There have been endless articles on how Windows 8 sacrificed desktop usability for being a better tablet OS.  The problem is, it’s not a very good tablet OS either.

The problem has nothing to do with Metro per se. The problem is that Windows still, at its heart, behaves like a 1990s OS.  Let me walk you through some things that I think, regardless of whether you’re a Windows, Android, iOS fan you can agree that these are inexplicably bad things.

For full disclosure, I have both a MS Surface and a MS Surface 2 Pro, my SP2 is my main “carry with me” machine.

#1 It often isn’t available when you want it to be

Want to check a quick email or look something up? Too bad, there’s an update that has be installed first. There’s always some update forcing itself on it seems like (or enough times that I can’t rely on it as my “quick check”

Oh, you wanted to actually use your tablet right now? No, it’s Patch Everyday!

#2 It has terrible sleep power features

I can leave my Kindle Fire, iPad or heck Macbook Pro laying around for weeks and pick it up and the’re ready to go.  Not so for any Windows 8 tablet I’ve tried (MS Surface Pro, various Lenovos).  After a few days, they’re drained if not left plugged in.

#3 It’s slow or not reliable at acquiring WiFi after sleep

This is a pretty well known issue that you’d think they’d have fixed with Windows 8.  I even picked up a new MS Surface Pro 2 to be ready for next month’s Build conference and low and behold, about a third of the time it won’t reacquire (or is very slow) to pick up the WiFi network at my home or at my office.  I’ve had to reboot it before just to get it to see my WiFi.  Android, Mac, iOS have never had any issue with this.

#4 Its version of “Sleep” is really more like a light hibernate

You go out to a business lunch with your trusty iPad. You want to pull something up real fast. You press the home button and it’s back on, instantly.  Not so on a Windows 8 tablet.  You’re going to get the Surface logo (or whatever logo), wait a second. Get to the logon screen, you lift that up, hit your security check and THEN you’re in.  That’s insane for a tablet.

Oh thanks!

But you’re one of the biggest offenders!

#5 There’s no “launch” bar on the Metro screen

Android and iOS recognize that there’s typically just a few things you go-to on your tablet all the time.  Not so on Metro.  I want to get to my camera, I have to remember where I put it (before we made Launch8, I just put those things at the start of the list but it still required me to go back to the beginning of my start list to get to them).   This shouldn’t require a third-party program (same is true of ModernMix and Start8, hey thanks MS but I’d rather have the OS be solid out of the box).

Why isn’t there a launch bar by default?

#6 What time is it?

Seriously, how often do you quickly look to see what time it is (or how much power you have left)? On Windows 8’s Metro, you have to bring up the Charms bar to get that.  What? Why? Not even something on the Start home screen? You have room for my name on the home screen (top right – thanks! I forgot who I am!) but not for the time of day or battery.

Thank god, I forgot who I was. Now, what times is it? How much battery is left?

Bonus: This isn’t an OS issue, this is strange hardware design issue so I’m not including it into the list:  Its “home button” isn’t tactile.  People who use tablets often use them in low lighting. It’s incredibly frustrating not being able to find the Windows button.  Why do Windows 8 tablet manufacturers seem to insist on not having a tactile Windows button? 

All games, even the games that looked amazing when they come out eventually start to look “dated” visually.

The challenge isn’t determining whether a game’s graphics have started to get dated looking but what specifically makes a game start to look dated.

Let’s use Legendary Heroes as an example:

What parts of the game look dated today? What parts do you think will look dated in the near future?

I'm willing to make you guys a Spell pack DLC for tactical battles and code the necessary AI to use them.

What I'm interested in knowing is what kinds of spells you would like to see?

Here are some spells I'm thinking of making:

• Mindblast: 1 HP of damage for each each individual you have in a group (so a unit with 5 guys in it would get 5 damage per guy) (unless unit resists)
• Hero's Bane: 3 damage per unit for every champion you have in the field (unless unit resists)
• Auro of protection - unit will receive no damage for the next hit
• Aggression - all units gain +2 damage for their next attack
• Defensive Stance - all units gain +3 defense for 1 round
• Mirror Image - target enemy unit is duplicated on your side (unless it resists)
• Brainwash - target enemy unit changes side for 1 round (unless it resists)
• Deadly Legacy - when target unit dies, killing unit receives -5 damage (unless it resists)
• Baffle - Enemy units spell mastery decreased by half for 3 turns
• Sacrifice - kill target friendly unit, gain that unit's attack/defense/HP for rest of battle
• Dazzle - target enemy unit has 50% chance to hit friendly units during its next attack
• Dogpile - Target unit will do 1 damage to every enemy that takes damage for the rest of the battle
• Arrow bait - Mirage unit summoned, all ranged weapons will strike this unit until it's destroyed
• Essence Tap - for every champion in the battle, that side loses 2 initiative.

I love the site Steamcharts.com. It’s a great place to see what people are actually playing. It uses the Steam stats as its basis so it’s a reasonably fair comparison for most new games.

Here are some fantasy strategy games:

Age of Wonders 3: King of the world!

FE:LH Hanging in there after all these years

Warlock II

Endless Legend

Civilization V: KING OF THE WORLD!

Sins of a Solar Empire: Yea, it’s awesome!

and lastly…GalCiv II, most copies sold prior to Steam (so most players aren’t counted) and it’s 8 years old but still going strong!

Greetings!

v1.6 of Legendary Heroes seems to have gone well and we’re now moving on to v1.7.  I’m not sure what the rest of the team has in store for that (it’s Kael’s team, I’m just a floater).  But I’ve got 16 engineer hours of my own time for v1.7 and want to make sure every hour is spent well.  I don’t know how many of you are interested in the sausage factory side of game development but if you are, this is a good chance to see it in action.

These are what I’m spending those hours on:

Watch this thread for updates. I’m going through this thread here for ideas.

As I finish these, I’ll update the chart to let people know. I don’t really get started on this until next week between meetings, accounting, legal, design, software work, etc.

Update 1: Friday, May 30

Finished the first half day working on this. Some of this isn't taking as long as I expected (marked at 0.5 hours in the status).

Update 2: End of day

Okay, I've got 9.5 hours into this.  The AI is definitely nastier now with the outpost upgrades. The pathfinding is less annoying for me.  I had a hard lock today that I want to put some time into.  I don't want this to just be new goodies, I'd like to fix some bugs that people have reported.

Before I tell them to set this up I wanted to make a post and gauge interest in this:

There's going to be a new fantasy strategy game from Stardock in the Elemental universe. It's NOT a sequel to Fallen Enchantress.  

I'm looking to ask the team to set up a founder's program for people who are interested in getting a sneak peak at what we're doing and getting early access to it this Fall. The founder's edition would be $20.

Here is, broadly, what the game is like:

1. Completely new art style
2. Asymmetrical 4X (it's not you vs. other similar empires, it's you vs. a single bad guy with everyone else as pawns between the two of you and you both play by your own set of rules)
3. No unit design and no tech tree, instead you gain access to things based on what you've built in your city
4. Sovereign is not a unit in the game, you instead choose the spell books your sovereign has, their specialization and their ability and use that across the world 
5. Shards provide magic which is divided between mana, lore (spell research) and skill (for upgrading your sovereign's specialization tree)
6. Much more quest focused (spells written by Cracked.com's Chris Bucholz, they're awesome)
7. Champions acquired via completing quests
8. Crafting (players find ingredients and recipes through the course of the game)
9. Multiple continents, islands, ship travel
10. Tactical battles heavily focused on what spells and abilities you have and how you use them, feels a bit like Hearthstone but the battles are still elemental style except with more units - instead of 9 ala LH you'd have up to 15)
11. All units have special abilities
12. Plot takes place centuries after the events of LH - suffice to say, bad things have happened
13. Player *starts out* with the Forge of the Overlord - the player is very tough, has all the techs from LH from the start which is to say the bad guy is just that much tougher

Now, as you can see, because it's so different we're updating, enhancing LH on its own dev path with its own meaningful updates. 

Anyway, who would be interested in joining a Founder's Program if we put it up in June?

UPDATE: The URL for the $20 early Founder's edition is live: https://www.stardock.com/buy?s=ESD-SDE-W062

UPDATE 2: The E2015 Founder's Vault is live: http://e2015.stardock.com/

I’ve got some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that GalCiv III is moving along on schedule.  The bad news is that we’ve decided to change the feature requirements necessary for GalCiv III to be considered a “beta”.

Originally, we were going to release the beta in May/June and have it not include combat/diplomacy/etc.  However, we’ve determined that we’re better off continuing with the Alpha series until some of those features enter into the game which isn’t scheduled until late Summer.

So the Founder’s Elite Edition will continue to see some big updates in the coming weeks (there’s a pretty huge update scheduled for the end of this month) but the beta version has been pushed.

Old man Paxton is giving me 16 engineering hours to put into LH v1.7.  So that means AI and other C++ game mechanic stuff.  There's a few threads around here I'll be mining.  But suffice to say, I plan to do terrible terrible things to you people with the AI update.

We have something really cool in the works. 

For those of you in the GalCiv III founders program, what are your favorite aspects of it? What would you like more of?

I’ve seen a lot of talk about early access and the pros and cons of it.  I wanted to share some experiences on this. 

The very first commercial retail PC game that allowed people to pre-order the game and get access to the beta was called Galactic Civilizations for OS/2 and the year was 1993. 

Every single Stardock game has had early access for over 20 years so this is a good opportunity to share some experiences about it.

#1 You can’t fund your game this way

I’ve seen many gamers (and even some game developers) believe that they can fund their game through early access.  It doesn’t work that way.  Most people (95%) won’t buy a game in beta.  The sales/revenue graph of a game is a straight line that turns into a cliff when a game is released.   So if you think you can pay for development this way, forget it.

There are notable exceptions (Star Citizen) but the reason they get a lot of attention is because they are so unusual. 

#2 Early Access is good for compatibility testing

I’ve seen people online talk about “paying to beta test” which is, well, a crazy thing to say. That said, Early Access is wonderful for compatibility testing.  For example, mixing video drivers, sound drivers, network drivers, and the OS is largely impossible to do well for smaller studios and publishers.

The setup has gotten insanier (that’s now officially a word) even in the past few years.  Right now, as you read this, right click on your sound system tray options, select play back devices.  How many of you get a noticeable delay in getting that dialog up? The answer is about 10% of you.  This is caused by AMD high definition audio devices being added which can cause some games to get a lot of stuttering in their sound.  It can be worked around but without early access, it would be really hard to solve this (you can fix this on your end by disabling those devices). 

It’s even worse on Windows 8 btw where people who don’t have Windows 8.1 UPDATE (not to be confused with Windows 8.1 normal) because there’s a bug in the OS that causes the sound driver to not get enough CPU which affects games using DirectX 11.  And these are sound issues. Video, well, that’s a whole different world. 

The point being compatibility is a good use of early access.

#3 Early Access is good for fan feedback

One of the best elements of Early Access is that you get people who are committed to the concept of your game.  We took some blow back from people because Galactic Civilizations III: Founder’s Edition was $100.  It includes everything we will ever make for GalCiv III (all DLC and expansions).  The idea behind it was to find a way to not have casual players in the alpha program.   The feedback from these players has been amazing. 

This is why #1 is so key: Not only will you not get very many sales (relative to the final game) of your EA game but you don’t want too many.  If you get too many EA players, the feedback gets way too muddled. You want people who are already sold on the concept and not people who will try to push you to make a different game (like MOO fans who always seem to wish GalCiv would become a MOO style game, I love MOO but GalCiv isn’t MOO).

#4 PR is a limiting factor on Early Access

As some of you know, Stardock sold Impulse to Gamestop some years ago. With that capital, we created an investment fund which has been used to help start-ups and get some amazing games off the ground.  Over the next 36 months or so, we’ll be releasing around 7 new games.  You know about Galactic Civilizations III. That’s one.

I would love to announce these games over the next year and get Early Access going for them because most them are brand new IP.  The limiting factor for us is PR. That is, how many games do we want in Early Access at once?  We don’t know that answer but we do know there’s a threshold before you create what marketing calls a “negative narrative” that becomes very hard to get away from once it has been created.

Galactic Civilizations III was an easy one because people already know what it is.   Right now, we have 3 other games that we play daily internally that aren’t even announced (one of which we play at lunch every day competitively multiplayer via the Internet between the teams).

The point being, many people don’t like the concept of Early Access and it does put the brakes on how many Early Access games are available at a given moment and keeps the bigger studios from doing it. 

#5 Fan interaction is a major motivator

Most people I know who make games do so because they enjoy making things to share with other people. No one becomes a game developer for the money.  If it weren’t for fan interaction, I wouldn’t be making games at all.  It’s my primary motivation.  I’m a creature of the Internet. I’m notorious for lurking and participating on forums outside our own because talking about our games or other games is very enjoyable.

Early Access is particularly fun because you can actually make meaningful changes to the game based on intelligent feedback.  Nothing sucks worse for a game developer than to get a great idea from a fan only to not be able to use it because it’s “too late”.