Hey Everyone! While we've been busy on all sorts of things (Betas, mostly), the seats in the office that once collected dust are starting to fill! We've added 3 new people to the team over the last 2 weeks... Kay Fedewa Kay is a local Michigan-bred Artist who's spent the last 2 years on the fantastic comic series The Blackblood Alliance . She enjoys playing Demigod as Sedna, and will be taking several of the art related tasks off my plate so I can...
Hey Everyone! Version 0.23 (aka 'The Beta1 Update') is now available on Impulse. We highly suggest those with major graphical errors on the main map give this a go. As for the major issues not listed as fixed... Saved Games: We're currently narrowing down the major issues with loading a saved game. These will be ironed out by next Thursday (Beta 1a). Crashs on Startup: This build won't do anything for people who can't get into the title screen. We have some leads on how the prob...
I really like writing journals for you guys, but I have a problem where, if I dont have time to construct something interesting (with videos or picts), I tend to focus on other tasks. This isn't a lazyman excuse, I jsut don't want to shortchange our fans. Anyways, I found Twitter to be a great in-between for anyone that wants to be kept in the loop but dosen't mind their info presented sans-excitement . This is the first week we have everyone back from the Demigod time-vortex, so ...
Welcome to the first of several 'Countdown' journals leading up to the release of Beta 0. While we don't have a firm date for the release (several folks need to recoup from weeks of Demigod all-nighters ), we still plan on getting Elemental's first playable form into your hands for June! Boogiebac (myself) holding a Resturaunt Meeting on City Resources After seeing the amazing starships made by players (and reviewers) in GC2's ship design...
Hey guys! Got a fancy new build coming your way tonight. The big fix we wanted to get out there was for the "white screen" that happened in tactical battles on certain setups (this should also fix memory issues those players may have encountered). We're testing this internally now and we'll let you know when its public. In the meantime, here's the changelong of various additions and bugfixes... 10:08pm - Just finish testing the major bullet points...giving it one last look over (a be tr...
As preorders are processed and new users begin downloading (and...gulp... playing ) Elemental, I wanted to extend words of both welcome and warning to our fellow adventurers.... - You are possibly (or definatly , at the time of this post) downloading the 0.291 build from last Friday. You should be on the lookout for v0.295, which we will be announcing one we get one last bug squashed - These are the last build of the Beta 1 cycle. This meens you'll be playing on the cloth map only, and ...
Of all the aspects of Elemental, none seem to strike a nerve quite like the handling of cities. Automation, size, uniqueness, too many in the world or too few...everyone has their take on how cities should feel. I believe, above all else, the worlds and nations of Elemental need to grow in a manner parallel to how RPS maps feel...in other words, elimination city spam without eliminating the joys of city building. To that end, we're doing something that (I believe) hasn 't been d...
So the next big beta is scheduled for this Thursday, where evenone on the beta group will get their first taste of several new features. One such feature (possible the biggest, from a gameplay standpoint) is in the implementation of the spellbook. You can now learn spells and, provided you have the mana and/or essence, cast them with a flick (click) of your wand (left mouse button). One of the suprising things we found this Friday, during our end-of-the-week powwow, is that the clo...
Remember Christmas-time back in grade school? You'd wrap up your assignments, have some parties, then go home for TWO STRAIGHT WEEKS of toys and relaxation? Well, because of the way things fell this year, the staff at Stardock was also granted the gift of 14 days of off-time over the holidays. It's been great, and while visions of Elemental still dance in our heads (I have some new ideas about population growth for next Monday) we're all thoroughly enjoying the time away from our desks. &nb...
As of now, the Cities in Elemental are traditional TBS fare. You build them up, train units, harvest resources and give the AI key locations on which to focus their invasions. Building improvements on the map is kinda unique, but in general it's currently what you'd expect from settlements in any Turn-Based Strategy title. To you they are production centers...to your neighbors they're obstacles. I'd like to improve the TBS city experience. Looking back, I don't really have any...
Wow, what a week. A task that I had assumed would take 1.5 days ended up sucking up around 32 hours. While my lack of scheduling foresight sucks, the time was DEFIANTLY worth it to have this vital feature done right... In previous builds, all unit stat handling was done with a basic array of stats. There was a hard-coded list of what could and could not be stored in it (Strength, Defense, and HP to name a few). It worked, but with several new stats in the pipeline (Magic...
Before Elemental, most of us worked on a little title called Galactic Civilizations 2. In this game, you would do spend a significant amount of time conversing with AI players. They would plead, threaten, and barter with you in as intelligent a fashion as we could muster, with much of that 'intelligent' feeling coming from the PAGES of conversation text written. Based on everything from relations to military might, the AI would pop up with dynamic dialog that changes based on gameplay...
With Fallen Enchantress cooling the sting that was 'War of Magic', I'd like to look back on one of the things I enjoyed most from the original Elemental: the 'retro' intros made for the beta builds (you can still see these videos here and here ). They only took half a day to produce, but got a great fan reaction (there were even major news outlets that posted about them). We had discussed doing something similar for FE, but deemed them far...
Ages ago (or, at least, what FEELS like ages ago) when we were nailing down the art style for Elemental, one of the key factors was creating a world where the cutscenes weren't in glaring opposition to the in-game graphics. This was around the same time that Fable 2 was released, where a beautiful pre-rendered intro felt (IMHO) fairly out of place in comparison to the mid-game cutscenes (which were beautiful in their own right). It was that realization - that paintings brought to life...
One of the 3 main design pillars being tackled for Fallen Enchantress is 'The World'. Wildlands, randomly generated maps, more quests/lairs/resources/creatures...we've taken all the feedback from WoM to ensure FE delivers with some really engaging worlds. When you start a new game, half the fun will be simply exploring the land! On the visual side, a simple piece of technology that we'll be utilizing to make the world feel more magical is the old-school trick of 'atmospher...