Stardock released a major update to its classic fantasy strategy game, Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes today.  The new version incorporates many months of fixes, performance optimizations, AI enhancements, balance tweaks and a host of other improvements.

"We are really happy to finally be able to get this update out to the fan community," said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock Entertainment. "We've been making improvements to the game for many months and been waiting until it reached a critical mass of updates to get it out there."

The game takes place on Stardock's fantasy world of Elemental.  In it, players start a kingdom from the a single leader and must contend with other civilizations who are looking to take control of the world.  Players research technology, design their own units, build cities, fight wars, go on quests, engage in diplomacy all while trying to unite the world under their rule.

Version 2.5 is available from the game's home page at www.elementalgame.com as well as on Steam and GOG.

It's available on Steam and GOG for $24.99.

Screenshots:

Discussion place for the upcoming Stardock Magazine.  Not a subscriber? Go here: https://www.stardock.com/subscribe/ 

Next month will mark the third anniversary of the original release of Ashes of the Singularity!

It's amazing how much things have changed since then.  I was looking at screenshots and gameplay video and the game has come so far from its first release.

This first image is from Ashes of the Singularity v1.0:

And here is what today's opt-in update looks like.

The first thing tto notice is how much bigger the buildings and units are. 

Here's a screenshot that shows it off better

We still have more work to do as the sizes are going to create some pathing and formation bugs which you will see for yourself if you try out the opt-in.  But the increased size makes the battles a lot more interesting and helps communicate the interactions between units much better.

The new version of Galactic Civilizations III includes an updated campaign screen that shows the campaigns as part of a timeline. We wanted to help players know where different campaigns take place in the overall story.

It's hard to believe that the base GalCiv III campaign, Crusade, actually takes place in the middle of the stories that were released for GalCiv III!

Our story so far...

During the campaigns of Galactic Civilizations II, the story ends with the human main fleet teleporting to a pocket universe, but not before using a Precursor (Arnorian) artifact to protect the Earth from Drengin invasion.

Galactic Civilizations III deals with the fleet's return from the pocket universe with a new artifact. A powerful orb known as "the bane" that was a weapon used by the Mithrilar (the beings who created the Arnor in the first place). The Terran fleet, armed with Precursor technologies, swiftly frees the people of Earth, who have been busy building their own fleet behind their protective shield.

The humans go on a crusade to free the other civilizations from Drengin thralldom. Their campaign to free the galaxy starts to turn dark as the Thalan, a species introduced in GalCiv I, explain that they are travelers from an alternate future and that the bane exacts a terrible price for its use (which is why it was hidden in a pocket universe in the first place). The bane's user will begin to lose all manner of perspective, which will lead to the destruction of the galaxy.

Retribution is at hand

The Retribution campaign is a 4-part campaign. I will say, at the start, that Galactic Civilizations, being a space sandbox game, doesn't lend itself to story-based campaigns. I generally don't recommend that people play the campaigns until they are done playing the main game (as opposed to the other way around). The campaigns exist to help players know the lore for the world in which the game takes place.

With that warning said, let us begin destroying the universe.

Into the fire

The campaign introduces (or reintroduces) players to the Drath and Korath, who were both eliminated as major powers during Twilight of the Arnor and Dark Avatar, respectively, in Galactic Civilizations II. 

This campaign is the conclusion of the 23rd century era of Galactic Civilizations stories. While I won't promise you'll love the campaign gameplay (they're not my cup of tea), I hope you enjoy the story they tell.

______________________________

Retribution Journals

Journal #1

Journal #2

Journal #3

Journal #4

Journal #5

Journal #6

Journal #7

Journal #8

Journal #9 (Current)

The green area is where you can place a tower.  The challenge is making this visible to the player in a way that is visually pleasing.

## Topics ##

• Editorial
• DeskScapes 10
• Siege of Centauri
• Stardock Survey

Join the discussion here: https://forums.stardock.net/494161

Also, join us on Discord: discord.gg/stardock  

## Editorial ##

by Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock

I just got back from GDC 2019.  This year the show was dominated by technologies that are slowly leading us to the idea of a personal computing cloud.  The idea here is that you will have computing power X available to you through your various devices, and that computing power will let you do Y.

Let's break down this personal computing cloud future based on what was actually shown and what it means.

Google Stadia: Google announced its data-center based console called Stadia.  The idea here is that the datacenter is the console. They can set what is, as a practical matter, a fairly arbitrary hardware configuration as being "the console."  That's because it's actually all being done on a virtual machine on servers at the data center.

The game runs at the datacenter and is then streamed to the user at whatever resolution the user desires.  It has no problem doing, for instance, 1080p at 60 frames per second.  The only limitations involve the quality of your Internet connection. Of course, that's the rub right? 

My ping to Google.com is 9ms.  That's over 100 times per second.  If I don't have a bandwidth cap, then being able to instantly play any game I want on any screen I have (i.e. this would run on a $30 Chromecast hooked to your HDMI port on a cheap monitor), is totally possible. 

So what about latency?  Again, depends on your connection.  At 10ms, you're not going to see any.  But what about 30ms? 60ms? That's a good question.  For the types of games I like - strategy and RPG - I'm in good shape. But an action game? That might be an issue. 

It's easy for us to forget how fast things are changing.  When Stardock started doing digital distribution, we had plenty of people saying that they would never choose to download their software over having it on disk (or CD) because it would take "forever" to download on their 56k modem, or they didn't like the idea of not owning a physical copy. In a few years, when 5G is ubiquitous and ping times are less than 5ms for most people, streaming could become pretty compelling.

As for myself, I would say that I like the idea of having more ways to play games. There are lots of games I watch people play on YouTube that I would love to be able to press a button and give them a try. It just depends on the cost and experience. 

AMD

AMD is doing some really interesting things.  They have a new GPU technology architecture called "Navi." Their goal is to make GPUs based on this architecture that can be both faster than anything else out there, and less expensive, depending on the configuration.  Based on what I saw, they are well on their way.

Even more interesting, however, is the move to virtualized multi-GPU.  Both AMD and NVIDIA are moving this way and it's easy to see why.  First, obviously, it will encourage more game developers to support multiple GPUs.  It is, ironically, often easier to develop a game that runs faster by making use of multiple GPUs than taking full advantage of a single GPU.  Thus, imagine a future where a given game can do amazing things simply because it supports say, 8 GPUs, and a future Navi based card is able to represent itself to that game as 8 GPUs.

What's driving both AMD and NVIDIA is the rapid evolution of both Vulkan and DirectX 12, both of which embrace massive parallelism.  As many readers know, our hardware hit a brick wall long ago when it comes to increasing single CPU (single core) performance.  We have long since stopped talking about Mhz, but it's taken awhile for a new paradigm to mature -- parallelism.  Human developers are still not great at doing this, but many developers, including Stardock, are working on technologies that automate parallel task graphing so that our software does a lot more things at once. While individual jobs may actually be slower, we're doing so many more of them at once that the end result is a lot faster.

Platform Wars

It's hard not to notice that the games market is starting to return to a multi-source model again.  For the last ten years or so, PC gamers pretty much relied on just Steam for all their games.  Now, there's Epic, Discord, EA Origin, and others vying for your game dollars.  

It's too early for me to give much of an opinion on this.  We are big fans of Steam and Discord, but also like the idea of competition. On the other hand, as developers with finite resources, we aren't in love with each service having their own technology stack that has to be supported. One of the reasons we love Humble Bundle is that we just provide them with Steam keys. There's a big difference between a store and a platform. A platform has an SDK that handles multiplayer and friends and achievements, and Steamworks now sets the minimum standard that gamers expect.  Supporting all these platforms is a pretty difficult challenge.

## DeskScapes 10 ##

Stardock's popular animated wallpaper program, DeskScapes, is about close to release.  We recently released beta 2, which adds support for Fences blur effects, enhanced video codec support, and random wallpaper selection.

Right now, the beta is only available for Object Desktop users. One of the coolest new features is the seamless WinCustomize.com integration, which turns one of the most popular websites for desktop backgrounds and animated wallpapers into your own personal library.

Object Desktop is currently on sale for $29.99 and includes DeskScapes, Fences, Multiplicity, Start10, Groupy, WindowBlinds, WindowFX, and more.

>>Object Desktop

## Siege of Centauri ##

Many of us here love tower defense games.  If you're not familiar with the genre, here is the basic idea: You have a base and enemies are trying to destroy it.  You, the player, are in charge of defending the base by placing defensive structures (towers) in the path of the enemy to stop them.  Different enemies have different strengths and weaknesses thus part of the strategy is figuring out the right tower at the right place at the right time.

Stardock is about half-way done with its own take on tower defense.  It's called Siege of Centauri and takes place in the Ashes of the Singularity universe.  As many of you know, Stardock has always pioneered parallel computing going all the way back to OS/2.  Our new game engine will use all your CPU cores which, in turn, lets us have massive numbers of enemies.  Moreover, it lets us do some interesting things like have actual terrain and physics come into play when deciding where to place your defenses.

We are currently running an early experience program for it.  Pick it up for $10 and help us make the ultimate tower defense game!

>>Siege of Centuari

## Stardock Survey ##

One of the most important things to us here at Stardock is customer feedback. We've released a feedback survey for our customers that will provide you with a 25% off coupon to use in our store. Thanks for all of your support, it continues to help us provide the best game and software experience possible.

>>Take the survey

Let's talk about this month's Stardock Magazine!
Aren't a subscriber? Go to https://www.stardock.com and at the bottom subscribe.

Topics:

• Google Stadia
• AMD's Navi
• Steam vs. Epic
• DeskScapes 10
• Siege of Centauri

Join us on Discord: discord.gg/stardock 

One of my favorite features of my work machine is how silent it is.  I mean, silent.  Even  under pretty heavy loads it is really quiet. This means no overclocking but I know from experience that overclocking only presents modest improvements and frankly, I'd rather just buy slightly faster hardware that I run at spec (or even below) for quieter day to day operation.

The key features I have going are:

1. Corsair RM1000i power supply. I love this thing.
2. A big heat sink (instead of water cooling).
3. Careful use of fans (basically they're completely off until they need to be on).

Maybe it's an age thing but there is something quite beautiful about a silent, but monster, PC.

What is tower defense?

Tower defense is a genre of strategy game in which you have ever more daunting enemies trying to attack your base (or simply escape).   Your job is to place defenses ("towers") to stop them.

Each of your towers has specific strengths and weaknesses.  Some are fast firing but do little damage while others fire infrequently but do a lot of damage.  There are towers that do area damage and towers that can only target one individual at a time.  There are towers that can target just air and towers that can fire great distances but only hit the ground. 

Because you have finite resources, knowing what enemies are coming and where they are coming from is key as you will need to choose your towers carefully.

Stardock's take

Stardock has a new game engine that is specifically designed to handle massive entity counts.  By massive we mean like 100X more than what has been seen before.  That allows us to think of game designs that weren't previously doable (at least without an insane PC).  An entity is a full-on unit. Not a clone or a visual trick but an actual unit with its own AI, weapons, pathfinding, targeting, etc.  

Having more enemies isn't enough on its own.  We also wanted to bring some of our 4X strategy game experience into Siege of Centauri.  Here are a few examples of what we mean:

• Maps have Metal Refineries which produce resources. They provide alternative locations that the player may, or may not, want to defend.
• Scavenging.  Players don't collect resources from killing enemies by default. Instead, player-built scavenger modules will collect resources of units destroyed in their area.
• Orbitals.  The player has a set of orbital abilities that can be called down to take a direct hand in the action in a pinch.
• Map Objectives.  There are various achievements attached to maps that give the player additional twists in trying to solve the map.

What Early Access is Missing (or what we're working on still)

It is important to stress that this is a BETA and not feature complete. This isn't some demo.  We have a number of features we have in various states of completeness that we may or may not add in based on player feedback.  That's the point of having early access.

Features that are definitely coming, just not ready yet:

1. Voice-overs.  Lots of them.
2. More enemy unit types.
3. More weapon types.
4. More orbitals.
5. Survival Mode (maps where you will definitely, eventually lose but see how far you can make it)
6. Equip screen.  Eventually we will limit your active tower types to 10 and you'll need to pick from your arsenal the 10 you want to use on based on the enemies that will be on there.
7. Much better effects (we have lots of programmer art in right now).
8. A lot more optional objectives.
9. More battle locations (a lot more) on bigger maps.
10. The Archive screen is still an early work in progress.
11. More paths (general map pass with enemies taking out other buildings that aren't on a direct path to your base).
12. Placement grid (makes it easier to place your towers).

Features we have in various states of completeness but want player feedback on beta 1

1. Tower upgrade tree (versus linear progression). Again, this is one of those things that sounds good on paper but might make the game too busy.
2. Destructible walls (place obstacles to force the enemy to either destroy them or find another way)
3. Night maps (we had these but they weren't fun, you placed light beacons to see, seemed like a good idea on paper)
4. Second resource (that is used for Orbitals rather than orbitals being set to a time out).

The take-away here is that Early Access here is designed to give players input into the game before things are locked down.  We have a lot of work ahead of us and we are excited to hear your ideas.

So I recently got a 4K projector for my home theater.  It's a Epson Cinema 4010 and on paper, it's a 4K HDR projector.  I have connected it to my Apple TV 4K and that's when I started to realize that HDR is still not fully ready for prime time for most people.

Here's some background:

Color TV is in color...but barely.  We are used to it but it's actually pretty crappy.  Luckily, we don't realize how crappy it is until we see something like HDR which stands for High Dynamic Range and shows a lot more color.  But HDR is also just the start.  There's also Dolby Vision which like HDR but better. 

However, HDR requires more bandwidth than SDR (standard).  And not only are most HDMI cables just v1.4 (most people don't even know there's a version number on HDMI) but most televisions and controllers are v1.4 as well.  You actually need v2.0A (obviously) to get the full benefit and needless to say, my new Epson projector doesn't have that.  

So what does that mean? How can it be HDR but while still using the older (but standard) HDMI setup?  The answer is frame rate.  I can watch HDR movies at 24 frames per second (which is like a movie theater I suppose) and the difference is pretty noticeable.  But this took some trial and error to understand because the 4K projector (which, it turns out, is not really 4K but really 2X1080p) like most audio/video equipment, does its best to bury these stats so that only the truly entrenched can discover this.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love this new projector.  And I'd argue HDR is a bigger deal than 4K.  But it's pretty surprising that we are increasingly seeing these amazing new standards come up (like Dolby Vision which my projector doesn't support at all and HDMI 2.0a which isn't even that new) with the hardware makers not making use of them.  

In short, we're still probably a couple years away from HDR and its cousins being mainstream.