The massive scale RTS game.

No commentary.  No narrative.  Just gameplay.

Greetings!

If you're noticing a big speed boost, it's not your imagination.  We have upgraded a big chunk of WinCustomize's infrastructure.

Cheers!

Greetings!
Sorry I haven't been as active lately. It's been Ashes of the Singularity 24/7 here at Stardock.

 

So let's do this:

## Escalation ##
We had to push the release date of Escalation from November 3 to November 10. This is my fault as I just wasn't comfortable with the balance in the campaign. It was a bit too hard on the default setting and we needed to adjust it.

Obviously, you can change the difficulty level (side note: In hindsight, it's pretty insane that the original game shipped without a campaign difficulty slider) but the default does matter a lot.

Escalation also has added more units to the mix to the point that our review guide is a bit out of date.

For example, the Charon cruiser is awesome. Any army it is apart of is able to teleport reinforcements to it instantly. But it will probably have a lot of threads about it because there's a unit that is very tough to balance. On a huge map with 20 factories going, a Charon is a roving nightmare unless you kill it quickly. So it has to be handled very carefully.

Back when I was a Total Annihilation nut playing in the PGL, I used all kinds of cheese tactics like com napping, jamming a flash into other people's factories (the destroyed hulk would block units from leaving the factory), giving metal generators (consume energy to give metal) and then gifting them to my opponent so that I could assassinate my opponent's commander without worrying about his Dgun. I'm not proud.

I bring up the above because as I play and balance Escalation, it's an endless challenge to find that right balance between what is fun and what is exploitable. Escalation includes a number of really interesting new units that are likely to create some new ways of playing the game that we can't imagine yet. So we'll have to pay very close attention to that.

## Flocking ##
Some of the negative Steam reviews talk about path finding problems in Ashes. But the problem they are experiencing isn't path finding, it's flocking. The units know how to get where they're going just fine. The challenge is what to do when you have hundreds of them trying to get past each other in the most efficient way possible. That requires a really sophisticated flocking algorithm and it's something we've been spending a lot of time on these past couple of months as it is a non-trivial programmatic challenge.

We think we have a suitable solution that should be ready to be made public next week. There are opt-ins that are starting to get pushed out that will test this and hopefully will make positioning armies much more enjoyable.

## Tournament Edition ##
Early next year we are going to create a Tournament Edition of the game. This version will initially be only available to Ashes players to share with 4 friends for free. Ashes of the Singularity: Tournament will be a multiplayer only version of the game to help encourage a bigger multiplayer community.

We still expect 90% of the player base to play the game exclusively single player but we do want to make sure there is a really strong multiplayer community as well.

## Vulkan ##
We have this most of the way completed and have test apps of it ready. The remaining issue is HLSL to Vulkan. One of our partners is working on an HLSL shader converter. Once we have that, we should be able to release a Vulkan version soon after.
Once there's a Vulkan version, we can take a look at SteamOS (Linux) support.

## Roadmap for Escalation vs. Ashes ##
It is important to remember that for us, there is ONLY Ashes of the Singularity. Escalation is an expansion to Ashes of the Singularity. When we are working on Escalation, we are also working on Ashes.

Ashes of the Singularity user interface

vs.

Escalation UI

 

Going forward, we will be differentiating Ashes and Escalation more distinctly and some of that means that certain elements of Escalation will come into the base game or be made available as DLC.

For example, here are some DLCs we are thinking of making available to Ashes players in the future that come with Escalation:

1. Crystaline worlds
2. Volcanic worlds
3. Maps with more players on them

There are also features that are probably going to back into Ashes (for free) that will debut in Escalation such as:

1. The UI update
2. The Substrate economy change
3. Upgrading the Smarty to a Barrager
4. Upgrading a Annihilator to a Deadly Annihilator
5. Adding a low level anti-air defense for the PHC and Substrate that upgrades to a better one.

But over time, you will see the distinction between the two grow.

## Philosphy on RTS game design ##
As some of our Founders can tell you, the design for Ashes of the Singularity was NOT to be like Supreme Commander. I once even posted on our forums that if you were hoping that Ashes would replace SupCom that you would be very disappointed.

So for example, I opposed, in Ashes, to have things like strategic zoom or more than 15 units per faction or lots of defensive buildings. I still am not sure having upgradeable buildings in the base game is a good idea but I feel like I've promised that to the community.

But why? The answer is that Ashes of the Singularity, at its heart, is supposed to be a next-generation RTS to introduce people to the RTS genre.

I read people saying that people should just buy "Supreme Commander: FA" or some other classic RTS. I'm obviously a big fan of Total Annihilation, SupCom, FAF, etc. but are you sure that's the game you really want to use to introduce someone to the genre?

The fact is, a lot of these great games do not work well (or at all) on modern hardware. The mouse cursor might not work or they crash if you're running at too high a resolution or they are no longer compatible with certain video cards and so on.

## Where Ashes will go and where Escalation will go ##
At a recent LAN party for core PC gamers who were NOT RTS players, I had to pick a game to introduce the RTS to them and that game was Company of Heroes. Not CoH 2 (or Ashes) but the original Company of Heroes (this is why marketing hates when I post, I'm recommending Company of Heroes as the best intro RTS game on the market <g>).

The only reason I didn't push Ashes was the hardware requirements. The 2GB video memory requirement was too much for a couple of them. If we could fix memory requirement that then Ashes would be a no-brainer. Alternatively, we can just wait until 2GB video cards are the norm.

If you take a fresh look at Ashes of the Singularity, not as a veteran RTS player but as someone looking to recommend an RTS to someone interested in the genre you'll (hopefully) note these things:

1. It's pretty bullet proof. You install it on a new gaming PC and it just works.
2. The game mechanics are straight forward. You capture regions and get their resources. You can then build up those regions and get more resources which lets you build more stuff.
3. There is some action in the first few minutes (In TA or SupCom, it can be several minutes before you even get to see any boom boom boom).
4. It's visually gorgeous (on a modern PC anyway).
5. Losing isn't particularly frustrating. Losing due to a Turnium build up is not generally anger producing. Having someone finally beat you back to your base can actually be fun. By contrast, losing because someone nuked your commander or did a Reaper rush into your base or put barbed wire all over the map or having your entire army melt because you couldn't find your little unit with the right counter to activate its special EMP power and select the enemy unit that would be casting the melt army spell can be extremely frustrating to a new player.
   

That isn't to say Ashes is perfect. We should have had a mobile orbital nullifier unit in the game when it shipped. We didn't think of it at the time. But we will add that. But overall, Ashes is a really really good introduction to the genre.

By contrast...

Escalation is designed with RTS veterans in mind. We listened to the feedback and realized that Ashes couldn't be a one-size-fits all game.

I spend a lot of time reading RTS communities and the Ashes one is the best i've been apart of. You guys are amazing and your feedback has been extremely helpful. But we couldn't put those ideas and features into Ashes, the base game, even as DLC at any price because at that point, it's not Ashes of the Singularity anymore, it's a hard-core RTS game.

That's where Escalation came in. With Escalation, I am comfortable having strategic zoom (and in fact, it's layered strategic zoom like we did in Sins of a Solar Empire). I'm okay with having a lot more units and defenses.

Strategic Zoom in Escalation

That doesn't mean Ashes, the base game, won't eventually get naval units and more factions of course. None of our plans have changed with regards to the base game. We just want to be able to have a game that targets ALL PC gamers (Ashes) and a game that focuses on veteran RTS players (Escalation).

## How did Escalation get so much stuff so fast? ##
As the Founders know, our sales projection for Ashes of the Singularity were modest. As I posted in our Founders forum last year, our objective was to sell 50,000 units of Ashes of the Singularity before the end of 2016 (not counting OEM sales).

It's not that we didn't have confidence in our game. It's that the demographics are the demographics. 4 core CPUs + 2GB video memory as a base requirement cuts out most PC gamers. It's just that simple. Not many people can play Ashes of the Singularity.

When it became clear Ashes of the Singularity was going to more than double the projections, we beefed up the team. A lot.

• Ashes of the Singularity = Oxide Games
• Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation = Oxide Games + Stardock

 

So once we had a design down for Escalation we had a lot more people available to do stuff.
Anyway, I have more to say but can save it until later. This is already really long. Let me know if you have any questions.

-brad

Stardock has released the final update for its political strategy/simulation game, The Political Machine 2016.  The new version adds “Election Integrity” as an issue, updates the Probing HIllary’s emails issue and provides some new random events such as Internet Revelations, Foreign interference, Internal party revolt and more.

The most recent AI vs. AI simulation of Trump vs. Clinton has the Democratic candidate up by 4 points nationally with the top issues including “Securing the Borders”, “Hillary’s Emails”, and “Reducing the Wealth Gap”

The Political Machine 2016 requires a Windows PC with at least Windows Vista or later.  It can be played single player against the AI, multiplayer versus opponents over the Internet or in Sim mode where players can select from dozens of candidates and see how they stack up.  While played as a PC game, the simulation underneath is based on years of polling and demographic data. 

Visit www.politicalmachine.com to learn more or go to its Steam page at http://store.steampowered.com/app/404620.

You can contact Stardock at [email protected].

Good write up by PC Gamer.

Soren attempts the Single-Player Challenges -- Watch live at https://www.twitch.tv/mohawkgames

Stardock Magazine

October 2016 – Part 2

by Brad Wardell

Contents

1. Editorial from Brad
2. Let’s talk about Mars
3. Object Desktop 2017 and beyond
4. Stardock Customer Report 2015
5. The biggest real-time strategy game ever is coming

 

## Feedback ##

You can chat with me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/draginol) or post feedback here. https://forums.stardock.com/480276

 

## Editorial from Brad ##

Greetings!

I’m old.  I got reading glasses this month.  I sure how Ray Kurzweil is right and we’ll be able to get young again. 

I drove from Michigan to Maryland in the new Tesla Model X.   I wrote up some opinions on the matter here. Broadly speaking, the Tesla super charger network is a big deal. Being able to recharge in 30 minutes (for free) is a pretty nice perk.  Stardock has two main locations these days: Plymouth Michigan and Towson Maryland.  Towson Maryland is where we’re making the new Star Control game.

If you are interested in becoming one of our Founders and helping us with Star Control: Origins (whether it be feedback or just supporting the project) visit www.starcontrol.com.

 

## Let’s talk about Mars ##

Last Spring we released Offworld Trading Company. It’s designed by Soren Johnson, the man who designed the much loved Civilization IV.  If you’ve ever played MULE, you have an idea of what Offworld Trading Company is about. 

Offworld Trading Company: The Patron & The Patriot

This week, we released the DLC called “The Patron and the Patriot” which is designed to flesh out the game’s setting – Mars.  You can read up about it here: http://www.pcgamer.com/offworld-trading-companys-new-expansion-tells-interactive-stories-about-life-on-mars/

Get it:  http://store.steampowered.com/app/271240/

 

## Object Desktop 2017 ##

I originally wrote the article I’m linking to as part of this issue of Stardock Magazine.  Once you read it, it’ll be obvious why I didn’t put it in here. It’s very very long.

A long, rambling article about Object Desktop 2017: https://forums.stardock.com/480274

Very large screenshot of Object Desktop in action

If you’ve been with us a long time, you know how important Object Desktop is to us.  Object Desktop is a one-of-a-kind product designed, in essence, to take Windows to the next level.  Historically that has  meant that we add features to Windows that often end up part of the OS later on.  What we are working on with Object Desktop 2017 are features that, as always, you could argue should be part of the OS.  But they’re not.

The PC desktop of 2017 bears little resemblance to where it was 10 years ago.  As a practical matter, it needs to redefine its role in our lives.  I don’t know about you guys but I have a lot of mobile devices these days.  I have my PC desktop still but I have an iPhone, iPad and a Microsoft Surface.  Other people here have Android devices and MacBooks.

The problem is that the Windows desktop hasn’t evolved to recognize this new reality.  That’s where we are taking Object Desktop. We want your PC desktop to evolve to incorporate all your “stuff” so that it acts like it was always part of your desktop.  Your Google drive objects, your Dropbox stuff, other messages, chats and other devices should all be considered extensions of your desktop rather than treated as separate ecosystems. 

In my opinion, the PC desktop must evolve to incorporate your entire digital life or it will ultimately become irrelevant.  I think Microsoft realizes this as well but in the meantime, we are going to be focusing our energies on making Object Desktop not just make your desktop more pleasant to use but make it more essential.

Get it: http://www.objectdesktop.com

 

## Stardock Customer Report ##

In November 2015 we sent out a survey to customers.  We got the results and have put together our analysis along created a report.

We will soon be sending out the survey for 2016.  But in the meantime, click that link above to find out all kinds of cool data.

Get it: https://www.stardock.com/press/CustomerReports/Stardock2015.pdf

 

## The Biggest RTS ever ##

On November 3, Stardock is releasing Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation!

If you like RTS games, you will almost certainly like Escalation. 

This past Spring we released Ashes of the Singularity which was designed to be an approachable RTS.  It was well received but people who were looking for a successor for Supreme Commander were sometimes disappointed.  Escalation was designed to be a much more sophisticated and deeper RTS experience.

You can read the fact sheet here: https://forums.ashesofthesingularity.com/

Get it: https://www.ashesofthesingularity.com/store

 

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Post here about your thoughts on the October 2016 part 2 Stardock Magazine.

What is Stardock Magazine? It's where I give out our super secret stuff to subscribers unfiltered.

To subscribe go here: https://www.stardock.com/ and add your email to the entry field on the bottom right.

 

 

My desktop running WindowBlinds, DeskScapes, WindowFX, Fences, Start10 at 5K resolution

IconPackager, Tiles and more at 5K resolution

 

Object Desktop is a suite of desktop enhancement utilities designed to allow users to customize their Windows desktop to work however they want it to work.

The core components of it are:

1. WindowBlinds – customize the Windows GUI
2. Fences – organize your desktop
3. IconPackager – customize your icons
4. DeskScapes – customize your desktop background
5. WindowFX – customize the UI behaviors

But that line up has changed as Windows has changed over the years as Windows has changed.

When Object Desktop first launched for Windows its 5 core parts were:

1. WindowBlinds
2. ControlCenter – virtual desktops
3. IconPackager
4. Tab LaunchPad – launching programs

Back then, the idea of “skinning” your Windows GUI was radical. 

 

By 2000, we had added a 5th item: DesktopX

DesktopX let us objectify the Windows desktop.  It was one of our most popular components.  Unfortunately, the Windows UAC (the security features built into Windows) eventually made DesktopX untenable because, by its very nature, it was designed to integrate executable code into the desktop which is the opposite of what Microsoft wanted to accomplish with its secure desktop initiative.

Windows XP Era

By 2004, Object Desktop had 3 years of Windows XP to be able standardize all its efforts on. This resulted being able to create Theme Manager which let users gain total control of the Windows desktop.

Object Desktop 2004

Windows Vista

Windows Vista was tough on Stardock and Object Desktop.  Microsoft pioneered a number of amazing technologies including Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), XAML, Silverlight and more.  For two years, Stardock put a great deal of effort into creating an Object Desktop Vista.  This included a DesktopX that could import XAML and export sidebar objects, a version of WindowBlinds that would use WPF to create resolution independent windows and a desktop compositor and of course the animated wallpaper program, DeskScapes.

Unfortunately, two things happened.  First, Windows Vista did not replace Windows XP for most people. Second, Microsoft decided to change direction leaving its promising new technologies sidelined. 

Moreover, the new secure desktop, UAC, made it very hard to run DesktopX.

Object Desktop 2006

Windows 7

With Windows 7, Microsoft was back on course.   Stardock updated Object Desktop to version 2010. DesktopX was deprecated and in its place was Tweak 7 which gave users the ability to modify various largely hidden settings.

Tweak 7

Windows 8…sigh

For Object Desktop to thrive, it needs a single OS target.  This is very important.  Windows 8 split the Windows market.  It made Start8 possible (which became very popular) but it meant that any technology we developed would have to be aware that it might not work on most of our customers machines.

Start8

Object Desktop 2013 saw Start8 and Fences become the two stars of Object Desktop.  Neither program, however, was about customizing the look and feel of Windows as much as altering the way people work with Windows.

 

Windows 10

With Windows 10, Microsoft has created an OS that appears to be their new flagship.  It’s still new but it appears that it will be a stable platform for us to focus our Object Desktop development efforts.  This means we can potentially revisit bringing back apps that were broken on certain versions of Windows and get them on Windows 10.

The real question is, in the age of mobile computing, what is the use case of a Windows desktop (or laptop) PC?

 

Object Desktop 2017

Since the release of Object Desktop 2016, Stardock has added two new programs to Object Desktop:

1. Multiplicity
2. SpaceMonger

Neither customizes the desktop but rather focuses on what we are calling the Metadesktop.   Multiplicity lets you easily access your other desktops on other machines and SpaceMonger lets you manage your drive space on your desktop and cloud drives.

This represents the start of the next stage of Object Desktop. 

Let’s take a look at the core components now:

WindowBlinds

The hardest part of WindowBlinds development now is high DPI.  Many of the skins were designed when everyone was running much lower resolution.  WindowBlinds 10 nails high-DPI support but not all skins will play well with it.  This will be an ongoing evolution for WindowBlinds 10.

WindowBlinds 10

 

DeskScapes

Animated wallpapers are pretty cool. And today, they use trivial amounts of resources.  When DeskScapes first came out, CPU use was a concern for animated desktops. Now, machines are so much faster it’s barely measurable.

DeskScapes 10: Animated wallpaper

Fences 3

Stardock released a new generation of Fences this year. 

Fences 3

But we have a lot of plans in mind for future versions of Fences.  For example, in the age of cloud storage, imagine being able to create fences to Google Drive folders? Or a Fence of your YouTube subscriptions? The mission of Fences, now that Windows 10 seems to be the standard will evolve to incorporate your world into your desktop experience.  We’re very excited.

 

Tiles

Tiles is a program that doesn’t get enough attention.  The idea behind Tiles is that you have a sidebar with a series of pages on it. Each page can have different things on it depending on what you’re doing. 

Tiles

On my desktop I have these pages:

1. Development page.  I keep Visual Studio and a few other apps related to making software here.
2. Business page.  This is where I switch over to start working on budgets and contracts
3. Games page.  This is where I link to the various games
4. Surf page.  This is just a list of my favortie sites I visit.  It’s how I quickly get to all the forums and such. Just click click click.

 

We are looking to further update Tiles (or possibly rebrand it as its mission has changed since its original release) to address Object Desktop 2017’s mission of integrating your world onto your desktop.

Start10

Is the Windows 10 Start menu better than the Windows 8 thingy? Yes.  Is it good? That’s only something you can decide for yourself.

As someone who deals with a lot of programs, Start10 is probably the first thing I install on a new box with Fences being a close second.

 

Start10

Windows 10 on my relatively new box. Thank goodness I know the weather.

 

Start10’s mission, to keep with our theme, will evolve as Windows 10 stays around longer.   Think about how you use your modern desktop.  You may have an Android device or an iOS device.  Does your Start menu pick up any of this? Most people now have multiple devices. Their desktop is supposed to be a superset device.  That’s where we have to go with Start10 in the future.  Keep the Start menu a simple, fast way to access your things but also give you the ability to quickly access anything on any device.  Google and Apple are already doing this on their devices.  Windows needs to do the same thing.

Multiplicity

Multiplicity is best known as the program that lets you control multiple PCs with a single keyboard and mouse.  The idea is that you might have a desktop and a laptop or maybe a couple other desktop machines that you have local access to and want to be able to combine these machines into a single user experience.

Multiplicity is super easy to set up.

More recently, Multiplicity added support for machines that aren’t local.  In this case, it acts more like a KVM switch or a remote desktop solution.  What makes Multplicity differnet from a normal remote desktop solution is that it is focused on fidelity from top to bottom.  For example, you could play a video game via Multiplicity without a problem.

Once again, with Windows 10 becoming our target OS going forward, Multiplicity has a lot of room to grow over the next year. Our goal, again, is to integrate your digital world to your desktop.

The others

This past year we released IconPackager 10, the first major update to IconPackager in some time.  Once again, the reason is that Windows 10 is becoming a viable target for development – i.e. our finite development time isn’t going to be put into targeting something that is going to be thrown out in 2 years.

WindowFX continues to evolve as well.  We haven’t decided whether we will evolve the touch and other features we have in mind into WindowsFX or into a new Object Desktop program.

SpaceMonger is another recent entry into Object Desktop.  With its ability to manage not just your local storage but your cloud, it’s compelling.

SpaceMonger will map out Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox use

We want to hear from you!

So how can you get Object Desktop 2017?

Just go to www.objectdesktop.com and there are options to renew your access to it (if you previously had Object Desktop) or get it new.  When you buy it, you access the Object Desktop manager which handles installing the components. 

Comment below with your own thoughts on what you’d like to see.