Elemental: Interim PRE-day 0 update

Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2415

Elemental: Interim PRE-day 0 update

Tomorrow marks the official release of Elemental. We will have a “day 0” update available as well.

But for those who are interested in trying out an interim version, we’re gearing up to release one tonight.

Here is what was implemented in the past 12 hours:

Lots of new seed maps (particularly for medium and large)
Enemy Unit caching modified so that they are released from the game after death (this should address the “game gets slower over time” issue some have reported)
In tactical battles, the camera will only move IF the unit is off screen
Fixed a crash related to city tiles on DirectX 11 based setups with a game within a game
Removed non-terrain based tactical battle bonus modifiers (an interesting idea but unintuitive)
There are technologies that will spawn more shards on the map.
Fixed tactical heal spell to ensure that it doesn’t do any 0 point healing.
Fixed issue that caused failed spells to say “miss”
Disabled the use of the L8 texture format to use the A8R8G8B8 format as it was incompatible with certain video cards and causing the game to crash (fog of war issue)
Worldly knowledge renamed to “Tech Knowledge” to be consistent with the manual.
Fixed a crash related to children being born during a reloaded saved game that could cause a crash on 64-bit machines
Fixed a crash related to reference counting on the Dynasty screen that happens on 32-bit Windows XP machines
Tactical Battles now support edge scroll
Fixed a buffer overrun issue that caused random crashing on SSD SATA drives while saving a game.
Cosmetic fix to the object tool in th map editor
Fixed a bug that would cause the goodie hut graphics not to be removed when they were no longer relevant.
Fixed minimap bug where unhiding and dragging the minimap without first resizing it would cause the map part to get offset from the rest of the minimap window, leaving it blank
Fixed bug on loading a game or starting a new game within a game where clicking on a city would leave its resource tab blank until it was clicked on again
Improved performance of units joining into an army
Hooked up the draggable window showing the list of players who have requested a new turn or not in multiplayer, automatically shows up in multiplayer but does not get filled or ever unhide in single player [NOTE: Multiplayer servers will NOT be enabled until AFTER day 0]
Fixed crash related to very very fast machines loading up data.zip before initialization causing data to not be fully enabled which would result in a crash when the object in question was accessed.
Ice Bolt spell removed
New spell: Stab of Ice, short range spell, causes enemy to lose turn in addition to damage.
Sion Unit given special abilities and rebalanced

Only 24 hours until the actual official release of Elemental: War of Magic!

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OliverFA
alborrelli
-Pagan-

Im so happy this is here...feels like ive been waiting like 2 years for it!! On the other side, im sad because I so enjoyed the whole process of watching the beta and the game transform to what it is today. I loved the little screen of characters you had and the cheesy pictures that looked like the old Dos games. Hopefully if another chance to beta one of you awesome games comes along, I can do it again, because honestly, it was the best beta I have ever been in. Ive done a few...for EQ, EQII, STO, Coh/CoV, Auto Assault, and many others. But in this one...you really listened. Thanks so much for letting me be a part of it!!

All the best,

jmccrea

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EviliroN

Join Date 04/2008

+20

its 1106 CST, so just after midnight for EST and update is live

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I believe that I should mention that I am unable to play the game, seeing that as soon as the world loads (I can see the bottom of screen display) the map itself remains white forever, and it's really annoying, considering that in the beta such bug didn't happen...

Hope you can fix it or tell me where I messed up, I'm itching to play

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Downloading the update now, I must say i am quite impressed. I really can't wait to see how great this game will become. I know they are going to add lots of new content, like spells, maps, etc.

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Quoting Supergulo,

reply 53

Hope you can fix it or tell me where I messed up, I'm itching to play

I believe they said if you have this problem to lower your resolution or to play in windowed mode until they can fix it.

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Really? Sorry! I didn't noticed! My apologizes, I was too hyped to read...

Thank you for the tip!

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well I saw it said in chat.

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It was said here too.

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I feel a significant increase in framerate!!! now i can actually play with the 3d map!! Yeeeeaaah!!!!

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ATI card user here, still suffering bad frame rates and memory leaks (and CTD while alt-tabbing). Running a monitor on the process I'm getting nearly 20 Hard Faults for memory every 10 seconds, in particular, while loading a game. They drop down to about 1 every few seconds after that. Impulse throws 5 while checking for internet.

Also, could you disable trying to pull down the data from the server on startup? If I have my cellphone connected to the net, the game COMPLETELY locks up (because it is way too slow). I kill my internet connection, then I can start the game. This is even with "Localized Data" being checked in options. Second, I've also noticed it always uses "Use Building Zoom" (or whatever). Though maybe that is fixed in Day-0. If you spam the "construct" building it locks up your camera, also... just small bug report there.

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Loving the game, can't wait to see what it will morph into in time- do wish it was easier to have children as thats a super cool RPG aspect- marry children to champions? (I havnt had children yet so maybe u can? I dont remember)

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I don't want to be accused of spamming but ...

This game rocks. It is well supported by an excellent developer and company. I am very happy with it.

Having made my position clear (this game is excellent) I am now going to get back to what I prefer to do, ie lobbying as to what I want to see in the expansions!

The Expansions and Patches Requests

Spells - Wants more spells. Interesting global enchantments please. Armageddon anyone? Eternal Darkness? Season of Light? Chaos Channels? Global Fertility? Battlefield spells - Prayer, Darkness, Mass Confusion, Rain of Fire etc. etc. The devs should basically rob the MoM, Dominions 3 and AoW 2 spellbooks.

Artefacts and Equipment - So much more. And more interesting swords, rings and amulets than just +1 - +5 please?

Equipment Abilities - To give more special ability options for regular troops? Bandage pack to give healing power - training component to give First Strike etc. etc.

Building Art Content - more and varied building components for the mod section (crystal buildings, spires like in AoW 1 & 2 for the elves, rounded domes and organic buildings like WarCraft 1 Orcs and organic structures like Zerg or something)

Creatures - Wants more monsters (not just humanoids).

Races - Non humanoid, maybe different gameplay mechanics?

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The patch reset my game options Oo

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Lest you believe I am here to trash Stardock, I will point out that I have been buying your games since GalCiv on OS/2. I installed OS/2 to play the darn thing.

The game is completely unplayable without any sort of end user documentation. The manual does not include simple basics such as how to zoom in or out. If you are not a veteran 4x player, you wouldn't know what the conventions are.

There is no documentation on multiple UI mechanical issues.

A software engineering company like Stardock ought to know the simple rule of software development: it isn't done if it isn't documented.

I know documentation is neither sexy nor fun, and that it is extremely tedious to do, and is expensive, and requires talented technical writers who don't add a single feature or fix a single bug.

AND I DON'T CARE.

If I cannot figure out how to play the game, the game is just a giant bug.

This situation is completely unacceptable, and whomever made the decision to release without a real manual (a PDF, or even a text file would have sufficed) should be ashamed of themselves.

I had enough faith in Stardock to pre-order, and now I am very, very disappointed.

EDIT: I should add that I HAVE read the woefully inadequate and unacceptable PDF that was included. However, it only has high level background fluff and high level game play concepts. No details at all, and no UI mechanics instruction. See my threads in the tech. support forum for details.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 34

Quoting DragonRider862,
reply 26

quoting post
Ice Bolt spell removed

New spell: Stab of Ice, short range spell, causes enemy to lose turn in addition to damage.

I take it that this is the prototype for the sort of thing you'll be doing with all the generic magical nukes in the near future? They could really all use some love.

The campaign really embarrasses itself in this regard in the preorder release...you only get a handful of spells, and three of them are Fireball, Lightning Bolt, and Arcane Arrow, out of which Fireball and Arcane Arrow are 100% identical (including damage, cost, and element) and Lightning Bolt is differentiated only by being Air instead of Fire and costing 3 mana instead of 2 for the exact same effect. Doesn't really give people who are using it as a tutorial a great first impression of the magic system! Especially since you're never given shard-claiming technology as far as I could tell, making the lightning one 100% useless.

Of course, that's just the pre-release version, and there's plenty of time to work on spells post-release too. But for the sake of making a good first first impression in the campaign, I would highly suggest that you make sure that those three spells in particular are distinct from each other (or replace two of them with totally new spells) for the real Day 0 release, if you haven't already. You don't want "why are three out of my four tactical spells reskins of the exact same thing" to be the first thing people ask when they open their spellbook!

The book 1 campaign is basically a glorified tutorial.

So when is book 2 coming out?

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I just started the game yesturday, not for long, but looks great. I think we all expect that a game of this magnitude would have issues, but the attention and care (and speed of responsiveness) that Stardock is giving this game is impressive. I look forward to continuing it, and to see where it goes from here.

Hey Stardock guys, I am currently a senior manager with technical, writing and creative traits as well for a software firm, if you guys have any career (not job) opportunites, let me know, this company looks very interesting to me.

Thanks.

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Quoting SAJ14SAJ,

reply 64

I am sorry, but I cannot agree with any of the positive comments in this thread for one simple reason: the product has no effective manual or documentation, and that isn't even MENTIONED in the change list.

Lest you believe I am here to trash Stardock, I will point out that I have been buying your games since GalCiv on OS/2. I installed OS/2 to play the darn thing.

The game is completely unplayable without any sort of end user documentation. The manual does not include simple basics such as how to zoom in or out. If you are not a veteran 4x player, you wouldn't know what the conventions are.

There is no documentation on multiple UI mechanical issues.

A software engineering company like Stardock ought to know the simple rule of software development: it isn't done if it isn't documented.

I know documentation is neither sexy nor fun, and that it is extremely tedious to do, and is expensive, and requires talented technical writers who don't add a single feature or fix a single bug.

AND I DON'T CARE.

If I cannot figure out how to play the game, the game is just a giant bug.

This situation is completely unacceptable, and whomever made the decision to release without a real manual (a PDF, or even a text file would have sufficed) should be ashamed of themselves.

I had enough faith in Stardock to pre-order, and now I am very, very disappointed.

EDIT: I should add that I HAVE read the woefully inadequate and unacceptable PDF that was included. However, it only has high level background fluff and high level game play concepts. No details at all, and no UI mechanics instruction. See my threads in the tech. support forum for details.

I agree there should be better documentation because the manual is not very helpful. However the game is very playable and even extremely enjoyable. And it is not really that hard to figure out how to move around the game. And to say that the game is unplayable without the manual is just ridiculous.

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Bellack,

Obviously, it was not as big an obstacle to you as to me, but it is not appropriate to say that my comments are ridiculous.

Given that there are more than one thread of people indicating that they have given up playing, or will wait a month to play, for the exact reasons I outline, I am obviously not alone here.

How to play a game should not be a puzzle. The challenge should be in succeeding at the game.

If you figured out the UI mechanics on your own, more power to you. There is no need to denigrate those of us who have not, or don't have the patience to.

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Worldly knowledge renamed to “Tech Knowledge” to be consistent with the manual.

You should note that in the game creation screen that it is still referred to as "Worldly Knowledge" when hovering over the relative abilities that reference this (Kingom/Empire selection).

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Quoting SAJ14SAJ,

reply 68

Bellack,
How to play a game should not be a puzzle. The challenge should be in succeeding at the game.

The game is far from puzzling. Book 1 of the campaign should teach you everything you need to know. Also, the game is rife with tool tips if you take the time to mouse over the options.

Just because you don't have the patience to take the time to learn a game doesn't mean anything is wrong with it. Learning a game is part of the experience and any good game worth investing in is going to take some learning. Its not rocket science and if your gimme-everything-I-want-right-now attitude is causing you frustration, maybe reevaluate your approach.

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the product has no effective manual or documentation

Possibly helpful video tutorial series:

http://frogboy.impulsedriven.net/article/391280/Elemental_VIDEO_TUTORIAL

There are some other resources I've found over the preceding months, but these are new and essentially up-to-date and easy to watch/listen to to get an overview and serve as a starting point.

I think the manual does have a fair amount of detail on the UI widgets and some mechanics, but perhaps fails when trying to connect all the dots together to give a clear idea to a player about how to go about actually playing. A "sand-box" mindset helps here, but I suppose some (probably including myself) would want to look at other resources to see how to pull all the details together into some cohesive gameplay sequence of tasks.

Just because you don't have the patience to take the time to learn

The important thing isn't to rush to defend Stardock's Internets Reputation. Not everyone learns the same way, using the same technique, for all things. I'd read a while ago that "brute force" learning techniques (e.g., your method: RTFM) is not typically the most effective or fastest way to learn a subject for a great many people. Stardock may find it useful feedback to know that at least some people find the game daunting - unless there is some defined sequence of events/tasks to guide a player through these early days. What if a well-established and popular game reviewer decides the manual, while detailed and well-laid out, fails to 'teach' a player how to play? "Just because you don't have the patience to take the time to learn" won't help the reviewer's final rating.

Pretty sure Frogboy posted previously that they wanted to make a challenging game rich in detail (like games of old...). That doesn't necessarily preclude having a variety of documentation, tutorials, etc. to help as many players (and learning styles) as possible. In fairness, they've made that effort. They can keep improving upon the existing docs, blogs, tutorial videos and write-ups through the game's life cycle though. It can only help increase the potential audience, imo.

There is a real challenge here though: this game is like a moving target. It seems to have changed so much, and given the toolset options and future development plans, it is going to continue to change rapidly, afaic. That makes documentation (a static snapshot in time of then-current gameplay) and maintaining that documentation over time, especially difficult.

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Je n'ai plus a dire.

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There was a PDF? Where? lol

(seriously, I didn't check, where?)

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Start | All Programs | Stardock Games | Elemental - War of Magic | Manual (PDF)

That shortcut, on my system, redirects to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Elemental\ElementalManual_EN.pdf

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just played Elemental war of magic for the first day - like it .... but the adventuring technology work only on 50% ... i have leraned all the Adventuring Tec tree & have leader of lvl 5 ,But i can't do level 2 - 5 quests becuase it still says am level 1 still , the spells on elemental side are few in number .. i have find out if you build a new charcter that has all the spell cast schools turned off you can still learn the basic spells which are weridly are 70% of the spell book knowlegue , the build of units i fought that you in time learning the Magic Tec you would unlock units that can cast magic .... nope ( No spell casting units ) only items & building ....... i fought when you play as a differnt faction their build would have their own charcterisc ( nope ) the bad factions all look the same & the good faction look the same .. but i guess is were the tile designer comes in to play ... lol the crazy thing i still love this game ...

i would love to know how i can mod this game because i would add these things in the game .

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