Journals
Dev Journal
One of the challenges in making Elemental has been to create a game with a very distinctive look. A lot of land-based strategy games tend to look pretty similar to one another. What we want with Elemental is an art style that someone will instantly be able to identify with this particular game. To that end, we have developed an art-style that is kind of a water-color look. One of our challenges is that we want players to be able to zoom in on units as closely as... [read more]
Dev Journal
Our story so far... In Elemental there is no such thing as a knight or a wizard or an archer. Instead, players design their own units. If you wanted to call a unit a knight, you might take a man, equip him with some armor, give him a helmet, arm him with a sword, and pair him up with a horse. The armor, helmets, swords, etc. are things you manufacture and thus have some control over how they look. Normally, customizing an individual unit falls only in the realm of role play... [read more]
Dev Journal
Are you a human? Are you SURE?
One of the first things we're going to be beta testing for Elemental is a new way of doing computer AI. As some of you know, the main reason I got into development in the first place was to write computer AI for games. Elemental is an opportunity to try some new things. For example, the initial betas of Elemental are going to require the user to be on the Internet to play. The reason is that the computer AI won't be inside the game itself but instead be implemented as AI play... [read more]
News
Elemental Preview from Examiner.com
Examiner.com’s “Game Examiner” takes a look at Stardock’s Elemental: War of Magic, and gives his take on Elemental. A quick excerpt: “Stardock has already conquered the world of space with their strategy hit Galactic Civilizations, and now it looks like they are setting their sights on the realm of magic. Elemental: War of Magic is a turn-based strategy game set within a magical realm where players can duke it out with both armies and magical spells, so... [read more]
Dev Journal
Unlimited expansion by us and the players
Some of the concepts we're talking about will be hard to envision without actually having the game but one of the real innovations we're trying to introduce with Elemental is the concept of unlimited expansion. The key to this is not hard coding civilization capabilities but rather leaving them open-ended. So let me start at the beginning: When someone first gets into Elemental, the relationships will be simple between things. A player who wants to design a horse mounted knight wi... [read more]
Dev Journal
Things are moving forward quickly. Seeing a drake, in battle, up close and personal is really cool. One thing that I believe is going to make a huge gulf between Elemental and what we've seen before is that Elemental is a 4X strategy game designed and engineered in an age where decent 3D acceleration is the norm which means we can do a lot of cool stuff in terms of UI, game mechanics, and game play. In the meantime, here are some new medallions: ... [read more]
News
Game-addicts.com on Elemental: War of Magic
Game-addicts.com posted the Elemental: War of Magic announcement news, and also gave their impressions of it. “Since no man is an island, Elemental: War of Magic also does feature multiplayer modes which comprise of traditional skirmish modes and a persistent universe mode (I wonder what that means). The flexibility of submitting your own maps, items, creatures, races, technologies, spells, buildings, environments and much more from right within the game makes the game it... [read more]