GameSpy has an in-depth look at Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar.  The expansion pack is due out this February but an open beta will be starting up next month in which all users who have pre-ordered the game can take part.

The expansion pack is being set up as not quite a sequel but a lot more than your typical expansion pack.  Check out their preview for more details.

GameSpot has a new preview along with some brand new screenshots of the upcoming expansion pack to Galactic Civilizations II. It includes a screenshot of one of the new features we've expanded the expansion pack too.

More to come!

Sins of a Solar Empire is a game conceived and developed by Ironclad Games. Ironclad is a game development studio located Vancouver Canada.

Stardock Entertainment is the publisher. It is most recently known for developing and publishing Galactic Civilizations II.

So how did we meet? What's the story?  Ironclad has an incredibly cool game in development. I've spent a lot of time playing it -- more time than I really should but that's another story!   There will be a lot of analogies used to try to explain what it's like but to me, it reminds me of what Total Annihilation might have been like in space but with a lot of diplomatic and economic features as well.

It's technically a "real time" strategy game but unlike most RTS's, this one really isn't about who can click around on things the most. It plays a lot like a traditional 4X game where the winner is not the guy who is the best mouse jockey but the player that can develop the best overall strategy.

Anyway, how did we meet? Ironclad was looking for someone to publish their game.  Someone who could publish their game at retail as well as digitally.  Galactic Civilizations II has already sold a couple hundred thousand copies worldwide in only 8 months -- most of those copies sold at your local retailer.  Because of Stardock's experience in marketing, advertising, and publishing space strategy games, we and Ironclad were a perfect fit.

With our combined talents, we hope to deliver a game that will really stand the test of time as a truly unique gaming experience.  Stay tuned!

Welcome to the Sins of a Solar Empire forum.  For fans from the previous incarnation of the forums, we apologize for the inconvenience of having to create a new account.  For users who have been on any other Stardock.net site (or JoeUser.com, WinCustomize.com, VistaBlogging.com, GalCiv2.com, etc.) your UserID and PW will work here.

For fans of Galactic Civilizations who are seeing this for the first time, you're in for a real treat.  Both Stardock and Ironclad team members will be hanging out here to help answer questions, listen to your suggestions, and generally just have a good time hanging out.

Have fun!

Stardock Entertainment, the creators of Galactic Civilizations, and Ironclad Games which includes developers from Homeworld: Cataclysm, have teamed up to bring you an epic real-time, multiplayer, space strategy game that combines much of the epic scale of a traditional 4X strategy title with the real-time 3D experience found in releases such as Homeworld, Total Annihilation, and other such games.

Over the coming months, this site will expand to give you the full story behind this epic new franchise.  A public beta for Sins is expected this January that anyone who pre-orders the game will be able to participate in.  With your help, we hope to put together a space strategy game that players can enjoy for years to come.

On behalf of Stardock Entertainment, the publisher, and Ironclad Games, the developer, I would like to welcome you to the Sins of a Solar Empire website.

We have decided to expand the expansion pack! What does that mean? We're adding a lot of major new features to it. It won't quite be a sequel but it will certainly be a lot more than your average expansion pack.

As you guys gave us suggestions and new ideas we realized that we didn't want to have to wait until some future sequel to add in those features.  So we're going to push the release date of the expansion pack to around the 1-year anniversary of the release of Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords. But for players who want to start playing it before Christmas, we're going to have a public beta program that anyone who pre-orders the expansion pack will be option to download and play.

Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar, was originally designed to add new units, new maps, a new story-based campaign, user-created civilization opponents, an epic generator, espionage agents, asteroid fields, new treaties, unique planet environments, and much more.  However, after going through the list of suggested features Stardock decided to expand on the already impressive feature set.

New features beyond the original concept now include a stream-lined technology tree, Mega Events, super-abilities that are unique to each civilization, a visual make-over, more advanced opponent design features, and a lot more.  We hope you like the results!

The war may be over, but the conquest has just begun...

More information can be found at https://www.galciv2.com/darkavatar.

With Windows Vista nearly here, the inevitable request to Microsoft for it to include built in OS skinning features has begun.

Putting aside the fact that vocal requests for skinning to be part of the OS didn't start up until third-party OS skinning programs started to come out, SHOULD they be part of the OS?

The first question is, how powerful should the skinning be?  Should they basically be resource replacement type skins (i.e. change the graphics to other graphics?). Should said skins allow controls and title bars/border graphics to be replaced (ala Msstyles).  Or should it allow for buttons to be moved, added, borders of independent thickness, animation, etc. (ala WindowBlinds).

Compatibility slides down as you allow for more sophisticated skinning.  One thing most people don't realize is that skinning programs themselves are pretty rock solid at this point.  But the SKINS themselves can cause problems for some people (i.e. slow downs, goofy graphical artificats, etc.). 

So the more power and flexibility you give to users, the more rope you are giving people to hang themselves.

Over here:
http://shellrevealed.com/forums/thread/332.aspx there is a discussion on whether skinning should be in the OS.

The people there are vigorously arguing that it should.  But what precisely is their reason?

From the discussion there it seems to me to be a matter of cost.  That is, a third-party program might be just as good (or better) than what Microsoft would include but they don't want to pay $20.  They unconciously want the millions of users who could care less about a feature to pay for the development and support.

There are 4 basic reasons I don't think such a feature should be part of the OS:

#1 Support.  Buggy skins cause problems. We've seen that. Msstyles, which are pretty mild in skinning power, do cause problems. Most people don't even realize that the app that hung randomly or just disappeared did so because one of the graphical resources in the .msstyles they were using messed up a given program.  WindowBlinds is no different in that regard. A badly made skin can cause compatibility problems.  But as long as it's not part of the OS, Microsoft doesn't have to deal with the support from that.

#2 Branding.  Microsoft is trying to have the Windows Vista experience be a specific brand. A specific look and feel. Putting skinning into the OS weakens that brand. Every Linux distribution could start including an Aero look and Microsoft's trade dress would be likely too weak to prevent that.

#3 ISVs.  In the short-term many into skinning people would think it great if skinning were part of the OS. But in the long term, it would be to their detriment.  It would eliminate the commercial market for skin engines.  Now maybe you're thinkig "Good! Those scummy corporate bastards should get real jobs."  Maybe that's even true. 

But once they're gone, they're gone.  At this stage in the game, it would be immensely difficult to pick up and create a new skinning engine from scratch. Note that zero third-party skinning programs were created in the past several years. None. WindowBlinds pre-dated Windows XP and so it was able to continue to evolve.  Other programs, Style XP and what not are just patching uxtheme.dll to use Microsoft's msstyles engine.

The net effect is that from that point forward, users would be dependent on whatever scraps Microsoft chose to throw to the skinning community. 

Stardock would be just fine in either case, it doesn't need the skinning market to thrive, it has lots of software.  So some user thinking that my argument here is based on commercial viability need a reality check.  The skinning market isn't THAT big. Enterprise software, PC games, are much more lucrative.

But you take away the ISV alternatives and you're left with whatever charity Microsoft is willing to hand out.  And once those ISV alternatives are dead, they ain't coming back. The skinning market is simply not big enough to justify the effort to create something from scratch at this point (it's worth mentioning that it took 8 years from the release of Windows to even start getting third-party programs and they were slow and buggy for their first couple years).

#4 ROI.  Return On Investment.  How many people would actually use such a feature? .05%? .1%?  Sure, in absolute numbers that's still hundreds of thousands of people.   But the cost in developing and supporting that feature would in effect mean that the 99.x% of users are forced to subsidize a feature that only a small group wants. 

And that small group can already get skinning -- from third parties. So it almost screams out "I want other people to pay for my hobby".

Not that I think there is something wrong with people requesting features to be part of the OS.  If someone wants a feature, they should ask for it.  I only start to object when people try to pass their desire for something for free as somehow being a principled stand when it's really just wanting to avoid having to pay for something or being inconvenienced by having to load up a third party program.

Before someone reads this and says "But third party programs add bloat" -- uxtheme.dll and WindowBlinds use trivial amounts of memory.  The VDM in Windows Vista uses typically 70 or more MEGABYTES of memory and it's primary purpose in Vista right now is for Aero glass.

The GUI Championships allows users to vote for their 3 choices for best of a particular event. The finalists of each event are then presented to the judges who make the final judgment.

The wallpaper events have begun and we need you to go and vote NOW. Your WinCustomize.com account info will work on GUIChamps.com.

GO NOW PLEASE!

I don't like negative reviews of things I make. And no matter how far into the fetal position they put me, there's really nothing that can be done except hope that your product or service is good enough that, on the balance, users and reviewers will respond favorably.

The reviews on Galactic Civilizations II have been very positive overall. But we also got our share of reviews that I either wasn't happy with or felt were unfair.  But what can one really do?  In my case, if I felt a review was unfair and was able to document specific examples in the review or put together some other coherent argument as to why the revie was unfair, I'd contact the review site/magazine/whatever.

But one thing that must be done with great care -- don't attack the integrity of the reviewer or magazine publicly, because that's a lose-lose situation.

The average GalCiv II review was roughly a 4.5 out of 5.  But at the outter edges there were two reviews that were under 3.5 out of 5.  Conspiracy? No.  Were they fair reviews? Impossible to say.

Recently there was a hub-bub between the company that makes Sword of the Stars and Tom Chick.  Back in 2005, Tom was contracted for a lump sum to help write the Galactic Civilizations II manual since Tom had spent the last 4,000 years ribbing me for how craptacular our user manuals were.  Roughly a year later, Chick, as one of the best known reviewers in the industry, gave a negative review to Sword of the Stars. Kerebos, the game's developer felt there was a conflict of interest.

Maybe I'm jaded but I just don't see it.  That would be like me saying that because we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with PC Gamer (or CGW or whatever) in advertising that PC Gamer that they should knock down similar games.

From a purely business point of view, games don't compete in the sense they do in other markets. That is, a person who likes GalCiv II is likely to give Sword of the Stars or Space Empires V a serious look at. Buying GalCiv doesn't preclude a purchase of other games that are in the same remotely similar genre. 

More to the point - when it's time to put a product on retail, the # of units they'll take is largely defined by how well other games that are similar did. 

Ever sell a house? It's a lot like that.  You WANT your neighbors who sell their houses to get as much money as possible because that sets up how much you are likely to make selling yours.  If other houses do poorly on the market, it affects you. 

It's not commonly known but one of the beta testers for Galactic Civilizations II was Soren Johnson (designer of Civilization IV).  Some of the features GalCiv II has in common with Civ IV came form Soren's suggestions.  The point being, game developers usually see themselves on the same team. We want Civ IV to succeed and they wanted GalCiv II to succeed.  Similarly, we want Sword of the Stars to succeed and we want Space Empires V to succeed.

So while it is frustrating when your baby gets a negative review, it's never a good idea to impugne the character or reputation of the person doing the review.  I've written my share of frustrated emails but they've always focused on either the review or that the reviewer's perspective came across as someone who just doesn't normally like the type of game they were reviewing (i.e. a first person shooter guy getting assigned to write a 4X strategy game and saying it's "boring" and giving it a low score).

Sometimes it may not seem this way but we developers are on the same side.  We want other games to succeed.  Moreover, the best known reviewers may not always agree with us on our games but they do have a high degree of integrity in my experience.

As a developer, it's really awesome to see how people can take ones game engine and use it to make some really interesting stuff.

Some GalCiv II players have gotten together and made a Babylon 5 total conversion.  There's mods for lots of other genres.  Obviously these are not officially sanctioned or supported but for people not afraid of modding, heck out the game play example a player made.