Journals
Dev Journal
I’ve been playing the beta 1Z candidate all day today and it’s around 9pm as I write this and while it is a vast improvement over beta 1G, it just isn’t put together enough for the public. The criteria for beta 1Z is that it has to be good enough where we think it’s ready to go to beta 2. So new date is sometime next week. Since that will push back our internal schedule, we’re going to let new people into beta 1Z next week so that they’re not stuck waiting. To get a scope of... [read more]
Dev Journal
To recap: Beta 1 (which is where we’re at right now) is where we play around with different game mechanics with the beta group on a cloth map. Beta 2 is where we let people try this all out multiplayer. Beta 3 is where we finally turn on the graphics engine to make it look like a game. Beta 4 is where tactical battles get turned on Beta 5 is the modding beta where we start to work with modders on tools and help on that prior to release. Here’s a video of me playing ... [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental: How game mechanics evolve (long)
Internally we are constantly playing, testing, and trying out new ideas. Here are some examples of discussions we have had: To: Team From: Brad Date: Feb 2010 Re: Tile density One of the things I’m a bit concerned about is how barren the world is. We want to make sure that Elemental’s world is filled with interesting things t... [read more]
Dev Journal
Greeetings! I’m pleased to say that I believe we’re nearing the end of Beta 1. Sometime next week we PLAN to release beta 1Z which is a very major gameplay update to Elemental (i.e. more radical than any previous beta). Shortly after this beta, we will have a vote by the beta team to determine whether they believe the game is ready for Beta 2 (the multiplayer beta). The vote will require 75% of beta testers to agree to go to beta 2. What is the criteria? If a... [read more]
News
IGN has an Elemental: War of Magic Preview Up
IGN.com got a chance to chat with the Stardock team while in San Francisco while at GDC 2010, and they have published a preview of Elemental: War of Magic. “I'll dispense with the usual opener here. I won't talk about Stardock's stellar reputation as a game developer, or its principled stance as a publisher. I won't bore you with lengthy remembrances of Master of Magic or tired complaints about the scarcity of turn-based fantasy strategy games. Instead, I'll just talk about Brad Wardel... [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental Player Input: Unit names and quotes
When players design a unit that are asked to give it a name and a quote. However, we don’t want players to feel like they have to do this. To that end, we want to create a system where the game will “recommend” a randomly picked name and a randomly picked quote. We thought it might be fun to let the beta testers get their suggestions on this into the game. To that end, what kinds of fun and interesting quotes would you like be randomly selected as the defa... [read more]
Dev Journal
It’s time to name the currency in Elemental. The Random House team has come up with rigma which we like a lot. An alternative would be gildars. But if someone has a really cool name we’ll consider it. [read more]