Journals
Dev Journal
I’m a map junkie. I love making maps. I even bought a program called Campaign Cartographer years ago just to make maps. One of the features of Elemental is, not surprisingly, a map editor. But the map editor is also being designed so that you can export your creations so you can easily print them out and such. The map editor will let users build theri own mountain ranges, forests, swamps, you name it. Of course, it’s also useful that you will be able to t... [read more]
Dev Journal
As Elemental players know, I had been on Elemental since early this year. Then…Demigod was released and the online experience for that game has been a total cluster. So I had to “assign myself” to Demigod to figure out what the deal was and make sure it got fixed. In my view, too many moving parts. I’m not a huge fan of multiplayer-centric games in the first place. I’m particularly not a fan of peer to peer multiplayer-centric games on the PC because on the PC, unlike on the conso... [read more]
Dev Journal
Countdown to Beta Zero - Spells, Spells, and more Spells!
Welcome to the first of several 'Countdown' journals leading up to the release of Beta 0. While we don't have a firm date for the release (several folks need to recoup from weeks of Demigod all-nighters ), we still plan on getting Elemental's first playable form into your hands for June! Boogiebac (myself) holding a Resturaunt Meeting on City Resources After seeing the amazing starships made by players (and reviewers) in GC2's ship design... [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental: Modding & Single Player
While a lot of Stardock’s development team has been interfacing with Gas Powered Games to continue to improve Demigod, the Elemental team continues forward. Now a couple of things about Elemental that should be made clear: Elemental will be a single-player focused game. It will have multiplayer but most of the development time will be spent on single player. Elemental will have a story-based campaign. While Sins of a Solar Empire and Demigod do not have story-based ... [read more]
Dev Journal
Why does Elemental need a cool looking world?
We mentioned in a previous entry that Beta 0 of Elemental will be able to be played on a cloth map. Now to be clear, not all of the game elements will be able to be handled so abstractly. But enough will be that the basic game could be played on the cloth map. But some users have emailed me asking why even bother having the zoom in map? And the answer is that a game, in our opinion anyway, is greater than the sum of its parts. What we hope to make special about Ele... [read more]
Dev Journal
Tentative Elemental Development Schedule
For those of you who have been through the development of a Stardock developed or published game, much of this will be familiar. For those of you aren’t, welcome! Early next year we plan to release a new turn-based PC strategy game called Elemental . Our games typically have 3 betas and then a private “gamma” and then release. We use the beta to mean truly unfinished, not feature complete but playable (we also use the term “alpha” for truly unfinished but not playable be... [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental & Civilization 4
Those of you who know me and the GalCiv team (who are now all on Elemental) know we’re huuuuge Civilization IV fans. If you don’t have Civilization IV, I’m not saying you’re a bad person for not having it. But I’m not saying you’re not a bad person either. Though, wait until it shows up on Impulse next month before buying it if you haven’t already. Anyway, at GDC, Soren Johnson (designer of Civ IV), myself, and Paul “Mormegil” Boyer) had a long lunch together and talked about th... [read more]