Our story so far…
Lest you think I’m some sort of shut-in. I really did go outside today. Cider Mill and then played with the kids. So 2 hours spent moving around and the rest of the day in front of the computer. That’s a ratio I can live with. 
Only 2 broken bones…
Adding Technologies
Adding technologies to Elemental is still a work in progress because the research screen in Elemental is still a work in progress.
The UI needs some work…
So before we talk about modding the “tech tree” in Elemental we should probably talk about the concept behind researching in Elemental.
Elemental doesn’t have a traditional technology tree. The idea here to have a lot fewer “techs”, each of which do something very very interesting in the game (as opposed to in GalCiv where you were researching “lasers IV”).
In Civilization IV getting a technology did something for you that changed the game and made it more fun but of course, once you have it, you have it.
So in an effort to have our cake and eat it too the idea here is that you get a technology and getting that technology does something “cool.”. For example, researching “Adventuring” will unhide the dungeons on the map (well not right now, but it will eventually). Researching mining will unhide metal ore you can mine. Researching education allows you to build schools in your cities, and so on.
But on top of that, once you have researched something, you can then keep focusing on that technology make it better than better. So researching mining will let you mine metal. But you can also continue to research mining and will continually get tiny bonuses in your mining ability for as long as you want to research it. Hence, you get an infinite tech tree.
So here’s how it works right now:
We have a file called “CoreTechs.xml”
The file name is irrelevant though to the game – as mentioned previously, any XML file will be read in and parsed. It’s the keyword that matters. We could have made every technology its own file if we wanted (that would be a headache though for us). But when the time comes and you want to start submitting your own mods, you’ll want to make sure you’re creating unique files and not uploading “coretechs.xml” or something.
Now, the highlighted parts are ones I have no idea what they do and no idea why they’re there. I will ask about them next week. The rest is pretty straight forward after a bit of experimenting.
First, you define the technology’s internal name. Then you have a display name and the image you want to use for it.
Next, you then set up whatever types of pre-requisites you want for that tech. Right now, techs only require other techs as pre-requisites but eventually you could have all kinds of things required to research a given tech (maybe an ancient scroll you uncovered from an ancient ruin, maybe something your hero got on an adventure, maybe a random event, whatever).
The “value” part is how many research points it takes to get that tech. By default (in beta 1B anyway) each citizen produces 0.1 research points per turn. So if you make something cost 10 research points, it will take a down of 100 a single turn to get it (very easy).
Next is the tech bonus you define. This is your “infinite” research element. It needs some work though still as this isn’t finalized. But basically what it will do is define what sort of bonus researching that tech will provide your civilization. So for instance, what it should do is that every 100 points you spend on “Farming” should give you a 1 percent bonus to your farming output. But we have a “TechLevel” field that I suspect is going to go away and we won’t be displaying it as a “tech” on the screen since it’s not a tech, it’s a bonus.
More answers on modding
What will and won’t be possible in Elemental for modders is still really up in the air. That’s why I’m planning on becoming an Elemental modder early on so that I can be making mods and push the engine early enough so that things can be changed in the engine. A simple Temple of Apshai type mini-game using the Elemental engine and Python is going to be my test case (not for awhile mind you but hopefully before the game comes out). That will give us all an idea of what is and isn’t possible.
