Elemental beta in spring?

It has been mentioned by the honourable Frog himself.  I can't see it being released before Demigod is launched for obvious reasons.  So hopefully late April or May.

Apparently its going to be a very basic beta to start with, it will be on a basic cloth map while they make the make graphics engine useable.  So it will be a real beta-testers beta without much of the functionality.  I wouldn't expect the main graphics and the like to appear until later in the Summer.

Not that I don't really hope it will be early spring, a more down to earth look at the situation would be that spring lasts until June 21st, so the beta could start both in springtime *and* in June

Hm... if I reconsider the whole ting... Elemental goes on PUBLIC beta in june. Then it could still go on internal beta this spring and everything would be consistent...

Stardock are based in Michigan. I'm pretty sure that for them, June is definitely still spring. They can get *frost* in late June. (I'm a North Florida native, and we whine about frost in March, which thankfully doesn't happen that often.)

This blurb is on the main site:

"Elemental is scheduled to go into public beta by June 2009. Players who pre-order the game will have the option to download beta builds via Impulse™. This enables them to give feedback, suggestions and even begin populating Elemental with their own creations via the integrated modding environment."

I expect that there will be a beta or alpha build before the one given to the public, I mean there pretty much has to be.   So whatever build comes right before the 1st release would be what I expect is in question.   I'd expect that to be a few weeks before the June release, so like May?     If there is going to be more than one private beta, then maybe as early as April, right after Demigod's release and Frogboy and company are not pushing to make Demigod's smooth.

I am pretty sure that there will be different betas available to people who have preordered, the first being in June. After all, the game is supposed to hit retail space in something like 18 months.

And given Stardock past records, only peole who have preordered will have access to those betas. And one should really look at the OP link to be sure to understand exactly what Stardock has in mind with its betas. And they are truly betas, not free demos of the game. The aim of those betas is really to hunt bugs, not have have fun. 

"Public beta" probably means that anyone who preorders gets in versus a "private beta" which would be the invite-only type.  Stardock doesn't seem to do the "come demo our game!!!11" type of beta at all.  And really, as some other people said, June is still Spring technically.  The summer Demigod beta started in early September IIRC, which is pretty late in summer.

Supposedly last week they had their first Alpha build.  I'm hoping some more details about that will emerge soon!

Well, talking to a friend (who also pre-ordered) we're convinced that when the expected release date for 1.0 is on Impulse, the game will still be in beta, but no one will mind. 

Really, the betas are a great business decision from Stardock, and one that I think reduces piracy and increases sales.

I think Stardock's beta process is a very clever move.

The developers directly get feedback from some players and the players have the chance to contribute. If I understood correctly (according to the bits and peaces of information scattered around on this forum...), we'll get only the table cloth to play around with in the first beta.

Yeah, the beta definitaly won't be a nearly finished product. I like the idea of being directly involved in the development process.

Got pushed back due to Demigod testing (which is ALOT of fun, BTW), which really just means it'll be more robust when it's done.

I'm working on the Essence code ATM.

Dev Journal thread on this soon, maybe? 

Perhaps...with several coders off helping wrap-up Demigod, I'm trying to devote as much time to coding as possible.

If you want, I can list my current tasks

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- Yes/no dialog when using essence

- When placing a city, make sure it's not too close to others (when you start a settlement, you're effectivly making a home for the wandering people of the world, so it's pointless to build in an area where everyone's 'come out of hiding').

- Implement city levels (settlements start as 'Outposts', grow as population reaches certain levels)
     - need 'cloth map' icons for different city levels
     - make sure stats update when a city reaches a new level (usable tiles, max population, income, etc)

- Population growth hooked to rations

- Buildings costing gold, balance 'build times' (some are 1 day, others 30 days....not cool)

- Why are starting settlements being created on dungeons?!?!?!

- Clear groundcover props when an improvement is finished.

- Icons showing up in the city 'resource' list.

- GroundcoverPropType XML data format created, read in to give artists more control over groundcover props

- Write a journal entry!!!

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Pretty dry stuff, but note the last one

 - Why are starting settlements being created on dungeons?!?!?!

Is this a programming issue, or are you fishing for suggestions of lore-based logic why this should be so? If it's the latter, I'm sure we could come up with a few winners

Man, Boogiebac's update here has me very excited.   Dungeons must be freakishly huge if you can fit starting settlements in them.   are you supposed to be able to create settlements in them at all? 

I hope the cloth map Icons are more complex than planets with more inner rings (Gal Civ 2) I would want something more complex like a monochromatic rendition of cities similar to those in Master of magic (the idea that they are getting more complex as the city expands, rather than just gaining a few rings or something, the shape changes as well)

Thanks for the update, Boogie, as well as a list of your current task list.  Very interesting!  You have quite the diverse task list.  Too bad devs need to be pulled from Elemental to work on Demigod (I was afraid of that!).

Not that you have time for it now, but I'm sure if you posted any of your tasks along the lines of "how should this work?", we'd be happy to help you brainstorm ideas.

Here's hoping rulers can set some limits on ration flows. Some of us definitely want some outposts to grow very little, if at all. And hopefully a taste thing like that won't inevitably be a weakness that AIs can exploit to take us out.

Noted with gratitude; patience is hard, but sympathy with tall task lists is easy.

I think your switch of preposition might be the operative variable here. Boogie said "on dungeons," which I took to mean that a settlement tile can overlay a dungeon entrance tile. Either way, starting out on or in a dungeon could be an interesting way to more or less 'create' a mega event, at least if dungeons can put wandering monsters on the main map. Probably not a good thing to be possible by default, though.

oh darn, your right.  I got too excited and didn't examine the vowel on that preposition.

That would kinda suck, monster spawn from dungeon ON your city.  I'd want the game to interpret it as being created by the city so the monster was loyal to me now

Maybe you just stumbled on a new feature for certain races?

That would be pretty sweet.  Maybe impractical, but sweet.  Or maybe if a dungeon was within a certain distance of a city you could choose to recruit from it after it was conquered?

Ugh, XML ? I understand it works, but XML is ugly. Besides, XML is like violence - if it doesn't work, you need more.

Please consider YAML instead. It's a lot cleaner and human friendly, and more powerful at the same time.

XML / YAML comparison:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-matters23.html

A nice description:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaml

(I'm not trying to sound arrogant, really. I'm just suggesting what I see as an improvement improvement. I suspect you may also be planning to use XML for modding, and I'd rather see YAML. Elemental:WOM doesn't seem to be very far in development so hopefully it's not too late for this.)

I don't know much about XML or YAML, but that article was from 2002.  I'd hope XML has evolved since then.

Maybe someone tripped and spilled a bit of Dwarf Fortress spice into the Elemental soup.