Journals
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Looking for Elemental: War of Magic Avatars?
Well look no further. Community members Spartan, Luckmann, and landisaurus have taken some time and created some very cool looking avatars with resources from Elemental: War of Magic. You can use these as your forum avatar on the Elemental forums, or other forums as well. There are a bunch of choices, and we thank them for taking the time to put them together for the community. Check out their post which has all the avatars . [read more]
Dev Journal
Excerpt from "Guardians of the Telenanth" Appendix B: Draginol & The Morning Star Kona the Dread Lord had fashioned his empire on the premise that he was the supreme power of the world. Central to his power was the orb of dominion, a tool that he had conceived and helped wrought with the aid of his brothers. Of the nearly 100 Dread Lords in the beginning, only 20 remained – the 20 mightiest. They were aided by thousands of fledgling Arnor who had turned on their ow... [read more]
Dev Journal
Excerpt from "Guardians of the Telenanth" Appendix D: The Tragedy of Draginol & The Arnor Draginol the Mithrilar was not wholly ruined in the beginning. Unlike the other 4 Mithrilar, Draginol was not created in the beginning. He was once mortal and like all mortal men, he sensed the passage of time which, ultimately, would be his undoing. Where Draginol came from and who he was is covered elsewhere. What is relevant is that for a long while, he found himself alone. T... [read more]
Dev Journal
When looking at the graphics in Elemental as we show them, there are two things to remember: 1. We're over a year away from release so we're talking very preliminary artwork. 2. It's a strategy game not an RPG so the units aren't going to have the kinds of detail that an RPG has because we have to display thousands and thousands of these units on screen. So the other day we discussed how equipment being added to your units would work with the Intel Havok physics engine. The idea... [read more]
Dev Journal
Concept: Understanding unit production
In Elemental, you design your own units. Give them whatever name you want to give them, equipment them with weapons, armor, helmets along with deciding how much training they need. Creating a soldier or a scout or a knight or what have you boils down to how long it takes you to have the equipment on hand and training which is raw time. There is still "quick build" but that simply, at a cost, gets supplies to that town a lot quicker. It's like having your... [read more]
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]