I wrote this over on my neowin blog:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=8&showentry=2280
Bottom line: Given the choice between an SSD or running 64-bit with 8 gigs of RAM, get the extra RAM.
For those of you who have been in the Demigod beta so far, the thing to remember is that that build has been a mere engine test.
Beta 2 is where the real game mechanics come in. The actual "fun" part of the game really starts to show up. Generals, upgradable Citadels, strategic objectives, etc. It should also be the first big availability of ImpulseReactor's "cloud" multiplayer (if it works right, it should make getting games going a snap). We're hoping to get this out before the Thanksgiving break.
We are prepping a major update for Impulse for release prior to the upcoming release of Sins of a Solar Empire v1.1.
Version 1.1 of Sins of a Solar Empire is the first update to the award-winning PC strategy game to require Impulse for downloading the update. During the beta process of Sins v1.1 we got a lot of feedback from players -- a lot of it very negative.
The first question people ask is, why are we requiring Impulse for Sins of a Solar Empire? We released a number of stand-alone patches for Sins earlier in the year so why require Impulse now?
There are a number of reasons. The most obvious reason is that Impulse wasn't available then. In the user manual for Sins of a Solar Empire we actually mention Impulse as it was intended to be used for updating the game.
But more importantly, Sins of a Solar Empire v1.1 is a gigantic update. It's even a bigger update in many respects than the recently released Galactic Civilizations II v2.0 (which also requires Impulse). Making a smart installer for it would have required a great deal of effort to keep the size under control.
There's a lot to making game updates that aren't obvious. For instance, does the game update combined with the demo allow the player to have essentially a full game? You'd be surprised to discover how many games in the past have fallen into that problem. Having Impulse simplifies that sort of thing.
In addition, there's the issue of on-going support for Sins of a Solar Empire. Ironclad and Stardock want to put out more releases and make it easy for people to get the micro expansion packs such as Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment which is scheduled to go into public beta shortly. Impulse vastly simplifies and improves this user experience.
So what are some of the things we've done with Impulse that will be out soon?
Check out the screenshots below:
Besides the user interface being cleaned up, the performance has been significantly enhanced. It's a lot snappier all around, particularly on Windows XP systems.
Another addition is that tabs are only displayed when there are items in them. So if a program is being downloaded, a download tab shows up. If there are updates, the update tab shows up. The idea is to provide a much cleaner experience.
So does this mean that Impulse is perfect? No. We still have a lot of features to add to it. We're always striving to make it better.
But hopefully users will be able to see some of the progress that's been made based on their feedback. When Sins of a Solar Empire v1.1 ships, hopefully users will find Impulse to be something highly useful rather than as simply a download manager.
Stay tuned!
So there's going to be a GalCiv II v2.01 soon.
Normally, this time of year, I would be playing a new PC game. But right now, I only buy new games from Impulse. I'm currently looking at The Witcher and Sacred 2. I'm going to get World of Goo this weekend for me and the kids.
But this past weekend, I played Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor which some of you know I helped develop and wrote the AI for.
And when I play, I always have the debugger open and so came up with some changes.
1. I made it so that tourism revenue grows slowly with time. Late game, I just don't like hitting the wall in terms of what I can do.
2. I made Terror Star techs a lot cheaper. Terror Stars are pretty powerful but so are Spore ships and they don't cost that much.
3. I made a new planetary super project called Fleet Command Centers that you get on Interstellar Construction. Once built, all your ships in orbit will work together as a fleet when any of your planets are attacked. This eliminates the old orbital fleet manager improvement. I found it just too cheesy that I was able to go to a civ's capital planet, knock out their defense one by one with my mega fleet and take it which can often cripple an AI player. It's too hard to defend against and too unrealistic so I changed it.
One of the best changes in 2.0 that I didn't really realize was going to make the game so much better was the change in weapon tech costs. It is now quite difficult to get up the weapons tree. Combined with other techs being less expensive (the removal of the big late game tech penalty) and you really end up having to seriously look at other strategies.
I've seen the AI start to finally build up influence starbases and economy starbases because the path to victory wasn't so obviously a simple climb up the weapon tree.
So this update should show up this week I think on Impulse. It should go along with the update for the European expansion bundle "Endless Universe" so that they can update via Impulse as well.
Object Desktop 2009, which is due out on November 19, will be including some pretty cool stuff. For Vista users, they finally get BootSkin. For XP users, they get animated wallpaper with DeskScapes.
Hi guys,
The media often requests we point them to some gamers who are well spoken and who are familiar with Stardock's games to talk to.
If you are interested in being interviewed by the press and such on the game industry and about Stardock's games, respond here.
Thanks!
One of the things coming up for next March is a complete re-design of WinCustomize. The site is going to be radically different from what we have today.
For one thing, WinCustomize 2K9 will be written more like an application (ala Facebook) than as a website. What that means is that the development team at Stardock Software will work on the platform and then a seperate team at Stardock Media will work on the presentation.
In the past, WinCustomize was developed and presented purely by the software team with the media team merely administrating it.
So what does this mean? For one thing, it will mean a much more robust design in terms of performance and reliability. It will also mean that the site will be able to more easily evolve. For example, WinCustomize today is very difficult to change. If we want to modify a page, developers have to get into the .NET code and modify the layout. By contrast, in the next WinCustomize will have its layout code completely seperated from the platform code. Pretty standard stuff in a modern web page really.
We're hoping to launch WC2K9 in March on WC's 8th birthday.
We're hard at work with the next interim build of Impulse. We still have a lot of work to do but here's a status of where we're at.
Cleaner.
We have made Impulse's minimum size down to around 600 x 400. You can resize it but now it can use even less space for users who are running on lower resolution desktops.
We've also removed a number of icons from the display to reduce the clutter. Now it's only the help icon.
Another change is that the store has been re-named as "Explore" in preparation for its expansion to support mostly free content.
Easier
The Impulse start menu is now a lot simpler and a lot faster. In fact, performance all around has been substantially improved to make the app feel a lot snappier in use.
What's next?
We're going to be adding a feature to hide tabs, change the skin and more.
If you have any suggestions or ideas, let us know!
One of the things in Elemental we've been thinking hard on is how the economic system in the game should work. Elemental is, first and foremost, about building a civilization that happens to exist in a world filled with magic.
So when it comes to building things, we are trying to get away from the classic "N production units". There are, for instance, no factories in Elemental. We want players to really understand just how big of a deal it is for a civilization to be able to produce mounted warriors who have metal armor and metal weapons. It's not just knowing how to build such a unit, it's being able to put together the infrastructure to produce such a unit.
Players don't research types of units, they research technologies. Players then design their own units and those designs require certain resources. A basic soldier with a club is pretty easy. You take a guy, arm him with a big stick. A better soldier might involve same guy, armed with same stick but trained. Now he's much much better but it will obviously take longer to get that unit. It's not about production then, it's about time.
A still better soldier might be equipped a bronze sword instead of the stick. But that bronze sword didn't just come out of nowhere. The metal had to be mined and then forged and then delivered. Of course, the challenge from a game-design point of view is that you don't want players to be forced to micro-manage such things. It's supposed to be a strategy game, not an inventory management game. And so, you make that issue something for your civilization to deal with - not the player.
A given land tile may have a metal resource on it. The player builds a mine on it. That mine then produces N units of metal per turn. That metal then flows to the keep's inventory (in the city). When the keep's inventory gets filled, it then starts getting sent out to other cities (little caravans start appearing on the map delivering this stuff). All of this is automated but evidence of a growing civilization. Players can build warehouses to store more inventory of a resource. A player can also build an armory which produces weapons which flow again into the keep's inventory and then into warehouses if built and then out to the country side to other cities. Players can build roads to increase the speed in which these resources make it (and incidentally, these caravans only go out sporadically so the map isn't going to be full of these units running around and they're not true units, they'll be almost like decoration except when attacked).
So when I go to build a unit, the amount of time it takes to build that unit is going to be based on decisions I made -- what am I equipping him with. How much training am I giving him? And of course, since populations of "cities" range from 100 to 1 million or so, one of the resources units require are people. A village of 100 people obviously can't conjure up a legion no matter how much money and resources you have.
How will all this actually be implemented? That's where the open beta will come into play. Our development tools allow us to quickly implement many different concepts and UI's. that's where a lot of our work has gone into so that we can make changes like this. Players saw hints of this in Galactic Civilizations where we could make dramatic changes to the game based on player feedback but it's nothing compared to what we've built for Elemental.
So for instance, do players want to prioritize where these caravans go? How much control do players want of this kind of thing? Would it be more fun to actually have technology branches dedicated to having governors (not AI, just bonuses to supply) that "manage" this. These are some of the many things that players will be involved in.
The main thing I wanted to get across is that we are not going to have the traditional "N units of production". Players will be able to design their units, design how much training (a small squad of elite soldiers or a huge mob of untrained brutes or somewhere in between?), decide how well equipped you want them to be and so on. It's not about sending out a knight. There is no "knight" unit unless you choose to call a unit you designed that has a horse, a soldier who has been trained, plate mail, sword, helmet, etc. a knight when you save it. How long would this knight take to create? Possibly very little time at all if you have the plate mail, sword, helmet, and horse ready to go. Then it's just a matter of the training time. Otherwise, it could take quite a long time (the game will estimate the time based on arriving supplies).
Hopefully this gives you a glimpse at the strategic depth we want to provide players. The choices for players in how they want to play this game are endless.