Typically what happens with games is that they come out, a community is formed, they peak, and then they die.

So how do we make sure Demigod avoids this fate?

Based on the # of users playing on-line, we're projecting that Demigod will reach its peak community (# of people available) around August. Left on its own, it would follow the path of most other games.

As I write this, there are 3,211 people currently either playing Demigod games online, waiting for games, or in lobbies. During peak hours, it’ll get to around double that.

So how do we make this number continue to grow over time or at least, once it peaks, stay there?

It’s a question we’ve been pondering since the late beta of Demigod itself. We think the answer is to pull forward some of the features we’ve been working on for Impulse that were originally scheduled to launch with Elemental.

The challenges of on-line play

In my years of playing competitively on-line, here are the problems that any such system needs to address.

1. A lot of people who play online are basement dwelling jerks who need a good flogging.

2. It is often hard to impossible to find decent human beings online.  I myself rely on groups like QuarterToThree.com for people I want to spend time with online. That’s what I do with Left4Dead and with Steam. If you want to see community features done well, visit Steam’s community.

3. Even if you find those people, it’s sometimes hard to get them together to play a game as a team.

The solution in Impulse

Now, one obvious gamer question would be, why didn’t we just use Steam. I mean, I use Steam every day for a lot of my games.

The reason we aren’t using Steam is that, as good as Steam is, and it is good, we don’t want it to be the only option. Competition is good for not just consumers but good for us (Steam and Impulse).  Doesn’t mean I’m not going to use Impulse to buy games when there’s something on it I want that isn’t on Impulse or use it for community. I just don’t want Steam to be my only option.

So with Impulse, we’re bringing forward a lot of community features in the next couple months. The clan features some people know about but the idea is to make it easy for people to find other like minded people to play games with (not just games on Impulse) no matter where they happen to be.

I am hoping we can get a beta of this going in the next few weeks so that we can custom tailor this.  But the idea here is that we need to not just have a “lot of people playing Game X” but people need to be easily find the right people to play with.

Stay tuned.

One of the harder to quantify advantages of Impulse IMO is that it generally has the fastest download speeds of anything similar out there. And I don’t mean one of those “faster in benchmark” but I mean faster by such a wide margin that it’ll basically go as fast as your ISP can go.

Our friends in the Demigod community seem to like having journal entries that answer a lot of questions in one swoop so we've decided to do the same in Elemental.

Q: What is Elemental?

A: Elemental is a fantasy strategy game (turn-based) developed and published by Stardock Entertainment. In it, players take on the role of a powerful sorcerer known as a "Channeler" whose goal is to build a kingdom and restore the devastated world of Elemental back to its former glory.

Opposing you are up to 11 other kingdoms and empires who have a similar objective except with the world under their control.

Players can win the game in a variety of ways including achieving the spell of making, completing the quest of mastery, diplomatic victory as well as the traditional military conquest means of victory.

The game puts most of its development focus on the single-player experience but there will be multiplayer as well with clans support (kingdoms and empires) and a series of multiplayer modes (and single player modes) that let people play the game in some unusual ways.

Q: Are the screen shots we see indicative of the final quality?

A: NO! The engine we've developed is still being enhanced. For instance, in the screen shot above, the shadows aren't in yet. There are still a lot of features left to be put in visually.  That said, one of our primary objectives with Elemental is to have a game that has unprecedented flexibility in terms of the systems it can play on: Netbooks all the way up to 64-bit Core I7s with monster video cards.

Q: What about modding?

A: Elemental will support in-game modding where users can create their stuff and submit it in game. It then gets moderated and becomes part of the game world. Players can decide which mods they want to use (ones just from Stardock, favorite ones, categories of them, etc.).

Q: How many factions are there?

A: There are 12 pre-made factions made up of 2 official races (Men and The Fallen). Each faction will play substantially differently. Players will also be able to create their own factions and modders will be able to add more races.

Q: What kinds of other creatures are in the world?

A: Elemental has a large set of species that inhabit the world. They are, however, individually rare and much of the strategy of the game is to recruit some of these creatures onto your side.  You will not be able to, for instance, simply "build" dragons.  The only units you can build are those of your race.  Other races (Dragons, Demons, Ogres, Yetis, etc.) are ones that you have to actively recruit to join you.

Q: When will the "beta" be?

A: We expect to have an alpha out in the next 30 days that will be available on a very limited basis. However, we anticipate launching the beta officially at the Penny-Arcade Expo on September 4th. This beta will be available to anyone who has pre-ordered the game.  Be warned though, our betas are not fun. They're real betas which means they're incomplete and unbalanced. But through these betas, users can help mold the game by working with us online.

Q: I've heard this game referred to as "Master of Magic 2"

A: While Master of Magic is definitely a major source of inspiration for Elemental. A lot has changed technologically since then that we (game developers) couldn't do back then. In an age of multithreaded supporting OSes, we can have much better computer AI for enemy players and game mechanics that benefit from what is possible today (3D engines for doing very very nasty things to the game world when you have enough magic -- think Populous).

Another example is how cities can be handled now. There isn't a separate interface for managing cities. Cities grow on the main map itself. When players click on any part of the city they get the options for the entire city right away on the same main UI. The idea is to keep the user interface out of the player's face and let them concentrate on playing the game.

That said, there's a lot of influence here. Tactical battles, for instance, will have some inspiration from XCOM (though much shorter in length).

I would describe the games as being in the same family of the same genre. But someone looking for a Master of Magic 2 would not likely find Elemental to be similar enough to be considered a genuine sequel.

Q: What are some of the game modes you have in mind?

A: We are looking at having a lot of different ways of playing the game other than simply the classic "start a kingdom, conquer the world".

For example, we are looking at game modes where players can just play an extended tactical battle.  Another example is "duel" where 2 humans play against each other with the AI players as pawns in their struggle. 

The idea being that we want to let players play games that are very short in length if they want or can potentially take months to play.

Q: Will there be native 64-bit support?

A: That is our intention. Right now we are relying on Intel's Havok for the physics of Elemental and so it will largely depend on where its support of 64-bit is.

Our engine, however, will natively support 64-bit thus we want to provide (with the game) both a 32-bit and 64-bit version. 

What: Object Desktop 2010

When: Late October 2009

Details:

Will come in two forms: Object Desktop ($49.95) and Object Desktop Ultimate ($69.95).

Object Desktop is scheduled to include:

• WindowBlinds 7
• IconPackager 5
• WindowFX 4
• Fences
• DeskScapes 3
• LogonStudio

Object Desktop Ultimate will take the above and add:

• DesktopX 3.51
• ObjectBar
• Keyboard LaunchPad
• Tweak 7
• IconDeveloper
• SoundPackager
• MyColors with 5 themes
• BootSkin XP/Vista
• SkinStudio 7
• RightClick

Highlights

1. WindowBlinds 7 is going to be a major change from WindowBlinds 6 and previous versions. Biggest change since its inception.
2. WindowBlinds 7 will include an additional skinning engine being developed for it.
3. IconPackager 5 is targeting to include enhanced live folder support for Vista/7 users.
4. WindowFX 4 is a rewrite of WindowFX and will focus on bringing a lot of UI conventions from Windows 7 back to Windows Vista and XP users as well as expanding on what else is in there. We hope to add a feature that could be described as Expose-like.
5. A lot of cool new stuff is being added to Fences.
6. DeskScapes 3 will add a new type of .Dream type tentatively called hybrid. It will let users have their cake and eat it too – far easier to make animated wallpapers that use a lot fewer resources.
7. Tweak 7 will build off of Tweak Vista.
8. SkinStudio 7 is a major overhaul with the objective to make it easy for pro UI designer to be able to create skins much easier without having to become experts on the intricasies of skinning while at the same time making it much easier for casual users to create simple but attractive skins.

The individual major updates to the programs listed above are expected to be rolled out between now and the end of October.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Object Desktop so we’ve been really going all out this time. We’ve tried to stay quiet about what we’re doing to make sure the ambitious plans we have could really be done. This year will be, by far, the  most significant update to our desktop enhancement techs to date.

Greetings!

So where do things stand with Demigod as of mid June with our favorite action RTS/RPG game?

Let's dig into this with some frequent questions I get messaged.

Q: Who are you?

A: Frogboy  = Brad Wardell, President & CEO of Stardock

Q: Who makes Demigod?

A: The award-winning developer Gas Powered Games is the developer of Demigod. However, as some may have noticed from Sins of a Solar Empire and Demigod, Stardock gets very involved in the games it publishes.  The most recent example being when Demigod's MP connectivity was problematic during the initial launch, we assigned our own developers to fix it. 

Q: What is the status of on-line connectivity.

A: Pretty much perfect now in custom games. I.e. as good or better than any RTS out there.  That said, we can't control what happens in-game with people who disconnect or have shaky connections. We take the data and send it to Gas Powered Games to see if there's anything that can be improved.

Q: How good is the online experience now?

A: I'm highly biased but I would say it's generally pretty awesome IMO -- now.  That said, I have a long list of complaints:

1. Rage quitting.  v1.1 will let teams concede and we're going to start rating people based on the % of games they complete/concede ([good],[fair],[poor]) so other people can choose to play with them and in pantheon/skirmish games it will be biased towards those who complete a game (or at least concede as a team).

2. "Random" disconnects. These don't tend to be as random as they look. There are people who have, to be put mildly, non-ideal Internet connections. I had almost forgotten the term "ISDN" until playing online.  This happens in every game but it is still something on our list to work with GPG in making better.

3. Pantheon / Skirmish quitters. Biggest problem here is where people quit pantheon games before they start. I mean literally quit. The solution I think here is to let people join as groups which is something we're talking to GPG about doing in a future update.

But as some have observed, I tend to be a glass is half empty guy. In all honesty, I'd say that Demigod is the funnest game I've played online in years - since Total Annihilation for me.  YMMV.

Q: How are sales?

A: Mixed.  Digital sales are great.  Retail sales need work.  We are hoping word of mouth on the game will encourage people to go to their local retailer and pick up the game. 

Q: Where are the two new Demigods?

A: We're still working out the details with GPG.  They're heavily into Supreme Commander 2 but they are working on more Demigods.  We are leaning towards having both Demigods being assassins since they are, statistically, the most popular. One good, one evil.

Q: When is v1.1 due to be released.

A: Next week.

Q: What are the next updates beyond v1.1 going to focus on?

A: Modding & clan support are at the top of the feature list. Beyond that, it will depend on how sales continue to be honest. 

Q:Why isn't Gas Powered Games on the forums?

A: They are reading the forums, I can assure you. They're just extremely busy working on the actual game. I don't code on Demigod so I have the luxury of being able to hang out with you guys and actually play on the game.

Q: I get confused over developers and publishers. Could you explain this more?

A: Sure.  Stardock develops and publishes games.  It developed, for example, Galactic Civilizations I/II and The Political Machine.  It published Sins of a Solar Empire and Demigod. 

When we publish, we get heavily involved on the game design to a very large degree (in Sins we worked closely with Ironclad on everything from what each frigate and cruiser did as well as the economic system, in Demigod, we were heavily involved with the flags and citadel upgrade concepts) but we don't write any code for the game itself but ultimately (after the initial release) ended up writing a lot of the connectivity code to replace the licensed system we had used.

The next game we're developing ourselves is Elemental. That's one we're developing and publishing.

Q: When are you going to fix "the balance" in Demigod.

A: You losing a game to someone doesn't imply an imbalanced game. V1.1 will be tweaking things like Heart of Life and numerous other things but no, <Insert Demigod here that ticked you off in last night's game> is not over powered.

Q: How do you plan to keep the community growing?

A: We're now close enough that I can tell you have a new feature that will be going into beta. It's called ReadyToPlay(TM). It will help you get groups of people together for games.

We are also going to have official tournaments after v1.1.  The rankings you see today are going to disappear after v1.1 now that the early cheese issues and data reporting is taken care of better.

Overall, the community seems to be growing pretty steadily in terms of # of games played per day.

But the main thing about the stats is that MY stats will get reset because I can assure you any time I lose it's due to the other guy's demigod being over powered, the other guy cheating somehow, or some bug. There is no other possible reason as I think you would all agree...

For those of you not familiar with game development, most of the development is spent designing the engines and technologies that will be used by the game. In our case, about 2/3rds of the time is spent on that kind of thing. 

In many respects, this time is much like developing a traditional software application.  Elemental uses a graphics engine that has been developed over the past couple of years for Society.

Our previous games used an engine called Pear that was developed in the late 90s and enhanced over the years.  The new engine, called Kumquat, has all kinds of goodies (as you'd imagine).

One of the big differences in Kumquat from my personal coding perspective is its use of Python for scripting.  Our old engine wasn't scriptable so everything was written in C++.  Now, Stardock is a bit unusual that we don't tend to use scripts in our games. In Elemental, the only reason we're using scripting is to make it easier for other people to mod the game.

Anyway, now we're starting to put the pieces together to actually make "the game" as opposed to a series of technologies.  That means I finally get to start sinking my teeth into AI.

With Galactic Civilizations, I only got a couple of months to work on the AI and I had to do it basically on my own.  This time around, our team is large enough that I get to work on it longer and I have help.

Not that I don't mind writing functions like get the distance between two points or whatever but having others who can write the worker functions will save me a lot of time.

One other difference in Elemental was the decision to have multiplayer support. There's a single player reason for this - I want to see how people play the game before the game is released so that I can incorporate clever strategies into the AI.

Those of you not familiar with Stardock developed games know that from my personal perspective, the only point to these games is the AI.  Personally, I think it's great that humans want to play the game too but I'm in it for the computer players.  My fun on GalCiv was always watching the different AI personalities fighting each other to see who would win.  But then again, I'm a pretty weird guy.

Just thought I'd mention unofficially here that we plan to have a hard cover book available at retail that takes place in the world of Elemental at around the same time the game is released.

One of the conclusions both Stardock and Gas Powered Games have come to is that modding is going to be absolutely key for Demigod’s long-term success. To that end, we have been trying to come up with a way to do modding in such a way that, to be candid, doesn’t involve a massive amount of work just for Demigod.

The solution, it seems, may come from the modding support we’re building into Impulse that was originally scheduled to debut with Elemental. This wouldn’t be the first time that a feature being developed for Elemental has found its way into Demigod. The in-game Friends stuff in Demigod may seem a little weak because it was originally intended to show up a year later for Elemental but was decided it needed to be available in some basic form in Demigod.

So how would these mods work?

Basically, users would control what mods they want to use via in-game overlay.  Then, when someone hosts a custom game, it would automatically download whatever mods were needed and enable them when a person joined the game.  The mods would be hosted and moderated by Demigodthegame.com and would support basically anything cool that people wanted to make.

So when would this show up? Well, right now GPG is putting the finishing touches on Demigod v1.1.  So this wouldn’t show up until at least v1.2 which would be sometime this Summer.

Hopefully this will definitively answer the question: Will Demigod support modding? The answer, it seems is yes.

I come home, hoping my new book “One Second After” has come in. My wife says, nope, no deliveries. I jump onto Amazon to look for my package. It says it arrived today and was on my porch. So I run to the front door, open the door and there it is, on the porch.

See, the Internet has the answer for everything!

The Elemental alpha continues to move forward now that the team is back on it full time.

The first alpha that any users will see will look a bit like this screenshot. It's the game's cloth map (the strategic zoom mode). The idea for the alpha builds will be to nail down some of the basic game mechanics.

Elemental is primarily a single player game. However, our intention is for the first public alpha to have Internet multiplayer in it.

This may seem odd but we are thinking that there may be quite a few ways for the game to be fun in multiplayer mode too. One mode we're very interested in is called Duel. This is where you start on a relatively small world with only 1 other human playing. There would be AI players in the game but there would be only tactical battles in this mode when attacking other humans. This way, players don't wait around very much.