This is my first shot at demoing Fences.  It also gives you an idea of just how compelling the new features are.

I’m playing with the latest internal build of Fences 2. I can describe it in one word: WOW.

Let me show you some screenshots that will explain what I mean:

Folder Portals:

At first glance, this looks like Fences 1.  But look closely… See the Videos and My Pictures? Those portals to folders. This is huge. Think of all the people you know that dump every picture and such onto their desktop. With Fences 2, people can put pictures where they belong – in their pictures folder. Then, using Fences, just create a portal fence on the desktop.

Pages:

This screen looks really busy right? Here’s the thing: It’s a Fences page. I got to it by clicking on the edge of the screen and dragging the screen to the next page. I use this page because I often have to interact and/or move stuff between these three folders. I bet I’m not the only one who gets pretty tired of having to open up folders, place them around the screen to drag and drop things between them.

Let me video this to really drive it home:

Fences 2 pages in action

Easier to use

Fences 2 installs as a Control Panel item rather than its own proprietary UI..thing. So you can always get to it through the control panel and the UI works the same as any other control panel.

Also, for people (like me) who just want a clean desktop, Fences is still the world’s best solution for this: Double click on the desktop and your icons go away (double click to bring them back).

More powerful

The power-user features of Fences 2 are presented in a way that they’re easy for power users to make use of but don’t scare off casual users. For instance, in the above screenshot, I’ve got my pictures displayed as details while my videos are showing their items as large video items. I’m also configuring a new fence to be the place that intercepts things trying to add their junk to my desktop.

Besides the obvious addition of being able to have different sized icons on your desktop, it lets you use your desktop as it was originally intended – your portal for all your stuff.  If you’ve used Windows 8, you can really appreciate how important it’s going to be to be able to use your desktop more effectively than ever and for everyone else, it lets you craft your desktop to work the way you want it to.

Fences 1 is, as some know, the world’s most popular desktop enhancement (by far).  Fences 2, is more than a mere evolution of the fences concept. It’s is the realization of two decades of what the desktop can be when given the right tools.  Fences is a simple program that has profound benefits.

Let me get this out of the way: I like Steam. I like Valve.

We have a poll up right now that asks whether you use Steam. Let us know please.

I’ve been in digital distribution since before digital distribution was a thing.  The very first computer game that was launched at retail and digitally distributed was Galactic Civilizations back in February 2003.

For us, digital distribution was a matter of life or death. Consider this, how many other independent (or heck, just non-publicly traded) game studios have been around 20 years? Go ahead. Count them up. Not many eh?

I incorporated Stardock back in 1993 from my college dorm room. And I can tell you, if it weren’t for digital distribution, we would have stopped making games a long time ago.  That’s because the more people that are between you and your customer, the more opportunities there are for theft. Not by players but by retailers, publishers, distributors, etc. 

One of the reasons why the whole “piracy” bellowing from publishers irritated me was because the biggest obstacle to getting paid for my work wasn’t from pirates. It was from the middle men.

In 1994, we released our first game. Galactic Civilizations for OS/2.  It was published by a company called Advanced Idea Machines.  The game was a huge hit. So I heard anyway. We didn’t get paid. And being a poor college student at the time, I couldn’t afford a lawyer.

So in 1996, we released Galactic Civilizations 2 for OS/2.  This time we released it ourselves. But our retail distributor, Micro Central, went bankrupt and didn’t pay us and our mail order distributor, Blue Orchards went out of business as well and didn’t pay us.

So then we moved to Windows and we released Galactic Civilizations for Windows, published by Strategy First….and again, didn’t get paid.

Do you see a pattern here?

What saved us was digital distribution.  With it, we could sell directly to customers, cutting out the middle man.

As you can imagine, when Steam came out we started to get a little nervous. Not because of the competition but because we feared the idea that we would one day need to sell our software through a third party and hence risk not getting paid…again.

As it had turned out, our fears have been unwarranted.  Impulse, now owned by Gamestop, pays like clock work and so does Steam.  By contrast, with a retail distributor you were lucky to get paid merely 90 days late. And that’s not counting the obnoxious and expensive RMA games they play. I like the service Steam provides. They’re easy to work with, they’re honest, and they’re passionate about what they do.  And most importantly, they let me, as a game developer, focus on what matters: making games.

Anyway, the point here being, what are your feelings on Steam these days?

There’s a show on National Geographic called “Doomsday Preppers”. I’ve never watched it. But I have read a number of blogs from people on the subject and I’ve become convinced that most people, even those into “prepping”, haven’t thought through what would be the likely, and even predictable, steps our society would take as it self-destructed.

The doomsday scenarios I have seen discussed revolve around one of the topics below:

• Economic collapse
• Nuclear attack
• Stellar impact (comet/asteroid)
• EMP attack
• Solar EMP event (Carrington Event)

I don’t feel qualified to discuss the likelihood of any of those things. I do, however, feel sufficiently qualified to say that there is one general scenario that I think is likely enough that it bears discussing: The collapse of our electrical grid and the consequences of that collapse.

A few years ago, I started doing research for a project on was premised on the fall of our civilization.  What could cause it? Was it plausible? What would it look like?

What I discovered was that our own civilization was far more fragile than I ever imagined. What’s worse, unlike the dramatic scenarios I read about, the most likely series of events would instead of a horrifying, gradual descent in which people didn't even realize that civilization was collapsing even as it was occurring.

In essence, our civilization dies as if it were a frog in water that was slowly brought to a boil.

Why guessing the scenario is irrelevant

There are a lot of different scenarios that could cause the power grid to be taken out.  I remember the blackout of 2003. It affected 55 million people and the power was out for 2 days. This all happened because some power lines in Ohio came in contact with some overgrown trees. Seriously.

55 million people lost power for 2 days because of a cascading failure that boiled down to some power lines getting tangled up with trees.  Hence, the specific trigger for a power grid collapse is less important than knowing the consequences of it.

General parameters

For our purposes, let’s just assume that the power grid has been damaged by something that will take 90 days to repair. Cars still work. Anything that wasn’t connected to the grid still works (like gas generators). Let’s assume this whole thing happens in August -- that tends to be when the electrical grid is under the most stress anyway.

Week 1: No big deal

The first few days are a party. The food in the refrigerator is going to go bad anyway so there’s a lot of BBQ’s. People talk about how this event is helping restore a sense of community. It’s like an extended camping trip in some ways. If only they knew.

The only friction that comes up at this point is that everything has to be bought in cash. People running to the store to buy their own generators (which sell out on the first day) are having to buy them in cash because credit card processing is down. Inconvenient.

By the end of the first week, the stores have sold out of their inventory of food along with other items one would expect to need “just in case”. Every army surplus store gets cleared out. No looting. Cash and carry.

Week 2: Some people have run out of water

It’s in week 2 that things start to become widely unpleasant.  Personally, I think a lot of people would start to be seriously concerned after day 2 but for the sake of argument, let’s assume most people tough out that first week.

Every real television station is still broadcasting. They have backup generators that are hooked up via natural gas and the natural gas pipelines are working just fine, for now. The gas stations are still working too. They have backup generators that run off gasoline. So people who need gasoline or diesel for their generators are doing fine as long as people have cash to pay for it. That also means cars can still get gas.

So the good news is that people are still being informed on the status of the blackout. The bad news is that they don’t know how long it’s going to take to restore power because it turns out that most of the transformers on the grid were damaged.

If you live in a major city, things aren’t so good. There’s no running water for most people.  If you live in the suburbs, there’s no running water either but those with houses can tap into their hot water heaters or have some local pond or something that, if they’re smart, they’ll boil first.

The federal, state, and local governments are bringing in water but it’s slow going, chaotic, and tense. The government is setting up relief centers in urban areas to supply food and water. The problem, however, is that there are a finite number of generators and, for the time being, no new ones are being made. The ability to fix anything that breaks down is compromised.

In summary, the urban areas are a bit scary because no power means reduced security and no independence but at least there are relief areas to walk to.  Suburbs don’t have the relief centers but still, generally have access to water and “community” food stocks are still holding up. People can drive their cars to the relief centers to pick up dry food goods and water bottles.

The death toll is far less than it could be. People who need assisted living or are vulnerable to heat related stress are the worst off. It’s easy to forget that large swaths of the United States are only comfortable thanks to air conditioning.

Week 3: Fraying

If you live out in the country, none of this is that big of a deal yet. You have generators. You have water sources. Some people, mostly suburbanites that decided to move into the country, have run out of food but they’re probably being supported by their neighbors. At least, I like to think so.

The suburbs, however, are fraying. Most people are out of food and are now flooding into the cities to those relief centers. While water is not a problem there, food is.  That’s because our distribution system in 2012 is based on just in time delivery. It’s very power hungry and the lack of a power grid is creating a lot of holes that are not easily patched.

Put yourself in this itself in the situation for moment.  It’s been 15 days without electricity. You have no more cash on hand. You’re out of food. You have some gallon containers of boiled water. Your car still has gas but you no longer have a way to get any more. You’re only 5 miles from the nearest relief center but you hear from neighbors that they’re now handing out MREs instead of “normal” food.

What do you do? Well, a lot of people have just moved their families to camping out near one of these relief camps. Should you do that?

Week 4: The Unraveling begins

So 22 days into the black out the scale of the problem is well known. Thank goodness communication still works. In the various EMP scenarios, there’s no communication.

On the other hand, communication still works.

A lot of the electrical transformers are out. This in turn damaged a lot of the grid infrastructure. It’s all repairable except that some of the parts can’t easily be replaced and that the supply of spare parts is very finite. As a result, certain parts of the grid have been restored.

The US power grid

Since communications still works, assume that the government has directed that the limited spare parts be used to restore the power grid in the most populated areas. This means the major urban areas, the east coast and the west coast.

This creates some sub-scenarios.  Do people migrate to those zones? Do those zones act as logistical bases to send out supplies?

I think we can surmise a few things here:

First, a lot of the equipment, having been running 24/7 for the past month, is going to start to break down. Those relief centers are going to start running out of food to supply. Water deliveries will start to become a problem as the number of vehicles available start to dwindle. Absenteeism is going to start to become a serious problem throughout this logistical network. To make a long story short, the patch work of relief centers is going to start to break down. This also means the delivery of fuel to gas stations and other consumables that rely on our vast, electrically powered, logistical infrastructure will start to come to a halt.

Second, a lot of people are going to start dying. The ability to supply medication in a timely manner is gone. If 15,000 people in France can die from a heat wave, one can imagine what would be happening in the American south in late August with no air conditioning.

Third, security will have started to seriously break down. Those that recall the problems in the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina can probably imagine what will be happening in those vast camp grounds surrounding every relief center – especially as supplies begin to dwindle.

And we’re only 22 days into this…

And mind you, we’re only 22 days in.  If an event occurred that physically damaged the power grid, particularly some of the very expensive, hard to replace, hard to manufacture elements of it, we’d be looking at large swaths of the population being without power for months.

There are a lot of variables that come into play and the further we go out, the more speculative we have to become. Here are some of the questions that would have a lot to do with the outcome:

1. Is this a worldwide issue? Just North America? Just the Eastern and Western Interconnect?
2. How effective would the local/state/federal government be in delivering vital supplies to population centers and how long could it maintain those supplies?
3. If transportation is still available, what would be the migration patterns? What percent would stay put versus move to where power is versus would camp out at a relief center?
4. How quickly would violence arise on a scale to disrupt or event overwhelm local authority?
5. How long would secondary elements of our infrastructure function without the grid (utility companies that rely on regular deliveries of supplies and components to function, communication grids that rely on power)
6. What is the MTBF of various types of backup generators?
7. To what level would people be able to obtain more cash and/or use credit cards if the grid went down?

Week 5: It Falls apart

Depending on the answers from above, it’s about week 5 that things start to go to hell. 

For our purposes we’re going to assume the following going forward:

• It’s a worldwide issue
• The government aid goes as well as it possibly can (i.e. benefit of the doubt)
• Non-Cash payment is a significant issue where the grid remains down (not that it’ll matter much longer)
• Best-case scenario regarding the rise of mobs, looting, and gangs (i.e. benefit of the doubt).

The second month

• Think you can hold off the hordes of starving because you have guns and a fortified house?
• Should you migrate to where they’ve restored the grid or should you stay put or should you “go to that cottage your grandma has”?
• How serious and how fast will things get violent?

Join the discussion

I’d love to hear from you in the comments area.  Corrections to my data. Supplemental information. Things I haven’t thought of. Link others to this article to get others who are knowledgeable on this topic to have access to it.

Follow @draginol

//

After the cataclysm, the mortal races with sufficient numbers organized themselves between Kingdoms and Empires.

Broadly speaking, the biggest difference in the ideologies comes down to the source of magical power their rulers subscribe to. The Channelers of the Kingdom gain their power from life – the ambient life energy. The Channelers of the Empire gain their power from death – when things die.

Men refer to “Fallen” races as those races that started out as men but were twisted by the Titans of old to serve their purposes.

The Fallen think of themselves as beings who were enhanced beyond the original base stock into something better (and certainly don’t think of themselves as “Fallen”).

By the time of Fallen Enchantress, there are 8 major factions made up by 5 “species" (Men, Quendar, Trog, Wraith, Ironeer) with men broken into 4 races.

From a UI design, there’s no nice way of distinguishing between a race and a species. So we refer to the 4 races of men by their families – Krax, Mancers, Amarians, Tarthan.

Good gravy is this cool:

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Why are computer players so often so dumb? The answer is that we expect computer players to make complex, intelligent decisions super-fast.

When we make computer games, we know that players have a very low tolerance for waiting for computer opponents to “think”. Historically, that has meant that computer players either cheat like crazy or are play terribly (or both).

In one of the minor video game history footnotes, Stardock’s Galactic Civilizations was the first commercial computer game to have a multi-threaded computer AI. This meant that while the player was taking their turn, the computer players could generate their strategy in the background.

The last version of Galactic Civilizations came out 6 years ago and a lot has changed. These days, most people have computers with multiple cores. Dual-core. Quad Core. 6-core, etc. Each core is, effectively, its own CPU. When it came time to design the computer AI for Stardock’s upcoming Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, I had the opportunity to think about how to make of all these cores.

The result is that not only do computer players "think” while the player is taking their turn. It can “think” all the time because each computer players gets its own core (ideally) or at least is shuffled off onto another core. So your animation and mouse input and sound can play on various CPU cores and the computer players are explicitly sent off to other cores so that their thinking doesn’t slow down the game.

This extra CPU horse power matters because Fallen Enchantress is a fantasy strategy game. Fantasy strategy games are notorious for having terrible computer players because the number of choices a computer player faces every move is massive. Fantasy games usually involve having to cast spells, deal with units that have special powers, deal with Heroes/Champions who are leveling up or upgrading.

If you’re playing Diablo 3, or have played some other RPG, you can probably appreciate the challenge in deciding the “right” powers, abilities, and spells to use. Now, imagine having to make those decisions in less than 30ms. Now imagine having to do all that except instead of controlling one unit you’re controlling 1,200 of them.

It seems a bit ironic that it’s not first person shooters or other seemingly cutting edge games that benefit the most from these hardware advances but rather good old fashioned strategy games.

A quick question:

Are there any privately held game studios older than Stardock still in business?

Stardock’s first game was released in 1994 (Galactic Civilizations) and was incorporated in 1993.

I don’t mean hobbyists but actual studio with full time employees.

Anyone know?

As a business model, I very much like free to play.

Free to Play is a direct response to the digitization of PC gaming. It’s no coincidence that free to play is a PC-centric phenomenon.  If we still had a handful of major PC game publications and a major retail presence, there’d be no free to play.  The market adapts, the consumer benefits.

Let’s define free to play:

Free To Play is software that is fully functional and useful/fun in its free form. It’s not a trial. It’s not a “Crippled” version.  It is, ultimately, freeware.  The difference here is that users also have the option, typically within the program itself, to add more features or content to the program. These features and content are completely optional and the user could go just fine without ever spending a cent. Well made freeware makes its premium features “nice to have” but not critical to the program itself.

Migration

Free to Play may have started out as a gaming phenomenon but it just as applicable to non-game software. About a year ago, I outlined to our software unit that all our software was going to migrate to a free to play model. You can see this with Tiles. Tiles is freeware but users can add features to it for small amounts. The base program is compelling on its own. The extras (premium) are clearly “nice to have” but not core to the program (skinning, extra tile filters, etc.).

This week, we’re releasing WindowFX 5, a program we’ve been making for over a decade.  The 5th generation version is free to play. That is, there is no Pro/Plus/Enhanced version. There is only WindowFX.  Users who want premium features can add them in the app for a nominal cost but the application itself is designed to be compelling on its own.

Meanwhile, our PC games are still pretty traditional. The upcoming Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is a $39.95 game. There will almost certainly be a demo version but it’ll be a traditional demo.  Digital does bring some benefits -- we can offer users of the original Sins of a Solar Empire series a $10 discount.  But we are very much looking at the F2P model when we are designing new titles.

Why is F2P taking over?

Simply put, the loss of a retail channel for selling software combined with the dilution of the software/gaming media has meant that publishers now have to rely, more than ever before, on word of mouth to generate revenue for their games.

Ten years ago, if I was publishing a PC game it went something like this:

Visit PC Gamer, Talk to Steve Bauman at Computer Games Magazine, Visit Computer Gaming World, Gamespot, IGN, GameSpy, a couple of others and you were pretty set on the marketing side.  Then you’d make sure your game was at EB, Best Buy, Gamestop, CompUSA, and a few others and you could expect great sales.

But today?

According to our surveys, most users are getting their information from various sources that boil down to word of mouth (Facebook friends, Twitter friends, Forums).  And retail? Good luck getting shelf space for your PC title. 

So what’s the best way to get word of mouth? Give it away. Give nearly all of it away.  Because it turns out that even if only 1% of the users contribute, you can make a killing as long as you have enough players – which is, ultimately, the challenge.  Because if you make it extremely well and give it away, people will talk about it. And that is what publishers are counting on.

So that’s why Free to Play works and will continue to become more and more dominant as time goes by.  In the meantime, I have to go buy a virtual hat and tweet a picture of my character with it…

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