This stuff is still in flux but you'll be able to see where we're going soon as we clean up the semantics.

When we're done a user will have 3 types of useful data displayed on them:

1) Access (how much access they have on the site)
2) Class (subscriber? registered user? etc.)
3) Experience (level 1 through infinite)

We don't have the third type implemented yet because we have to clean up the point system.  Basically your experience will be determined by the number of total points you have generated through your articles, skins, posts, comments, etc.  Think of it as your overall contribution.  This score is multiplied by your class (1 through 5).

On yoru account you'll eventually have a bar that will show you how close you are to the next level. The higher the level you are, the more you have contributed to the community and we will provide additional goodies to those people who are higher level.  The system is designed as a way for us to reward and thank people who are helping out on the site in a more objective manner.

High level users will get special icons by their name when they post and such as well as get extra "coverage" when they make new posts submit new skins and the like (though we're still working through that).  If you have any suggestions on what kinds of things you would like us to provide for people that have really helped out let us know.

If you click on the popular tab you will see that what we track as most popular is different than in the old WinCustomize.

First off, the top authors are now based on downloads in the past 30 days instead of the day before. We believe this gives a more accurate gauge of what's hot on the site than the radical changes from day to day.

Secondly, we now have a hall of fame.  Right now, the hall of fame is ALL TIME since 2001.  But in a week or two, we'll be switching this to popular for the past year (though at the beginning it will be the most popular starting Jan 2005).  You'll be able to click on a partiuclar view and switch between "All time", "Past year", "Past month", and "Yesterday".

Third, if you click on a particular author, say Adni, and click on "My Skins", you'll be able to get a list of not just how many downloads the skin has gotten but how many referrals the skin has generated (which we consider equally important).

Lastly, there is a point system in place on articles and articles are displayed in that sense. It's still in the beginnings of this. Essentially every time it's read it gets a point and every comment gives it a few points and every referral it generates gets it points and you'll eventually be able to rate the article to give it bonus points.

January 3 is still the official public launching day of WinCustomize 2005 (i.e. the day we actually announce generally that WinCustomize has been re-done).  But obviously, with Christmas almost here and everyone going on vacation, we are getting close to the point where the site is as it will be when it's announced to the rest of the world (a week from this upcoming Monday).

Read this 10 point guide on what's coming up for 2005.

I write a lot of articles here on WinCustomize, JoeUser, and elsewhere. But ultimately, I'm NOT impartial. I work for Stardock so all my opinions are colored by that world view of things. It's not that I try to steer people to Object Desktop, a wonderful suite of software available for the low price of only $49.95 at www.objectdesktop.com. No, like I said, I don't push people to that stuff whether it's Object Desktop or even games like Galactic Civilizations (www.galciv.com). 

But like I said, I am not impartial. If you want a more impartial news source, make sure you check out Teknidermy. Its news god, known in the underworld as Craeonics which is Latin for "Cynical European fellow" scours the net for the latest/greatest news on skinning, tweaking, customization, and taxidermy.

So go over there and check it out!

So there I am, at the dentist to get my tooth looked at (it was fine) when the dentist says to me "I heard you decided not to have your son's cavity filled."

"Yes," I said. "I don't see the point in putting my 8 year old son through the drill to deal with a cavity that is on a baby tooth."

"Still you should really make sure he gets taken care of, your son needs to have that filled." he responded.

Rather than debate it I responded, "Hey look, if social services can't get me to listen to reasoning when they visit me, what chance do you think you have?"

To which he said "but there's a chance it could damage his permanent tooth."

To which I responded "That's a chance I'm willing for him to take."

Sometimes, absurd responses can side-step debates, especially when you're natural inclination is to be a goof off anyway.

I definitely agree to keep an eye on the baby tooth that has a cavity to make sure it doesn't hurt or get serious. But growing up I knew kids whose baby teeth literally were rotting out. I'm not subjecting my 8 year old to a dentist's drill unless I have no other choice. The mere fear of the dentist's drill has been enough to get my son to start taking brushing his teeth more seriously.

"Besides," I told my son, "I read on the Internet how to drill onto teeth myself so if you don't brush your teeth, I'll drill the cavity out myself."

He's upstairs brushing his teeth again as I write this.

Galactic Civilizations II will introduce the concept of food into its planets.

Now before you give your views on this, please bear in mind that we'll have months of play-testing and beta testing to make sure we get the mechanics down pat.  Starbases and constructors in GalCiv 1 weren't added in until 3 months before release - the whole concept came from beta testers. So much may change.

Anyway...

A given planet may have 8 to 10 usable tiles. These tiles can be used for 1 of 5 things:

1) Factories that make building ships and such faster.

2) Infrastructure that improves how fast you can build new buildings.

3) Buildings that improve the amount of research a planet performs.

4) Residential areas for people to live.

5) Farms that produce food.

The population of a planet is going to by the maximum of either the amount of available food or the amount of residential space for them.  Some buildings will also provide some residential space too (i.e. an industrial area may provide enough homes for 1 million colonists). But residential areas will provide the space for far more people.

So the population of a planet will be much more up to the player to control. In the first game, the player had very little control over it. Only when people became miserable from overcrowding did people stop breeding. Now, food and housing can effectively limit the population.

Now right now, the plan is to NOT allow the importation of food from other worlds. Even though we agree this could be justified, it's purely a complexity thing. As cool as it sounds on paper to put together supply lines and such (That could be disrupted in war) we're just concerned that it coudl bog down the game.  So on the importation of food issue, we may look at that as a 2.x feature.  No one has requested this but it seems like a natural thing to ask for since we thought of it too.

Some tiles will be better suited for food and others better suited for factories.  Rare tiles will have special items on them (artifacts, super-fertile land, ruins, rare minerals) but like I said, that'll be rare.

What you may get out of this is that while the planet system will have more depth than in the first one, it'll actually be a lot simpler too. In GalCiv 1, by the end of the game the player might have dozens and dozens of planets that they were just arbitrarily building "whatever" onthem without much thought. 

In GalCiv 2, each planet will be unique but with 5 different things to buidl on them and them having a base # of useable tiles on them there won't be a lot of things to do with them. By late in the game, the planets will be pretty set up and you'll be concentrating on other things.

That said, the BASE # of useable tiles on a planet will be 8 to 10. But then there will be another 2 to 3 upgradeable tiles (tiles that can be made useable with soil enhancement) and another 1 to 2 tiles that can be made useable with terraforming.

What we're excited about is that players will be able to try out a lot of different strategies. You can have your industiral world, your research world, your banking world, etc. In galCiv 1, all the planets wree the same except how much they produced which was limited by the planet quality.  That seems, in hindsight, to be kind of lame.

When I was making the Prelude to war campaign, it became apparent that by the end of the game you're just queuing every single thing into the build queue via the governors and letting the planets go which means that planet quality was the deciding factor in a given game. No sort of strategic intelligence needed.

Now, before someone asks, why only 8 to 10 useable tiles. The answer is - we don't want the planet management itself to become a overwhelming thing.  The planet management should be something that you set up early in the game and that later in the game it's more about designing ships, getting that key technology, assembling fleets, getting your battle stations and cultural centers into play. No one wants to mess around with the planets later on in any great deal. Hence, the limitation.

However, once in awhile, there will still be that class 26 planet (26 useable tiles) which will be quite valuable of course.

In the not-so-good news for Microsoft category, the EU has upheld the ruling that Windows XP in Europe will not have Windows Media Player.

"The evidence adduced by Microsoft is not sufficient to show that implementation of the remedies imposed by the Commission might cause serious and irreparable damage," the draft Court statement obtained by Reuters said.

Personally, I find this to be a bad move for European consumers. While it's always tempting to stick the giant in the eye, it's not the giant who will suffer in this case. At this stage in OS development it is very handy for both businesses and consumers to assume that the base OS includes video playing and music playing as part of the OS that supports a specific format (WMV in this case on video).

Read the whole article.

If you have Object Desktop, you have access to Theme Manager.  Theme Manager doesn't get talked about on-line nearly as much as it should. It's one of the most powerful Windows customization programs out there. But it is also incredibly easy to use. 

In my opinion, Theme Manager represents the best of Windows customization software -- it does a ton of things but it does it incredibly easily.

So what does Theme Manager do? Just what the name implies, it lets you manage all your themes. Not just themes though, your skins, icon packages, visual styles and more.  If you have SkinStudio installed, Theme Manager will even let you apply msstyles seamlessly.  If I click on the visual style item, it will display visual styles of all formats. It doesn't care about the format. The one in the screenshot is an msstyle.  Theme Manager is the only program that exists that can actually preview msstyles without having to hack your system DLL (uxtheme.dll).  And it will apply the msstyle quite seamlessly.

Just by pressing the apply button it takes care of things. And it does this without messing around with your system files.  That's because, under the covers, Theme Manager uses WindowBlinds and SkinStudio (both parts of Object Desktop).  But the person using Theme Manager won't even know that. It's all done as part of Theme Manager. This is where the object-oriented ness of Object Desktop's components come into play. 

Theme Manager doesn't stop there though. It does this for pretty much all the popular programs out there. Want a different CursorXP cursor? No problem.  Want to change your logon screen? No sweat. Want a different boot screen? Easy.  Theme Manager doesn't do these things itself, it works through other programs under the covers.  What if you don't have one of those programs? No problem, it'll go and download and install it for you.

So if you've got Object Desktop, download the latest version (2.19a as of the time of this writing). If you don't have Object Desktop, get it now at www.objectdesktop.com. Remember, with Object Desktop you get not only everything that it already has but everything that gets added and improved for a year afterwards.

Object Desktop users should check out recent updates of Theme Manager. A lot of work has been going into Theme Manager lately that is subtle but powerful.  For instance, if you have SkinStudio installed, Theme Manager will automatically treat all visual style formats the same (WindowBlinds and msstyles) and display them side by side with previews even.

Read the full article..