When I was 20 I had nothing. I was working multiple jobs to pay for college and started Stardock as a way to pay for school.  20 years later, it’s now worth 9 figures.  How did this happen?

The number 1 rule for success I’ve found is to build partnerships. This can mean your employees and it can mean external companies, contractors, etc. that you team up with. 

What does “building” partnerships mean? To me, it means, working towards their success.  This might seem counterintuitive but if you build your relationships upon the premise that if your partners succeed then you succeed then all your decisions boil down to what can you do to make your partners successful. 

If you're a founder, the FAQ has just been uploaded. Should show up shortly.

Don't know if you guys saw my tweet:

https://twitter.com/draginol/status/476387740372971520

Mind you, this is from the cheapest 3D printer I could find.  When we get closer to beta, we plan to show off what the 3D printing feature in GalCiv III can really do (as we export the colors and other details as well).

Anyone have a favorite 3D printing service I can recommend to people who don't have their own 3D printer? I saw this place: http://www.sculpteo.com/en/

If you have any questions, feel free to post them. I'll take as many of those questions as I can and put them into an FAQ that I'll put into the Founder's Vault.

What is E2015?

It's the code-name of the next game in the Elemental game universe.

Where can I find out more?

In the Founder's Vault: http://e2015.stardock.com/

How do I become a founder?

That time has passed.  

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.