Starting with beta 4 of Elemental, the modding tools for the game have begun to be made available. This article will serve as a very very basic primer on how modding works in Elemental.  During the beta process, the team will try as much as it can to help users learn what can and can’t be done with the existing modding tools. Those who need a lot of hand holding should probably wait until after release since the team will have very limited time available to document what is what...

We got our beta 4 milestone done a bit early so the team got Tuesday off to recuperate. So tomorrow, with any luck, we should have beta 4 released. After that, the beta is closed to new users and we move towards release next month. We’ve really had a blast working on Elemental. I was talking to some friends today on how Elemental is different (in terms of development) from other games and the big difference is, on a sequel or when using an established engine, if something isn’t done, ...

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...

I left my iPad up at the cottage and I’m bummed.

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,...

I’m an engineer. I went to college for it. Got a degree in it. Dilbert cartoons apply to people like me. One of the things that’s been really challenging since having my own company is just how idiotic the business world is. You read about it. You hear about it. But seeing the idiocy first hand is just incredibly frustrating. Why did such and such deal get made? Because someone had a better technology? No. Because someone made a better business case? No. Instead, all too often I see de...

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...

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...

"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...

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...

  Today’s USA Today has a bombshell – at least for people who haven’t been paying attention: Nearly half of Americans pay no federal income taxes. I’ve tried to explain this before to my liberal friends who insist that “rich people” don’t pay their fair share and whenever I’ve brought up that nearly half of Americans pay zilch to the fed in income taxes they scoff that it’s probably some far right propaganda. Nope. It’s real. As April 15th comes up and I look at the million...

This likely won’t make the final cut into the game because it’s too much for new users. But for those of you interested in the lore of Elemental and how races, factions, and allegiances work under the covers: In beta 1Z and beyond there will only be three included races: Men, Trogs and Urxen. But for those of you in the current beta, we have it sub-divided out much further. The race of men long ago were split into two parts – west and east. The west fought the Tita...

I am very much enjoying Starcraft 2.  I think Blizzard’s concept on leagues is very cool too.  I just wish I understood the execution of said leagues. I was originally placed in copper because heck, I had no idea what I was doing during my original placement matches.  Clearly, I played a lot and eventually figured out how to play and got to #1. Then they reset it. The second time around, I won 3 of my 5 placements and got into bronze (I lost against people in...

Great article:  What the Top US companies pay in taxes . The reader is meant to get fired up by the fact that these hugely profitable corporations aren’t paying Uncle Sam taxes. Oh, they’re still paying taxes. Billions of taxes. Just not in the United States. That’s because companies liek Wal-Mart, General Electric, AT&T and so forth have overseas divisions and can have the profits show up in any of those countries – countries with lower tax rates. How did this happe...