One of the things people like about our office is the hallway-long whiteboard wall that the games team uses for a variety of purposes. Right now there are several to-do lists for 1.1 and beyond, a rundown of sales for our various titles, and a HUGE ‘wish list’ of Elemental features/tweaks players and press have requested. In fact, we’ve switched from writing the suggestions down and now simply print out feedback lists and tape them to the wall. My request today is in a simil...
Hey Everyone, Tonight you’ll be able to update to v1.09E of Elemental. There are several bugfixes and tweaks in it, but the major change is the shift to a public Multiplayer build. If you’ve been playing the ‘release candidate’ MP builds, we suggest turning off ‘Show Pre-Release’ versions for anyone that has it selected that ONLY wants the official updates). After 1.09E we’ll be shifting all our energies onto v1.1, where you’ll start to see t...
Hey everyone, So v1.09 went live, and one of the big modding-side improvements is in the official addition of a 'my games/elemental/Mods' folder! The game will now properly read data from 'Mods/Data' and graphics and models from 'Mods/GFX'. For anyone using Mods that have required data or graphics to be placed in the core game directories, I highly suggest moving these out into this new folder, otherwise Elemental may attempt to rebuild the Data.zip file, resulting in a nice, lo...
Greetings! For those who didn’t know (and I don’t know if anyone cares) I’ve actually been out for the last two weeks, ‘expanding my dynasty’, so to speak (baby #2). It was a nice dose of reality coming off a pretty rough month - but you guys have been around the forums, so I wont churn that bucket of woes. Instead, I’d like to take a fresh look at where we stand right now. While my time away didn’t provide the rest I would have liked, it did get m...
More of a maintenance update than anything, Elemental v1.07 focuses on the performance issues seen by both high and low end users. There are more improvements to come as code is continually improved and tile-designs are streamlined, but this update should bring a healthy FPS boost to all. And, if your frames per second remain under-par, new options will give you additional wiggle-room. That's not to say gameplay dosen't get some update love...resources no longer use up city tiles, ...
Well, here it is - our list of feedback as compiled from several review sites, this forum, other forums, and our own Q/A team. There are a few more sites I need to pick apart, but in general I feel this covers many of the egregious issues (but feel free to note anything we’ve overlooked...we want to be as thorough as possible). The ‘Major Issues’ are the ones you’ll be seeing fixed ASAP. Ideas/suggestions will be re-prioritized and completed as proper solutions are ...
So launch week has come and gone. It’s certainly been...exciting? Anxiety producing? Wonderful? Crazy exausting? All the above? Brad is currently taking some much deserved time off with his family, and, with v1.06 out the door, the team is about to do the same. We’ll be back Monday, but before then, I wanted to bring everyone up to speed on what we’re working on.... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. The M...
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...