Journals
Dev Journal
Elemental: Thoughts on multiplayer
The Elemental alpha continues to move forward now that the team is back on it full time. The first alpha that any users will see will look a bit like this screenshot. It's the game's cloth map (the strategic zoom mode). The idea for the alpha builds will be to nail down some of the basic game mechanics. Elemental is primarily a single player game. However, our intention is for the first public alpha to have Internet multiplayer in it. This may seem odd but we are thinki... [read more]
Dev Journal
I really like writing journals for you guys, but I have a problem where, if I dont have time to construct something interesting (with videos or picts), I tend to focus on other tasks. This isn't a lazyman excuse, I jsut don't want to shortchange our fans. Anyways, I found Twitter to be a great in-between for anyone that wants to be kept in the loop but dosen't mind their info presented sans-excitement . This is the first week we have everyone back from the Demigod time-vortex, so ... [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental – polishing for Alpha 0
So much going on this week and at the same time, so little. A lot of vacations here at Stardock pop up in June since this is one of the prime months here in terms of weather. On a sad note, Trent (Mittens) had his last day today. He’s off to Salt Lake City to take a position as a designer at a new game studio. We’ll miss him. Combined with the people on vacation, the studio area feels like a ghost town. My executive planner and marketing manager gave me a “CEO ma... [read more]
Dev Journal
As some of you know, the Elemental Beta 0 got nixed due to us needing to throw developers onto Demigod to help GPG and Raknet with the online experience. The team is starting to migrate back and we’re all glad to be back on Elemental but we did lose some time. But we are still pushing to have an Alpha build on June 25th to give out. It’ll be cloth map only (so what you see in the above screenshot won’t be in the alpha series and the betas will look a lot better than what... [read more]
Dev Journal
As some of you know, we had to assign quite a few members of the Elemental team to help with Demigod after it was released. Most of them are back on Elemental but a couple of our developers are still attached to Demigod to refine the multiplayer system in that game. It’s been particularly challenging since initially there was virtually no “Stardock code” involved and now it’s thousands of lines. So we have definitely “gotten involved”. The good news is that it will likel... [read more]
Dev Journal
A strategy game that is also a world
When people think of 3D hardware and its benefits, they usually think of first person shooters and RPGs. But ever since Galactic Civilizations, Supreme Commander and Sins of a Solar Empire started popularizing strategic zoom the possibilities have really opened up that 3D acceleration, now mainstream, let us do a lot of amazing things. In Black & White, players could zoom out to see the world or zoom in to see individual villagers living their lives. It gave us... [read more]