Over at CivFanatics.com we had a contest for players to submit their own characters to be integrated into Dark Avatar.
The response was excellent. In fact, they were beyond excellent which brings us to the couple day delay and narrowing down the winners.
Because there were so many good entries, we're going to expand the prizes beyond what we had originally said so that there will be more people receiving prizes.
Also, because some of the ideas are so good and interesting, I'm seeing how much of the story can be altered and adding some new specific features in order to put them in.
Some of the concepts submitted are so interesting that they've inspired some new features to be added to the expansion pack.
So anyway, we're working on it. Should be today or by end of day Friday at the latest.
In the course of Stardock becoming a publisher we've learned a lot about the industry. Here's the dirty little secret -- game publishing is a business. A mature business. One whose models are well understood.
If I make game Wizbang 1, I can't realistically release Wizbang 2 for at least 36 months.
So what you get is this formula (and after reading this, take a look out there at other games).
WizBang 1 released.
IF WizBang 1 is BUGGY THEN release WizBang Complete 6 months later.
ELSE if WizBang 1 is a success release 9 months later WizBang: Expansion Pack which adds NEW content and a token new feature at $29.95.
THEN IF WizBang 1 wins any game of the year edition, create WizBang: Game of the Year Edition which incorporates (maybe) the Expansion Pack.
ELSE if WizBang 1 doesn't win game of the year edition, create WizBang: GOLD EDITION which does the same thing.
Here's my problem: I don't want to wait until 2009 or later to put in a bunch of features that users have come up with. I want them NOW or at least really soon.
In the upcoming expansion pack to Galactic Civilizations II (Dark Avatar) we have a pretty ambitious feature set there. But what if there's more we want to add to that? Users post some really interesting stuff. But it's too early for a sequel but at a certain point, you are way beyond an expansion pack.
Heck, a normal expansion pack for GalCiv II would be new ship components + new scenarios + new maps + new campaign + some cool new feature. That's how it's supposed to be done. It's not about whether that's a good thing or not, that's simply what the market has determined is the optimal business strategy for expansion packs. You can go back 6 years and see the same thing.
My other issue with a system like that is the cost to new buyers. For people who have WizBang 1, a $30 expansion pack isn't a big deal. But what about the new buyer? Paying $40 to $50 PLUS $30 is now a major purchase.
I'd like to see soething like WizBang: Half-Away to Sequel for $40 to $50 and then for people who bought the game the $30 expansion. That way, you can get new people into it and still provide a discounted upgrade path to the half-way sequel version.
I think it's not just better for gamers but it's also better for the game companies as well. So why don't they do it? The answer: Retail. Few games can put both on the shelves at the same time. It is confusing to consumers. It doubles shelf space. Since most publishers are completely reliant on retail for their income, we end up with the result: Expansion packs and "Game of the Year" editions.
And I don't want to knock that system. It's not a bad system. But in the case of Galactic Civilizations II, I am really anxious to keep going. It's done so well. It's done so vastly better than our wildest estimates and it's still doing well. Very Very well. And there's no end of fans with interesting ideas.
AND we realize that we can't do a sequel. But why can't we do something that really takes GalCiv II up a notch and then sell the upgrade to existing users as an expansion pack while having the retail version be the compilation all at the same time?
Most publishers couldn't. But thankfully we have something most publishers don't have -- TotalGaming.net. We have the proven capability of selling large volumes of games digitally. And because we opted to NOT have CD copy protection but instead provide a simple serial #, we have the capabilty of being able to tell who currently has the game.
What that means is this: We could potentially have a stand-alone retail game that is a quasi-sequel AND provide a digital (or at least direct boxed version) upgrade path in the form of the expansion pack to users.
The net result is that existing players could look forward to an expansion that has even MORE features than what had been promised without having to pay a cent more than the original expansion pack price AND new players wouldn't have to spend $70+ to join the fun.
I've seen some articles on the net usually from writers on the left-side of the political spectrum argue about how the average American isn't doing any better than they were 30 or so years ago.
According to the consumer price index (CPI), the median household income is only 4% higher today. I've seen people try to make the case that our generation is the first generation that isn't going to be living better than their parent's generation.
So let's be real clear about that statement -- would you prefer to live today with what you've got or would you prefer to live in 1976? How about if your salary, adjusted for inflation, was increased by 10%? 20%? 30%?
For thousands of years, one generation did live pretty much the same as the next generation. That was the reality of most of human history. But common sense tells us that that isn't the case anymore. That each new generation is living far better than the previous. FARRR better.
Going back 30 years means no cable TV, no Internet, no personal computers, no DVDs, no air conditioning (for the average person), dirty air, probably dirty water (Michigan's great lakes were horrible -- Lake Erie caught on fire!), crappy food choices, expensive toys, expensive bikes (my bike cost LESS than my bike when I was a kid without even adjusting for inflation), no cell phones, expensive plane travel, no video games, etc...etc...
And the average American today makes use of all the things I just listed. So clearly, the average American is living better than they were 30 years ago. Not just a little better but a lot better. How much would they have to pay you to go back and live back then? I don't think there's any amount of money that could make me go back then.
Something to think about next time some politician tries to claim that "real wages" haven't increased and that our standard of living is declining.
There's a lot left to do in Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar. But most of the core new features are implemented, they're just buggy. VERY buggy. And there's little AI yet to take advantage of it and there's a lot of polish missing and UI crumminess and tons of other things.
Today I worked on some of the mega events. Coding a mega-event = Easy. Testing a mega event = Hard. They're a pain to make them balanced and feel right.
Take for example the Dread Lords event. In Dark Avatar, the Dread Lords might show up as a major civilization. Nice. But how tough should they be? How tough should they REALLY be? Well you don't want them just wiping everyone out and be game ruiners. But you want them to be challenging. Which means that you'll have 20% of people on the forums screaming that the Dread Lords are "broken" because they wipe everyone out, 20% of people saying the Dread Lords are a joke, and the rest thinking they work fine. That's how it always is. You also have the inevitable crash bugs. There's quite a few of them right now and we're cleaning them up. Big pain.
See our bugs:
What are those blue dots around my ship? I dunno.
Why aren't my agents nullifying their production? Dunno.
Missing symetry in that hard point.
Why is my civilization one of the listed opponents?
We also have a lot of graphics to get in. I have to implement the rest of the Mega events. There are quite a few and some of them will require more graphics than are currently present. The new soundtrack is really nice and the new intro video is probably going to be a lot better than the original.
I can say this, even at this rough stage, Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar is a much funner game for me. Three things that make an immediate difference - the spies, the asteroids and the special planets. Not being able to colonize half the worlds until you get advanced technology - VERY big change to how the game is played. Having agents to wack your opponents with keeps players from getting too powerful without having to actually go to war with them. And asteroid fields give players a LOT more control over their economy based on THEIR strategy as opposed to randomly placed good/bad planets because players can direct where the resources from asteroids go to (with diminishing returns as they get further away).
People I think are really going to like the streamlining of the economy. The numbers for everything will be much smaller. Much easier to deal with and more intuitive to work with.
So while the internal alpha is pretty buggy, it's already pretty fun (the mega events are pretty fun too -- mega events are different from the random events in that they are more intelligent in who they effect and why). For example, a plague event that starts killing off the population requires players to research a tech to stop it. It's an expensive tech. Do you research it yourself or trade someone for it when they get it? If you research it yourself, you can trade it to others and get a ton of stuff. And that's just one of many mega events that we have in. Almost all of them change the gameplay in some way but not by imbalancing it but by adding a new gameplay element.
As some may know, the upcoming expansion pack, Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar is only going to be available via TotalGaming.net (i.e. on galciv2.com).
People will be able to purchase it and download it or purchase it and download it while waiting for the boxed unit to arrive. But it won't be available at stores.
So the question is, how much will this affect sales? Some percentage of people won't buy on-line for various reasons. Which means no one knows how well an on-line only release will do. Let us know what you think and check out the poll.
As for last week's poll which asked how players like the new version of Galactic Civilizations II, 84% said they are happy with it. 9% Said they are happy with it but liked 1.2 better. 3% said they don't like it. 4% said they were having technical problems of some kind with it.
In the sandbox mode of the game, the alignments in DA will be:
Good:
Altarian Resistance
Torian Confederation
Iconian Refuge
The Krynn
Neutral:
Terran Alliance
Arcean Empire
The Thalan
Drath Remnants
Evil:
Drengin Empire
Korath Empire
The Yor
The Korx
For the first time since the original Galactic Civilizations, good, evil, and neutral will be balanced.
Now you can get the complete Galactic Civilizations I saga for only $29.95. This includes the original game, Altarian Prophecy and all the updates in-between.
If you've ever wanted to play the game that started it all at a reduced cost, now's your chance. You can buy and immediately download it OR you can have a box sent to you (and still download it while you wait). 
"Hey Bill."
"It's Brad."
"Yea, whatever. Hey, how you doing?"
"Actually, my back has..."
"That's great, here let me introduce you to Susan, this is Bill."
"Brad."
"Whatever."
In the software world, we always make fun of ourselves by calling it "Starduck". "Yea, those StarDuck guys are making that need Window blind thing."
Who would have ever thought that the Vista install would make it official...
Good old WindowBlind. While the spelling being wrong is annoying, it's more annoying that this was on the WindowBlinds Vista build. The compatibility check on it is just looking at the most generic info. This is on a release candidate so it can still be fixed. But I tell ya, OUCH.
We have added an ObjectBar 2 gallery. While many ObjectBar 1 themes will work with ObjectBar 2, the number of underlying changes in ObjectBar 2 make compatibility somewhat iffy.
So we've created an ObjectBar 2 gallery where you can upload ObjectBar 2 skins and well as themes. What's the difference?
A theme is the actual collection of bars on the screen. A Start bar, a Sidebar, whatever would be an example of a theme. The bars in those themes can be skinned.
Similarly, we have added a RightClick section. RightClick skins are compatible with ObjectBar skins (or more precisely, RightClick can be seen as a sub-set of ObjectBar in terms of functionality).
Making ObjectBar skins is quite easy to do. Documentation is here. Have fun!