Our public beta of Elemental lasted until Beta 4.
We’re going to be making the game available early to everyone who beta tested Elemental (planned day is either Sunday night or Monday morning) and anyone who pre-orders prior to Monday morning will get the game on Monday rather than having to wait until Tuesday.
A quick beta recap for those who didn’t follow it:
Beta 1: Began a year ago.
Beta 1 focused on game concepts and took place purely on the cloth map. In this beta, we talked about all kinds of different game styles we wanted to try to explore.
The key challenge of beta 1 was coming up with a game design that was sufficiently original, challenging, interesting and engaging for players.
Beta 2: Began early this year.
Beta 2 focused on testing the brand new engine that Elemental uses called Kumquat. It is a 3D engine made specifically for the PC. What makes it special is that because it was made for the PC, it sacrifices memory usage for performance (consoles work the opposite – they have a lot less memory but great hardware). As a result, Elemental’s hardware requirements are roughly the same as for Galactic Civilizations II allowing the game to run on a very large number of PCs.
The key challenge of beta 2 was performance and stability.
Beta 3: Summer
This beta deal with starting to put the pieces together. Tactical battles, economics, magic, spells, diplomacy, etc. This was about getting the features in there and seeing what worked in practice (this is why sequels are so much easier – you have an established system).
Beta 4: July
Beta 4 was basically Beta 3 with the modding features enabled.
Beta 5: August
This was an internal beta where all our “stuff” came together.
Gold: August
This is the “release to manufacturing” version. There are actually several of these versions depending on what continent it’s going to for manufacturing with our RTM having been last Thursday evening.
Day 0: August 24th
This is the build where we get to do more polishing, AI improvements, tweaking, bug fixes, optimizations, etc.
Here are a series of screenshots for those whose last experience with Elemental was Beta 4 in order to outline some of the high level changes:
Updated UI
More to come…
Sweet!
guess the out of memory is now, out of Random Events?
Exciting news about the early release for Beta testers. Awesome fan service!
Are those the final fonts? Some of them just look super generic like something you'd find as the default font in MS Word. Sorry, to be super critical about something as little as that but a classy, unique, highly readable font can add a significant level of polish to a game.
Ugh! These dev diaries are like Chinese water torture...it makes the waiting for the big day all the more difficult! But thanks for doing them just the same.
Speaking about "random events"...I trust Elemental has them (I mean besides the random crashes)?
Wohoo! Awesome. Thanks for the continuing support. I'm really looking forward to this. Thanks to the whole team. Excellent job!
The first thing I do is create a tech in the warfare tree called, "Cowboy Diplomacy."
wow, can't wait till next week
are you trying to make bull cavalry?
harpo
Trying to finish up my GalCiv2 game right now and I'm eager for ELEMENTAL! Thank you!
I just got done with school work and read all journal entries from the 14th to today. So much great stuff to read through. Awesomeness is an understatement for all the progress.
Cheers!
Yeay! Can't wait!
Just a question, since when I pre-ordered my account was not charged, so does my account get charged on sunday/monday, or still on tuesday?
my guess, based upon previous stardock transactions, is that you will be billed WHEN you are able to download the items you have ordered/pre-ordered.
LOL great sense of humor Lord Frog. I also like the different coloring for the summoned bear. Now is that a tactical battle spell or one you cast outside on the normal map? One thing I did like about MoM, was the ability to cast some summons in battles, I believe like Fire eles, and phantom warriors and such. The pics look awesome and I cant wait. Great job!!
Hey Brad,
Are you sure the game is gonna come out on the 24th, I remember hearing from so many people that there was NO way it would happen. (Tongue firmly in cheek.)
Congratulations on getting your baby ready for primetime! And seriously, as one dedicated video recording beta tester to you. You guys have created a great playground for us to run around in.
In a sense I've gotten very reluctant over the years to endorse a game. This one, get's my seal approval. Not just because it hits all the sweet spots on my personal Venn Diagram. But because this is really the launching of a truely integrated and collaborative game engine.
I had a blast doing videos of the game, and as I'm sure you can imagine, I'll be doing more once you've put it on my computer for live gameplay. And then, we'll be able to really rock the foundations of the gaming world.
Finally, a game that doesn't assume that I need things with very little depth, and let's me personally explore the world of my own imagination. Thank you! The real tagline for this game is... Explore the World of YOUR Imagination!
(Oh and any word on what effects Rivers have, and are they any smoother now in placing than they were in Beta 4?)
I guess I should be surprised that a developer puts this much work into a game after it's gone gold, since no other company really does, but after browsing these forums apparently that's standard fare from Stardock. Very impressive and commendable.
I'm just sorry I didn't pre-order it way back so I could get in the beta. Oh well, my order is in now at least.
p.s. Sorry to nitpick as well, but I second the request to have a higher resolution, easier to read font, if possible. Maybe a nicer one with anti-aliasing.
The early release "reward" is a great move on many levels!
However, Frogboy, is there any chance of an even earlier lone release of the Hiergamenon - even if it lacks some visual and flavour content?
Presumably it's something already somewhat stand-alone if it's going to be printed into book form.
It would give us eager people something to read up on and learn pre-release, give us time to discuss and debate strategy on here leading up to it, etc. I've always found that it can be very tempting to dive into the game sans-manual, but this way we almost have to read the lore, etc, that you've worked so hard on, and you still have those final 48 hours to do last-moment tweaks.
If this has also been suggested and squashed then my apologies!!!
I preordered via a retail store, so I'm guessing that means the same day as the people who did not preorder, of course. I mean, they did not send the preorders out one day sooner, correct Even if so, with my internet speed, it would take me to Wedensday to download it if I had ordered via Impulse. . .
Did Super Events make it or won't ever make it? Maybe in the "Pirates of the Capacea" Expansion Pack?
Genuinely Impressed, I had concerns over the use of shards and the depth of the research system and it's starting to look like that paid off. Good job guys, and kudos to you and the other devs Frogboy, for keeping us up to date even at this stage.
Regards,
Paradoxical
I'm really impressed with what I see. I'm definitely going to buy the game.
And thanks for the glow for special places. It just adds a little magic to the map and makes it become more 'alive'. Please leave the green hue around summoned creatures. Why would you want to remove it? I think it's an improvement.
Or even better: Give the summoned creatures a green glow/aura around it!
Bunch of awesome stuff.
Random scaling suggestion: rather than each shard adding an extra 1x multiplier, how about each shard adding an exponent if phi (the golden mean)? Zero shards is naturally 1.0x power; one shard is ~1.62x power; two is ~2.62x; three is ~4.24x; four(?!) is ~6.85x. This creates a nice curve that's not totally front-loaded (with the current linear increase, one shard is HUGE; two is OK, but not as great; three is hardly worth bothering) but also doesn't change the balance point too far from what it is, at least for reasonable shard counts.
On big maps you'd be likely to get unreasonable shard counts, or at least the possibility.
Another shard suggestion: maybe have each shard allow for an extra summon of units based on the shard, like air shard= a 2nd air elemental?
it looks great i love the glow so we can easier find stuff
Sometimes Amazon does send stuff out the day before so you can get it on Tuesday, but yeah. You won't get it early unless they break the street date.
I think that this system might be good for large maps as well - since you will be able to mass large armies, you want to have spells that actually do something. (in other games) I usually found myself using direct damage spell only in the beginning, as in late game "weaken", "sleep", "slow" etc are more worth it than killing 3 knights out of 100. This shard system might put direct damage back to the late game... (of course, assuming it is nicely balanced. i.e. "weak" should be more difficult to exploit properly, but effectivity IF used properly is bigger than just fireballing them to death)
It also reduce the necessities of very similar spell spam, which differs in ONLY in damage value. Now if you want bigger punch, get more shards!
Shards really turned out into something meaningful, I am glad to see this shift from initial "magic book allower".
btw. I especially like the "number of summoned creatures" suggestion!
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