See https://forums.wincustomizetest.com/378475

The beta begins this month…really!

Back in the OS/2 days, Microsoft got caught using what were called “Microsoft Munchkins” (coined by John Dvorak).  Essentially these were guys whose job was to smear OS/2.

Anyone who has had to deal with these kinds of users whether it be on Wikipedia or some forum tends to be able to spot these guys since they usually create accounts only to smear a particular product or service (or boost a product or service).

As many people know, I spend a lot of time online and thankfully, I haven’t seen anything that struck me as peculiar until very recently when suddenly, comments on articles regarding Impulse have detractors appearing out of nowhere. I.e. they create an account specifically to smear Impulse usually saying things that really sound like FUD.

Now, I might think Impulse is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I would be the first to admit that the average person isn’t passionate about digital distribution or development platforms. Certainly not passionate enough to bother creating a new account just to smear something.

I’m inclined to chalk it up to just the usual Internet junk. Maybe people are more into this kind of thing than I thought.

So I thought I’d hand it over to you guys and see what you think.

Here are examples:

http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?story=62814

User called Gahenna creates an account on Shacknews just to smear Impulse Reactor.

“From my limited experience with Impulse, it's interface is garbage and slow, there's nothing worth purchasing (everything is D list or worse). It's not even close to the same league as Steam.”

Within 24 hours Gamautra puts up its Impulse::Reactor thing and sure enough, a user pops up who has never posted before anywhere as far as anyone can tell.

“While I appreciate the competition with Valve's service, Impulse seems to provide a much lower quality service”

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27687/Stardocks_Wardell_Details_Impulse_Reactor_Specifics.php

And on the same day or so 1Up puts up their article:

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3178341

And a user called “Grizzt” (real name “dasd asd”) and writes:

“i tried there service before it wasnt quite up to par with steam or the other services i tried.”

Okay, maybe there’s just a dedicated fanboy out there. Or maybe it’s a different fan boy writing up the same points over and over.  Thanks to the anonymity of the Internet, nobody knows. Heck, maybe Impulse just sucks in ways I never realized.

The writing style seems different to me. I’m no expert but it doesn’t seem like it’s the same person.

It’s probably just coincidence. But there’s a lot of news items on Stardock on various sites and it’s pretty unusual to see such…dedication.

What do you think?

If you haven’t seen Joystiq’s article on the Xbox 360 hardware, go check it out:

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/18/ben-heck-ponders-xbox-360-slim-motherboard-memory-unit-support/

This is an important article for those of you who buy consoles and can read the writing on the wall on where gaming is going.

My wife was a great cleric. Adina was a powerful wizard. Vic was a noble knight and me, well, I was a scoundrel – I refused to be called a thief. Antarac had no proof behind the theft of the Inzul jewels.

This time, however, we had gotten in over our heads. We had entered the ruins of Uthrong beneath the spine of the world and had come face to face with a Lich. 

Given the effort it had taken Adina to counter the magical seal that had protected the opening to Uthrong, we probably should have known there was something very bad in there. In short order, we were dead.

The Lich, I presume, would have gone on to wreak havoc on the poor kingdom that Uthrong resided in. Being dead, that was no longer my concern…

In Elemental…however…

It would most definitely be your concern. Now you’re the sovereign of said empire and now you have a high level monster running around the world thanks to these “adventurers”.

In Beta 1, we introduce the occasional lone NPC named “hero” to test out the plumbing. In beta 2, they get “the treatment”. 

Champions in Elemental are not random. We define specific parties or individuals of champions with their own 100 character history, stats, and items.  If the player’s diplomatic ability is greater than their battle rating, you can recruit them (if we have time, we’ll allow other means to encourage them to join too like good old fashioned bribery).

Now it’s your turn…

Have you pre-ordered Elemental? If so, feel free to comment on this thread with some of your favorite RPG experiences whether that be D&D or Fantasy Hero (my personal favorite) or something else entirely along with the name of your group, the name of the characters and a little bit about them.  We, in turn, will try to fit as many of them into the game.

We’ll want to know what types of quests you guys went on. What sorts of trouble you caused or what great things your party did. Of course, once you’re running a kingdom, these pesky adventurers may be looked at in a whole new way.

Back a few years ago, more than one person remarked how odd it was that Stardock hosted (for free) its primary competitor in the Windows desktop theming world (Samurize). It competed (and still does but the market has changed quite a bit since Windows Vista came out) with DesktopX.  Why would we do that? 

My answer was: I don’t like monopolies, especially ourselves. 

When we were designing up the specifications for Impulse::Reactor, there was much debate over whether it should require the inclusion of the Impulse store or require the creation of Impulse store accounts.  I was adamant that it shouldn’t because the job of Impulse::Reactor isn’t to replace Steamworks with something that’s just as exclusive. On the contrary, I don’t want Impulse to dominate. I don’t want Steam to dominate or any of the others either.  In the past couple of years, I’ve seen enough of the sausage factory that is the game industry to know that you definitely do not want anyone having leverage over publishers or consumers.

If your motivation is to create excellent things, you want competition. If you’re a consumer, you want competition for your dollars.

No matter how wonderful a thing is when it starts out, the end behavior is inevitably the same once they have leverage. The solution is to prevent anyone from ever having a monopoly in the first place.

The problem with being success is that it tends to make whatever you do bigger.  I never intended Stardock to get as large as it is today. I remember years ago saying that I would put a hard limit on Stardock’s growth at 50 people.  That seems quaint now.

For those of you reading this who worry the American dream is going away, fear not. I started the company with nothing. No venture capital. I was in a dorm room and working multiple jobs to pay for school. You can still succeed with hard work and good judgment.

That said, I’m having a hard time knowing now where (or if) to stop further growth.  The only reason we’re not bigger is that we’re so busy that we don’t have time to interview often (and I apologize for those of you who send us your resumes, we’re trying).  Bigger teams help get more sophisticated products (software and games) to market.  Impulse is growing at a far faster rate than we had projected.  There’s even talk of building a second building just for Impulse in the next year.

It’s amazing how easy it is for these things to just start growing beyond what you had ever planned.

After Elemental gets released I’m going to kind of take a sabbatical from Stardock and become a modder.  I’ll focus mostly on modding Elemental and when Civ V ships, I’ll mod that as well.  I really would like to see modding of PC games to become more mainstream as they are one of the big advantages they have over consoles.

I’m back from the Game Developer’s Conference. Lots of fun.  I did a lot of demoing of Impulse::Reactor but also showed a few journalists what we were doing in Elemental.

The most common question I got is how is Elemental different from other turn-based strategy games (ala Civilization or Galactic Civilizations).

The answer: Elemental is a much more personal experience.  In Civilization or GalCiv, the player exists outside the game. It is about (as their names imply) their civilization.

Putting you in the game

In Elemental, the player starts out in the game, by themselves.  They literally must build their kingdom (or empire) from the ground up with nothing. When starting up in the sandbox mode, the player is asked who they are and can design (both in terms of traits as well as visuals) what they are like.

The connection between your army and your people

Similarly, when you build armies, the number of people in your “units” matters because each one comes from your town. Early on, an outpost or village may only have a couple dozen people.  Thus, each person you draft from your village is one less person there to grow food, build houses, research technology, etc.

Our goal is to avoid abstracting your armies.  If you zoom in, you will be able to see that every person in your army is different (even if it’s just cosmetic) to help send home the point that these virtual people are part of your cause.

Your dynasty

Similarly, because we’re a fantasy title and not historical, we can put the player as the head of a multi-generational dynasty.  Thus, your sovereign’s virtual off-spring can be sent off to battle and be put in danger.

The Reaction

The reaction we got from this was very positive.  Over the coming months, we’ll be fine tuning this experience with the beta testers. And since we’re our own publisher, we’ll take as long as we need to get it right.

At GDC 2009, Stardock released GOO (Game Object Obfuscation) for developers to begin providing some intellectual property protection for their games that did so without annoying legitimate customers. The idea behind GOO was to put together a system that followed the Gamers Bill of Rights but still was acceptable to publishers looking to keep their games from being casually pirated. Since then, it has been adopted by several developers and publishers including Paradox and THQ.

At GDC 2010, Stardock debuted the full Impulse::Reactor. At the risk of hyperbole, Impulse::Reactor is revolutionary.

I realize it’ll be compared to other development tools released previously but the technology of Impulse::Reactor is something quite new.  Let me show you why with these 5 reasons:

#1 Setup is automated

Again, if you’re not a game developer, you may not see the significance. But now, publishers and developers can set up their Impulse::Reactor accounts through an automated process.  This includes defining achievements, using GOO, generating code, etc.

 
Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity will soon be updated to support achievements.

Adding achievements to your game is a matter of visiting the website and defining them. Then click on the “Generate Impulse Reactor code” and it will actually generate source code.

#2 Implementation is incredibly easy

I want to emphasize that this next screenshot indicates all the lines of code necessary to get basically set up.  This is what makes Impulse::Reactor revolutionary. 

The developer simply includes 2 files: ImpulseReactor.dll and ImpulseReactorOverlay.dll into their game along with a subdirectory which contains the skins.

The Overlay is the key because rather than developers having to call dozens of APIs to build their own UI, they simply call the proper Impulse::Reactor screen and then get the callback information as plain XML.

Because Impulse::Reactor does NOT require the user to bundle a third-party client, the screens are included as part of the overlay into the game itself. This is important because it makes it easy for developers to skin the overlay screens to match their game experience.

This screen capture includes all the setup code AND the code to add achievements. It gets generated from the website.

#3 It’s Vendor neutral

As game developers, we pour our hearts and souls and money into making games. We don’t want some third party to come in and take over that experience or take all our customers.

Impulse::Reactor doesn’t rely on an external client and is skinnable. In addition, users can logon with their Facebook, Twitter, and soon Windows LiveID, OpenID and other means if they want. 

This way, users don’t have to keep track of yet another username and password if they don’t want to.  The data is anonymzed. This way, their game should cause no issues to be released on all digital distributors and retailers.

Developers can skin the logon and let users logon with their Facebook or Twitter account

#4 Seamless integration into the game

Stardock’s “non game” business has included products like DirectSkin, DesktopX, WindowBlinds, ObjectDock, DeskScapes and countless other products and technologies.  When Microsoft, Dell, HP, AMD, nVidia and so forth need technology to brand their programs, Stardock is the go-to company for this.  That cool custom UI on GE’s medical equipment? That’s our tech.  That app with the custom skin? Probably our tech behind the covers.

What makes this possible is that over the years, we’ve perfected the ability to integrate our code into the user’s process.  This is important because the alter native way to do in-game “overlays” is for an external program to run and then for it to “blit” the screen into the game. The problem with that is that it is very obviously not part of the game and requires the game to distribute the external client.

Developers can choose to have screens come up as part of the game or if they don’t want to implement that, they can define a hot key to pop up the Impulse::Reactor control panel.

The advantage of Impulse::Reactor is that developers can customize their screen by changing the .PNG files and XML in the ImpulseReactor sub-directory to make these screens fit the game itself. 

From a feature point of view, Impulse::Reactor provides features like GOO, friends lists, posting to Twitter/Facebook (if the gamer opts in), in-game DLC, achievements, chat, multiplayer matchmaking, rankings and ladders, server lists, virtual drives, and more.

#5 It’s FREE

The only string attached is that the game has to be available non-exclusively on Impulse at the same time as it is available elsewhere.  The BETA for Impulse::Reactor began today with key internal partners with its general availability this Summer. 

Here’s a video demo from GDC: