A few questions on maps:

1. Would you prefer randomly generated maps or a handful of well known maps?
2. Would you prefer the default to be unexplored maps or pre-explored?
3. How would you feel about an option where the map is unexplored but any region you are in and all adjacent regions automatically become explored?
4. Do you prefer smaller maps (30 minute games) or huge maps (multi-hour games)?

Greetings!

The Founder's program will be coming to a close in the coming weeks so this seemed like a good time to get the gang here together for introductions.

Please tell us a bit about yourself, what you want Ashes to be like and some other games you enjoy playing.

Thanks!

As for me:

I'm Brad Wardell. I'm the lead designer of Ashes of the Singularity.  I am looking for an RTS that has massive scale (so that I feel like I'm fighting a world war) that isn't about actions per minute.  My favorite games of all time include Total Annihilation, Sins of a Solar Empire, Civilization series, Starcraft and Star Control.

looking for feedback on the AI. Should be substantially better compared to 1.2 or 1.3 opt in 1.

While 1.4 is going to mostly be about AI, we found a lot of low hanging fruit largely thanks to the saved games you guys have sent in and your posts. Thank you!

 Preface

Ashes of the Singularity is an up-coming real-time strategy game that takes place in the year 2178 when humans have evolved to the point in which we interact with the physical world through constructs (think of a modern day Drone as a very primitive construct). A single human (or “Post-Human”) is handling millions of these constructs across many light years simultaneously just as we are “handling” 100,000 billion cells in our physical bodies right now.

The object of the game is to take control of Turinium generators that have been placed on suitable worlds in order to convert the entire planet into Turinium (or at least as much of it as we can.

Computronium

Turinium is our take on Computronium.  It’s actually not as new a concept as you might think.  Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker’s Guide of the Galaxy series revealed that the entire Earth is a giant computer. In essence, the Earth was actually Computronium. 

Computronium is programmable matter. The ultimate programmable matter. While theorized, it is inevitable.

Intel Sky Lake and the road to Turinium

This week Intel announced SkyLake. It’s a new CPU based on a 14nm fabrication technique.  Each year or two, the fabrication size gets smaller and smaller.  In 2005, it was 65nm. The 8088 was 3 microns (3,000 nm).

At some point we will reach the smallest possible size that processing can occur at.  It will almost certainly be at the sub-atomic level but you will reach that point. That ultimate smallness is called Turinium. 

Moore is More or 42

Once you reach that ultimate smallness, the only way to get more processing power is to have more of it. Mass starts to matter. 

It would be incorrect to assume that Turinium has to look like some sort of gray goo type material.  Since it’s at the sub-atomic level, it could look like anything you want depending on the level of efficiency you want out of the mass.  A tree could be made of Turinium for instance.  To reference Douglas Adams again, the Earth and even Arthur Dent were all made of what was effectively Turinium (trying to find out the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything).

Why would we care?

As the name of the game implies, Ashes of the Singularity is about what happens after the technological singularity. It’s just too good of a subject matter not to use as the basis for a Sci-Fi game.

In this future, humans have, for over a century, been augmenting their capability through computing power that we can’t even really imagine today.  The best analogy we have is that we’re already doing this: How much of your knowledge do you keep in your brain versus via your mobile device? Compare that to 10 years ago.  Now imagine where things will be in 50 years. 100 years.

Once you have Turinium , the “faster” computing paradigm is over. It’s how much Turinium you have. And feats that we mere humans can’t even imagine start to become grasped by these Post-Humans who have access to so much more capability. 

Thus, Turinium becomes the ultimate resource. More valuable than anything.  Unlike the Space of the Dune series, Turinium can be created on most other planets, it’s just a matter of reaching out and taking them.

Greetings!

The team is now fully staffed with the exception of bringing on one additional animator.  It is now, the largest game project currently underway at Stardock across all studios in terms of monthly budget.

For those of you who remember the development of the original Star Control series, you may recall that Paul and Fred worked very closely with fan (SC2 mainly).  In fact, thanks to Paul and Fred we've been able to team up Riku who did most of the best known tracks for Star Control 2 back in 1992 and he's in charge of the new sound track.

Now, that said, we have a number of challenges that we need help with.  I'll list them below.

Challenge #1: IS Star Control Star Control without the Spathi?

The new Star Control is a prequel. It takes place before the events of the original series.

And for those who are deeply into the Star Control lore, our long-term plan is to make the Star Control universe a multiverse.  The Famous battles of the Ur-Quan conflict (part of which is told in Star Control 1 and Star Control 2) take place in one universe.  By contrast, Star Control 3 takes place in a separate universe.

As mentioned, Paul and Fred are the ones who wrote the Ur-Quan conflict lore that manifests partly in the first two Star Control games.  Today, Paul and Fred, the founders of Toys for Bob, work at Activision which precludes them from being able to work on the new Star Control. However, since Star Control is a multiverse, we can, with patience, hopefully wait for the day for a continuation of the Ur-Quan story.

That said, regardless the new Star Control won't deal with the aliens from the Ur-Quan stories for multiple reasons.  First, in the Ur-Quan lore, the humans join the Alliance of Free Stars in 2116, 4 years after the humans are contacted by the Chenjesu and our story takes place in 2086.   Second, because we don't want to interfere with Paul and Fred's story, we want to wait until they're free to work on their story again to continue it.  

From Stardock's point of view, Paul and Fred own the Ur-Quan lore and in fact, this lore goes well beyond what was seen in Star Control 1 and 2.  So while Stardock owns the Star Control universe, we don't make any claim on their lore.  Similarly, post-release if others create their own lore for their own universes, Stardock won't be making any claims on that lore either (i.e. no sneaky EULA that tries to lay claim to any lore/assets made that uses the new Star Control engine).

When you visit www.starcontrol.com later this Fall, you will absolutely see both classic and new aliens together since we support both the new Star Control and the original trilogy. We plan to provide a fairly elaborate series of pages to support Paul and Fred's backstory so that it's kept alive for the day when they can return to the Ur-Quan story.

Challenge #2: What IS Star Control?

While game designs are always unique, I'd like to propose that we look at what we are working on together collective as a specific genre (like 4X strategy).

In Star Control's case: It's an action adventure game. Specifically, an action adventure game in which you play as the Earthlings, go out into the galaxy and meet aliens, go on quests, explore planets, and have space battles.

That is what we're in the process of creating.

Challenge #3: Defining some core values

Each person will have their own vision of what they think a new Star Control must contain.  Like I said above, SOME people will absolutely say that Star Control is about the Ur-Quan and the Spathi and so forth. 

For me, it's a bit more general.  I want to interact with really interesting aliens that are well written, funny, charming and try out lots of cool ships, design my own custom ship, etc.  That's why we brought on comedy writers early on and have put a lot of budget behind making sure that we're prepared to record 11 hours of voice acting that will be handle through our engine's lips syncing tech (our engine is made by the some guys who led Civilization V's engineering PLUS additional veterans from around the industry).

Challenge #4: Satisfying the super fans

So how are we going to make the hard core fans happy?

Broadly speaking (without giving too much away) we plan to provide fairly extravagant mod tools. Tools well beyond what has ever been made outside of say Spore.

If you've read "Ready Player One" then you have a pretty good idea of the authoring level we are going for.  We'll be talking a lot more about this as we progress.

The main point is that our goal is to make the Star Control universe all-encompassing. Infinite continuities with OUR included initial campaign just one of an endless number that the community can provide.  If you've seen what the Ur-Quan masters team have done, imagine if they had millions of dollars in engineering hours designated to providing tools and support to ensure that there's a never ending stream of Star Control content.

Anyway, that's where we are now. 

Cheers!

-brad

Greetings!

We are almost done with Sorcerer King v1.2.  It's a pretty major update to the game that should be out sometime this month.

We are starting to outline what will be in 1.3 and 1.4.  

What we'd like to know is where do you want to see this game go?

There are a number of directions it could go. For instance, towards more of a 4X game play or towards more of an RPG. Which do you guys prefer?

So there's been a lot of great discussion about the direction we plan to take the game in terms of removing the production wheel from the planet govern screen.

This post will probably be a bit disorganized, I apologize in advance.

Planetary management today:

The player goes to a govern button and can play around with the planet's production wheel to optimize its production.

The problem with this is that you HAVE to do this in order to optimally play the game.  I know that many of our core players really like this but it's extremely off-putting to the vast majority of the player-base.  We also find it extremely gamey.  Specifically, it trivializes the fact that this is a colony on an alien world that is supposed to be unique.

When you play the game, you notice how many little cut scenes we have to try to convey what it means to be doing these things.  We do this because it matters to us that players are given the feeling of weight of what it means to be colonizing other planets.  It's why we have technologies like Xeno Farming. You can't just grow corn on these worlds. 

Features like the per-planet spending ultimately result in a planet being simply another "resource" in your empire.  That's not what we want this game to be about.

If you played GalCiv II, which had a total of $800k budget, you can click on the details screen and see all the time and energy we put into what is largely fluff stuff (statistics, man on the streets opinions, history, etc.). 

GalCiv III's planet management is very soulless in our view and we have the opportunity to do some interesting things with it in this engine.

Planetary management: The future = you are the leader of a civilization, not a mayor

Many players have stated they are looking forward to admirals and commanders and such for fleets.  But few talk about the importance of good leaders in government.  

Where I'd like to see government aspect of the game go, in the long-run, is towards the concept of Governors and Senators. These were things we touched on in GalCiv II but we literally had insufficient memory to cram anything else into that game by the end of its last expansion.  But GalCiv III is 64-bit, we can make this extremely interesting and sophisticated.

Thus, the direction we are looking to go is where you would recruit governors to run your planets.  You would assign it to a planet and they'd have their own special abilities. Maybe one governor IS a micro manager and having him as your governor lets you micro the spending ratios on that particular planet.  Another might be really good for managing finances, another at research, and so on.

In none of these cases is the governor actually constructing anything on the planets for you.  That system would be separate in which you could set up templates or set up a particular weighting and tell the governor to execute on that that plan.  I.e. the governor is still beholden to you.

Beyond planets: Sectors = Senators

Beyond the governors are the Senators. In a game where you only have 5 planets, who needs another level of abstraction? But in the future, if you have thousands of planets, you are going to need a bureaucracy to run this civilization.  This is where vast amounts of political features can be integrated.  This part would need to go through a lengthy beta with players to nail it down but the idea being that as you go up the tech tree, you gain access to lots of interesting political abilities that you can choose to implement as part of your strategy. Things like a cabinet, a senate and elections start to become very interesting additions to the game.

Discussing the AI

The team is always looking for ways to improve the AI. They took the path in GalCiv III to make it very moddable and that direction will continue.  When I wrote the GalCiv II AI, it was not moddable at all.  I would, in a background thread, simulate future turns to predict what I thought players would do and then try to counter it.  That design precluded scripting because I was reacting to other players as much as I was implementing my own strategy. 

Now, on the forums, the AI gets talked about a lot.  We take it very seriously to the point the 1.4 is mostly going to be about AI.  But at the same time, we really need some of the more..earnest players to understand some underlying facts: Each day, thousands of games of GalCiv III are played. We record the setup stats. 85%+ of players don't play above normal.  Over half of players play at BELOW normal.   And while they may not post, they are just as much as a customer as frequent posters.   For them, bad UI, alien interaction, constructor spam, boring invasions are far far more concerning to them than whether the AI is challenging to someone who has mastered mid-maxing and has level 17 banks.

Thus, design updates to the game aren't about making it "easier" for the AI.  They don't even factor in.  In the long-run, the AI will keep getting better and better as we mine the data we get, look at saved games people send us and just plain get better at the game ourselves.  What I can do, adamantly, is that we won't be prioritizing engineering hours into thwarting really edge case strategies (i.e. if you create a custom race with these bonuses and these starting conditions and do X, Y and Z you can get a huge advantage).  We can't focus on that kind of thing.  Most players don't even use custom races. That is, most people just play as the Terran Alliance (which kills my soul given how much budget has been spent on the customization aspects).  That is, they don't even modify the Terran Alliance. They just play as them as-is.  

The point is: While I love hanging out and posting with you guys, engineering hours have to take into account the entire player base. Not just people who post on forums.

What's next?

So 1.4 will be AI centric and continue the work on the planetary governor stuff.  We also want to tackle the way constructors are handled but that won't make it into 1.4.  

Cheers!

Greetings!

First off, thank you so much for being part of our community.  I've been making GalCiv games for nearly my entire adult life (23 years and counting).  You guys are what makes it worth it.

Secondly, so to recap our story so far:

1.0 released in May.  

1.0x series in May/June. Bug fixes, AI tweaks, balance.

1.1 released in July (delayed due to Steam June summer Sale). Lots of usability improvements, more content, bug fixes.

1.2 released in August focused on adding the Mega Event System. Minor AI updates.  Bug fixes. Balance.

1.3 is nearly ready, September release. Focus is on UI improvements based on player feedback. Reduce micro-management.  This was the first of the post-release updates based on player feedback. Basic stab at planetary automation.

So this brings us to 1.4.

1.4 is almost purely about AI and game balance.  There will be more work on the governors.  

We ARE going to get rid of the per planet spending wheel.  I know many of you like it but it is just incredibly tedious to deal with and violates the general spirit of GalCiv (there's a reason we never had this in previous GalCivs, it's not like we hadn't thought of it).  In its place will be something different. We'd like to hear what YOU would like to see in there.

The AI work is going to focus on AI adaptation to player strategies and adding more goodies for modders to create custom AI mods.  The measurable objective for 1.4 is that on NORMAL the AI should be able to beat most players with the higher levels being substantially improved.  

Part of the improvements will come from design changes.  The game isn't designed with players getting >1 million credits per turn for instance.  So there will be some balance work to address some of the unintentional exponential growth tweaks.

Another area of improvements will come from improvements to the AI trading.

What's your view?

Greetings!

I know it’s only been a week since the big update but…we have another big update!

Release date: NOW

• Gameplay

  • Power removed as a resource

  • Battlegroups can now be made out of groups of T1s or groups of T2s.  No strict hierarchy for low level units is required.

  • Units accelerate and move faster

  • Units engaged in battle move at 25% their normal speed.

  • Lots of misc AI improvements

  • Smarties are more powerful

  • Artemis track targets a little closer in

  • Capture time lowered from 30 seconds to 15 seconds

  • Capture distance incrased from 150 to 300

  • Gameplay setup options

    • Neutral Defenders on/off

    • Prebuilt Extractors on/off

    • Full Fog of War on/off

  • Auto-save enabled by default

• Menus & Multiplayer Functionality

  • Singleplayer Setup Screen updated

  • Lobby Browser & Custom lobby updated

  • MP Save/Load game support

  • Private game support

  • Steam icons displayed for players

  • Ability to kick players from lobbies

  • Animated background

  • Lots of misc visual polish

• Misc Art

  • Team colors more prominent on units

  • fixing normals and position of Radioactives extractor

• In-Game UI

  • New health bar style

  • Firing range rings appearance improvement, and limited to one range ring per group/Battlegroup

  • Selected unit’s weapons are now listed & have corresponding tooltips

  • Minimap

    • Visual pass

    • Basins show as impassible, making navigable area more legible

    • Region icons now show region by their most common resource

    • Power lines displayed by team color

    • minimap changed to show radar return color coded by player

  • Fix arrow button consistency in Empire Tree

  • Scroll bar for Empire Tree

  • Cursors for input modes

  • Research tree UI improvements (more big changes to come)

• Sound

  • New notification VO

  • updated ship select sfx

  • unit specific move sound hookup

  • updated for T1 weapons sfx

  • builidng construction sound

  • added/updated some ambient tracks

• Improved crash reporting to help debug community issues

• Lots of crash fixes

• Misc

  • Performance optimizations

  • Better handling of Engineer Stop

  • Tighter leash on units in a destination

  • fix for floating Turinium Generator model

  • F1 now correctly cycle selects the player’s engineers

  • AI opponents now have recognizable names

The founder’s program is going to end within the next 60 days or so as we are starting to run out of serial numbers.    You can join the Founder’s Program here. 

When we go into beta, the Founders are going to get coupons to give to friends to get more Ashes keys to help begin building a multiplayer community.

Greetings!

Welcome to all the new founders! Thank you for joining us!  

Today's discussion has to do with resources.

The current plan is for the game to have these resources:

1. Metal. For constructing units and buildings. Provided by metal extractors.
2. Radioactives. For constructing more advanced units and buildings. Provided by radioactive extractors.
3. Tech. For acquiring new tech. Acquired by the player building Research Matrcies. You can research techs (like logistics) infinitely but they get increasingly expensive.
4. Logistics. Increases the number of units you can have. Provided by researching tech (the logistics array is going to go away).
5. Power. Determines how many buildings you can have. Provided by power generators in regions you capture.
6. Noble Gases. Required by global abilities to be used. Provided by either (a) Resources on the map or ( Constructing a building that provides it (debating)
7. Turinium. For acquiring victory points.

However, there's an argument to be had that we have too many.  So let me present one of many possible alternatives:

1. Metal. 
2. Radioactives.
3. Logistics
4. Turinium
5. Tech

Abilities instead use Radioactives.  Power is simply eliminated.

What are your thoughts on different methods (for those of you who have played).