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Frogboy
Frogboy
Join Date 03/2001
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Elemental: Community Support Part I

March 22, 2009 9:58:32 PM from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums

Now for those of you who know me, none of this will come as a shock.  For Elemental, one of our chief goals is to make a game where the community can keep it going forever and ever.

That means automating as much as possible in game from our standpoint. We want people to mod and mod and mod the game. For instance, if someone wanted to make Carcassonne (I think that’s what it’s called) I want people to be able to do that with Elemental.

What people don’t understand about Elemental is that it’s really the first 3D gaming engine to be made specifically for strategy games in years. This is a big deal because there are some huge differences between a game that’s designed to be played 1st person and one that is designed to be viewed third person in terms of what features the engine is optimized for.

I’d like to see the Elemental engine be able to be used in lots of interesting ways.

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NTJedi
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Frogboy
NTJedi
Join Date 03/2006
+39
Reply #1 March 23, 2009 12:08:07 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

This is excellent news and will add great replay value for the game! 

Here are some features the community would be interesting in modding: 

1)  New Races/Nations:  And the related details(spells, technologies, items, abilities, units, buildings, etc.,)

2)  New Terrain Types:  examples= Lava, Snow, Caverns, Tar Pits, etc.,

3)  New World Map Structures: examples= Gates, Mazes, Altars, Graveyards, etc.,

4)  New Channeller Shapes/Designs: examples= Saurons immobile flaming eye, Medusa(Gorgon), etc.,

5)  New Battlefield Skills for Units/Champions/Channellers: examples= Turn_to_Stone, KnockBack, Possess, Spray_Web, etc.,

6)  New Abilities for only Champions&Channellers: examples= Tunneling, Alchemy, Stealth, Assassinate, Tracking, Hibernate, etc.,

7)  Adding new game elements: examples= Merchants Guild(Another Trading Method), Arena Death Match (Each_Player_sends_1_Champion_to_Fight_for_the_Prize(s)),  Traveling Weather randomly moving on the World Map, Natural Disasters(Plague), Mercenary Boards(Temp_Hire_Mercenaries), etc., etc., .

8)  New AI Personalities:  Custom AI Scripting allowing the creation of unique interests, personalities and behaviors for the AI opponent.

 

Hope this helps.   

 

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Frogboy
Ephafn
Join Date 03/2006
+4
Reply #2 March 23, 2009 12:20:13 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

I’d like to see the Elemental engine be able to be used in lots of interesting ways.

What is the scope of this? Are you aiming to have the game be so moddable that one could recreate, for example, a Civilization clone with it?

If yes, that would be awesome. (Although I know I shouldn't expect so much from any game.)

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Frogboy
Tamren
Join Date 03/2008
+34
Reply #3 March 23, 2009 1:15:02 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Sounds great.

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Frogboy
Mythor
Join Date 03/2003
+1
Reply #4 March 23, 2009 3:02:49 AM
from Stardock ForumsStardock Forums

What was the engine for Empire: Total War made for, if not specifically for a strategy game?

Greater developer support for customising a game is always appreciated though. Fans will get around recalcitrant developers if they must but the more open the game is, the more likely you'll get the "Counter-Strike" of strategy gaming.

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Frogboy
GHenrikG
Join Date 06/2007
+6
Reply #5 March 23, 2009 4:20:41 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Hm, I wonder how this game will evolve... I guess, it depends a lot on how user friendly the modding tools are. Can someone, who has never modded before, have an easy start with it and change the game to a total new one? Perhaps even without looking at code at all? This would be a daring task... And a fitting achievement for stardock as I learned to know it.

It would end up in having creator programs for everything: Units, houses, cloth, plants, beasts... Even rules for the game mechanics...

 

Edit: I know design programs will be included, but it seems as if this is becoming larger then I have ever imagined... Righ now the ELEMENTAL project sounds to me like getting a good turn based strategy game with the possibility to make any turned based strategy game you desire...

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Frogboy
Wahngrok
Join Date 01/2004
+14
Reply #6 March 23, 2009 4:48:43 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

If you could make a Carcassonne total conversion you could probably make one for any board game as well. Ah, the possibilities...

And even better: Master of Magic reloaded.

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Frogboy
alway
Join Date 06/2007
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Reply #7 March 23, 2009 9:48:51 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Quoting Mythor,
reply 4
What was the engine for Empire: Total War made for, if not specifically for a strategy game?

It was made for a loading screen game!

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Frogboy
Peace Phoenix
Join Date 01/2004
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Reply #8 March 23, 2009 11:15:40 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Here are some features the community would be interesting in modding:

Nice list. I wonder how the AI will be able to manage correctly all this kind of stuff.

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Frogboy
getter77
Join Date 03/2009
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Reply #9 March 23, 2009 1:22:09 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Very nice to see such a strong focus on it.  I'm already pretty sure I, hopefully with others when the time comes, will endeavor to make a Roguelike from it/out of it! 

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Frogboy
Spartan
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #10 March 23, 2009 1:48:26 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

A damn solid list of suggestions so far; they all work for me.

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Frogboy
Fenhiro
Join Date 01/2009
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Reply #11 March 23, 2009 1:55:13 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Mikey Likey! Ah this is just another evolvutionary step for gaming, I'll probably have more fun making stuff than actually playing the game...well as long as modding will be noob proof...I'll admit it I'm a noob when it comes to modding (except when downloading them)

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Frogboy
RonLugge
Join Date 05/2004
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Reply #12 March 23, 2009 2:39:38 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

What people don’t understand about Elemental is that it’s really the first 3D gaming engine to be made specifically for strategy games in years. This is a big deal because there are some huge differences between a game that’s designed to be played 1st person and one that is designed to be viewed third person in terms of what features the engine is optimized for.

 

Such as, or is this one of those things only a professional would understand?  (The only thing that comes to mind is draw distance -- you need to be able to draw a lot more in terms of distance for a strategy game)

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Frogboy
Hawawaa
Join Date 09/2006
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Reply #13 March 23, 2009 3:59:58 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Keep those suggestions coming! Great Work!

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Frogboy
Sammual
Join Date 09/2004
+12
Reply #14 March 23, 2009 4:18:56 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Quoting ,
quoting post
For Elemental, one of our chief goals is to make a game where the community can keep it going forever and ever.

That means automating as much as possible in game from our standpoint. We want people to mod and mod and mod the game. For instance, if someone wanted to make Carcassonne (I think that’s what it’s called) I want people to be able to do that with Elemental.

What people don’t understand about Elemental is that it’s really the first 3D gaming engine to be made specifically for strategy games in years. This is a big deal because there are some huge differences between a game that’s designed to be played 1st person and one that is designed to be viewed third person in terms of what features the engine is optimized for.

So we would be able to mod a Hex grid into Elemental?

Would this involve licensing the engine or will a scripting language be included in Elemental?

Sammual

All hail the frog! 

 

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Frogboy
Cauldyth
Join Date 07/2004
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Reply #15 March 23, 2009 6:07:51 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Someone should re-make Archon in the Elemental engine.

 

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Frogboy
psychoak
Join Date 07/2007
+225
Reply #16 March 23, 2009 8:58:01 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

If Empire really is a brand new engine, that would be true.  As far as I know, they haven't come out and said they rebuilt it from scratch.  They've definitely modified it heavily, but you can do a lot of modification.  Just look at what Valve did with Half-life.  They took the Quake engine, modded the shit out of it, and put out a game that looked far better while maintaining excellent stability.  They then took that same engine and made countless modifications over the years, eventually becoming the titan of the first person shooter that is the Source engine.  It's not the same engine, but it's not really a new engine either.  A technicality perhaps, but it would explain his statement.  Most strategy game engines are either modified versions of their predecessors, or engines from another genre entirely.

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Frogboy
BladeRunner08865
Join Date 04/2006
0
Reply #17 March 23, 2009 10:45:35 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Can you make more complex than Spore yet just as accessible?

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Frogboy
Zeneroth
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #18 March 24, 2009 10:43:18 AM
from Stardock ForumsStardock Forums

[quote quoting="article"]
I’d like to see the Elemental engine be able to be used in lots of interesting ways.
[/quote]

As in making First person shooter ?

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Frogboy
alway
Join Date 06/2007
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Reply #19 March 24, 2009 10:58:15 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

As far as the Empire Total War engine goes, I would say it is the same base engine that was used for previous total war games, it just has a few more features and updated graphics. Of the coding from the previous total war game, I would guess around 50-75% of the coding remained unchanged.

What I think more companies need to do for their strategy games is adopt the zoom scalability so wonderfully captured in SoaSE and GalCiv 2. In total war, you can only see part of your empire at a time, and on the battle map you can almost never see your entire army at the same time. Most strategy games have the somewhat small ability to zoom in/out , and so it feels like playing your game in a box with a low ceiling.

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Frogboy
Netaddict45
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Reply #20 March 24, 2009 11:27:19 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Time to be a negative nellie and scream about how this will fragment the player-base and end up preventing people from finding others to game with.  Of course, I still play the V&K Middle Earth mod for Diablo II... 

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Frogboy
landisaurus
Join Date 06/2008
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Reply #21 March 25, 2009 11:37:39 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

man, I have to say a carcassone mod would be quite a site to see.   What a great board game.   While we are at it, we could have a settlers of catan mod too

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Frogboy
Insanetitan
Join Date 02/2006
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Reply #22 March 25, 2009 6:04:27 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Quoting Netaddict45,
reply 20
Time to be a negative nellie and scream about how this will fragment the player-base and end up preventing people from finding others to game with.  Of course, I still play the V&K Middle Earth mod for Diablo II... 

 

Well, disregarding balance issues for submitted content, I think people just need to be less picky about what they play.

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Frogboy
Luckmann
Join Date 04/2006
+132
Reply #23 March 29, 2009 8:48:49 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

The greatest support you can give me would be bears and a variety of stock mounts.

Quoting Zeneroth,
reply 18
Quoting ,
quoting article

I’d like to see the Elemental engine be able to be used in lots of interesting ways.
As in making First person shooter? 
Oh, there has been much too few fantasy shooters. I got a concept for one where you play as an Elven Archer, with just a variety of bows and arrows.

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Frogboy
Chadeo
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #24 April 10, 2009 2:38:00 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

 

I have been a long time fan of Stardock and I am very much looking forward to Elemental.

Even though I have every expectation that the base game will be a blast to play, I am excided by the stated goal of mod support. To me mods to a game add a huge amount of replayability and enjoyment to games, sometimes even more than the base game.

The two best examples of this for me are Team Fortress and Fall From Heaven 2. Fall From Heaven 2 is a total mod of Civ 4 (and based on the devs stated interest in civ, I really hope you guys have played it). It turns civ 4 into a dark fantasy world and adds in spells, real religions, changing game world (hell literally can take over the world), and many other changes. The mod was only possible because of the huge amount of support that Firaxis built into civ 4. This allows the modders to not just modify some config files here and there, but to write new python scripts, and even new c code and custom dlls. The access level given to the modders is amazing.

I mention all of this because I would love to see a similar level of mod support from Elemental. While only a few dedicated fans would make use of it, many many other players would be able to benefit from what they come up with.

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Frogboy
psychoak
Join Date 07/2007
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Reply #25 April 10, 2009 7:06:27 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Since el presidente has posted on the FFH2 forums and shot the shit with the designer, I'd guess he's played it.

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