Our second update for Elemental War is arriving today and we have some cool stuff in it.
Highlights:
Version 0.9.2 contains two big new features and several smaller ones that will improve gameplay. The highlights will focus on the big ones, see the full changelog at the bottom for the rest.
Setting Special Events
In Hero Mode you will now have at least one special event per environment. Swamp and Grassland already got two. The events can be both positive and negative for the player and will add some more variety.
Such special events can be everything. For example in grassland a Griffon can fly across the map and catch any monster as its prey and fly away with it. In swamp enemies can get stuck for a short time randomly.
So there are already 8 of them implemented and we have some more ideas. If you also have ideas or opinions about this feature, let us know in our discussions.
Alliances
We already announced it a few weeks ago, now the first step is done. In 0.9.2 you can found an own alliance or join an existing one. So far you just can browse your alliance members, color your own name and as alliance admin the one of the alliance and see the alliance name in the leaderboard for your scores and those of other alliance members.
This is the base for the upcoming alliance features because 0.9.3 will then introduce the alliance challenges that will allow you to challenge other alliances (obvious, isn't it?). Such a challenge will be e.g. to reach the highest score in a specified time frame in a specified game configuration (game mode, difficulty, random or chosen elements, map). You will also be able to buy modifiers to make the challenge more difficult for your opponent.
So stay tuned, this will become a really nice addition and you can already prepare for the challenges by founding and joining alliances and group up with your friends.
Full changelog:
Enhancements:
introduced new statistic: Solved Quests
build menu isn't closed anymore when building tower while Left Shift is pressed
tower upgrades now show a difference to the current tower for damage, range, attack speed and damage per second
culture info now is configurable
normal maps now are also unlocked for Hero Mode, random generated maps for Classic and Survival Mode
added possibility to directly restart a game without needing to go back to main menu
added dices on Gambling tower showing the bonus damage
introduced profile page
added alliance system: you now can found and join alliances and get the alliance tag added to your leaderboard entries
added first special events in Hero Mode
it is visible now that post processing settings are disabled when post processing itself is disabled
unlocked a new quest
in the profile you can now select your country to filter leaderboards for this country and only show scores of players from there
enable background music in tutorials as there is no dubbing yet
Fixes:
upgrade menu now can be closed via right click and same shortcut as it is opened with
towers now can also be upgraded when selected via selection rectangle in case it's just one tower or all towers are the same type
zooming on Linux might be better now
hp in monster info screen now are scaled now if text is too long
message "Crystal Received" doesn't appear twice anymore in Hero Mode
We hope you enjoy the new update. Feel free to leave your opinions and ideas either as comment, in the forums or ingame using the feedback button. The next update will be available in two weeks.
Elemental War 0.9.1
Today we're releasing our first update for Elemental War. We fixed a lot of bugs, improved the performance and of course also added some new stuff.
Highlights:
In this section we will show you the biggest improvements in this release. At the end of this news you will find the complete changelog.
Setting Attributes
As mentioned earlier we're going to introduce special attributes and events to all environments in Hero Mode. The first step were the special attributes. With them we want to make gameplay in every environment a little more unique. While grassland is something like the neutral zone and doesn't have any advantages or disadvantages, every other environment got one. These are:
Desert: enemies that are 2 minutes or longer on the map will get a little heat damage. It's not much, but if you can hold them back long enough it will help you.
Forest: tower range is reduced by 20%.
Graveyard: undead enemies have 25% more health.
Iceworld: some status changes like Poison and Freeze have a higher impact (last longer).
Swamp: enemies can stuck randomly for a few seconds.
Tower improvements
Most important: All towers now got their textures, so there are no placeholders anymore.
Besides that we added some more sounds and adjusted the existing ones, especially the distance the sounds could be heard.
The rest of the changes for towers were mostly small fixes and improvements except of Money and Mine tower, that were broken before. Both towers work now as expected again. Money tower will give you gold for every enemy that passes it and deal damage to every one of them. Every few seconds it will lower its gates and stop all enemies from passing it. But be careful when building multipe Money towers as every one of them will increase the cooldown until gates can be closed again.
Performance
Performance is our main issue so far and even though we already improved a lot for this update, we will further improve it with future updates.
Update 0.9.1 improved performance in the following areas:
closed minimap now has zero impact
opened minimap has a much lower impact than before as just the markers have to be rendered, but not the whole terrain
every tower that turns somehow to its target (like Ballista, Poison, Pulp, Slime, Earth, Nature...) uses less CPU time
reduced CPU time used for getting targets of towers with area damage
Laser and Fossilize use less CPU
loading times should be slightly faster (but they should not have been a big issue before)
reduced CPU usage when there are multiple enemies that are not visible
improved performance when enabling SSR (Screen Space Reflections)
For performance gain measurement we use our built-in benchmark on High quality level. I ran it with the release version and compared to the results of the 0.9.0 hotfix. The results show the lowest value of three runs. The used PC runs with Windows 10, 16GB RAM, i7-4790K (4GHz) and a GTX 970. Results are shown in fps, so that's what is compared.
improved some upgrade texts so also unnamed effects now are mentioned in there
Coming Bugfixes & Enhancements
The first week of Early Access has passed and we got some feedback from you how to improve the game. Thank you for that, for gaming, streaming and the positive reviews!
We are working hard to implement your ideas and do anything to make EW an even better game. So here's what you can expect from Elemental War throughout the next weeks:
Bugfixes & Improvements
First and foremost it is our goal to improve the framerate of EW. We did some improvements here and there but are still in search for the cause of the low performance. Nevertheless we guarantee a much better performance for the game versions to come!
Direct preview of new tower range when hovering upgrade button
Improvements for controller support
Monster/tower selection will be improved, so it’s easier to select them either to see their stats or target them
Either fire element or missing condition for upgrade will get another color so they can be distinguished
Lives, gold and crystals will be correctly displayed after continuing a previous game
Enhancements
More quests: There will be many more quests waiting for you in Hero Mode.
Setting features: Each setting will find possibilities to make your life even more difficult – by special events and distinct features.
More community features: You will be able to organise your profile, establish alliances with your friends and compete with other alliances. Wow. We really look forward to that.
More sounds for tower attacks
Remaining tower textures
If you see you’re going to loose a game and want to quickly restart the map with the same settings, this will be possible soon
Building multiple towers without the need to click the build button/shortcut again by holding Shift pressed
Upgrades will show the difference in range, damage, attack speed to the previous tower in the tooltip
Maps from Classic and Survival Mode will be unlocked for Hero Mode
We hope you enjoy the game! If there's anything we could/should change, don't hesitate to contact us.
Daniel & Sebastian from Clockwork Origins
Hotfix 0.9.0 rev2488
We already released a first small hotfix for Elemental War today. It just fixes a bug that could cause tutorial 2 to stuck when upgrading your first tower.
Thanks for reporting this bug to us.
If you find another bug, miss some feature or think something shall be improved feel free to contact us either via the ingame feedback functionality or here in the discussions forum. The forum has the advantage that we can directly reply and others see your suggestions, too.
Our usual updates will be released every two weeks on Friday. So the first update will be released on November 2.
Elemental War is Now Available!
Elemental War is now available to buy on Steam!
What can you expect?
Three different game modes in singleplayer, each with different requirements: Classic Mode, Survival Mode, Hero Mode
More than 50 items and monster abilities in Hero Mode
6 settings from desert to graveyard
Rankings: detailed leaderboards of players
What will be next?
As Elemental War just starts in Early Access today, there'll be many updates in the future. Besides using the feedback you give us, we of course have our own plans to further improve the game. Here's a list of the most important stuff that's planned in the near future:
More Quests and Items: in Hero Mode you can unlock new items by solving quests. Actually there are just 5 quest available (they aren't easy, so you won't get them solved that easily), but we will add many more during the next updates to unlock all items that are already part of the game and add new items, too
Side quest, that will give a boost for the current game session when completed
More Sounds and Effects
Full Controller support: playing with controller basically works, but there's enough room for improvements
Abilities and Special Events in the different settings: we offer you 6 different settings so far, but they just have a different look yet. The plan is to add some abilities and special events to the settings for Hero Mode to make them more unique. Such abilities can be e.g. higher chance of causing a status change on monsters in the ice world, while a special event can be an ice storm that reduces the range of your towers but also slows down enemies
Community Features: We want to push both competition between players and also cooperation.
The first step will be to introduce special ranks in the leaderboard (so the better your overall score is the better your special rank will be).
As soon as we reached enough players we will unlock new regions for players to join. The idea is to be able to compare your scores with people that live in the same country, area or even city than you do
The biggest part will be alliances: You can connect with other players and join a group and be able to cooperate and compete in new ways
Bugs, Feedback and more
For bugs and feedback we have a great ingame reporting functionality. This of course doesn't allow for discussions. We set up https://steamcommunity.com/app/917850/discussions
As we're in Early Access we want to hear your feedback on anything. May it be bugs, new ideas or stuff we should improve, everything is welcome.
