For those of you who have an MSDN subscription, Windows 8 (the RTM build) is now available. Have you tried it? If so, what’s the verdict?
I’ll have my thoughts later this week.
I’ve received a number of inquiries today regarding the lawsuit Stardock filed against its former Marketing Manager, Alexandra Miseta in federal court. Unfortunately, our policy is to not comment on ongoing litigation.
Someone chose to publicly post the filing (which you can see here). I presume they did so to capitalize on their marketing knowledge to create a false narrative of this person being unjustly picked on. In twenty years of being in business, this is the first time we have ever filed a lawsuit. We take these matters very seriously.
Whatever the motive they had for posting the filing, they succeeded in getting coverage that we are alleging that our former marketing manager, Alexandra Miseta, quit our company without notice, 3 weeks prior to the largest product launch in our company history and on her way out destroyed/took important marketing assets (along with a number of other things). These assets then had to be recreated at the last minute by those most familiar with the title (the development team) which took them off, during crunch time, from doing the final QA work on the title which had a significant impact on the quality of the release.
None of this conflicts with my or Stardock's previous public statements regarding ultimate "blame" or responsibility for a product's failure. As the CEO, the buck ultimately stops with me. However, that does not excuse malicious actions of individuals.
The Ultimate Edition of Galactic Civilizations I is now available on Steam!
Check it out: http://store.steampowered.com/app/214150/
If you don’t already have The Political Machine 2012, then don’t get it for yourself. Think of the children. I’ve been campaigning across this great land of ours telling anyone who will listen about the great issues of our times:
1. ATM fees (the devil)
2. Reality TV shows (too many)
3. And tax cuts for me. (and only me)
If you’re into modding, you can make any issues you want and have them be as important or trivial as you’d like. In a recent update, we added Romney’s tax returns, Chick-fil-a and “You didn’t build that”. But there’s nothing stopping players from going in and doing their own.
It’s tough to go on The O’Malley Factor. But, as you know, I am a hero. Courage is my middle name.
Me and my close, personal, friend, Barak Obama.
California goes Republican? Not likely.
For some reason, Florida’s top issue is social security.
I am in favor of good things and I oppose bad things. Tiny little flags for all.
There are a few other updates in the works for the game between now and election to help keep things hopping and up to date. In the meantime, if you manage to beat the AI I wrote, then hop online for some multiplayer action.
Our story so far…
Many many years ago while developing the universe for Galactic Civilizations we started working on a fantasy world. This world became known as Elemental. The plan was to create a trilogy of games:
and
War of Magic was Stardock’s first attempt at a land-based strategy game. It didn’t end well. But there was a silver lining, we learned a lot and rather than try to patch/enhance War of Magic with 2 expansions, we just moved directly on to doing a new game in the Elemental universe – Fallen Enchantress.
Here are some screenshots of War of Magic:
And below is Fallen Enchantress with the most similar screenshots I can make to use as a comparison:
We have tried where possible to keep with the artistic flavor and spirit of War of Magic even though the games are radically different.
People on various forums always ask me if they should buy War of Magic. I tend to say no since Fallen Enchantress really is superior in every respect and getting War of Magic won’t really give you a leg up in Fallen Enchantress because the game mechanics are so different.
But for those of you who do have War of Magic, you might find it interesting to load it up and play it a bit before Beta 4 of Fallen Enchantress comes out this week so that you can get an idea of just how different it is. It just goes to show that when you’re making a fantasy game, there are a lot of different design directions you can go even if it’s in the same world.
This next week we are hoping (but not promising) to put out the 4th beta of Fallen Enchantress. Beta 4 will be focusing on overall gameplay with special attention to the underlying city mechanics and user interface. We expect this beta to last approximately a month at which point we’ll be releasing Beta 5 which will be all about balance, fixing any remaining bugs, polish, etc.
Here’s a video I did yesterday that shows how the start of the game has changed:
The most delicate balancing act we perform in Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is the starting position. How close should monsters be? How powerful should those monsters be? How near should we place more powerful monsters? How many resources should be near? How many goodie huts should be near? What about quests?
The user has considerable control over this based on their start-up settings. However, we all know that most people will go by the default settings – at least at first. So we spend a lot of time playing around with these values along.
Here I’ve unhidden the map and turned on the grid in the cloth map view. As you can see, there are lots of monsters here but they have all been carefully balanced such that a player should be able to defeat them if they are careful and don’t try to mow them all down (i.e. defeat means player is at full health).
Since the maps are randomly generated, including the continents themselves, it can be pretty tricky making sure that the resource placement and map itself remains fair. In a traditional land based 4X, there’s no magic. By adding magic, we significantly increase the challenge.
However, when successful, the reward is great: unprecedented replay ability.
Sometimes the local politics of Higgins Lake Michigan can be very frustrating. The latest example has to be the "save the dam" advocates.
Briefly, MSU in cooperation with the DNR are conducting a study of the effect the dam has on Higgins Lake. The dam is used to help control the lake water level.
Many decades ago, a dam was put on the lake to keep the water level high enough to use the lake effectively for for boats. As more people bought cottages on the lake, the demand to raise the water level ever higher grew.
The issue came to a head some years ago when the water level got so high that huge swaths of the shore, complete with their trees, began falling into the lake. Many people began to build sea walls or fortified their shorelines with stones which resulted in the erosion problem being exacerbated for everyone else.
To put things in perspective, our family has been on the lake for decades. We've lost nearly 40 feet of beach since the 1940s. Moreover, the erosion of the sea shore resulted in a massive increase in the amount of organic matter in the lake which caused an explosion in the number of snails in the lake which in turn helped bring "Swimmer's Itch" to the lake for the first time in its history.
As a result of all the erosion and the corresponding hassles it entails, people have begun to ask "what should the water level be?" One of the local foundations raised sufficient funds to get that question answered scientifically -- the creation of a study. The study will take a couple years to complete.
However, the study is violently opposed by those who fear that this will lead to the loss of the dam and convenient (for them) access to their boats. No one has actually seriously proposed getting rid of the dam. Personally, I do not want to see the dam go. I boat on this lake as well and if the water level was significantly lower than it is today, it would be quite a hassle to navigate the lake.
The problem is, no one really knows what lower lake levels would do. We can only speculate. Hence, the study: The study is the result of years of squabbling by the residents up there as to what the lake level should be kept at. Now, at least, there would be a study that outlines what the consequences of different water levels would be.
What's funny about this, at least from an "outsider", "city-slicker", point of view, is that those who are so up in arms about this are ultimately concerned about the ease of getting their boats out into the lake and having to be more careful in navigating certain areas. They don't seem to be aware that the north east shore of the lake is disappearing (high water + winds from the south west year after year). It's enough to make someone want to yell "Lazy hicks!" at those who put their convenience over someone else's property.
Every time I've seen this issue debated, it ultimately boils down to convenience -- for them. Never mind that other people are seeing their shores, trees, decks, porches, washed away or that all the organic material being washed into the lake is damaging the lake quality. No, it's about their bloody pontoon boats.
I don't have an opinion on what the lake level should be. If I were the weather god, I'd prefer much lower winter and spring levels and keep the current summer levels. It's the Spring storms that are destroying us.
I do know, however, that if one party is losing their trees and patios to the enriching water caused by an artificially high lake level and the other party just doesn't want to have to buy another 8 foot dock section or have to pay attention to rocks which party's concerns are valid and which party's concerns are unreasonable imo.
Just curious, how serious would you take the views of someone who made their money by winning the lottery when it comes to economics and business?
So picture this, 40 some year old couple with a yearly household income of around $200k suddenly has a windfall of over a million dollars in one year. Not from their job. Not from a business. Not from meeting some life long goal. The money just suddenly showed up.
What do you think their attitude would be towards other people who were rich?
I see a lot of people in politics support the concept of "local control". But as a dogma, it falls apart at a certain point. Let me present you the example of Higgins Lake, Michigan.
Higgins Lake is a beautiful lake in the northern part of the lower peninsula. It has two large state parks, a couple first class marinas and several public boat launches. The lake itself is beautiful. Shallow and sandy by the shore and very deep (over 100 feet deep) in the middle.
So what problems could it have? Answer: Boat parking.
If you own a boat, you can park it on the lake if you use one of the licensed marinas or if you have property on the lake.
However, a lot of the locals who don't own property on the lake and don't want to pay to keep their boat at the marina, think they should be allowed to hoist their boat in the water at a road end. Their argument is that road ends are public land and therefore, they, the public, should be able to leave their boats out in the water for the Summer.
Think about that for a moment. Most roads are public. Imagine if they lived on a public road and suddenly hundreds of campers parked out in front of their houses for the Summer. It would be obnoxious. More than obnoxious, it would prevent other people from being able to park there temporarily.
For some years, people did just as I described and it was a disaster. Every road end on the lake was filled with boats that made it virtually impossible for other people to get out onto the lake from those road ends. It was also a nightmare for people who lived near road ends since their homes now bordered on make-shift marinas -- something they certainly hadn't signed up for when they bought their house.
The courts ruled that it was illegal to park boats on the water for non-transient uses (for the reasons I mentioned earlier - you can park your car the side of a road for a bit but that doesn't mean you get to turn the road end into your personal camping spot for the summer). Eventually, the Michigan legislature codified this in law.
In the last couple of years, the people who want to put their boats in at road ends have come up with a new tactic - try to make the issue decided at "the local level". That is, let the people in the township vote how the road ends are used. Isn't that nice? Of course, there's a lot more people off the lake than on the lake so it's pretty obvious how that vote would go - which is precisely why property rights aren't determined at the local level -- if Peter and Paul think they should be able to use your stuff and it's put to a vote where they're the only two voters, guess how that's going to go?
The issue even skirts some class warfare rhetoric. You see, most people with houses on the lake don't live there all year. Which, thank to "local control" on who gets to vote, means they don't get to vote on anything. They're taxed heavily (Higgins Lake residents get the standard non-homesteaded tax and a special non-resident tax on top). So the people most directly affected by a vote of "local control" wouldn't even get to vote on the matter, which is pretty convenient for those proposing the bill.
As you can imagine, the local politicians are inclined to support the "local control" side of things since the majority of the people near Higgins Lake certainly would like to have free (or nearly free) rights to park their boat on the lake. And the people most likely to passionately oppose them can't even vote.