Subway Wednesday
At Stardock, Wednesday is usually “Subway Wednesday”. We go to the local subway together and talk gaming. I substitute the potato chips with cookies. We usually talk about all manner of things (nerd talk).
Today was a tough day. It has definitely changed the way I look at certain gaming “journalists”. I do want to say we really appreciate the support from the community and have really appreciated the way some in the media have stuck up for us too.
Street Dates
Elemental marks 2 of 2 in terms of broken street dates and it really biting us in the rear end. There’s a reason why most games today require you to install and get the instant update and are locked out until release day. It’s something we’re going to have to really think about in the future. With Demigod, one could have said it was a fluke. But with Elemental, it’s a pattern.
What’s next?
For me, it’s AI AI AI. Elemental is a lot more complex of a game than Galactic Civilizations was. I do want to emphasize that the difficulty level at the world setup is not related to AI difficulty. It has to do with how tough the monsters and such will be (crazy shrills late game type stuff). The player intelligence is set up on the opponent set up screen.
If you’re able to beat the AI at harder settings, please feel free to post your strategies and such. I am not only happy to incorporate your strategies into the AI but relish doing so.
Compatibility. This isn’t my area of expertise but I’m getting a new found respect for the engine coders. Talk about frustration and scary. You get one video card that leaks memory (think megs per turn) if you use feature X, but if you turn it off, then it causes alt-tab to break. You got Windows XP Sp5 with older video cards having one weird issue while first generation quad core having a different issue.
Makes me long for the days of DOS.
Today, you’ve got Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Vista 64, Windows 7 and Windows 7 64. Then you’ve got a plethora of video cards and CPUs to go along with it along with different versions of the drivers in all these various cases.
There’s a case of white screens happening along with terrible performance afterwards on some setups. That’s been apparently fixed internally based on the checkin logs.
There’s a case where some machines aren’t even using the GPU. I’m a total lay person on that but isn’t that what DirectX is supposed to take care of? Oye. But they tell me they’ll be able to figure it out.
My understanding though is that the day 0 version of the game has largely resolved stability issues that some people ran into. That is, the version of the game available on release day should work fine. But if you have problems, feel free to speak loudly and specifically in the support area.
Expanding the world
One of the areas we’re really interested in going into is in the realm of expanding the world. More spells. More special abilities. More characters. More quests and so forth.
The Modding World
There are already some amazing mods being made. Keep an eye here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/forum/756
You can share maps you create via Impulse::Reactor which is built into the game. We will be enabling the sharing of other types of mods once the moderation guidelines are firmed down which should be after we have a chance to catch our breath a little.
You guys are awesome
We’re a small dev team as you can imagine so your kindness and support really puts wind in our sails. We love you guys. I think many of you love Elemental for the same reasons we do. Personally speaking, I feel like too many games come out these days to be “consumed” and then moved onto. As an “old time” gamer, I want to have a game that I’m playing for years and years to come. That’s why updating the AI matters so much to me because the AI needs to get better over time to keep up with players.
I can tell you this: Regardless of whether Elemental gets good or bad reviews or sells well or sells poorly, this game is the ONLY game Stardock’s development studio will be working on for 2010 and much of 2011.
One of the benefits of being a small, privately owned company is that we can focus on things for reasons besides quarterly earnings. This is a game we love and will be expanding for years to come. And I don’t mean just the single player game either but the multiplayer as well.
A bit of a vacation
Anwyay, this may be my last post for a bit. I’m going to take some days off. The last few days have been pretty challenging. But I will leave you in the capable hands of the game’s producer, Boogiebac (Scott Tykoski) who will keep you up to date.
Have fun on your break
Post editing seems crashed for me, so sorry for not adding this to prior post:
-An important area here also is the tooltips getting fully fleshed-out. There is a ton of stuff that is quite opaque at the moment, and loading-up on tooltips should fix this completely. My sense is that the tooltip/help-link system is about 50% done. When I can get good info it works pretty well, but lots of stuff needs better descriptions and/or a display of the calculation used to determine the value (which you do have in some cases to some extent, like on combat speed, which is great).
Take care Brad - we'll all look forward to seeing you back after a few well earned days of R&R!
I have faith that I will come to love Elemental as much as I loved both versions of GalCiv...
That's something I love about games like Elemental, Civilization, Europa Universalis, etc. While I do want to "win" each game, part of the enjoyment comes from just playing through each game.
I'm thankful for companies like Stardock & Paradox. Two of my favorite game companies. Although I find myself playing less EU & HOI as each release seems to get even more complicated... or maybe I'm just getting older. Anyways, you both create the type of games I like to play. I have bought and played Fallout 3, Starcraft 2, Borderlands, among others but they just don't hold my attention. Nothing against the games, they're fun in their own way but I sometimes regret those purchases because I didn't end up playing them for very long. At least with Starcraft 2 I finished the campaign but once I was done with that I lost interest. Just something about the 4x games (and the epic strategy games) that really hold my interest.
Congratulations on getting a great game engine and a great game out; you guys did fantastic work. Looking forward to the journey ahead, and seeing what the community comes up with as the engine and gameplay grows. I'm happy to hear you all are taking a break; I can't imagine anyone else who needs one more.
Winni
Some perspective for you: If you filter out the white noise of sycophants and trolls, remember that most gamers posting just want to play Elemental and have fun with it. At the end of the day, that should be all that really matters.
I'm really enjoying the game and appreciate the hard work. Enjoy your break and try not to think about the AI the whole time
Thank you Frogboy and Stardock!!!! I have been following the forum and watching the Beta videos for months. I couldn't wait to play Elemental!!! Now that I can, it is GREAT!!! Keep up the good work! A BIG job well done to you and the staff at Stardock.
Don't let the neigh sayers get you down Brad, it's a great game. Just make sure those review boys get the latest update - I'd hate to see a re-tread of Demigod.
Rest assured, what you guys don't add in the modding community certainly will. Why, I've already made my first quest and delusions of grandeur are already setting in. Give it six months and Elemental will have more content available to the player base than they'll know what to do with.Now, back to my Chicken Bacon Ranch on a foot long Italian Herbs with 3 cookies and a few thousand more turns of Elemental...
That would be sweet.
Who knows, maybe some way down the line the factions might have different looks for armor, weapons and clothes, kind of like the ship styles per race in GalCiv2?
Though I guess that would be a bit too big for a "normal" patch.
Subway? Eww...
Go here instead. The food is much better, and I know for a fact that the cookies are delicious. Oh look, there's a location less than half an hour from your office.
Yes, take some time off and enjoy the awesome cool weather we are finally getting in Michigan. Down to below 50 the next couple nights so enjoy before it gets hot again next week.
you guys are awesome! the players of your awesome games really do appreciate all the hard work you guys put in. To alot of us, games represent our chief form of entertainment and relaxation and really improve our lives when we come home from work or have a rough day, and to me, despite the unforseen bugs and what not (and lets face it what games arent riddled with em now cuz of the complex and different types of hardware and software available) Elemental is a fantastic game and being a big turn based strategy fan i can see myself playing it to death for years, even more so knowing how much effort you guys put into improving your games, and since its such a good turn based strat, im not even going to buy Civilization V any more, i cancelled my pre-order cuz i think so much of Elemental
also. awww your subway gets potato chips, over here in Oz we just get cookies and yoghurt.
+1 Thanks for the update and enjoy the much deserved time off.
As I play the game more I'm finding more to appreciate, but I believe the only real problem with the game is that it wasn't released in February 2011. Giving this version to the beta testers instead of the general public would have eliminated all of the current negativity and would have seen quite the opposite reception at a later date. (Easy to say that now, heh.)
My feelings exactly. Elemental has the potential to be not just a game, but a hobby. It's currently a fairly good game. I fully believe Stardock will support it until it becomes a very good, or even great game. So thanks for your work so far, and I look forward to further development.
I have to ask, how do retailers break the street date? Are they doing this just to be evil and ruin an indie developer or are these people just morons, or did you not spell it out in a contract? Can you sue these a holes? Something tells me that if anyone broke the street date of Starcraft 2, Blizzard would have made absolute mince meat out of the poor retailer like a zerg just going berserk on a cow just sitting there...
Frogboy,
I understand where you are coming from in that you have put in a lot of work and there is some great stuff in Elemental. However, I can't help thinking that Elemental could really have used another couple months of development. While the core game is pretty solid and the potential is there for a truely great game, it just not there yet. As it stands now there are a fair number of bug/issues that really need to be ironed out. The bugs/issue are fairly minor, not game breaking by any means, but there are too many of them for the game to feel "finished". I know Stardock will keep working on Elemental for a long time and eventually it will be an awesome game. I just hope you realize that people aren't being unfair when they complain about the lack of polish and balance. They have a certain level of expectation, based on other game at release, that simply aren't being met. I'm sorry if I seem negative, I really do like the game, I just don't believe that it should have been released yet.
Clear up storage space, get people to buy their games faster ectect. It isn't making them money by sitting out in the back.
You guys have done amazing the work u put in to these rivals all big time company's. I love the game and i love you all lol, and honestly if i can every git my schooling done for gaming designed i want to work for u man
Listen to the bug reports, ignore the rants..
Keep up the good work.
While I am a big fan of Stardock, and the way that it operates (devote time to polishing a game over a long period of time... The GalCiv model, really), reviewers have to deal with the hand they are given in terms of providing a review. The PC Gamer reviewer was a fan of Stardock as well, but he was utterly unable to play the game on multiple computers and still has issues playing it even with the latest patch. A reviewer can't just say: "Oh, well I know the reputation of this company. It's broken for me now, but I'll take their word that it's going to be fixed." The reviewer is doing his job.
I respect that it's virtually impossible to deal with all of the potential combinations of videocards/OSes as a smaller company. Win 7 64 and ATI cards should not have been missed. It's the most popular OS for gamers right now (http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2010/08/04/windows-7-64bit-most-used-os/1) and the only other choice is nVidia.
Anyways, I look forward to what is done with the game. And to when I'll be able to play it (ATI and Win 7 64 here... shoot).
Relax a bit, get a foot massage, and next Wednesday get cookies and chips, you deserve it!
I think the problem is that retailers need Blizzard more than Blizzard needs retailers. Anything Blizzard makes sells a ton of copies, so you really don't want to do anything to make them not want to do business with you.
The situation with Stardock is the opposite; suing Best Buy would likely just cause them to stop selling Stardock products completely.
I came across this game randomly two days before its release date, and have been paying attention to the forums ever since, though not being able to contribute.
So its time for me to say a big thank you!
Im not a developer to any degree, yet have waited for nearly ten years for a substantial merging between rpg and strategy; Stardock, your the first Ive seen successfully pull it off.
The crazy thing is, it doesnt even feel like the game has reached a fraction of its potential. Though as with any pc game there are bumps at the beginning, Elemental has such promise once things have been tuned and balanced out.
Btw. I have a laptop below the minimum requirements, yet the game runs relatively well. Its real unfortunate that a group of individuals blew the issue out of proportion on the forums. Rather than constructive criticism, it only added to the frustrations of releasing the game. But frogboy (and stardock), being a new guy I can see what a loyal and devoted fan base you have. After experiencing the games impressive concepts, consider yet another individual added to those ranks.
Thank you.
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