Most of the excitement in the Elemental universe has been about Fallen Enchantress.  But War of Magic continues to move forward too, albeit in a different direction.

There’s a lot of changes in v1.3 to gameplay that I’ll talk about later but one change that I’m working on is the scaling of costs of things in terms of population.

As many people know, in “the real world” it’s one thing to find one specialist nearby for your company but it gets progressively more difficult to find more and more. This happens to work out as a nice game mechanic because in v1.3, the cost of a study, workshop, archivist, or anything else that has no duplicate limit will slowly get more expensive in terms of personnel cost.

Your first study will only cost 1 (instead of 5). Your second one will cost 2. Your third one a bit more and so on.  This helps get the game moving early on but also makes it hard to get the crazy, out of control, late game scaling that has been typical. It also makes bigger cities more important because higher level settlements are the ones with the best resource multiplying improvements.

It’s been an emotional month here at Stardock as many of our friends of many years get ready to move to Dallas (where Gamestop is relocating Impulse).  It’s going to be a bit of a ghost town for awhile here with so many people going. 

We’re a place where there’s virtually no turn over.  So culturally, having even one person leave is a big deal. So you can imagine what it’s like to have a dozen+ leave all at once. 

I myself am going to continue to lower my hours, particularly this Summer.  We’ve got some work to do on creating our own digital service for our own stuff in the future as well as integrating Free-To-Play features into our software but overall, it’s going to be nice to step back and have a life again.  I’m getting to indulge myself on Elemental: War of Magic for its upcoming v1.3 build.  Everyone else is on Fallen Enchantress and a couple of unannounced game projects (plus Sins: Rebellion).

I look forward to being able to catch up on my tech journals. I can see how easy it can be to fall behind the curve on this stuff.

After years of waiting, I’ve gotten the Chevy Volt.

I’ll be doing a more thorough review shortly after I’ve had more time to evaluate it.

Bailey and her mother Hara and 8 siblings.

Bailey at 8 weeks.

Our newest family edition. Bailey. Our Entlebucher.

Here’s a video of Scott (Boogiebac) working on some cut scenes for Fallen Enchantress.

I've spent the last couple of days trying to wreck WOM v1.2.  Each time there's been an RC, I take a shot at destroying it -- and have succeeded in doing so. Hence why we're in April and still monkeying with v1.2.

I won't go through all the new features and changes in v1.2 over v1.11 but here are the things I think people will notice very quickly:

1. Framerate is substantially faster.

2. End turn performance is substantially faster.

3. Memory use has been drastically reduced.

Once v1.2 is out the door, we move onto the v1.3 track which is almost purely a feature upgrade to the game.

Every time I announce to family and friends what noon kooky thing I’m going to try, people assume that I’ll grow tired of it and quit doing it.

My poor wife, however, knows differently and has gone from being supportive to dread when I start brain storming some hair brained thing I’d like to try.

I think the bees were the tipping point where she realized that once I pick up a hobby, I’ll stick to it.  Obviously there’s finite time in the day so hobbies to displace other activities (movies, television and recently fiction books). 

This last year I talked her into having the family adopt an Entlebucher Swiss Mountain Dog puppy. Not only did I want our kids to have a family dog but I am very interested in training dogs.

This year, the raised gardens are being built. It’s a series of 30 inch high brick “desks” in the back that I’m going to grow food in. This is the compromise hobby since my wife was adamant about not having chickens. It should be noted that Chris Taylor’s wife (Gas Powered Games) is fine with Chris having chickens and she got a beehive this year.  Just saying.  My first attempt at compromise, miniature goats, didn’t pass the grade.

Next year, the fruit trees I’m having put in the orchard this year should be mature enough to be worth tending to and bare fruit (bear?).

That is, assuming I haven’t been committed by then…