Please vote on this:
https://steamcommunity.com/linkfilter/?url=http://www.strawpoll.me/13992658
Thanks!
It's been a year since we posted the last big public update on the new Star Control.
Last year, we began the Founders Program! Thank you all that joined. In the next two weeks, we will be ending the Founder's Program as we prepare for a public Beta program. If you want to join the Founder's Program it's not too late yet.
A new tier
Right now, we have Founders and Lifetime Founders. Both get access to our internal vault of stuff. Lifetime Founders get everything we ever make for Star Control: Origins. Those who are standard Founders get Star Control: Origins and everything we release for a year after.
Development schedule
Our original release date was going to be November 2017. That's exactly 25 years from the release of Star Control 2 (The Ur-Quan Masters). Some design changes we made have extended the development time (which I'll be talking more about soon) but we will be releasing the Super Melee beta in time for the anniversary.
Some screenshots
Super Melee in action
In engine, animated, voice synced conversations with aliens and of course the commander of Star Control.
Design your own ships, share them, and fight with them either against the computer or your friends online or on the same PC.
The writing team, led by Cracked.com's Chris Bucholz, has a compelling sci-fi story that is also very much in the style you expect from a Star Control game.
We are working on a host of tools that will make it easy for people to create their own universes to share and play in.
Explore worlds for minerals, Precursor artifacts, hidden bases, and more.
We will have a lot more information in about two weeks!
I'm really liking the direction the version 2.6 opt-in is going.
That said, I feel like I'm really only touching the surface of where we're going with this game.
Do you guys understand that the engine is state of the art and brand new? As a game developer, it's very exciting.
The next big thing on my plate is all the political stuff. That's what the next major expansion will be about but the main game and Crusade players will benefit as well as balance continues to get more and more interesting.
From the AI side, the next major effort for me personally will be the ship design AI. I'm going to be tossing out the "modding" stuff that no one uses and instead have the AI procederually design its own ships which I think will be a lot more interesting anyway.
Meanwhile, lots of interesting editors are being made for you guys to actually access the 11,000+ files that make GalCiv III.
I promised you some years ago that for GalCiv III we were in it for the long haul. Well, I can say for a fact that here at 2017, we're not even warmed up yet. There's so much more we can do.
The only real question will be whether people WANT turn-based strategy games. I have nothing but joyous feelings about Stellaris and Sins of a Solar Empire. But there does seem to be a preference for real-time games over turn-based. Real-time makes pacing a lot easier since you just speed up or slow down the game as needed. But I feel like RT games (and yes, I mean Sins too) lose some of the crisp game mechanics that turn based games can have.
In any event, we have a lot of exciting stuff coming up!
The big GalCiv III v2.5 update went out. Most people like it. Not everyone of course (it breaks save games). If you're liking it, you know the drill "Like and Subscribe" as they say on YouTube or in Steam's case, please leave a review. Even if you've left a review in the past, you can delete your old one and leave a new one which will have the "Recent reviews" which matters a lot (a lot more than it should imo but hopefully Valve will update their algorithms in light of recent review abuse on Dota2 and other games).
Anyway...
Playing with the look and feel
[..]
You may not have noticed this before but in the Ship Designer of Galactic Civilizations III you can take the ships you have designed (or downloaded) and export them as a .OBJ file. This can be used by 3D printers but also on a cool site called Sketchfab. It's super easy to set up.
Here are a couple I've already uploaded:
Have fun!
p.s. Bonus one:
Last week I did a one on one test against the Drengin AI set at Normal. It was on a tiny map in which I rushed for invasion tech and killed them.
This time, let's bump the AI to Genius...
AI at Genius
The 2.5 GalCiv III AI is a lot smarter than previous iterations. It handles fleets better. It researches better. It builds up planets more intelligently. But it is really difficult, even in human 1 on 1 games, to deal with a rush.
Now, at Genius, the AI starts out with more money so it's not quite a "fair" game but then again, I'm not playing fair either. Let's see how it goes.
Our story so far...
Every once in awhile, Do a 1 on 1 test on a relatively balanced map to see how well the AI is doing. I play on Normal or Gifted as that puts the AI on roughly equal terms with me.
I choose the Drengin because they are a vicious, evil civilization that has few redeeming qualities and they play the game very differently than most people do (they are absolutely amoral). Their strategies aren't always ideal but they do tend to be interesting.
And so it begins...
Both humans and Drengin start with a class 14 world (a very nice planet) as well as two habitable nearby worlds.
I want to tell you the story of a situation I ran into with a Google employee named Tab Atkins Jr.
So what do you get if you combine a petty little man like Tab Atkins Jr. and a culture that promotes defaming people who don't share your ideology? The answer: Manipulated search results to punish those they believe "deserve it".
With the increasing evidence that Google some employees have no problem trying to ruin the careers of those that they disagree with, it is not surprising that its employees feel comfortable using their privileged position at Google to smite those guilty of wrong-think.
Take the case of Google search employee Tab Atkins Jr. After a Twitter spat with Zoe Quinn, Atkins decided that social justice needed to be served and wrote a libelous smear of me on his blog with the title "Brad Wardell is a douchebag"...three years ago.
As a semi-public figure I'm pretty used to someone, somewhere writing something unpleasant about me. What I was not prepared for, however, was someone who knew Google's search algorithms well enough to keep their little blog post up at the top of Google (but no other search engine's) search results for three years.
Compare the difference:
BING:
No where to be found.
DuckDuckGo:
No where to be found.
GOOGLE:
Right at the top just behind my Twitter and Wikipedia pages.
Now mind you, I've been featured in a lot of newspapers, magazines and websites over the years from Time Magazine to the WSJ to USA Today and of course frequently in the technology news sector. None of those articles come up. LinkedIn.com doesn't even come up. Even the infamous false allegation of "sexual harassment" that certain gaming journalists latched onto (and later apologized for) can't beat it.
Either the SEO managers at LinkedIn, FaceBook, Kotaku, USAToday.com, Time.com, etc. need to recruit this guy...or, more likely, this guy knows how to manipulate Google search results. I don't know if Google gives preferential treatment to results from its employees or not. What is known is that the results are unique to Google and have managed to survive 3 years at the top despite his blog not being notable.
However, the issue I have isn't just about Tab bt rather, what it says about Google's culture. I don't think anyone I have ever worked with would feel comfortable doing this to someone. I'm the publisher of Neowin and it's never occurred to me to use my power to try to ruin an individual. What is the mindset of someone who writes something like that and then uses what appears to be insider SEO knowledge to ensure it nears the top? What it says to me is that there's something gross about Google's culture and that they have a pretty high confidence that they can mete our social justice at those they feel deserve it.
Now, imagine if I weren't already a successful CEO that will never have to find a new job but instead was just "some guy". What Tab did would be catastrophic. It sends a chilling message to those who participate in social media: Piss off an SJW at Google and they will use their privileged position to harm you.
Now, you might ask "Have I reached out to Tab?" and the answer is, yes:
That was two years ago. In which he responded "he'd think about it".
Perhaps Google has some other explanation as to how their employee's 3 year-old blog gets to the top only on Google and no other site. I have my own opinions.
In the meantime, consider this: Imagine if an employee at Google had written such an article about say Zoe Quinn or some other SJW darlying? What do you think would happen to them?
Up until the revelation that Google employees will actively banish people who don't share their politics I was willing to think that Tab was just an isolated "bad apple". But now, I feel very uncomfortable at that thought that anyone out there with the "wrong opinion" is only a few keystrokes away from being smeared by Google employees in the online search results.
I am hopeful that this current trend of using the Internet to deplatform, defame and otherwise attempt to harm people comes to an end.
The irony of returning the favor by naming this post after Tab isn't lost on me. However, since Tab doesn't seem to be familiar with the concept of empathy or decency, the best I can do is make sure that others know the kind of unethical behavior being engaged in by Google employees.
Your opinions are welcome.
Update:
You may have heard that Zoe Quinn's accusations against someone resulted in that person killing themselves. It's just a reminder that SJWs are not the "good guys". They're often horrible people who virtue signal in order to distract from the fact that they are, themselves, terrible people.
Notes:
In the year 2242...
This is my random playthrough of Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade v2.5. This is my story.
For part 1 go here.
Version 2.5 is easily the biggest update to the base game of GalCiv III since its first release back in 2015. What makes these updates possible is the continuing sales of DLC and expansions like Crusade.
The much beloved Galactic Civilizations II never got an update like this one. That is because back then, games were sold at retail and so there was no realistic way to keep updating the base game like we can today for budgetary reasons. Hence, GalCiv II came out in 2006. Dark Avatar came out in 2007. And Twilight of the Arnor in 2008 each being its own stand-alone game with the version before it being retired.
I don't know about you guys but I much prefer today's model where the base game keeps getting updated. However, developers often don't communicate the importance of expansions and DLC that make these updates possible.
Also, if you want to help us you can make a huge difference: REVIEW GALCIV III ON STEAM. If you've already reviewed it, feel free to write a new review. It helps reflect a more accurate recent review score. Steam uses the review score in their discoverability algorithm. Anything below 70% is basically invisible. Below 80% is mostly invisible (i.e. won't offer it on the search the store suggestions).