After we complete upcoming expansion pack for Elemental: Fallen Enchantress (which we expect to announce NEXT WEEK) we have to do some hard thinking. Specifically, what do we do next? After some trials and tribulations we’ve put together what is, in effect, a Master of Magic style engine (and before someone flips out, I’m not saying FE is just like MOM, I am saying that at this stage, our *game engine* is finally capable of actually making that game which is obviously was not capable of in 2010).
But first, let’s look at the history…
Once upon a time…
After Galactic Civilizations II I wanted to do a fantasy strategy game. I wrote up a brief treatment and had our lead artist draw a mockup of what it should look like:
Basically, I wanted Master of Magic with updated graphics and multiplayer.
During this time, Stardock had the opportunity to publish two games – Sins of a Solar Empire and Demigod. Two opportunities we couldn’t pass up. Meanwhile, Impulse was starting to really take off too.
Now, we’re a small company. REALLY small. People are always shocked at how tiny Stardock is. We might possibly be the oldest independent game studio left (20 years old this year) that still regularly produces new games but the entire enterprise is less than 60 people and that includes our main business – consumer software (Multiplicity, Start8, WindowBlinds, Fences, etc.).
What that meant, back in 2008 is that the team that made Galactic Civilizations had to be spread out to help out on Sins, Demigod and Impulse. To do Elemental, we hired up.
Elemental (and at this point, it was just called Elemental) was going to be a pretty straight forward game. Build cities, capture shards, learn magic, research tech and conquer the world.
Now, Stardock’s game studio didn’t run like a normal game studio. That is, there was really no such thing as a producer or a designer. You either coded or you did art. We had titles but they had no real meaning. Design was handled by the person who was implementing an “area” of the game (for example, GalCiv II did not have a visual tactical battle display in its design, the person who was assigned to code “resolution outcome” wrote that).
And we had a lot of ideas. Why stop with Master of Magic’s design elements when you can also throw in Magic the Gathering concepts, Total War, Civilization IV, Ultima, etc.
Slowly, things began to morph as people had more and more ideas get presented.
The spell system got more sophisticated.
The tactical combat design scope grew.
And the reality was that all this stuff just didn’t mesh together. At one point, we even had underground dungeons.
So when Elemental came out, it was extremely buggy (we had spread ourselves too thin – we had no redundancy) and the individual components just didn’t flow together.
Fall From Heaven
When we looked at what went wrong with Elemental it became clear that we were just wearing too many hats. No one owned the design. No one owned the look of it. No one owned the engine design. We needed to bring someone in who would own the project and enforce their will.
That’s what Kael, the designer of Fall From Heaven was able to do.
Kael (Derek Paxton) didn’t just have great game design skills, he was a senior project manager at Novell.
Originally, we had planned to do two expansion packs:
War of Magic – Fallen Enchantress and War of Magic – Forge of the Overlord. But it was decided that we should do a more ambitious overhaul to the base game and this became Elemental: Fallen Enchantress.
Fallen Enchantress
So with Fallen Enchantress, we ended up with a pretty good fantasy strategy game (if you don’t already have it, GET IT!). We have lots of ideas on how to improve it but the important thing is that we now have a fantasy strategy game engine that is capable of doing whatever type of game we’d like.
And that’s where we’re at. What do we do next? I can tell you one thing, it will not have the word “Elemental” in it. Why? Check this out: [Google Search Results]
That isn’t to say we’d scrap all our work and start over with a brand new design and recreate the millions of dollars in art assets. But it’s not going to be tied to Elemental. But this assumes that our players want us to continue making this style of strategy game at all.
After all, there are some exciting fantasy strategy games in the offing – Age of Wonders 3 I suspect will be announced soon and Eador: Masters of the Broken World looks excellent. Are there enough people who want Stardock to keep making fantasy strategy games of this type to justify that effort?
[Quick aside: What do I mean by “this type of strategy game”?]
Personally, there are two key differentiators in fantasy strategy games that help me define what sub-genre they belong to:
And specifically, the question is: Making fantasy strategy games that involve tactical battles, city building and RPG elements? That’s the niche I think we have here. I don’t think we’ve nailed down the perfect blend yet but that’s what time and experience exist for.
And that is what we’d like to hear from you. Do you like what we’re doing enough to keep Should we continue it forward (and don’t answer “Make Fall From Heaven” its future isn’t tied to this). Also, before someone screams GalCiv III the future of GalCiv is not tied to anything we do here.
Go here to answer:
https://www.elementalgame.com/journals
Discuss in the comments.
underground! .... you are really close to creating the bar for what you described: a world building/tactical/saga/thingy-a new genre !...I think you got a original engine that has the best of everything you tried to capture in the melding of all the games you mentioned, to me, it mixes two incredible diverse titles like Age of Wonders and Romance of the Three kingdoms with world building and setting it all in a world where your imagination can roam, the feel and presentation of the story, characters and creatures, organics and magic (even in random generation) are very unique, indeed.... well done ...please, do carry on!
Take a break from the Elemental universe. You've been working on it for many years now. You all sound a little burnt out on it.
Take some time away and do a different game. This lets you regain your passion and enthusiasm, while letting your subconscious come up with some new stuff for a new Elemental style game down the track.
So my suggestion is this :
Let Kael loose on FFH3.
Kael - You know you want to!
Alternatively go GalCiv3. We could all use some more space battle goodness.
Then come back to Elemental with fresh eyes.
Edit: And yes I did just scream FFH3 AND GalCiv3. Because its what most fans of StarDock want from StarDock. You have only a small team with limited resources, these are the 2 most requested games - Go do them! Elemental will always be there to come back to in a couple of years. And your team will have learnt so much more by then.
Another good use of the FE engine could be a TBS a re-envisioning/mash-up of Alpha Centauri, Outpost, & Space Colony. Different Factions/Races vying for control over a planetary body.
There are a number of great posts here, and I don't really have anything new to add, but I will say that I believe FE to have a lot of untapped potential. I greatly enjoy this game, and would love to see it expand further, even under a new name.
That said, I also think it's important for you guys to do what you feel passionate about. Create what you want to create, above all else.
Now your talkin'!
Weird, thats exactly the idea that was I was thinking about too!
Reason: I recently bought Gal Civ Ultimate I&II and after a brief experiment w/ the ship designer, my first thought was "How can I add an alien vessel to my Lore idea of a modded FE?"
The interface/design sections of both games are similar {good business move FrogBoy - reuse & re-adapt} and I started to wonder just how modifiable is each game when treated a unit?
Opens up some creative idea possibilities for sure...
4. The game design itself would continue to evolve, fairly dramatically. This from Frogboy is great news I think. For me at least, the game at present is good fun but the potential for improvement is huge. Chris
4. The game design itself would continue to evolve, fairly dramatically.
This from Frogboy is great news I think. For me at least, the game at present is good fun but the potential for improvement is huge.
Chris
I really liked FW/EL.
If Warlock is a scaled up version of those games, why not do the same with FE but the other way around. Like Xia and others suggested, Fallen Enchantress: Tactics. It's well withing the capabilities of the engine I believe?
I voted for the continue on FE, but my thought is for a far richer world eg E:War of the Titans (a prequel to E:FE & e:wom) set in the same world just before the titans arrive and do their thing with LOTS of magic lots of spells compared to the few that are in FE, dragons flying around along with other various monsters and involvable in the titan war on either side
harpo
I'd like to see evolving FE but ... hold on... let's get FE working first and then think about evolutionary processes ... call me crazy but I think a screwed up game that misspawns and consistently crashes needs a little more work before people start discussing it's 'evolution'.
anyway that's my two cents worth (actually $40 worth for a game that doesn't work!)
Love to all
Sash
FFH2 already has multiplayer, great modding abilities and pretty good graphics. I wouldn't have problems to play it in 10 years again. I don't think that a successor is required so fast. Besides that, a FFH3 that would be able to top FFH2 would be a very difficult task, since FFH2 is build up on an already excellent Civ4. And I'm not sure if I would buy a FFH3 without multiplayer if I can play FFH2 with multiplayer.
Elemental went from 'bad' (Warlock) to 'average' (Fallen Enchantress) and will hopefully reach 'good' in the expansion. After that, further expansions might be a save way to perfect the gameplay, so an Elemental 2 (however it will called) will be great and not just average or good.
However, I voted for MoM 2 since there's no worthy successor yet, and playing MoM with 320 x 240 isn't exactly the greatest experience to play, even if the game mechanics are still the best the genre has to offer. I also dare to say that MoM2 is a lot more in demand than an Elemental 2. I'm 100% sure that a well-done MoM 2 would sell a lot better than a well-done Elemental 2, simply because MoM is considered the holy grail of fantasy strategy, while an Elemental 2 will have many doubters who just expect another "crazy experiment gone wrong" regardless how well it would be done.
A MoM 2 should be done like Eador, Masters of the Broken World and the new XCOM started. Both made or are making an almost 1:1 clone of their predecessor with better graphics and WITHOUT any crazy experiments and ideas that sound great but don't work out. If an 1:1 rebuild is finished, new ideas and improvements can be tried since you can always go back to an already great game. However, in contrast to XCOM, the game shouldn't be streamlined.
Not sure if a completely new fantasy strategy is a good idea. Warlock should have made clear that it takes a very long time to create a good fantasy TBS from scratch. Even FFH2 was build on almost 15 years of Civ experience with Civ 4. Not sure if Stardock has the resources for another risky experiment like Elemental.
Ok, so you meant FE2 and not an FE expansion. Was confused for a bit.
I would like to see what Derek would do with FFH with the resources of Stardock, and the ideas from FFH modmods.
Another idea: not Fantasy Sci-Fi, but what about Fantasy Baroque, (like 18th century tech with fantasy- think Fredrick to Napoleon style combat with magic)
As for GalCiv 3, relax- I'm 95% sure that game is already in development and we'll be hearing about it in a few months. Enough hints have been posted around, and it has been 5 years since Twilight, which was Brad's rule for a GalCiv sequel.
Third time's the charm
Bingo.
Strange, I have had a few crashes, yes, mainly when I am in Custom Faction/Custom Sovereign design mode, but the game overall has been rock solid...
I am not sure what a mis-spawn is...
Compared to the madness I experienced trying to get BF3 and Tribes:Ascend running FE has been easy peasy smooth sailing...
In fact, in testing a clumsily made mini-mod, I put xml where it was not intended to go, the game client accepted the code and all it did was not generate graphics....Invisible Pioneers anyone?
If I had left a . {period/point} out of many other types of code the whole sub-routine would fail and nothing would run. {I am relating Pre-Visual C++ (like Fortran lol)}.
Maybe a post in support w/ system specs, dxdiag is in order?
All the best,
SS
As someone who, at least ,entertain the idea that I might one day be a producer for a computer game this article was highly interesting. I rarely post in this forum since I don't feel I have anything to add to the discussion. As far as I'm concerned Elemental is a good game as it is and I've gotten my moneys worth in entertainment. I doubt I will uninstall it any time soon.
That said I'm a bit annoyed that you used a poll for customer feedback. I knew the results even before clicking the link. The people who post here, which is a tiny part of the guys playing the game, are highly motivated and feel invested in the game. Or they would not be here posting. It makes a lot of sense for them to vote for you to continue making games like the one they currently like. You know what you have but not what you'll get, so to speak.
I decided to post because I voted "Other". I be brutally honest I couldn't care less what games you decide to develop. Create whatever project you think you can make work. All I want is that you make a good game. If you can not make a good game then don't bother. I don't buy bad games so, for me, that seems like a waste of effort.
I'm sure that the above paragraph seems really stupid and pointless but it's the most honest answer I can give. You're obviously in the position of having to make a big decision for the company, since you're clearly not satisfied with situation, and you're considering your options. Computer games, as all sorts of entertainment, are a nightmare to create. Backpedaling when you noticed you're on the wrong path can break your legs, so to speak. My advice, for what it's worth, is to sit down. Look at what you have. Compare the options. Then ask yourselves "If we choose this option are we sure we will create a good game?"
If the answer is "No" or "Maybe" then don't bother. For all the passionate opinions of your fans not one of us know how to make good games. If we did we would be creating them ourselves right now. You guys on the other hand are amongst the most initiated and talented people on the planet on this issue. If you disagree with this then you've been spending far too much time in the company of your peers. You guys can spot a good game, especially a strategy game, when the rest of us just see promises and hype. If you know it's a good game then it's a good game.
And we will buy it. And we will play it. And the more we like it the more outrageous our whining will be about perceived flaws.
I honestly think you engine could offer a very good game.
This is a very good opportunity for creating a revised game with different rules but using the same content - perhaps even killing off some parts of the game and introducing another, at the very least you have the change the mix and tie it all together - this is the hard part.
That being said many key elements of Elemental are flawed. And it is again spread too thin - the game does no tie in well with its components. Its not a very fun game even though rich with features, and it offers little REAL depth (by that i dont mean the amount of stuff you do, but the actual strategic depth).
Eador as an example is a rather simple game but has a magnitude of choices and every single thing you do matters a lot - its a well thought out game that works on many levels(if there is any negatives to say about it then its that combat gets a little boring - and this also is its saving grace - were combat not as good as it is it would be a very bad game because you spend much of your time in combat)
I think the core game-play and game-play rules need to be reviewed and really worked through well - this is the hardest part in any game and makes true gems stand out from the clones.
This game has more than ENOUGH content - dont work on adding more - work on making this work better.
Examples:
Quests - make quests give more random challenges but also pinpoint what those might be so that the player might now what he is to face and can decide on whether and when to take the quest - dont make players lose out on quests that are there!
The Quests system that is in place now could be SO much better.
Magic - come up with a system or magic casters to use magic right off the bat and have some spells for magic heroes that dont cost mana or use Heroes FREE mana pool (lets say a hero will have free combat mana based on his level). THEN make a limit to how much combat/global mana heroes can use based on whether they are mages or warriors.
Of course you must make AI be able to use either one of these features - but these will make the game richer.
There is lots more you can do.
I think the custom unit thing needs to be heavily revised because the AI obviously doesn't know how to use it and honestly there is just too many options half of which no one uses - why have them there, better to have fewer traits that have real strategic value to make players think for 10 minutes which should they use - right now players just use a few traits to make the best units available - there is little reason to make bad units because unit levels matter a lot.
I am no game designer, you are and I'm sure you can do better than I, but I personally haven't played the game in 2 months because of how limited the AI is and the obvious game design flaws.
I did no vote.
I like this part, makes me think what part of the consumer base is on the forum.I think it would be nice to see an online-feature in-game to also show the polls (You can log on to your game with a rather hidden command). This might get less forum dwellers, and more of the "masses" opinions.
I don't think in any way that the polls Stardock put out is final, they only use it to see what the forum dwellers feel, I guess they also know what kind of community is actually dwelling in these forums (I always thinks of bridge trolls when I say "Forum DWELLERS"... Yes I want to live under a bridge in a gloomy cave )
Sincerely~ Kongdej
Exactly, of course Stardock are aware WHO is answering these polls and these are not firm results, just hints to be analysed further.
I remember about 6 months ago Frogboy wrote about the dangers of listening to the "zealots". So don't worry about this poll having too much influence over their decision-making.
Most talented and initiated of game designers? Thats simply wrong. Stardock did not create a single classic in my opinion and the 2 games in this series are far from it.
I am sure there are 100s of ideas in Frogboys and most peoples head that would seem very good, but not all of them are.
I seriously doubt that Frogboy is asking people on this forum what to do with his money. But this is a good discussion that will bring fresh perspective. A lot of time even VERY talented individuals get caught up in the wrong idea which is clearly evident in this case if not by the 2nd then at least by the first game.
Currently there's a very interesting on GameSpy http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/crusader-kings-ii/1227292p1.html which kind of fits into the topic of this thread very good. (IMHO)
It's pretty much about the big problems of TBS games in general with the tedious end games. Fallen Enchantress is also mentioned with a positive and a negative aspect.
I wonder why they didn't mention GalCiv2. I always found the "Great early game, boredom incarnate end game" especially true for it.
I'm not a zealot, but I like this genre and I would like to see more of it. It doesn't necessarily have to be FE/Elemental, but something with a fantasy theme.
I get the feeling that Frogboy is inclined not to continue FE unless there is a strong response in either direction from the zealous among us. , so this survey is to assess interest, similar to the Map pack.
I'm well aware that this gendre is a niche within a niche, so sales/sales growth is limited, but honestly I don't want GC3. .
I've played a lot of it, and purchased every iteration since GC1. Unless there is something revolutionary in GC3, I'm ready to move on to other things.
Fallen Enchantress does have the whole Alpha Centauri-eque "hostile world" going for it.
However, I come from the Age of Wonders camp and really miss the line of sight gameplay in tacticals.
If Triumph is indeed coming out with AoW3 and the tactical maps are more complex (ie:changes according to city) and they fix the AI and diplomacy, I may be spending more time over there.
Just being honest.
Coming out of a long hibernation just to say this: FE and its universe has a great deal of potential and it'd be a crying shame to see you all move past it.
If EWOM was where FE was at release, then FE would be a classic, that's how much you improved it. The game isn't there yet, but you obviously learned a lot from EWOM and I imagine just as much from FE. Stick with it. You're almost there...
Let's see what this expansion does. Then we'll reevaluate.
in the meantime, start watching Stardrive (www.stardrivegame.com) as it is doing some amazing things in the SciFi 4x genre. When you announce GC3, you'll need to take a hard look at what SD is doing right, which is a lot....and it's a very, very small team.
No multiplayer. With few exceptions, RPGs and TBS single player tend to suffer from the addition of multiplayer.
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