Journals
Dev Journal
AI Wars Part 2: Building a better empire.
For you map makers out there, you’ll be happy to know that I have modified the code today so that if you set your map to NO objects that it will create no objects at all (before it used to still seed the basic set which is no longer needed in v1.1). This means I can make a really boring but --- explicitly controlled map. Screenshots of what’s going on Please excuse the ugly screenshots. I’m in the debugger. Turn 1: Everyone on my test map gets ... [read more]
Dev Journal
To best understand the AI of v1.1 one must first understand the nature of threads. In a normal game, the players all function in a single thread. There is a while loop in which various components of the game are given the opportunity to to do their part – draw something to the screen, look for player input, update the game state and of course, move the computer AI. In most games, including v1.0, the AI does all their work at the end of a turn. This is why in most games you hit th... [read more]
Dev Journal
We have been hard at work on the 1.1 patch. Today we built an internal alpha which went to our testers and they began reporting issues, bugs, etc. Our feature list isn't completely implemented yet, there are still a few things to checkin but I expect that they will be all in by Monday. The team has been told to focus on bug fixes and polish between now and next Thursday (11/18/2010) which we are targeting as the date for the release of the public 1.1 beta.  ... [read more]
Dev Journal
The Design a Spell contest was launched today. I'm excited to see your ideas. I know a lot of people will want baselines to create within, after all its hard to design an implementable spell if you don't know exactly what can be done. But I encourage you to forget the technical limitations for the moment and just design spells that you would love to play with. Sure it means that some great ideas might not make it to the final 5 because they aren't pr... [read more]
News
Elemental “Design a Spell” Contest!
We are excited to announce a new contest for Elemental: War of Magic! The “Design a Spell” contest gives you the player the chance to have a spell included in an upcoming update, and a chance to win some really cool prizes like an ATI video card! Submit your own spell and the top 5 chosen by the contest moderators will be posted and the community will vote on a winner. First Place: ATI Radeon™ HD 5850 1GB graphics card AND have your spell implemented into Elemental: War... [read more]
Dev Journal
Fixing the Zone of Control (Influence)
The Zone of control (ZOC) code has always been a bit odd since it was written for GalCiv2, with weird little bubbles, twists, etc. But it mostly worked in GC2, and I didn't have time to give it a lot of love when porting it to the new engine. The code to update the ZOC is also fairly inefficient, which is why it only updates at the end of a turn. The ZOC expands based on the influence of the city and the player's influence ability. It works by specifying a source, which has a power and a ... [read more]
Dev Journal
The longest part of my day is waking up to early to head into the Stardock office. I'm anxious to get back to work. What a great job. I spent yesterday helping to make the spells more exciting, but so far my focus has been on process. We will create a consistent design, we will document that design, we will march toward implementing that design. Flexibility is important in creating games, if something isn't working it has to go, but we... [read more]