Gamespot has a terrific preview of Galactic Civilizations II. They also have some exclusive screenshots of the current internal build along with the new 3 minute or so trailer for the game.
Check it out!
Windows XP includes a single visual style known as "Windows XP Style". By installing WindowBlinds, users can add thousands of other visual styles that are freely available on websites such as WinCustomize.com.
Software companies such as Microsoft have used WindowBlinds to release additional visual styles such as their XBOX visual style. PC Manufacturers such as Alienware have used WindowBlinds to create a branded Alienware look and feel for their PCs. Millions of consumers have used WindowBlinds to make Windows look like an alternative operating system, their favorite holiday season, their latest computer game, or something tailored just for them.
WindowBlinds 4.5 includes the new ability to change the color of visual styles through hue shifting along with modifying the brightness and saturation of the visual style. It also includes the ability to have alpha blended Start menus and standard menus which enable users to have semi-transparent pieces to those parts of Windows XP and eliminates the "jagged" look around the edges of the interface.
WindowBlinds is a free download at www.windowblinds.net. Consumers can purchase the enhanced version of WindowBlinds for $19.95 which adds the ability to skin more elements of the Windows user interface and can skin even non-theme aware applications. Users can also get the enhanced version of WindowBlinds by purchasing Object Desktop ($49.95) which is Stardock's suite of desktop enhancements. It can be found at www.objectdesktop.com.
About Stardock:
Stardock is a Windows software developer located in Southeastern Michigan. It is the world's leading developer of Windows enhancement utilities. Its software is used by corporations and consumers alike who wish to customize their Windows environment to match their particular needs. Stardock also develops games such as the award-winning Galactic Civilizations and the political strategy game The Political Machine. Its home page is www.stardock.com.
WindowBlinds 4.5 Free Download / $19.95 for enhanced version or $49.95 at part of Object Desktop WindowBlinds home page: http://www.windowblinds.net Requires: Windows 98, ME, 2000, or XP. (Windows XP recommended).
Going to San Francisco in about an hour. Going to be showing off WindowBlinds 4.5, DesktopX, Blog Navigator, ObjectDock, and Galactic Civilizations II.
See ya in a week!
Let's get this question out of the way now:
Is Konfabulator better than DesktopX for the creation and usage of widgets?
I don't think it is. I *like* Konfabulator but it's not nearly as easy to create widgets for and the final widgets are .widget files and not EXEs like they are in DesktopX. Its default widgets ARE more polished than the typical DesktopX widget for sure.
But we're getting our butts kicked by Konfabulator. At least in terms of market share now. I'm not sure where we're going wrong. But we're going wrong somewhere. It's not in features that's for sure. If anything, we have too many features. And DesktopX costs less, doesn't time out and doesn't have a nag screen.
And it's in a positive cycle now. Robert X. Cringely wrote a terrific article about emergency systems using Konfabulator as part of his solution. Some students read it, write the app and contact their local newspaper. Newpaper runs it and pretty soon it's picked up everywhere: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20631
Somewhere, something has gone wrong. I've been reading the riot act to our PR agency for months. I think perhaps it's time get a new PR firm since they haven't managed to get any stories going.
So this next week I'm off to visit the game magazines. It's almost the same time of year that I went to show off Galactic Civilizations I. We didn't get much preview coverage. Maybe..just maybe it's because the graphics were awful and looked like shareware from the 80s? Look at this first screenshot. This is where Galactic Civilizations I was at that point. Look at the top left, you'll see the frame rate. 36 frames per second. Which was certainly fast "enough". It's funny though because people always assume that if the graphics are bad, the hardware requirements must be low. But that's not necessarily the case. The graphics improved greatly between the GalCiv Alpha and the final game just as the graphics will improve from the GalCiv 2 alpha to the final game.
Now fast forward 3 years and here's what we're taking on the media tour (similar view). Look at the frame rate in the top left. 166 frames per second. 
Same hardware as the above screenshot was taken. That's the benefit of 3D acceleration. So ironically, Galactic Civilizations II, with much better graphics, may have lower hardware requirements than the first one. I suspect for most players, GalCiv 2 will run a lot smoother and faster than the first one.
The graphics are still pretty rough. But comparing to where we were in relation to the first one, we're doing pretty well I think.
Well there's only 10 more days left in January and Firefox has ONE skin in that section. Suffice to say, it's not a section that's in demand it appears.
Barring a miracle, on Feb 1 it's no longer going to be displayed on the site by default (the section won't be removed but it will no longer show up). It'll go with Beatnik and KewlPad and other programs whose skins aren't heavily in demand.
We hadn't planned to launch this until February but we're a bit ahead of schedule.
So here is the official site for Galactic Civilizations II. It's still under construction. Lots of features left to be added still. But this should give you a taste.
You can pre-order Galactic Civilizations II now by clicking on the purchase link on the left. You get a discount on the price (the final SRP is expected to be $49.95) and you'll be able to get the March beta of the game.
The final game isn't expected to be released until the end of this year or early the following so you'll have a lot of time to give us your thoughts and feedback on what you want in the game. Check out the Journals area to keep up on our development progress and the Databank will give you the details on the game.
And if you don't have the original Galactic Civilizations, you can still get that over at www.galciv.com. This sequel isn't just some v2.0 of the same game, it's a significant departure in terms of gameplay. We're really excited about the new game mechanics and we hope you like what we're doing with it.
We hang out in the forums so let us know what you think.
What a difference 4 days can make. So as I mentioned in my last journal, I was concerned that the visuals of Galactic Civilizations II wouldn't be where we want them to be. But if you can compare these in-game screenshots with the ones I did just 4 days ago, you can see how much just a few days can make. And bear in mind, we have nearly a year of work to do. So you can imagine how cool this stuff will be when the final graphics are done.
The planet interface still needs some artistic help but the mechanics of it are working very nicely. One of the things that I really like, that wasn't in GalCiv 1 is that I can queue up stuff very intuitively right here. That is, I can literally go onto a planet and go from usable tile to usable tile telling it what I want to build and it'll just put it in the queue. So it's a true win-win scenario. The planets will have much more depth to them and yet require less micro management than the first game. I think of all the features in the new game, this is one of my favorites. To be honest, I felt that GalCiv I's economic system was a joke.
Let's be real, in GalCiv 1 the planets had these arbitrary magical planet classes that just by landing on them gave you tons of benefits. Everything you built on there just added bonuses. That meant that the AI had a real advantage because if it could just land on the good planets, you're screwed because there's very little skill involved in getting a lot of benefit from high class planets.
But now, planet classes simply mean how many usable tiles there are on a planet to start with. A given factory won't produce 20% more shields. Instead it'll produce 5 shields. Period. Want more production? Build more factories. Oh..no more room? Too bad. But now it's up to the person to actually make full use of their planets. If you only have 10 usable tiles, that means that you'll have to make some tough choices. Is this planet my tax revenue planet (lots of farms to increase population?) or is this my industrial world? In other words, there's actual skill involved. Whereas in GalCiv 1, come on, let's be honest, late in the game we just set the governors to build EVERYTHING. Why not? No skill in that.
Now there's tactics and skills. And this means that good players will be able to really shine. Moreover, it gives me, the AI developer a chance to show off my stuff too. I used to get pretty fed up with players claiming that they lost to GalCiv because the AI "cheated". But in GalCiv 2, it'll be obvious that the AI won because it planned out its planets better for its overall strategy.
Since you're not able to play the game yet, I can't really communicate what a cool thing this new system is. Normally something that requires more skill means more micro management. But here you get to demonstrate your skill without it getting tedious and I think that's just great.
I'm totally jazzed about the zoom out features. If you zoom out enough, this screen turns into a tactical map. It still needs work (guys the colony ship you start with shouldn't be big, tinier icons please). But it's really cool. Here I've just zoomed out and moved the camera a little. We also now operate in a truly 3D space in the sense that stars and other debris have "paralax" scrolling but it's true 3D - some things are simply further away than others. The screenshot doesn't give it justic.
Not that everything is happy. The first screen has "Start a new game" that doesn't quite fit right. The "Please wait" dialog has a done button even when it's waiting. My turn button is still missing. And there's of course tons of missing features (the mini-map is useless IMO right now). Plus the unusable planets need more variety and the default ships look crummy (Alex, get me more cool looking ships!). The alien setup screen needs work.
For instance, there should be two connected buttons or something for each alien that says "Active" or "Inactive" with whichever button is selected being very highlighted. Right now, I have to double-click on an alien race to choose it which isn't going to be intuitive. We also need to have more obvious highlighting (probably some animation) so that people know which races are already selected. The new system is very nice though compared to the old. We'll have more alien races than you can actually play against this time around.
But like I said, look at this journal and the screenshots from my last one on this topic. 4 days and they were able to make these huge improvements. And we haven't even started with the beta yet. That won't be for another month and a half. Lots to do there. At least the performance is good. It plays much faster on my ThinkPad laptop than GalCiv 1 did. BTW, if you have an older Intel integrated video adapter on your computer, you're going to be out of luck. GalCiv 2 won't work on it. Sorry. Nothing we can do. They don't support true type fonts in games and we need this DirectX 9 feature too much to go without it.
There's still a lot to do of course. I'm not convinced that the mega nebula look is the way to go. The background stars are still too uniform. And there's not enough of them. But we'll see what players say. Stay tuned!
Last week I had a cold. A pretty strong head cold. And the only thing really unusual about this is that I've never had a cold before. I'm 33 years old and I've never had a head cold. I didn't realize that the "common cold" was really common. Since I'd never had one, I just assumed plenty of other people hadn't had it.
As my mother, college roommate, and my wife can all tell you, because I've never had a head cold I've also never had to blow my nose. Ever. I've had the "sniffles" before but nothing ever approaching a stuffed up nose.
My wife would watch me pathetically complain in the past when I'd have what I'd considered previously a stuffed up nose "Honey, look, if I breath in really hard in my nose, there's definitely something slightly obstructing my breathing! Can't you hear it??"
My wife listened in mute amusement as I had to figure out how to blow my nose. Apparently this is absurd. But if you think about it, if you're 33 and never had to blow your nose, it's not as straight forward as you might think. Blowing air just out your nose really hard. Never had to do that. Some people can curl their tongues (I can't do that either).
So picture me in the bathroom having concluded I need to blow my nose because I'm truly all stuffed up. And I'm coughing because I'm unsuccessfully trying to blow air through my nose but can't get it to jsut go through my nose and so the air coming through my mouth ends up making me cough.
I did eventually figure it out. And a couple days later it was over. The virus had done whatever it is it does.
I haven't gotten much sympathy about this. Like I said, I didn't realize that most people had to blow their noses before. I thought only people with sinus problems or chronically sick people had to blow their noses. I was the normal one and other people were the sickly people.
That's not to say I don't get sick. I had a fever in the Winter of 2001 for instance for a day. And I had Mono when I was in 5th grade. And I got some nasty stomach flu at Christmas of 2002 (that was awful) that everyone around me had already gotten.
But this cold thing (I didn't have a fever so it wasn't the flu) was defintiely the pits. I had to use cough medicine. I didn't really know about off the shelf cold or flu medications until I met my wife. I knew of asperin growing up. Not that it ever came up growing up with either my mom or myself. I got ear aches when I was a kid too I should add.
So my review is - colds aren't fun. I don't like them. Hopefully it'll be another 33 years before I get another one. 