Screenshots

This version of Eleme is colorful and somewhat cartoony. Casting a spell creates a spectacular particle effect on the screen. The element gems are 3D models that rotate. It's a nice effect. The characters were borrowed from a library of free images, and the backgrounds were ripped from another game (which is why Eleme II can never be sold).

Title Screen

Get ready to play!

Effect Spell

Full 3D spells with particle effects

Fireball Spell

Damage multipliers are shown as each spell is cast

Solar Flare

A powerful spell! You can switch gems and wands while playing.

Another Effect Spell

Effects spells can change the outcome of a battle

Development

This is a 3D game with a 2D feel. Written in C++ with DirectX, it will run on most computers. I got the character images from a free clip-art site. The backgrounds were ripped from another game.

Although this is the only version of Eleme in which I didn't create the spell graphics myself, it took a while to find just the right graphics for each spell.

The special effects are fun! Some spells will fill the screen with particle effects and point sprites.

Modeling

A Fireball

Texturing

Earth

The elements are actually textured spheres. They rotate when you're selecting an element. Adding this to the 2D menu gives them sort of a "popping out of the screen" feel.

Levels

Zoomed Out

Wrapping Background

Cylindrical

The backgrounds are cylindrical so that when you turn your character to the left or the right, it feels like you're really turning.

Layout

Spellcasting

Effects Menu

Background

I always create template graphics when I'm designing a screen layout. This allows me to get the feeling of where things are and make adjustments before actually creating the final textures.

Balance

Element Charts

Spreadsheet

This is one of the most important parts of development. If the game is not balanced, it will not be fun. Every spell and every element and every effect is carefully adjusted little by little until it's just right. I use spreadsheets to balance spells, and sometimes I actually use it to import code.

Coding

Loading Code

General Vars

Message Loop

This code is fairly low-level. There weren't many libraries or nice wrappers to make it easy back then. I took care of memory management, rendering, and all the hard stuff myself.