Journals
Dev Journal
Elemental Mod example requests
Comment here on what sorts of mods you’d like me to make to serve as examples to work from. Be aware that in Elemental v1.1 that the magic system is moving away from personal mana to a global mana pool (much funner, more balanced) so you will likely want to keep mods focused on things that can be easily modified by that change. Anyway, if you’re interested, put in your requests here and I’ll start on these this next week and start posting source to the mods. [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental – a busy Friday
I hate leaving all this for the end of the week, especially when it’s good news stuff and our community could certainly use some of that. So here’s what’s going on! Elemental: Arena As some of you know, we put off v1.08 until next week since we wanted more time for QA. See, we can be taught. But we went ahead and put up the Arena page so you can see some of the features that multiplayer in Elemental will be providing. The changes made to the single player game (data and fi... [read more]
Dev Journal
Making use of a lesson learned
I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that we’re going to have to delay v1.08 for a few days. The internal QA deadline for the test build was this morning and unfortunately it needed a few more hours before being submitted. Rather than even remotely risk something that is going to cause pain (for our players and us) I’m just pushing it until the next QA slot which is next Tuesday. The good news is that it means that there will be substantially more game play improvements in v... [read more]
Dev Journal
Sharing Elemental Mods via Impulse::Reactor part 1
We’re seeing a lot of really cool maps being submitted into the gallery. We’re going to loosen up a bit on moderation so that we can get your maps up to the public a lot quicker. I’ve also put in a request in to support mod maps in custom games so that a group of friends can create their own maps and then play on them. It won’t be in v1.08 but we’re hoping to get it before too long. One of the challenges in moderating the mods is the handling of the more complex mods – tiles,... [read more]
News
BigDownload Review of Elemental
BigDownload has posted their review of Elemental: War of Magic, and have given it a “Must Own” rating! “Elemental is, as we have said, the best game Stardock has made so far. It really is a wonderful title, and despite some incredibly poor design decisions, it stands out in a tired genre. Post-launch support aims to elevate the game beyond the relatively simple status it is at now, and we welcome it with open arms. It's worth noting that this is the first time we've found ourselves sit... [read more]
Dev Journal
Hope everyone had a good labor day. This week we’re working on Elemental v1.08 which we expect out late this week. Amongst the highlights: Multiplayer turned on Weapons balance pass More performance optimizations Bug fixes City Manager screen (maybe in for v1.08) AI updates Also, those who have purchased the book, Elemental: Destiny's Embers , will begin being able to download some of the extra content Random House has sponsored. A lot of the int... [read more]
Dev Journal
One of my favorite shows on TV is Avatar, the last airbender (not to be confused with the recent movie). One of my long term goals with the AI is to be able to have the AI in tactical battles be able to give the kinds of battles back and forth with players (as well as eventually in MP as well) that I see on that show. Of course, such an AI will take probably years to reach that level but we have the luxury of doing that sort of thing (like with GalCiv before it). The engine ... [read more]