I wrote awhile back how the death of Steve Jobs affected me. This is kind of an update on how things have progressed since then.

Now, I don’t consider myself in the same league as Steve Jobs. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet some of the titans of our industry and their force of intellect has been humbling.

Capability aside, certain types of people are motivated by very similar things. We all have our demons.

In my case, I grew up with very little. I never felt I was good enough.  It was just my mom and I in an apartment for much of my childhood. Insecurity was my motivator and “success” was the score card I used to keep those demons at bay.

My first money-making effort was started when I was 6. I made money by taking out the garbage to the dumpster for the neighbors in our apartment building.  I saved nearly every penny. Delayed gratification was something I was pretty good at. When I got to be a teenager, I earned money helping clean mechanized shovels used for sewer repair (I won’t go into any more detail than that).  The money I made with that let me buy my first car, a Chevette which let me get a job further away at the mall selling books. That in turn, got me enough experience to get a job as a proof machine operator at the bank during the Summer when I went to college at Western Michigan University (which I went to because I got a scholarship because of my ACT scores).

In college, for reasons I still can’t fathom, my professors asked me to teach lab classes and sub lecture classes despite my 2.x GPA. When I wasn’t doing that, I was working at Babbages (now owned by Gamestop). I still didn’t have enough money to pay for school so I started my own company making custom PCs called…Stardock.

After I graduated, I ended up focusing on Stardock as it was hard to find my “dream job” because of my 2.x GPA and let’s face it, a small state college doesn’t open a lot of doors. I will admit that I get a pang of…I dunno, envy and personal failure when I see someone who went on to make it big after a stint at Harvard. Having mentors and connections can really make the path easier – or at least, so I’ve heard.

But that’s why I have tended to look to Steve Jobs as a role model. He didn’t have the resources to go to a Harvard, make the connections, build networking skills and seamlessly magnify his inherent talent to reach the pinnacle of success.

Steve Jobs built his success the hard way.

Steve Jobs at 40

The hard way, however, includes some sacrifices. Some terrible, sacrifices that in the bigger scheme of things makes one wonder if they’re worth it. Missing out on your kids growing up. But more specific to this particular path, it means building skills and knowledge at the cost of heart breaking personal failures.

And in the end what was it for? Steve Jobs, the CEO of the world’s most successful company was still, ultimately, unable to save his own life. No matter how successful you are, life isn’t just short, its length is often beyond your control.

Steve Jobs, at 50 (only 10 years later)

I didn’t know Steve Jobs personally. He was an inspiration from afar. His death made me reevaluate my life goals. I’ve been fortunate enough to have had some level of success.  Certainly not billions like Steve Jobs but certainly far more than I could ever realistically need.  Like I said, Steve Jobs was beyond me in every measurable respect (talent, capability, and level of success).

I know from talking to others that I’m not the only one who used money as purely a score card.  At some point after I graduated I had my own score card  net worth goals. $1M at 25, $10M at 30. $100M at 40. $1B at 50.  But they might as well be just points in an arcade game. The money is largely meaningless since most hyper-driven people never spend even a fraction of what they amass.

I probably would have continued on this trajectory if I hadn’t gotten the wake up call. Two years ago at this time, my typical schedule was 84 hours a week.  That’s 10 hours a day, 6 days a week plus one all-nighter (Wednesdays).  During crunch times, I’d do 15 hours a day, 5 days a week plus 2 all-nighters.  I wish I could come up with some excuse for this other than I enjoyed doing it.  It’s no different than the MMO player who’s trying to power-level their character as fast as they can. Last year I turned 40, so I thought I had “at least” another 40 years, minimum.

But the death of Jobs’ broke me out of that line of thinking.

Now, I’m working 40 hours a week. Well, maybe a bit more but I haven’t done a single all-nighter since Jobs died. It’s very weird having all this…time. I’m getting to know my kids. I’m hanging out with my wife a lot more. I’m getting more involved in hobbies and we’re about to start a charitable foundation this year. It’s a different life.

That’s not to say that I’m retiring. Far from it.  But my life has changed. I’ve been granted a reprieve. Life is short. And as has become clear, no matter how successful you are, you have little say over just how short that life is. It doesn’t change my hero-worship of the visionary aspects and drive of Jobs. Instead, I would like to think I’m looking at his inspiration from a new, broader, perspective than I had before.

I have a standing opinion about people who take their forum disagreements into “real life”: They’re horrible people.

This evening I was surfing the net and found someone who had been recently subjected to someone who disliked them on an Internet forum going out and taking out ads with their real name, address, etc. for the purposes of harassing them.  The person who did that is a horrible person.

The irony, however, is that the victim of the harassment was someone who flamed me for stating that the people who disliked me on an internet forum who went on to trash my book on Amazon and in a stand alone review were horrible people. 

I can empathize that it’s hard to accept that ones friends might be horrible human beings. But anyone who takes their dislike of someone into “the real world” is a horrible person. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of an excuse for it.

If someone’s pissed you off on some forum then step back, take a deep breath and deal with it – on that forum.

Today was a reasonably warm day and very sunny.  I used the opportunity to split one of my beehives into two.

Here’s how that works.

I have a beehive that’s doing pretty well. To split a hive, you take a bunch of frames from inside the hive that have eggs and open celled larva and move it (and the bees on the frame) to the new hive.  In a few days, week, the bees will realize there’s no queen and feed one of the larva royal jelly which will turn that bee into a queen.

I currently have 4 hives, the goal this year is to get that number to 6.  As of today, I have 5.  If I get another nice day, I hope to split another.

I just finished a really enjoyable book called The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. Highly recommended.

I’ve been planning my midlife crisis for awhile. These things need planning of course.  Last year I hit 40.  That’s the age where denial over middle age is over. It’s arrived.

I’m a man of many interests. I just don’t know what to focus on nor do I know if I want to focus on anything in particular. The problem is incentive. I’d rather have more hours in the day to spend time with my two sons and daughter (not to mention my wonderful wife). 

As some of you may know, Windows 8 has been pretty upsetting. It’s not just that it’s crap (which, make no mistake, the current build is), it’s that it shakes my previously solid faith in Microsoft to its core. I look at Windows 8 and I see a product made by dumb people. That’s too harsh. But certainly not the Microsoft of the 90s. It’s just another big company that makes crap without knowing what it’s doing.  You can argue that Microsoft of the 90s made crummy software but that was more an issue of development talent.  Bill Gates knew what he wanted, he just didn’t always have the people under him to execute.  Now, they don’t even have that. It’s depressing.

Most of my time these days is spent on Intel WiDi. If anything is going to make the Window PC relevant in the next few years, this is it.  If not WiDi, then Apple AirPlay is going to wipe out much of the niches PC’s currently inhabit which would be bad news for Intel (let alone Microsoft).  WiDi is the ability to take what’s on your PC (and Stardock’s EdgeRunner technology allows you to take a piece of the desktop, like say a window or a media player) and stream it to a WiDi device.  The goal is that in a few years, all your displays (monitors and televisions) will be equipped with WiDi technology. 

One reason I’m not bullish on consoles in the long-term is because of AirPlay and WiDi.  Why should have be stuck with some box connected to my TV when I can use my iPhone or my PC to just stream what’s on it (and by stream I don’t mean mirror) its content to a display?

My goal is to make sure Intel wins this battle. But it’s going to be an uphill battle. My house is fully equipped with a combination of Control4 and Apple AirPlay and it has a huge lead right now.

So on the one hand, Windows 8, in its current form, is an abomination.  As much as I appreciate Microsoft's enthusiasm to reinvigorate customization to solve their inept design decisions, I would rather have a good version of Windows 8.

That said, it appears they're going to frog march Windows 8 out the door.  For those of you who have it, what things would you like us to fix first?

Update: 

Hour long AI test video for the truly die hards who want to see all the mistakes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnPKHQIksrA&feature=youtu.be

I see all. I know all. At least, when it comes to this map.

In the top left we have Markin, leader of the AI civilization of Gilden.

In the bottom right, we have me, Draginol, leader of Pariden.

How many turns will it take me to wipe them out? What mistakes will the AI make that can be exploited (and fixed)?

First…some notes

This build is 0.911 which has some balance updates to make sovereigns and champions a little less powerful. The monsters are somewhat more aggressive and the AI has had some general improvements since 0.91.

Second…help me!

If you see me making a mistake, let me know.

Early Game:

I train up two pioneers and then the tower of dominion. I recruit a champion and send the champion in one direction and my sovereign in another.

(to be continued).

Othollo vs. Black Widow monster. Othollo has stone skin enchantment on him already.

Othollo wins.

Opinion: Level 1 champion shouldn’t be able to take out a black widow. Suggestion, Stone skin should do +4 defense plus +4 per earth shard.

Same issue:

My first level sovereign took out a troll by himself.

Opinion: Troll should get 2X more HP than it currently does.

AI Early game: Meanwhile…

Lord Markin just did the same thing. However, he isn’t using stone skin.

Opinion: Stone skin should be a “gotta have” for the sovereign.

Let’s look at the code…

Ok, this is where “strategy” comes into play in AI writing.  The code is very conservative about casting spells with regards to mana.  So at the start of the game, it doesn’t cast a lot of spells even though, IMO, it should cast some spells as early as possible even if it means lowering the available mana.

There are a few ways to do this:

1. Have an XML value for “Early Game AI multiplier” which tells the game to multiply the value early on.

2. Have the code take into account that the value of storing mana should be different at different times in the game.

3. Treat certain unit targets different than others (the value of a spell that affects a sovereign is different than a spell that might target a champion that is stationed in a city).

etc.

AIs in the mist

As you can see, the AI is intent on building a civilization. An admirable goal to be sure.  But not a good strategy.

By contrast…

My early development has focused on training up pioneers and now soldiers to go out and conquer.

With those units, I go out and level up:

By contrast, the AI leader is Soloing it:

Mind you, it’s not that I don’t think about sending units to reinforce the sovereign.  It’s always a balance between how far should it send them and how long should the sovereign wait around? What’s the attrition rate of units getting to the sovereign? Should I send the sovereign home or keep him in the field?

There’s a lot of tweaking that goes into this sort of thing that improves iteration by iteration.

Combining Heroes

One thing the AI does is that once champions get to a certain level, it will gradually put 2 in an army and potentially 3 or more depending on their level.

This is something I have to tweak almost every build because what is a “high enough” level changes.

Now, In this battle the AI is escorting pioneers with two champions and a Drolgard (a mid level Gildenian unit).

The AI (bpttp, left) casts stone skin on himself and then gift of iron right off the bat.

Gilden’s Drolgard unit is better than my Destiny’s Guard unit but he only has 1 of them (the other is a scout). But he does have two champions.

Let’s see what he’s done with his champions:

Yeesh. Level 12.  This is why I get nervous about changing the soloing behavior. Because there is a cost to having the AI wait around for escorts even if he does get killed a lot more often.  If sovereigns got injuries, I’d have to rewrite this.

His other hcampion isn’t that great.

vs.

It’s going to really boil down to whether I can take out his units and his extra champion I think.

On the second round, the AI Markin cast growth on himself. Then his champion cast haste on him. So this is not looking very promising.

The growth spell AI Markin has is self explanatory. And bad for me.

So if I should have done something differently there, feel free to tell me.

…later, Lord Markin is alone. How powerful is he?

This is a bit of an ambush but let’s see what I can do against him.

His first turn he casts growth.

His second turn he casts stone skin.

His third turn he casts gift of iron. Very wasteful. Will check his mana after the battle. But it’s pretty bloody nasty combo. He has a 63 defense.

Here is how the rest of the battle goes:

http://screencast.com/t/uuG8UvkqKO

He only has 65 mana left so he must have determined that he needed to win that battle.

…

So that’s enough for today.  Plenty to integrate in for this week.

As you may imagine, with each iteration, we internally pepper Kael with our own ideas and suggestions.  In no particular order these are some of the ones I’ve put in so you get a flavor of the feedback that poor Kael has to deal with daily.

• Every champion should have a unique ability – ex: give Baco “Destiny’s Gambler” spell where the player can spend 50 mana and get a random result, mostly good but some bad.
• Move random events away from being random and into being “choices”. For instance, an event that currently just random makes everyone go to war instead turns into a council where everyone votes on whether to have a war of finality or an emissary comes and demands you give them 10% of your income, if you fail fortresses appear on the map that begin attacking everyone.
• Have Civ techs that cause Outposts to get guards and expand influence so that you don’t need as many late game.
• Have weapons and armor that are “better” but cost significantly more resources so that the player with more stuff can fight a war of attrition.
• Have quests tend to give players access to more spells so that they’re more compelling. Getting a magic axe is less interesting and gets repetitive. Getting a random magic spell, by contrast, would make the finite # of quests have far greater replay ability.
• More terrain types (especially snow at the poles).
• Outpost specialization (late game, spend money to upgrade outposts that have an impact on the ZOC they control)

Now coming up in beta 4 is the new city system which will result in smaller looking cities (far fewer tiles on the map) but a lot more city improvements to choose from in total but fewer in a particular city (cities will specialize and that specialization will make available exclusive techs that require that city type). But that won’t be coming for awhile. But just something to remember when making requests on cities.

Mind you, these are just suggestions and may never make it in.  There are a lot of good ideas that get made everyday but there’s finite time and budget and the game has a very specific design that is being carried out on schedule that has done well so far.  But as we do iterations of a beta, there’s room for adjustments still.

Elemental: Fallen Enchantress beta 3 has been out a few days now, long enough hopefully to start getting impressions.

If you’ve had the opportunity to play it for at least 2 hours, please vote in the poll to let us know what you think:

https://www.elementalgame.com/journals

Thanks!

Let’s see how much the results change based on how we fight this battle against a bone ogre:

Auto Resolve results:

Next: Into Tactical and just hitting the auto-play:

Next: I personally play the tactical battle to see if I can do better

Now, I burned a ton of mana in my battle but suffered no damage at all.

So the question is, why did auto-resolve do so poorly? We’ll have to evaluate that as we go on.