Journals
Dev Journal
AI Test: December 1 – running blog…
Developer Journal on new AI capabilities for Elemental: War of Magic v1.1 World Difficulty: Normal Map: Tiny All players (10 opponents) have “normal” intelligence instead of Pariden Goal: Elimination of all AI players as quickly as possible. I just find that funny. If you guys see anything wrong with the strategy I employ, let me know. Early Game: Build town, recruited a couple NPCs, sent sovereign out to gather goodies. Observation: Need more... [read more]
Dev Journal
Highlights of AI work in pictures
I’ve spent the better part of last week working on the Elemental AI. Without going into too much detail, here are some notes of what has been done and what needs to be done still. Starting out playing as Relias for the Altar. One of the things I noticed when I was playing was that after awhile, the monsters become simply fodder for experience and gold. The low level ones just don’t keep up. So I made it so that intellig... [read more]
Dev Journal
As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I don’t like game design. I like to mod other people’s games much more. That’s what got me into game development in the first place, the love of modding or taking other people’s concepts in a different direction. It’s probably one of the reasons I enjoy debugging so much (and hence, multithreading is so fun for me to work on). One of the areas I desperately want to improve the computer players on has to do with spell casting. I... [read more]
Dev Journal
On behalf of Stardock, I’d like to wish the entire Elemental community a Happy Thanksgiving! We’re very thankful to have you as participants in this ongoing journey to creating the ultimate fantasy strategy game. Wherever you are today, our thoughts are with you. Have a great day! [read more]
Dev Journal
With Elemental: War of Magic v1.1 BETA now out, you can see the direction we’re heading with the game. Global mana has made a huge positive impact on game play and having your population being put to work (literally) not only provides a great game mechanic but connects the player to the game more closely. As you can imagine, such significant game play changes require a lot of new AI coding to make it effective. With Kael joining us to relieve me as the Producer on Elemental,... [read more]
Dev Journal
The following are the key new features of the 1.1 patch. It went into public beta on November 19th and will be released on December 14 th , 2010. Global Mana System - Instead of having mana per unit, mana is a player resource. Players must balance between using their mana to enchant their cities and units, summoning creatures, attacking their enemies, or saving up for powerful late game spells. New Spells - New spellbooks and spells have been ad... [read more]
Dev Journal
The 1.1 Spellbook Overhaul Cometh!
Since launch, one of the major complaints about Elemental: War of Magic was that the last bit of our title (the "Magic" part) was found to be...lacking (to put it gently). Global mana addresses areas of cheese, but without a significant overhaul to the Spellbooks and Spells you’re casting, that side of the game would still feel weak. We’ve taken the following steps to rectify this in 1.1.... 1. Spellbook Re-evaluation: There were several problems with the way spells have be... [read more]