Journals
Dev Journal
Let’s try this again…
This week we’ve put up a couple of journals that are soliciting input from players on what they’d like to see in terms of faction customization. My journals were clearly too wordy as I failed to convey the fundamental questions at hand. So I’ll put it in bullet point form. We are rapidly nearing Beta 3 where the “game” itself comes together. At that point we will need to decide where to focus our asset creation (read: Artists and Random House writers). Presently, ... [read more]
Dev Journal
More discussion of Factions and Races (long)
…In the beginning there were Men and Dragons… When the Titans came, they saw the creatures of the world as building blocks and created many new creatures from them. These creatures are called (by men) “The Fallen”. There are four known sentient races of The Fallen (see the Lore for more details). In previous discussions, we have used analogies to Middle Earth. In Middle Earth, Illuvatar created only two sentient races. The El... [read more]
Dev Journal
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... [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental – Beta 1Z4 is coming
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... [read more]
Dev Journal
The third pass of the conclusion of Beta 1 is going up today. Here’s what’s new from last Thursday: * Item Swapping * Overview: You can now swap items between units by opening the ITEMS tab for a selected unit and dragging/dropping the item icon to either a unit on the map, a medallion on the empire tree, or a medallion in the army/stationed units context list. + Added ability to drag (non-equipped) items out of a unit's item context list and drop them either on a unit on th... [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental: A preview of the modding
Sometime after July 4th we expect to have the Elemental modding beta. Modding isn’t something that we plan to work X weeks on and then finish. Rather, the modding budget involves full time Stardock developers assigned to it for the next 18 months. The modding beta will comprise making available the core tools that modding will need. Namely: Making your own maps Making your own creatures Making your own items Making your own buildings Making ... [read more]
News
IncGamers Elemental Interview with Brad Wardell
IncGamers.com have published their recent interview with Stardock’s Brad Wardell about the upcoming PC game, Elemental: War of Magic . “ As you might expect for a game with "magic" in the title, the most intriguing aspect for us is the magic system itself. How does that function, and what can we expect to see from spells? More importantly, are there spells of truly apocalyptic, world-ending power? Through the course of the game, players will encounter magica... [read more]