I blew most of my writing wad writing this article on Windows Vista today.

Yesterday I did a lengthy audio interview with Apolyton.net. We touched on what features we had to cut out of the game that we wanted to have in there.

Two of the features I wanted in were asteroid fields and dedicated legions of troops.  The dedicated legions of troops involved having to raise armies. In this way, your planets would be populated by different aliens and that their approval and productivity would be based on different races and how you were getting along with any major civilization led by that race.  There was a bit involved in it but I would have enjoyed seeing scenarios where players might be governing a planet full of Drengin or wanting to populate a planet with Yor because they were more productive or moving Torians around because they had a higher population growth.

But like many features, it boils down to balancing and making sure the computer players can make use of those features. It's something that comes up time and time again -- features are easy, putting together AI that effectively uses it is hard.

As I joked on the podcast (Which we'll announce when it's public), every critic who posts always starts out with "I've been a programmer for 20 years.." and then launches in to how easy such and such would be to code.  Look at how obnoxious it's proven to get the AI to build improvements on its planet effectively. You'd think that would be trivial to get right. I know I thought it would be. And when I play the game, the AI always uses its planets seemingly with perfection. Yet I'll see a screenshot of someone who has gotten a planet where the AI built nothing but entertainment centers or embassies. How the heck did that happen?  Like I said, features are easy, making a smart AI to use those features is not.

That's one of the reasons the asteroid fields weren't put in too.  How do you balance them? How do you get the AI to mine them effectively versus building starbases versus making freighters versus making defenders versus building fighters versus building ships to escort.  And people think tactical battles would be great.  Sure, it would take a few hours to program in tactical battles but a good month or two to get a solid computer AI to use them well (that is, once we added in features to make tactical battles worthwhile in the form of other types of modules such as ranged weapons, battle engines, tractor beams, etc.).

Many of those things are the kind of thing that would possibly be held over for some future sequel. We'll have a better idea based on the sales of the expansion pack. The general line of thinking is that expansion packs do around 20% of the sales of the original game. And that expansion packs are typically half the price of the original game.  So you're talking (at best) 1/10th the revenue of the original game which means 1/10th the budget of the original game.  In our case we are currently planning on making it a digital release (download only) since digital sales of the game have been so strong. But there is also some talk about maybe having it available at a single retailer.  What we don't want to do is have a scenario where a retailer is bumping GalCiv II off the shelves to put up the expansion.  We'll see.

We've put together a pretty in-depth look at where Windows Vista stands as beta 2 is about to be released.

As the article indicates, Windows Vista has awesome potential. But it also has some serious problems that need to be overcome. The question isn't whether Microsoft can solve the problems as much as can it solve the problems in the time for their self-imposed deadline. Read on and share your thoughts...

A Vista of the Leopard

Let me start this article by saying that I think Windows Vista is the most important version of Microsoft Windows since 1995.  If Windows 95 had been a disaster for Microsoft, we might all be running some flavor of IBM's OS/2 today.  Most people take for granted that if you run a PC, you run Microsoft Windows.  But as Windows XP nears its 5th birthday, such assumptions start to be called into question.

Apple's "BootCamp" enables users of Intel-based Macs to boot between Windows XP (or Vista) and MacOS X.  Look carefully at Apple's ads and you will find that they are promoting the hardware quality even more so than the OS.  Who they are targeting is clear -- performance minded PC users who might buy that PowerBook to put Windows XP on. Some percentage of those Windows users are likely to end up as Mac users.

The next version of MacOS X "Leopard" is scheduled to essentially come out at the same time as Windows Vista (roughly beginning of next year for general availability).  Two brand new operating systems (as far as the public is concerned) running on the same kind of hardware. It will be impossible to ignore the comparisons.

However, where Leopard will be the 5th revision of a very modern OS architecture, Windows Vista will be a brand new OS designed to look like previous versions of Windows.  Windows Vista is a major change from Windows XP.  It is not as much of a departure as MacOS X was from OS9, but it is a much bigger change than Windows XP was from say Windows 2000.

This means the level of polish in Windows Vista is going to be crucial.  The slogan for Windows Vista is "Clear, Confident, Connected".  And I must say, Windows Vista has the pieces to make that slogan true.  The question is whether Microsoft can deliver those pieces with the polish, integrity, and reliability that users expect.

When users start to get their hands on Windows Vista Beta 2, they need to remind themselves of these 3 facts:

1. Most users of "Whistler" (the beta of Windows XP) beta 2 (May 2001) were able to use it full-time as their main OS.
2. Windows Vista's RTM is probably around the end of October with a general availability in January 2007 for mortals.
3. A 32-bit PC can address up to 4 gigabytes of memory per process (really 2 gigabytes in practice).

Yes, Microsoft does "get it"

Sometime in 2003 someone with power at Microsoft got fed up with Microsoft getting tagged as making "mediocre" operating systems.  They got sick of Mac zealots and Linux advocates chanting about the ancient architecture and outdated design of Windows.  And they decided that the next version of Windows would truly be state of the art.

Microsoft lists a bunch of features to highlight for Windows Vista.  As far as I'm concerned, there are 4 features of Windows Vista that have the potential to change the world.

1. The Desktop Window Manager (DWM).  Outside techies, you won't hear about this.  But your entire Windows Vista experience runs in 3D now.  Oh, it looks 2D. Your apps and the desktop itself looks similar to Windows XP right? But it's all a 3D surface. It would be like loading up a PC game where the GUI is made to look like Windows XP but you know you're inside a game. 
   
   The reason that's a big deal is because it means all those great features on your video cards can finally be used seamlessly as part of your desktop applications.  In Windows XP, users are usually quite conscious when they're switching to a full screen DirectX application.  Now, the desktop IS a full screen DirectX application. You're always in DirectX now essentially (via Milcore).  I can't even begin to tell you all the goodies Stardock has been cooking up that make use of that. For users, it means a radically improved user experience.
    
2. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). Microsoft will be touting the security of Windows Vista a lot. But a lot of the security going forward will be the result of Microsoft's totally new networking foundation. The network code in Windows XP is, essentially a heavily patched version of what's been in Windows since around the Windows for Workgroup days. 
   
   Remember the early 90s? Nice times? Kumbaya? Before we all realized that there were jerks on the Internet with nothing better to do than to write malicious viruses, malware, DDOS clients, adware, etc?  Microsoft has worked hard on Windows XP to keep patching things.  But Windows Vista represents a new direction, a networking infrastructure built from scratch with today's security issues in mind.
    
3. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). This was called Avalon.  This goes a bit with item #1. But the reason why WPF is important is that it allows software developers to write new programs that make use of the fact that the Windows environment is now essentially a full-screen 3D DirectX application.  Microsoft has a bunch of tools and a whole development infrastructure that had to be built in parallel in order to pull this off.  XAML and other terms will become increasingly mainstream over the next few years as we see developers creating radically better looking, more friendly software.
    
4. Live Anywhere.  Jason Cross has a great article about Live Anywhere. Essentially, one can picture a world in which Microsoft's "points" become the digital currency of choice.  In 5 years, if Microsoft pulls it off (and I think they have a good chance of doing it) people will be able to buy games, software, music, movies, etc. with Microsoft points via Live Anywhere. 
   
   Before anyone gets "big brotherish" about this, there are some real benefits to this -- as Live on the Xbox has proven, it opens the door to independent content providers to be able to make money on the Internet. It dramatically lowers the barrier to entry.  Right now on the PC there are 3 PC game digital retailers of note (4 if you count Gametap).  Direct2Drive, Steam, and TotalGaming.net. Live Anywhere could end up replacing or complementing these services. But games would be just the beginning. Combined with things like Urge and the upcoming demand for HD video content and you have consumer demand for what Live Anywhere could do.

All of this has been put together into an OS that has a much cleaner, better organized,  more polished interface and environment.

Those 4 features have far-reaching consequences if Microsoft pulls them off well.  Each one really deserves a long article on their own to explain their potential.  Any single one of these features would have been justification for a "new" version of Windows.

And yet, Microsoft is not just putting these 4 major things together into Vista (either bundled or as part of its overall move forward), it's including dozens of minor (and not so minor) features in there as well as well as having to put together a support structure for developers and users and hardware vendors to make use of this stuff.  And on top of that they're trying to release this with 6 different SCUs that amount to "Windows Vista crap" and "Windows Vista Ultimate" and 4 versions in between.

A Vista of the precipice

So Microsoft gets it. But great ideas and great designs really hinge on execution.  And that brings us to where we are right now in May 2006.

Right now, Windows Vista has a few serious problems.  Perhaps my concerns are overstated and this article will be merely a foot note of "doom and gloomers" who were wrong.  I hope so. I want Windows Vista to succeed. So let me put forth my concerns and you be the judge of whether I'm making a mountain out of a molehill.

Disclaimer: This is based on my experiences with beta 5381.  I was recently invited by Microsoft to a briefing of what's new in Windows Vista which is one of the reasons why I'm so excited about the concept of Windows Vista.  I also made sure to specifically ask on the first day if we could now publicly talk about this beta build and show screenshots since previously we were not supposed to put up screenshots.

Problem #1: Memory is cheap but we're at the end of the 32-bit line..

For the last several years, I and other people's response when a new OS or application used a lot of memory was to respond "memory is cheap, just add some more..."  Well, the good news is that thanks to Physical Address Extensions on most modern CPUs, your PC can theoretically handle up to 64 gigabytes of memory.

The bad news is that most motherboards stop at 4 gigabytes and each process can only use up to 2 gigabytes of memory (3 with tweaking) unless they use AWE (Address Windowing Extensions) which is not something most developers want to get into. 

So why should you care? Because Windows Vista uses a lot more memory than previous versions of Windows right now. 720 Megabytes are used on a fresh boot (on my test box) vs. around 250 Megabytes on Windows XP.  And that's before third parties get their hands on it and put on their stuff. 

To be fair, I could probably get this down to 500 megabytes with some power user trimming (just as power users can get XP down to under 100 megabytes).  But you're talking about a lot of memory. For most people, tossing on 8 gigabytes of memory onto their machine isn't an option.  Going to 64-bit is the next step but that may prove harder than most people think because many applications require 64-bit specific versions.

The point of this is that this all seems to point that these cool new features have a significant memory overhead in order to make use of. And that 4 gigabyte limit could really become an issue sooner rather than later.

Problem #2: Handles? What are they? The new Resource limit.

Most people don't know what handles are. Most people don't need to care about them.  But unless Windows Vista is able to do something about them, the term "user handles" will start to become something people know about, read about, buy utilities to deal with.

Right now, hit Ctrl-Shift-Esc on your computer. This brings up the task manager on Windows XP.  Go to the Performance tab.  How many handles are you using right now?  I've got a ton of programs going right now and I'm using 18,000 handles.  When my machine boots, it's using around 2,400 handles. 

What does that number mean?  Depending on your configuration, somewhere around 25,000 handles your Windows machine will start to slow down dramatically and eventually programs will fail to launch, weird errors will start to show up and eventually things will start to crash or not function.

My Windows Vista box starts out at around 12,000 handles on boot up and quickly climbs to 15,000 without really doing anything.  Loading up Internet Explorer 7 takes it up rather quickly to 800 megs of memory and a lot more handles being used.

My concern is that non-power users are going to start bumping up against the handle limit.  The 64-bit version of Vista doesn't seem to have a problem with lots of handles so there is an escape path for the long term.

What I am hoping is that if someone with clout at Microsoft will have this issue brought to their attention and have it dealt with. The handle issue is already a problem for many power users on Windows XP.  It's probably the most common cause of system instability.  With Windows Vista having built in search (which consumes a lot of handles just as Google Desktop does), handles could become a serious problem.

Problem #3: Compatibility

The radical architectural improvements to Windows may come with a price -- compatibility.  First, let me say loudly that it is not fair to judge the final product based on the beta.  But I do know what the compatibility was on Whistler at this stage versus Vista.  And if your response to that is "Yea but Vista is a much bigger change" then realize this -- it doesn't matter to users how big the change is under the covers if their programs don't run.  Windows Vista is supposed to be going to manufacturing in a few months.

Users submitting bugs (and feel free to ask anyone in the beta to verify this) can tell you tales of reporting a bug or compatibility problem to have it closed with a "working as designed".  I know our guys are getting frustrated turning in a well documented, repeatable bugs only to have it seemingly blown off and having it continue to show up month after month (Hey, Logon team, we're all waiting for a replacement API to the Winlogon notify stuff, it's been half a year!).

If you stick with the built in apps in Windows Vista along with very mainstream apps, things are fine.  But as soon as you start venturing out, things get murky.  And I don't refer to desktop enhancement programs (WindowBlinds is running fine on Windows Vista).  It's usually "little things".  My Verizon connection program or some shareware program or whatever. 

As an evil capitalistic developer, poor compatibility is good news "New version! Now works on Windows Vista! Pay up! Whohaaha (singing) I'm getting a boat..a brand..new..boat (/singing)"  But as a user, I am concerned that early adopters may find that many tools and programs they rely on have problems.

This may simply be something that Microsoft can't solve or shouldn't solve. But if that is the case, then Microsoft needs to spread the message that Windows Vista is a truly new version of Windows and some legacy software may need to be updated. I think users will understand that as long as it's communicated effectively before hand.

But for users who can't get their scanner to work or some custom gizmo, or applet that came bundled with their printer or whatever, it's going to be annoying if they had no idea that going to Vista was going to mean that a noticeable chunk of their programs don't run correctly.

Let me show you a screenshot that shows the excellent potential of Vista as well as the current problems:

What a cool utility and yet it also implies we have a long way to go.

Problem #4: Unowned Slop

What the heck is all this crap in my task list on boot up? SVChost wasn't funny in Windows XP when there were 5 of them and it's a lot less funny when there are a dozen of them -- ON A FRESH BOOT UP!  Look at this stuff.  These are all the processes running on a fresh boot up of Windows Vista beta (5381).

Microsoft talks about security but it's just not acceptable that Windows Vista should have a generic process name like svchost anymore.  Each thing that wants a piece of my memory should have to have a name so that we know what it is. A third party could certainly write an application that digs into each svchost and then refeeds it into task list but this really should be part of the OS.  I think it would also put more pressure on the various empires within Microsoft to justify their existence as part of the initial boot.

Most of all, it just looks sloppy.  Clean? Clear? Confident? Some early adopters are going to open this up, see this mess and think "Bloated, sloppy, kludged". Feel free to comment on what your thoughts are on that.  Am I just being anal? Maybe. But I suspect there's a lot of people out there who are going to take having 41 processes on bootup of which a dozen of them are called svchost.exe (as well as various duplicate process names) and not think kindly.

Problem #5: It's Annoying!

There are so  many new "security" oriented dialogs that the entire experience, when coupled with the above mentioned issues take out the "fun" of using the OS.  Want to empty your recycle bin? You need to go through multiple dialogs to do that including a security prompt! Even as a so-called administrator, you can't get into all the folders on your system.  And some of the folders you can get into, you can't write to files in them! Admins have certainly lost a lot of power it seems. See the screenshot of trying to get into "My Pictures" as an admin.

It's really hard to describe in words how annoying it is to constantly be prompted to enter a password or to boost your privileges to do seemingly trivial things.  It interrupts ones workflow, train of thought and well, it just goofs up my groove, man.  Microsoft is working on these issues and they are aware of them, but the recycling bin debacle makes me wonder how such obvious issues could make it so far into the beta process.

So what should be done?

Windows Vista is more important than Windows XP or Windows 2000.  It is an ambitious project that demonstrates Microsoft's ability to innovate.  A lot of people unfairly criticize Microsoft for not being innovative.  Sometimes the criticism is fair but Windows Vista truly is innovative. Even if some of the ideas in Windows Vista got executed elsewhere first, Microsoft had come up with many concepts and ideas first (gadgets may seem similar to Apple's widgets which were similar to Konfabulator's widgets but were all predated by DesktopX by years which was predated by Active Desktop and other concepts as well for instance and the Sidebar gadgets were in the earliest Longhorn builds long before Konfabulator showed up -- though after DesktopX).

But what we need to know is that Microsoft will not rush Windows Vista out for some arbitrary marketing date.  That, if necessary, Microsoft will move the Windows Vista date back even if that makes PC manufacturers scream bloody murder. 

I am not suggesting that Microsoft can't address the concerns I point out there by the time they hope to release to manufacturing.  But I am saying that I think it is going to be a very tense summer in Redmond in order to make the date given where the OS is right now.  When Windows Vista beta 2 comes out for the public, people will be able to judge for themselves and decide what the status of the OS is. 

What are your thoughts?

Stardock has released what may be the final beta for WindowFX 3 before it is released to the public.  WindowFX is a program that allows Windows XP users to add a ton of user-chosen special effects to their Windows experience.

WindowFX 1.0 introduced users to alpha-blended shadows for windows on the desktop.  Since then, WindowFX has continued to add new features and new effects.

WindowFX 3 takes advantage of many of the same technologies that allowed WindowBlinds 5 to see such a significant performance improvement over previous versions of WindowBlinds (such as making use of more video card hardware acceleration).

New features in WindowFX 3 include a host of new effects for minimizing and maximizing windows, taskbar thumbnail previews, an alternative Alt-tab previewing behavior, and more.  WindowFX 3 will be $19.95 on its own or can be purchased as part of Object Desktop. 

Users of Object Desktop can download the beta for WindowFX 3 right now.

Microsoft has announced what kind of hardware you will need for Windows Vista.  The good news -- you won't need much to run it in its most basic mode.  The bad news is that the full Vista goodness will require a very high end system and lots of memory.

CPU wise, only 800Mhz is needed.  Realistically, you should have a 2+ Ghz machine to get the most out of it.  In theory, only 512MB of memory is needed to run Windows Vista, realistically you should have 2 GB of system memory.  It's on the GPU that you will need to have a really beefy setup.  To get the Vista "glass" effects you need a video card with at least 128MB of video memory.

For the official specs, see the linked to CNET article.

The question we asked was, would you purchase a multiplayer only expansion pack that was $20.

Multiplayer expansion are nothing new.  Civilization III had one. Even the original Civilization had a multiplayer expansion. 

My own thoughts on a multiplayer expansion pack are ambiguous. Unlike an EA or Take 2 or any number of big publishers, Stardock's ability to get widespread retail space for an expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II is a real challenge.

Hence, future expansion packs for Galactic Civilizations II are likely to be digital-only.  This way, the retail version of Galactic Civilizations II can hold on to its space as long as we can and people who want more can come here to get it.

Which brings us back to what exactly should be in an expansion pack.  We plan to make multiple expansion packs. One of the mistakes we made with the first GalCiv was that we only made one and users made it clear to us that they would have liked to have seen more.  So this time we will make sure we do that.

The first expansion pack would come out this Fall.  The second one next year. It would be that second expansion pack that we have to finalize what features for that could potentially be mostly about multiplayer.

When one thinks of an expansion pack, think of is like designing a ship in GalCiv II.  We have 5 slots. Multiplayer would eat up at least 3 of those slots, more likely 4 slots.

So the question really boils down to, are there OTHER features you would prefer to have instead of multiplayer.  This multiplayer poll won't be the last one on the subject.  But the results make it clear that there isn't a huge outcry for a multiplayer expansion.

I think most people are of the opinion that they'd happily by an expansion pack that included multiplayer if it had lots of other features. But that's not how these things work out. Multiplayer is a huge feature so other features would have to be taken out.

Once the first expansion pack comes out, we can then look at what might go into a second expansion pack (including multiplayer) and put the question up as to which features would people want the most.

The June 2006 edition of Computer Gaming World has arrived and in it is the review of Galactic Civilizations II.

If you don't get Computer Gaming World, it's definitely worth it to pick it up on the newstand. This issue has a big article on Spore which is a game that everyone (ourselves included) are very intersted in. It also have the Oblivion review in it. 

The GalCiv II and Oblivion reviews help demo CGW's new review format.  4 pages of review gives the reviewer a lot of space to talk about the game in a great deal of detail. 

For instance, the CGW review talks about Christopher Nahr's Galactopedia and gives a link for it.  It talks about the Starforce incident, it goes into some of the features he likes and ones he misses but also discusses the reasoning that went into what features to include or not include.

The reviewer (Bruce Geryk) also talks about Master of Orion and other games in the genre and how the features in those games helped add to the genre (or detract depending on the game).  He also hammers home that he wishes the game had multiplayer.   Maybe next time.

Andre from Windows Connected has spilled the beans on Microsoft's "Urge" (our NDA wouldn't let us talk about it). 

Urge is a new music service that will come with Windows Media Player 11.  It is a team up of Microsoft, MTV, VH11 and CMT. According to Andre, the goal is to provide a better experience for users to download music with more detail about the content, albums, and artist information.

Another interpretation is that it's a "better iTunes than iTunes" though the model seems to be more akin to a combination strategy where users have the choice of subscribing or buying content per piece.  Other information we cannot say due to our NDA (we can only repeat what's been made public so far).

It appears iTunes is going to have some serious competition. Windows Media Player 11 not only has key features such as this, it also has a streamlined user interface that makes using it far more appealing than previous versions.  The WMP team has really outdone themselves this time.  

We'll have more details on Urge as they're made public.

If you already have Object Desktop you can do this. This week myself, Steve from TweakVista, Nate from Betanews, Bink from Bink.nu (who missed his plane back, tsk tsk), and several others were visiting Microsoft to get some of the latest news on Windows Vista.

While there, we put together a little joke using WindowBlinds + DesktopX + IconPackager + IconX in order to make a Windows XP machine look somewhat like Windows Vista. Using DesktopX we whipped up a fake build number, IconX to get the most of the Apogee icons, IconPackger to apply the icons, WindowBlinds to apply the VistaXP skin (skin not available here as Microsoft requested its removal).

Here's one of the screenshots we came up with.  You can imagine the setting that all this took place in - a couple dozen techies in a room all communicating to each other with IM in the same room.

The original prank was put up on Bink.nu (see link below)