One of the things that motivates me to "do stuff" is the idea of being able to try to make a difference in some way. One of the things I'm starting to look into is starting a foundation.

In some years, I hope to start giving a significant portion of my income to various charities.  My wife Debbie would effectively run it and my children would learn the value of supporting organizations that are making a difference in the world.

There are some useful articles on-line such as:

http://foundationcenter.org/getstarted/faqs/html/starting_nonprofit.html

http://www.suntimes.com/business/savage/31000,cst-fin-terry-166.savagearticle

No one ever accused me of not being tacky.

But every year I get asked by friends and family what I want for Christmas and the answer is almost always "books". I love books.  But people say they don't know what type of book so I end up with a lot of other..stuff.

So below is my Amazon.com wish list.

There's been a lot of sob stories about people losing their homes due to the recent mortgage crisis.  But everytime anyone looks at one, they discover that the fault isn't with "predatory lenders" or "the economy", the fault lies with stupid stupid consumers.

Check out this one:

http://rachellucas.com/index.php/2008/08/13/the-only-thing-i-feel-sorry-for-these-people-about-is-that-they-were-born-stupid/

If you've been in one of our betas before you already understand what I'm about to talk about. But if this is your first beta, you may find this discussion interesting.

Our betas tend to be very beta. That is, rough. Whether it was Galactic Civilizations or Sins of a Solar Empire, our first betas tend to be pretty rough. Unfortunately, the higher the profile the game, the more likely people are going to try to use the beta as a way to judge the final game.  The first GalCiv beta was awful. I mean AWFUL.

Here's a screenshot of GalCiv II beta 1:

Here's the final game:

It's amazing how much can change in a few months. Bear in mind, this was a SEQUEL to an existing game in which it was the same games team working on it.

Sins of a Solar Empire went through the same evolution.

So right now, we are working on a ton of things in preparation for beta 1 including the opening screens to try to make them more friendly and well, more polished.  If you've developed a game before, you already know how things like finalized UI images often wait until very late. But the average consumer isn't going to be quite as understanding.

The stability of the beta is excellent. It's as stable as a released game IMO. The challenges will be compatibility, balancing, and taking in user feedback and implementing it.  We all have our own lists of things we want to address as soon as possible it's just a matter of prioritizing those changes and getting them in.

Some people at Stardock want to focus on the maps. Some at GPG want to nail down the in game UI functionality. Others want to incorporate additional strategic elements.  And believe it or not, this is the sausage factory that exists on every game whether it come from Blizzard to Bungie or Ensemble. We all go through this. 

Of course, the difference here is we plan to share with you a peek at the inner sausage factory in our development journals here and elsewhere so you can get a sense of what goes into making a AAA title.

If you've ever worked on a game, you know that for 80% of the process, the game is little different from any other development endeavor. It's not "fun". You aren't "playing" the game, you are simply working on it in the hopes that it will be fun at some point.

Galactic Civilizations, for instance, was incredibly boring until the final months. We were starting to sweat it but then, like the flick of a switch, it came together and was very fun. Sins of a Solar Empire was extremely tedious until the last few months of development. But then, as players saw, it came together and started being awesome.

And so it's starting to come together with Demigod.  We still have a lot of work to go. But even with lots of features not enabled yet, I find myself enjoying myself playing just against the computer players in a 3 on 3 game (all AI except me).  I just love the various powers that the Demigods have, the items are really fun to mix and match.  I'd say it's about 60 days away from being at that point where, like Sins and GalCiv before it, Demigod gets the critical mass of "fun stuff" in that it starts to become a problem internally (i.e. where we have to limit "testing" to non work hours).

-Brad Wardell = Draginol = Frogboy.

More so than any game Stardock or GPG have done before, Demigod is truly unique in that it's such a radically different game from what we've done before.  While it has some simlarities for Defense of the Ancients, the strategic scope is significantly larger (as one would expect in a AAA stand alone title).

Here are 10 reasons why users may want to pre-order the game and get the beta:

#10 The game will include the usual multiplayer skirmishes most strategy games have, but Demigod will also have a persistent on-line tournament mode that is being co-developed by Stardock and Gas Powered Games.  We will definitely want to get people's input on this. If you ever played TA, especially on Boneyards you can get an idea of some of the things we're going for.

#9 Item ideas.  You build up your Demigods by purchasing items in the game to equip.  We've got a lot of items already but I suspect you guys will have some requests in this area.

#8 Map ideas. Demigod comes with multiple maps (arenas).  We will be looking for feedback on how to make these maps even better.  What would Total Annihilation have been without Painted Desert or Greenhaven for instance?

#7 Collector's Edition. Technically, the pre-order version of Demigod is the Collector's Edition which will come with extra stuff over the standard retail version.

#6 Assassins vs. Generals. The former is a bad ass. The latter is a strategic genius. Balancing the two will be quite a challenge and who better to do that than the players BEFORE the game is released.

#5 Multiplayer testing.  With Demigod, Stardock, GPG, and Ironclad are working together on a new type of multiplayer platform that, in theory, will allow people to play online without opening ports when it's done. I.e. it just "works". 

#4 Game Mechanic Tweaks.  How many times have you bought a game only to have it have some feature or game mechanic that really throws off the game for you? You can help make sure Demigod is the ideal game for you BEFORE it gets released.

#3 Tournament Achievements. One of the things we'd like to put in are features that give kudos, awards, achievements to players who have played a long while that show up in game.  The beta players will be the ones who help decide what those are and how they operate in game.

#2 Strategic Flow.  In Demigod, the map will have other objectives to take than simply wiping out the enemy's base or what have you.  We want to have a lot of depth in this department and who better to help mold this than players before the release?

#1 Richness of experience.  If any of you have played Galactic Civilizations, you know that one of the reasons why the game has been so popular is that the game presents a rich experience in terms of dialog, back story, bits of history here and there that show up during the game.  Beta testers will be major contributors in this regard just as they were in GalCiv.

We're only 4 weeks from the first beta (the compatibility beta).  Things are about to get very interesting...

The first beta of Demigod is looking to be on September 5th.  We wanted to do it at the end ofAugust but we're all going to be attending PAXX (Penny Arcade trade show) that week and we want to be here to help people get started.

Now, just so you know, the first beta we are intentionally removing a lot of gameplay elements just so that we can get people to focus on compatibility and performance.  We want this game to be about twice the performance as Supreme Commander had (a LOT of work has gone into lowering the hardware requirements).  Multiplayer in the initial beta will be LAN only but you'll be able to play against an AI player.

Once we have all that nailed down, we can add the actual gameplay elements, broaden the multiplayer, and go from there.

The initial inspiration for Demigod was heavily based on the Warcraft 3 mod, Defense of the Ancients. If you've never played it, Defense of the Ancients is an incredibly clever game concept in which players team up on on a single map choosing between many different heroes. How one customizes their hero makes all the difference.

Demigod works similarly in that you choose amongst several different heroes (your Demigods). Some heroes are called Generals whose strengths come from their ability to manipulate their minions and engage in larger scale strategy. Other heroes are called Assassins who are immensely powerful individuals whose strengths focus on just being massive butt kickers.

Defense of the Ancients could almost be described as a game where two rivers are flowing against each other. Each player is trying to get their river to make headway against their opponent's river until the flow enters their base. My analogy may not make sense unless you've played DotA. But if you have, you probably get my meaning.  Demigod does not play quite like that.

In Demigod you have a lot of strategic choices you have to make. Arenas have other elements that give one side or the other significant advantages. This means players have to choose often to give up some ground in order to gain longer term advantages. That is, there are certain parts of the Arena that you can control that give your side significant advantages. Hence, there are multiple strategic objectives.

The Demigod gains strength through experience, as they level up, the player can choose to strengthen different abilities or add new powers. Players can also use money to purchase items that give their side or their Demigod additional advantages. This is basically the same as was found in DotA.

So it's definitely fair to say that DotA served as inspiration for Demigod. But Demigod will ultimately be somewhat different in play style. Right now, myself, Chris Taylor, and Mike Marr are putting our combined design experiences together in trying to create a unique, innovative, and compelling strategy game experience.

More to come on this soon.

Wah.  I'm back from vacation and I don't want to be.  I still ended up working but it was beautiful there.

Below are some pictures from the trip.

Me on the phone driving the boat away from shore.

The boys getting ready to sweep the steps.

Dr, Melissa Clouthier: Mourning Michigan: How liberal policies are killing the state I love.

6 steps for dealing with liberal friends and family

Do you want to be friends or do you want to prove you're right? I'm not saying you should go along to get along, because I don't believe in doing that, but people get very sensitive about how little they know about politics. If you rub it in their faces or make them look like idiots, which incidentally, is what generally makes for a good blog post =D, it's going to upset them. It's one thing to do that to liberal bloggers or liberals in a comment section, whom you probably don't care about one way or the other, but it's another thing to do that to your friends and family. So, let them know you disagree, but don't make a huge issue out of it or humiliate them.

That's a tip I need to learn. I don't try to humiliate friends or family, I try to stay out of discussions on politics if I can with them. Most of my family is quite liberal but they also don't follow the issues very closely.

More on liberals and conservatives in relationships here