I'm on vacation officially though in reality according to my journal I still managed 30 hours last week here at the cottage. My online availability has been diminished a bit (i.e. not browsing the sites much).
Here some pictures from the trip.
In classic strategy games such as Total Annihilation and in Supreme Commander the player not only had their usual units but also had a commander -- a very powerful central unit that was particularly lethal and capable of doing many different things.
Demigod, in many respects, is the logical progression of this game mechanic. In Demigod, players choose a hero to be their Demigod in a quest to becoming increasingly powerful.
In individual games that take place in arenas that, in my opinion, are a strategy gamer's panacea (even classic maps like Painted Desert in TA can't hold a candle to some of the cool arenas in Demigod), the Demigod will rise in level as he (or she) gains experience allowing for increasingly powerful abilities.
What is also cool is that outside these individual skirmishes these Demigods grow in power. This has some very important ramifications. Besides making the single player experience much more interesting, it introduces a much better on-line experience.
Let me put it like this: Demigod is aiming to solve some of the most basic problems in on-line gaming: Because your Demigod gets better in a persistent universe, experienced players have an incentive to keep with their hero and its stats rather than "smurfing".
Moreover, it creates a great deal of interesting match-making possibilities. Why not allow the option of someone who is really good at the game with a high level Demigod face off against 3 or 4 opponents online? In Total Annihilation, I regularly would play against 4 or 5 players versus me and that was on a "level" playing field. Of course, players can still opt to the traditional on-line skirmishes where everything starts on the same playing field. But with Demigod, players will have more options.
I am sure I'm not the only guy who remembers the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring (the movie) where Sauron is trashing Elven and human butt and thinking "ooh, I'd so like to be able to do that!" In Demigod you are the Sauron. 
For those of you interested in what my desktop looks like, I'm running Aero Frost with the "Think Green" weather gadget.
With Dell taking the Windows experience to the next level with the introduction of the Dell Dock, I've seen a lot of online buzz about it. Most agree that the Dell Dock is really good but intermixed are a lot of Mac fans who use terms like "Mac rip off" or how it's a copy of the Mac dock.
Mac zealots have a long and glorious history of retroactively claiming pre-existing concepts as being invented by Apple. For example, the modern "widget" (end user created applets that use Javascript) was not invented by Apple. They also didn't first appear in Konfabulator either. They appeared in Stardock DesktopX years earlier. Apple zealots usually counter by arguing that things like desktop accessories from 1981 "invented" the concept (as if the average user was going to whip out small assembly language programs).
I think most rational people agree that the modern widget is a mini application that can be created by end users that are tied together with a high level scripting language (i.e. Yahoo Widgets, Dashboard, Sidebar Gadgets, DesktopX). And DesktopX borrowed the concept from IBM's worksplace shell which in turn was inspired by prior art as well.
But the controversy over widgets is nothing compared to the claim that Apple somehow invented the concept of docks. Even allowing for the history of NeXT with its side dock, the dock concept is ancient.
Stardock, for example, has been doing "docks" since 1994. Object Desktop for OS/2 included things like Tab LaunchPad and Control Center. You don't see Stardock fans complaining that every sidebar is a "rip off" of Control Center. And Control Center certainly didn't invent the concept of a side-based bar or dock either.
You would be hard pressed to find many companies that have been continuously producing a dock and a sidebar as long as Stardock has -- 14 consecutive years of development. I think it's fair to say that we weren't "inspired" by an Apple OS that wouldn't exist for 7 more years from the time we started doing this sort of thing.
Tab LaunchPad on OS/2 circa 1994
Stardock makes no claims of having invented the dock. We called our first dock Tab LaunchPad because IBM itself had created a dock for OS/2 2.0:
IBM OS/2 LaunchPad circa 1992
But let's say you're a true die-hard Steve Jobs zealot and want to argue that NeXT "invented" the dock. You'd still be wrong as docks were part of Acorn computers from the early 80s. The point, of course, isn't who invented the dock, the argument of course is whether companies like Stardock (who wrote the Dell Dock) were somehow ripping off or stealing or what have you from the MacOS dock and I think you can see why this is such an obnoxious and offensive argument - we've been making docks since before Apple had figured out how to do preemptive multitasking.
They say a picture is worth a 1000 words. Here is a picture of what the Macintosh looked like in 1996 (System 7.5) along with a picture of Stardock Object Desktop in 1996:
vs. 
Mac 1996 vs. Stardock Object Desktop 1996: Which desktop do you think more closely resembles today's modern desktop? Note that Object Desktop was written during the Windows 3.1 era.
Stardock doesn't run around claiming that it invented the modern desktop experience. We don't imply or assert that everyone else is "ripping us off". Some ideas are just obvious.
The Dell Dock represents the continuing evolution of the desktop experience. Like all improvements to the user experience, inspiration can be found everywhere. But when advocates of a company or an operating system try to lay exclusive claim to all such improvements, they diminish the hard work, innovation, and inventiveness by thousands of other people from around the world who often have worked in obscurity with little glory. It is bad enough that these innovators don't get credit they deserve, it's even worse when they are so often smeared as copying those who came after.
Other Pictures:
Stardock ObjectDock Plus (4 different docks)
Our 2 year old (almost 2 anyway) is just such a helper...
Each month it seems another significant figure in the scientific community comes forward to express skepticism about human-induced "global warming" (now re-branded as "climate change" since it's tougher to disprove).
I think this year will be the year we look back and say "Hah, remember when there was this huge movement of self-righteous but scientifically clueless lay people running around screaming about human induced global warming despite so little evidence?"
The latest skeptic is David Evans who helped produce models for global warming for Australia for six years.
Check out the full article here.
The beauty of this particular debate is that the people who have argued that human carbon emissions (CO2 in particular) are causing it have been so obnoxious, so smug that it will be a pleasure to say "I told you so." On almost every other topic, friends and family will come to me for my opinion on some scientific issue but on this particular one, nope, suddenly my opinion is based on "ignorance" or I've been "brainwashed" by "big oil". These are the people who watch An Inconvenient Truth and suddenly think they're climatologists. Oh right, temperature has gone up since 1976, CO2 is a green house gas. It too has gone up. We make a lot of the stuff. Therefore, we must be the cause. So simple. So convenient. That has to be the answer...
The world's most powerful, easy to use desktop customization program gets a major update: DesktopX 3.5.
DesktopX is a program that lets users extend their Windows desktop to support true objects (as opposed to just icons). These objects can be cosmetic in nature or using a plugin or some scripting a user can make a desktop object do virtually anything. These objects can then be combined together to make widgets or used to build an entirely new desktop.
DesktopX 3.5 has been in development for over a year. Getting DesktopX 3.5 to work seamlessly on Windows Vista was a significant challenge but worth it.
DesktopX 3.5 isn't just a Vista update, however. It allows users to export their creations as Windows sidebar gadgets! This is significant because by default, Sidebar gadgets tend to be limited in functionality. DesktopX objects, however, have no limitations, a user can make plugins in C++ or virtually any other language allowing Sidebar gadgets to be incredibly powerful.
DesktopX 3.5 also includes a completely revamped website along with a major overhaul of the DesktopX documentation.
If you've ever wanted to see what kinds of cool stuff you can do with your desktop, DesktopX is a great and easy way to do it whether you're a novice or an expert PC user.
DesktopX is available on its own or as part of Object Desktop.
Download: DesktopX 3.5 
Visit: www.desktopx.net New Documentation: DesktopX docs 
Screenshots: Desktops & Objects
The world's most powerful, easy to use desktop customization program gets a major update: DesktopX 3.5.
DesktopX is a program that lets users extend their Windows desktop to support true objects (as opposed to just icons). These objects can be cosmetic in nature or using a plugin or some scripting a user can make a desktop object do virtually anything. These objects can then be combined together to make widgets or used to build an entirely new desktop.
DesktopX 3.5 has been in development for over a year. Getting DesktopX 3.5 to work seamlessly on Windows Vista was a significant challenge but worth it.
DesktopX 3.5 isn't just a Vista update, however. It allows users to export their creations as Windows sidebar gadgets! This is significant because by default, Sidebar gadgets tend to be limited in functionality. DesktopX objects, however, have no limitations, a user can make plugins in C++ or virtually any other language allowing Sidebar gadgets to be incredibly powerful.
DesktopX 3.5 also includes a completely revamped website along with a major overhaul of the DesktopX documentation.
If you've ever wanted to see what kinds of cool stuff you can do with your desktop, DesktopX is a great and easy way to do it whether you're a novice or an expert PC user.
DesktopX is available on its own or as part of Object Desktop.
Download: DesktopX 3.5 Visit: www.desktopx.net New Documentation: DesktopX docs Screenshots: Desktops & Objects
Greetings! With the release of Beta 1 starting to get closer (August) to all those who pre-order the game, we're starting to put together a tentative schedule.
Those of you who have been through other Stardock betas know how these things go. Below is what you can expect:
August. Beta 1. This will not be a "fun" beta. It's a stress test of the engine. Those of you who were in the Sins of a Solar Empire beta or the GalCiv betas know we're not kidding. There will be very little balancing in this version. It will also be multiplayer-only at this stage.
October. Beta 2. This beta won't be that fun either but it'll be better than Beta 1. THIS is the key beta in which players give us their ideas and suggestions. The beta process isn't just to find bugs but to let players suggestion changes to the game. There will be a series of Betas 2 (2A, 2B, 2C, etc.) that will be released in which we begin incorporating player suggestions. These will happen quite rapidly thanks to Impulse.
December. Beta 3. This may or may not be a public beta depending on how things go. What we have done in the past is give players who have been particularly helpful access to late betas so that we can keep tweaking and enhancing with their feedback.
January. Gammas (release candidates).
February. Tentative release date at worldwide retail in multiple languages.
We do plan for the game to be available at stores roughly the same time in North America, Europe, Russia, and Australia/NZ at the very least.
Users who are part of the beta will be getting something special but I am not at liberty to talk about it yet.
The concept of Demigod is quite simple: A god has fallen and several heroes have stepped up to battle for the right to take his place.
The gods, accepting this challenge, have created a number of godly arenas where these heroes can call upon their former allies from the mortal world to help them achieve victory.
In a large sense, Demigod is a strategy game. But it's not like Supreme Commander or Company of Heroes. Instead, it is something quite different as it is very tactical in nature.
As someone who likes big strategy games, I wasn't sure what to make of the first Demigod alpha I played. But Demigod quickly got me hooked. As a Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander player, I really like the idea of a "commander" (your hero) leveling up and leveling up.
The gods look on as the battle ensues and wages are made on every fight big or small in the arena with the player collecting his portion when things go his way. This money can be used to improve your forces, buy spells, buy artifacts and items, recruit units, construct special buildings, etc.
I have played as both a "general" and as an assassin. The general plays mores similarly to an RTS where I am recruiting a lot of my units who fight on my behalf and I have some control over them. The assassin is much more about the hero being a bad ass. You put your money and efforts into making him increasingly tough and sending him into the mix to do some real carnage. I don't know which I like better, each build of the game gets dramatically better than last so it's hard to say. I will say I've been surprised at how much I've been enjoying the Assassin given how tactical it is compared to the general.
