We're working having the aliens lip synced dialog.
Here's a proof of concept with an alien reading the description for Sorcerer King (www.sorcererking.com).
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8051911/StarControl-talktest.mp4
Sorcerer King about to go gold
In the next few days, Sorcerer King will go gold. That term means a lot less in the digital era since it’s just the moment that it’s 1.0 and we’re ready to say “this game is worthy of being purchased for the posted price.”
I’m both excited and nervous about reviews. In the past, our games were designed with “drive by” reviews in mind. That is, they were fairly straight forward in what they’re about. Sorcerer King, however, is not. It doesn’t fit nicely into a genre whole. On the good side, the game is immediately fun to play.
Sorcerer King is NOT a 4X fantasy strategy game along the lines of Fallen Enchantress, Endless Legend, Age of Wonders, etc.. The best way I can come up with is that it’s a 4X RPG. You’re building an empire but the empire is your character. It has 4X elements but it has more RPG elements than traditional strategy elements. The best way I can describe it is that it’s fantasy Star Control which is a cop-out.
Sorcerer King’s goal: Blend Star Control and Master of Magic
What I wanted to do with Sorcerer King is blend Master of Magic and Star Control together. No easy task which is why it’s taken us 2 years to make this game because the two games contradict each other. Star Control 2 is designed to be played once. Master of Magic is designed to be played over and over. That contradiction is where most of our design time has been spent (as well as a goodly chunk of the game’s budget).
There is more content in this game than our last 3 games put together. And yet, most people won’t ever see half of it unless they play for a very long time. That’s because how do you make an EMPIRE RPG (if there’s such a genre) highly replayable unless every game plays out differently?
While I love Galactic Civilizations III, I think Sorcerer King might be the funnest game Stardock has ever made. It’s the first game we’ve made in some years where I go back to playing it to make little tiny tweaks over and over. “I’m just testing it of course”.
Hunting season on game developers
Windows 10 comes out this month. It’s a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8 users. I am very hopeful that people will take advantage of this because DirectX 12 matters a lot. It will represent a revolutionary jump in game visual fidelity once it gets fully used.
That said, the game industry has gotten a lot less fun to work in this past year. Not a day goes by where some idiot is attacking me, personally, online over things that I never said or did (or, at best, they torture the context so much that they might as well have simply made up their allegation whole cloth).
It’s not just me, of course. It’s become a virtual plague for developers as everything we make or post is scrutinized as if we were running for public office. That’s not what we signed up for. We just want to make cool games and release them, not worry that the outrage brigade is going to be calling our offices demanding we be fired because they don’t like the “subliminal, ableist, misogynist message in our game”.
At least I’m able to respond to this publicly as I am not answerable to anyone other than our customers who, by and large, like what we do. But most developers do not have the luxury and they’re getting pretty fed up as they weigh their “fight or flight” instincts.
Tolerance for other points of view is a win-win for civilization
I like people. Someone disagreeing with some view I have doesn’t affect my opinion of them. I can read someone’s book, watch someone’s movie and be friends even if we disagree on politics. My concern is that it is becoming increasingly common for people to celebrate their intolerance rather than trying to overcome it.
Unlike the movie industry, the game industry doesn’t generally inject its politics into its creations. My only agenda in my creations is for people to have fun. There’s no underlying message, subliminal or otherwise. I have no passion for causes or politics. My passion is to make cool stuff.
I can’t predict where things will go. I just know that something that can’t go on forever won’t.
What’s next
Stardock has a very busy year coming up. Sorcerer King is this month. Servo is this Fall. Ashes of the Singularity is this Winter. Offworld Trading Company is early next year. And between all that there are new games to announce, new expansions, DLC, etc. And Star Control should be ready to be announced this Winter. We have a fun time making these games and we really enjoy interacting with our player bases. We have less fun receiving emails, messages, and wishes for us to kill ourselves.
The Fury is lethal (and that’s the actual unit with a high-resolution texture, not a mockup).
It’s a big month for Ashes of the Singularity.
Windows is coming
First, DirectX 12 will finally see the official light of day with the release of Windows 10. We plan to release an update to Ashes this month that includes a benchmark mode so you can see how well your machine works on DirectX 12 (and then you can try the game out on DirectX 11 and compare the difference).
The AI is coming
This month we’ll be incorporating the first draft of the Ashes AI so that you can set up your own challenges and players on various maps (more maps are being added).
Multiplayer and Friends
Hopefully for July anyway we plan to give those with Founders Lifetime Editions some special keys that will let their friends join in on multiplayer. Really depends on where the multiplayer services (not the in-game multiplayer but the Metaverse features like leagues and such).
What would you like to see?
Those of you in the Founders program, feel free to post here to see what you’d like to see in asap!
Welcome to Sorcerer King a different kind of fantasy 4X from what you’ve played before. Sorcerer King is a game where the events of a traditional fantasy 4X game have already happened: A group of rival civilizations built up empires fought wars with one of those civilizations coming to dominate the others. In this case, the winner was the Sorcerer King.
The game starts out with you and your rivals relegated to a single city under the terms of peace set by the Sorcerer King. Now, however, rumor has reached you that he is looking to become a god and is destroying the magical shards to consume their magic. He must be stopped.
If you’re new to the Stardock Elemental games, here is a brief history:
Ultimately, the hero Mirdoth found a mysterious artifact called Curgen’s Bane and used it to help Relias and Procipinee defeat the Fallen Enchantress and bring peace to the land.
Two hundred years later, Mirdoth returned. No longer a hero but as the black sorcerer who has mastered Curgen’s Bane and with it, has annihilated the kingdoms and empires turning them into shadows of their former selves.
Mirdoth returned as the Sorcerer King and annihilated the kingdoms of Elemental.
This story is about you and how you will save (or destroy) the world.
The Sorcerer King is powerful. He’s not your typical fizband waiting for you to walk up and kill him. He has vast armies and at the start of the game, you rely on his tolerance to exist. Nothing stops you from antagonizing him but that is the quick way to defeat. You must use some discretion early on.
You start out incredibly powerful but the Sorcerer King is a demigod. Tread lightly.
It’s not all bad news though. You are also extremely powerful and you control the Forge of the Overlord, a magical device that allows you to craft powerful items that you can equip on your most powerful champions and lowest soldiers. With skill, patience and a little luck you will be able to rebuild your kingdom, raise powerful armies and defeat him and his minions.
At the start of the game you will be choosing your sovereign. You start with 6 and each one is very different. Your sovereign choice determines:
The difficulty level matters a lot. We’ve had two years to work on the AI. The normal difficulty is designed for those who are already pretty good at these kinds of games.
We recommend playing on small or medium land size when you’re first starting out. Larger than that requires a lot more care and strategy in dealing with the Sorcerer King since his domain is that much larger. We also recommend the random map generator in general but we include many different pre-balanced maps.
The shards and doomsday counters should be left on their defaults until you are familiar with the game. The more shards, the more powerful you can become but then again, it’s also how powerful the Sorcerer King can become. Doomsday speed determines how quickly the Sorcerer King is able to acquire the necessary magic to become a god.
The Doomsday meter is not a clock. It represents the Sorcerer King’s progress in casting the spell that will make him a god. It can be sped up, slowed down, even reversed based on your actions. And some champions and even one of the sovereigns (the Tyrant) feed off of it.
The higher the doomsday counter, the more powerful the Sorcerer King becomes. He gains access to more powerful creatures and more powerful spells as it goes up. Keeping the doomsday counter low is generally a good thing…unless there’s a really good trade.
Your rivals are the other kingdoms and empires that once competed with you for dominance of the world. Like you, they were defeated. Unlike you, they are unaware that the Sorcerer King is looking to become a god. They have not evolved with the times yet. They are still trying to reclaim their former glory. You must convince them otherwise (or at least keep them from going to war with you).
Your allies
You start the game already with a single city. This city was once the capital to a mighty kingdom. Now, you are a vassal of the Sorcerer King. Early on you will be exploring and scouting out the world.
You can build on any resource that is in your zone of control. Click on it and choose build. Any enemies within that zone of control will be attacked automatically.
Shards provide magic which you can divide one of 3 ways:
There are also 4 other key resources in the world:
Magic can be directed towards lore which allows you to learn new spells. Choose wisely.
Your cities can train units or build city improvements. The resources they have are food (which the city needs to grow), production (for constructing things) and essence (which allows enchantments to be cast). As the Sorcerer King grows more powerful, some of your citizens will become thralls reducing your logistics.
IMPORTANT: If your city has essence, use enchantments on it. They cost mana but they help your city out.
When a city has enchantments, you can see it on its info bar. You can have 1 enchantment per essence and most of them stack.
PRO TIP: You can go to the advanced options and turn on the Story Teller camera which lets you use the middle mouse button to move the camera angle.
It won’t be long until the Sorcerer King summons you. Remember, you are not at war with him at the start of the game. In fact, he will happily help you..for a price. You, like him, are a magical channeler, able to use the shards. He will give you things in exchange for using your powers to fuel the doomday counter.
Scattered across the lands are plenty of opportunities for adventure and questing. How you deal with these quests will shape the game’s progress.
Quests can pretty much do anything. They can change your stats (in this case, +1 cruelty) as well as provide items, weapons, armor, units, spells, more, you name it. In addition, they will change what future quests within that game are available and what options you have.
Each sovereign has their own skill tree. Think of this like a “tech” tree in a traditional 4X. They unlock new abilities, city improvements and unique features.
You can build more cities but only on tiles that can grow food. Recommended locations will show food icons. However, often, you cannot settle on these tiles until the local warlords, ruffians and other scum are cleared as they have their own zone of control.
Across the world, lots of other would-be leaders have set up their own camps and claimed areas. Look carefully at their combat rating (the 17 in this screenshot). That is a decent estimation of how powerful they are. If your own combat rating is less, you will need to be very careful in confronting them.
Inevitably, you will find yourself in combat.
The tactical battle screen shows who is going to move next on the left along with what combat round it is to give an idea of the passage of real-time. How far a unit can move is shown as lightly lit tiles on the map. Your units typically have special abilities as well. Your units can also call on you to cast a spell on their behalf. However, your ability to affect events far from you is based on your own clairvoyance skill.
When your champions level up, they gain access to new skills.
As you explore, you will be kept informed of the Sorcerer King’s progress both in terms of the doomsday counter as well as notifications when he has attacked one of the shards. You must balance your own expansion with that of protecting those shards. Each time one of them is wounded, you they will become reveals on the mini map.
The map will reveal where a shard is once it has been attacked.
Other realms have their own plans. You will soon encounter them.
Each rival kingdom has their own wants and needs. You can trade with them, gain favor with them (or lose favor) by acting in their interests.
They can also be powerful enemies…
As your cities grow, they can gain access to additional tiles.
What to choose? More food, more materials or more essence?
You can also train pioneers to build outposts (which extend your zone of control) or new cities if you can find fertile land.
Building new cities makes your kingdom more powerful but also attracts the attention of the Sorcerer King…
The Sorcerer King is not pleased.
Depending on how much groveling you do, you can control how much threat you generate.
The discussion of Threat takes us to the report screen.
The report screen
At this stage of the game, the Sorcerer King considers me a minor annoyance. In this world, there are 22 shards, 1 of which I control. The doomsday counter is still very low. I can also see that the Sorcerer King’s standing army is much…MUCH more powerful than mine.
Also at this point, you should have gathered enough items to start crafting things. Click on the crafting button to bring up the Forge of the Overlord.
It takes skill to use the Forge of the Overlord effectively. At first, you’ll be making very basic items.
Pretty much anything can be crafted. For example, with the right ingredients you can learn to make scrolls that will reveal where the Sorcerer King has imprisoned rival champions.
Your champions are powerful but beware, if they are killed, it takes 25 doomsday essence to revive them.
On the other hand, dangerous quests can lower the doomsday counter and bring other spoils with it.
However, your increasing power and meddling will slowly turn the Sorcerer King’s attention at you.
You must be very careful when to reveal your true motives to the Sorcerer King.
As soon as possible you will want to find or acquire more champions. Most of the sovereign skill trees allow you to free a champion directly.
Lord Tandis is one of the most powerful champions in the game.
You are encouraged to do whatever it takes to win the game. The stakes are very high. You can alter the shape of the world through magic. For example:
One easy way to prevent evil from attacking your cities and shards is to raise mountains as fences against them.
Pick a choke point
Cast the spell
and voila, instant mountain. The Sorcerer King can’t get to your capital city without either lowering the land or using naval which he rarely does.
You can also harvest the lands for resources though this has the chance to generate doomsday (rarely).
The Sorcerer King is also trying to tame your rivals. While you have the Forge of the Overlord, the Sorcerer King commands Curgen’s Bane, an ancient artifact of incredible power* (as seen in Galactic Civilizations III).
You are in a race with the Sorcerer King to win the favor of your rivals
Once you have enough power to confront the Sorcerer King, you have to obtain a key to his magical fortress. His two lieutenants hold this key and are somewhere in the world. Finding them can be difficult.
A “lucky” scout finds the Vetrar..for a few seconds.
Winning your rivals over to your cause not only gives you access to their resources but also gives you a unique champion.
Gaining allies is crucial but difficult
By this stage of the game you will star to use auto-resolve more. Those units that were so intimidating early on are now fodder for your might. That said, it’s sometimes fun to watch how powerful you’ve become.
By late game, your champions are so powerful that those early game thugs you still occasionally run across are no match
It is during the later part of the game that you will gain the ability to create your own unique items via the Forge of the Overlord.
The second tab on the Crafting screen allows you to enchant weapons. This becomes unlocked through your sovereign skill tree.
Destroying the Sorcerer King in combat is not your only option. There is also the TOWER of MASTERY. Most sovereign skill trees have this at the end. But doing so is perilous as the Sorcerer King will bring his wrath on you. However, you can build lots of outposts to extend your zone of control which will attack anything that enters them. You can also upgrade your outposts by sending more pioneers to them. If you can hold off the Sorcerer King long enough, you, instead of him, will become a god.
The Sorcerer King can be confronted directly or alternatively replaced by you as a god.
Have fun and Good luck!
I’ll admit my bias here but Sorcerer King is extremely fun.
What is it? It’s a fantasy strategy game with a lot of role playing elements. Or it’s an RPG with strategy elements. You be the judge:
It’s a strategy game because
It’s an RPG because
Fallen Enchantress vs. Sorcerer King
Our last game in the Elemental game universe was Fallen Enchantress and it was straight up a 4X strategy game.
Star Control vs. Sorcerer King
This may seem counter-intuitive but the game that inspired Sorcerer King the most was Star Control 2.
In Sorcerer King, the war is over. Your side lost. Now, the Sorcerer King is looking to become a god which is a bit of a problem because it requires all living things in the world to die for him to do it.
Now, you must go and unite former rivals, go on quests and build your characters up to confront him. The game does have a campaign that provides a very curated experience (similar to the Star Control main story). But Sorcerer King also supports a very sophisticated sandbox (which is we’ve had to spend 3 or so years on this game).
What character you start with determines the entire course of the game. Not just because each one has lots of different cool features (it does) but also because the story elements each character receives changes based on this as well. On top of that, every quest feeds every other quest. The options and consequences of quests in the game mean that each game will be different – even the campaign.
Sorcerer King in images
You can choose between 6 entirely different sovereigns. Each has their own story and their own series of interactions with the world (which take many games to even experience most for just one character).
You can also choose your own rivals (or have them randomly chosen) that you’ll have to contend with (or win over). They have their own baggage with each other as well.
You also can set up the backstory for each sovereign at the start of the game which changes your starting conditions.
Across the world there are elemental shards. By capturing them, you can invest their magic into lore (new spells), skill (which gives you new abilities), or mana (for casting spells).
Learning new spells
Your sovereign’s skill tree.
Sorcerer King’s quests, written by Chris Bucholz (a columnist at Cracked.com), both progress each game’s unique experience but are also enjoyable for themselves.
The Sorcerer King wants to be your friend. Or specifically, wants to keep you from meddling with his quest to become a god. How he treats you depends on which character you’ve chosen to play as as well as what decisions you’ve already made.
Through the course of the game, you will be able to find recipes and craft new items for your units
If you antagonize the Sorcerer King too quickly, you will suffer his wrath as he starts out much more powerful than the player.
Every unit can be equipped
Mid game crafting gets especially powerful as you can create unique items without recipes.
Using your magic, you can raise mountains to protect your cities (or create land bridges across the water).
Your ultimate objective
You can win the game by either defeating the Sorcerer King through strength of arms or supplanting him by becoming a god yourself (capture shards to fuel your own spell of godhood).
How to get it
Sorcerer King will be released on July 16, 2015 at www.sorcererking.com.
Unlike GalCiv II, the GalCiv III AI and overall system is extremely moddable. I'm glad they did that but I'm having a hard time making the AI play the game as well as I'd like.
Whether people like it or not, skill at a game is the result of knowing effective, specific, strategies. You can't procedurally generate a strategy. Some of it needs to be hard-coded and that's where we're struggling because GalCiv III is all about data mining and procedural design. It is much more like a Chess AI than what I've done in the past.
For instance, in Starcraft, I'm a mid-level diamond league player. I have very specific build orders, very specific map control strategies that rely on timing and a very tight control of resources. In GalCiv III, presently, I can't even make a ship focus on a particular type of defense. Heck, getting the AI to not decide to build endless constructors is a lot harder than you'd think.
Anyway, you're not here to read me complain about our own game. So let's roll up our sleeves, we've got years to do this. What I can say is that the AI system in GalCiv III is on a much better foundation than GalCiv II. There's much more we can do. But it's going to take time and frankly, a lot of community help.
What I need form you guys are saved games with an explanation of a strategic error you see the AI making. I don't need help in coding what the AI should do because I can assure you, all those functions are there. It's simply calculating that doing something else is a better idea.
GalCiv II way:
If (transportisnearmylanet)then (do specific bad things to that opponent)
GalCiv III way:
Go through and weight zillions of possible things you might do, sort those weights and execute various empire-wide build/movement decisions.
Much of the work on GalCiv III will be making decisions more locally.
The Founder's program works around the ALPHA build of Ashes of the Singularity.
If you are joining in the hopes of playing a fun game, don't. It's NOT fun yet.
So who should join and why?
We're mainly interested in these types of people to join:
(1) Power Users. People who know tech and can give us a lot of feedback on the tech.
(2) RTS experts. Particularly Total Annihilation, Company of Heroes, Starcraft 2 and SupCom veterans.
In other words, not for casual players.
What are we looking for from people?
There are a lot of important UI conventions that we will need to nail down. There will be a lot of balance. We will ultimately be compared to Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void and SUpCom: FA and the latest CoH which have had years of balance and content added. Through the right group of founders, we can shave years off the time it'll take to get the proper balance, AI strategies, and UI conventions nailed down.
Active founders will be given extra keys to give out to their friends (these keys will only work until the release of the game and only work multiplayer). We are going to be attempting a lot of meta game stuff with the multiplayer game. We expect most people will play the game single player but multilayer is a major focus as well for us.
Helpful tools:
I recommend JING for taking screenshots and marking them up. You can even submit your images to their site and then link to the images here.
The Sausage Factory
Founders are going to see the down and dirty of game development. That means, you'll be seeing us try out different ideas that we may throw out later. When it comes to UI, balance, game rules, almost nothing is off the table. Where we'll be constrained will be map features (like different types of forests) and units.
Spoilers
<spoilers below>
Those who get the lifetime edition get all the DLC plus the major expansions we have in mind which include:
Ashes: <Naval Units and Oceans expansion>
Ashes: <Aggressive neutrals - that's as vague as I can get, it'll be very exciting>
Ashes: <Third race>
The DLC will mostly be map stuff, more units, more campaign stuff.
Who is making Ashes?
It's a join effort by Oxide Games and Stardock. More specifically, the team includes people who were major parts (as in leadership roles) on Sins of a Solar Empire, Galactic Civilizations, Civilization V, Demigod, Lord of the Rings RTS and more.
The basic schedule:
In short, we have a long way to go still.
Modding:
As I've been doing with Sorcerer King, I may recruit people from the community to work with me on the game. Ashes is very moddable. I should also mention, we'll be contracting people from the community (i.e. with Sorcerer King, I contracted people from the community for $$ to implement the quests in the game that we wrote up, was a wonderful experience and made some great new friends).
To mod, you will need to get a good CSV editor as that is the format we're storing everything in.
Greetings!
We are so excited at the number of people playing GalCiv III.
Now, the question is, what NEXT. Stardock's perspective is that your purchase doesn't just get you the game "as is" but rather is the beginning of what will be a multi-year journey of updates to the game.
So in this thread please list FIVE things (no more, no less) that you would like to see in an upcoming free update (and by upcoming, I mean, by end of Summer).
Preface that list with the understanding that these should not be expansion pack type things (i.e. "full blown interactive invasion" or sophisticated espionage system).
To get the ball rolling here is my list:
#1 Steam Workshop support. That means, I want to be able to easily download other people's ships and custom civilizations.
#2 Massive, community driven AI update based on the expertise of all the players (rather than just internal devs playing it).
#3 Anti-Micromanagement UI improvements. That is, kill constructor spam, make managing a huge empire more interesting and fun.
#4 Better, more satisfying fleet battles (both visually and in terms of player decision making)
#5 Major diplomacy updates. Let me have full blown diplomatic discussions with the AI.
That's my list. What's yours?
Steam version here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/226860/discussions/1/598198173700392501/
Hi all!
I wanted to link you guys to the Steam AMA thread we had:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/226860/discussions/1/617336568065171463
Greetings!
I’m happy to report that the ALPHA build of Ashes of the Singularity is nearly ready to share with those who have joined the Founder’s program. We expect to make it available early next week.
What to expect?
We’ll have exciting features such as:
What is the purpose?
This will be the first time Ashes of the Singularity is being made available “in the wild”. We want to see how the engine is working and start building a core community to work with as we begin to implement proper balance, UI, hardware compatibility, etc.
What should you report on the forums?
Everything. Visit the Founders and report everything you can. https://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/forum/1112
Is this Early Access?
No. In fact, we won’t even contemplate early access until the game is much further along.
So who should join?
People who are looking for a next-generation RTS (real-time strategy game). One that has been built from the ground up for modern PCs.
To join the Founder’s you will need at an absolute minimum:
Here are the games we think Ashes of the Singularity will appeal to:
So why shouldn’t I become a Founder?
You almost certainly should not unless you are really really into this type of game.
Is there a walkthrough?
Sure, right here:
Title music and themes are composed by Richard Gibbs who composed the music for Battlestar Galactica.
The Background
The year is 2178. Humans, as we know them, have evolved. They are now locked in a galaxy wide war amongst both themselves and a sentient AI race collectively called the Substrate.
The war is for control of planets that are suitable to be converted into a substance we are tentatively calling “Computronium” (during the founder’s program, we will be coming up with a different name).
When a planet is found, the claimant places a “Seed” structure on the planet from which they can construct engineers and and other units to begin the orderly conversion of the planet into that person’s ever expanding empire.
Sometimes, however, a planet has multiple claimants resulting in conflict. Your job is to either convert the planet first or annihilate your opponents. Victory means adding that planet to your empire which in turn grows your power base.
Early Game
This is the Seed structure along with an engineer. The seed is already quite powerful and not easily attacked. It can produce engineers. Engineers can construct other buildings and claim resources (metal and radioactives). You need metal as a base building material and you need radioactives for more advanced items.
I tend to use my first engineer to go around and build metal extractors and then have a second engineer build a factory.
You can speed up construction of units with an Engineer.
Each region has a power generator in it. You must capture it to gain control of that region. Once you do that, you can claim the resources as well as power buildings. Regions start out with guardians (creeps) that must be killed off before you can take it.
To gain access to better tech, you build a research matrix. The more research matrices you build, the higher up the tech tree you can go. However, research matrices consume a lot of power (all power comes from the power generators and they provide a finite amount of power).
Next week
We look forward to hearing from brave (and/or crazy) people looking to join us on this adventure.
Join us here: https://www.ashesofthesingularity.com/store
Hyperion approaching a power generator.