Okay, I've been reading a lot of different interpretations of forum comments that I or mods have made on the release of Oculus (which officially was announced today).

First, I want to give a big hand to Gas Powered Games who did an incredible job on Oculus. He is amazing! Make sure you read up on his story which you can view by clicking on the arrow button in the Demigod selection screen by his portrait.

As was the case with Demon Assassin, Gas Powered Games didn't take the easy way out. They could probably have gotten away with just reskinning existing Demigods with a mix of powers and called it a day.  But they didn't. In both cases, they made sure they got new and interesting abilities that add strategic depth to the game.

The Demon Assassin's swap ability is just killer (often literally). Oculus's chain lightning is extremely fun.

Second, I want to address some of the flame wars that came up on the forum. As some of you know, in order to release Oculus we had to release an update to Demigod. That update included directions on how to add him to your account manually.  In hindsight, that shouldn't have been put in the release notes but rather simply waited until he was officially announced.

The confusion some users had in trying to add him to their account prior to the web page being updated created considerable angst on all sides.  The original idea was to have a store page where users would "buy" him for $0 in order to determine the level of interest in DLC content that may not always be free.

However, it was decided that we would just let users add him to their Demigod account by logging into multiplayer (after that, they can play him SP as well).  We can, with that, still determine the number of active users there are to determine what opportunities there may be in the future.

Third, with regards to future DLC, as I said previously, these two Demigods are the two promised free demigods. They represent the last two free ones Stardock will be paying to have developed. Future content in the form of maps or demigods would have to be paid for.  On in other words, we ponied up to have GPG make these two, but future ones have to be paid for by players if it is determined there's a sufficient market for them.  I realize some people are upset and clearly the easier path is to just not say anything but part of what makes Stardock what it is is that we try to be transparent on such things.

Fourth, As the North American publisher of Demigod (Atari is the worldwide retail publisher of Demigod other than NA), we will continue to forward to GPG all player requests, problem reports, etc.

Fifth, It is our intention to lobby to have player created mods integrated into the game for future updates to choose from.  There have been some outstanding tweaks and changes made to the game by players that we would really like to see in the game but the ultimate decision goes with the owner of the game -- Gas Powered Games.  But having worked with them for over a year now, I can say that GPG is very customer focused and so I don't foresee any issues there.

So go have fun! I'll see you online.

Fear his thunder!

We are pleased to announce the release of the second free Demigod: Oculus!

Oculus uses the powers of lightning to aid his friends and punish his enemies. His powers include chain-lightning, the ability to re-charge the mana of friendly demigods, and the lethal capability of launching himself down on his enemies from his throne.

To add him to your account, simply load up the latest version of Demigod, logon to Multiplayer and after that, he should be available to you both in single player and in multiplayer.

Come Beta 2 (end of February), multiplayer should come to Elemental. 

Multiplayer in Elemental is going to be done in an unusual way for a strategy game. In fact, Elemental’s multiplayer is more akin to what you would typically see in a first person shooter.

Here’s how it works:

Option 1: Play on the Stardock servers:

Player loads up Elemental, chooses Multiplayer, selects “Host” (or Join). If they select Host, it will find the nearest (geographical) Elemental server run by Stardock and put them in the lobby. From their point of view, it’s almost exactly like any other game. But in reality, the player is now part of a client/server setup where Stardock provides the servers.

If the user chooses “Join” they instead get a list of “Worlds”. These are servers that have at least 1 human player already in them. The display will include the map name (random or a specific name), host, and ping time.

Next to each of these worlds will be a symbol. Stardock servers will have a Stardock logo. But third-party servers will have their own symbol (a checkbox at the bottom will toggle whether third-party servers are displayed or not). This brings us to Option #2…

Option 2: Play on Custom servers:

In the Elemental folder will be a program called “Elemental Server”.  Launching this will add a custom server to the list of available “worlds” for people to play on.  By default, it’ll be just like the Stardock servers.  But these servers, run on third-party machines, can be highly customized.

Players can mod their servers with custom content, custom rules, and lots of other things that we’ll get into later.  If you ever played Stellar Frontier ( a game we made a long time ago) players created all kinds of different server mods and set up entire star systems with custom planets, custom ships, etc.

The video below outlines the strategy below:

Elemental Beta 2 is due at the end of February.  The modding features won’t be supported until release (we won’t stop people from modding but we won’t support them as we’ll be constantly changing the data formats as the game progresses).

A note to people not in the beta: You’re not missing anything. The betas are NOT fun. These aren’t demo betas. These are real, painful, boring, ugly betas.  The graphics engine is disabled in both beta 1 and beta 2.

The suffering of beta testers:

What is the best way to have a civil online community? There are lots of opinions on this.  My position has always been to eliminate toxic users as quickly as possible. Ban them.

Debating a topic: Good. Personalizing the debate: Getting onto thin ice.  Attacking people in the debate: Over the line.

Over on Neowin.net, we’ve been trying to find ways to clean up the forums. News comments and forum posts there are pretty rough and much of that is, I believe, because of the light hand given to punishing or eliminating users who are, well, jerks.

Like most discussions, it is HOW a point id expressed that leads to trouble. 

Most people who get moderated/warned feel they were unjustly picked on - even users who just got done using a string of profanity to describe someone's mother.

From a discussion on Neowin.net:

Certainly, I realize that. However, the onus isn't on me to accept abuse. 



I would submit that a user insulting themselves is not a violation of Neowin's rules. 

However, again, *any* time you turn a discussion away from the topic and onto a person you are treading on thin ice. We can rationalize the validity of the personal discussion but at the end of the day, moving from discussing a TOPIC to discussing a PERSON is a move from green to yellow.



This is why making it personal is a bad thing because people naturally want to respond in kind.

In your previous message you said "Don't throw a tantrum if you don't get your way." I can tell you that's a pretty provocative thing to say. 



Then don't be surprised when you're not welcome at said house. If you can't behave in a way that is acceptable to the owners and moderators of a site, then you're not going to be welcome there.



Except, no, I really don't. And more to the point: Neither do the users of Neowin. 

The answer is NOT for people to get a thicker skin. The answer is for those people who like to make discussions personal to tread carefully. 

Discussing the topic: Green.
Discussing a person in the conversation: Yellow.
Attacking the person: Red.

The issue of "consistent moderation" boils down to someone saying they didn't really go through a red light but an "orange" light whereas someone else was clearly going through a red. The best route imo is to simply avoid the yellow light.

(original http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=862112&st=345)

Discussion I had on Treehugger.com:

 

We all need to make money, that's a given in this modern day and age. The issue greens have with "capitalism" is that it is done almost completely devoid of conscience and consideration for the long term outcomes. ("This asthma medicine may help control your asthma symptoms that have not been brought under control by existing medications.... this medication may increase your risk of death from asthma.")

Capitalism is certainly no panacea. It's just the best of the worst options we have. " src="//forums.treehugger.com/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif" /> Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were certainly not environmental paradises.

My belief is that the most effective means for change is to persuade people that helping the environment is in their best interest in one way or other. Once that happens, that creates a demand for products and services that cater to the people that companies will in turn fill.

In the home I'm building, I'm spending a lot of time dealing with the contractors who produce and install the environmental friendly products -- the solar panels, the LED lights, the close/open cell insulation, the geothermal, the gray water system, the inverters, etc. And every step of the way I'm dealing with people who are to the RIGHT of me politically. 

That takes nothing away from people here. It was TreeHugger.com that set me on the path of finding out what I needed to do to make sure my new house was as green as possible. So I'm certainly not arguing that people here aren't having an impact.

The issue is when one group demonizes people who aren't in lock-step. Or worse, creating strawmen of their political opponents and imbuing them with traits that are simply figments of their imagination.

In one conversation on this forum, I was told I was anti-green specifically because I don't buy the CO2 hypothesis on AGW. My deeds meant nothing, only my faith. As a conservative, it is just as easy to build a liberal strawman - the hapless hippie whose idea of helping the environment is bitching on forums and composting twice a year while driving some 30 year old van 50,000 miles a year. But that's just as much of a strawman as the one SgtMaj constructed for conservatives.

We simply do not accept the notion that straight, short term economic gains should be the driving force in making business decisions. Which at this point in time, is exactly the way the majority of "Capitalists" do business. 

We do not support companies that continue to throw all other considerations and concerns under the bus in their single-minded pursuit of ever growing profit margins.

The problem I have with this is that it's so subjective as to be meaningless. 

IMO, true environmentalism is already winning -- at least in the United States. And it's almost entirely due through increased awareness which has created a demand that business look to fill. Even Walmart is now stocking organic products. That's a big deal.

In just the past decade, there have been tangible results in the realm of energy conservation, reduction of waste (people bringing their own bags to the grocery store), a focus on cleaner water and air, more awareness of taking care of the environment around us.

Compare how people live today versus the 70s. I can still practically smell the lead that used to be in the air and people cutting down all their trees to make room for their grass or dumping fertilizer on their lake front grass. 

In another decade or two, windows will start providing solar power to homes, virtually all new cars will be EV, new homes will increasingly have geothermal to lower costs even further, and on and on. 

And the reason this will happen is because people will demand this sort of thing in their products and it will increasingly be reflected in basic building standards in local communities.

It won't happen because a bunch of militant greenies bullied their way to getting oppressive federal laws in place. It'll happen in spite of that.

Original: http://forums.treehugger.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13782&start=30

So much going on this year. 2010 is THE year.

2009…ugh.

For our family, 2009 was awful.  My wife’s closest friend since childhood died of cancer. It is something that we are still coming to terms with. Few people have close friends from the time they’re small children all the way through their adult lives consistently. 

And professionally 2009 was rough. Demigod’s launch was a very difficult time.  When it came out, the network libraries we had licensed just didn’t work right.  Those of you who know me know I don’t care who’s fault it is. I am all about making something work. Demigod pushed that to the limit. Our name was on the box. It was my job to make good but the effort took its toll one me and my team that I recruited in to fix Demigod.

2010…w00t. 

2010, by contrast I am very much looking forward to.

Personally, our family is very excited about “Future House” coming to completion.  It’s supposed to be done next Fall. As it’s come together I fully admit it’s excessive. I didn’t really mean for the house to be so ridiculous. That’s the problem with blue prints. The whole house was only like 16 inches on 14 inches on paper. That’s not big right? How it became a 20,000 square foot monstrosity was a long journey.

Our three children continue to be amazing for us. Each one so different and interesting. Debbie and I are so relieved that the kids are so healthy. I’m not sure if any of them have actually ever been “sick”.  They’re so bright and so kind, it makes them very enjoyable to be around.

“I will work harder”

Professionally, things are shaping up very well. This year will be a challenger.  Now, at work, I relate the most to Boxer from Animal Farm. Whatever challenge there is, my answer is to just work harder. That almost did me in on Demigod. There was a week last Spring where I would work all day and all night with the dev team to code up a new networking system and then stay on the next day to work with QA and GPG on integration and then repeat again and again for weeks straight. I gained weight, lost some hair, went a bit gray. I’m mostly back to normal now though I still have to lose some weight.

Control..or not?

This year, the constant hiring has made it harder and harder for me to be directly involved in every facet of the company. The first time this really hit home was with an incident in which Impulse had a game called Warlords Battlecry 3 where the publisher had removed its copy protection but not the code in the actual game that looked for it resulting in a diminished game experience. In the old days, I’d have played the game myself. But as we’ve gotten larger, I’ve had to rely on managers – which is still fine. But now my managers have to rely on their own minions who report to the managers who then report to me and that got us into some pain there. 

The main things at work that I  “control” have been Elemental and well that was it.  In October, I added Object Desktop back to my list of things I directly ran because I wasn’t happy with the attempt to mainstream. Everyone wants to go after (no pun intended) Joe User.  I don’t want to go after them. I want Power User. 

I have started to get back into Sins of a Solar Empire. Diplomacy, the new add on, does improve the game a lot. I spent a couple days making new maps for it and torturing those involved on various changes I wanted to get in in order to keep players from gaming it (too easy right now but tomorrow will be much better).

Digital Distribution

The other area that I’ve been involved but not as directly has been Impulse.  That’s been more collaborative because there are so many moving parts.  It’s been hard to compete with Steam since I’m a fan of Steam. More than a fan. A fanboy. But it really does need the competition. The whole forcing people to bundle the Steam client in order to make use of Steamworks is BS. It’s shameful. If Microsoft pulled that, there’d be riots. But because it’s Valve, they get cut slack (including by me – fanboy). But I’m not thinking of Valve 2010. I’m thinking of Valve 2015 when it’s owned by some mega company and then it won’t be so cool if someone were to own the whole market. 

If Impulse had dominant market share, I’d be tempted to start a competitor to it.  Heck, when WindowBlinds started dominating skinning so much, I used to promote our competitors (Chroma at the time) – much to the consternation of my team. I just don’t like anyone dominating something.

Kids growing up

My oldest son turned 13 this year.  He’s such a good kid. I just am not prepared for having a child that has reached that stage. It’s amazing how fast he grew from his being a little kid to the young man he’s growing into.  I always imagined being a better dad than I actually am. I had always assumed I would play LEGOs with my kids. Or want to be the coach of the various sports they play. I don’t. 

The year I gave up politics

I used to follow politics a lot more than I do now. As a conservative, I was pretty excited when the Republicans took over congress and Bush was President. But given how badly they screwed things up, it’s pushed me more and more towards the libertarian camp. Government seems to attract dumb people. Don’t give them power.

Last year I got into trouble because I remarked on Facebook that if UPS was going to boycott Fox News then I’d use a different shipper. This got picked up everywhere. Ironically, I don’t watch Fox News except on the rare occasion. I prefer the Internet for my news. But holy cow did the political nuts come out of the woodwork for that. I instantly became a “Neocon”.  I never realized that ones choice of shipper was so crucial.

The book

I never thought I’d get to write books that would be published in an actual store. This year, I have the opportunity. But it’s a lot harder than I thought. I have a new respect for good writers. I salute you.

Lenovo has come out with the T410 – a major update to their laptop line. It has a better screen. Built in eSATA. High quality camera built in. And of course a massively better processor than what I have in my T400.

But the thing is, my T400, as beat up as it has gotten over the past 2 and a half years, is still ridiculously fast and useful thanks to a few decisions that have really worked out.

First, I got 8 GB of memory and 64-bit Windows (first Vista, now Windows 7). This was a huge deal because after awhile, everything is in the disk cache and I can load up Word or Outlook as fast as those programs take to restore from the taskbar on most computers.

Second, I got an Intel X-25 SSD. When combined with the above, loading programs is instantaneous.

In fact, let me show you:

And mind you, this is a 2.5 year old laptop.

And I didn’t do something special in that video. Heck, you guys know what kind of hit to performance doing a video capture does.

Third, I got the Verizon WAN option which I didn’t think would be nearly as useful as it has been. I use this feature a LOT. There are just so many times when it is a pain to hook up to some WiFi and the Verizon performance is so good that, as a practical matter, it’s “good enough” for whatever it is I have to do.

Put these factors together and the Lenovo ThinkPad T400 is still just a wonderful machine. No new laptop for me but if you’re looking for a new PC that’s USEFUL and not too expensive, check out the new ThinkPad T410.

http://gammasquad.uproxx.com/2010/01/this-is-cgi-all-of-this

That video is ALL CGI!