August 2010?

I think that the release date will be postponed.

Agreed. At the rate were going (which is comepltly fine with me) I dont see anyway it will be done by August.

I just can't wait to join the (second) beta.

Things will speed up once systems get implemented, really. I think its a meetable date.

I think when you see all these different and numerous ideas piled on them from the forums, it seems like there is just too much work to do, but I would guess they already have a very good idea of what they want to make.

See: https://forums.elementalgame.com/367385

Yeah I think that thread is what inspired this one. I don't have my little orphan Annie decoder ring yet.

Indeed...just take a look at the various excellent ideas & suggestions. Polishing the game mechanics, adding/enhancing features, etc. will take a lot of time imo.

I think that the actual release date isn't important. No one is going to want to have it released unfinished and/or not as good as possible (money situation ignored).

It's ready, when it's ready. No matter whether it's August or December.

It'll be done when it's done.

That said, game mechanic stuff is trivial compared to the engine work.

In GalCiv II, I routinely made dramatic changes to the AI or economy or what have you in-between updates (as some long time GalCiv players know).

For instance, we could implement one combat system, decide we don't like it, and do a different one in the next week -- as long as the actual mechanics don't make their way into the engine. Hence, the ugly looking beta.

I just thought of a good example of the importance of engine to a game:

Take Caesar IV, a great game and use the Elemental beta cloth map and you can quickly picture how quickly the game could be changed.

I appreciate the insight.

I am all for "it's done when its done." And it sounds like when the gameplay is where you want it things could come together for the finished product really fast. I was just wondering if August 2010 is even a target, is there a target, if it is what your gut feeling is.

The impression I get is, it's too far out to even really be looking at dates, that's fine.

Wait, you are saying we can mod a Caesar IV in Elemental? How?

Based on what I see internally, I think we could make this upcoming Spring if we pushed it.  

What the beta testers have and what we have are two different things.  The beta testers are involved in gameplay design testing. It could have been done in flash really except then we wouldn't have been able to try out data streaming and the basic 3D engine parts.

That sounds ... very uplifting. Can't wait to join the next beta

That. is. AWESOME! Not that I want it this spring, it is just cool that things are progressing so well. And thanks for spilling, I know how you game developers hate hate hate setting timeline expecations. Very good news.

Yeah, don't push it. Let it flow nice and natural. This is the PC gaming worlds last chance at a decent TBS for a good long while. Sid Meier's recent announcement of an upcoming 'facebook' version of Civ did not inspire confidence over at civfanatics.

Indeed, don't push it...just listen to the suggestions, that is very important. We have lot of experienced strategy gamers on this forum. It's a good thing. We all want this turn based fantasy game to be close to perfect. If it will take an additional 2-4 or more months to tweak the various gameplay mechanics, no one will complain.

Yea, I should emphasize here that we don't plan to push it.

Originally, we were going to release the game and do the modding in post release updates.  The big change in our development focus has been to make the modding more central to development.

The other big change and the most important one in my mind was the decision to extend the beta so that we could let people have more input into the process.  That meant pulling out all the actual engine stuff and leave only a sprite-based 2D map (the cloth map) so that we could toy around with lots of different ideas.

even if it was pushed to something more like October or november 2010, its hardly the kind of push back I have grown accustom to seeing in games I want direly.   Less than a year of delay for quality reasons isn't much of a sacrifice to have a solid game in my opinion.

But oh so painful.

If necessary, I'd make Elemental take 3 more years to finish.

But it's not looking like it'll be necessary to do any pushing.

The "Game" stuff (game mechancis and such) are pretty trivial to put in.

What makes modern games take a long time are the assets and engine development.