There's been a number of negative articles about the Chevy Volt for some reason.
Let me tell you, it's the best car I've ever owned. Here are some of the cool things about it (and please feel free to ask anything you'd like to know because a lot of what I'm writing here hasn't been talked about):
So I've had it 6 months. And in 6 months of normal driving, I have never had to fill the gas tank. It's still using the gas that came with it from the dealership. Something like 2500 miles so far. That's because it gets 40 miles on electric and it's very rare for me to have to drive more than 40 miles at a time.
So here are some of the things about it that make it "worth it" for me (YMMV):

1. It's silent. And I mean silent. Not quiet. Silent. This is a nice thing if you live in a small city and are just cruising around the downtown on a Saturday morning. Open the windows and just relax. It's amazing how much of a difference to the experience that makes.

2. No refueling. This is obvious but I don't know about you guys but I hate having to go and get gas. It's never at a good time.

3. Wonderful in the summer heat. I go to town and I leave the car running 100% of the time when it's hot out. You don't have to keep the key in the car (there's no ignition). So I just have the car run with the air conditioner on. No engine to run, just battery (trivial amount for it) and so I get back to the car, it's cool. I have a dog and this means I can bring my dog with me and not worry about the heat.

4. Remote starting. This is part of the OnStar system but it takes off with the Volt. After a day at work, I turn on the car via my iPhone and it's nice and cool. And because it's silent, no one even knows it's on (and since the car is powered via my home solar array, it's all renewable energy anyway).

5. It emails me. Also part of OnStar but the Volt setup is particularly nice in letting me see how I could be more efficient, status of my oil and tires (my tires need air).

6. The interior. Car magazine editors (to me anyway) seem out of touch with normal people. They focus on things that I don't think most people care about. As a non-enthusiast of cars, I only care about getting from point A to B. So I do care about things like cup holders and how easy it is to plug in my gadgets and how well set up the interior is and the Volt has the best interior of any car I have. It makes my 2011 BMW X5 look primitive by comparison.

7. Insanely good iPhone integration. I've never seen anything come close. Our company fleet has Fords, BMWs, Toyotas and more and none of them come close. The LCD screen lets me control my iPhone (or XM radio) much nicer than anything else I've tried.

8. Touch screen is both touchscreen AND knob/button controlled. Some cars (Jaguar and Toyotas) have touch screens. Others make you use knobs (BMW). The Volt lets you do both and there are times you want one or the other.

9. Great hands free. The blue tooth in it has much better mics than anything else I have. Which is frankly, annoying given how expensive some of the other cars in our company fleet are.

10. Great ergonomics. It's a 1000 little things that come together. The center holder has little holes in it to let you put your USB cables through (my expensive BMW, by contrast, does not). The rear hatchback has been designed so that when you open it, the water that might be on it flows out onto the ground (the Toyota van and BMW X5 flow the water right into the trunk/rear of the vehicle). There are back seat cup holders. And on and on. There's just a bunch of small nice details that make the car fun to drive.

11. It's peppy. Forgot to mention this earlier but the car drives fast. It has spunk.
Could they improve it? Sure. But I think that the first gallon as electric is the wave of the future. I've been shocked at how little gas I've used as a result of having the first gallon equivalent (~35-40 miles) be battery powered instead of electric.

For the first time since The Corporate Machine, I have a version of one of our games 100% in my hands.

So v1.4 is all mine. Everyone else is now fully on Fallen Enchantress. 

I'm not on FE yet because some of the mechanics are still being implemented so I can't work on its AI yet.

It's just you guys and me.  So it's like being a modder again except I get to play with the source code.

In this thread, I'll be hanging out talking about the "stuff" I'm doing.

1990s

During the creation of the history for the Galactic Civilizations universe a number of stories are assembled regarding the earliest days. These become known as Elemental: Guardians of the Telenanth, Elemental: Mascrinthus & Draginol, and Elemental: Destiny’s Sentinel

Early 2000s

Stardock attempts to license Master of Magic from Atari to create a Master of Magic 2. Negotiations stall over legal requirements.

2006

Galactic Civilizations II is a hit, team starts to get serious about the design of “not-MOM”.

2007

War of Magic: Design 1

Design 1 was essentially Master of Magic + Dynasty System + Multiplayer

2008

Sins of a Solar Empire released

2009

Core WOM team refocused to help on Demigod. After launch, team revisits where War of Magic is a 1Q2010 release still hoped for.

War of Magic Design 2 is created. Cost of having significantly different (i.e. different body types) and having player designed units beyond budget. Two main humanoid styles chosen (Men and Fallen) with the different races fitting into those styles.

2010

Full studio is now on WOM but the new game engine (Kumquat) has limited particle effects support and memory management.

War of Magic Design 3 is created. Economic and terrain system is simplified. Control of resources is now key to victory. City building is streamlined.

Release of War of Magic v1.0. Kumquat proves unstable on various hardware configurations and just plain buggy. Reviews of WOM are mixed. Stardock and its fans very unhappy. Sales are initially strong but end up lower than GalCiv II or Sins or Demigod.

Release of Destiny’s Embers (book) is more favorable, sales are good.

Stardock brings in veteran designers and producers to focus on a “super expansion pack”

2011

Fallen Enchantress moves from being an expansion to being a sequel.

Fallen Enchantress moves a lot closer to the original WOM concept (Design 1) where terrain and city building matter a lot more, magic matters a lot more, and units and their abilities matter a lot more. System opened up so that the different factions can be made far more diverse (whether that’ll be in FE or an expansion to it depends on budget). Everything is XML’fied for more extensive modding.

To be continued…

I own (as of August 2011) the top end Samsung (active 3D) and top end LG (passive 3D) televisions. Just bought them both this Summer.

The Samsung’s active 3D glasses are state of the art. They use bluetooth and give a stunningly sharp 3D picture.

The LG came with several pair of passive 3D.

Here’s the verdict (and frankly, I can’t imagine any sane person coming to a different conclusion because it’s not a close call): The passive is better – by far.

Yes, the active is slightly sharper. But the fact is, right now anyway, active 3D means 60hz which means flicker. Watching something on active 3D glasses for a length of time is going to give most people a headache. It’s a great demo though.

By contrast, the passive 3D is comfortable.  It’s like watching 3D at the movies.

I don’t really find 3D very compelling anyway – in general. It is, however cool that both sets will convert 2D to 3D and do so quite well – remarkably well. So watching the occasional home movie on either one is nice.  The active 3D is sharper but gives you a headache. The passive is less sharp but comfortable. I’d prefer comfortable.

So there you go. If there’s a future for 3D glasses, and I’m not sure there is, it’s passive.

I'm interested in doing another GUI Championships.

Who's with me?

Welcome to the Fallen Enchantress forum!

Fallen Enchantress is Stardock's second PC game based in in the world of Elemental.

In 2010, Random House released Elemental: Destiny's Embers (at a bookstore near you). A month after that, Stardock released Elemental: War of Magic.

Originally, Fallen Enchantress was going to be an expansion pack to War of Magic but the design changes to Fallen Enchantress have been so significant that we decided it made more sense to make it into its own game hence Elemental: Fallen Enchantress (complete with its own domain www.fallenenchantress.com which will be up as its own stand alone sight this Fall).

To understand Elemental one has to know its basic history.

Age of the Magi

In the Hiergamenon, the Book of the Magic recounts the great sorcerers (Ereog, Argynn, Breon).  It ends with the casting of the Forge of the Overlord which attracted the the Elas'nirand the Dred'nir.

Age of the Titans

The age of the titans is broken up into three books (Pariden, Curgen, and arguably the Book of Ezmir). If you have the limited edition of the PC game, War of Magic, then you know much about this.

The age of the Titans ends with the cataclysm, the breaking of the world.

Age of Mortals

The PC Game, War of Magic, takes place in the western continent in the world of Elemental approximately 150 years after the cataclysm.  The West (known as Anthys) is a desolate but relatively tame part of the world. War of Magic concerns itself with the claiming of vital resources and the building of a great kingdom.

By contrast, Fallen Enchantress is much less desolate but a lot more dangerous. It takes place on the eastern continent and revolves around a very different set of circumstances.  The Kingdoms of the West's philosophy was gain control of strategic resources and overwhelm the enemy through superior masses.  By contrasts, the Empires of the East rely much more heavily on magic and intelligent construction of cities, fortresses and so forth. Part of that is that the East is much less rich with strategic resources but much richer in overall terrain (not as desolate).

Moreover, because the Titans dwelt in the East, sorcery is much more developed.

Fallen Enchantress, as a game, will be a very different experience than War of Magic as a result (not to mention it has a much bigger budget but I digress).

...

Destiny's Embers, the book, takes place approximately 8 centuries after the War of Magic has ended and deals with the Destiny's last attempt to thwart the unnatural interference of immortals in the world of Elemental. But that story is told elsewhere.

I’ve been an Outlook user for years.  But in the past several months, I’ve been migrating more and more to Gmail. The email still goes through our company server to and from ultimately but Gmail is just a better mail reader.

Here’s what’s changed:

1. Gmail now has a way of identifying “important” emails. I don’t know how its algorithm works but it works quite well.
2. Gmail has insanely good spam filtering.
3. Gmail has mouse gesture support (I hold down the right mouse button and drag left or right to go to next message).
4. Gmail has added copy and pasting of images into emails. This was a big show stopper.

The only thing I really miss outlook for is its editor.  I use outlining a lot in emails and Gmail just has nothing like that yet. 

Another nice thing about Gmail is that you don’t have to store the messages locally. This matters for tech companies in an era of patent trolling litigation and the like where you are expected to be able to quickly hand over email on a particular subject to legal.  Storing emails locally long-term is not practical.

Ironically, Windows Live mail, while visually pretty, is still very far behind.  Given how much Microsoft continues to charge for Outlook, I fear its future is in doubt.

This will eventually get stickied somewhere.

So here is where we stand as we near the first anniversary of the release of the first Elemental title (War of Magic)

War of Magic v1.4

Last month we released War of Magic v1.3.  We are currently working on v1.4 which we anticipate going into beta this month.  v1.4 is scheduled to include AI updates, balance updates, and bug fixes.

Fallen Enchantress

Most of Stardock Entertainment’s resources are currently being put on the second Elemental title (Fallen Enchantress) which is a fairly radical departure from War of Magic (other than art resources).  I can’t go into much detail regarding it other than to say it that it is much more similar to a Civilization/Master of Magic style strategy game versus a Galactic Civilizations/HOMM style strategy game (i.e. every tile of terrain matters i.e. building near rivers or forests or hills and that kind of thing will matter and there are things like unrest and tax rates and that kind of thing).

Of course, the decision to make Fallen Enchantress effectively a new game (other than art assets) has meant that its date is being pushed out to being more like a sequel’s release.  That said, our plan is for the beta to come out this Fall still. However, bear in mind, that other than both existing in the Elemental universe, the gameplay of the two are very different.

Staffing

For those of you who follow/are interested in this sort of thing, the staffing on Fallen Enchantress is similar to War of Magic. 

• I am the executive producer of both. 
• Cari and Jesse have been the senior engine developers. 
• The big changes have been that Scott has moved from being Producer to being senior Animator. 
• We also were able to re-hire (call back from last year’s lay offs) Auri who was the lead animator on WOM who is back on animating all the new monsters. 
• Derek Paxton (Civilization: Fall from Heaven fame) has taken over from Scott as Producer.
• Derek has also taken over as lead developer (as opposed to the quasi “design by committee” led by myself with WOM). 
• Jon Shafer (Civilization V lead designer) has designed the single player campaigns for Fallen Enchantress.

In addition, several new artists/developers have been hired over the past year with the result being that the FE team is larger than the WOM team was.

Who gets what

Everyone who bought War of Magic in 2010 gets Fallen Enchantress for free. The betas will one day simply “show up” in your Impulse account. You don’t have to do anything to get access to it.  People who bought War of Magic in 2011 up to its release will be able to get Fallen Enchantress for a discounted price. The full price for Fallen Enchantress is likely going to be $39.95 and it’s a stand alone game (and in fact, we may sunset War of Magic entirely – i.e. no longer sell it new after FE is released – however we may continue to release updates to WOM after FE comes out regardless to satisfy ourselves and our fans who like its game mechanics).

Objectives

As some of you know, my “day job” is CEO of Stardock overall of which Stardock Entertainment is one business unit of with the Elemental franchise being one game series of.  To make a long story short, I’ve given Derek cart blanche to do what is necessary to make sure Fallen Enchantress awesome – even if it means spending more money or taking more time. As a result, while I am fairly certain the betas of it will come out this Fall, I can’t promise when the final version will come out.

Multiplayer

Since I don’t want that dangling out there, multiplayer matters to me personally but we know the hard statistics on the % of people who play turn-based strategy games MP (and I mean industry wide). The word tiny comes to mind.  That said, Elemental will be receiving multiplayer love anyway.

Lastly

Yes, we do read the forums religiously. But we don’t typically respond. 

War of Magic: v1.3

With Summer here it is time to get v1.3 of War of Magic out the door and start thinking about v1.4.  I had to push some of the things I wanted to do in v1.3 (notably rewriting the tactical AI) into v1.4 as I ended up spending a lot more time than anticipating improving the overall “feel” of the game.

With v1.2F, I tweaked the economics further and made a few AI changes that I think should result in greater challenge as well as a tighter experience.  Overall, I’m feeling much better about how the game plays even if I’m not happy with other parts of the game (and I’ve yet to make a game I’m happy with but that’s a different topic).

Starting this month and into the Fall I’ll be focusing my efforts on the AI for Fallen Enchantress. So it’ll be what I learn in Fallen Enchantress that goes into v1.4. 

Fallen Enchantress will be the biggest challenge of my AI career as I believe (perhaps incorrectly as I’m biased) the ability of the AI monsters and AI players to make intelligent use of their special abilities in battle will be crucial to the overall enjoyment of the game. So a great deal of my time will be spent having the AI learn to not just cast spells but to treat their abilities and magical powers as a cohesive whole – to build micro strategies with them. 

In all likelihood, the first beta of Fallen Enchantress will hit before War of Magic v1.4 goes into beta so we’ll have a better idea where players want me to focus my efforts at that point since virtually everyone who got War of Magic will be getting Fallen Enchantress for free anyway.

The Lore of the World

War of Magic didn’t have the opportunity to express the considerable lore of the world. There are so many different creatures and types of beings in the world of Elemental that we are hoping will start to be shown in Fallen Enchantress.

If you’re read the book, Elemental: Destiny's Embers, you get an idea of some of the complex politics of the world, particularly amongst the Kingdoms of Men. Fallen Enchantress will let us explore the complexities of the Empires of the so-called “Fallen” as well as give players a better understanding of the much harsher conditions that exist in the eastern lands where the Fallen survive.

In War of Magic, the maps took place in the west where the lands were barren and brigands and darklings may have roamed the landscape. But the west was a paradise compared to what the Fallen were dealing with in the East.

+ New citizen cost system re-done. Exponential growth system eliminated.

+ Previously unlimited improvements are now set to be N per city level N

+ Tax income no longer grows linearly but rather fast at first and then slows down with diminishing returns.  3 Population brings in 3 gold per turn. 25 brings in 18. 50 brings in 34. 100 brings in 63. 1000 brings in 500.

+ The more cities you build, the harsher the prestige penalty overall. That is, as you add more cities to your kingdom, all of your cities will begin to see diminished prestige. I.e. a few big cities or lots of smaller cities but not easy to do both.

+ Studies only take 3 turns to construct (was 4)

+ Studies consume 3 citizens (Was 1…2…4…8…etc.)

+ Only 1 study for a level 1 settlement. +2 more for level 2. +3 for level 3 and so on.

+ Same system as above for workshops and arcane labs.

+ Same for Imperial system.

+ Cleaned up tool tip text to be clearer

+ City influence growth slowed

+ Technology cost grows slower (fewer labs and such)

+  Max number of children per generation now 3

+ Sovereign mana generation now 1 per turn

+ Fortifications provide 25% defense bonus (was 10%)

+ Base spell cost increased from 25 to 50

+ Spell level doubling cost increased from 25 to 100

+ Auto Resolve will aggressively use tactical combat spells if mana is available

+  Pioneer made cheaper, quicker to build, changed graphic

+  Base HP increased from 3 to 4

+ Training time for formations decreased

+ AI sovereigns will select combat spells

+ Money spell now costs 50 mana to generate 25 gildar

+ AI Improvements (haven’t done anything to tactical yet)

This build should go up in the next few days as a beta.

UPDATE: The build is up but it's showing up as 1.2d in Impulse.