Testing out AI changes in today's internal build of Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar. It will be a long game and we are recording in story form the game itself.
If you want to stop in and check out the progress, click on the link below as it will be getting updated every few minutes for the next several hours!
More below!
During the course of the beta we record our games to see what needs to be tweaked.
Yesterday, during the course of AI tweaking, I recorded the game. This is only on the tiniest of maps and only 2 players so you can imagine how things would be on a huge galaxy with lots of opponents (I'm finishing up on a "Realistic" Milky Way galaxy map for the GalCiv II:Dark Avatar expansion pack).
The gameplay examples shows you some of the ways the game is different even in a 1 on 1 duel on a pretty simple map. In particular, the multi-core AI options in effect (a quick word on the new enhanced CPU *option* -- even if you don't have dualcore, you can use this feature, it just takes slightly longer per turn which to get the extra AI algorithms used whereas on dual core and quadcore it's "free").
Check it out below. More to come.
As is told in "Dread Lords", the Drengin Empire had bided their time as the humans and their allies dealt with the Dread Lord menace. No alliance of convenience would be necessary. Kindar, the war leader of the Korath clan, counseled to let the Dread Lords and the sub-Drengin wear themselves out and the Drengin Empire would crush the diminished victors.
And so it came to pass that it was the humans from Earth who proved to be most most lethal in warfare to the Dread Lords. The Drengin Empire had begun to suspect that the diplomatic humans were nothing more than velvet over an iron fist. In the year 2215 when the Terran Alliance utterly and ruthlessly crushed the Xendar (events that occurred between the return of the Dread Lords and the Altarian Prophecy) the Drengin recognized that the human claim of fellowship and peace was a fraud.
What the Drengin didn't realize was that the humans from Earth who lead the Terran Alliance were repentant warriors. Falsely assuming that any civilization advanced enough for interstellar travel would have cast off war to a bygone era, the humans have pursued a cultural revolution of harmony and pacifism. That era came to an abrupt end during the Xendar wars and since then, the humans had become diplomatic but militarily powerful.
The Dread Lords, while few in number, had inflicted terrible losses upon the humans and their friends. Their allies, the Arcean Empire, had seen vast losses in their military strength owing to the wretchedly ancient ships in their fleets. Whereas the humans were newcomers to the interstellar club, the Arcean Empire had had an advanced civilization for thousands of years (just as the Drengin Empire). Technology would have likely remained stagnate if it weren't for the invention of Hyperdrive which allowed ships (and ideas) to travel great distances in short amounts of time.
The Drengin Empire attacked in the wake of the Dread Lord menace. One of the most famous battles was the battle of the Ar-Siron quadrant. It was a classic duel between the the Drengin Empire and the Terran Alliance.
AI notes: The game below was test game #12 using Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar map "Duel Supreme" with the player playing as the humans and the Drengin set to "intelligent" (tough difficulty) which is the highest intelligence setting before the AI receives economic bonuses.
Commanding the forces for the Terran Alliance was Admiral Aaron Hawkings. For the Drengin Empire, Kzain'Talan would be in command. This after action report is a study of the strategies employed by both. Each side had equal resources at their disposal and allows us to discuss the mistakes and triumphs of each side in this classic duel. For the purposes of this recount, the sensor logs are in full use so unlike the players at the time, no "fog of war" is present.
The battle began in January of 2226, one year after the events of "Dread Lords".
The Terran Alliance base was on the planet Poseiden. Named after the long range explorer who founded it (as opposed to the Greek god). The key knowledge was that the Drengin Empire had an outpost in this quadrant and that there were two planets in-between of unusual quality. in the Xasica system.
What was unknown at the time was that the Drengin too knew about the Xasica system.
The scout ship Thangir was in the area. Fortunately, Admiral Hawkings was working on that assumption and was fast moving colony ships into the area.
Hawkings made the tactical decision to damage short-term economic growth in an effort to get both of the planets. That meant using the Terran Alliance standard colony ship blue-print as opposed to designing something more sophisticated.
vs. 
The Drengin always design new ships (The AI does anyway). The only difference is that their version is slightly cheaper.
It turned out to be a closer thing that we had envisioned. The Drengin nearly got both of the planets. They rushed as quickly as we did.
Xasica Prime turned out to be a wonderful world. A class 13 world with rare artifacts on the planet. What we would learn later, is that Xasica Thrall (the Drengin twin) was not quite as nice (no special bonuses on the planet).
The other key thing about this quadrant were the two galactic resources. One provided special properties, that when mined, would make the population significantly more content. The other provided rare economic value. Controlling them would be important as well.
By the summer of 2226, the quadrant was evenly divided. One thing we observed is that unlike most human governors, the Drengin will tax their people incredibly harshly. In the later analysis of sub-space communication, we learned that the Drengin had a tax-rate of over 90% even though the approval rating was less than 20%. It was a temporary spike but one they employed to boost early production.
Drengin (red) have the same population as the humans (blue) do but nearly twice the income. The Terran Alliance maintained a tax rate of around 49%. The question is, however, is this a good strategy? The Drengin were sacrificing population growth (few citizens were migrating to these worlds given the tax rate).
By the end of the first year, the Terran Alliance had surpassed that of the Drengin Empire in this quadrant and income was catching up quickly. The Drengin captured the morale resource while the Terran Alliance occupied the economy resource. That situation didn't last long as Drengin fighters quickly destroyed the Terran Alliance starbase.
The first battle in the quadrant took place between a Corvette squadron of "Super Dominators" (basically mercenaries that the Drengin go to sign up with them) vs. two Terran Alliance fighters.
The Mark 1 Terran Alliance fighter was no slouch. Armed with a Westinghouse Fusion powered laser cannon (Mark III) it packed quite a punch. It 60 meters in length, it was a fairly larger sized fighter and required a crew of 5 to man it (2 pilots plus 3 weapon specialists).
By contrast, the Drengin Empire's first-generation fighter in this war was tiny. A crew of 2 manned the 38 meter long Kiklar fighter armed with a missle of the same name.
Though outnumbered, the Terran Alliance came out on top in the first encounter. The poor quality of the Drengin ships represented a general weakness in the Drengin economy. They began to adapt to the changes but not before the Terran Alliance had gained a significant economic advantage.
(author's note, at this point I turned on the force high CPU option in Dark Avatar to help the AI do more analysis and become even more challenging).
By the end of 2228, the war was relatively at a stalemate. We had taken turns wiping out each other's star bases and had now managed to fortify rebuilt ones. No planets had changed hands and both sides were essentially building up for an assault.
The battle of spies, however, was heating up.
The Drengin were trying to sabotage my economy. More to the point, they wanted me to use precious income to acquire agents. The battle between economic and morale resources was on. Which was is better?
The Drengin had upgraded theirs to give them a +24 point boost to morale throughout the quadrant which enables them to get away with higher taxes.
The Terran Alliance had done the same. The main difference was that the Drengin hadn't put on any real defenses on their starbase but instead kept a fleet nearby. The Terrans had no ships to spare but had armed their starbase.
After a lot of back and forth fighting, the Terran Alliance managed to take out the Drengin's key morale starbase.
The tide was turning. Xasica Thrall was liberated. It would be renamed Xasica Liberty from here on out.
Leading the way was the F-10 Tigershark with its Raetheon G-X Plasma cannon.
The war was now at full power. The Drengin wiped out a number of my key starbases as well.
My remaining military starbase in the Xasica sector managed to slow down the Drengin forces while I moved in my military might.
The Drengin ships were increasingly resistant to human weapon of choice (beam weapons). But Terran lead in technology due to their economic mistakes early on more than compensated. The Drengin policy of taxing their population into oblivion early on was coming back to haunt them.
My goal was to take full advantage of the Drengin's early mistakes before their Mark 5 Frigate started to be produced in quantity.
vs. 
The Drengin designs on ships had improved over the past year. Their 200 meter long Frigate took a crew of 30 and had an attack rating of 15 and a defense of 4 against the Terran Alliance's beam weapons. It outclassed the significantly larger Terran Alliance frigate ("Punisher"). The Raetheon Ion-Plasma weapon was state of the art at the time of the ship's design but had fallen behind the latest Drengin designs. The humans had the advantage of having more Punishers out there though.
The Terran Alliance had the edge. But the Drengin were coming on strong.
Meanwhile, the Punishers cleaned through the Drengin fleets that were so outdated by this point.
The fight over the Xasica system continued for considerable time. The Drengin M5 frigates went up against my fortified force of Tigerhawks.
The Drengin Frigates had a pretty decent defense now against Terran weapons but were out outnumbered by them.
It was a key battle and my force, while nearly totally destroyed, the humans were victorious. The Xasica sector was firmly under Terran control. Now is was time for bold action. A strike at the heart of the Drengin economy in this quadrant. This is where humans surpass Drengni -- tactical boldness. The Drengin Empire military campaigns can best be described as being an avalanche of power. Humans, by contrast, tend to make tactically bold strikes. When successful, humans can cripple their foes as was the case in the Xendar wars.
For this special mission were two new ships that were only available in small quantity.
and 
The F-20 fighter and the Numenor class frigate. They were incredibly lethal. But they were also few in number. The Drengin were still developing their Mark 6 ships. The humans, in essence, had beaten the Drengin to the punch.
The falcons would get their chance against the Drengin Mark-5's. The state of the art Terran Alliance ships went up against the formidable Drengin frigates. Unfortunately...
4 fighters, even ones that were quite powerful, were not enough to defeat the M5 Drengin frigates.
Meanwhile, life on Xasica Liberty was interesting. The locals, mostly Drengin colonists still, did not think much of humans referring to them as "vile".
The bold plan by the humans was indeed bold. Bold in that "bridge too far" kind of way. The Drengin saw the threat and moved ships into orbit of their base world.
The result was the death of the entire Terran invasion fleet.
But the Drengin were frustrated in their attempts to retake the Xasica sector. While they came close, they had to send back their veteran Frigate for repairs.
The Mark 6 Frigate had arrived.
Armed with "Fravker'Siathi" extra-dimensional missiles (which humans call "photon torpedoes"), it had an attack rating of 30 and a defense of 4. The Drengin had, once again, leap-frogged the humans in technology.
But for the Drengin, their doom was already ordained. Their failure to take the Xasica sector back quickly meant that the humans had a decided economic advantage. The Drengin strategy of attrition was no longer viable. If the Drengin were to have any hope, they would have to make bold and unexpected moves.
This is where the fog of war not being on allows us to see the Drengin strategy change. Normally, the Drengin Empire leaves star bases alone to focus on their attrition strategy. But now, recognizing their disadvantage, they did something...unusual. They sent a strike force to eliminate the massive Terran Alliance economic starbase.
This analysis was due to the new MCore AI algorithms (i.e. option to make use of more CPU in order to do more advanced strategies). On my dualcore CPU, it added no time at all since it all happened in a thread.
Their strike was devastating. The Terran Alliance economy was hit hard enough to be back almost even with the Drengin Empire's despite having the extra planet. The Terran struck hard at the base Drengin planet and in a massive battle that involved dozens of ships, the humans prevailed.
The Drengin commander, Azurelas, asked for a cease-fire.
It was a race now. With the economic starbase wiped out, the Terran economy was broken. Could the Terran Alliance win the day with the ships they had at hand. It was time for another human gamble.
Andersona I went down.
It was all but over for the Drengin Empire now. As certain as Terran victory was, the closeness of it was not known until later. The Mark 9 Drengin ships were ridiculously powerful.
The Mark 9 Drengin defenders had 12 attack, 4 defense.
The Drengin base world was taken by the Terran Alliance.
Terran Victory was at hand. A close battle but a decisive victory for the humans.
This is where they went wrong. The Drengin Empire taxed its citizens too aggressively early on which slowed their population growth and in fact wrecked it. They effectively handed the Terran Alliance a full year of free development that the Drengin could never recover.
The AI has been modified based on this.
It was a lot closer than it should have been, however. Because of the new CPU option being used that's in the Dark Avatar expansion, the AI was able to formulate much more sophisticated strategies, design better ships sooner that were more optimized and take on more complex tactical strategies.
The Drengin Empire continued to make mistakes that it will need to evaluate for the future. While it normally escorted its transports, it still did not effectively keep them from being destroyed when outgunned. This is something that, given enough analysis time it should be able to avoid causing the humans to have to hunt transports rather than shoot them in a barrel.
The Terran Alliance continue to grow as a major power in the galaxy despite their relative inexperience. The Korath high command within the Drengin Empire have begun to make preparations to deal with them...
The user manual for Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar is in Beta 2B.
It's a PDF that you get to by pressing the "manual" button.
It's a LOT longer than the original Dread Lords manual (and it'll probably end up costing around $100k more in manufacturing when it's all said and done -- that's why manuals aren't usually this big).
The manual right now is messed up in the sense that it's the pre-print version. We'll be updating it with a "normal" PDF. But I thought beta testers might get a kick out of seeing what a pre-print manual looks like and get a sneak peek at the backstory elements that were added including how population really works and why the star map is presented the way it is.
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!
via email...
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some of the U.S. statistics for the Year 1906 :
************************************
The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
A three-minute call from Denver to New York City
cost eleven dollars.
There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S., and only 144 miles
of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more
heavily populated than California.
With a mere 1.4 million people, California was only the 21st
most populous state in the Union.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents per hour.
The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year .
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at HOME .
Ninety percent of all U.S. doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which
were condemned in the press AND the government as "substandard."
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used
borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from
entering into their country for any reason.
Five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars.
Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and
Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet.
The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!!!!
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea
hadn't been invented yet.
There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
Two out of every 10 U.S. adults couldn't read or write.
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Eighteen percent of households in the U.S. had at least
one full-time servant or domestic help.
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE ! U.S.A. !
Now I forwarded this from someone else without typing
it myself, and sent it to you and others all over the United States,
possibly the world, in a matter of seconds!
Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years
WinCustomize.com is a website owned by Stardock. It was founded back in 2001 when the dot-com collapse took out most of the skin sites. Stardock wanted to ensure that there was a stable home for people who wanted to create cool stuff to enhanced their Windows experience.
While 2006 was Stardock's best year from a traditional success point of view (doubled in size, more than doubled in revenue, helped produce stuff for Microsoft on Windows Vista, building partnerships with OEMs, and the game's division made one of the top PC games of last year), I believe Stardock failed the skinning community. It failed it utterly.
This is going to be long but I will try to identify the areas where Stardock blew it and what I think it needs to "make good".
As bad as the documentation for making cool stuff for Stardock's apps appears, it's actually far far worse. And if you think it's really really bad, trust me, it's even worse than that. It's not that we don't try. The problem is usually the only people who are good enough to make the documentation are the actual development teams who tend not to be very good at writing documentation. Ever looked at the actual text inside a WindowBlinds .UIS file?
Part of the problem stems from what Stardock really is as compared to "normal" companies. We're a bunch of software developers. Historically, almost pure coders. Until 2002, Stardock had one artist in the entire company and he was assigned to do our games. In 2003, we brought in a second artist (also to work on games). That's insane. But it didn't seem so. Not to us anyway.
We've always been a tech company. We created technology for the sake of creating technology. The fancy term for that these days are "thought leaders". That is, we think of stuff before other and try to crank it out. Those familiar with the misadventures of "TextBanners.net" may recall that we came up with text ads first. Yay. Neat technology but of course, Google owns that. We came up with full GUI skinning. First on OS/2 back in the early 90s and then on Windows. And we even had user-created mini applications created via JavaScript back in 2000 (DesktopX). But so what?
Without good documentation, tutorials, step by step guides, what is the point? With WindowBlinds, we got lucky. So compelling was that program that users were willing to figure out the arcane format. How arcane? This is from a WindowBlinds skin:
[Personality]
TextShiftNoIcon=-2
TextRightClipNoIcon=84
UsesTran=1
BUTTONCOUNT=26
TextAlignment=0
TextShift=-2
TextShiftVert=-3
TextRightClip=89
TextOnBottom=0
Menubar=YellowTab\YellowTabMainMenuBarImage.bmp
Top=YellowTab\YellowTabWindowFrameTopUis2.bmp
Left=YellowTab\YellowTabWindowFrameLeftUis2.bmp
Right=YellowTab\YellowTabWindowFrameRightUis2.bmp
Bottom=YellowTab\YellowTabWindowFrameBottomUis2.bmp
TopTopHeight=23
TopBotHeight=48
LeftTopHeight=37
LeftBotHeight=9
RightTopHeight=26
RightBotHeight=9
BottomTopHeight=2
BottomBotHeight=2
This isn't a joke. That's what the WindowBlinds "language" looks like underneath SkinStudio. My favorite is the BottomTopHeight line. But like I said, it was compelling enough that people were willing to reverse-engineer it to make cool stuff.
Our documentation elsewhere has been much more lacking. We put out documentation but it's pretty awful. Probably the best documentation we have is for DesktopX. And it's not anything I'd consider competitive in quality to Yahoo Widgets's 308 page developer manual. In fact, compare the DesktopX page to the Yahoo Widgets page.
The problem at Stardock is myopia. I'm not a politically correct type of guy as many of you know but I say without ego being involved that DesktopX is far far superior to Yahoo Widgets or any of the other platforms from a technological point of view. In capability (on Windows) is a complete superset and then some. As technologists, we simply assumed that was enough. Build a better mousetrap, etc. But people won't use the "Better" mousetrap if it requires a PhD. to manufacture.
Let me ask you this -- Where is a modern WindowBlinds tutorial? Let's say I want to create a WindowBlinds 5 skin. How do I do it? Where's the nice friendly example that walks me through it? Heck, the user guide that's on WindowBlinds.net is awful and the only reason it's not worse is that I went and edited what was originally put up there (complete with Times Roman font and MS Word artifacts).
In the beginning, when Stardock was smaller and the community smaller, much of these problems could be masked because me or one of the other developers at Stardock could personally answer questions on a forum. But as Stardock has grown and we've gotten a lot busier, these glaring holes in our documentation became critical. The WindowBlinds skinning guide that is on the page is from 2002. I kid you not. FOUR YEARS AGO! The only thing that saves WindowBlinds skinning remotely is that SkinStudio, while not an easy to use application, is pretty decent. But it's not enough and the learning curve has only gotten worse.
You'd think the terrible documentation situation would be enough to cover the lack of support for skinners. But no, it's worse than that. Even setting aside the documentation, lack of organized tutorials, lack of step-by-step guides, etc. there's the fact that Stardock should have someone who is dedicated to doing nothing else but helping people become skinners.
Think about it. Stardock benefits from people making skins and themes right? Shouldn't it have a dedicated [email protected] type email address? It doesn't. Why not? We should. Heck, we wouldn't even need a full-time person. Just someone to help point people to tutorials (that presumably would exist), answer questions, give advice, etc.
Instead, we leave people to the tender mercies of the forums (which I'll get to next).
Stardock doesn't even put out hardly any good example content any more (that it doesn't charge for! 
) for people to learn from. Stardock released one ObjectBar theme into the ObjectBar 2 gallery. When was the last time Stardock released some new DesktopX gadgets, themes, etc? How about some new ObjectDock samples? ObjectDock 1.5 supports .dockzips. Do you see any in the gallery? I don't. We released nothing that uses it.
Being good in the community was something we used to be great at. Sure, there were always the perpetual "free beer" people who objected to our existence (i.e. people who didn't like the idea of paying for software but themselves didn't write any software or make skins or anything) but overall, we were much more interactive.
Now, on the plus side, the # of "Frogboy is evil" posts we get in various places has declined. But I think, as a community, we were better off with some of that when Stardock people were more interactive. And, more importantly, setting an example.
The WinCustomize forums largely disgust me. Sorry but it needs to be said. WinCustomize's forums wreak of elitism and intolerance. Why are the forums not as busy as a site that gets millions of visitor should be? Because people come on, ask a question, make a mild criticism and then get creamed by old guard people who wish "newbies" would go away. One of the reasons why we really got behind WinCustomize.com in a big way after it was launched was because we were so pissed off at some of the elitism we saw elsewhere (I'm sure some of you know what I'm talking about). But while many of us old guys have been busy coding new stuff, the forums have become an increasingly hostile place.
And when they're not hostile, they're sterile and impersonal. I'd as much hang out on the WC forums as I'd hang out on the forums for my TV manufacturer. Only because of the wondrous loyalty of many good-hearted folks are our forums even remotely capable of being rehabilitated.
Moreover, Stardock should have a community manager. Could even be the same guy who's helping skinners. Someone who's helping out on other sites. WinCustomize isn't the only skin site. What about SkinBase? They deserve more support from Stardock than they get. Or tons of newer customization community sites too that I'm not even hanging out on.
Again, in the old days, Stardock's lack of infrastructure was masked. I would get an email from someone ([email protected]) and quickly answer it. But now, I get thousands of email a day. Hundreds of which request a response. As a result, I don't even see much of the email I get. Realistically, I should ask someone to look through my email every day and flag anything that needs urgent attention.
We should be better at setting an example for how things should be done. Stardock people should be in the forums. Stardock people should be making skins and releasing them. Should be making tutorials. Should be writing documentation. Should be answering questions. Should be commenting on skins. Should be hosting IRC chats. Should be making video demos. And so on and so on. But we're not.
And so things tend to go to whomever is the loudest or has the deepest pockets. I mean do skinners really envision a gadget future in which they're mucking with DHTML and Javascript to create a fixed size gadget for the Windows Vista Sidebar? Does that sound cool? But what's the alternative? Making a PNG file that's tied up with some Javascript for a different multi-billion dollar company?
I've seen people on-line refer to us as "Those wizards at Stardock will think of something cool..." Which is a very high complement. But if we want to be the thought leaders then we better bloody get back to leading on stuff.
Because I don't know about you guys but if my "skinning" options are either making another glass skin for the OS, making a weather gadget/widget for whatever or sitting it out, then forget it.
It's easy for me to sit here and rip Stardock a new one. It's my company after all. Talk is cheap. What is Stardock going to actually do about this? And by do I mean realistically. Because if you read through my litany of complaints, the "solution" seems obvious -- in a perfect world. But it's not a perfect world. We live in a world where I can't even hire a decent QA (Quality Assurance) person. We get people in for interviews who haven't even been to our webpage (first rule of thumb when interviewing for a job -- know something about the product or service that you are interested in being involved with).
Here are the things I think Stardock must do in 2007:
Updating documentation is an obvious thing that needs to be done. But it needs to go beyond that. Stardock needs to develop visually easy to understand tutorials that walk a user through how to create something.
It also needs to update its software (particularly SkinStudio) in such a way to make it easier to create skins. More specifically, there should be beginner, intermediate, and advanced ways to create stuff both from a tools point of view and a tutorial/documentation point of view.
It should be consistent across the board. Everywhere on all Stardock's products there should be guides focused on beginners, intermediate, and advanced users.
Stardock should create an off-shoot of the next WinCustomize.com (like skinners.wincustomize.com) that is dedicated purely to learning the art of skinning. Everything should show up there and it should be reasonably well organized.
Moreover, Stardock should have a person who is officially responsible for helping people get into this. Have a question on how to create an alpha blended title bar for WindowBlinds? Need help creating an animated wallpaper (well, not yet but soon...), How do I make a new boot screen for Windows Vista? How do I make a docklet for ObjectDock? And so on.
Part of this also comes in the form of trying to support other people's standards. For example, DesktopX 3.5 will export content to the Windows Sidebar. So people who don't think it particularly joyful to muck around with DHTML and Javascript can instead use a proven environment with updated documentation and tutorials to create new stuff.
But more to the point, someone at Stardock should always be on-hand to help out on this. It should be someone specific too. Not a "skinner support department" but literally someone who is part of the community that works at Stardock that you know and feel you can talk to individually.
This is like the above example but it has more to do with non-skinners. Stardock needs to be more involved on a day to day basis in the community. That means hanging out on forums. I recognize that the days of me participating in some lengthy discussion on Neowin.net or deviantART or Customize.org are long gone. There's just not the time anymore. But someone needs to be doing it.
We're working on that already. IslandDog is working on this already and I imagine you'll be seeing him in a lot of other areas as we develop this new strategy.
But there's going to be some pain on WinCustomize 2007. We're going to bring down the hammer on elitism. Any user who comes across as a bully or "anti-newbie" won't be welcome. WinCustomize.com's forums should be thought of as a lounge to hang out with friends. The forums will be modified to support a more "community" like atmosphere.
People email me and I just don't see the emails -- literally. One user on a blog said that "Stardock's success has gone to Brad's head". My egomania aside, the reason I don't answer emails isn't that I don't care about folks anymore but rather a simple matter of logistics. Heck, I missed Microsoft's invitation to go to CES (luckily I found out via other channels). I just don't see the emails. Most of my time is spent doing other things. I'm actually better known in the game industry these days than in the skinning world.
But it is still the company's responsibility to replace my presence with someone else's. Otherwise, Stardock might as well just be yet another Internet business out there to squeeze money from people. People who know us know that we're in this because it's fun to do. But to a newcomer, if we don't behave any differently than any other "business" why should we expect to be seen as any different?
So we absolutely have to rectify that in a big way.
Picture this: The year is 2001. DesktopX objects are starting to become popular. WindowBlinds vs. msstyles have heated up. And the sky seems unlimited in terms of new cool stuff from not just Stardock but shareware and freeware people from around the world. Great eh?
But then the ghost of Christmas future shows up and tells you that by the end of 2006 that widgets have become various ways to skin clocks, weather readers and RSS feeds (there's nothing wrong with that but then a specialized app could/should have been made for those 3 things that is MUCH easier to create skins for and that skins could be shared). And Hoverdesk and Litestep were either dead or on life support and that the ObjectBar 2 gallery had one theme in it. Who would have believed it?
Without leadership, you have inertia.
I wrote recently how the most damaging thing to skinning has been the length of time it took Microsoft to do Windows Vista. This is true. That is, one can legitimately argue that the skinning community shouldn't expect Stardock to come up with all the new stuff. But on the other hand, if Stardock wants to be perceived as a "leader" in this growing trend, it needs to do stuff.
That means:
To do these things, we are trying to build up the manpower to do this. It has been slow going though. The problems described in this article are things we've seen and been aware of. But solving them means bringing on talented people to help us. And that has been a real challenge. We want to hire people. But the # of people who can really do the job is amazingly small.
So there you have it. How Stardock failed the skinning community in 2006. I hope I do not have to write something similar next year. The pieces are starting to come together now. But we have a lot of work ahead of ourselves.
It mostly boils down to too much work for too few people. We've got projects going on with major PC OEMs, Microsoft, Take 2, and beyond which, for a company of around 50 people total is just immense. Especially when the ones who have traditionally "done" the stuff that made Stardock what it is today are now stretched between so many things. But that's our problem and it is something we have to resolve.
I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, criticism you have to offer. There's a LOT to look forward to next year. And this year has been a great year. But it was definitely not a shining beacon for Stardock's support of the skinning community. We'll do better.
We have a big deficit and some people think the only way to reduce it is to raise taxes.
The linked website below lets you play emperor with the budget. If given total power over the budget, could you reduce the deficit?
It's been a busy year for the so-called "Religion of Peace". It started with violent protests and attacks on Danish embassies over the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohamed and ended with 6 Imams crying foul for getting kicked off a plane after behaving in ways that would have gotten anyone else booted. And in betwee, a big fat sandwich of violence.
Islam, the violence-inducing ideology masqerading as a religion, managed to keep itself in the headlines with its followers publicly, loudy, and regularly demanding death to those who "insult" Islam. And from the same religion that produces people who behead people on a regular basis, accuse Jews of drinking the blood of innocents, behead Christian girls for trophies, or pee on a Christian bible, their threshold of what constitutes an insult is amazingly low.
Muslims come in every size, color and creed but no matter where you go, where there's Islam, there's violence. As polls show alarming percentages of British Muslims supported the subway attacks in Britain to the seemingly constant riots of Muslims in France, even when in relatively small minority, for whatever reason, the Muslim population seems much more prone to violence.
Blogger Michelle Malkin has a year in review that helps the casual reader get caught up on the busy schedule of this year's Jihadists. Click below to see.
If you have a Geforce 7950 in SLI mode and experience a lockup in GalCiv II, turn ON the hardware mouse cursor.
We are working with nVidia to figure out the cause.