IGN’s Jason Ocampo has put up his preview of Elemental.  Stardock’s new turn-based fantasy strategy game isn’t due until 2010 but even at this early stage it’s pretty far along.

During Stardock’s recent preview to IGN, one of the closest kept secrets of the game, its diplomacy system, was finally unveiled.  In Elemental, diplomacy is not merely a matter of trading and treaties but involves family politics as well.  Each sovereign, while eternal, can have children who will, in time, grow up, have children, grow up, and pass on and repeat the cycle over and over.  Political marriages can strengthen ties and children and family members can become playable characters in the game world similar to “heroes” found in other games who have their own unique abilities based on their pedigree.

In addition, while the game will include a state-of-the-art 3D engine designed from the ground up for massive scale strategy games, it will also be fully playable as a 2D cloth map.  Players can zoom in to the full 3D experience and set in the options dialog how close they want to be before the transition between strategic view and tactical view occurs.

The beta program, which is open to all who pre-order the game prior to the end of this Summer, begins in the next few weeks and will play entirely on the cloth map in order to allow players to maximize the actual game-play input into the game’s development.

The game’s website is www.elementalgame.com .

Other IGN Screenshots:

Full Preview:

Elemental: Full Preview

Some people had guessed Oculus since there were the beginnings of him in some of the LUA XML inside of Demigod itself.  Some of the concept was there but none of the actual assets had been created (that’s what’s being done now).

The idea with Oculus is to have a general that has some ranged weaponry.  In some ways, Oculus is a new type of general in that existing minions you acquire actually provide specific benefit to him.

Now, with regards to the release of the 2 new free demigod add-ons, we are hoping to show something at PAX but the actual character models are still being finished up so it’s looking unlikely that we’ll be able to show anything before the end of the month).  But we’ll be putting up more and more details as the assets start to come in.

Overview and Traits

Oculus is a Ranged General fighting for the Forces of Light. He wields a staff that shoots magical bolts.

Oculus is an offensive general using lightning for various effects. His Chain Lightning can arc through the enemy’s ranks, and he summons ball lighting that battle for a short period of time before exploding. He aids his allies by healing them when he takes significant damage, and he can restore their mana.

Oculus has significant magical skill, but a great deal of his power comes from synergy with his army.

Abilities

Chain Lightning – Key 1

Activated ability. Oculus unleashes a bolt of lightning that arcs to nearby enemies. Damage and number of arcs increases as the skill increases.

Electrocution

Enemies afflicted by Chain Lightning cannot regenerate health or mana for a short amount of time.

Blast Off! – Key 2

Activated ability. Oculus releases lightning underneath his throne, knocking back enemies at the start and landing points, and launching himself to a new position.

Ball Lightning – Key 3

Activated ability. Oculus selects a target end location. He summons ball lightning that will move to that location, fighting anything along the way. Number and strength of ball lightning increases as the skill increases. At later ranks, Ball Lightning will increase the attack speed of nearby allies.

Explosive End

Ball Lightning explodes when it dies, damaging nearby enemies.

Mana Surge – Ultimate – Key 4

Activated ability. Oculus restores a target Demigod’s mana.

Mental Agility

The target of Oculus’ Mana Surge has reduced cooldown time.

Passive abilities

Sacrifice

When Oculus takes a large single hit, he heals nearby allies based on the strength of the hit.

King of the Minotaurs

Minions summoned by idols give Oculus increased attributes. Minotaur Captains increase his health. Siege Archers increase his weapon damage. Priests increase his mana.

Lightning Blast

All allies near Oculus have a chance on hit to blast lightning at their opponent, dealing minor area damage.

Hi guys, last week I was out visiting the media and showed off Elemental and gave away a lot of tidbits that haven’t been public yet. Keep an eye on the news section here on ElementalGame.com as we’ll be linking to stories as they come up starting tomorrow afternoon EST.

If you live in the Seattle area, we’ll be showing the full Elemental build (not the cloth map build) at the Stardock boot at PAX.

Greetings!

I’m getting ready to get on a plane to go to San Francisco to visit with the media (gaming and non-gaming).  It’s been a crazy week getting all the different things together. I was hoping to get the second Demigod preview ready this week. If there’s some down time during the week, I’ll work on putting together the notes on it.

Gas Powered Games is working on getting me some screenshots and such to begin showing them as we start to get near PAX (Penny Arcade Expo that’s in Seattle at the beginning of next month).  As I’ve been scrambling around the office, I can say there’s quite a bit of activity both at Stardock (where I work) and at Gas Powered Games (the makers of Demigod) to solve a LUA decompression bug that causes the game to crash in MP.  One theory is that it’s related to the concede code somehow but no one is quite sure but that’s one of the reasons why there hasn’t been another mini update – both teams feel that this issue needs to be resolved before more features get added.  That said, I saw QA testing out the re-match code.

Rematching

So the way they’re implementing rematching is a lot like the concede. As a game ends, players can propose a rematch. If everyone agrees, the game starts again.  It’s working pretty decently in LAN mode but there’s a bit of extra work for online MP because of the stats and there’s more timing robustness needed because of latency.

Other stuff going on

I’m not privy to everything Gas Powered Games is doing of course but besides working on 2 new Demigods, rematches, replays, balance and other goodies for Demigod players, they’re working on Supreme Commander 2 which is being published by Square Enix.

Over at Stardock, we’re working on Elemental which is a fantasy strategy game that isn’t due out until mid next year.  I know there’s a lot of interest at both developer GPG and publisher Stardock to keep enhancing Demigod over the long-term.  The view is that a game like this, being primarily multiplayer, can continue to grow over time.  Obviously a big challenge is getting more content out there whether it be from GPG, Stardock, or modders. That’s where much of the future development will focus. 

Another area we’re working on is improving the community features of Demigod. We’ll be talking more about that in a couple weeks (one of the reasons I’m going out West is to show these new community features).  But suffice to say there will be a lot of good news coming in that area as we ramp up to PAX.

If any of you guys are going to be at PAX, please stop by the Stardock booth. We’ll be showing Demigod, Elemental, Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy, and lots of other cool stuff.

For those of you who have been in a Stardock BETA, none of what I mention is going to be a surprise. But for everyone else, stand back!

See the screenshot? If you’re in the Elemental BETA, you won’t see anything remotely resembling that for MONTHS.  That’s because BETA 1 of Elemental will exist only with the strategic map (aka the cloth map).  Imagine playing Galactic Civilizations or Supreme Commander or Sins of a Solar Empire purely from the zoomed out strategic map.

Why are we doing this? Because we’re evil? Well, that probably does contribute. But the main reason is because if the game is good, it should be fun to play even with the crappiest graphics.

So BETA 1 will be fun then right? NO. It’s going to be HORRIBLE actually. At least, for the first month and a half it’ll be represent such a dense level of crapitude that it actually has its own detectable level of gravity.

The alpha testers could attest to this right now except they’ve all lost consciousness (the smart ones anyway) due to passing out from it.

Originally, I had argued internally that BETA 1 would be only X’s and O’s played at CGA resolution with 4 colors but the team made the case that we’d end up having to throw out that code so we settled on the strategic map (cloth map) since at least, if we did that, a player could actually play the game on a netbook or some really ancient laptop in pure cloth map mode.

Why Stardock? Why are you so cruel? Is it because chicks wouldn’t go out with you in highschool?

Sure, that’s a contributing, even possibly a majority factor, but a big part of the reason we do it this way, and again, GalCiv and Sins players can attest, is that it allows players to have a lot more input into the game.

A Stardock BETA isn’t a typical beta. It’s really not a beta by typical industry terms. Rather, it’s more of a prototype. GalCiv players, not us, came up with starbases.  Hard to believe that isn’t it? But it’s true.  For BETA 1, we’re not really looking for “bug” reports. We want to hear people telling us what they’d like to see, how they’d like the game work.  And we’ll debate, discuss, argue, and have a lot of fun putting it all together over the next several months because, well, for us, the BETA process is a key part of the game’s (as opposed to the coding) evolution.

If we do things right, Elemental will be a game that will be evolving and improving and modded by players years from now.  Everything from its game mechanics to its flexible graphics engine is being designed so that a person will be able to fire up the game 10 years from now and it’ll still seem like a “modern” game that is fun to play and has continued to evolve.

Case study: Master of Magic

Imagine if Master of Magic had been developed as a 3D based game instead of sprite based. That means, no fixed screen resolution. Now, imagine if all the assets in the game were designed to be potentially replaced using very well known, open standards and that a lot of the game specific coding was available in Python?

The result would have been a game where the graphics and other visual “assets” could slowly be updated and replaced with ever higher polygon and higher texture versions. The AI and the game mechanics could slowly evolve over time as players came up with interesting ideas and they could pick  and choose which parts they wanted.

That’s one of our biggest goals with Elemental.  We want to make a game that will keep getting better over time.  So we have an engine with no practical limit on texture size or polygon limit. It can get both visually and programmatically better for years to come with our without our involvement.

But in the betas, well, they’re still going to be HOOOORRRIBLE!

Demon Assassin

Overview and Traits

Demon Assassin is a Melee Assassin fighting for the Forces of Darkness. He wields a sword and a knife in battle, the sword being his primary weapon.

The Demon Assassin is a highly mobile character who can quickly close the gap between himself and his opponent though the use of warp attacks. His Shadow Swap ability allows him to change positions with an enemy Demigod, throwing them back into their foes. His melee attacks are fast and have a passive chance to critically strike.

While mobile and able to dodge many normal attacks, Demon Assassin is susceptible to magical damage.

The nemesis to Regulus, the Demon Assassin is extremely fast and lethal.

Abilities

Warp Strike – Key 1

Activated ability. Warps behind the targeted unit and performs an instant attack. Damage dealt increases as the skill increases.

Deadly Warp

Passive ability. Warp Strike has a high chance to critically strike.

Spine Attack – Key 2

Activated ability. Launches a barb from his tail, attacking an enemy at range. Damage dealt increases as the skill increases.

Warp Area – Ultimate – Key 3

Activated ability. For a few seconds, Demon Assassin warps to nearby enemies and attacks them. While performing this ability, he is invincible. Number of warps increases as the skill increases.

Forceful Blows

Passive Ability. Smaller enemies near targets of Warp Area are thrown into the air.

Shadow Swap – Key 4

Activated ability. Demon Assassin swaps places with an enemy Demigod. Distance increases as the skill increases.

Passive abilities

Elusiveness

Demon Assassin’s chance to dodge normal attacks increases.

Demon’s Speed

Demon Assassin’s movement speed increases.

 Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor has received an update bringing it to version 2.03. This also applies to the Ultimate Edition and Endless Universe as well. Updates can be downloaded now via Impulse.

Change log:

• Minor adjustments to tech tree costs
• Arceans more aggressive at colonizing
• Terrans build up military sooner
• Fleet window crash bug fix
• Misc other updates and fixes

I wrote this almost 3 years ago:

https://forums.joeuser.com/144168/

“What happens if the earth starts cooling?”

Of course, we have since found since then that yep, the earth’s mean temperature is starting to go down again despite all the claims of the global warming zealots who claimed it would be a steady rise.

I wonder how long it will take for the whole “climate change” zealotry to start to die out?

I imagine the comments area will contain tons of people who disagree with me since the masses are still convinced that the earth is on a warming trend caused by humans.  I invite that because this post will be around for years and we can look back in the future.

The current system has its flaws but it does something profoundly right:

Most people who have health insurance are paying for their own individual health insurance either directly or indirectly through their employer. They are paying into the system for what they get back.

Obama supporters dream of a different system where taxes pay for health insurance instead. The problem with that is that nearly half the population pay no net federal income taxes. 

People get this and they’re pissed off about being saddled with paying for yet another thing for the nearly half of the population who pay no net taxes.

A big reason I have such disdain for the federal government is that the people who don’t pay have not just a lot of control over how money is spent but have an incentive to get ever increasing goodies given to them. Health insurance is just the latest.

According to the 2008 exit polls, over 60% of the people who pay no net federal income taxes voted for Obama. Zip.

So yea, I’m sure they’d love to see the idea of health insurance paid for by tax payers, because it’s free for them.

But the remaining near half the population are stuck with the bill.

And that’s just one reason. Loss of freedom, rationed care, the unintended consequences of moving away from the free market are just a handful of other reasons.

But for me, one of my big frustrations is just getting sick of being stuck with the tab of paying for people who hide their parasitic demands behind the illusion of “compassion”.