Journals
Dev Journal
Sorry guys, there will be a beta 1z3
Before people groan, progress on Elemental continues across the board besides just the “game” aspect (if there are any developers reading this feel free to explain to non-developers what I mean). Anyway, Beta 1Z2 that went up yesterday is much better than Z1 was in terms of stability and such but it’s not quite there yet. Namely, the stuck turns and saved games need to be addressed more. There are still reports of crashes but memory and stability seem to be adequate to proceed. ... [read more]
Dev Journal
A sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYdgzxbf-YM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16pspR74M6w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6L6MhSgpgo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwDpjaXn9Fg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvW6okgy4wA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI8akt4fXv4 (skip past the very very beginning) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnEMcquu2lc (one of my favorites) [read more]
Dev Journal
I AM NOT PLAYING DRESS UP!!!11!
I am CREATING a powerful sorceress capable of laying waste to entire villages! But she must look sharp. [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental Beta 1-Z2 News and Changelog
Beta 1Z2 is scheduled to be released this week (today or tomorrow). The beta will close to new members tomorrow afternoon. As I mentioned earlier this week, we are committed to releasing the game when we’re happy with it even if it means we have to delay it repeatedly to do so. That said, as you can see with this 1 week of progress, there is also good reason to believe that we will still make the 3rd quarter release (if not, it’ll get pushed to 1Q2011). I currently d... [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental: Why it’s important to get it right
First off, we want to thank the users who are publicly supporting us on our regular and intentional delays of the beta process. We appreciate your support. This blog is mainly targeted at the users who are contacting us privately telling us quit “delaying” or how important it is for the game to be released in August or saying that we’re being too perfectionist. Let me address those issues with a bit of understanding about Stardock and its motivations. Stardock is a privately h... [read more]
Dev Journal
Galactic Civilizations II had advisors for the players. The players could query the advisors and it would give advice on what it thought they should do. Unfortunately, I wrote the advisors in Galactic Civilizations II and my bias was always pretty anti-human so when I say players, I mean the computer players. Humans did not have access to the advisors. It was always considered an unfortunate necessity that the computer players had to tolerate having humans in their game since humans w... [read more]
Dev Journal
Forum feature I recommend using
"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... [read more]