Lifelong meterologist and the founder of the Weather Channel has written an article denouncing the "global warming" movement as nothing but the "greatest scam in history".
Read the whole thing.
For those of you who are interested, I have written up a brief tutorial on how to write articles for the Internet.
Since starting WinCustomize ~7 years ago, we've seen a lot of people post blogs, articles, news items, etc. And many people just haven't ever been shown a handful of tips and tricks that can make creating web-based articles much easier.
I learned the hard way, so to spare others the years of grasping at new techniques, I present to you:
Running a blog community as well as a multiple sites that involve people submitting articles has taught me one thing: most people do not know how to use word processors or web editors correctly.
Programs like Word, Expression, DreamWeaver make it relatively easy for people to communicate with words very effectively provided that you know how to use them.
Today, I'm going to write a brief set of rules on communicating effectively on the Internet.
If you find yourself selecting a line of text, making it bold and making it larger to indicate that it is some sort of header, stop. Don't do that. You just cause everyone pain by doing that. Instead, use header tags.
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| Use tags such as heading 1, 2, etc. to make headers. |
By using header tags, your document will automatically be supported by any future effort to use the table of contents tools. Moreover, if you decide to switch fonts, you just have to modify the header tag. But the big reason they're important is due to the nature of the web -- if you post something to the web using header tags, they will tend to be supported. By contrast, if you simply change your font to bold and change the size, the result may not look right when you post it on-line.
I hate to say this but Microsoft Word sucks for writing web documents that are going to go on-line. It's particularly true if you're writing something that is going to be submitted to a site via a web form of some kind (i.e. like when you write an article on WinCustomize.com).
Even if you select "Web Filtered" in Word, to save, you still end up with an HTML file with a bunch of custom class names in it that may interfere with the CSS of the website. Use Front Page or Dream Weaver or some simple HTML editor. You don't need to write it in HTML literally, just write it in a rich editor that saves it as pure HTML if you can.
If you find yourself using a table as part of your document, then make it look like a table too.
For example, which of the following is more aesthetically pleasing?
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Magic Weather for DesktopX by Stardock Design The Magic Weather is the result of a great deal of time and effort put in by the entire team to create a really cool looking weather widget. It uses data from Acuweather to display the current weather conditions as well as a 5 day forecast. |
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Example 1 is how most tables I see posted by users on-line. But doesn't't example 2 look a lot better? If it's a table, make it look like a table. Put a border around it. To do that, you make a table, and give it a border and then put another table with columns inside. It doesn't't really take any longer.
In addition, control the size of your tables. If you're showing images that are say 240 pixels wide, then decide precisely how big you want your text to be. Don't rely on percentages. Give it a pixel size if you can.
I'm amazed how often people will simply use a full sized image that they force size down.
Which of these looks better?
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| Image where the user simply sizes the full-sized image in HTML. Will typically link to larger image. |
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| Separate thumbnail created for smaller image, links to larger image. |
You may also have noticed that I put my screenshots inside of a box. Since I made the entire background a contrasting color to the background of the page, I didn't need to put a border around it. When writing for the web, it's important to break up your writing into bite sized chunks visually.
If you're going to put together any sort of list, use bullet points or numbers. What I mean by that is to use the actual web versions of these.
I have 5 things I have to do today:
1) Get up
2) Bathe
3) Eat
4) Work
5) Sleep
I have 5 things I have to do today:
Little things like indentions help break up the text and make it easier to read.
Those are the demons you must slay if you want to succeed in business.
Writing for the web does require some adjustment. But with a little practice, you can create articles that are both visually appealing as well as intellectually stimulating.
One final tip about the Stardock sites like JoeUser.com and WinCustomize.com -- if you write your article on another server, completely with images, save it, load it in a web browser, copy and paste it into the GUI editor on a Stardock site, the Stardock site will automatically put in the image paths into the HTML for you which can save quite a bit of work.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
Developed by Ironclad, a start-up game developer whose founders worked on Homeworld: Cataclysm and published by Stardock Entertainment, best known for developing Galactic Civilizations, Sins of a Solar Empire is a space-based RTS that aims to combine the depth of 4X strategy games with the pacing and multiplayer goodness of real-time strategy games.
Beta 4 of Sins of a Solar Empire was just released to the beta team and this is a brief preview of what's in it and what still needs to be done between now and it's February 2008 release.
Note that I work at Stardock which publishes the game. But I'm also an avid gamer and game developer. So I'm biased but I suspect that you'll care about the same kinds of things I care about in these games. 
Sins of a Solar Empire is a game full of innovations. Nearly all those innovations surround a particular goal: To allow an RTS to have unprecedented scale. Most of the innovations fall into the area of reducing micro management and delivering new ways to manage large empires without any fear of it devolving into a "click fest".
You know the drill - big name RTS comes out. Multiplayer doesn't work for people behind a fireewall or even behind a router. Patch is released that fixes it kind of. Another patch is released that fixes it further.
Sins of a Solar Empire is no different except in terms of when these problems occurred: A huge public beta months prior to release. Beta 3 users got to enjoy huge lag, connection problems, router issues, etc. So a patch was made called Beta 3a which kind of fixed it. Beta 4 largely (but not completely) resolves multiplayer connection issues. Kudos to the beta testers who suffered through and reported the issues so that people who buy the game won't have (knock on wood) problems getting multiplayer going.
I will admit, I'm pretty geeked about the ability to SAVE MULTIPLAYER GAMES! It's obvious in hindsight but but the technical hurdles to smoothly and reliably allow people in a multiplayer game to save their game in progress and pick it up a week later aren't trivial.
Being able to save in a multiplayer setting is a big deal from a game design standpoint. It means you can have maps and scenarios that one can expect to finish in an hour or so as well as maps and scenarios that can take months to play depending on the user's choice. And the game plays very differently depending on how you set things up.
Imagine being able to get together with friends on weekends to continue an epic tournament of Sins of a Solar Empire. That's the kind of thing that multiplayer saved games makes possible.
The user interface is still in flux. I am hoping that the late November beta update will get the finalized user interface in. It's not so much that the current UI is bad (though the research screen needs love), it just needs polish.
The star of Sins of a Solar Empire remains the overall experience though. The scale of the universe, the incredible battles (seriously, it's like watching a Babylon 5 battle except you control the ships), and the exquisite game mechanics that really make the game feel like a 4X game in an RTS engine.
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| Zoomed in on a construction frigate |
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| Zoom out just a bit. |
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| Zoom out further, now I see a planet, ships become icons. |
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| Keep zooming, now I see the planets in the star system... |
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| Zooming further, now I see two star systems, one with lots of planets! |
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| And finally I can see 5 star systems. Now THAT is scale. |
Beta 4 is the first beta where the game mechanics are starting to really show their promise. Pacing still needs work but it's getting better and better.
The game mechanics are pretty straight forward but also provide immense strategic choices:
You have planets. Planets provide money through taxes. There are also planetoids (i.e. large asteroids) which aren't as good as planets but tend to be surrounded by more asteroids. Asteroids have either metal or crystal which players extract. They provide infinite resources (i.e. they don't run out).
With those 3 resources (money, metal, crystal) you can do all kinds of interesting things. But you can't do all of those interesting things at once. You can only build so many different things around planets based on your logistics capability. The player has to make some tough choices as to what they want to build around those planets. Building research labs helps them get new technologies. But there are also orbital stations for trade, culture, defense, ship construction, etc.
The net result is players take the route of having lots of cheap ships or go the route of having fewer awesome ships. The ships, however, come in many sizes and shapes and capabilities which we'll talk about in a bit.
Here's where the game mechanics in Beta 4 really start to be neat. So you have planets, they provide your money. Research Labs determine how far up the tech tree you can get. Each race gets its own tech tree. And these techs are very important. So building multiple labs is important (but on the other hand, you can only build so many labs around a given planet).
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| The Research screen UI still needs some work. |
Most RTS's have very little diplomacy. Sins of a Solar Empire has considerably more than the typical RTS.
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| The Diplomacy isn't quite done but bounties work nicely already |
The new diplomacy system isn't in Beta 4. But what is in there has some cool stuff (we'll talk about the new diplomacy system in beta 5). The bounty is my favorite part of Diplomacy. The game has NPC units known as pirates who are effectively like Barbarians from Civilization but more lethal. But you can passively pay them to attack other races by putting a bounty on that race. Best of all, nobody knows who is putting the bounties on people. Trust me, in a FFA this is totally awesome.
You have three classes of ships: Frigates (cheap ships), Cruisers (medium ships), and Capital Ships (incredibly powerful ships).
You start out able to crank out Frigates and you also start out with a capital ship (think of the capital ship as being like the Commander in Total Annihilation, don't bother to rush someone unless you really know what you're doing and your opponent doesn't).
The capital ships are very rare because not only are they expensive but they require specialized crews that you have to train (basically you research a technology which increases the # of capital ships you can control).
The whole point of battles in Sins is that mobbing someone with lots of ships isn't going to get you very far if your opponent has a good counter to it. I.e. You send a mob of fighters at your opponent and it only takes a very small number of flak batteries on a cruiser to wipe them all out.
In a really epic sized game, you will get a lot of ships. But on the more typical multiplayer maps where there's only a few planets, those capital ships and how they're armed will matter. Capital ships remind me a bit of the heroes from Warcraft 3 in that they gain experience that allows you to upgrade them in interesting ways. I like being able to visually see the results of my upgrades (the first time you see fighters coming out of your upgraded battle cruiser is a real sight).
The ships in Sins of a Solar Empire work together almost like a single unit. All you have to do is group them and from there, the fleet will act as an intelligent fleet.
The battles in Sins of a Solar Empire are pretty incredible as others have reported. As more and more finalized graphics get in, the battles just look more incredible. They seriously remind me of Babylon 5 style battles.
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| Not a mockup, that's a real battle in-game |
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| Epic battles, even in beta 4 |
So how do you have an RTS that has epic 4X empire building and not have it become a micro-management nightmare? How do you keep it from being a click-fest? Honestly, my answer would have been you can't and that anyone claiming you can is just full of hype.
Look at the screenshot below and behold a UI that is going to be stolen over and over (I know I'll be stealing it for Society). This is an innovation whose credit belongs purely to Ironclad. And I've watched this thing in beta for the past 18 months and the Empire Tree UI has been there from the beginning as it is now (which is probably why the icons are so fugly still and need to be improved IMO).
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| The Empire Tree on the left is a key innovation |
Look very closely at it.
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| The Empire Tree is what really makes Sins of a Solar Empire stand out. |
One only needs to read through the forums (it's a public beta) to see the reception of the Empire Tree. It really is a key breakthru for RTS's. It is a BIG deal. A really hard core player could literally play the entire game from this UI. It's that powerful. Yet it can be folded up too, just click on the arrows to roll up a particular planet or star.
Lots. It's going to be a busy couple of months for Ironclad and Stardock to finish this up. There's a lot of polish that still needs to be done. There is an entire third race that isn't in the game yet. The new UI is needed, the diplomacy still needs improvement, the computer AI still needs work, and there's still pacing needed (the balance looks pretty good though the Vasari and the unreleased Advent still need work).
But with two months left to polish (the stability is very good), I think Ironclad will make their date though I wouldn't want to answer to their spouses this holiday season...
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Title: Sins of a Solar Empire |
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We are on track for a December release of the second expansion pack, Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor.
However, as we work on it, we realize that we have a historic opportunity to do the beta releases in such a way that we can reintroduce each major civilization with its new unique technology tree.
But as some have observed, the compressed beta schedule doesn't allow for us to really give each civilization that kind of reintroduction that they (and we) think they deserve. That each civilization now has unique ship parts, planetary improvements, and technologies which can significantly alter the game play means that having time to really enjoy the civilizations as they are released seems important.
On the other hand, many will want to have this expansion pack finished in time for Christmas.
So we put the question to you guys: Which would you prefer? An early December release date for Twilight of the Arnor or an early January release?
Advantages of coming out in December:
Advantages of coming out in January:
So you tell us. We can go either way. There is a web poll on the left side of the main page of GalCiv2.com. Vote there and post here and we'll go with the majority.
Stardock has released WindowBlinds 6.01. WindowBlinds is a program that allows users to completely change their Windows XP or Windows Vista visual experience. It does this by applying system-wide skins called visual styles.
Visual styles can change nearly every element of the Windows GUI from the Start menu, task bar, title bar, push buttons, scrollbars, and nearly everything other part of either Windows XP or Windows Vista.
WindowBlinds works by extending the native drawing routines of the operating system. It does not replace system files or modify data on the user's PC. It has been used by Microsoft, ATI, nVidia, Alienware, and countless other companies to create alternative visual styles to Windows.
WindowBlinds 6.01 is largely a maintainence release fixing reported bugs, tweaking performance, as well as adding support for 64-bit Windows XP (registered version only).
WindowBlinds is a free download and can be registered for $19.95. The registered version adds additional features such as colorization, font control, blur support, and more. Users can also get the registered version as part of Object Desktop, Stardock's complete suite of desktop enhancement utilities.
Screenshots:
Download: www.windowblinds.net
Stardock has begun writing the SkinStudio 6 tutorials. The first chapter is now available. If you've ever wanted to try your hand at skinning, pick up the SkinStudio 6 beta and check out the tutorials.
| What are skins? |
The term "skin" refers to the concept of changing the surface look of something. There are skins to change the outside of cell phones. Their are skins to change what your computer case looks like. There are skins to change the look and feel of particular applications like media players. And there are skins that can change the overall look of your computer operating system. The skins designed to change the look of the Windows operating system are typically referred to as "visual styles". But for our purposes, we'll use the more generic term "skin".
Our kinds of skins are made up of dozens of little images called bitmaps. When you look at your Start bar or title bar, you can see that these things are ultimately a bunch of images. If these images are replaced with new ones, you can dramatically alter the look and feel of your computer desktop.
When someone creates a skin, they have to create images to replace the parts of their computer interface that they want to change. They also typically have to tell the program that is applying the skin how those images should be used.
| What is WindowBlinds? |
WindowBlinds is an application that takes specially made skins and applies them to change the entire Windows GUI (graphical user interface).
WindowBlinds has been around since 1999. Back then, it would apply skins to Windows 95, 98, and Windows NT 4.0. At first, WindowBlinds just changed the title bars and borders of windows. Over time, it added push buttons, scrollbars, radio buttons and other common controls on Windows.
When Windows XP came out, the Start bar was enhanced and explorer windows gained "task panels". WindowBlinds was updated to support skins that had those elements in them as well.
Over time, WindowBlinds came to be able to change just about every part of Windows. Each subsequent version of Windows -- from Windows 2000 to Windows Vista, added additional new elements.
As you can imagine, creating a skin that makes full use of what WindowBlinds can do became increasingly complex. To address that, Stardock created SkinStudio.
| What is SkinStudio? |
SkinStudio is an application that allows users to create and edit skins for use by WindowBlinds. It makes it much easier to create a skin that contains all the images and data needed to enhance and extend the entire Windows GUI. The finished skins are then applied by WindowBlinds.
This tutorial documents and explains how you can use SkinStudio to create WindowBlinds skins. It covers SkinStudio version 6 (and beyond). SkinStudio 6 was a complete rewrite over the previous versions. Previous generations of SkinStudio had grown in complexity along with WindowBlinds. Eventually, it became so complicated to use that only the truly committed could create skins with it. SkinStudio 6 is designed to allow casual users to make skins again.
| The Elements of a Graphical User Interface |
When you look at your computer and how you control it, what are the primary pieces? What are the specific parts you use to control what you do?
The most basic skin for WindowBlinds would include replacements for those elements of the Windows GUI. SkinStudio, however, will let users change as little or as much of the Windows GUI as they'd like. What the user doesn't change, SkinStudio will fill in with the native elements of the Windows GUI.
| A brief Overview of SkinStudio |
When SkinStudio is first opened, you have the option to create a new skin or to open an existing one. If you choose a new skin you will be presented with the default Windows GUI.
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| SkinStudio welcome screen |
When you choose a new skin, SkinStudio will ask you what kind of skin you would like to make.
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| Choosing the kind of skin you wish to create |
The two basic choices are:
WindowBlinds Basic Skin. These are technically called UIS 1 skins. They are best used when you're making a skin that is basically the same as the Windows GUI but with different graphics. They are easier to make and faster. But they lack many of the more advanced features as they can only do what the OS can do.
WindowBlinds Advanced Skin. These are much more powerful in that you can have title bars and borders of any size, use alpha blending and shadows in your windows. They don't run quite as fast (still faster than Windows is by default) but they are much more flexible.
Once you have chosen what kind of skin you want to make, you are presented with a preview of your current skin along with a panel of actions you can use to make changes to it.
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| The categories of SkinStudio |
The categories of actions are:
Full Preview. This shows you what your skin currently looks like.
Edit Controls. This displays the various controls of Windows such as push buttons, tab controls, progress bars, scrollbars, etc.
Edit Start Menu and Taskbar. This lets you alter the look of the taskbar and menu.
Edit Explorer / IE Shell Parts. This option lets you change the special controls that are unique to Internet Explorer, Explorer (the main shell of Windows). This includes (on Vista) Internet Explorer tabs, the back and forth buttons and more.
Edit XP File Animations. When users copy or download files on Windows XP, an animation plays. WindowBlinds can change that animation. This is where you can assign new animations.
Edit Titlebars and Window Frames. The most basic part of the Windows GUI -- title bars and borders. The frames of your window also include the close button, minimize button, maximize button, title bar text (technically called "the caption") and the system menu icon. There are different types of frames to choose from depending on your design choice including per-pixel frames (these are frames with an alpha channel, use these if you want to have a shadow and have your windows be partially see-through) or UIS2 frames which are very powerful but don't have per-pixel options.
Change Skin Colors. Windows is full of places that display text. You can control what color text is displayed as.
Change Skin Fonts. Similarly, you can change what font face is used for different parts of the Windows GUI.
XP Specific Sections. Windows XP has many unique GUI elements not present in other versions of Windows (including Windows Vista). These include the logoff dialog, control panel styles, task panels (often referred to as shell styles), and toolbar icons.
Backgrounds. WindowBlinds can change the backgrounds of the desktop (the wallpaper) as well as add a background to explorer windows.
Theme Part Details. This category displays the most common parts of a skin that people tend to care about. It provides short-cuts to get to different parts of the editor.
Now that you have an overview of SkinStudio, we'll start creating a skin piece by piece in the next chapter.
| Table of Contents |
Chapter 1: Introduction to SkinStudio
Chapter 2: A Brief Overview of SkinStudio
Chapter 3: Skinning the Start Bar
Chapter 4: Creating images for the Start Bar
Chapter 5: Making a new Start Menu
Chapter 6: Saving Your Creation
Chapter 7: Changing the TitleBars and Borders
Chapter 8: Making Title Bar Buttons
Chapter 9: Skinning Windows Buttons and Other Controls
Chapter 10: Windows XP Specific Elements
Chapter 11: Vista Specific Elements
Chapter 12: Fonts and Coloring
Chapter 14: Conclusion and Resources
(c) 2007 Stardock Corp.
The Arcean Empire is an ancient civilization. A planet that united at the end of the "Great conquest" that nearly destroyed their world at a time when humans were still living in the jungle.
Arcean society and technology stagnated shortly after the uniting of the world. Change and "progress" were looked upon with suspicion and the world slowly developed space travel in the subsequent tens of thousands of years.
It was only when they encountered the humans, in the 22nd century (Earth Time) that the Arceans were awakened to the need for technological progress. The humans, in a short amount of time, had gone from riding horses to colonizing moons and planets in the blink of an eye. The universe, as the Arceans had known it, was ended.
The Arceans realize that research, even with the newfound knowledge of its importance, doesn't come easily to them. The technology tree of the Arceas is a bit more expensive. On the other hand, the Arceans had a lead in one particularly interesting area -- weather control. The Arcean technology tree allows them to build weather control zenith's which can increase a given planet by up to 3 levels -- a significant advantage. Of course, they'll need those advantages to overcome the more expensive nature of their technologies and their relatively poor diplomatic skills (making it harder for them to trade technologies).
This is the story of the Arcean Empire in a tiny quadrant known as the Crucible. In it, the Drengin, Arceans, and humans vie for supremacy.
This game play example is using beta 1b (internal) of the expansion pack Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor.
The Arcean capital in this quadrant has a human colony near by. But we have control of the important influence resource.
The starting conditions of Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor are significantly different from the base game or Dark Avatar. For one thing, Tourism is now worth 10X as much. This makes a huge difference at the start of the game where players now can expect to see 70bc in revenue. However, the starting funds have changed to be only 3,000 instead of 5,000. So it will be up to players to build up their economies a bit more gradually.
Each civilization gets their own tech tree. Even familiar technologies are often placed in a different order than they once were. The Arceans get Weather Control which is a pretty big deal.
On the other hand, the Arceans are terrible at propulsion. Unlike the humans and other races, there is no Impulse Drive or Warp Drive or anything like that. They have to build Navigation Centers on their planets to get a speed boost.
The thing about Navigation Centers, however is that the technology itself gives you a +1 to your ship movement. Then, with the navigation center, you get another +1. Thrown in Sub-Space Drive which is basically a computer based navigator and you get another +1. What this means, ironically, is that in the early part of the game, the Arceans are the fastest race out there with ships that might be doing 5 moves per turn. In the long-run, however, they're slower but it's a big deal early on.
By RIGHT-CLICKING on the technology on the screen, you can find out what the technology does.
The Weather Control Zenith. The pride of the Arcean Empire. Up to 3 tiles made available.
In this version of the beta, the Arceans don't get Xeno Engineering (which is being addressed). Luckily, I was able to trade for it so I could build better starbases.
Meanwhile, the Drengin are building up.
One thing of note is that the Arceans only have one Particle Beam weapon technology (most of the others get multiple). The bad news is that it is very expensive. The good news is that there's only 1 and then it's on to bigger and better weapons.
So what are the other civilizations doing?
The Drengin are moving along. Their slaveling labs aren't as good as ours. But they have less maintenance. Slaves are cheap -- less effective though.
The humans are doing pretty well. Though I happen to know their AI hasn't been updated one bit. Despite that, they have automatically adjusted to the new technology tree. Which means, of course, they'll automatically adapt to your technology tree that you create with the technology tree editor!
The Terran Alliance had shrewdly managed to become the the dominant power in the quadrant. After consultations with the home guard, we were given permission to formally ally with the rising stars of the galaxy. That still left our old nemesis, Lord Kona and the Drengin Empire.
...To be continued...