[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2609676353/Dev+Journal+3+The+Great+String+System+Overhaul[/confluence]
Let’s start with where things currently stand at Stardock in our remastering and reimagining of Elemental.
We have ported the underlying engine and code base to 64-bit.
We have upgraded the graphics engine to DirectX 11.
We have brought over the Dynasty system from War of Magic (yes, this game had full on families, dynasties, and magical breeding).
We have brought over the crafting system and global inventory from Sorcerer King.
We have reexported the original textures at much higher resolutions.
We have updated the shaders so the terrain will look a lot better.
Here are some in-progress examples:
There is a lot of work ahead and the size of the team we get is based on a simple formula: Wishlists x $10. So for instance, if we get 50,000 wishlists, we get $500,000 to work with. In the first 48 hours, we got 7,000 wishlists, which is pretty good. That’s $70,000 added to our budget. You can see how spreading the word on the game will be extremely helpful to us.
We’ve left a number of these slots open so that the community can contribute to this list and we’ll add to it over time to keep the community informed on where things stand.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the things we are already working on.
The graphics of this game weren’t great in 2010. Time hasn’t improved them. When we made the original game, we were in a constant conflict on visual style vs. memory cost vs. time to figure it out. We ultimately ran out of time and ended up with a visual look we didn’t love. It was, however, distinct.
We have already done the hardest part: Move the engine to 64-bit and DirectX 11.
The next hardest bit is to port our assets to FBX so that we can work with them in modern tools. Our character models were extremely low resolution and even updating the visuals, where we could mess with the textures, is challenging if you can’t work with it in a modern app. Games have changed a great deal, but the tools used to make them have changed even more.
The original game was not just English only, but it was hard coded in absolutely insane ways. The actual data had the strings in them.
Has to become. . .
so that we can localize the text in string tables into other languages. This is a big and unsexy task, but it is a prerequisite. We plan to support English, German, Russian, Chinese, French, Italian, and Spanish for starters and would like to make it easy to add additional languages if needed.
Elemental was designed for modding, but it was not good at mod management. I had a ton of mods I personally made for the game that got wiped out in a later update and it was pretty annoying. I can’t even imagine how annoying it was to others.
This time, we’re modernizing mod management via Steam Workshop and it will be handled in such a way that an update to the game can’t blow away mods. Or I should say, it better work that way.
So what kinds of mods would we expect?
Maps (the game has a powerful map editor built in)
Quests
Items
Tiles
City Improvements
Locations
Units
Campaigns
The original design for the game envisioned players being able to share (via Impulse) “modules” with full adventures to the whole community. Not to mention letting modders create their own lore and even full redesigns.
Now, how much we can do with this depends, again, on wishlists. We will keep people up to date on where we are.
As the wishlist count grows, more features can be evaluated for inclusion. Please talk to the other gamers you know who remember these games fondly and find others who will enjoy them anew. Tell us what you’d like to see. Stay tuned!
If you could list 3, and only 3 things you absolutely want in Reforged, what would they be?
We aren't in love with this UI for the character creation screen. And yet we also don't want the character to be too big (the preview) because the 3D model wasn't designed to be looked at too closely.
This is a catch all thread for discussing what's happening in Elemental this Summer.
The team is working on localizing the game to other languages, the new UI, an FBX exporter, and getting the features from War of Magic, Fallen Enchantress and Sorcerer King in as well as planning out the features that were part of the original game design put in.
So much of what we do is based on AI help.
Hard to believe this trailer only cost $5.2 million!
In 2008, right after we released Galactic Civilizations II and Sins of a Solar Empire, we at Stardock felt pretty good about ourselves. We had assembled an amazing team of people that could make amazing games and we thought there was nothing we couldn’t do. Hubris attracts Nemesis.
With space conquered, we set our eyes on making Fantasy Civilizations. It would be half Master of Magic and half what we had learned from making Sins and GalCiv. The game would be called Elemental and it would be the ultimate 4X fantasy strategy game.
We dreamed big, envisioning a game packed with depth and nuance, an expansive fantasy world filled with intriguing characters, a rich lore, and quests weaving through every corner of the map. It would combine civilization-building with deep RPG elements, unique units each carrying their own backstories and stats, and a world players could truly shape through terraforming, magical dynasties, crafting, and more.
We wanted it all, from dynasty systems where heroes could marry, have children, and pass down traits visually and statistically, to intricate city building, powerful spells, extensive tactical combat, and robust modding tools backed by a built-in social platform for sharing creations. Heck, we even had a companion book from Random House exploring the lore. The vision was ambitious and we were excited.
But there was one hitch. We designed Elemental to fit within the constraints of a 32-bit engine that had access to only 2GB of memory. As it turns out, trying to stuff a universe of possibilities into just 2GB is, well... challenging. We built, what we thought, was a sophisticated memory manager to deal with it, but we would still get random crashes even though we were keeping the total memory allocation well below 2GB.
We trimmed, cut, streamlined, and reshaped, trying desperately to fit this vast universe into a smaller memory footprint. When Elemental: War of Magic was released in 2010, it was chaos. It was heartbreaking. It simply didn’t deliver on our dream. It very unstable and we had spent so much time trying to work around the memory issues that the game we released lacked the refinement that our players expected.
Undaunted, we learned, iterated, and adapted. Two years later, Elemental: Fallen Enchantress emerged—a refined, streamlined take that kept much of the strategic depth and advanced AI, delivering on many of our original promises. We gave it away, free, to everyone who bought War of Magic.
Fallen Enchantress became highly regarded among strategy fans, praised for its intelligent gameplay, engaging mechanics, and innovative features, like the ability to zoom from a richly detailed living world to an elegant, strategic cloth map — an innovation widely adopted across the genre since.
A few years later, we delved into other aspects of our original vision with Elemental: Sorcerer King. This iteration emphasized a robust crafting system and compelling quest mechanics, finding its own niche audience despite stepping away from heavy strategic depth. This wasn’t a 4X strategy game, but instead was a crafting/adventure game. Player vs. World. It was fun, but not what players expected.
Yet, Elemental remained fragmented. We had 3 different games that emphasized different aspects of the original design.
War of Magic focused on the player using magic to shape a world.
Fallen Enchantress focused on leading a fantasy civilization.
Sorcerer King focused on questing and crafting.
But none of them fully realized what Elemental was supposed to be.
…Time
Passed…
Stardock grew. We eent on to make and publish other games. We started other studios with our friends like Mohawk Games (Offworld Trading Company, Old World) and Oxide (Ashes of the Singularity, Ara: History Untold), but the team didn’t forget about Elemental. We thought about it every day, even 15 years later.
Remarkably, most of the people who worked on Elemental are still at Stardock and scheduling has worked out so that we have the opportunity to bring them all back onto a single project.
In a normal company, what we’re doing is insane. Every person who was on Elemental back in 2008 is in a lead role now. You would have one of them on a given project, not all of them on one game, but we want to do Elemental justice.
And so here we are. We have remastered the original engine to be natively 64-bit. We’ve updated the graphics engine to DirectX 11.
We’re rewriting a lot of code to bring all the pieces into a single game. The terraforming and Royal Dynasties from War of Magic, the deep unit design and Civ building from Fallen Enchantress and the crafting and quest system from Sorcerer King.
And to be sure, this will be a fantasy 4X strategy game. Elemental was never intended “everything to everyone”. It’s a fantasy civilization game in an RPG world.
So here we are, 15 years later. We’ve been working on this for a long time and we’re excited to share with you the progress we’ve made.
This is what Elemental is:
A vast, procedurally generated fantasy world where every game feels fresh and distinct.
RPG-level depth where every unit has a unique story, stats, and place in your kingdom.
A sophisticated dynasty system originally dreamed up for War of Magic, allowing your characters to marry, produce heirs, and inherit traits dynamically.
Rich terraforming mechanics to shape the land itself according to your strategic vision.
Enhanced crafting and quests inspired by Sorcerer King, ensuring deep immersion and story-driven gameplay.
Tactical combat that's engaging, strategic, and now powered by an advanced AI that makes auto-resolve battles both practical and satisfying.
A beautifully redesigned UI optimized for modern displays, razor-sharp at any resolution, fully leveraging today’s PCs.
Integrated modding tools more robust and user-friendly than ever, empowering our incredible community to expand and personalize the world.
An immersive story-driven campaign rich with lore and meaningful decisions that shape your civilization’s destiny.
Now, we can’t fully hide the fact that this was a game originally made 15 years ago. The art assets were made with tools made by companies that don’t even exist anymore. But the gameplay is quite unlike anything else out there.
Elemental: Reforged is our love letter to you—our fans who've kept the dream alive. We can’t wait for you to finally experience Elemental as it was always meant to be.
Thank you for joining us on this incredible journey. It’s going to be epic.
— Brad Wardell, Lead Designer and CEO, Stardock Entertainment
Our story so far
If you’re reading this, you probably enjoy historical strategy games—I certainly do. Several years ago, my company, Stardock, recruited talented individuals from Firaxis and other studios, establishing two new companies; Mohawk Games and Oxide Games. We split key leadership from Sid Meier’s Civilization IV and V across both studios.
For a while, my day job involved running these companies alongside Stardock. For their first titles Oxide and Mohawk intentionally avoided historical strategy games to explore new directions. Oxide developed Ashes of the Singularity and Mohawk created Offworld Trading Company. Having brought over Jon Shafer (Civilization V) and Soren Johnson (Civilization IV) to Stardock, with Soren leading Mohawk, we chose not to tempt fate by immediately producing another historical title. However, both studios were eager to dive into historical strategy projects.
Eventually, running two studios became complicated when early builds of Old World (Mohawk) and Ara: History Untold (Oxide) appeared simultaneously in the same office space. My day typically began reviewing Ara, then I'd walk over to discuss and play Old World with Soren. To avoid any conflict of interest or perception of favoritism, I knew it was time to step back from directly managing both studios.
4X games in development
While Ara and Old World were in development, I was back at Stardock overseeing Sins of a Solar Empire II, Galactic Civilizations, and a (sadly) canceled historical strategy/simulation game. Occasionally, I'd check on Ara and Old World to see their progress.
Old World released first, blending elements of Crusader Kings and Civilization beautifully - it remains a fantastic game. Ara, meanwhile, was still under development, aiming to offer a fresh take on historical turn-based strategy. Creating a 1.0 version of any game is challenging. Every developer knows how hard it is to "finish" a game, with new ideas always tempting further exploration. Ara was full of intriguing concepts but hadn’t yet come together as a commercial game.
By early 2024, Microsoft and Oxide asked me to step in and help complete Ara. The game had impressive foundational elements and enormous potential but needed significant refocusing. Initially, Ara functioned more as an intricate social simulation—each character was fully simulated, with detailed lives affecting immigration, health, diet, and culture. It was impressive, but not what players expect from a turn-based 4X strategy game. Meeting player expectations is critical. No matter how innovative, games must align with player desires.
So, together with colleagues from Stardock, Oxide, and our partners at Xbox Game Studios, we dove in and reshaped Ara into a fully realized, turn-based strategy game in just a few months. This rapid development pace had consequences. Even now, screenshots circulating online depict a game significantly different from the final release. While systems like supply chains, crafting, and the Living World excelled, areas like warfare, diplomacy, and micromanagement needed attention.
Despite these challenges, finishing Ara: History Untold was among the most rewarding experiences of my career. The integration between Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios, Oxide, and Stardock teams went beyond mere collaboration - it was seamless. Ultimately, Ara shipped to positive critical reviews and notably stable performance at launch - a rarity for modern games.
However, due to the late-stage gameplay refinements the game wasn’t ready to “show” its gameplay until just weeks before release, resulting in a quieter release. Nonetheless, Ara has cultivated a small but enthusiastic community of players.
The Path Forward
Historical strategy games uniquely benefit from ongoing development. The last game I designed, Galactic Civilizations II, still receives updates 20 years later. Stardock has a long-standing passion for supporting and nurturing gaming communities. Our cofounding of two dedicated strategy game studios demonstrates this commitment.
We continue to enjoy our great partnership with Microsoft. Collaborative brainstorming sessions between teams from Microsoft, Stardock, and Oxide have been incredibly fun, tackling everything from gameplay mechanics to visual improvements. With Ara’s future firmly rooted in direct community engagement and rapid iteration - something Stardock specializes in - it made sense to transition the day-to-day publishing responsibilities to Stardock.
What's next? Currently, we’re releasing v1.31, a minor maintenance update. Behind the scenes, substantial work on version 1.4 has been underway since January. This update addresses community priorities: Warfare enhancements, micromanagement improvements, AI refinements, and user experience upgrades. After 1.4, we’re targeting Ara’s first anniversary for version 2.0, essentially a comprehensive reimagining of the game. Version 2.0 will retain Ara’s strengths while fully realizing the vision of a turn-based 4X historical strategy game, aligning closely with the original goals before the game's development shifted toward a social simulation.
I look forward to sharing these updates and continuing this journey alongside our dedicated community.
Some screenshots of what's coming to v1.4:
Version 1.4 is going to introduce a new mode: Live Strategic Mode. This is where Living World elements like armies scale up as you zoom out to help players see what their units are doing and better visualize what they are doing.
Version 1.4 maps will have twice as many regions (at least) per map size as 1.3 does. This means more room to manuever and generally just more readable maps. The Earth map has been updated to support this.
Battles will be displayed on the map. You can still zoom in to get more detail but at a glance you'll see your armies battling it out. Battles, in general, are also going through a lot of iteration for v1.4.
Greater visual distinction between nations. Different nations units are somewhat unique looking. Here you can see Aztech units looking somewhat different from what you'd see from other units of the same class.
More details to come!
Just a quick head's up that we have Ashes of the Singularity 3.3 now in QA. We'll have more news on it shortly but it's a pretty massive balance update.
This UI was made by AI.
So was this:
We are not quite at the point where AI can make the actual WindowBlinds skins themselves. Certainly not in real time. But I think we are getting close to where skinners will be able to make skins much more easily.