Starting next week we will begin exploring the world of Elemental in the Journals section!
Players of Elemental: War of Magic will begin getting the full background of the lore of the game.
The Fallen are made up of many different races and creatures. Some of these creatures are sentient (or semi-sentient). Some are mindless and others, while lacking sentience have a cunning that makes them lethal.
This is by no means a complete list of Fallen creatures.
![image[3]](https://draginol.stardock.net/images2009/CreaturesofElementalHordesoftheFallen_F856/image3.png "image[3]")
Trolls. Huge, powerful, stupid. Powerful sorcerers can charm them.
![image[7]](https://draginol.stardock.net/images2009/CreaturesofElementalHordesoftheFallen_F856/image7.png "image[7]")
Edars. Rare but powerful Edars are incredibly dangerous with their elemental magic. Can be recruited – for a price.
![image_thumb[2]](file:///C:/Users/Draginol/AppData/Local/Temp/WindowsLiveWriter1286139640/supfiles81A4FFC/image[10].png "image_thumb[2]")
Umderdroths. The Dread lady Umber bred these lethal killing machines as pets. Can be tamed by powerful channelers.
![image_thumb[3]](file:///C:/Users/Draginol/AppData/Local/Temp/WindowsLiveWriter1286139640/supfiles81A4FFC/image[13].png "image_thumb[3]")
Daemons. No other way to classify these nightmarish creatures. Created by the Titans, they may be immortal.
![image_thumb[5]](file:///C:/Users/Draginol/AppData/Local/Temp/WindowsLiveWriter1286139640/supfiles81A4FFC/image[20].png "image_thumb[5]")
Dire Wolves.
Dire Bears
Sions. Powerful users of a very specific magic. They can be recruited.
This Summer we are hoping to put up some flash movies on the site to help introduce players to the lore of Elemental. The movies would be organized as a timeline starting at around 10,000 years before the Cataclysm.
Elemental: War of Magic, takes place approximately 100 years after the cataclysm.
The upcoming Beta 1G (due “real soon now”) begins to incorporate actual “game” stuff. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to discuss and begin introducing people to the actual world of Elemental.
The Fall of the Immortals
Men referred to the immortal beings who dominated their world for thousands of years as the titans. The Cataclysm brought their dominance to an end but at great cost.
When players begin Elemental: War of Magic, the world is utterly ruined. Even though it’s been 100 years, the devastation is still nearly complete. Fertile land – i.e. land rich enough to grow food even with the benefit of Channelers sacrificing their own life-essence into the land is pretty rare.
Don’t expect a happy soundtrack at the beginning of the game. In fact, don’t expect to hear music at all. The background music for all Kingdoms and Empires is very subtle. Some of this will start going in during the Beta 1G cycle.
The Channelers
The number of people who can actually cast magic is nil in the world. That is because thousands of years prior, the Elas’nir known as Tar-Thela used her ability to gather the magic of the world and put them into the shards that her kind had brought with them. Unexpectedly, those shards became rooted where they were making their locations strategic ever after.
However, for a long while, the titans were pleased with the results – the mortals were no longer a threat to them magically.
Then, some mortals were born with the ability to channel magic through the shards and they became individually powerful enough to rival the titans.
In Elemental: War of Magic, players are one of these Channelers. There are 10 default factions to choose from (or you can create your own).
One of the factions is called Pariden and is led by the beautiful Sorceress known as Procipinee. She is the daughter of Emperor Amarian III. In the final battle that led to the cataclysm, he rose up against his immortal masters and helped slay Curgen, the lord of the Dred’nir.
In the aftermath, he led the remnants of his people west. It was he that learned how to cast the spell “Revival”. He sacrificed his own essence in order to provide this knowledge to all Channelers wherever they may be in order to one day revive the world.
His daughter, Procipinee, was one of those Channelers. Despite her best efforts, she is looked on with suspicion by the Kingdoms of men because of her family’s close associates with the now reviled titans of old.
Click on the full screen button on the video to view the full picture.
| A family that lives on the outskirts of Petoskey, Michigan decided to build a sturdy, colorful playground for their 3- and 4-year-old sons. They lined the bottom with smooth-stone gravel all around to avoid knee scrapes and other injuries. They finished building it one Friday evening and were very pleased with the end product. The following morning, the mom was about to wake the boys up and have them go out to play in their new play center. This is what she saw from the upstairs window. |
| Yes, he slid down the slide. |
I work at Stardock and those of you who follow my journals know I’m pretty opinionated (see “Kudos to Good old Games”, “Happy about Steam”, “Don’t blame the pirates”). So let me give my 2 cents on why the young studio, Ironclad Games is already so successful. I’m not speaking for them. This is just my opinion on what makes a new studio successful.
The founders of Ironclad Games are industry veterans. They worked on Homeworld: Cataclysm and other pretty well known projects over the years. When they got together, they decided to focus on something they were very passionate about and very familiar with first: Space strategy.
This is the key distinction that I know others in our industry are familiar with: FOCUS. Sins of a Solar Empire is a PC game. Period. It made no compromises. They didn’t spend money on things that would have diminishing returns like cut scenes (the cut scenes in Sins were made by Stardock largely for marketing reasons). As a result, the game was a lot less expensive to make than other games while delivering an incredible gaming experience.
I’m the designer of Galactic Civilizations and I will say this: Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity is a better game than Galactic Civilizations. It has better game mechanics. It is more fun single player. It has multiplayer. It has a vastly better user interface. It has a more cohesive experience.
Obviously, the games do have a different set of appeal (and when I get back to some future GalCiv sequel I’ll happily steal a lot of ideas from Sins but that’ll be some years from now). But what Ironclad did with Sins of a Solar Empire was, imo, revolutionary.
Let me walk you through a few of the innovations in Sins of a Solar Empire:
1. The Empire Tree. A user can control their entire empire from this simple tree. In a world where “skill” is often measured by how fast one can click, the Empire Tree brings STRATEGY back to the real-time genre imo.
The Empire Tree in Sins. Expand the tree to the detail you want.
2. Adaptive UI. The adaptive UI got its start in games like Galactic Civilizations and Supreme Commander. But nothing yet has come close to matching what Sins of a Solar Empire does.
For those of you not familiar with Sins of a Solar Empire who have wondered how a game made by less than a half-dozen guys could sell a million or so copies the adaptive UI really provides a clue imo:
I can be looking at this and with the mouse wheel roll out to this next picture:
Notice how some ships are icons and others are not. It’s not “all or nothing” ala GalCiv or Supreme Commander. The interface intelligently figures out when something is “too small” and turns it into an icon.
If that was all Sins did, it would still be very impressive but it goes further:
If you keep zooming out, the user interface changes again to provide an instantly readable display (hint: the side with more dots on it is probably in the best shape in that system).
Remember, this is happening in a fluid motion. We’re not changing screens here. This all happens in one continuous motion.
Imagine how different things might have been done, however, if Ironclad had been worried about console controls during its development? It committed to a platform – in this case the PC – and used its inherent strengths to make a better game.
3. Knowing when to say “when”.
As any game developer can tell you, it’s not hard, if you have art assets (which obviously Ironclad does) to have incredible graphics. This is the battle that occurs in nearly every game studio in the PC world: Pixel Shader 2? Pixel Shader 3? Pixel Shader 4? The most gratifying choice is always the most powerful option but it means a lot fewer people will be able to play your game.
In addition, in a world of 32-bit gaming (every major PC game out there is a 32-bit game – even if it runs on your 64-bit machine) you get 2 gigs to play with. Total. That’s it. Even your 12GB Windows 7 box won’t benefit a given game because that game can only address 2 gigs. Hence, that super fancy first person shooter with gorgeous graphics may only have 8 guys in a room because otherwise it’ll go over the limit.
Knowing when to say when can make all the difference in the world in terms of gameplay. Choosing gameplay over “art” is a very unappreciated choice often times. Ironclad made the tough choices with Sins. They kept the texture sizes reasonable so that more ships could be in the game.
This tiny constructor ship looks great despite having to have a relatively small texture size in order to allow the game to have thousands of units in play at once. In an age where screenshots rule the day, how many large studios would have been able to make the tough call of choosing unshowable gameplay over screenshot love?
Conclusion
The continued success of Sins of a Solar Empire helps demonstrate the point here: If you want to found a successful game studio, do it because you want to make great GAMES. Don’t try to rationalize what you’re doing as some type of “high art” or for ways to commoditize the “product” you’re making. Make a game. Make a great game. If you do so, you will succeed, just ask Ironclad Games.
Today Stardock Entertainment released the newest incarnation of Ironclad's masterpiece called Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity takes the original game and combines the Entrenchment expansion pack and the Diplomacy expansion pack (also released today) together.
If you already have the original game and Entrenchment, you can get Diplomacy for only $9.99. If you're new to the game, you can pick up Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity.
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Had a great multi-star game today. Here’s some screenshots from that game:
Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy is the second expansion pack for Sins of a Solar Empire. Combined with the original and the first expansion pack (Entrenchment) you get Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy is the second and final expansion pack to the award-winning PC strategy game, Sins of a Solar Empire.
When the two expansion packs are combined with the original, you end up with Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity.
Diplomacy builds onto the foundation put in place with Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment (the first expansion pack). Here we’ll take you on a guided tour of what it brings to the table…