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…
One worry is possibly that since AFAIK the spell victory requires control of all four shard types, this would be easy on a big map and really difficult on a small map. But if shards are rarer on big maps they have a different dynamic than on small maps.
Sweet... like the looks of these screen shots.. and thanks for highlighting the changes..
You know what would be MUCH better than Sunday or Monday? How about Friday night? If we could get it early enough to spend our weekends playing it, that would be awesome.
totally agreed
harpo
Hm...it looks like that the size of the tactical maps is still the same [..way too small imo]. Oh well...
Who do we have to bribe to make this suggestion happen?
RE X Nodes giving X times multiplier for spells.
Frogboy's algorithms need more bell... curve.
/Just completed a Large normal where my custom sovereign Jacq only founded a city when the cost went up to 25600 Gildars for my pioneer unit to have done it. Yep she conquered that many AI players with nothing but allies and summoned beasts. Jacq of course is a homicidal maniac on Essense.
hmm is it possible for me to download the game if a friend of mine (who is in US) gives me the CD KEY ? I am down here in Australia.
If he buys a retail copy and gives you the key which you register in Impulse? I don't see why not, but you could probably just buy a digital copy yourself in that case and cut out the middle man. (Or he could buy a digital copy as a gift to your account.)
One advantage to a digital copy in your case is that with a digital copy instead of a retail one, you'll get it earlier (looks like Monday, though Brad also mentioned possibly Sunday night) and can start downloading. With a retail copy you won't be able to start downloading until Tuesday.
Thanks for the new screens! Makes it easier to not fiddle around with the beta. I'm tickled about the new random events, I mean the beta is already so magical it keeps nuking my computer! A few more is just icing on the cake
*jumps up and down*
Great post, thanks for the info Frog boy, forget all the nay sayers, a vast majority of people waiting for this game don't even post because they have no problems and are able to read and fully comprehend your posts and information.
Hope the pre-load is this week and we get the unlock on sunday night !!!
Can't wait!!!!!!!!!!
The tactical battles from a visual standpoint look like a DragonAge skirmish and not a war between Empires,very weak stuff.
What happened to this?
Those kinds of numbers on screen are still "feasible" according to Frogboy but only on the largest/biggest maps. At least that's what was said a while back. Whether or not that's Still accurate I'm not completely sure.
I call them bullshit mock up screenshots.
People wanted tactical turn based battles akin to MOM and not RTS battles.
The initial plan was to go with pixel-based movement and continuous turns, but most beta testers wanted the more traditional turn-based tilemap combat. So that's the way it ended up going. The unit count is a separate matter, more based on balancing and map size. Bigger maps will have more money and resources and thus bigger armies.
I've been following this game closely ever since you first announced it but never participated in the beta, I prefer not to play uncompleted versions. I just made my pre-order. Can't wait until Monday!
Who...what? Where was this discussion...? I was under the impression realtime combat was ditched due to technical limitations, not whining.
Funny, I am under the opposite impression... I wouldn't call in "whining" more like "lobbying Stardock".
If I had to do it over again, I would have done what you did.... The beta damaged my brain some.
See the journals back in the March-May range.
Is the late Sunday/early Monday download going to be the Gold version, the Day 0 version, or something in between?
And thanks for the early access, even if it is only 1 day!
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