http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/

Every time someone gets their hands on the raw data and then looks at the “Adjusted” data that the “consensus scientists” end up with, it’s pretty obvious that the data is being modified to fit a pre-determined conclusion.

The above listed article shows how the climate centers that we rely on to tell us what the “average temperature” messed with the data by adding a literal stair-step “adjustment” to the data to ensure that we end up with global warming.

Ironically, the raw data (i.e. the actual temperature readings taken) showed a decline in temperature at this one station but the “adjusted” temperature resulted in a difference of 3 degrees centigrade (adjusted to be warmer).

That’s crazy.

For our brave and daring beta testers who are playing through the prototype betas (Beta 1 and the forthcoming Beta 2) it’s probably hard to imagine Elemental having role playing aspects. But the quest system is a big deal in the game.

You ever play D&D? Or maybe (as I did) Fantasy Hero? You are exploring a world, going into dungeons, and generally wreaking havoc in some poor guy’s kingdom.

Well, in Elemental, you’re that poor guy – the king of that kingdom.  There will be parties of adventurers running around the world.  Maybe next time you and your buddies get together and accidentally set free a Balor and run away from it that you’ll feel a pang of sorrow for the poor king who has to clean up after the mess you make.

This is what Beta testers see

This is what the same thing looks like in the actual game.

In this thread, we want to discuss specifics. What types of quests would you like to see in the game? Programmatically, we’re leaning towards using Python to create quest templates with XML to create derivative quests.

For example, the old “fetch me the gauntlet of Mordon and I will give you the ring of radiance” quest would have its details done in XML but the actual mechancis of the quest would be done in Python.  That way, modders and such can create additional quests later on and share with people. Non-coders can then use a built in editor to create quests using the existing templates.

So now…

What specifically would you like to see?

I.e. list some quests you would like to see in the game. Be as specific as possible and we’ll try to get them in.

NO ONE out-trolls me!

One of the things that I really enjoy doing is posting Stardock’s dirty laundry. This is the kind of thing that only a private company can really do.

I don’t really look at it as “bashing” Stardock when I post critics and admissions to the imperfections of our products. Rather, I look at it as a type of transparency. It lets people know that we see a problem and are aware of it.

Of course, the downside is that you occasionally get haters who see our admissions of foolishness, stupidity, weakness, and general imperfections as opportunities to smear either me personally or Stardock in general.

I lurk on more sites than I care to mention. And so I’ll read some post that paints me or Stardock out as “the devil” but those people don’t usually realize that the reason they know this “evil” is because we freely divulge it. 

Someone in the media recently asked me how I feel that there’s people who won’t buy our products because I switched our shipping company from UPS to Fed Ex (Same cost) because UPS had annoyed me.  I said “Good for them!” because I support that.

If a company annoys you for any reason, you should feel free to not buy from them.  If I was funneling revenue that Stardock gets to killing baby seals for my video amusement, wouldn’t you think twice about buying something from Stardock? I would. Mmmm. Baby seal.

Anyway, my point is that if someone gets annoyed with something I do or that Stardock does and chooses not to buy our products then I say: Good for them. Market forces will sort it out and nothing keeps corporations honest than users making informed decisions on their purchases.

So whether I’m trolling our WindowBlinds technology or pooping on the Galactic Civilizations backstory or the evil corporate overlording at Neowin you can be assured that as chief troll, my job is to make sure that we’re staying honest, transparent and answerable to the customers.

If there is a Galactic Civilizations III someday, it’s going to have to deal with a lot of issues in its game universe.

If we look at the story of Galactic Civilizations as a 5 chapter (so far) novel you’d have:

Chapter I: Galactic Civilizations: The humans develop Hyperdrive and its technology spread to the other 5 major space-faring civilizations (the Drengin, Arceans, Yor, Altarians, and Torians).

Chapter II: The Altarian Prophecy: Shows us that long ago, there were other races of powerful beings that battled throughout the universe. One of these beings, known as Draginol, used a powerful object known as the Telenanth to create a precursor civilization that came to be known as the Arnor.  Draginol and his peers eventually disappeared for reasons we do not yet know leaving the Arnor as the guardians of life.   Draginol’s presence, however, for reasons we do not fully understand still, resulted in the Arnor, the Altarians, and humans being visibly similar in appearance.

Chapter III: Dread Lords: This chapter opens up the long-awaited war between the Drengin and their allies (notably the Yor) and the Humans and their allies (notably the Arceans, Torians, and Altarians).  The Drengin accidentally free the Dread Lords from a prison located in a pocket universe where the Arnor had put them and they begin to wreak havoc.

As a result, the humans and their allies are forced to deal with the Dread Lords (which they’re successful) only to be beaten down by the Drengin and Yor.

Chapter IV: Dark Avatar: Life is good for the Drengin.  Arcea is occupied. Toria is occupied. Altaria has been bombed into submission and only continues to fight on through the Altarian Resistance.  The humans, always clever, have managed to keep Earth protected by using an Arnorian shield to produce a forcefield around the planet.

But the Drengin Shock troops, known as the Korath, are insisting on the extermination of the defeated. The Yor support this as well. The Drengin, by contrast, “merely” want to enslave the defeated. 

It turns out that the Dread Lords have been pulling the strings of the Korath and the Drengin manage to fight them to a stalemate.

Chapter V: Twilight of the Arnor: The Korath are slowly beating back the Drengin Empire thanks to their relationship with the evil Dread Lords. Luckily, a human expeditionary force has found the last Arnorian who provides aid to defeat the Dread Lords once and for all and ironically saving the vile Drengin from their genocidal brethren.

At the end of Twilight of the Arnor, the evil Drengin reign supreme. The Earth is still protected behind an impenetrable forcefield but is not a strategic factor.

How’s that for a depressing point to leave off?

…

So where does Galactic Civilizations go?  The story still has 4 more chapters in my mind with the last chapter having many possible endings to it.

One of those endings results in the Yor becoming the dominant force in all the universe (not just the galaxy).  As someone who has a healthy interest in astronomy, the sheer scale of the galaxy, let alone the universe is something I take very seriously.

In the dark future where the Yor take over, there are no living creatures anywhere. The universe itself becomes sentient via a Yor-invented material known as “the substrate”.  Essentially it is material that spreads across the universe converting all matter into this material in which the Yor come to exist within.

The best (and still poor) analogy would be that this material is used to turn all matter into a single massive computer and all consciousness exists within this “Matrix-like” existence --- except there is no biological life. No one is connected to VR but rather all conscious reality exists within it with the collective intelligent of the the Yor being able to spread the substrate to all places at once through the folding of space.

Nothing in this scenario would even exist in the physical, material world anymore. All life would exist in the virtual sense within the Substrate. THAT is the goal of the Yor.

The Yor, of course, are right now merely synthetic organisms that exist still as individual physical entities in the material universe.  They do not yet have the means (technological or otherwise) to realize their dream but that is their goal.

…

Of course since we’re humans, the fate of humanity in the form of the Terran Alliance (those darn earthlings) will be the center point of the concluding chapters.  But they are an even greater threat than the Yor (and if we get to make GalCiv III you’ll see that).  The Thalan, in fact, are actually a race of beings from a parallel universe who have figured out the means to travel to other universes and managed to enter our universe at a point before the humans destroyed the universe (though, “destroy” obviously will have to be explained since one man’s “destroy” is another man’s “transform”.).  The universe, being over 13 billion years old and unimaginably large can’t be “destroyed” in the conventional sense.

…

From a GAME point of view, however, what makes me exited for a future Galactic Civilizations game are the artifacts which will allow players to do a lot of crazy things in game that are fun and interesting. But that’s for another discussion.

Piece of Trivia:

The aliens in Galactic Civilizations II were designed and modeled by Paul Warzecha. Today, he is the lead character modeler on Diablo 3.

Since my return to being the Product Manager of Object Desktop and the programs that make it up in October, one of my jobs has been to re-evaluate where skinning is today and try to take the products in the direction I think skinning is going.

Object Desktop 2010, launched this month, is the result of some of this thinking – at least, as much as we could do in a couple of months.

My mantra for skinning has basically been: Make it useful, target power users.  I’m not interested in making software for grandma or pointless cosmetics which is the direction Object Desktop took in my view for the past few years.

Let me give you an example of the problem with skinning in a Windows 7 world.

Paint.net with plain Aero:

Pros: Perfect compatibility, visually pleasing.

Cons: It’s just AERO, like everyone else.

Next:

Paint.net with WindowBlinds 7 running a UIS 2 skin (Sublime):

Pros: Looks cool, very customizeable.

Cons: Cosmetic glitches can mar functional compatibility.

Next: WindowBlinds 7 running a UIS 0 skin (Aero Clay black)

Pros: Perfect compatibility, customizeable Aero.

Cons: Still basically Aero.

Next: WindowBlinds 7 with a UIS 0 Hybrid skin (Corporate Aero)

Pros: Perfect compatibility, skinned controls and client area, customzeable Aero

Cons: Aero frames limits how much skinning you can do.

Probably the single biggest change that I see coming to skinning is its return to the realm of power users. That means, if it’s a cosmetic only change then it better be 100% compatible and have no downsides. 

Power users might sacrifice something if it increases their productivity or looks significantly better but in the age of Aero, I have yet to see a skin that looks so good that I’d be willing to give up one iota of compatibility and I suspect I’m not alone.

That’s why UIS 0 is so important and moving forward why UIS 0 Hybrid is so important. 

UIS 2 skins, the ones that let skinners go wild, will continue to evolve to be better and better but there will always be apps that do different things that acan’t be predicted.

The upcoming public release of SkinStudio 7 will be crucial because it’ll include easy ways of making UIS 0 skins. I wouldn’t mind there being a SkinStudio 7 Starter Edition that just does UIS 0 to simplify things for new skinners.

One of Sid Meier’s rules of game design boils down to “Prototype, prototype, prototype”.

Forgive me for any unintentional hubris but as far as I’m aware, Elemental is the first commercial PC game that opened that phase of development to the public.

Just this week all kinds of changes have been made to the engine.  So let’s talk about that.

First, for those of you not in the game industry, the thing to remember is that 80% of a game’s development time is spent on engine and assets. The remaining 20% is the actual “game”.  That’s why we have the luxury to monkey around with different game mechanic ideas.

Star Emperor

15 years ago IBM came to me (I was in college) and wanted a “Galactic Civilizations” game but different for something called the IBM Family Funpak. I said “Oh…oh yea, I have a game called…Star Imp..er…I mean Star..Lor- er Star Empir…er Star Emperor. Yea, Star Emperor.”

IBM agreed to pay a pile of money for this game and over a weekend I took my GalCiv for OS/2 code, changed the game mechanics to Star Emperor and voila. A million licneses sold to IBM. 

GalCiv was basically Civilization in Space.  Star Emperor was basically Warlords in space. IBM was happy. Gamers liked it. And I decided I’d do this Stardock thing full time. It totally beat out doing “Truth in Lending” programs for Ford Credit.

Cool stuff in Elemental

Quickie concept of updated Diplomacy interaction

For Elemental, of course, we have more than a weekend to whip up our game mechanics.  But that’s half the fun.  We get to play around with all kinds of different idea.  Best of all, thanks to this Internet thing, we can get input from others.

So here’s stuff from this week:

1. There will only be 1 type of mana. Mana.  Control of the elemental shards will be handled ala Magic the Gathering. A spell may cost N mana but also require control of M shards to cast. This way, players don’t have to sit there and hold shards for dozens of turns to cast a spell and creates a much more vibrant game.
2. The battle system has been monkeyed with several times this week internally.  The current system has Attack along with a range for that attack.  There is also no longer “fire” or “frost” damage but instead simply Arcane damage and Arcane resistance.  It’s very similar to what Master of Magic except we have Combat speed in there too.
3. Players will get a cue that the enemy player is about to cast a spell so that they have the opportunity to counter it when in a tactical battle.  If auto-resolve is on, players will be able to set a default amount of mana they’re willing to invest in a given battle. (we’re still playing with this and expect to for months to come  based on player feedback).
4. Multiplayer diplomacy will get its own UI rather than sacrificing even an ounce of the SP diplomacy UI to support MP.
5. The campaign is going to be much much more story driven than originally conceived. Cut-scenes between each chapter written by our friends at Del Rey.
6. The map itself is going to get a lot more interesting stuff in it. This should start to show up in the next beta but basically, the map is too boring right now.  You’ll see.

Now, for those of you NOT in the beta, fear not. You’re not missing out on anything fun. These prototype betas are explicitly designed to be awful so that we can try out lots of different ideas cheaply. This is going to continue on through the entire prototype phase of the beta (which is beta 1 AND beta 2). 

For those of you in the beta, you’re hopefully starting to notice what makes our games a bit different in how they’re developed. We use our software tech like DesktopX and other goodies that allow us to make massive, easy changes to our game mechanics. This way, we can radically change things based on player feedback. 

We can re-do an entire screen in less than 15 minutes (for instance). If there’s anyone in the industry reading this, please feel free to run through the normal way a screen gets changed so that readers can see the contrast.

Future house continues to move along and we’re using a material called “SEALECTION 500” for the insulation.

Basically, it’s like having your house filled with styrofoam (at least, that’s how it tastes..).

Here’s the FAQ on it.

http://www.advancedinsulationla.com/faq.html

Once in, it looks like this:

If you use the Greenland ice core samples you get a long term temperature map.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that “this” – the Internet – does exist in the physical world too.  Millions of servers around the world.

Here’s a picture from one of the Stardock data centers. This rack contains one of the Impulse cluster manager servers and just inches below is Neowin.net’s servers. 

The Neowin requires 5 very high end servers to run the site that is almost purely database/text is a testament to how popular that site has become over the years.

I’m not much of an IT expert but my understanding is that cluster managers are basically a series of virtual machines that help manage a raid drive unit for storing a piece. You typically have several of these cluster managers (they’d kill me if I said how many there were total) to help distribute resources between each other and then mirror onto data clusters that are stored around the world to increase throughput.

The Neowin setup is very different since Neowin is a tech news site with very little downloading. So it’s mostly a series of database servers and VM’d web servers to help distribute its load to keep the site lightning fast.

Years ago, when we were a lot smaller and I was more involved in setting up servers, the traffic was so much lower that you could have a single box for handling all the databases and another box for handling the web server. Such a setup, back in 2001, was enough to handle millions of users.

Our friends at deviantART were much the same way. A couple of boxes were enough to handle the whole thing. I remember comparing notes with their guys back in the day. 

To give you an idea of how small a world things used to be, Betanews, Stardock, deviantART, and Neowin all shared either IT, bandwidth, or sever space.  Long ago, if Stardock.com was down or if there was a problem over at Neowin I’d call up Nate Mook (the founder of Betanews/FileForum) and see if he could “kick” the appropriate server.

Heck, for all I know, there’s still some Stardock file servers in the Betanews rack somewhere. Things are a lot more sophisticated these days.

Now, the machines are unimaginably faster and more powerful and you need more of them because the traffic and also because of the sophistication of data mining people expect in real time.

Though still, even today, part of me almost expects to walk in and see some sort of huge machine with blinking lights filling a room.