Yesterday marked the launch of the digital release of Sins of a Solar Empire, today at 2pm EST, the retail edition should begin showing up at retailres such as Best Buy.

Here's some links to some impressions and feedback from around the net:

• Quarter To Three
• War Gamer Forum Impressions
• Comment here with links to yours and we'll look at making more

Here are some suggestions on maximizing the fun factor:

1. I saw some people talk about game pacing. The game has three game pacing modes: Slow, Normal, Fast.  It's designed to appeal to a very wide range of users and these settings have pretty dramatic effects.  If you find the game pacing too fast, you can change the various settings at the start. If you find it too slow, you can increase the speed as well.
2. The Tutorial has a glitch that requires users to run at 1024x768. We're going to release a minor update later in the week or early next week that addresses that.
3. If you have any ideas or suggestions on tweaks and such you'd like to see, visit our forums and we'd love to hear them! We plan to release free updates based on player feedback.
4. Pirates. They're bastards for sure. Read the manual regarding them. But basically they will attack every N minutes the player with the highest bounty. However, if you don't want pirates in your game at all, create a map (or use an existing map) with no pirates.
5. On multiplayer, some games on multiplayer don't disappear immediately off of ICO and will report "rejected by host". So don't worry, you're not being really rejected -- well not by the game anyway.
6. If you have an nVidia card with recent drivers and have any problems, turn the planet detail to high if you have it on highest. 

We're glad you guys like the game! We're very excited about how things have gone so far! Lots of cool stuff to come!

Since 1999, Stardock has been a pioneer in digital distribution.  The original Galactic Civilizations was the first PC game to be released at retail and digitally at the same time.  Its flag-ship product, Object Desktop, made the transition from being a retail product to being digitally distributed with a subscription in 1999.

For the past few years, Stardock has distributed its content with Stardock Central:

Stardock Central

And while Stardock Central was very cutting edge when it was launched back in 2003, it's getting a bit long in the tooth.  For the past year, Stardock has been working on a  new platform that will finally combine Stardock's various technological assets into a single place. This new platform is called Impulse.

Impulse

Impulse isn't just a cosmetic make-over of Stardock Central. It greatly expands the capabilities of Stardock's digital distribution offerings. 

Here are 5 key differentiators of Impulse:

1. Users do not have to load Impulse to use the software or games.
2. Impulse will support third-parties submitting their software or game, name their price, and then after review having it available -- all done nearly automatically. Stardock already has this system in place on WinCustomize.com with "Master" themes.
3. Impulse will integrate its next-generation social networking features in the Community tab that will let users have friends, chat about games, have blogs, and more.
4. Impulse includes built in support for backing up your purchase to CD/DVD.
5. Impulse allows users who buy software or games at retail to still manage their updates and re-download the entire product on Impulse (for products that support this feature).

Impulse provides a cleaner UI than Stardock Central.

Managing your software on Impulse is a snap. If you bought a game or software program at retail or even from another digital distributor, you may be able to still manage updates and such on Impulse.

Impulse is still in internal beta at Stardock but it expects to release it in mid February with additional features for it being added through the course of the year.

[Click Me: Launch Day FAQ]

On February 4, 2008 Sins of a Solar Empire will be released.  So how exactly is this going to proceed?

1) For those of you who pre-ordered:

If you pre-ordered the game but were NOT in the beta tomorrow afternoonish, Eastern Standard Time, the orders will begin to be processed. There are thousands of pre-orders to be processed so it will take some time.  Here's the insta-answer to this question "I haven't received my email yet!" answer: It hasn't been sent to you yet.  The pre-orders should complete being processed by 8pm EST. If you haven't received an email, then check your various spam filters. Otherwise, go HERE, type in your email and it should email you all info we have on you.

2) Get Stardock Central

To download the game, you will need Stardock Central. Your email will include instructions on creating a Stardock.net account (that's the account you use to logon to this website and post and such). If you want to get a head start, you can go here.

3) If you had a beta version

If you were one of the beta testers, first, thank you for your help! Sometime tomorrow afternoon v1.01 will appear on Stardock Central. That is the latest version. You will need to uninstall your existing beta first.

4) If you are buying it at a store

Once you install it and have it running, you will need to update to v1.01 to play on-line. Click on the "update game" button on the main menu and you'll be taken to where you can download the v1.01 patch. The patch is only 11 megs so don't worry.

5) If you are downloading the full game

We have leased some mega-super-duper high speed lines for the launch week. It should (better) download really REALLY fast regardless of how many people are buying.

6) If you are going to play multiplayer

If you are behind a router, you will need to make sure that port 6112 forwards to your machine. If you're doing a LAN game just make sure you have Windows Firewall either disabled or set up to allow Sins to work on it.  Also: Be aware that if you have a slow machine, that multiplayer runs at the speed of the slowest machine in the game.  So while the game will play fine on that 4 year old PC, you may want to think twice about joining a 10-person multiplayer game. It'll run but you won't be popular.

7) If you do have an older machine

Make sure you update your video drivers.  Don't do what I did with my ATI 9800 and assume that my drivers were fine. They weren't.  Same on audio drivers. Before you report garbled or stuttering or whatever sound, make sure they're up to date.

8) IF you run into a problem

Make sure you read the sticky threads before posting. Odds are, there is a common problem that pops up, we'll post a sticky post with a solution.

9) If you have a good machine

Go to the "Effects" option and turn up the graphics option. Make sure you get the full Sins experience graphically. The defaults are conservative.

10) If all else fails

Take a deep breath. Relax. We WILL take care of you.  Whether it be with your order, your PC, getting multiplayer to work, making sure you get the right package, etc. Don't worry.  [email protected] can take care of most problems.  On launch day, the fastest way to get support will be the forums because we're all hanging out here.  But remember to look up the sticky posts.

11) Waiting for your download to finish?  Try making some maps!

Today we also released the first piece of the Forge Tools package; Galaxy Forge.  It's a visual map editor for Sins that will let you craft your own custom maps.  Every map in the game was built using Galaxy Forge.  You can grab it from the Downloads Page.  And if you're having trouble figuring it out, be sure to check this Beginners Guide.

Good luck and have fun!

In a few hours, our friends at deviantART will hit their 50 MILLIONTH submission (deviation).

But for me, the most amazing thing about deviantART is its popularity.  It is now in the top 50 most visited websites in the world. 

Let me put that in perspective. deviantART is more popular than MSNBC.com, CNET.COM, MTV.com, Gamespot, IGN, and many other extremely well known sites. 

In fact, more people go to deviantART.com on a typical day than CNN.com.  That's how popular the site has become.

What started out as a skinning site has become the world's dominant art site.  Obviously, customization isn't a focus these days, I think it's still amazing how the site has grown.  I'll be the first to say that for the life of me it's beyond my grasp. I've never (and continue not to) understood the desire of people wanting to submit random stuff.  I understand people wanting to share skins or icons or software and other such things, but not scans of sketches or random art.  And that's what makes deviantART so revolutionary. It's not an obvious concept (at least not to me).

Congratulations deviantART on your 50 millions submission!

So what is a game of Sins of a Solar Empire like?  Just like we did with Galactic Civilizations, we've put together a story based on playing a full game. 

View: Rage of the Ishendi

This week's IGN blog on Sins of a Solar Empire focuses on an issue that is rarely discussed in the game industry - the problem of high system requirements for new PC games.

Increasingly, new PC games will be released with extremely high hardware requirements and when they don't sell as well as hoped, it's used as a blunt instrument to say that "PC games are d0med".  The reality is much more complicated.  When you sell a product or service, only those who are capable of making use of it can become customers in the first place.  Too often, game companies assume that people will upgrade their systems just for their game. 

Sins of a Solar Empire is designed to work on both older machines and newer machines. The graphics, of course, look better on the latest machines but the experience on older machines isn't just marginal, it's good.

This morning, we played a game on a 4 year old Dell machine with an ATI 9800 graphics card on it. It didn't just run okay. It ran very well (i.e. extremely smooth). It doesn't look nearly as pretty as it does on say Geforce 8800GTX but it certainly looks pretty good still.

At the end of the day, as much as we want our games to look awesome, we also want as many people as possible to be able to buy our game.

Check out the full blog here to learn some of the technical details involved and other thoughts on the matter.

View: IGN Upgrades