GamaSutra Interview About Elemental's Strategy-Centric Modding Engine

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24988
from Elemental Forums

GamaSutra’s Chris Remo has another interview with Brad Wardell, this time focusing on the modding engine in the upcoming game, Elemental: War of Magic. 

“Elemental makes use of a level of detail system paired to its zoom feature that swaps out different models and textures as the player moves from examining individual workers at ground level up to viewing whole continents, at which point the perspective blends into a flat 2D "cloth map."

That will be available to modders, who can import their own custom 3D models from 3ds Max or Maya to make their own strategy games, creating all the intermediary versions of the models and allowing for a game scalable across a broad variety of system specs -- or bypassing the system entirely if they don't have the development bandwidth to make all those extra assets.”

Read the full interview at GamaSutra.

12,746 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Excellent interview:thumbsup:

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top


"Players can even create high-resolution PNG files from their maps and dungeons to print out and use for tabletop strategy games or RPGs, a feature inspired by the Campaign Cartographer software Wardell used to use in his Dungeons & Dragons-playing days."

 

As someone who once considered using Civ4 and Dwarf Fortress as mapping utilities to aid in story writing, I greatly appreciate the inclusion of such a unique feature. :thumbsup:

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Indeed a great interview. Always like learning a little more about Elemental! :congrat:

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Fascenating.... doesn't say much about my big issue of Blender compatibility, but the near-complete modding freedom is veeerryyyy happy news!

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Scoutdog, reply 4
Fascenating.... doesn't say much about my big issue of Blender compatibility, but the near-complete modding freedom is veeerryyyy happy news!

I want to know about XSI...

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

If I remember correctly Civ4 originally launched with a python based AI, but they had to put it back into the C++ and everyone was thankful. The time between turns was absoutely brutal. You could hit the end turn button and go run errands before your next turn started. The end game was pretty much unplayable. Python does entail a performance hit. No doubt about it. If you want to get fancy with the AI, python might be a hindrance.

Thankfully, we had access to the Civ4 C++ source code, so we could still do AI modding.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting cephalo, reply 6
If I remember correctly Civ4 originally launched with a python based AI, but they had to put it back into the C++ and everyone was thankful. The time between turns was absoutely brutal. You could hit the end turn button and go run errands before your next turn started. The end game was pretty much unplayable. Python does entail a performance hit. No doubt about it. If you want to get fancy with the AI, python might be a hindrance.

Thankfully, we had access to the Civ4 C++ source code, so we could still do AI modding.

 

I am surprised python could have crippled AI performance so much. It's not that slow.

Furthermore, python's syntax is very smart and easier to learn for people.

It's a full langage, not only a scripting one.

 

 

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

It's been mentioned before somewhere, but I think the problem was how it did the python execution, not the execution itself. Something like starting a full on python process with every exec of a python script, versus pawning it off on a python shell that always stayed running.

Or something like that anyway.