Sorcerer King Beta 4 is starting to come together. We expect to release it in early February.  There’s a ton of changes coming to it, most notably the new crafting system and summoning system.  Below are two screenshots that give you a taste of some of the visual changes coming too.  

I need more analytics in the game to do this properly but this is a start. How long should a game last? That depends on the game.  Sorcerer King, for me, as the designer, is meant to take elements of Master of Magic, Star control and FTL and put them together.  While those games may seem dissimilar, they each have key ingredients that I think can be blended together to create something really spectacular. And Sorcerer King is turning out spectacularly. Map Size Ra...

The below spells are ones that I think can be implemented that have come from players. Spell that creates a Swamp tile (slows movement) Spell that turns a group of tiles into ones that do damage if you walk through them. Meteor Strike – spell that destroys everything in it, leaves crater. Wall of Fire – tiles do damage to anyone who walks through them. Tsunami, huge wave of water is conjured up that wipes out units Your spell idea here… (will be reading com...

Simple example of the Dungeon Master punishing me for being a total jerk in the game. http://screencast.com/t/tYwgUWtpc http://screencast.com/t/WvqCML5VJD

Q: What's the deal? There's a ton of awesome 4X fantasy strategy games to play. How is your game different? A: This game assumes you’ve already played those games. And lost. Q: Wait, what? I already lost? I haven’t even loaded up your game. A: Yea, sorry about that. Q: What the hell happened? A: So to recap, in games like Fallen Enchantress, Age of Wonders, Worlds of Magic, Master of Magic, Warlock, Endless Legends, etc. you are trying to build an empi...

Okay guys! I'm out at the lake for the next couple weeks. I only plan to be on working when the weather is crummy.  I just checked out source code for E2015 and will be working on that during the rainy days. While I'm out. please DO NOT burn down the place. I know it's tempting. I realize now that leaving the ammo dump and the fuel depot together in the same area of the forum were mistakes but resist! Just resist. Thank you!

All games, even the games that looked amazing when they come out eventually start to look “dated” visually. The challenge isn’t determining whether a game’s graphics have started to get dated looking but what specifically makes a game start to look dated. Let’s use Legendary Heroes as an example: What parts of the game look dated today? What parts do you think will look dated in the near future?

Greetings! v1.6 of Legendary Heroes seems to have gone well and we’re now moving on to v1.7.  I’m not sure what the rest of the team has in store for that (it’s Kael’s team, I’m just a floater).  But I’ve got 16 engineer hours of my own time for v1.7 and want to make sure every hour is spent well.  I don’t know how many of you are interested in the sausage factory side of game development but if you are, this is a good chance to see it ...

We’ve been blessed with a lot of fantasy 4X games in the past few years. Besides the Elemental games we’ve gotten Warlock, Age of Wonders 3, Eador, and soon Endless Legends. If you like fantasy games, I highly recommend checking them all out (except War of Magic which is inferior to all of them). Unfortunately, as game designers, we have an unusual challenge: Magic. Magic isn’t fair It is really really hard to write good AI in a game that literally allows players to conjure...

Greeeeeeeeeeeeetings my friends! This post is more for indie developers who want to know how much money things make.  First some basics on game budgeting: Every person on your game you should budget at $10,000 per month. It’s a good rule of thumb.  You should target a 25% “profit” on your game to cover the unexpected as well as for future growth Steady State income represents the gross income of your game without sales, promotions, new releases, etc. ...

Lots of cool stuff going on around here. Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes 1.6 is due out in April and there will be a new DLC released shortly after that.  It involves spouses. That’s all I’ll say. Legendary Heroes 2.0 Also, as some of you may have heard, Legendary Heroes 2.0 has been approved and budgeted. This will be a free update of some significance.  I don’t have a due date for it yet but it does have some interesting changes in it including ZOC for monster l...

Derek (Kael) has been super busy with the general expansion of Stardock Entertainment over the past 3 years.  AS I type this, there are 7 concurrent game projects going on.  Back in 2008, I dreamt of having a second team.  Here we are, 6 years later with seven teams.  I’m writing this from the airplane on my way to visit one of the new studios (one that hasn’t been announced yet). So what does that mean for fans of the Elemental universe?  The answer is, lots of goo...

Introduction These collected notes are are often sketchy. Much has been lost over the years.  To the best of my ability, I have put together the hints, scraps and rumor together in order to give you a somewhat coherent history of the world of Elemental.  Some of this may just be myth as much of it seems fantastical and unbelievable. It is, however, the best I can do and will, I hope, allow us to predict what events may occur next. The Lost History In the beginning t...

I’ve ready a lot of comments on Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes AI.  I feel confident in saying that most people seem very satisfied with it overall. But I think most people would say it’s not quite as good as GalCiv II’s. In some respects, the GalCiv series is an anomaly.   I’ve been programming AI on GalCiv games for 20 years.  Let’s put that on the table for a moment and consider the ramifications. Can anyone think of a game, any game in the history of game devel...

With Legendary Heroes out, I can finally start reading how people are playing the “finished” game.  Kael’s gotten me tons of reports and I’ve started tackling them one by one. I am hoping to have the first batch ready for the next update (perhaps as early as next week). But that won’t be the end of it.  I plan to take care of some low hanging fruit strategy suggestions first and then go on and deal with the more challenging aspects that will require a lot more play testing to do. ...