Wow.  I'm Nerdgasming.  Great to have Kael aboard.  And if you're wondering what comes out when you nerdgasm, its legos. 

Yea, but then I get to build a fort for my GI Joes with them!

Eh. Considering the popularity of his mod [FFH2], I must say that this was a good decision.

Congrats to both Kael and Stardock! Very very nice! I'm now very much looking forward to seeing where the games direction will go

Now I wonder if part of the reason the standalone Fall From Heaven game was put on hold was because he was making a move to Stardock.

That's indeed awesome!! News posted on www.elementalgame.info !

Edit: Wrong thread.

Well, looks like the OP had some foresight there, since Kael is now going to be doing more than merely modding Elemental, hehe.

Well, at least he knows first hand how aggravating it is for a modder to run into hardcoded features that you just can't get past.
Then you spend ages with creating the illusion of having done it anyway...

If all he does is keep this kind of accessibility on the agenda I'll be happy because I simply don't care if I get "my" game tomorrow or in two years.
Of course, the kind of choices in FFH are a good omen. They aren't the typical Elemental choices like "the unit with more points is always the better unit, duh".

I guess I owe Riadsala a big thank you for his support!

Yea Kael, you should give some of that new paycheck his way!

Nice to hear from you Kael. I look forward to seeing your creativity and talent put to use with Elemental.

Put religion in the game, Kael

Also put in a Minecraft mode to let us build our own kingdoms. and ponies. And "Opposing forces" (Don't name them Taliban!!!)

I must admit I haven't really played Fall From Heaven much at all, I did own Civ 4 and the expansions and started up a game or two but never really played it enough to learn its intricacies.

Now Kael is working on Elemental I see it as another chance to experience his game design skills for myself.

ha, you're welcome. I'm not big headed enough to assume that my thread had anything to do with it though! I just glad that my faith in Elemental has been restored. It'll be interesting to see the direction in which you take the game.

While it's too early for any details, is it safe to assume that you'll be carrying at least some of FfH2's design philosophy and feel? If you can combine the strengths of both games, you're looking at a classic

Happy thread this was.

Great news all round

Riad, I guess that's another beer I owe you?!?

Which is a shame, and limits creative control and ability to respond to feedback. An expansion set that really shakes things up, adds some traditional fantasy races (with an Elemental twist) and revamps the Fallen (keep a few, make them very unique from the humans and each other) is really needed.

A second cataclysm that sunders time and space and merges Elemental with another plane could do the trick. (and due to wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey doesn't necessarily negate Brad's book, it's just an alternate universe where Nero didn't kill Kirk's dad with a space squid... ermm...)

Something like one of the Fallen Empires (Resoln acting on something their oracles had planned for centuries?) attempting to summon back the Titans, resulting in the world the Titans are from being sundered and meshed with Elemental itself. Many races that the Titans had fought and nearly conquered (Elves, Dwarves) coming back to the forefront and fighting with men and the surviving Fallen. The east and west similarly shattered as entire landmasses are warped and shifted between the planes. Time itself also being broken momentarily with causality shattered. Empires the Titans annihilated restored on the broken continents in the blink of an eye, etc.

The net result- carte blanche to rewrite backstory as needed, put in some traditional races and give them new back stories, and keep the kingdoms and empires that people like the best and make them a bit more unique gameplay wise. (Say Tarth and New Pariden survive and play differently as the "Barbarian" and "High Men" archetype factions)

Channelers from what were two separate worlds have to cope with the fact that the laws of magic are still settling down from this terrible event, and there could even be differences in how magic plays out on parts of the landscape due to the residual energies of each world interacting.

You don't need a different race to have a different faction.  Screw mixing in traditional fantasy races, mechanics are what matter and those are what are utterly lacking from faction diversity.

Yea ... regardless of how the races look like, its still possible to make them act genuinely different.

To continually improve upon the engine and Design implementation* is the only way to do this.

I feel that Kael's experience with taking a Design, and implementing it in a way that is both within a project's means and fun ... may prove beneficial.

However, ultimately ... until the Engine becomes something that is genuinely good, I feel there is only so much that can be done.

Yeah, this.

Just look at what Kerberos done in SotS, with unique movement system for each race. Game plays completely different for different races.

the problem is that race and factions get blurred in this game for some reason. you would have thought all those 6 human factions (5 kingdoms + krax) are from 1 human race just different factions.. but it isn't. they are all separate races and factions which doesn't make much sense. this is eminently noticeable when you create your sovereign/faction. i know that the lore page says human race are subdivided into the 6 races, but still...

obviously it might make sense if it's paving the way into umpteen factions in later chapters and if races/factions have their own traits/stats. but without something to really distinguish the races, it's all a bit pointless.

having a fixed background story isn't a problem. the game (or the sandbox game anyway) doesn't really touch much of the story. if you look at all those historical games.. the background story is fixed. but players can still do plenty. it's not like they've given out everything about the story, plenty of scope for change if they deem it necessary

funny in a way that this is a bit like feist in reverse. they have a game (in far future) with "fixed" background and then he wrote books covering the ancient events.

In Elemental many of the concepts that should be simple are too complex (Allegiance - Faction - Race relationship, Unintuitive lore etc) and things that should have some complexity are too simple (tactical battles, racial differentiation, tech differentiation, spellbook differentiation etc).

Hoping Brad, Derek and Toby see the big picture in this regard.