I love my turn-based strategy titles, and prefer the fantasy setting over sci-fi, so I see myself getting into this game much more than other Stardock titles. Although I'm concerned by their history that the story will be non-existent.

Preparing for Elemental Beta 1

For BETA 1, we're not really looking for "bug" reports. We want to hear people telling us what they'd like to see and how they'd like the game work. We'll debate, discuss, argue, and have a lot of fun putting it all together over the next several months because, well, for us, the BETA process is a key part of the game's (as opposed to the coding) evolution.

Beta 1, will all take place on the cloth map. The idea here is to take all the eye candy away and let beta testers focus first on just the game play.

Over the coming weeks, the economy and magic of Elemental will begin to take shape and beta testers will, ideally, find the game fun despite the Commodore-64 style graphics. Then, when the full environment is added in as well as the tactical battles the fun will be greatly amplified because you'll be able to see the true effects of your power!

Players who pre-order the game will be able to download beta builds via Impulse. For more information or to pre-order Elemental visit www.elementalgame.com.

I am avoiding the beta like the plague; I REALLY want this game to rock, and I don't have the free gaming time to participate, plus I really want to see the refined product at release.

I love my turn-based strategy titles, and prefer the fantasy setting over sci-fi, so I see myself getting into this game much more than other Stardock titles. Although I'm concerned by their history that the story will be non-existent.

Wait a minute...the person who started this thread works at Stardock? As a technology evangelist?? This is a goddamn sponsored viral marketing thread! PLANT! PLANT! PLANT!

*knocks over table*

*kicks dog in the corner*

*holds up "Steam 4Ever" sign*

*runs out the door*

I looked forward to a thread on Elemental, don't really care who started it.

I wants me some information and opinions!!!

I looked forward to a thread on Elemental, don't really care who started it.

One of the things that will make Elemental different from anything Stardock has developed before is that we will view the release date of the game as the beginning of its life rather than the climax.

The reason for this is that a big part of our objective with Elemental lies in the engine underneath it. It is our dream to slowly evolve Elemental to be so modable that a user familiar with Python 3.x will be able to use Elemental to create virtually any kind of land base computer game.

One of the things that some of you probably suspect but we can confirm from bitter experience is that while there are plenty of good 3D engines out there (Unreal, Gamebryo, Source, etc.) there aren’t really any modern engines (that we could find anyway) that are specifically designed for top down where there’s lots and lots of units on screen.

What I am hoping will happen is that over time, more and more of Elemental will cease being C++ and be moved into Python scripts. The AI and some of the game logic will be first but eventually as much of the code that we can economically justify taking from C++ will be moved to scripts.

In this way, users would be potentially able to create all kinds of new games using the Elemental engine. For first person shooters, this is nothing new. Civilization IV is extremely moddable too. Our goal here is to take an engine that was designed from the ground up as a 3D engine with full strategic zoom and a multi-threaded graphics engine and make it as generic as possible.