Elemental: Reforged News

[p]We are working on improving the visuals for Elemental: Reforged. While we can’t get it to “AAA 2025” levels since this is a 2009-era engine, it’s amazing how far you can get only with stone knives and bear skins.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Since this is a Remaster++ and not a sequel, I think most people will understand if our goal is to make the graphics better. New bullet point: Graphics now 25% less bad! But with modern hardware or even old hardware (by today’s standards), there’s a lot we can do with the old engine.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Even adding normal maps to sand can make a big difference. Not to mention everything having shadows that are consistent.[/p][p] [/p][p]BEFORE:[/p][p][/p][p]AFTER:[/p][p][/p][p]If you go back and play Fallen Enchantress, you’ll quickly notice that many things didn’t get shadows. That’s because back in the day, shadows were too expensive to give to everything, so you had to “bake” the shadows into graphics.[/p][p]It also means we can zoom out much further before going to cloth map:[/p][p][/p][p]BEFORE:[/p][p][/p][p]AFTER:[/p][p][/p][p]The terrain here has been completely redone. Trees, ground, etc.[/p][p]We are also working on adding additional terrain detail for regions that are good for settling on. In FE, we had to keep the tile yield overlay on all the time because it was hard to know if a given tile could be settled on.[/p][p]More to come![/p]

[h2]2GB of RAM is enough[/h2][p]In MY day, a megabyte was a lot of RAM, so when designing Elemental, the 32-bit memory limit meant nothing to me. I knew what it was, but it was such a gigantic number (4GB, but 2GB in practice) that I didn’t consider the ramifications of the design. This was going to be a PC-only game, so what did I care?[/p][p]Ah younger, naive me. I wanted to make Master of Magic, but I wanted an RPG world where every unit, city, and being was unique. Every character had their own story. We’d never made a land-based game (Galactic Civilizations, Sins of a Solar Empire), so terrain textures meant nothing.[/p][p]Anyway, I won’t recount, again, the trials and tribulations ahead. What it did mean is we had to pick and choose the features from the design that could fit without constantly crashing.[/p]

• [p]War of Magic had the dynasty system and messing with the terrain was a core game mechanic (ala Populous), but that used up too much RAM.[/p]
• [p]In Fallen Enchantress, we saved RAM by getting rid of the per unit spell books and magic storage. It wasn’t a lot, but it simplified things while also making the game play better. City Specialization was also enjoyed by players (Conclave, etc.) and Champions could go on their own paths.[/p]
• [p]In Sorcerer King, we made a kind of light strategy/RPG game, but were able to have crafting and each unit in the game have its own inventory and not just champions.[/p]

[p]So now we, can bring them together.[/p][p][/p][h2]64bit Paradise[/h2][p]It’s amazing how many problems just go away with having what amounts to unlimited RAM (from the perspective of this game anyway). No “garbage collection” process where one wrong timing causes the game to crash. No sudden “out of RAM” issues because the player MIN/MAXED in a way we didn’t expect. All kinds of performance benefits because we’re not having to constantly take things in and out of memory.[/p][p]The current build does use around 5GB of RAM. That’s far more than we could have fit in the original game, but by today’s standards, it’s pretty small.[/p][p][/p][h2]Modding[/h2][p]Modding becomes a lot more interesting because more RAM means more mod stability.[/p][p][/p][hr][/hr][h2]🏆 Feature Comparison Matrix[/h2][p][/p][hr][/hr][p][/p][h2]Early Access Update[/h2][p]So we have decided to do an early access for the game, but we have also been listening to the feedback and concluded the game needs more of a visual uplift before then. Originally, the visual uplift was essentially going to take the source art from 2009 and use that in its native resolution (i.e. much higher than what was in the game), but it was, to be clear, still graphics from 2009, even if it higher resolution. Elemental: Reforged isn’t a sequel. It’s a remastering of all 3 Elemental games into a single cohesive design, or at least that was the intent.[/p][p]Nevertheless, we are going to spend more time on the graphics because expectations matter and we want to meet them as best we can. We’ll have more news soon, but hopefully before Halloween.[/p]

[p]The team working on Elemental: Reforged is essentially the same team (plus some new faces) that worked on Elemental: War of Magic 16 years ago in 2009. Back then, my colleagues were mostly associate-level developers and artists, right out of college. Today, of course, they’re leads and normally distributed amongst various projects. It’s unusual for a project of this size to have multiple senior or lead developers on it, but we all desired the opportunity to show what we wanted to do with the game, but couldn’t, in 2010.[/p][p]One thing that has changed significantly from 2010 is the concept of Early Access. We previously used Early Access to get player feedback on design, balance, or other issues so that the final game was much more polished. While Early Access was a great tool from 2010 to 2015, but today, not so much.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Early Access should not be a glorified demo[/h2][p]We used Early Access heavily from 2010 to 2015 to tune balance and test design. It was never about outsourcing QA to the community as internal QA discovers about 90% of the actual bugs that are addressed. What QA can’t decide is whether a spell should deal +5 or +6 fire damage, which is where player feedback matters. Today, though, Early Access is often treated as a marketing beat. Players have certain expectations for Early Access and review the game accordingly, and if the game is using Early Access as intended (a Beta), that can wreck the game’s release chances.[/p][p][/p][h2]Why the caution?[/h2][p]Reforged is not just Fallen Enchantress in 64-bit with new visuals. It plays a lot like a new game and Early Access would let us test real changes. For example, removing free pop-up Champions in favor of recruiting them from the world. Good idea? Maybe. Maybe not. That’s where community feedback comes in. Feedback meaning a post of ideas on a forum or Discord, not a negative Steam review to punish us for trying out a new idea.[/p][p][/p][h2]Roadmap[/h2][p]If we do Early Access, here’s what it would look like:[/p][p]After that, we would see what the sentiment on the game is and we would be very transparent on how things are going. Games like Age of Wonders 4 have sold something like a million copies. The first Endless Legends did even better. So obviously, there is a market for fantasy strategy games and we’re happy to increase scope and do as much as players want provided there is demand. That’ll be up to you guys.[/p][p][/p][h2]The Proposal[/h2][p]So, there’s a post: Elemental Early Access? Yay or Nay :: Elemental: Reforged General Discussions. We want to hear from you on this with the hope that if we do Early Access that enough of the player base will understand that this is a BETA and not some demo.[/p][p][/p][p]Here’s an example:[/p][p][/p][p]This UI and character needs more stats:[/p]

1. [p]Spell Mastery[/p]
2. [p]Resistances (merge Spell Resist into a bunch of other resistances and have a tooltip),[/p]
3. [p]Critical Hit %[/p]

[p]The blank area under the portrait needs to have additional information like race and specialization. That is what we are looking for in an Early Access.[/p][p]And as a community, we will conclude when the game is “done” (Because a lot of people, like me, won’t play early access games) and then we can talk about what comes next. Let us know what you think![/p]

[p]The general philosophy for the Elemental games is that they are strategy games in RPG worlds, and part of this means that units could be designed and equipped like you would in an RPG. The one thing we couldn’t do for War of Magic or Fallen Enchantress was have crafting. We just couldn’t fit it. In Sorcerer King, however, we did add it, but we had to remove other things to make it fit. In a 64-bit world, we can have our figurative cake and eat it too.[/p][p][/p][h2]Recipes and Ingredients[/h2][p]Throughout the course of the game, players will acquire recipes for various items, weapons, armor, and potions, with some coming from the tech tree and others from quests and loot. These recipes require ingredients, some of which can be produced in your cities, while others must be found or harvested from the land itself through the use of magic.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Some ingredients can only be found in very remote locations around the world at great risk and danger, but can then be used to create items of significant power.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]One major change from Fallen Enchantress is a global inventory system. Players can equip their champions and other units with equipment that they’ve found and crafted.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Players simply need to go to their unit roster and select the items they want to equip on that unit to build them up.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]From a strategic point of view, it provides an additional pathway for players. Receive items through quests and monster killing, harvest resources and craft them at home, or acquire them by conquering other civilizations. Or, of course, some combination of the above.[/p]

[p]We like sandbox games. We are not interested in telling you a story. We are interested in you creating your own stories through gameplay, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have lore - lore that has published books about them and decades of development in them. Today, I want to share a little bit of the backstory for Elemental. Note: minor spoilers mentioned.[/p][p][/p][h2]In the Beginning[/h2][p]There were the Mithrilar. These were extremely powerful guardians with no native shape or substance. Placed in the universe to oversee the creation and guarding of the Telananth, a massive crystalline structure with an unknown purpose.[/p][p]However, there was a Mithrilar that came from somewhere else. Damaged and different, he had a native shape and substance, but he had no name and, at first, no memory. From him, the Mithrilar took on their own shapes and substances.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]In the course of time and events, the Mithrilar, now branded as “Draginol”, meddled with the Telananth and was gravely wounded in a blast that embedded him deep in the world.[/p][p]Unconscious and wounded, some of his essence seeped into the world, changing the evolutionary path of this world. This essence could be shaped and used by various types of beings.[/p][p]This power attracted other beings to this world, known by the natives as “Titans”. This Cataclysm devasted the world killing nearly all life.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The cataclysm emptied the world of many of its people and animals. Many escaped and became exiles on other worlds. Those that remained were left with the relics of the Titans, including the Elemental shards (from which the world was ultimately named after) who had gathered the essence and locked it away. Great structures and monuments were built around these shards.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Some rare mortals, known as Channelers, could harness the power of these shards that contained the traces of lost essence of the Draginol Mithrilar. Different Channelers had different ambitions and intentions on using that power. Some sought conquest, some sought to heal the world, and Elemental: Reforged is their story. Your story to create through your decisions.[/p][p][/p][p]Elemental: Reforged is about the player being one of those rare Channelers and what they choose to do with that power.[/p]