Neoseeker Interview About Elemental Modding, Community, and More!

Published on June 21, 2010 By Island Dog In Elemental News

Neoseeker.com has put up an interview with Stardock’s Brad Wardell about Elemental, including discussions about Modding, Tactics, and more.

“The game is very community driven. Does this make it easier or harder to develop, or both? How? Obviously it makes it better.

It makes it harder but better. The Community often overestimates the effort to do some things and underestimates the effort to do other things. I’ve seen the same guy who would ask for us to have an “option” to play the game as an RTS think that wasn’t a big deal but loudly proclaim we won’t be able to ship this year because food is too plentiful on the beta 2 test map.”

Read the full interview at Neoseeker.

Comments

Alstein

on Jun 21, 2010

Unrealted question- what software is yours that ships with Windows- you mentioned that at the end- just curious. Probably stuff I don't use much, but would like to know.

Sushikawa

on Jun 22, 2010

So when Brad state that the new engine "...sacrifices RAM for greater performance..." did he mean sacrificing ram usage through efficient programming and resource management, or sacrificing RAM like lambs to slaughter Rambs to the slaughter?

Paul Foegle

on Jun 22, 2010

is it just me or did the interviewer seem like an a-hole?

Spicy Mike

on Jun 22, 2010

Yeah, what Windows-related software do you guys ship?

Describe Elemental's accessibility. Do you think it will be attractive to those who dont usually play strategy games? I tried to play Master of Magic and failed miserably, but Elemental looks much easier to grasp. Granted MoM hasn't aged terribly well, at least for new players...

Seriously? I loved the fact that the MoM manual had all kinds of calculations for the nuts & bolts of the game - but you don't need it to play. Build cities, improve cities, train units, and explore. How can you "fail miserably" at playing it? Lack of patience?

xenobrain

on Jun 22, 2010

So when Brad state that the new engine "...sacrifices RAM for greater performance..." did he mean sacrificing ram usage through efficient programming and resource management, or sacrificing RAM like lambs to slaughter Rambs to the slaughter?

I think Brad said in a Journal somewhere that Elemental will have a lot of different versions of it's 3D models and tiles at various LODs (level of detail). This means higher RAM usage, but computers with less graphical power will be able to pick the model that offers the best appearance vs performance on that system.

Compared to consoles, PCs have tons more RAM, but the average PC is using an Intel integrated graohics cards which has pathetic graphical performance even compared to today's now 4 to 5-year-old consoles. Hence a trade off of more RAM usage for better-tuned graphics being a PC-optimized tradeoff.

Sushikawa

on Jun 22, 2010

I was simply making a crack at the current beta's massive memory leakage

RavenX

on Jun 24, 2010

quoting post

The Community often overestimates the effort to do some things and underestimates the effort to do other things. I’ve seen the same guy who would ask for us to have an “option” to play the game as an RTS think that wasn’t a big deal but loudly proclaim we won’t be able to ship this year because food is too plentiful on the beta 2 test map.

Well, at least I know I'm not That "same guy" lol.

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