This is the first non-Dell I’ve had as my main office machine in years. And by years, I mean as far back as I can remember.  But the new Dell XPS 730X doesn’t come with more than 6GB of RAM and I wanted more than that so I went to iBuyPower to get it.  I’m still a huge fan of Dell and Alienware but I wanted those 12GB.

We’ve installed Windows 7 on it and the machine is just a total monster.  It nearly 3 times faster than the monster Alienware box I got last Summer for home.

The specs:

• Core i7 965
• Windows 7 BETA 64-bit
• 12 GB of memory

I am still in the process of updating the other base components. Gotta check in with AMD for the latest ATI card to put in here. I got a 4800 in it right now. 

I’m waiting until Windows 7 to get an SSD drive.  With 12GB of memory and the fact I never reboot (or very rarely) means that everything I might possibly do on the machine will get cached. I’ve learned that from my ThinkPad T400. 64-bit with lots of RAM trumps SSDs in terms of day to day performance.

Love the case too.

The case is pretty tacky. But it is quite functional. I wish the Dell XPS line would adopt having more of the goodies accessible like this.  My only gripe is that there’s no SD card reader slot up here.

The multi-card reader is where the floppy drive used to be in these things years ago.  The CD/DVD/Blu Ray burner/reader is up where it would normally be.

In terms of benchmarks, it scored a 2014 which is almost 3 times faster than the Alienware box from this past Summer which had one of those Intel extreme whatevers in it (it was the fastest thing I could buy at the time).

One of the many things about Demigod that makes it different from your typical strategy game is that it contains a persistent universe.

One of the options in multiplayer is to join a tournament. This tournament pits the forces of light versus the forces of darkness. 4 of the Demigods are associated with the forces of light and 4 with the forces of darkness.  The test screens we have above don't reveal which 4 are on which side but you can probably guess.

These tournaments are expected to go on for weeks and, if all goes well, eventually we plan to expand on these tournaments with other types of tournaments (generals vs. assassins, clan based tournaments, etc.).  It all depends on how popular these tournaments work out.

Another aspect of the persistent world is that your Demigod earns favor points when they play online (whether it be in skirmish, tournament or whatever other crazy thing we think of). These favor points can be used to purchase items that become part of your player and stored on the Impulse reactor.

So start thinking about all the cool things you wish RTS games did from a persistent universe point of view and let us know because we're definitely open to ideas on future types of tournaments, ladders, empires, clans, you name it. 

We're putting up Beta 2C as we speak. Just 2 business days after beta 2B.

Now, before anyone asks, YES we are working on adding binary patching support into the game and Impulse so that these updates are much smaller.

So what's new? Here is a partial list:

1. Password obfuscation is in! Yay! So is tabbing between controls.
2. Various display issues corrected.
3. Sedna got some balancing
4. Citadel upgrade costs increased
5. Flag control multipliers enhanced: If you have 60% of flags, your war score increases by 2X and if you have 75% of the flags, it goes up by 4X.
6. Lots of work done on multiplayer connectivity (see below).
7. Audio quality controls added.
8. Some arena tweaks
9. Some sound and voiceover tweaks

So let's talk about multiplayer here because there's a lot of misconceptions about how it works.

Demigod is a peer to peer game (as opposed to client server).  That means that each player has to be connected to another player for it to work which can be pretty challenging. If you've ever played a game where you couldn't host but could join, you can get an idea of our challenge: In Demigod, all players are, in effect, hosts.

So why was this done? There are many reasons for it. For one, it tends to reduce lag between players and in a game like Demigod where timing is important, reducing lag is a big deal.

So what is the problem at this point?  Right now, a player creates a game, someone tries to join and until those two players are able to connect, the guy joining is staring at the "connecting" screen.  But then, someone else tries to join, now both the people are waiting at the connecting screen until all 3 are connected to each other.

So let's say right now there's a 50% chance that player A and B won't be able to connect.

If it were a 1 on 1 game, that would mean you could join half the games. If there are 2 people in the game, that means there's a 25% chance you can connect (50% of 50%).  If there are already 3 people in the game, that means there's a 12% chance you'll be able to connect.  You see how this gets bad in a hurry.

So what if we get the connectivity up to 90%?  So 9 out of 10 games with only the host you can connect to.  What if there's 2 people in? You're already down to 80%. And so on. 

So what can we do?  Well, that's what we're working on.  Right now, I'd say we're at over 90% connectivity in less than 10 seconds and 95% in less than 20 seconds to connect to a random person. But given the current UI/experience we give users, even if we get it to 99% (which is our goal) we need to provide more feedback to the player and more control.

On our tests yesterday, what would happen in a typical 6 person game is that there'd be one player who just couldn't connect in a reasonable amount of time to the other players.  Right now, the result would be everyone but the host would be staring at a "connecting" dialog.

What we need to do is A) Provide feedback so players can see what's happening and ideally let the host kick out the player who just can't seem to connect to everyone else.

I’ve owned a laptop (or usually a few laptops) every single moment since 1995 when I got a ThinkPad 750.  Some of them I liked more than others.

But the Thinkpad T400 that I got this Fall is, by far, my favorite laptop of all time.  First, it it just really fast. It has an Intel T9600 CPU which is very fast. It’s almost as fast as my Dell XPS 710 mega machine at the office. Second, it is loaded with highly useful features like:

1. 3G Internet access so that it’s always able to get on the Internet. I cannot understate how big of a deal having this integrated is versus carrying around a 3G card.
2. It has an SD Card reader in it which makes it very handy dealing with media.
3. It can read and burn CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Ray.
4. It’s quite light. About 4 pounds.
5. It gets great battery life.
6. It has 8GB of memory which, combined with 64-bit Vista makes it super snappy. Before getting an SSD drive, consider going to 64-bit and loading it up with RAM. Disk caching > SSD.

January 19 marks the beginning of serious crunch time as we start moving towards the final stretch.

The team is working on Beta 3 which is the first beta that begins to bring together the key game elements of Demigod into a "fun" game.  After Beta 3, the story will focus on fixing bugs, providing better balance, taking feature requests and expanding the Pantheon (the persistent online tournaments, leaderboards, etc.).

So what will be in Beta 3 and when will it be out?

Those features are:

1. The Tournaments will be in.
2. The network connectivity code needs to be much more solid than it is today.
3. The pacing should be a lot better.
4. The Pantheon should start tracking how players are doing.
5. Plus lots of game play changes that should help introduce players to the unique game play elements of Demigod.

We are hoping to have this new beta up this week. 

This is a true story:

Dear Mrs.. Jones,

I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer.  I work at Home Depot and I told Sarah how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit.  I told her we sold out every single shovel we had.  Then I found one more in the back room, and several people were fighting over who would get it.  Sarah's picture does NOT show me dancing around a pole.  It's supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot.  From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.

Sincerely,

Mrs.. Smith

When I have lots of energy I tend to plan to do a lot more in the future on the false assumption that that energy will persist. Sigh.

The new WinCustomize is going to be a radical departure from what we have today.

In the web 2.0 age, we can do a lot of interesting things that should greatly improve the navigation of the site. The days of clicking, waiting for the page to load, clicking, waiting for the page to load and so forth will go away.

Instead, the site will feel more akin to a desktop application. Want to see the most popular skinners, click on tab and it'll expand to show it.

The site will end up being far cleaner, far faster, and far easier to use than what we have today.

For the record, I was against Proposition 8 in California. I don't think the state should involve itself in what legal arrangements consenting adults make.  If two gay people want to get married, that's fine with me.

That said, the people of California voted (again) and they have decided that they don't want the state to acknowledge gay marriage. 

Now Google comes along and tries to sue to have this overturned based on the premise that it makes it harder to hire people in those states. This is a nonsense argument but its validity is irrelevant. What is relevant is that a very large corporation is trying to sue to change a law that was expressly voted on by the people.

What's worse is that a powerful, public corporation is getting involved in social politics? How long until such a culture pervades into other parts of their business? Maybe websites that don't have "correct" opinions start to not show up on Google.

I don't like big brother, even when big brother agrees with my politics.

I was reading in the forums someone saying something to the effect of "I was playing a game and the other player took all the flags in the first 15 minutes and it seemed like it was hard to come back from that."

In the final version of Demigod, the game would be over before 15 minutes if that happened.

BETA 1 of Demigod was the engine test for compatibility.

BETA 2 of Demigod was the engine test + Internet connectivity.

BETA 3 of Demigod, due next Thursday is where we start to get into the actual game play.

So let's talk briefly about what our vision for that game play is.

Our goal for Demigod has been to make it the "Counterstrike of strategy". That means games should be intense but also relatively short.  The only time a game of Demigod should last more than half an hour is if both teams are very evenly matched.

If you are an expert and you are playing someone who is new to the game, the game should be over in 10 minutes.

In betas 1 and 2, we intentionally made it so that wasn't the case so that we could get people to test out the actual engine parts.  But starting with Beta 2B (today) that begins to change as we start to go towards the final stretch.

Whether playing it single player against computer players or playing on-line, the depth of the game comes through the game mechanics themselves, the persistent world and the game play options.

Stardock and Gas Powered Games have a lot of experience making very complex, very epic strategy games.  Galactic Civilizations, Supreme Commander, Sins of a Solar Empire, etc. are all very large-scale, epic strategy games.

And as cool as those games are, they're not the types of games you can easily sit down and play with friends or simply sit down and play during a respite after work. They require considerable commitment.

And as a gamer, with Dawn of War 2, Empire Total War and Starcraft 2 on the horizon, my need for epic RTS games is going to be met and then some.

Demigod isn't designed to compete with a Starcraft 2 or a Dawn of War or a Sins of a Solar Empire. It's something quite different. Something quite new. 

Demigod is the game that you and your friends can sit down and get going in minutes without having to go through a few "test matches" to help them get the hang of playing.  Its depth is in the subtlety of the game mechanics. Its skill is in how you handle your Demigod; how you equip him (or her); how upgrade your Citadel; which parts of the map you fight over and having the judgment of when to do what.

There is no "build order" in Demigod because there are no buildings to build. There are no peons or construction units because there are no resources to harvest. There are no barracks because you do not construct your units (other than generals who summon their units).

And yet, the mechanics for getting gold and getting access to better stuff is in there.

You get gold by controlling certain parts of the map and killing units and Demigods.

You get access to better units by controlling flags on the map.

You are able to get better abilities by earning experience in battle.

You are able to become stronger by purchasing items and weapons and armor from the shop.

And all of this is done without managing peons, building mines, constructing barracks or anything else.  The game focuses on the funnest elements of RTS games.

And hopefully in the next week or so, players will begin to see where this design leads to and like it as much as we do.

Stay tuned.