Elemental – a busy Friday

from JoeUser Forums

I hate leaving all this for the end of the week, especially when it’s good news stuff and our community could certainly use some of that.

So here’s what’s going on!

Elemental: Arena

As some of you know, we put off v1.08 until next week since we wanted more time for QA. See, we can be taught.  But we went ahead and put up the Arena page so you can see some of the features that multiplayer in Elemental will be providing. The changes made to the single player game (data and fixes) have been ported to the MP servers and are still being tested.

https://www.elementalgame.com/arena

image Elemental: Arena – Main Screen

imageElemental: Arena – Game Screen

Development resources on multiplayer are being reserved based on what the community is looking for.  It does not come from Elemental’s single player post-release budget so those of you who love single player don’t have to worry, the two are very separate (in more ways than one).

Impulse::Reactor will automatically save your games online so you can revisit them later in the event you can’t finish the game in a single sitting. The saves are kept in “the cloud” so that you can access them from whatever machine you’re playing Elemental on.

 

Elemental: Mods

The second piece of news is that the mods web page has been put up.

image

https://www.elementalgame.com/mods

This is basically a duplicate of what’s within the game.  The difference here, however, is that players can manually download the actual XML and other assets to see how they were done. 

We have started with the maps and will be adding tiles, quests, campaigns, items, effects and then custom mods such as textures, third party tools, etc. so that the community can interact with one another more easily.  We will also be putting up links to third party resources and websites and wikis.

Elemental: Hiergamenon

The third piece of news is that the Hiergamenon page is now up. 

image

https://www.elementalgame.com/hiergamenon/techtrees

This is an on-going online resource that will, for now, let users view the XML data from the game in a more accessible way.  The next step is to make it so that players can modify it in a web-based editor and then download their creations for themselves.

Elemental: Destiny’s Embers

imageFor those of you who have bought the book Elemental: Destiny's Embers we had originally planned on releasing the first of the book series of content today but some of our changes require the v1.08 update so its push pushed this as well.

Each character has their own unique equipment and in some cases special abilities (since not all of them are Channelers).

image For those of you who have read the book, Nym is one of the characters the download code provides.

Readers who purchased a Kindle or Nook version will also be able to download the content as well, we’ve made arrangements with Random House to take care of those customers.

That’s all for tonight!

133,950 views 70 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

That.

Is.

One.

Awesome.

Journal.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Glad to see journals are re-opened.

 

Are you ever going to sell codes for that DLC separate from the book?  Would you be allowed to?

 

2nd question: Are you guys going to look at MP for potential AI improvements or game balancing?

 

 

Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

You forgot to lock the thread, so I would like to say "Keep up the good work"

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Ooooh some interesting looking stuff there, any chance we could talk about the combat changes for 1.08?

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Has the development team worked on any mods that will be going up other than the actual campaign itself?

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Yay! My country is 0.76% of Elemental population. XD

Now to check all those sweet URLs in the OP!

In before the lock?

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

*impressed*

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Whoever is in charge of the website, fix the menu. It's has weird MouseOver issues. :P

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Wow this is great news. I am really excited about the online ranking system.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

A lot of good things in this Journal!  ^_^

About the maps: I suggest to include an entry with the map size... some of them has it in the description, but it's such an important parameter that I think should have a dedicated place in the map characteristics.

And I also suggest to include for all the mods the possibility to rate them (out of ten, or out of 5 stars at least)... I think that in few months we'll have a huge amount of mods, and we need proper way to filter the goods ones. popular through downloads numbers is ok, but a quality indicator will also be very good.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

For Multiplayer, what I'm looking for is being able to play the full-featured single player game in multiplayer with my friends, with AI players, and with mods if we so choose.  I don't need/care about separate game modes, mini-games, etc.

 

 

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting arstal, reply 2
Glad to see journals are re-opened.

 

Are you ever going to sell codes for that DLC separate from the book?  Would you be allowed to?

 

2nd question: Are you guys going to look at MP for potential AI improvements or game balancing?

 

 
End of arstal's quote

We can't. They're not ours to sell.  In the end though, there will be an expansion pack's level of content all free for the price of a $10 book. Random House has done something really interesting here, it'll be interesting to see how it works out for them.

Regarding MP: We will be.

But a lot of the AI issues in v1.0x have been related to having one group implementing the "numbers" and a separate group implementing the AI. This was done because Elemental is so data driven that was thought to be a "good idea" to divide up the labor.  However, this has resulted in a much weaker than anticipated AI because the two groups didn't always communicate as well as they could have and so you end up with the AI dealing with numbers it wasn't expecting (example, lord hammers doing 40 damage).

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

Looks nice thanks to all at stardock! no have a  :beer: this weekend on me.. send bills to Brad :grin:

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

I stumbled on the goodies earlier this afternoon when the menus were hosed up. VERY nice stuff, but laying out the hierarchy of the tech and empires is a very good one!

 

As to the question about DL content, it was stated earlier that all DL content will be released to EVERYONE 90 days after it is released to those that bought "x". So, whatever I get for buying from BestBuy others will have 90 days later. Stardock apparently gave up some pretty good coin for that to happen.

 

Well, Brad posted before I did and in fact I'm dead wrong it seems.

 

 

Huh.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Frogboy, your answer make me think about something:

I hope that the program analyse the data on startup, (like the min and max value of items, weapons ect), instead of hardcoding the value in the AI script.

I say that because mods can alter extensively these data values, and the AI could become unbalanced...

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

Pure awesomeness! I especially like the arena page. :beer:

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Wintersong, reply 8
Whoever is in charge of the website, fix the menu. It's has weird MouseOver issues.

End of Wintersong's quote

Try doing a hard refresh (Ctrl + F5).  If that doesn't work, wait a little while.  Eventually your browser will realize the background image has changed and update accordingly :)

Bara

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

Why does Nym wonder what they (whoever they are) tastes like? O_O

 

And yes, I'm well aware that for all the really cool stuff in those pics/on the site, I notice some random statement in the corner of a screenshot. >_>

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

On site is probably part of new features, but hidden.

When i use top menu bar, i try enter to forum i have:

https://www.elementalgame.com/modsmenu

https://www.elementalgame.com/hiergamenon/techtrees

 

 

Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Franky999, reply 15
Frogboy, your answer make me think about something:

I hope that the program analyse the data on startup, (like the min and max value of items, weapons ect), instead of hardcoding the value in the AI script.

I say that because mods can alter extensively these data values, and the AI could become unbalanced...
End of Franky999's quote

Not really practical.  The basic problem (let's just say the killer problem for the AI in Elemental v1.0) is that the amount of time it takes a focused player to get powerful weapons is too short for the AI to practically respond to.

It would be the GalCiv equivalent of the AI having to deal with Terror Stars within the first 100 turns.  

Addressing this isn't hard, it just means that the person doing the balance numbering and the AI lead need to be talking to each other (or right now, the same person - me).

Not to mention, it kind of trivializes the other strategies (like magic) if I can crank out a party of guys who do 160 damage per turn early on.  It's just an example of how DATA matters.  It also represents an example of where I was wrong in thinking that balancing isn't that big of a deal. It's been so long since I've had to make a new game totally from scratch that I'd forgotten how long in man years it really took to balance GalCiv.  Even The Corporate Machine is just the third incarnation of Entrepreneur (I'd love to redo that game at some point but nobody wants business war games).

Reply #21 from Elemental Forums Top

Thank you!  Great update all around.   Enjoy your weekend.

Reply #22 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting GunslingerBara, reply 17
Try doing a hard refresh (Ctrl + F5).  If that doesn't work, wait a little while.  Eventually your browser will realize the background image has changed and update accordingly

Bara
End of GunslingerBara's quote
Thank you, Bara. I had to actually delete temp files manually to finally have Chrome show the correct images.

Reply #23 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 12

We can't. They're not ours to sell.  In the end though, there will be an expansion pack's level of content all free for the price of a $10 book. Random House has done something really interesting here, it'll be interesting to see how it works out for them.
End of Frogboy's quote

Cool.  I was going to pick up the book eventually anyway but if it comes with a ton of free content as well I'll go get it.

So I assume one can get the book from anywhere (say Amazon) and then the codes are in the book?  (Any worry people will go to an actual book store and right down the code and take them home?)

And then you input that code into Impulse I'd gather and the free content will then appear for download?

And finally, is there a list anywhere of what free content is available via buying the book?

Just trying to get a handle on this.

Thanks!

P.S.  Love the tech tree online.  I already understand it a whole lot better and I can map out a strategy properly on what tech to go for next.

Reply #25 from Elemental Forums Top

I am not really interested in MP, but thank you for the update.  Looking forward to playing 1.08.

 

**understanding that a good MP base will continue the longevity of patches and updates to the game**