When it comes to skinning the OS, I'm a fanatic. I've been into changing the look and feel of the OS for nearly 15 years now.  From Object Desktop on OS/2 to working on the very first GUI skinning program on Windows, skinning is a passion of mine.

Over the years, I've seen a lot of programs, companies, and ideas come and go.  On the software side, there's been great programs like eFX and Chroma (to name two) along with the ubiquitous WindowBlinds.  On the content side, there's been teams of artists who have created some cool stuff like Pixtudio, The Skins Factory, SkinPlant, LIghtStar, and so forth.

When Windows XP came out, all of the third-party skinning engines went by the wayside except for WindowBlinds. WindowBlinds had an advantage in that Windows XP came with a skinning engine called uxtheme that was essentially a derivative of WindowBlinds 2 (i.e. they function the same way, have very similar formats, etc.). So rather than being hurt by XP, WindowBlinds got a free boost.

So back in 2001, the skinning world kind of branched into two groups. You had those who used WindowBlinds to skin Windows XP and you had those who used uxtheme to skin Windows XP.  Each solution had its own pros and cons. 

WindowBlinds costs money ($19.95) but had a much wider variety of skins and was a superset of features of uxtheme. 

On the other hand, uxtheme was free but to use it, users had to apply a patch to crack the theme protection. Microsoft didn't want people making skins for uxtheme so they added digital signing protection to their skins. To get around that, hackers patched out that check and allowed the creation of third-party skins for it called msstyles.

So the division in groups largely rested on whether the 20 bucks for WindowBlinds was a sticking points. The people who went with WindowBlinds would say that they have a lot more skins, could use any msstyles skin converted to WindowBlinds and had a lot more features. Users of uxtheme rationalized their choice by pointing out it was free and it wasn't hard to patch the file.

And so for 7 years the two skinning communities developed on a parallel course. WindowBlinds, being a commercial product, continued to be developed over that time. uxtheme, of course, remained unchanged.  Some companies began making skins for money. The first were Pixtudio, The Skins Factory, and Skinplant. They all made skins for WindowBlinds.  But others made pro skins for uxtheme such as LightStar. 

In 2006, Stardock, the makers of WindowBlinds had a new idea for skinning called MyColors.  The idea was that Stardock would create a new group called Stardock Design and go out and partner up with major brands starting with sports teams and universities to sell branded themes. These themes would have the necessary software embedded in them. To make this happen, Stardock Design would also need artists.

The existing studios such as Pixtudio, The Skins Factory, and Skinplant simply couldn't produce enough content per year.  Instead, Stardock Design went out and brought in house the skinners who made up these studios. All of Pixtudio and Skinplant work at Stardock. 

This is where things get interesting...

The owner of The Skins Factory saw Stardock Design as a competitor and relations between the two soured. Moreover, The Skins Factory made it clear that it was going to work to create its own skinning solution rather than rely on Stardock's solution so that it wasn't dependent on what it perceived as a competitor.

Since The Skins Factory was (and still is) a one or two man shop that contracts freelance artists, the steady work at Stardock Design in creating content for major brands led some of the free lancers to join Stardock full time which further soured things with The Skins Factory.

Thus "HyperDesk" was born. Hyperdesk was discussed on WinCustomize considerably so I won't go into all the technical details here. Since it isn't released at the time of this writing, I have to go by informed speculation. It is essentially a uxtheme patch combined with a theme manager that will apply icons, wallpaper, along with specific support for applying skins to specific applications (like Winamp or Media Player).  The problems with patching system files are well known, particularly the long term viability of patching uxtheme.dll from a consumer point of view.

Now for the commentary:

Hyperdesk and MyColors are similar in that the idea is to let people buy a "theme". You want your desktop to look have a complete look? Don't want to mess with a bunch of programs to do it? Then just buy the theme and with the press of a button Hyperdesk or MyColors will apply it.

Hyperdesk seems to go with the longstanding Skins Factory tradition of quality over quantity. Ironically, because they're stuck with uxtheme, they're very limited on the GUI skinning (it's no coincidence that their teasers are limited to shots of the media player as the few hints of the actual skins are pretty typical 8+ year old msstyles based tech which is pretty bland now). They will be hard pressed to approach the quality in their existing portfolio. That's because their existing portfolio was based on the technology that serves as the precursor of MyColors.

MyColors, by contrast, is powered by something that can offer better quality but the need for quantity to get serious distribution attention has spread Stardock Design thin.  This means that there just isn't the marketing bandwidth to spend the time to create an incredible web presentation.

The presentation of say the Hyperdesk Sony Ericson skin absolutely blows away the presentation for MyColors themes.

For example:

MyColors Mustang vs. Hyperdesk Ericson

But you'll notice that they aren't showing very much. They show one icon (which ironically was made by someone who works at Stardock) and just bits of GUI. But the presentation if first rate.  The MyColors Mustang page, by contrast, looks like an Amazon.com page or something.

Because Hyerdesk hasn't been released yet, I can't comment on the actual quality of the Ericson suite.  I can point out some facts that The Skins Factory has made public.  First, it won't support Vista which, in 2008, is pretty catastrophic.  The number of people so into skinning that they'd pay money for premium themes but have stuck with XP is not very large. Secondly, unless Hyperdesk gets a miracle soon, there won't be any significant distribution channels. The uxtheme patching means he won't be getting it preloaded (not to mention the lack of Vista support) and he has no native channels to get started in which has relegated to him to having to post "teasers" in forums.  In fact, this article is probably the most significant publicizing Hyperdesk has received so far.

The thing about selling these all-in-one themes is that it's based on conversation rates. That is, N% (where N is typically less than 2%) of people exposed to it in a significant way will actually buy something.  So if you get 1,000 people to download and try Hyperdesk (or MyColors) you might get 10 to 20 of them to pay for it. 

A decent theme made by non-slave labor costs tens of thousands of dollars to make.  Let's say $10,000 to break even on a minimal theme. If you sell your theme for say $12.95 you're probably netting around $10. This is assuming it's an inspirational theme (i.e. has no royalties attached to it).  To break even, you have to sell 1,000 of them. That means you have to have a channel that can get 100,000 people exposed to it. That's a lot of people - just to break even. And I'm being cheap on the cost.  It costs Stardock Design more than that to produce a suite once you count associated costs.

Worse for Hyperdesk, even if they somehow get a uxtheme patch solution for Vista, the msstyles format on Vista is completely different and doesn't have a nice editor like XP msstyles did.  At the very least, it would require creating a whole new msstyles for Vista which would increase the cost.  So now you're probably closer to $20,000 to produce a single theme -- and this is if it's purely original work. If you were doing, say a Disney based theme, you would have royalties and upfront payments and approvals involved which drive up the costs even further.

The Business Model

Now everything I mentioned here were things we considered when doing MyColors.  The only way MyColors succeeds is if it gets massive distribution. That means getting preloaded or doing special distribution deals with major brands. That's why MyColors uses WindowBlinds OEM technology (its skin format is a bit more restrictive to ensure maximum compatibility). It's also why it includes gadgets. Gadgets can be branded and remote control any media player instead of having to make a skin for a specific media player. 

Over the past year, Stardock has signed on several major distributors and PC makers to begin phasing in MyColors distribution. So by end of this year, MyColors will be on millions of computers.  But this was only possible because a) MyColors doesn't tamper with system files and MyColors has a library of hundreds of themes. Those were the two pre-requisites because most distributors aren't that interested in distributing something that brands them as much as finding ways to generate measurable increases in revenue using their massive distribution. 

And that combination is what I think will be the death blow to Hyperdesk.  You can argue I'm biased or whatever but you can look at the facts for yourself:

• Companies with big distribution channels aren't that interested in increasing their "brand awareness" with a skin because they already have massive brand awareness because they have big distribution channels.
• The above companies generate additional income by selling things through their massive distribution channels
• These companies will only include things likely to make a lot of money which in this case means a large library of content
• These companies will not tolerate support issues from what they bundle. Hence, something that patches system files is DOA to them. People will flame WindowBlinds but the reality is, it has a long successful history of enterprise-level robustness when the content for it is provided by professionals.
• These companies will want to support the current version of Windows (obviously).

Without the above criteria satisfied, Hyperdesk can't get massive distribution. And without that, he's stuck selling to the hobbyist community - except Hyperdesk doesn't have a community to sell into. Posting on a personal page on deviantART isn't going to cut it and deviantART isn't going to get into the business of trying to sell a handful of premium themes on their site any time soon.

Now, does that mean you, the reader, shouldn't buy a Hyperdesk theme? Oh no. If it's good stuff, you should buy it. I will probably seriously consider buying Hyperdesk themes if I like the themes. I can, after all, always convert the msstyles to WindowBlinds to avoid patching anything and then I get to run it on Windows Vista.

Just a head's up that we released an update earlier today that fixes the text issues and the custom opponent window.

It's on either SDC or Impulse.

Well today I've got a lot of coding and forum work to do.  We released Twilight of the Arnor and people seem happy. But I'm not convinced that all the final strings got in (i.e. tech descriptions).  And while we did release the info guide and a twilight manual, I want to keep updating them as well as hang out on the forums answering questions and helping.

Unfortunately, my middle right finger is swollen up.  As some of you know, I keep bees. I've got 6 honey bee hives this year.  The hives are located at the back of the Stardock property (well away from the building).  So yesterday I was out there working on them getting rid of bur comb inside a hive when I got stung. At the same time, I got a cell phone call which I needed to take. So I had to leave the stinger in me (pumping away) for a bit. When I got off the phone, I scratched it out.  I'm immune to bee stings in general but leaving the stinger in so long caused my middle finger to swell up a bit today (you wouldn't notice it unless I pointed it out) causing it to be a bit stiff.  So it's slowing down my typing speed a tad.

Greetings!

We hope you're enjoying Twilight of the Arnor. We had a great time working on it.

The digital distribution portion of Twilight is a real challenge versus what we've done in the past. With most games, we have an actual CD or DVD to work from.  Here, we're putting thousands of different files on various servers.

So what we plan to do this week (probably tomorrow) is do a minor cleaning house update on anything that might have gotten "left behind".  I saw someone mention that the Altarian tech tree has a "todo" description for instance.  We also will put in some code to clean up some of the settings for those who ran the beta (if you can't make custom opponents, there's your cause - delete the directory my documents\my games\gc2twilight and you should be set).

So use this thread to tell us anything you saw that you think needs to be tweaked or that we may have missed and we should be able to resolve it tomorrow as it's just a matter of putting the files on the server.  For anyone who runs into that, we apologize for any inconvenience.

1) Uninstall the beta before installing the final

2) Go into my documents\my games and delete the Twilight of the Arnor (gc2twilight or something like that) folder so that you can start with fresh preferences.

Any other suggestions you guys may have, add them in the comments.

Hopefully you're noticing the new distributed downloading system that is exclusive to Stardock Central and Impulse.  Those of you with ridiculously fast connections who are downloading the expansion pack should be getting extremely fast throughput on the download.

Let us know what you think. Is it worth the extra cost (it's expensive for us to run this)? Does it make you more likely to purchase software digitally in the future? Any feedback welcome!

Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor has been released!

Stardock is pleased to announce the general availability of the second (and final) expansion pack to Galactic Civilizations II.  The new expansion pack, Twilight of the Arnor, adds hundreds of new features, gives each civilization a unique technology tree, a unique set of planetary improvements, star base modules, ship parts, and more. 

Moreover, with Twilight of the Arnor, Stardock went back and revamped the graphics for the game to bring them up to the state of the art.  A new sound track has also been added along with updates to the computer AI.  It also reintroduces the Terror Star, the ultimate weapon last seen in the original Galactic Civilizations as well as a new victory condition called Ascension. Online tournaments have also been added to allow people to compete at playing the same map and scenario and submit their scores to the GalCiv metaverse.

The expansion also includes the conclusion to the Dread Lords saga in the form of the Twilight of the Arnor campaign. 

And finally, to keep the game evolving for years to come, Stardock includes a half dozen newly developed editors that will help modders and end users alike such as a map editor, scenario editor, campaign editor, tech editor, ship component editor, and much more.

The expansion pack is $29.95.  It requires the previous expansion (Dark Avatar) to also be installed. New players can purchase the integrated "Ultimate Bundle" for $59.95 and get the entire Galactic Civilizations II saga.

[Get it now!]

[Get more information]

So that we can avoid any potential issues, do yourself a favor and uninstall the Twilight beta before installing the final version.

 

The final version will be released this afternoon.

So what's new in Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor? Check out the in-depth info guide to get the details on what may be the most comprehensive expansion pack in PC gaming history. You can get just the expansion pack or get the entire GalCiv II saga at a discount here at galciv2.com.

[Twilight of the Arnor Info Guide]

 

 

Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor

Info Guide

By Brad Wardell
Designer and AI Developer

 

Executive Summary

Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor is the second and last expansion pack to the award-winning PC strategy game, Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords (2006).

The first expansion pack, Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar (2007) was an immense commercial success and won Editor’s Choice awards from G4 X-Play (5/5), GameSpy (5/5), UGO (A), Gamespot (9.1), PC Gamer (90%), 1Up (9/10), IGN (9/10), and many other sources. Dark Avatar introduced two new civilizations, a new campaign, super-abilities for civilizations, asteroid mining, unique planetary environments, and more.

This second expansion pack, Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor (2008), aims to top Dark Avatar in terms of game enhancing features. It adds a new campaign concluding the Dread Lords trilogy, adds hundreds of new features, and also gives every civilization its own unique technology tree and therefore unique ships, unique planetary improvements, unique starbases and more. It also introduces a new victory condition option called Ascension, which provides a whole new way of playing the game. All of these features are wrapped in a massive graphics overhaul that takes advantage of a new technology that actually significantly reduces the memory and hardware requirements. In other words, it’s not just a lot prettier, it runs even better on lower-end machines with better graphics.

Our Story So Far…

In Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords, the galaxy is on the verge of war. The evil Drengin Empire is only held in check by the might of the ancient Arcean Empire, which is nominally allied to the fledgling Terran Alliance. The Drengin fear the up and coming Humans from Earth because while the Humans claim to be diplomats and merchants, they also have seen evidence that Humans are lethal when it comes to war. Moreover, the Humans are rapidly spreading their influence across the galaxy, leading the Drengin to conclude that time is working against them.

In a desperate search for an advantage, the Drengin unwittingly discover and free the ancient precursor civilization known as the Dread Lords. The Dread Lords quickly wreak havoc across the galaxy, while the Terran Alliance builds a coalition that fights the Dread Lords off. Just as victory appears imminent for the Humans and their coalition, the Drengin Empire, which had stayed out of the war, strike with a massive fleet. The Arcean Empire is quickly overwhelmed and the exhausted coalition is no match for the fresh forces of the Drengin and their allies. The Humans, however, recover the collection of artifacts that the Drengin had taken and discover that one of them is a planetary force field that makes a planet completely impervious to attack (though it also means nothing can leave the planet either). The Humans use it to protect Earth and then use the second artifact they found to send their main fleet to a pocket universe that had trapped the Dread Lords in the hopes of finding additional artifacts to even the odds.

In Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar, the galaxy is on fire with the Drengin Empire dominating. However, the Drengin are conflicted as to what to do with the defeated. The Drengin shock troopers, known as the Korath, feel extermination is the best way. By contrast, the Drengin high command feels that extermination is wasteful and wants to use the defeated as a neverending supply of slavelings. This leads to a galactic civil war between the Drengin Empire and the newly independent Korath clan. The Korath, however, are merely pawns of the Dread Lords. The Drengin manage to successfully fend off the Korath assault on the Drengin homeworld leading the galactic civil war into a stalemate.

In Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor, a deep space expedition force of the Terran Alliance has found the last known survivor of the Arnor – the precursor civilization that had battled and exiled the Dread Lords in the first place. The last Arnorian explains that the source of Arnorian power (the Dread Lords are of the Arnor as well) are a series of shards scattered across the galaxy. The Terran Alliance must collect and destroy these shards. Only then will the Dread Lords be forever diminished and the galaxy free to determine its own destiny. Twilight of the Arnor includes the campaign to conclude the fate of the Arnor – both the Dread Lords and the Arnorians.

 

Our goal with Twilight of the Arnor

As a gamer, I often feel like developers are milking me by the time they do their second expansion pack. Am I getting my money’s worth or am I helping pay for someone’s boat? And if so, is it a good boat? Does it have one of those cool fishing thingies in the back? Either way, it’s not like I’ll get to try out their boat, I’ve just purchased an expansion pack to a game I know and love. The point being, often times gamers tend to get less and less with each expansion pack.

Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor was made by gamers who love the series. We just happen to know how to code (poorly) and have some art talent available to us. We wanted to make something that is really special.

We’ve tried to address every pet peeve we, as gamers, have ever had with second expansion packs such as:

1) The Graphics. Graphics aren’t that big of a deal but often times, a second expansion pack feels “dated” because the game engine is “aging.”

So check this out:

vs.

The left is the Survey ship from Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar (2007) and the right is the same ship from Twilight of the Arnor. Look at the detail difference - and the one on the right uses less than half as much memory because of the way the textures were done.

The idea is that a user getting Twilight of the Arnor should feel like they’re playing a 2008 game, not a warmed over 2006 game (when the original was released).

2) The Universe. One of the big things we wanted to make sure we did was to really expand the game universe. Giving each civilization its own technology tree allowed us to make each civilization truly unique. Before, they all shared the same tech tree so the races were a bit generic. Now, we can tell their story, give an idea of their culture and history, etc. To us, that’s the whole point of an “expansion” pack.

3) Features & Tweaks. This document won’t be able to remotely touch all the features and tweaks that went into Twilight of the Arnor. If I didn’t get to work on Galactic Civilizations (i.e., I’m actually paid real money to work on this – well, not technically anymore as I’m paid in US dollars...) I’d be a modder. Same with most of the team - we just love the game. If we could, we’d keep doing updates and expansions forever, but we have other games we still have to get to.

The Features: Stardock Went Insane…

This expansion pack is what happens when the people love what they’re working on, but know they won’t have an opportunity to do another expansion pack and that a sequel is many years off. There’s no real justification for all the features we have in here; we just wanted to make something really special.

With our first expansion pack, Dark Avatar, we added a lot of new features, but with Twilight of the Arnor we knew this was the end of the road, so we had to put in as much as we could possibly fit. While I can’t say I’ve tried every expansion pack that’s ever been made, I suspect that Twilight of the Arnor is the largest (in terms of new features and game changing content) expansion pack that’s ever been made to a traditional PC game.

If you’ve seen expansion packs before, you know the drill - they usually include some new units, some new maps, a few new scenarios, and a few new features. We have all that but it’s really just the beginning and barely worth mentioning.

Here are our primary new features:

· Each civilization gets its own unique technology tree. This is huge. There are 12 major civilizations each with over a hundred technologies. No PC strategy game has ever attempted this kind of thing (and in hindsight, it’s obvious why, as it added months to our development time, but it’s worth it!).

· Terror Stars. These giant starbases move slowly but can wipe out entire star systems. Plus, they look incredibly cool.

· Unique planetary improvements per civilization. This is also a huge deal. Like the techs, it’s not just cosmetic differences. Each civilization has its own history that results in different philosophies of how to succeed. It also means massive replayability and visual richness.

· Lots of new types of ships. Once again, because of the unique technology trees, you end up with different weapons and other components which results in unique ships. Or, as the accountants put it, “So, how much thought did you really put into this giving each race its own tech tree? Did you really consider the logical consequences of that?”

· New victory condition: Ascension. This optional victory condition will cause five ascension crystals to be placed in a given map. Build a starbase on them and collect one ascension point per turn for each one you control: gather 1000 points and you win. Of course, other players will attempt to annihilate you in the process.

· New features / polish for new players. Inevitably, this game will be packed up into some super mega GalCiv bundle, so a lot of small features have been added to make it easier for new players to get into. For instance, players can now choose to have the computer design their ships for them.

· Map Editor. Players can now make their own maps.

· Scenario Editor. Players can design in-depth custom scenarios that change the overall game rules. It’s been designed to be very easy to use.

· Tech Tree Editor. Players can now create their own technology trees or modify ones that come with the game with a very easy to use editor.

· Planetary Improvement Editor. Add your own planetary improvements to the game.

· New invasion screen. The planetary invasion screen in GalCiv II looked like something out of an Apple 2 game. That’s partially because it was inspired by an old Apple 2 game. Regardless, we’ve replaced it with something that brings the graphics quality from the 1980’s into the 1990’s.

· Metaverse tournaments. Custom tournament maps/scenarios are being provided with their own online scoring so people can compare their playing ability to others directly.

· New galaxy size: Immense. Due to the memory optimizations, Stardock was able to create a ridiculously large galaxy size called Immense.

· New soundtrack. Lots of new music in the game.

· Tons of new content. It would take pages to list all the new small additions we’ve added.

· Massive graphics overhaul. Just about every graphical element has been redone. Moreover, it’s been redone to use less memory at the same time. We’ll discuss this a lot more later.

· New Campaign: Twilight of the Arnor.

· Hundreds of tweaks and enhancements. Everything from animated ship components to new types of planetary governors to new options for ship handling, the expansion pack is literally an exercise in strategy gamer wish fulfillment.

New Feature Highlights

Terror Stars

Terror Stars are starbases that after a great deal of investment can take out entire star systems. They’re great for the player who is dominating the game and wants to mop up – at any cost.

Unique Technology Trees / New Graphics

This is the feature that we decided to fully commit to – with all of its consequences. Ever imagine playing Civilization or some similar game where each race had a completely unique technology tree, which also meant unique units, unique improvements, unique capabilities, etc.? We’re not talking about a few minor changes, we’re talking fully unique civilizations now. With 12 civilizations, it means 12 different ways of playing.

Figure 1: By giving each civilization its own technology tree, we could give each its own unique story, history, and culture that players can learn about and enjoy.

Figure 2: Just one of the many tweaks to Twilight, the tech tree now displays icons telling you what the tech gives with mouse-overs. Seems obvious in hindsight...

GalCiv II / Dark Avatar: The 12 Civilizations Were All Basically the Same

In Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar, if I were playing as the Drengin my homeworld looked like this:

Figure 3: In GalCiv II: Dark Avatar, this is how the Drengin homeworld looked. Take a close look at the planetary improvements and the planet surface.

Figure 4: If I were playing as the Arceans in GalCiv II: Dark Avatar this is how my planet looked. Note how it's basically the same as the Drengin.

As you can see from these two examples, the planets previously looked the same and they have the same stuff to build. From a replayability point of view, each of the 12 races in GalCiv II were essentially the same.

But in Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor, the 12 Civilizations Are Truly Unique

Compare the two previous screenshots to playing as the Drengin and Arceans in Twilight of the Arnor:

Figure 5: In Twilight of the Arnor, the Drengin get their own unique planetary improvements and planet surfaces are truly unique looking.

Figure 6: Twilight of the Arnor’s Arcean starting planet. See the unique planetary improvements and planet surfaces. Each race not only looks different now but plays completely different.

The differences between races isn’t just cosmetic. Now, bear in mind, people can still play as the Humans which has a much more familiar feel to it, but now there’s 11 other civilizations to play as, which greatly enhances the replayability.

Moreover, the computer AI has been updated to handle these changes as well. Thanks to the extended public beta, balancing is being handled prior to release, so that these civilizations play well together despite being so different.

The Updated Graphics

Updated graphics are not normally that big of a deal. We think you may find some of the changes here to be very interesting because it may change the way you feel about what matters in computer hardware. It certainly made us re-assess what matters in hardware.

For years, we believed that the number of polygons a GPU could push out mattered the most, but we’ve discovered that it’s texture memory and texture quality that matters. It’s more important, in our opinion, to have a good texture artist than a good modeler. Consider these two images:

Figure 7: Colony ship hull from GalCiv II: Dark Avatar.

Figure 8: Same colony ship hull from GalCiv II: Twilight of the Arnor with the same model, just a different texture that uses less memory too.

Looking at these screenshots, one might think it’s the difference between an older console and a next generation one, but these two screenshots use the same number of polygons. Yet the one on the bottom uses less memory. That’s because of texture-sharing. GalCiv II’s previous models all provided each ship with its own texture. In GalCiv II: Twilight of the Arnor, each ship style gets one huge, highly detailed texture that all the ships share. As a result, you end up using a lot less (think hundreds of megabytes less in a lengthy game) memory even while the ships look vastly improved.

GalCiv II: Twilight of the Arnor actually runs better on the same hardware than GalCiv II: Dark Avatar despite having much better graphics.

Lesson learned: Texture quality can be even more important than the number of polygons.

Let’s Talk About YOUR Civilization

The first expansion pack, Dark Avatar, has had continuing success for features that we didn’t realize were that big of a deal at the time: The ability for players to design their own custom civilizations to play as and play against. In Twilight, we take it further:

Figure 9: Players can now design their own civilizations that even have their own unique technology trees - and players can create additional tech trees with the included editors.

New Victory Condition: Ascension

Part of the story for Twilight is the existence of ascension crystals which give the Precursors (the Arnor and Dread Lords) such an advantage. In sandbox games, players can now capture ascension crystals and try to win by collecting enough points. They work similarly to victory points in Company of Heroes – except here there’s diplomatic issues to consider since you’re not necessarily (or want to be) at war with other players.

Figure 10: Build starbases on ascension crystals to begin collecting ascension points. Collect 1,000 and you win. However, other players aren't going to stand by idly and allow that to happen.

The AI Isn’t Just “Harder” It’s More Clever

It’s easy to make computer AI that can beat the typical player. What is harder is making a computer AI that plays the game like another person would, and makes it enjoyable for the human. The difficulty levels in GalCiv II: Twilight mean something. The computer players play differently, behave differently, and say different things based on the difficulty level. The AI is the core part of the game and for Twilight, it received a great deal of attention.

Figure 11: The computer AI is a lot more clever. To even the odds, lots of screens - particularly the trade screen - received user context help to make information more available to players, just click on the icon buttons to get info.

 

Players and Their “Big” Galaxies

What is it with strategy game fans and the ridiculously large map sizes they want?

Twilight introduces a new map size that might as well be called “Yea, you bloody loon, I’ve got your crazy big map right here!” but marketing said we had to name it “Immense.”

So how big of a map is immense? In my best Sicilian (from Princess Bride) imitation: “Supreme Commander big maps? Sins of a Solar Empire big maps? Civilization? MOO? All wimps!”

An immense sized map in Twilight has 576 sectors. It takes 12 moves to get from one side of a sector to another. It’s just insanely, ridiculously big.

Supporting that sick map size meant Stardock had to go back and reengineer a lot of the memory management and performance algorithms. The net effect is that Twilight of the Arnor uses about half the memory of Dark Avatar and runs about 30% faster on the same hardware. So there were benefits.

Now for the screenshot of the immense size galaxy so you can get an idea of how ridiculous it is:

Figure 12: Immense sized galaxies. I mean, what the heck. That'll take months to play!

But people want these huge maps so it’s our job to give it to them. Another thing about having a map this size is that the AI had to be updated to support different strategies since what works on a small map falls apart on a big map. That meant different ship design algorithms, different construction algorithms, different economic management algorithms, even different diplomacy algorithms (why bother declaring war on someone it would take you 30 turns to reach?).

 

New Ship Designer

Probably the most popular feature of Galactic Civilizations II was the ship designer. It’s like being able to play with LEGOS in public without everyone looking at me. I mean, without everyone looking at the guy playing with LEGOS in public.

People have created some crazy ships and posted them on the net. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a space cabbage patch doll.

The new designer makes it much easier to organize favorite pieces. Plus, the game now supports animated ship parts.

Figure 13: The new ship designer allows players to animate ships and organize their favorite ship pieces.

 

The Editors

From the launch gadget, the third option is called “Editors”:

Twilight of the Arnor includes six editors. The idea here is to let people take over the future of the game in the years ahead to keep it all fresh and fun.

Figure 14: One of our favorite editors is the tech tree editor. Players can actually create their own tech tree and then assign it to different players.

Figure 15: Want to add your own weapons, defenses, and other goodies to the game? No problem.

HINT: All of the data is located in the c:\program files\stardock\totalgaming\galciv2\twilight\data\english directory.

Computer Designed Ships

In previous versions of Galactic Civilizations II, players had to design their own ships. This is great if you’re into that (which we are) but for casual players, this could be daunting, and for experts it could get a little old.

A new option allows the AI to design ships for you by default. It is on by default but can be turned off.

Figure 16: The AI will design ships, give them clever names based on what types of things are installed on them and do a pretty decent job at it.

 

Ship Updates

Besides the graphics being improved, the ship weapon effects and sounds have been given an update (as well as the overall soundtrack). This is part of the goal to make sure the Twilight feels brand new (i.e., a 2008 game, not an expansion to a 2006 game).

More than that, a lot of new components have been added to ships to increase the strategic options for players (both human and computer): there are components that make your ships more lethal if fighting in friendly territory, there are components that give bonuses to all the ships in a fleet, there are components that give ships more hit points and so on.

Figure 17: Besides looking better, ships in battle have a lot more strategic options to their original design.

Strategic Maps

Figure 18: Players can zoom out to see massive amounts of territory at once. Meanwhile, the Torians are moving towards victory.

 

Other highlights

 

Designed ships have detailed information on them

 

Because each race has its own planetary improvements, different strategies are employed per civilization

 

The quality of the technology descriptions has been improved.

 

The new ships are gorgeous

 

The new planet surfaces are vastly improved

 

The new campaign completes the saga (hint, always take out the Dread Lords early in a mission!)

 

Ascension victories mean there's dramatically more strategic possibilities

 

Strategy grognards will appreciate the hundreds of small enhancements such as the Finance Management screen

 

Tournaments allow players to compete on-line indirectly

 

 
Never forget the power of a Terror Star!

 

 

Conclusions

We hope you find this information useful. To get the game, visit www.galciv2.com 

[Purchase Now]

 

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