This is going to be long. I beg for forgiveness up front.

So for those of you just tuning in, Elemental has just completed a marathon 8 month Beta 1 cycle. The purpose of which was to explore all kinds of new game mechanics and try different things out.  It went so well that in our next game, I’d like to bring the beta people in even earlier. 

For Beta 1, we stripped out the graphics engine forcing users to play on a “cloth map” interface. We went through considerable lengths to ensure that beta 1 was unpleasant to play.  The goal was to get people to think about what makes a good game rather than thinking about graphics or features per se.

From that marathon beta we got a incredible amount of feedback, online discussions, and lots of debates. We read them at length and they made us think about a lot of different things that we hadn’t thought of before.

So what was the impact? Below I’m going to walk you through the tangible differences to the game based on the betas and the beta tester debates.

The Camps

No one will ever agree on the single best way to make Elemental. No matter what we do, there will be dissatisified people. It’s inevitable because (and I consider this unfortunate) the gaming industry has reached a point where there is a severe lack of what we call “new IP”. That is, games that don’t include a roman numeral after the name. Worse, when we do get new games, they’re increasingly designed to work on both PC and consoles which means that their feature set has to work on the lowest common denominator.  As a result, Elemental has a lot of hopes behind it.

But we have to be careful. Anything designed to be all things to all people is doomed to failure. So with Elemental, we’ve had to really consider what the game is about and focus on that game.

Camp #1: The Settlers Camp

This is the camp I’m nominally from.  That’s where you mine resources which in turn get processed into one thing and then turned into another before being used as yet another. The economic system in Elemental was (early on) very much like this.  You mined metal. This metal was processed into metal bars which in turn were turned into weapons, armor, etc. Which in turn were shipped to where you wanted to build the unit.

This was one of the concepts that the beta program jetisoned. Not because it was a bad idea but because A) there is a “Settlers” game already and it would so overwhelm the rest of the game.

Camp #2: The Master of Magic Clone Camp

I am nominally part of this camp as well.  This camp’s input tended to be “Master of Magic had X” and that itself was enough to argue that Elemental should have it.  While Elemental is almost certainly the most similar game to MoM since MoM itself, it is, by no means, a clone of it.

Camp #3: The Fall from Heaven Camp

The popular Civ IV mod has lots of fans (myself included). There’s certainly plenty of items in Elemental that are similar to what is in Fall from Heaven since both ultimately are civilization style games.

Camp #4: The Panzer General /  Magic: Total War camp

This is the group that argued, quite correctly that with a subtitle “War of Magic” that it made sense to focus on the warfare elements of the game.

Camp #5: The SimFantasy camp

The term isn’t meant to be dismissive of those who would like a truly organic world.  At the one extreme, you have Elemental as a board game and at the other extreme you have Elemental as a fantasy world simulation.

5 Major changes from the beta group

So what are some of the big changes that occurred because of the massive beta?

In no particular order:

1. The Economic System was completely changed.  Early on, like Civilizaiton and countless other games, Elemental had resources stored at the city level rather than the “civilization” level. Beta testers successfully lobbied for a system that has turned out to be a lot more fun where resources go into a global pool but if a city gets put under siege, it is taken out of that global pool. This makes siege warfare meaningful while at the same time letting players focus on their Kingdom (or Empire) rather than dealing with a particular city. It has also, in play testing, helped eliminate two age old problems: City spamming and late game grinding.
2. A new technology system.  The tech tree system in Elemental was completely changed based on feedback.  This was largely due to the sense that Elemental’s system should be more about recovering lost techs than “discovering” the wheel.  This is a world where one researches an area and recovers a certain technology.  This has had a tremendously positive impact in making each game feel differently in our internal testing.
3. A better spell system. The old spell system is still in the screenshots. We were married to it but beta testers successfully made the case that spells should be learned through acquiring spell knowledge and then “purchasing” those spells. Since Magic is such a central part of the game, giving players the temptation to grab some weaker spell early (or go for the more powerful spell behind door number 2) was more compelling.
4. Tactical Battles. Tactical battles haven’t been part of the beta but they’ve been heavily discussed. Originally, tactical battles were designed to be RTS. Then Continuous turns.  But as time has gone on, it’s become clear that the gameplay that people (and frankly that we enjoyed the most) was more closest to XCom. That is, turn based. Tile based. Moving units to the best spots. And eventually working to have your units in spots that are easy to spot the enemy while they themselves are hard to find.
5. The role of NPCs. Early on, NPCs were just going to be recruitable fighters. But during the beta, it became clear that was far more interesting to give players the option to go out and find units that could help their kingdom economically versus being forced to build a city on turn 1.  Now, players have a realistic choice between city build up right away versus going out and trying to find some good allies right away. Both strategies have risks but now they’re both viable strategies.

Moving forward

With Beta 2 expected in the next couple weeks, we’ll have a pretty good idea whether release is going to be this Summer or next Winter. (Fall is “booked” at retail).  I personally believe that late Summer is still likely but we’ll see.  Beta 2 will give us a pretty good sense of where things stand.

The big questions in our minds will be the role of the NPCs in the world and the role of quests in the world.  Their inclusion are the most obvious “differentiators” for Elemental.  We’ll be balancing and enhancing those features for years to come. 

During the past couple weeks of heavy *playing* Elemental (as opposed to just coding) I’ve come to the conclusion that Elemental is very different than any strategy game I’ve played before.  It’s different in a very very good way. But that is going to be a challenge for “marketing”.

The Technical Game play Difference

In my view, Elemental is simply the natural evolution of PC strategy gaming IF PC games were being made explicitly for the PC still as opposed to cross platform.  Nearly every new title that comes out these days either is made to be cross platform (i.e. for consoles) or it’s using a licensed engine (that is cross platform).

Being a PC-exclusive game with a PC-exclusive engine means that we can assume that we have at least 1 gigabyte of memory to play with  (the Xbox 360 tops out at 512MB and it has to share that with video textures). 

So for this discussion, toss out the debates on the latest video cards versus what’s on a console and all that. Let’s consider the ramifications of having a gigabyte of memory to play with.  What does that mean in terms of GAME PLAY?

1. It means that I can have lots of unique looking units. This matters because the player, at a glance, can distinguish one unit from another.
2. It means I can upgrade units in game and have them visually look different. This matters again because, players need to be able to see that this unit is different from that unit without having to click on something.
3. It means you can have a much wider range of creatures in the game.  Think about that for a moment. Consider any recent games you’ve played. How many different types of creatures were there in it? Even in an RPG. How many?  Not many right? That’s because it requires a lot of memory to juggle lots of different creatures. 
4. It means you can have a lot of different types of buildings that are visually different.  How many times in recent years have you played an RPG and entered a building or dungeon that was identical in nearly every way to every other dungeon or Inn or whatever? Why was that? Were they lazy? Was it budget? No. That’s not the question. The question was, was that game ALSO available for a console? Yes. It was memory.

BTW, none of this should be considered console bashing. I love my Xbox 360. It’s wonderful for many types of games. But you could not make Elemental for it. Even if you had a $20 million budget you couldn’t make Elemental for the console. It’s not technically possible on the current generation of consoles. 

If I made a game that required a touch screen, that wouldn’t make the iPad a better gaming platform than the console or PC. It just means that particularly game really needed a touch screen.  Elemental requires a PC because of its inherent design. That might change some day but not right now.

The effect on strategy games

In every 4X game I’ve played, the start is pretty much the same. You start building cities/colonies/whatever, harvest resources, build stuff, then exterminate stuff to get more resources and repeat as you explore and expand out. (4X).

Elemental is a fantasy strategy game. In it, you’re in that D&D world you and your friends used to play in. You’re in the land of the Elder Scrolls. You’re playing in Britania, Middle Earth, etc.  But with ONE big difference: You’re not an adventurer anymore.  You’re the King (or queen).  Your attitude towards adventurers (who are IN Elemental btw) may change forever once you see them accidentally unleash a greater demon to rampage across the land.

Now, as a hook (the marketing guys love “hooks”), this is cool but it’s meaningless without players feeling like they’re playing in an RPG world. An RPG world is not simply generic strategy game X with magical units. It should feel like a fantasy RPG world.

At the start of Elemental, like the start of any great RPG (imo) it’s about YOU. Not some abstract kingdom but you are in the game. Beta testers know this.  What beta testers haven’t got to see yet is the importance of recruiting, especially early on, people (i.e. individuals) who have their own backgrounds and histories and most importantly, skills.

Similarly, players have quests they can go on, can get married, have children, arrange marriages, etc.  Now, in an RPG, this is not unheard of.  In Fable, my character got married, had children.  The difference here is that these children will grow up and be able to lead armies or go on adventures on their own.

NOT innovation, just the logical evolution of strategy games

Being able to have a rich fantasy kingdom (or empire) with interesting unique characters, armies, dragons, economics, diplomacy, quests, etc. isn’t some “new” idea. This is where PC strategy games were already heading to or would have if “cross platform” design hadn’t started coming into play.

Starting in Beta 2, beta testers will begin to help us mold the game towards its public release and then, over the next year, two, or three, let is continue to evolve as new concepts and ideas are considered.

Here’s how I use Fences. Each person may use it differently.  I still use a dock (not pictured here) but for my “main” stuff I keep it handy at the bottom.  Then I organize my stuff by throwing them into a Fence.  One of the killer features of Fences is that you can toss a ton of stuff in a Fence and it’ll get hidden. Look closely at the “To Sort later…”. If I mouse over the Fence, a scrollbar appears.

Double click and voila. Clean desktop.

Fences Pro automates the organization of your desktop.

https://www.stardock.com/products/fences

Lots going on this week.  I’m scheduled to fly out on Monday on a media tour to start showing off Elemental in preparation for its anticipated release date late Summer.

Here are some of the things being worked on in preparation for beta 2.

1. Memory use.  We’re consolidating our mapping of how every byte of memory is used in the game. 
2. Performance. We’re setting things up so that we can begin handing over builds to the full QA lab for compatibility testing.  Will the game work on a Netbook? Does the game scale up on the latest/greatest ATI/nVidia cards?
3. Stability. What are the problem areas? They’re almost always due to something not releasing a pointer or not checking the validity of an object. But the text matrices have to be made and handed over to QA.
4. Balance. Yes. Beta 2 begins the phase where it’s supposed to be “a game”.  The AI won’t be very strong in beta 2 since that’s the area I’m responsible for and I have only recently begun coding it. But it should be much further along than in beta 1.
5. Asset integration. This is where we start plugging in screens, units, and other features that were unit tested but not in the main code branch (i.e. they weren’t in “the game” per se). There are still features that won’t be in beta 2 (most notably tactical battles) but things will seem night and day different than beta 1.
6. Sound Sound Sound. A lot of time has been put into getting the sound effects and musical score elements into the game.
7. Map Editor / Campaign. The two are tied closely together. It is our intention to make the campaign in such a way that a modder could create their own campaigns and share with the community. So we’re having to make sure we’re not hard coding things into our campaign.

I’m going to write more about this shortly but having had my iPad for about 3 weeks I have to say that the iPad and other devices like it are going to murder large sections of the Windows based market.

If you use Windows a lot, then you should have WindowBlinds 7. The big new feature in WindowBlinds 7 (imo) is the ability to skin “aero” *(the default skin in Windows Vista and Windows 7). 

While there are thousands of WindowBlinds skins that can drastically change the UI, I am finding myself gravitating towards these Aero skins because they’re so subtle and because they conform to the standard Windows GUI sizes, I can program and such knowing that the funky tools I use won’t care about my customization.

Screenshots of this one texture in action:

Other skins:

To get WindowBlinds 7, go to www.windowblinds.net.

Greetings!

GPG has submitted to us version 1.3 of Demigod for testing. It addresses a whole bunch of outstanding issues that have been reported.

GPG has intimated to us that v1.3 is the beginning of a new series of free updates to Demigod.  I will have more details next week as it goes through QA.

If Stardock were a real company, a guy like me wouldn’t be allowed to put up dirty laundry like I’m about to put up.

For those of you who know me, I’m a bean counter.  It’s probably why I love strategy games so much because tactics are for amateurs, logistics is for experts.

So one of my ongoing angst with the Elemental budget overall is just how large a percentage of the budget thus far has gone into “modder tools”.

Don’t get me wrong, I love modding. But in my day, modding meant opening up LUA or Python scripts or creating your own “stuff” using tools like After Effects or Maya or 3D Studio. THAT is modding.

Now, I have seen and known about the Workshop tools in Elemental for a long time. I’ve discussed them. The Map Editor I understand. Being able to make maps is important for modding. The tile designer is important too for people who want to create their own custom environments.   However, the particle editor I didn’t “get” and I had, on more than one occasion, brought up the $$$ spent on building it.

Well, on Friday I finally got to see why it’s there and what it does.  The internal build on Friday added in the spell effects (i.e. when you revive land or cast fireballs or whatever).  I had assumed that each spell effect was being created in Maya and exported to be used.  I was shocked to learn that no, all of the spell effects were made with the built in effect editor. 

The spell that really shocked me was whirlwind.  In the game, we’re in a battle and there’s lots of units fighting it out when they show me the Sovereign casting whirlwind on a group of units. A tornado shows up and wreaks havoc.  My first inclination was “Great job! That looks great” and wondered what they used in Maya to do that.  That’s when I learned that no, none of the spell effects were made in Maya. They were all done with the built in effects editor – in less than 5 minutes. That’s why it cost so much to make. It allows for crazy amounts of spells to be made and visually implemented by us and modders alike.

What’s really sad, and this is the really embarassing part, when I’ve demoed Elemental to the media and showed them the workshop, I didn’t show the effects editor because I didn’t think it was a big deal.  Turns out, it’s a very big deal.

In another couple months, you guys will be able to play around with this too. I can only imagine the kinds of crazy stuff people will make and share with this.

I didn't want to make a journal entry on this but would rather talk directly to you guys on what we have in mind.

We don't like that players have to use so much essence to build up cities right now.

Instead, the plan is to require essence to still revive land but the land will spread out more quickly (it'll become more apparent why in the full 3D engine).  So while you will still need to spend essence if you want to spread across large swaths of the map, you won't need to use it to build a city 8 tiles away. Instead, cities will cost 100 materials to build -- a big sacrifice at the start of the game but not a big deal later.

We don't want to gimp essence too much because you'll need that essence to imbue your heroes and start casting some cool spells.