Okay, this is pretty cool.

By Posted October 29, 2009 12:17:44

image First, I’d like to apologize as we had promised that the betas would suck until Beta 3.  Oh, they still suck. But because we need to get this feature in earlier than later, something fairly cool is getting in early.  I will say that we will make an effort to avoid any cool features getting in early in the future.

So in today’s beta update, players can design their own units.  But in Elemental, units are represented by cards from a UI point of view.  To make this a useful feature and not just cosmetic, players can design their cards.  The reason this is useful is because players can change the background and pose of the unit. As a result, we can shrink the cards down very small in the UI where we need and players will still know what they represent because they were the ones who designed them.

To see it in action click here:

http://screencast.com/t/zgacEgNmRwMq

+382 Karma 30 Replies 8 Referrals
October 29, 2009 12:23:37

That is so sweet

October 29, 2009 12:23:39

Magic the Gathering: Elemental

October 29, 2009 12:45:46

Dude looks good! I get my pc back tomorrow and will be beta testing again.

October 29, 2009 12:48:52

Very cool ! I begin to see how I will be able to make my sovereign's Black Company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Company)

 

October 29, 2009 13:01:41

Okay, that's just cool. [e digicons]:frogboy:[/e]

October 29, 2009 13:11:14

grr, this ain't what i signed up for.

at least tell me it flickers randomly or something!?

October 29, 2009 13:11:50

As long as it still randomly formats my harddrive, I can tolerate this feature.

October 29, 2009 13:15:16

Oo that's really cool. It'll help make units feel more "our own" too, allowing us to give them backgrounds/poses that we imagine being relevant!

I never thought about being able to customize the graphics in this manner making them more recognizable to us because we designed them (at least, it'll make our own troops easily recognizable, not sure about the AI or other human players). Very sneaky.

October 29, 2009 13:16:20

Frogboy! HOW DARE YOU!!! You are done! Finished! You'll never work in this town again! My lawyers will be calling you! I'm filing a suit for breach of contract! This! This is COMPLETELY unacceptable!

October 29, 2009 13:26:51

Hmm, just the thing for my dramatically posed, confident, rightiously couragous peasant levvies. (you're in dragon bait company now, soldier!)

Also with a quietly professional pose for the armoured/equipped guys I actually care about.[e digicons]}[/e]

 

 

October 29, 2009 13:41:31

A couple other neat things about this:

+ You can flip the background using the mirror icon button above the background list.

+ The pose you choose on the card will be the pose that the unit takes on the map when you are in cloth map mode.   This gives you another way to make your own units unique and easily identifiable on the map.

 

 

October 29, 2009 14:03:06

The pose you choose on the card will be the pose that the unit takes on the map when you are in cloth map mode. This gives you another way to make your own units unique and easily identifiable on the map.

Heh, i was just about to ask this question concerning poses on the cloth map. 

October 29, 2009 14:47:35

underwear change on aisle 3! Totally awesome!

And for those that suggest because the game has INFORMATION CARDS it makes the game Magic: The Gathering...

[e digicons][/e]  [e digicons]:thumbsdown:[/e] [e digicons]:annoyed:[/e] [e digicons]:rolleyes:[/e]

October 29, 2009 15:30:25

Ooh, that looks like it will be fun.

So what is the catch then? Does it cause bad disk write sectors?

October 29, 2009 16:05:47

Polynomial
Magic the Gathering: Elemental

QFT

Elemental: War on Magic always makes me think of MtG. I keep thinking that they are declaring war on the MtG franchise.

October 29, 2009 20:45:23

I'm having a nerdgasm.

October 30, 2009 04:35:56

Totally awesome. Now give us the ability to Mod in our own backgrounds.

October 30, 2009 05:01:58

@raven X :   look in the elemental folder, under "GFX" then "backgrounds"   you'll find some PNG files, ready to be modded.   (It looks like it automatically pulls images from that folder, so if you add your own images it KNOWS, Though, my tests in adding additional images to widen the background selection has failed, you can totally replace the existing backgrounds with something  else.) 

 

 

SEE!     I just open one of the background PNGs (in this case I used the stain glass on) and load it into an image editor (in this case I used MS paint for windows 7) and BOOM     your own background

October 30, 2009 07:19:16

That's great news Landi. Thanks for pointing that out brother.

October 30, 2009 10:11:55

... what have they done?

October 30, 2009 10:13:59

I wonder if they'll have a "null" pose where the 3d unit isn't drawn at all so you can just use the background as the unit card image.  Perhaps too misleading, but it could be fun.  Of course, wouldn't work too well if the same pose is used on the map.

October 30, 2009 13:26:09

Custom poses

October 30, 2009 20:01:37

Custom poses
Uh. Oh. Dare I ask your opinion on female units?!

October 31, 2009 00:46:48

Scoutdog

Custom poses Uh. Oh. Dare I ask your opinion on female units?!

Naked

lol

October 31, 2009 02:50:32

Mind = Blown

If ever there was a case to be made for "It's the little things that count," this is it.

 

Super special awesome, indeed.

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