Fallen Enchantress Is Set to Rise
Stu Horvath
Fallen Enchantress Is Set to Rise
In 2010, Stardock released an ambitious turn-based strategy game called Elemental: War of Magic. In what has become a cautionary tale of game development run wild, the Elemental that hit shelves was a smorgasbord of bugs and bad design, but great ideas. It was a beautiful disaster.
Enter Derek Paxton, a modder who earned his bones developing the most successful Civilization IV mod, Fall From Heaven. His task was to create a standalone expansion for Elemental that delivered on the original game's promise while avoiding its pitfalls. (In fact, Fallen Enchantress will be available for free to anyone who bought the first game.)
DIG caught up with Paxton as production on Fallen Enchantress was wrapping up to see how he went about righting the ship.
DIG: Can you tell us about your role on Fallen Enchantress and the history of the project?
Derek Paxton: Fallen Enchantress is a turn-based strategy game set in a fantasy RPG world and inspired by Master of Magic. I am the lead producer and lead designer on the project. As the designer, I determine the features and mechanics for the game. There are talented game designers here at Stardock, including Brad Wardell, lead designer of Galactic Civilizations, and Jon Shafer, lead designer of Civilization V, so I get a lot of help from the team.
As the lead producer, I have three main responsibilities: to plan (schedule who is doing what and when they are doing it), to communicate (make sure everyone understands the plan and the final goal), and to control (make sure we are progressing against the plan and taking care of issues that come up).
DIG: What did your previous experience -- and that of your team -- bring to the development process?
D. P.: I came to Stardock in November of 2010. Prior to that, I worked as a project manager for an enterprise software company. My customers were banks, government agencies, and insurance companies. My professional experience comes from working on large software projects, which has helped me formalize the processes at Stardock and embrace the tenants of successful project management -- constant communication, avoiding scope creep, and specific, quantifiable goals.
When I wasn't working, I created a dark fantasy mod for Civilization IV called Fall from Heaven. I worked with a group of talented modders and artists, and it became the most popular mod for Civilization IV, with over half a million downloads. So my passion has always been in creating strategy games -- particularly fantasy strategy games.
DIG: Have you used any specific technology, hardware or software in developing Fallen Enchantress?
D. P.: We use products like Bink, Havok and Miles as engine pieces for the game. Stardock has developed its own game engine, which is great because it allows us to add and change features as needed -- which wouldn't be possible if we produced a commercial engine. It does carry the disadvantage of having to support the engine. We can't trust that there is another team of dedicated people that we can report engine memory leaks or crashes to. We need to fix them ourselves.
Personally, I live in Excel. The game assets are all in XML, but rather than changing them with Notepad or another text editor, I have them all in a huge Excel document. That way, I can easily tweak values and compare all the assets of a particular type to each other. It also does some data modelling for me so I can see a graph of all the monsters in the game and see if they are underpowered or overpowered for their level on various attributes.
DIG: While Fallen Enchantress is being characterized as a standalone expansion of War of Magic and shares some of the previous game's assets, many of the gameplay mechanics appear to have changed. How have you identified systems that needed to change and how did you implement those changes?
D. P.: From a design perspective, it was a review from the ground up. Nothing was sacred, and we went through what we liked in the game, what Master of Magic did and the early concept docs for War of Magic. War of Magic changed so much in its development, largely because of the challenge of building a game engine at the same time as building a game (if the engine couldn't support a feature, the feature would be dropped or significantly altered to fit). Having a complete game engine meant that we could focus on the game.
Implementing the changes was a scheduling task. Each major feature received its own functional design doc with the list of assets it covered and the systems that would be required to make those assets function. A developer was assigned to that feature according to the project schedule and was responsible to turn the design doc into an implementation plan. They would lay out the code-level plan, what functions would be needed and how existing classes would change. That plan would be reviewed by the senior developers who offer feedback for things like shared functions, efficiency and more mod-able designs -- and once approved, they would start coding.
Screenshot: http://www.elementalgame.com/
Stu Horvath is the managing editor of DIG, as well as the man behind the geek culture website, Unwinnable.com. Previously, Horvath has worked at the New York Daily News, Wizard magazine, Random House, CrispyGamer.com, and Joystiq.com. He is also a founding member of the NYC Videogame Critics Circle.
Videogaming & Video Game Reviews
- 'Hunted: The Demon's Forge'
- Baseball Simulation in MLB 2K11: Part 2
- Video Game Thought Leaders: Matt Ployhar
- Daggerdale - Talking With Tim Ernst of Bedlam Studios
- Fallen Enchantress Is Set to Rise
- 'Mortal Kombat' and the First Amendment
- 'Infamous 2'
- 'Fable III'
- E3 2011 Showcases a Big Year for PC Gaming
- Happiness Is a Warm Gun: Chatting With Emotional Robots
- 'Fate of the World'
- 'The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings'
- 'L.A. Noire'
- PlayStation Network: After the Fall
- Value Proposition - PC or Console Games?
- Complexity in 'Civilization'
- 'Dragon Age II'
- Creating the Baseball Simulation in MLB 2K11
- Hear That Knocking Sound? It's PC Gaming!
- 'Portal 2'
- Saving the Universe One LEGO Brick at a Time
- Synchronization Between Threads in the Infernal Engine
- Thought Leaders: Eleanor Wynn
- The Art of War: Shogun 2
- Solid-state Drives Revolutionize Gaming
- War Production: Chatting With Frank Pearce of Blizzard
- 'Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime'
- Darkspore Creatures Come to Life
- Finding the Next Challenge in Visual Computing
- 'The Sims: Medieval'
- The Future of PC Gaming? A Personal Viewpoint
- Explosion of Creativity: Power of Online Communities
- 'Homefront'
- Game Optimization for Modern Hardware
- 'PixelJunk Shooter 2: The Belly of the Beast'
- Pixels and Sand
- Sneak Peek at DC Universe Online With Chris Cao
- Thought Leaders: Orion Granatir
- Combat Duality in Fallen Enchantress Is Set to Rise
- 'Jikandia: The Timeless Land'
- Exclusive Look at Homefront
- GDC 2011: Sneak Peek of Battlefield 3
- Talking Dragon Age II With Valve Software's Erik Wolpaw
- Nathan Camarillo of Crytek Talks Crysis 2 and CryEngine 3
- 'Two Worlds II'
- 'Dungeons'
- Peter Molyneux Talks Fable III and Commitment to PC Gaming
- There's an App for That Game
- Talking Tech Tactics With Football Manager 2011
- 'Kingdom Hearts Re:coded'
- 'Dead Space 2'
- 2K Sports Announces 'NHL 2K11' for Apple iPad
- 'Dead Space' for iOS
- Why are Video Games for Girls so Lame?
- The Muddy Beauty of DiRT 2
- The Reality of Indie Game Development
- Using Artificial Intelligence in Game Development
- Top 10 Most Anticipated Video Games of 2011
- Need for Speed Drives Back to Roots
- Developing and Optimizing Games for Netbooks
- 'Bejeweled 3'
- Rolling Thunder, Analytics and Performance Drive Need for Speed World
- Who You Gonna Call? Ghostbusters Challenges
- Dude! Who Killed My First-person Shooter?
- Racing to the Finish Line: Chris Southall Talks Total War and Sonic
- The Force Remains Strong with LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars
- Unreal Engine 3 Brings Chadam to Life on Web Video
- 'Pac-Man Championship Edition DX'
- 'Infinity Blade'
- TRON: Evolution -- Game Developers Go Hollywood
- EA Sports Moves Graphics-rich Gaming Online
- Humble Opinions: From The Sims to Indie Games
- Meet Mr. Industrial: Justin Lassen's Music Machine
- 'Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood'
- 'Mario Vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem'
- 'Time Crisis Razing Storm'
- 'Arcania: Gothic 4'
- 'Disney Epic Mickey'
- 'Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light'
- 'Ace Combat: Air Assault'
- 'Game Dev. Story'
- Epic Games Unveils 'Gears of War 3' Multiplayer Details
- 'Castlevania: Lords of Shadow'
- 'Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1'
- 'Amnesia: The Dark Descent'
- 'Enslaved: Odyssey to the West'
- 'Valkyria Chronicles II'
- 'Dead Rising 2'
- 'Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep'
- 'Halo: Reach'
- 'Mafia II'
- 'Scott Pilgrim' vs. Its Video Game References
Video Games: Fallen Enchantress Is Set to Rise
Copyright © 2011 Studio One Networks. All rights reserved.
Your Favorite Comic Strips Online
Daily Comics & Your Favorite Comic Strips Online
Your favorite comics strips Animal Crackers, Annie, Bound & Gagged, Brenda Starr, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy, Broom-Hilda, Dick Tracy, Gasoline Alley, Gil Thorp, Housebroken, Loose Parts, The Middletons, Pink Panther, Raising Hector, Sylvia, 9 to 5, Bliss, Bottom Liners, Love Is..., Pluggers all online at ComicStripNation.com