Elemental: War of Magic will be much stronger than it would have been otherwise. This manifests itself in terms of the backstory, the campain, the in-game quests and the general the cohesiveness of the game world.

For readers, it means that the book won’t just be the standard “book based on a video game” fare that often comes across as only vaguely connected to the same world that the game came from.

Elemental: Destiny's Embers is a story I’ve been working on for some years now. With help from Random House’s writing team, they’ve helped me take my early manuscripts and polish them and craft them into a story that I think readers of fantasy will enjoy.

More information:

The book: Elemental: Destiny's Embers

The game: Elemental: War of Magic

 

-Brad Wardell (aka Frogboy)

The Elemental team having a night out. 

There is quite a bit of concern (mostly from marketing) that people will be angry when beta 2 comes out because of how much we crippled the betas. I hope those of you in the beta understand why we did what we did with the betas. Elemental is a new game. It’s been many years since there’s been a new fantasy strategy game made from scratch. As a result, it was important to us that we not rely on 3D graphics or multiplayer in order for the game to have good game mechanics. Now,...

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...

We have been pleasantly surprised at how this has worked out because it gives us the opportunity to look at seeing if we have time to do something we have wanted to do: Develop the RACES further. The Kingdoms are made up by a single race (Men) The Empires are made up of three races presently (Men, Trogs, Urxen). However, with the reality being that people seem to much prefer to create their own factions, it may make sense for us to return to TWO pre-made races (Men and F...