Since 2001, when Windows XP shipped, most users have hovered between 1 and 2 gigabytes of memory.  That’s because 32-bit Windows really can’t use more than 2 gigs (technically 3 gigs).

With 64-bit Windows, however, there’s no real limit any time soon.  I predict that within the next couple of years you’ll see 16GB machines become pretty common and when that happens, lots of interesting things will start to happen again for PCs.

One interesting thing will be virtual machines. 

Running Windows XP within Windows 7 has a lot of utility to it as a developer but for most users, it’s largely meaningless. That will change as applications themselves start to be able to specify the conditions in which they run under. 

One of the things that has held Windows back has been backwards compatibility. But virtualization largely eliminates that issue because you could simply have programs run in their own VM.

It’s a real shame that Microsoft is even making Windows 7 in a 32-bit form because it just delays the migration to 64-bit computing.  The reason this is important is almost totally based on RAM.  This sort of virtualization isn’t cheap when it comes to RAM usage. But virtualization will free Windows to go in many different directions at once.  It’s the next big thing.

Related:

• Part 1: Intro
• Part 2: Fences

Skinnable on a per game basis. This will be in Beta 3A.

With about 30 days until we go gold for the retail version and another 45 days for the BonusPak (day 0 update) update, we're going to close the beta to new users tomorrow.

From here on out, there will be a couple of new betas for the existing beta team to try out. Some of the updates will occur without requiring the users to download anything. But Thursday will introduce beta 3A which is a big deal in terms of fixing bugs and such.

I know we’re having fun beta testing!

My son Ryan (8 years old) draws the rook.

My older son Alex (12 years old)  diagrams the rook.

I wish we had more time to communicate with the beta team on what we’re doing. I’m left with Sunday nights really to do that because the rest of the time we’re just in massive crunch mode.

So let’s discuss Demigod and its relationship with Impulse Reactor.

Impulse Reactor is a DLL that ships with games that want to make use of its features.  It doesn’t require the Impulse client to be installed on the machine. Impulse Reactor is a true virtual platform whose home isn’t in a client but rather in “the cloud”.

Here are some of the things we’re doing with Impulse Reactor and Demigod:

Chat:

Starting hopefully with Demigod beta 3A, the Impulse chat will be able to be brought up in-game (here it’s skinned to look like Aero but we’re going to add the Demigod skin prior to its inclusion). 

By doing this, GPG didn’t have to spend precious development cycles on an in-game chat and we could build something pretty sophisticated (it’s standard IRC so you can be in the chat without being in Demigod).

Intellectual Property Protection

Copy protection, DRM, whatever name you want to call it. Impulse Reactor supports it. Stardock games like Demigod don’t require the user to keep the CD in the drive or “call home”. 

But our non-games have, for years, made use of this technology that we’re now making available to other players.  They can either incorporate it into their EXE (ala Steamworks) or they can just run a wrapper program that does it automatically.

For developers, it has the benefit of vendor neutrality – you don’t have to make users create an account to play their game.  For users, it comes with the benefit of being able to download updates or the full game over again from any participating digital distributor – not just Impulse which eliminates the concern of “what if company X goes out of business?” because it’s not tied to any particular vendor.

Multiplayer match-making

One of our goals for match-making with Impulse Reactor is to let users have a lot more control over who they play with.  So users can exile problem users and not have to worry about them joining their games as well as set other parameters for multiplayer.

Skill Ratings

With Demigod, we will be implementing the Elo skill rating system into Impulse Reactor. This has some important ramifications on multiplayer that are not immediately obvious.

First, we intend to include AI players in the rankings. This will give us a definitive answer as to how good the various AI players are because they’ll have an Elo score (Elo is the same system GPGNet uses in SupCom and Boneyards used it previously).

This gives us a lot of flexibility in setting up good multiplayer match making and having a robust, on-going way of ranking players. Plus, because it’s all on the server, we can keep tweaking this forever without forcing users to download new versions of Demigod.

We plan to have a ton of stats for players to look at and play with. Wait till the graphs and awards and such start showing up.

Multiplayer Connectivity

Impulse Reactor uses RAKNet to handle NAT negotiation. The challenge we’ve been having with Demigod connectivity has largely fallen on how to handle the “poison pill” situation (where someone behind a super nasty firewall who wouldn’t normally be able to play can keep an entire group from getting a game going).

We’ve debated a lot on how to handle poison pills (do we make the host eject them? should there be a time out? If so, how long? what do we do about malicious poison pills? etc.). 

Given that we’ve had mixed network 5 on 5 games, we know the system works pretty well in Beta 3.  But we have our work cut out to deal with initialization bugs, expanding the # of players who can connect at all, other various bugs that have to be identified, etc.

Now, you might ask, why use Impulse Reactor for this instead of something else?  The problem is, there really isn’t an alternative. The dirty little secret of PC gaming is that strategy games on-line have been quite a nightmare to get going with port forwarding and messing with routers.  Demigod, while being a very strong single player game, needs to a good multiplayer experience from day 1.

Sins of a Solar Empire, for instance, shipped with pretty good multiplayer – if you knew how to configure your router like every other strategy game. And like every other strategy game, the multiplayer community was relatively small.

By contrast, first person shooters with their dedicated servers thrive.  But if strategy games are going to become more mainstream, we need a simple, bullet proof way for non-techies to play multiplayer, hence Impulse Reactor.

..and…

There’s a ton of other cool stuff coming out for Impulse Reactor but we can’t yet talk about it.  But for those of you who have been waiting for a PC strategy game to finally take this stuff very seriously in terms of tournaments and rankings and ladders and such from day 1, Demigod is your game.

Troubleshooting

So you’ve bought your game, brought it home, installed it and something isn’t working right? Didn’t those losers test this game? Why can’t those greedy game developers insist on shipping games that aren’t done? Just because game developers are chick magnets doesn’t give them the right to ship this kind of junk! Right?

In reality, there are really three types of problems that 99% of users run into. There are video card issues, networking issues and genuine bugs that weren’t found by testing.

Video Card Related Issues

If the game is running too slow for you, there are 3 ways to cure it:

Get the latest version of your video drivers!

First, you can make sure you have the latest video card drivers. Before you assume you do, check again. During our beta testing with real world players, we lost a lot of time due to technical users assuming they had the latest version of their drivers just because their drivers are only a month old. Often times, a new game comes out and a bug in a driver is found and fixed.

Turn down the video settings

Turning the Fidelity down to low, lowering the shadow fidelity, and turning off anti-aliasing are keys to getting better performance.

Can you get a better video card?

Demigod doesn’t require high end video cards to run. But it does require a video card that supports Pixel Shader 3 which is a techie term for non-ancient video cards or super low end video cards. Pretty much any $40 video card will do the trick.

Learning about your computer

If you click on the Start button and hit Run and type dxdiag it will bring up a program that will tell you a lot about your computer. If none of this worked, check your sound drivers too and see if you can update them.

Still stumped?

You paid hard earned money for this game. You don’t care how glamorous the life of a game developer is. You want your game to work NOW!

First, make sure you have the latest version of the game. New versions of games often remove lines of code like this:

pCrashOnBillJohnsonOfVirgina->(TRUE);

Sometimes, games ship with lots of these. But if we haven’t found your particular line of code in the game then contact support.

If support can’t help you solve your technical issue, you can return the game directly to Stardock for a full refund. We don’t care where you bought it. It could be Germany, Russia, or Boyne City Michigan (just kidding, nobody actually lives in northern Michigan). Just include your receipt with a print out of the return authorization code that support gave you and we’ll refund that amount.

Connectivity

Separate from technical issues there is network connectivity. That is, the ability actually get multiplayer games going.

Because Demigod relies heavily on low latency, it is a peer-to-peer game. That means, all players have to be able to connect to one another. This is different from a client/server game (like Sins of a Solar Empire or Team Fortress 2) where you are fine as long as you connect to the host/server.

Demigod introduces a new technology called Impulse Reactor. Amongst its many capabilities is the ability to seamlessly connect multiple users without those users having to open up ports manually on their router.

Unfortunately, there are many types of routers and many types of firewalls out there some of which are difficult to go through.

Here are things you can do to increase the speed and reliability of Demigod connectivity:

1. Open up ports 6100 to 6200 on your router if you can.

2. Disable (temporarily) any anti-virus programs you’re running. Some of these are designed to block what Demigod is trying to do.

3. Disable (temporarily) any firewalls on your computer or router.

4. Demigod uses UDP based networking (as opposed to TCP). Make sure UDP traffic isn’t getting blocked.

If that doesn’t help, visit us on the Forums where we have applets and people who might be able to help.

Contacting Stardock

· By email: [email protected]

· Forums: http://forums.demigodthegame.com/

· Mailing address:

Stardock
15090 Beck Rd.
Plymouth MI 48170

I plan to write a more formal report on Beta 3 shortly but here are some quick thoughts after spending the day with it with friends.

Briefly:

FUN. It is fun. It could use more balance and some pacing and some anti-cheese stuff but I feel pretty good about the fun level of the game.  

BUGGY. Oh god it's buggy. Forget playing multiplayer unless you close the game (exit to Windows) between each game attempt.  The Pantheon is basically a non-starter in this build.  I have had a high degree of success in connecting to other players but it only takes ONE player who's behind some nasty firewall to try to join your game to wreck it for everyone. This needs to be fixed asap. Lots of places where the UI locked up.

OVERALL.

High confidence in Demigod being a hit provided the following things are fixed:

1. Connectivity MUST BE BULLET PROOF. If you can't reliably get into games, Demigod will fail.
2. The Pantheon stats need a lot more data. We need a "Skill Score" (ala Boneyards and SupCom) as a way for ranking better.
3. The various bugs of course mus be fixed.
4. We need to pay very close attention to balance and cheese tactics reports in the forum.  I will be looking for posts that say [CHEESE].

Beta 3 of Demigod is out and a lot of new features are in which also means this will likely be the buggiest beta we’ve done yet.

Here are some highlights:

• Pantheon added.
• Better NAT for Skirmish.
• Torch Bearer has returned.
• His ice spells have changed a good bit.
• Frost Nova reduces movement speed.
• Rain of Ice reduces attack speed.
• When Deep Freeze is used on an enemy that is affected by Frost Nova, Rain of Ice, or Biting Chill, it will consume those effects and deal extra damage.
• Lord Erebus has returned.
• Mist has changed greatly.
• It now drains mana while in Mist.
• It deals damage to nearby enemies and heals nearby allies.
• Queen of Thorns' Spike Wave now vastly reduces movement speed for a short duration.
• Ground Spikes reduces armor.
• If a target is reduced to negative armor, they take additional damage.
• She is now able to Open and Close while moving.
• The Rook's Hammer Slam is now ground targeted.
• Wings of the Seraphim's effect breaks on taking damage.
• Bejewled Goggles will now help players spot objects that are normally invisible.
• Several items now have bonuses for Minions.
• The cost of items has been reduced a bit.
• You should definitely check out the artifact shop.
• Minion Idols now have different amounts of minions they summon and caps.
• For example, a level 1 idol summons 1 minion with a maximum of 2.
• The level 4 idols summons 4 minions with a maximum of 4.
• Plus countless of bug fixes and tweaks.

• ü WIP opening cinematic updates
• ü Fix for minion sliding
• ü Fixes to minions dealing with mistform
• ü Fixes to tooltip calculations
• ü Item fixes, including Twig of life, Parasite Egg, Restorative scroll, war idols.
• ü Balance and stat adjustments to 25 items.
• ü Cost adjustments to 30 items
• ü AI fixes, including Oak, Regulus, Torch, alternate game modes, bat swarm,
• ü Minion targeting
• ü Huge sound and VO triggering polish pass
• ü War rank display fixes
• ü Hardening the citadel upgrade system to prevent lockups
• ü Trebuchet updates
• ü Achievement screen fixes
• ü Range ring display fixes
• ü Targeting reticule fixes
• ü Texture display fixes
• ü Ability cooldown display fixes
• ü Stunned unit display fixes
• ü Stunned cooldown reset
• ü Adjusted summoning progression for yeti, shamblers, idols
• 1: Summon 1, Control 2
•       2: Summon 2, Control 2
•       3: Summon 2, Control 4
• 4: Summon 4, Control 4
• ü Citadel upgrade cost adjustments, reward adjustments
• ü Eliminated double-foul-grasp bug
•       * All Demigods and their minions can now attack air.
•       * Priests can not attack air
• * Artillery no longer attacks air
• ü Steering fixes for zero distance calculations
• ü Fixed particle and texture system leaks
• ü Minion guarding less error prone.
• ü Hammer slam now ground targeted.
• ü Slot count now displays correctly in the join screen
• ü Deeper contrast on unowned abilities.
• ü Selection highlight fixes for AA and multisample backbuffers
• ü Queen weapon no longer damages friendlies
• ü Oak now limited to a legal amount of mana
• ü Flag capture meter smoothing, UI placement
• ü Re-enabled windowed mode
• ü Swapped temp fake decals with permanent real decals
• ü Shared cooldown for teleportation items
• ü New faction art in various menus.
• ü Stored username and password
• ü Changed options echoed to chat in lobby
• ü Fidelity adjustments to skydome rendering
• ü Game options saving hardened.
• ü Demigod selectable by “H”
• ü Queen can transition on the move
• ü Mulch Shambler now deals area damage
• ü Mist and Ooze range rings added

Want to help us?

1) Download DebugView (dbgview) from Microsoft and have it running. It’ll tell you a lot of nitty gritty info about the beta that will likely help us.

2) Run windowed and use the F9 key to look at errors Demigod is running into internally. This can be useful.

3) If you have performance issues, make sure you tell us what OS you’re running, what video card you have, and how fast your CPU is.

4) Look for cheesey artifacts and items that wreck the game play for you. Now’s your chance to tell us where the balance sucks.

5) AI stuff. Have some strategies you think would be helpful for the AI to make use of? Let us know.

And now for a small sampling of the known problems…

- If you are unsuccessful at joining a multiplayer game and hit abort, odds are, next time the game UI will be locked up and you’ll have to terminate the Demigod process.

- While the Pantheon feature is in, it is very very buggy right now. As in, actually getting a pantheon game going is a huge pain.  We expect to make very rapid progress now that it’s actually in but if you’re easily frustrated, you may want to hold off until beta 3A.

- Often times when joining a game the whole UI just disappears when you click join.

- The connectivity still sucks.  It works great in an idealized testing environment but has a poison pill problem that we need to rectify – that is, it only takes one user who can’t connect to keep a game from starting. At least now, you can tell where it’s failing:

- We have a totally killer issue where if anyone plays a game with a map not included in beta 3 (like Cataract) that NOBODY will be able to connect online. We hope to fix this over the weekend. So for now, if you’ve found some clever way to get Cataract to work in beta 3, that’s great but please don’t try to use it.

FIRSTS
1. Who was your FIRST prom date?

Lori Wlodyka, 12th grade.

2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love?

I sure do, every day (Sherry).

3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?
A glass of wine I think.

4. What was your FIRST job?
I took out people’s trash to the dumpster for 10 cents a bag when I was little. Then I did babysitting, then I worked at an excavating company.

5. What was your FIRST car?

A 1984 Chevette!

6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?

Co-worker.

7. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?

My daughter Ashley because she was using my chest as a trampoline.

8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?

Mrs. Reinbolt.

9. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?

The first one I remember was to Texas.

10. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk?

Betsy in Texas. Still in contact on a regular basis.

11. Where was your FIRST sleep over?

At my friend Eric’s in high school.

12. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?

Daughter, Ashley.

13. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time?

My friend Pat’s.

14. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?

Asked my daughter to quit jumping on my chest!

15. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to?

Never been to one.

16. FIRST tattoo?

NEVER.

17. FIRST piercing?

Nope.

18. FIRST foreign country you've been to?

Canada.

19. FIRST movie you remember seeing?

Bambi.

20. When was your FIRST detention?

Never got detention. Got suspended though!

21. What was the FIRST state you lived in?

Texas.

22. Who was your FIRST roommate?

Doug Coates.

23. If you had one wish. What would it be?

No comment.

24. What is something you would learn if you had the chance?

Some foreign languages.

25. Who do you think will be the next person to post this?

No idea!