Releases March 17, 2026
Journals
News
Organize Your PC Desktop with Stardock's Fences 1.0
Stardock , the world leader in desktop customization, today released the highly anticipated version 1.0 of its popular and free desktop organization application, Fences. Fences is a one-of-a-kind program designed to organize the desktop by allowing users to customize how icons and files reside on the desktop based on user-defined preferences. Fences is the ultimate tool for those users who want to keep their PC desktop clear of clutter. Fences works by allowing users to “dra... [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental Beta ideas discussed: October 2009
We’ve been combing through the forums looking at ideas people have had for the game. Now if anyone wonders why we’ve extended the beta testing period for this game need wonder no longer: We want time to put in your ideas. So let’s walk through some of them here. Creating your sovereign The idea has come up on the forums and we agree that sovereign creation should get its own screen and that the sovereign is independent of the kingdom/empire you choose. That is, you shouldn... [read more]
Dev Journal
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. ... [read more]
Dev Journal
Designing units in Elemental discussion
Some of you in the beta are probably starting to recognize the influence you now have and why we had the beta be so primitive – so that your ideas can really REALLY go into the game. So let’s talk about how units should be designed in the game. Here’s how it works: Players design their own units. It’s not like Civilization and such where you have knights or warriors. You start out with a person. The key traits of that person involve their attack (how many HP damage... [read more]
Dev Journal
This next week we’ve got a ton of things to do. Most of what we’re working on doesn’t show up in the game. In no particular order, here are some things on the high priority list: 1. Gotta expose the AI to Python. Need that so that I can start doing serious surgery on the AI without constantly having to recompile and re-run the game. 2. Nail down what resources we want to have in the game. I keep thinking that it’s better to have more resources than fewer. ... [read more]
Dev Journal
Beta 1A of Elemental has arrived (or will in a few minutes). It’s still incredibly primitive but a lot has gone on under the covers thanks to feedback from the beta testers from the initial beta. First, a lot of bugs got fixed. There’s still a lot more to go at least but the CPU frying issue, the hard disk corruption issue, and of course the video card overheating problems have been mostly taken care of so we are pretty sure that the odds of the game physically damaging your comp... [read more]
Dev Journal
One of my pet peeves on games has to do with how long it takes to get the game loading. For Elemental Beta 1A (tomorrow) I’m working on adding /fastload as one of the command line parameters. This skips things like DirectX detection (only for people whose systems are already perfect with Elemental as it doesn’t print out the user’s hardware info in debug.err). It’s amazing how much “stuff” we have to load. That’s because even though we’re not displaying the “full game” during the ... [read more]