Brad Wardell's Blog


A victim of ones own success

Published on Friday, March 31, 2006 By Brad Wardell In Game Journals

Stardock's business model has been predicated adapting to what users request.  The company's motto is "Innovation on demand".

The idea being that we release the best product we can and then we rapidly enhance it based on user feedback.  Users of Object Desktop, for instance, are very familiar with this.  We have also introduced this model to our game development which has had very positive results.  Our conclusion isn't so much that Stardock is "great" at customer service but rather most PC game companies are simply not geared up to do the kind of development model we're used to.

The PC utility market is extremely competitive and so rapid updates are one of our critical advantagers.  Since 1999, a huge percentage of Stardock's R&D budget has been put into building an infrastructure to crank out user requested updates quickly.

Central to that strategy has been Stardock Central which allows, literally, a developer to put up a build onto the system and have it available to users without creating an installer.  In addition, a custom set of forums that interact with the user's account information was created over the past few years that lets them interact with all our sites, Stardock Central, and access things quickly and easily depending on which site they're on.  It also has allowed us to implement various "community" features that helps make users part of the team -- because they are.

Where the model is starting to break down is as we've become more mainstream, the sheer numbers of users has started to show weaknesses in our system.  In addition, the demographic has dramatically changed which has significantly hampered our ability to do what we're best known for doing -- crank out rapid updates.

In the past, especially with Object Desktop, our demographic was almost completely all power users.  As a result, we could release alpha-level updates to those users who, in turn, would let us know what changes they wanted or any bugs they found. Power users who weren't comfortable with alphas would wait for betas and power users not comfortable with either would wait for releases.  Bugs, features, etc. would be queued up to be addressed and the system flowed nicely.

Over the past year or so, the utility market we're in, the desktop enhancement market has had two odd things happen: First, the market has increased in size dramatically. Secondly, the number of other providers of such software has strangely declined (despite more opportunity).  What happened to all these developers is subject for a different topic. But the net result is that WinCustomize.com, Stardock's site for supporting Windows customization, exploded with far more users than had been expected. Even now, it's basically limited by server levels.

The market size increasing though has brought in users who are not power users. Users who don't read manuals, don't understand the difference between alpha, beta, RC, release. Don't know how to resolve problems on their own.  The net result has been that the same updates that we used to just throw out onto Object Desktop (or ThinkDesk) now have to go through an internal QA or else we'll suffer in massive support calls (phone, email, more phone, more email) that drowns out truly serious support (In the last week of February, a sampling of tech support email resulted in the conclusion that roughly 2 out of 3 emails would have been resolved had the user simply looked at the readme in the given product or gone to the knowledge base -- two years ago, that would have been 1 out of 10 emails).

Of course, we're not set up with that kind of internal QA, not in terms of a long-term infrastructure.  When we do a major release like WindowBlinds 5 or Galactic Civilizations II we can put together a pretty impressive QA team using people from other parts of the company. But those people are far too expensive to have doing QA for the long term.  So now we're in the position of having to build a full time QA staff that can rapidly handle the updates that come from the various development teams and get them out there.

Similarly, we're going to have to start hiring people to do forum support. More people I should say.  In our rapid development model, we would put up an update that would list what's in there and users would respond with what they found worked/didn't work.  Now, we put up updates and people will ask "Did you fix <bug X>?" or "When is <Feature Y> going to be put in?"  That is, assuming the user even reads through the change log at all before asking questions.  Then there's the users who read the change log but don't try the update and complain about theoretical things.  "Oh, I don't like that new WindowFX feature, I think it might slow down my computer." or "I think the economic change in GalCiv II is bad" (without having tried it).

Of course, right now, we simply don't have those people to beef up a permanent large scale QA department or to act as a day to day buffer between development and support. They have to be hired and trained which we are, but it's a slow process.

So the business model of developing niche software (desktop enhancement utilities and turn based strategy games) in order to attract power users and hard core games has started to break down.  They have started to break down because those markets are no longer niche markets. Turn based strategy games have become mainstream and desktop enhancements are mainstream. And so we will have to evolve.  But it's been painful and likely to continue to be painful for awhile.

Apolyton.net: The making of GalCiv II

Published on Thursday, March 30, 2006 By Brad Wardell In GalCiv II News

Over on Apolyton.net we wrote up an article with site owner Dan Quick on some of the background of Galactic Civilizations II. This time, we talked about what was involved in making the game. What were the goals? What have been the results?

It also gives a roadmap on what's still to come.

I hate when a bug is mine..

Published on Thursday, March 30, 2006 By Brad Wardell In GalCiv Journals

Well in 1.1BETA I found an annoying bug where social production doesn't get shifted over correctly.  It took me a second to find it.

Here it is:

if(strCurrentImprovement == "")
{
  if(pCiv->lMoney<500)
   
ulProduction = 0;
  ulUnusedSocialProduction = ulProduction;
  ulProduction = 0;
}

So there's the bug.  The CORRECT code would have been -500.  That is, if your treasury is lower than -500 THEN it goes to 0.

Fixed already (in my build but not the one that's on SDC) but just so you know in the beta.  It's mostly cosmetic in that it simply doesn't display the clear shields being sent over. But it's still annoying -- because it's my bug.

GalCiv II: v1.1 BETA 2 Change Log

Published on Thursday, March 30, 2006 By Brad Wardell In GalCiv Journals

The only major feature we're going to be adding to 1.1 after this is the modder's UI stuff.  Everything else will get put into 1.2.  I think people will like some of this week's changes.

This version will be on Stardock Central in the next day or so.

Build 2A:

+ Tweaked funneling of unused social production.

+ Fixed visual glitch where it would not show unused social production

+ AI less sensitive about starbase building

+ Neutral civilizations won't discount relations with good players anymore (why be good? because good and neutral civs will tend to like you more).

+ Tweaked hardpoints on ships.

+ Torian population growth ability changed to 20 from 30

+ Torian Morale ability increased to 25

+ Torian luck increased to 10

+ Diplomacy ability slightly more potent in determining diplomatic relations

+ Being a good civilization gives you more bonuses with neutral and good civilizations in terms of relations

+ AI will generally not trade weapons technologies back and forth to other players unless they're very good friends.

+ AI more aggressive about upgrading ships

+ AI escort ships less likely to be converted into attack ships

+ Rewrote CalcMilitaryMight() to be more intelligent. If someone has a higher military might than you now, you better take it seriously.

+ Population Growth tweaked so that abilities are taken into account BEFORE morale bonuses. Net effect is that population growth ability not quite as powerful.

+ Fixed cosmetic glitch where military might factors always displayed "--" in the report screen instead of "-".

+ AI is less rigid about trading weapons and techs with human player, it will trade low level techs even if the player is very powerful but not high level ones unless they are allied.

+ AI much smarter about taking bribes. If you're weak or they really hate you, it takes a much MUCH bigger bribe to move relations back up.  Moreover, how often you can bribe and get an effect has been increased (previously you could bribe them every few turns and maintain high relations in perpetuity). Now if you're bribing more than a couple times a year it will ignore subsequent bribes.  In short, you can still use gifts and such to increase your relations with other players but you can no longer rely on gifts as the sole means of staying out of war unless you're willing to spend a LOT of money/tech on it.

+ If AI is at war and is losing that war, it will value gifts and help farmore than normal and be much more appreciative.

+ Double-Clicking entries on the Stacked Ship Window will bring up the Ship Details or Fleet Management window for that ship/fleet
 
+ PaulB's Random Icons showing up on the Galaxy Setup Screen

+ Fixed bug in Options screen where some options that required restart would pop up the message that the game needed restarting, but not list which options required it.

+ Fixed bug where ships built in an off-screen port that had a rally point assign would be invisible next to the planet until they were selected or moved.

+ Implemented graphical <<<< on planet screen to indicate when social production is being added to military production

+ rally point context window enhanced

+ can now move rally points using the MOVE btn on the context area

+ Formatted Text boxes will now allow you to use the mouse wheel to scroll when hovering over the text ( used to have to hover over the scroll bar )

+ End Game Summary Graphs screen now shows up to 10 civs (instead of 8)

+ When a new game is started, the Global Resource Manager now unloads all textures and surfaces that are no longer being used

+ Implemented new MOVE button in Ship Designer:
  + Select a component
  + Click move button (or press M)
  + Click where you want to move the component
  + NOTE: You cannot move a component if something is attached to it

+ Implemented Hot Keys in Ship Designer:
  New hotkeys:
    Delete - deletes selected component
    M - Moves the selected component
    1,2,3,4 - Default, Front, Side, Top views
    Pre-existing hotkeys:
    H to toggle hardpoints on/off
    + and - to zoom in and out
  
+ Fixed bug where "Cannot Remove Component" popup would get stuck behind the ship design window

+ More balancing of Arcean and Altarian AIs in terms of researching technologies.

+ More emphasis on creating escorts

+ More work on the simulated intuition engine to make better guesses as to whether an area is unprotected. (avoided temptation to simply put in code to have it look to see if there's attack ships in the FOW and escort transports - it's easy to create a perfectly effective AI, it's harder to make an AI that plays like people)

+ Terran Alliance AI more focus on defensive technologies

+ Torian AI better at building up planets.

+ AI better at building up planets at the very start (bias towards factories early on)

+ AI more concerned about the health of its troops in evading trouble with transports.

+ New API: AITakeEvasiveAction(X,Y).  Give coordinates of threats and it will attempt to stay away from them.  Using this only a bit right now to see effect.  Combined with faster ships, it should be harder to take out enemy ships at higher levels.  This API only works at Bright or higher.

+ Defensive technologies cost less.

+ Fixed crash when trade ship arrives at a planet and the trade routeaborts because it is too long

+ Added "Remove Functional Components When Upgrading a Ship Design" option to the option screen.  This is ON by default.  Turning it off will leave the functional parts on a ship when you upgrade it.  You will have to remove parts manually.

+ Fixed FogBugz 8471: Upgrading a ship design sets all ports building nothing to build the upgraded design

+ Updated map scrolling in message popup window.  If coordinates are passed to message box, the map will now scroll to those coordinates when the message pops up

+ "Do you want to upgrade starbase" popup will now display the name of the starbase and scroll to the location of the starbase

+ Fixed FogBugz 8014: Bottom-most sector displays at top of game screen as 2863311-2863311

+ Updated the tool tips in the camera controls for the ship designer to say "Rotate" instead of pan, since that is what they do now

+ Implemented Details/Manage button in stacked ships list. Players can now easily access the new Fleet Manager interface. Joy!

+ Ship Details window can now display data on a ship type as well as a specific instance of the ship

+ Ship Details will no longer allow you to decommission a ship that is currently involved in a battle

+ Implemented info buttons in the Civ Manager Governor screen.  You can now use the info button to get information on ship types or change/disband rally points

+ Fixed bug where "Component will not fit dialog" would get stuck behind the Ship Designer window

+ Fixed bug in Ship Designer dial controls where if set to rotate "freely" the mouse wheel would only allow scrolling in one direction.

+ Fixed problem in games prior to v1.1 that are loaded into v1.1 where the starport would get stuck at 0 turns if they had obsoleted a purchased ship before saving the game.

+ techs now appear in the foreign report window as espionage is done on alien races (fixing problem of not knowing enemy techs when tech trading is turned off)

+ Fixed graphical bug where some components attached to a ship would scale to a HUGE size when trying to resize them

+ Fixed graphical bug where some components attached to a ship would rotate 180 degrees whenever you rotated or scaled them

+ Random opponents and num of races will now randomize on Ctrl+N. (let us know if this is what you want)

+ Humans will now be randomly picked when playing another race.

+ Civ Manager Governor now only lists rally points that are being used for "Ships Going To" list

+ Prevent Cheese: Cannot disband a fleet in fleet manager while the fleet is involved in a battle

+ Race Legend Window will now only show civs the player has met if Blind Exploration is enabled

+ Fixed rare glitch where hardpoints reappear on the ship if you have them turned off, and select a component on the ship or from the list

+ Destroying a fleet will destroy the ships in the fleet.  Disband works as it used to.  These are now two different things.


------------------


Below is a repeat from 1.1 BETA 1.

+ New Option: No tech Trading. Players can prevent any tech trading by anyone.
+ New Option: Blind Exploration. Players can now start out not knowing where the other civilizations are located.

+ New Option: Disable Minor races. No minor races.

+ New Option: Randomize player intelligence. This will scramble opponent intelligence by around +/- 10 points to have more variance.

+ New Option: Randomly pick opponents. Players can simply choose to play against N opponents and it will pick them out.

+ Ship Design Screen re-designed to allow far more visible space for designing.

+ Ship Design Screen supports panning with left-mouse button held down.

+ Ship Design Screen displays installed components in a grid list. Right click to remove a component.

+ Ship Design Screen supports rotation of components.  See options screen to control how much you can rotate them.

+ Ship Design Screen supports copy/pasting behavior with ship size/rotation. If you select an existing component and then select a new component, the new component will automatically take on the size and rotation of the installed component you had just selected.

+ Ship Design Screen supports symmetry in rotation. Select an existing component, then select a new component to add on and then RIGHT-CLICK on the appropriate rotation dial and it will mirror the rotation automatically.

+ Ship level doesn't add as much to max HP.
+ Option now to display an animated dotted line showing where your selected ship is going.

+ How many turns it will take to reach a destination can be displayed at the destination target for selected ship. Note that you can hold down the Shift key and drag select multiple units.

+ If low-level espionage achieved, you can see the destination of selected enemy ships.

+ AI values range technologies more

+ Sensor techs increase sensor ability

+ Lots of little AI tweaks not worth mentioning but together will make a substantial difference to making the AI more enjoyable at low levels and more challenging at higher levels.

+ AI's more aggressive about expanding range with starbases. (some of  them anyway)

+ Uncommon habitable planets tweaked to make them slightly more likely to have habitable planets.

+ Fixed AI bug where it would sometimes put its rally points on planets when it didn't mean to.

+ AI takes distance more into account than it used to for determining relations.

+ AI more sensitive to cultural and military build up using new APIs that do fewer false positives.

+ AI gives more effort towards researching propulsion technologies.

+ AI puts more effort into logistics techs.

+ AI puts more effort into miniaturization techs. In all 3 cases it does  an evaluation of the galaxy state to determine whether it should be doing this.

+ Some AI personalities focus on significantly different techs.

+ AI will design faster or longer range ships depending on its needs

+ AI tech trading rewritten so that it doesn't do sweetheart deals. Tech trading somewhat rarer now as a practical matter. May need to be balanced so that human player doesn't get too much of an advantage.

+ AI can upgrade ships if it has enough money and thinks it's worth it.

+ AI manages colony improvements more effectively.

+ AI adapts economic strategy based on whether the new "disable tech trading" option is on.

+ AI generally better at picking techs based on new algorithm for evaluating galactic state.

+ Some AIs smarter about building constructors/freighters/defense.

+ Terran Alliance AI will not allow it to fall behind militarily beyond all hope.

+ Most AIs now will try to upgrade existing starbases more so than building new ones.

+ Most AIs will tend not to upgrade starbases that exist just to extend range.

+ Terran Alliance AI builds helper starbases closer to home.

+ Terran Alliance experimental strategy: Very focuses research - will  ignore other weapons techs other than its main strategy. If you're not playing against the humans, you're missing out.

+ Terran Alliance has a whole new ship design sub-module for having its very own types of ships.

+ Terran Alliance will build defenders with no weapons (not needed to keep invaders out).

+ Drengin AI planetary management substantially different from others.

+ AIs take into account wasted social production (which is no longer wasted) into account when deciding what to build.

+ Drengin more likely to escort transports.

+ Drengin will focus more on trying to have the strongest military at all times.

+ Terran Alliance focuses on diplomacy techs, gifting, etc. to keep relations up so that it can pursue technology.

+ Drengin and Terran AIs now very much focused on controlling all nearby galactic resources.

+ Drengin focus more on extending their range of their ships and getting more morale building techs than previously.

+ Drengin tend to focus more on their primary weapon and defense techs. We'll see how it works.

+ Drengin AI a LOT smarter about what they research.

+ Yor AI now derivative of new Drengin AI.

+ AI, in general, values research more than it did previously.

+ First attempt, but probably not last, for AI to try to take out resource starbases of enemies where it can find them (as a reminder to players, the AI doesn't necessarily know the existence of a resource starbase, it has to "see" them. So if you have some resource in the corner of the galaxy, don't wonder why it's not getting attacked any more than why you don't see their resource starbases tucked into some corner).

+ Trade revenue increased on larger galaxies, decreased on smaller galaxies.

+ Starbase factories improve the production of factories and labs on planets by X%. Half of that increased bonus is "free" and the other half is charged for.

+ The -2000 ceiling on debt has been eliminated for players playing at higher difficulty levels.

+ Last vestiges of aborted feature "Propaganda" eliminated. Expansion pack will have "agents" that players and AI can assign to do mischief and counter-mischief instead.

+ ECONONOMIC ENGINE CLEANED UP! Production and research now works as follows: Labs and Factories produce N production of their kind. How much of their capacity is used is based on the domestic policy sliders (spend rate X what % on each of the 3 sliders is used).

That amount is then multiplied by 3 types of bonuses:

(1) Your Civ Ability (which you set at start and can enhance by mining special resources).

(2) Economic starbases with factories on them.

(3) Planetary bonuses that comes from random events, UP issues, etc.

50% of this bonus you get for free -- not charged for it. The other half you pay for out of your treasury.

Example: If I have factories producing 100 units and my spend rate is 50% from domestic policy and my military spending is set to 100% then that factory's base production is 50 (50% of 100).

If my Civilization ability on military production is 10% and I have an economic starbase doing 5% bonus and I had an event that increase planet production by 5% then I would have 50 + 20% bonus = 60 production. I would only be charged 55 however -- 10 bonus production, 5 free, 5 paid for.

+ Tax rate angers citizens less (a bit).

+ Your Morale ability is taken to the .90 power and then added to morale (was .80 power).

+ Population growth fixed dramatically. This is going to have a significant game play result that we're still having to fix in the AI. Before, on a class 10 planet with a morale of 70 your population would increase at 20% per turn. Now is would change at 3%.

The "population growth ability bug" wasn't a bug but rather a problem with having populations in billions rather than millions. The population growth was previously capped at 200 million per turn. 20% of say 1 billion (or
higher) reached that cap. So all those bonuses meant nothing.

Now, at 3%, if you have a population of 1 billion then you're looking at an increase of 30 million per turn X your population bonus. If your morale is 100%, that gets doubled again.

Here's the thing: If you drain a population down to only a few billion, it'll take you a very long time to recover. Say goodbye to mass colony rush. You'll need to be very careful or else you could end up with a vast empire of tiny populations producing no money while smaller empires grow beyond you and conquer your weak but large empire.

Population Growth = CurrentMorale X Government Level X PlanetQuality Factory X GrowthFactor.

+ If your morale is > 75% you now get a 25% extra bonus to population growth. If it's at 100% you get a 100% extra bonus.

+ Population growth ability taken into account at the very end of this process for maximium effect.

+ Research Ability used wholesale (previously it was chopped in half).

+ Base taxes collected now is the square root of the population of a planet. This may be tweaked based on play testing.

+ New clean APIs: CalcTotalMilitaryProduction() and social and research equivs that just give you how much a planet is producing (for AI use later).

+ Social Production that is not being used anymore is transferred to military. So you're no longer being charged for social production. However, only the BASE social production is transferred and that amount is not subject to bonuses and so forth (lest there be a lot of cheese tactics and gaming of the social production bonus). So you still need to manage your economy decently but you're no longer being charged for production you're not using.

+ AI at lower levels gets less money to account for improvements in overall AI.

+ AI now "adds noise" to its decisions based on difficulty level.

Essentially, on things that are prioritized, AI that is playing as a "dumb"
level will have injected into its calculations a noise factor that will result in it coming to wrong conclusions about what it should do and hence do stupid things. It's random

+ Planets on the verge of defecting are more likely to defect.

+ AI updated to use its points differently based on new ability costs.

+ AI Ship design looks at the galaxy size and then decides based on that whether it needs to focus on range or speed more. Before it was one size fits all.

+ Cost to upgrade ships now cheaper.

+ Lockup fix: AI could get confused on where to put a starbase and get into an endless loop.

+ Player and AI on same starbase rules: 4 friendly starbases per sector.

+ AI more likely to target starbases.

+ New function: FindClosestEnemyStarbase()

+ AI will send its ships to guard nearby planets rather than cluster them in hordes.

+ AI will target military support starbases more so.

+ Bonus production now displayed in various displays).

+ Updates to the various screens to display the correct economic data based on the new economic engine (involved 9 different .cpp files).

+ Planet Abilities decreased in player start-up. Before someone yells (or if someone can answer them on various forums): Before the abilities would then get nerfed in game. For instance, a research ability of 20 was treated as a 10 when calculated. Now, the research ability is half as much in the player setup window but multiplied directly. There's no net change, it's just a display change.

+ Message changed to tell players they can only build 4 friendly starbases in a given sector.

+ Most defense modules are now slightly smaller

+ Logistics change: Large ships now use 6 logistics (was 5). Huge ships use 8 (was 6).

+ HP change: Large ships get 30HP base (was 28).

+ HP change: Huge ships get 50HP base (was 48).

+ Nano Rippper damage changed from 8 to 6.

+ Capitals no longer provide a morale bonus.

+ Maintenance on labs and factories increased slightly (1 to 2) to compensate for higher tax income and easier morale.

+ Factories and labs produce slightly less base production (because the new bonus system provides more bonus production).

+ Cost of some high level buildings substantially decreased.

+ Slight tweaks to racial abilities.

+ Eliminated Galactic Mall and Concert Hall starbase modules. Since influence victory strategies have been strengthened, we require players to have to go for the cultural domination tech path.

+ Put cost to upgrade an influence starbase at the beginning, subsequent modules are free.

+ Mining modules have been significantly nerfed since abilities are now directly multiplied rather than modified.

+ If you have the cultural domination techs, you can build directly to  those upper cultural influence modules bypassing the wimpier lower level ones.

+ Influence modules are less powerful (since you can now go directly to them) but still very powerful.

+ Fixed some tech tree bugs where the category was wrong. The AI relies on category to determine what type of tech it is since the AI isn't scripted.

+ Lots of tweaks to technology costs based on play testing and user feedback.

+ AI values tweaked. Miniaturization was valued very low. So the AI tended to have lots of cheap and ineffective ships compared to expert players.

+ AI less aggressive at lower levels.

+ Fixed typo in UP issue.

+ Prevent Cheese: Do not allow player to open fleet manager for a ship that is fighting. They could disband or change the ships in the fleet.
 
+ If a component on the ship is selected, size and rotation will remain the same as the selected component when a new component is chosen
+ You can click a slot at the top of the window to select a component on the ship. Clicking the slot again, de-selects the component.

+ Clicking a component on the ship, high-lights its slot in the component list

+ Fixed bug where if you choose a filter, and then add a component that should be filtered out, it would still show in the list

+ Size and rotation settings are no longer reset when selecting a new component type

+ Fixed bug where Clear button did not restore modules ( like colony, trade, etc) in the list of available components if they had been added to the ship before clearing it.

+ Fixed an exploit where players could add several modules of different types on the same ship by using auto-place.

+ Fixed not being able to select slots Slots now tint to the correct color

+ Took out the old component "slots" code and replaced it with new code using a grid list control.

+ Implemented the filter controls for choosing function or structural parts, or all parts. Known bug: if you choose a filter then add a component of diff type it will show in the list.

+ Added support for mouse wheel to the rotation dials. They will use whatever increment you have set in the options screen for rotations.

+ Made the constructor highlight slightly less transparent to make it more visible

+ Random ?'s turn on and off on the Opponent screen Polished

+ Functionality on the Opponent Screen added funciton to

+ "OverrideTextDisplay" of Spinners

+ added code to make civ save extra research points when it has more needs for the current tech

+ changed code to save ship designs as .xml files blind exploration now works

+ Changed "Enable Minor Races" option to "Disable Minor Races"

+ Changing any of the Game Options in Galaxy setup will now trigger the galaxy thread to be recreated if it is already running

+ Random Number of Races option working

+ Random Selection of Races option working (PaulB will be cheking in a screen to fix the clipping)

+ Random Intel option working (PaulB will be cheking in a screen to fix the clipping)

+ Added Stat in "Foreign Stats">"Misc" that gives the intelligence of the race.

+ NEW FEATURE: Auto-Pilot Lines checked in NEW FEATURE: "Show Auto Pilot

+ Lines" option added to Options screen NEW FEATURE: Resource icons on

+ tactical map are now color-coded NEW FEATURE: Number of weeks to move

+ to destination appears on the destination cursor

+ Tweak: Made dial needles thinner in ship designer

+ Fix: Bug where adding a ship with moves to a fleet with 0 moves restores the fleet's moves

+ Fix: Potential crash in overlay code

+ Fix: Made constructor highlights slightly more visible

+ Fix: Fleet Manager updates context area if fleet is disbanded

+ Fix: Removed code in CalcAStarRoute (used by trade routes and auto-pilot lines) that prevented the route from reaching across a gigantic galaxy

+ added code to FindPath to allow AI ships to get a new destination when they don't have one

+ added code to CanRaceBuildShip to check for an existing model file if  it's a user defined ship

+ added code to classShipTypes to save out an XML file for its def. If a ship is user defined and this function can't find a .shipcfg file for it, it will now return FALSE. This fixes the bug that Brad found where he was playing as a custom race and he changed what style of ship he was using.

+Fixed length of the Zombie Army event to make it fit nicer in the box

+Added ability to pan and rotate main map with the Keyboard:
   -CTRL and Arrow keys to rotate (with snapback working if activated)
   -SHIFT and Arrowkeys to pan main map

+ Old "hardpoint modifiers" that rotated and flipped hardpoints have been marked as "hidden." This removes them from the components the players can choose, and also allows them to keep using the designs they have previously made that use them.

+ Improvement Summary window now shows tile improvements and their effects on the improvement and planet

+ Fixed bug where obsoleting a ship that had been purchased prevents the star port that purchased it from ever building anything else again

+ Improvement Summary Window: Fixed spacing of units

+ removed some references to humanity in the Tech Tree (but only where it made sense to remove, most places it worked well)

+ Fleet Manager: Now displays number representing ship's logistic value in ship thumbnail

+ Fleet Manager: Implemented the command buttons

+ Ship Designer: Implemented "Reset Component" button

+ Ship Designer: Added tool-tips to the new design UI controls

+ Ship Designer: Fix: Scaling selected part now scales ONLY that part

+ Fleet Manager window is implemented

+ Dbl-click a fleet or click on Details in the fleet context window to open it.  Use it to add ships to your fleet. Use it to move ships from one fleet to another. It still needs a few graphical tweaks: Some things don't tint Will be adding a number next to the ship icons to show their logistics (like the stacked ships window does)
 

+ You can no longer multi-select dead ships or ships hidden by FOW (This fixes bug where multi-select highlights empty spaces)

+ You can not cycle through fleets in the ship details window anymore (This is to make way for the new Fleet Manager screen)

+ Action buttons in ship details screen are now disabled if the ship cannot perform that action

+ Fixed bug where text in trade screen would display green when using the money slider even if the AI would refuse to trade a military tech because the civ was too powerful.

+ Fixed bug that Brad e-mailed about (Planet logos missing when zoomed out)

+ Fixed bug in Tutorials window where pressing ESC key would hang the game

+ Fixed UP Starbase Tax law-related problems.

+ Fixed bug where a player could not attack Dread Lord planet with an orbital fleet manager on it

+ Fixed non-working scroll bar in rally point window Added GetTurnsAway  function to classStarShip that returns a float indicating number of turns it will take to get to specified tile CTRL+I now displays the number of turns it will take a ship to get to its destination.

+ MiraclePlanets Event: Now updates the overlay icons for the planets. (They used to have "uninhabitable" icons even though they were upgraded by the event)

+ Fixed exploit where you could get around UP starbase module limit using a fleet of constructors

+ Fixed sizing to 0 error message in debug.err in ShipCombatShipsEntryWnd.

+ AIUpgradeShip will not allow you to use it on a fleet (it will abort gracefully) “Fleets” themselves cannot be upgraded, but the ships in them can
+ Fixed UP Law bug where starfaring tax was applied even if the civ in question was dead

+ Fixed UP Law bug where war tax was applied even if the civ you were at war with was dead

+ Fixed UP Law bug where Starbase tax was applied even on starbases that were destroyed

+ Changed starship::GetFleet function to return a pointer to itself if the ship is a fleet.

+ Found and fixed source of “Influence Flooding” bug.  If the invader used the “Use unhappy citizens” tactic, these citizens could be counted as casualties and the casualties would exceed the number of troops on the transports, thus giving a negative population.

+ Fixed crash when memory allocation fails on ship type creation in ship designer. Adds message to debug.err when this happens and takes appropriate action to avoid crash

+ Fixed crash in Polyline.  It now checks number of points in the line to avoid out of bounds crash.

+ Fixed CTD on Governor Screen.   pColony was not set in governor mini map. Pointer is checked now.

+ Fixed bug where removing components does not remove their tech requirement.

+ Fixed crash when entering victory status screen.  Planet was not set in colony::CalcMorale.

+ Fixed incorrect stat shown in ship statistics text (Trade screen)

+ Fixed bug where data on main screen (treasury, tech, etc) would not update immediately after loading a saved game

+ Fixed crash in OverlayGraphic::QueryInterface function.  Pointer was not being checked.

+ Trade Screen, if you right-click a ship, you will now get the “ship intelligence report” on that specific ship, instead of a generalized ship type information popup.

+ Trade Screen, if you right-click a starbase, it will now show the correct data based on what modules your starbase has.

+ Fixed a typo in conversations

+ Fixed a “false positive” message in debug.err.  It would display “Could not find texture” when PictureFrame images were being set to NULL (to clear the image).  This is ok.

+ If population after an invasion is less than 1, it will be set to 1

+ Fixed incorrect data being displayed in Ship Upgrade window

+ Fixed colors in a few end game summary screens to use race color instead of interface color

 

 

The Apogee Icon Suite!

Published on Thursday, March 30, 2006 By Brad Wardell In WinCustomize News

Famed icon artist Paul Boyer (Mormegil) has completed his latest icon masterpiece. And holy cow is the final version incredible!

The Apogee premium icon suite includes over 200 unique icons in 15 different color variations.  Each icon supports every major (and minor) icon size from 16x16 all the way up to 256x256. 

The attention to detail on each icon is beyond compare.  With native support for the new Windows Vista icon format, Apogee will not only work great on your Windows XP system today but it'll be ready for Windows Vista as well.  Each icon has also been designed so that it looks good at different resolutions. At 256x256, the icons are good enough to be used as clip-art (for private use) and yet still are recognizable and crisp at 16x16.

The Apogee suite is only $9.95 for new users. Object Desktop users can get it for $8.95.  Considering the sheer amount of content you get, this is probably the best skinning/theme/icon deal that's ever been released.

As good as the screenshot looks, they're even better once applied to your system. 

PowerUser.TV Episode 34

Published on Wednesday, March 29, 2006 By Brad Wardell In WinCustomize News

Vista has been delayed! The team discusses what a disaster this could be for Microsoft, as well as Bill Gates speaking on the delays in IE7. Firefox is taking up the slack with their 2.0 alpha release. Also Google has been forced to reveal websites but not personal information for their users.

France has a controversial plan to make sure that all media players sold in France will play all format types, which would directly affect Apple’s iPod sales. DRM stories abound with reports that the MPAA/RIAA saying that it is not ok to break DRM even if it’s a threat to your life. Starforce’s new way of enforcing their DRM is an instant reboot of your computer anytime you engage is "suspicious activity". Rage! But we are returned to our former jolly state by being able to discuss porn and the revival of the planned XXX domain. Also Dell puts us to shame by buying Alienware in spite of our podcast last week.

In our gaming segment we also get to discuss something that we haven’t been able to talk about before: online crucifixion. The RPG Oblivion has been released and Joel thoroughly enjoys having his butt kicked by it. Lots of PS3 news and other items of interest from GDC. Listen now and let your Geek flag fly!

New Reviews, last week of March

Published on Wednesday, March 29, 2006 By Brad Wardell In GalCiv II News

Some new reviews of Galactic Civilizations II have come out this week. The first one comes from Gaming Horizon.

Their verdict:

Galactic Civilizations II is the first sleeper hit of 2006. The AI is the best seen thus far in any strategy title and the complexity and depth of the game will keep gamers coming back for just one more turn. With a random galaxy generated every game, coupled with AI that is unpredictable and incredibly intelligent, the game is sure to never play out the same way twice. Gamers looking for a good turn based strategy title will find a lot to like in Galactic Civilizations and the reduced MSRP of $39.99 also makes this game one of the best PC buys of the year.

You can read the full-review here.

The second new review comes from GameShark.com. As the AI developer on GalCiv II, I particularly liked their comments on the computer AI:

Getting back to the AI – this is really what makes GalCiv II stand out from the crowd. This game has some of the best enemy AI around. It's clever, doesn't cheat, makes mistakes, anticipates, and is generally wonderful. Each of the game's ten races behaves as separate entities and will treat you differently depending on the race you are playing. Still, what makes the AI so brilliant isn't that it's hard to beat, but rather that it acts more like a human than any other turn based strategy game around. It's programmed to guess what a human may do – and it'll flat out tell you that it knows what you're up to. It's borderline creepy. On the harder levels of difficulty if you leave the AI an opening it rushes through it, make a blunder and it jumps all over you, try to make a crazy tech trade and it'll laugh at you and tell you why, but it's also prone to making "human" mistakes. It's not perfect nor should it be. It's simply a brilliant AI game model and it ensures that no two games of GalCiv II will ever play the same.

I'll mention this part again but it's very cool when reviewers spend enough time on a game to play it at different levels and see that the computer AI actually plays differently. You can imagine the tedium in writing computer AI that is intentionally "Stupid" at lower levels to represent on-line play.

Much of the AI design came from the Warcraft 3 beta incidentally.  On Battle.net, players are automatically put up against players of a similar skill ranking.  Our goal with the AI was that as players bumped up the intelligence level on opponents, it would feel the same as going up the ladder on a multiplayer game (except where the other guy doesn't drop as soon as things go against him or her <g>).

You can read the GameShark.com review here.

The next one is from GamingTrend.com.  They really liked the game but took some points off for no multiplayer and that the graphics are a bit "static" in some places (which is true as making sure the game ran on lower end hardware took priority and so the budget for more on-screen "stuff" was put into other areas).

Their conclusion:

Stardock has made Galactic Civilizations II a great game, and they have made an even bolder move by not including any type of copy protection with the game.  Their sense of humor shows not only within the manual but in the game as well.  It has personality throughout.  It looks and sounds very good.  The thorough manual explains to you the building improvements, super projects, and differences in difficulty levels.  Tables showing the Star Base enhancements are also included.  Stardock has gone a long way to make this look like a professional effort, even with a development team that is small compared to the ones used by the big publishers, and it shows throughout.

Gamers looking for a strategy game that has the depth of Civilization IV but want a more futuristic setting should definitely look at Galactic Civilizations II.  It’s perfect for laptops since it doesn’t require a CD to be in the drive.  The replayability of the game is almost infinite.  The response to the game has been overwhelming, with the first printing flying off the store shelves.  If you have any interest in turn-based strategy games, be sure to pick up a copy or download it from Stardock’s web site.

You can read their full review here.

Those are some of the reviews that came out this week. If there's a review I missed or that you'd like me to post about (good or bad) please feel free to command in this thread and I'll check it out.

Gamespot World Premiere of the Demo

Published on Wednesday, March 29, 2006 By Brad Wardell In GalCiv II News

Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords, the demo is nearly ready to go out.

It will be available at noon EST on March 30th at Gamespot!

Another note about the demo: A lot of time was put into having the demo size be relatively small.  While the full game is 1.5 GB in size, we managed to bring the demo size down to less than 200MB (I think it's around 150MB).  And the demo allows players to play in randomly generated galaxies.  Obviously there's less music and video and ship parts, but it still gives a good taste of what the game is like.

Total Sales a factor of distribution more than anything

Published on Wednesday, March 29, 2006 By Brad Wardell In GalCiv Journals

I remember talking to friends about how many copies they thought some game would sell. Often times, such discussions would include "Oh, it's a great game, it'll sell millions of copies."

You need a very good game to get a million units. But it doesn't mean your game is necessarily better than some game that sold half that or a tenth of that. It just means you had better distribution. 

One of my favorite games, Dominions 2, probably didn't sell very high volumes. Does that mean it wasn't a great game? No. It just means it wasn't massively distributed.  By contrast, when I walk into Best Buy and find literally 40 copies of Oblivion on the shelf on the first day, you know it's going to do some serious sales. Combine with the fact it's a really good game and you have a mega hit.

Quality of game is a major factor in determining how close you'll reach your sales potential. But it is distribution that sets that potential.

For example, below is a sample of the top 10 best selling PC games from February (before GalCiv II shipped):

  1. The Sims 2: Open for Business
  2. World of Warcraft
  3. Star Wars: Empire at War
  4. The Sims 2
  5. D&D Online
  6. Lord of the Rings
  7. Age of Empire III
  8. Civilization IV
  9. Zoo Tycoon 2
  10. Battlefield 2

Many of these games are fantastic. However, their quality does not necessarily translate to sales.  To be in that top 10, you have to be in a LOT of channels AND have a good game AND have a game that appeals to a very wide audience.

The first Galactic Civilizations (2003) initially shipped into EB and Gamestop.  That was it.  A couple months later it got into CompUSA and BestBuy and a few other places.  Obviously, that limited the title's potential in sales.  We were happy with the sales, however.  Our expectation wasn't to sell a million copies. We only expected to sell 30,000 copies with the hope it might do 50,000.  It ended up doing around 150,000 total worldwide.

For Galactic Civilizations II, we self-published and put more effort into getting into more channels on the first day. This had terrific results.  Our goal with the sequel was to do around 200,000 total sales with a higher % of those sales being full-price sales (a lot of GalCiv I's 150k sales were deeply discounted sales due to our publisher deciding to discount quickly and heavily in exchange for up front advances).  As I write this, GalCiv II has already exceeded the # of units GalCiv I shipped in North America.

A lot of that difference was distribution. But not all of it.  We've already sold more copies of GalCiv II direct than we did of GalCiv I total. We're still trying to understand why that is.  Is GalCiv II that much better than GalCiv I?  Are more people just willing to buy on-line now than they were in 2006?  Was our marketing just that much better?  It's some combination of factors but how much of each factor we don't know.

At retail, distribution sets your potential. People are buying a box. The more places that have your box, the more sales you can potentially make.  For instance, Galactic Civilizations II has been in the top 5 (or even #1 in some cases) in the stores it's in -- Best Buy, CompUSA, EB, Walmart, GameStop, Amazon.com at various times.  And those are only in the stores that we can access rankings.  If we hadn't sold out, our stats would probably be even more impressive (first time indie publisher not easy to get retail space).

Needless to say, we've been really thrilled with sales.  If a little company like Stardock can be #1 at Walmart or BestBuy or EB or whatever, then anyone can do it -- if you just make a game people want.  It really demonstrated the power of word of mouth.

But we'll never sell a million units or anything like that.  To do that, you have to be in a lot more channels.  We're in Walmart. That's good. But we're not in CostCo, or Sams Club, or Target, or Office Max, or tons of other stores.  I walk into my local comic book store to pick up the latest Ultimate Spider-Man and there's World of Warcraft for sale on the shelf. That's Distribution.

Shelf-Space also matters.  Many people will walk into a store and if there's a huge block of a new game on the shelves, they'll buy it because well, it must be pretty special if it's getting that much shelf space.  So when I walk into a store as a developer I'm thrilled to see 8 units of GalCiv II on the shelf. W00t!   But next to it is Zoo Tycoon with 20 units on the shelf. Regardless of whether you like Zoo Tycoon or not, one must give credit to Microsoft for being able to push that many units into the channel and get the sales they get.

One of the things developers and publishers need to really explore is what role does "marketing" play.  Do ads in magazines matter?  What about webzine ads?  There's a lot of research out there on how people find out about games.  But there's little conclusive proof on that.

All we do know is that Distribution sets the potential and game quality X marketing determines what % of that potential you'll reach. 

SkinStudio 5.01 released

Published on Tuesday, March 28, 2006 By Brad Wardell In WinCustomize News

Stardock has released SkinStudio 5.01.  SkinStudio is a program used by designers and skin authors to create their own visual styles / skins for Stardock WindowBlinds, Microsoft Media Player, and other programs.

SkinStudio is most popularly used in conjunction with WindowBlinds.  Where WindowBlinds applies skins to change the look and feel of Windows, SkinStudio is what helps people create the skins in the first place.  SkinStudio 5.01 supports all the native features of the new WindowBlinds 5 including per-pixel alpha blended title bars, animations, etc. 

With SkinStudio, skinners can actually select different parts of the Windows GUI (title bars, push buttons, etc.) and then change how they look by selecting a different bitmap (or PNG).  SkinStudio can also import skins create in .msstyles format to be used in WindowBlinds format seamlessly.  SkinStudio also supports creating Boot Skins as well as skins for other programs.

Version 5.01 is a maintenance release over 5.0 which was released last November.  It includes performance enhancements, further support for other languages, and better skin previewing.

Download at http://www.skinstudio.net

Screenshots: