Every so many months I’ll load up Starcraft to play a few games. It is still an amazingly designed game. It is my go-to game when it comes to seeing a well designed-RTS.

That said, Starcraft is not designed for casual multiplayer enjoyment.  If you’re not “really” into it you will likely find your mood soured after a few experiences online.  This is regrettable because it is intentionally designed to be this way.

Years ago, I worked on the Starcraft expansion “Starcraft: Retribution”. As a result, I became fairly proficient at the game.

Proficient at Starcraft really boils down to two things:

(1) Your build order

(2) Understanding your timings versus your opponent’s timings (that is, at what minute/second you will have X versus what they will have at the same time provided you’ve scoutted adequately.

Proficient won’t get you into the game’s higher leagues but it does mean you know the basics of what matters and what doesn’t. (Counters, APM, micro, macro, etc. are skills that have to be mastered to get beyond “proficient”).

That said, if you’re a casual player getting back to Starcraft after awhile, it can be pretty frustrating.

For you Starcraft players out there, let me share some experiences that might give you a chuckle. 

For these games, I’m playing as a Terran…

Game 1: 6:31pm, Mood = Very good

Me: Hi there! GF and HF!

Opponent: glhf

Opponent is playing as Zerg.  Just over 2 minutes into the game, just after my barracks finishes, a small group of zerglings enters my base, kills my peons.

Me: Ah! You got me. Well done. GG!

Game 2: 6:40pm, Mood = good

Opponent: Protoss

It’s about 7 minutes in.  I’ve got 3 barracks and my engineering bay is just about done.

Suddenly, 2 Oracles show up and kill half my peons (SCVs) in a flash. 

Me: Oh! I almost had that engineering pay done! I can’t believe I missed that stargate. Where did you put it?

Opponent: Proxy, noob.

Me: Ah, well GG.

Game 3: 6:52pm, Mood = average

Opponent: Protoss

It’s about 3 minutes in and my SCV spots a Protoss Pilon with cannons going up.  I immediately build a bunker to contain it.

Opponent Quits.

Game 4: 6:56pm, Mood = average

Opponent: Terran (Map Frost – I think)

It’s about 5 minutes in when suddenly streams of Reapers enter my base while my main army was near my natural that I had just finished.

Me: Ack! I scoutted your base and looked around near mine, you only had 1 barracks

Opponent: AHAHAAH! Look behind the ice debris

(sure enough, on that map it’s easy to build 2 proxy barracks that are very hard to scout)

Me: Clever. GG

Opponent: No. Not GG. l2P [learn to play]

Game 5: 7:10, Mood = sour

Opponent: Terran

Very early Reaper harass in my base (~2 minutes). My early scout only saw 1 gas so I assume standard build. 

At 6:40 I do a scan of his base, 2 gas! Oh crap! Banshee! My engineering bay isn’t up yet.

7:00 cloaked banshee enters base, devastates me

Me: grr. GG

Game 6: 7:20, Mood = Poor

Opponent: Protoss

Ok. This time I get an engineering bay up and a turret in my mineral line early just in case. I scan his base and I see nothing unusual. Reaper scout noted 2 gas so I’m a bit nervous. I have a bunker up front of my natural.

At around 6:55 I send over a poke (a small attack) to try to do a stim marine/marauder at his natural. Unfortunately, his photon overcharge stops me in my tracks combined with a few zealots but I feel good as I did knock him down a bit.

However, at 8:00 2 invisible units run past my bunker and devestate my army. No scans available as I had just scanned his base so his invisible guys (DTs) wipe out my army. My peons are safe because I have the turrets there but with my army gone (and now my bunker gone he quickly moves in with some zealots and wipes me out.

Invisible, fucking units with unlimited cloak. Jesus.

Me: GG

Game 7:  7:33p,, Mood = Pissed

Opponent: Protoss

Protoss snuck in and built 2 proxy gateways. I discover it with my scout SCV at 2:48 but it’s too late. 2 zealots pop out before I can finish my bunker and I’m dead.

ARGH.

Game 8: 7:40pm, Mood = Really pissed

Opponent: Protoss

Ok, I scout the fucking base for Pilons (so my timing is now a bit slower). I send an SCV out to scout for proxy shit (which slows me down more). I send a reaper into his base and see 2 gas. So what is it? My SCV finds a proxy templar archives.

Hah you bastard! Your damn invisible guys won’t get me this time.

So I build the goddamn engineering bay early enough so I can build turrets in my mineral line. All this scoutting means I can’t expand as early as I’d like but this time it’ll be worth it.  I build a turret behind my bunker too. I’ve got 3 barracks and plan to get my factory going at around 8:00.

My scoutting revealed he has stalkers so I’m prioritizing Stim but I’m a bit behind my timing because of all the freaking SCV scouting I felt I needed to do.

At just after 7 minutes I see the other guy’s mothership ship core (a strange flying unit that has special abilities and shoots air and ground units that this race gets early for some reason) show up but I’m not worried. I have turrets in my mineral line and he’s way on the edge of the base. 

Suddenly about a dozen stalkers blink into my base bypassing all my defenses and just wipe me out.

Me: What? What the hell? How did you get into my base?

Opponent:  Blink. FTW!

Me: Doesn’t blink require vision?

Opponent: MSC. FTW!

Me: Son of a $@#@ gg.

Game 9: 7:49pm, Mood = Enraged

Opponent: SAME GUY!

Me: Well, rematch time! That trick won’t work twice!

Opponent: GLHF!

Since I can’t count on him doing the same build I still have to scout. But this time I go for an early factory and get a couple mines out. I do build a bunker near my command center as a last resort and I kind of cripple my economy to do this but it’ll be worth it.

I send a small poke (small marauder/marine attack) at around 6:40 and see the mothership core which, combined with a zealot and stalkers keeps me from doing much damage beyond destroying a pylon.

Once again, around 7 minute here comes the mothership core. This is going to be awesome. 

Units blink in, MFC moves back before my mines can get it! Damn but they do damage the stalker. My marauder heavy group, armed with Stim (I rushed it) prepares to wipe this bastard out!

Suddenly, his army simply vanishes!

Me: WTF?

Opponent: Recall! FTW!

(Silence)

[His units simply teleported home apparently]

8:00 has passed and I’ve totally gimped my timings in preparation.  A couple minutes later he overwhelms me front the front with immortals (their artillery) because while I had been turtling up, he had expanded and was up to 7 gates while I had only managed 3 barracks, a factory as I had put so much of my economy on hold to build bunkers, turrets, mines and other things at weird timings that I just lack the skill or something to compete.

Me: Well, clearly I’m outmatched! I’m done. gg

Aftermath

Mind you, I’m playing unranked. I’m not a very good player. I’m just a casual player.  I have no idea whether there’s a balance issue or whether there’s anything wrong other than the fact I must absolutely suck.   Back in the old days, I used to play a lot so I have a decent understanding of the importance of scouting, timing attacks, unit groups.

I also know the basic counters for different units and my typing speed (I don’t have great “APM” overall but I’m purely a keyboard guy at this game) allows me to have intricate control groups that let me treat my marines differently from the marauders and such.

What I do know is that it’s not fun for me.  I’m sure that a good player would read this and laugh at my suck.  And I have no doubt I suck. But I do know the game pretty well (the mothership core thing was something I hadn’t seen before though and was probably the one thing that struck me as being an odd design choice).

What can Blizzard do?

Not much.  Like I said, it’s a well designed game. But it’s an e-Sport now.  If you want to play casually, you need to play with friends. Starcraft was designed before the age of YouTube replays and mass forums.  They’d have to totally redesign it if they wanted the game to be less frustrating to casual players.

The problem is, in the age of YouTube,  anyone can just go on and see a “build” that lets them win against people who haven’t seen the counter to that build. 

Ever wonder how popular a given game really is?

How many times have you read on a forum about how some game is way more popular than some other game.  Is there a reasonable objective way to tell? Actually, yes.

www.steamcharts.com

Here are some Stardock games:

LH: http://www.steamcharts.com/app/228260#All

Sins: http://www.steamcharts.com/app/204880

GalCiv II: http://www.steamcharts.com/app/202200

There are a lot of metrics you can come up with to tell how popular a game really is. My personal favorite is to look at the “all” option for the active players graph and take a look at it.  What is, roughly, its typical player base.

Here’s FE: Legendary Heroes:

Now, eyballing it, I would guestimate it’s steady state user base is about…900 players at once.

Here’s the same graph but for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion:

I’d guess that it’s average userbase is about 1400 players at once.

Anyway, have fun!

Greetings!

The ALPHA of Galactic Civilizations III is due in 17 days (March 27). I want to use this post as a way to set people’s expectations and, if anything, use this as a public service announcement that you should NOT join the Founder’s program if your goal is to play a video game for fun early. That is not the purpose of the Founder’s program.

The stages of development

Software goes through 5 distinct phases with varying definitions but below is my own personal version:

Phase 1: Prototype

This is where you have something that kind of sort of works. It may not work anywhere else but your machine and only the most rudimentary features are in.  Right now, Stardock has 6 games in prototype of which only 2 have been vaguely mentioned – GalCiv III and Code-named Mars.  Most non-insane studios do not talk about games until they are way beyond this point. 

The purpose of the prototype is work through basic systems and set up the art pipeline.

Phase 2: Alpha

This is where the game will probably work on other people’s computers but it’s nothing that would remotely resemble a “fun” experience.  The fact it works at all is a miracle and only the most basic features are working. Internally this stage means the art pipeline is now working (that is, you can get new art assets into the game) and the underlying engine is functioning.   In my mind, the threshold that makes something an alpha is that it is possible to win (or lose) the game. That doesn’t mean it’s fun.  Most of the features won’t be in.  The purpose of the alpha is to see if the engine works on other machines and start solicitation core game mechanic feedback from members.

As an example: GalCiv II’s alpha was basically sprite based and utterly unplayable. Sins of a Solar Empire’s alpha didn’t have phase lanes. Demigod’s alpha still used Supreme Commander assets and UI.

Phase 3: Beta

Many studios these days have open betas. Betas tend to have most of their major features in and some gameplay in.  How “fun” it is depends on how far along the process they are. Think of your favorite game and change a few variables about it and suddenly it’s not fun.  Civilization IV becomes a lot different if it takes 50 turns to spit out a settler. Call of Duty is a totally different game if everyone has 1000 HP.  You can’t judge what the final game will be like.  But at least now it’s a game.

Phase 4: Gamma

At this stage, it’s a release candidate. You’re not really adding anything anymore. You just want to see if there are any bug issues that got missed.  Some games are reviewed at this phase even because you can pass judgment at this stage.

Phase 5: Release

The game is out and will be judged.

Where we stand

In 20 years of game development, I’ve only shared alphas with the public one other time and that was with the original Galactic Civilizations for OS/2. It was extremely primitive. 

Obviously, our biggest concern is that we’ll have people making judgments on the game itself at this stage.  We’re over a year away from release.  The opportunity here is to see how well the game runs for people but also to hear what long time GalCiv players think of different parts of the game.

The alpha  phase is the opportunity to experiment and try out different ideas. In this alpha, we’re trying out new things such as a new type of technology tree, a single planetary manufacturing queue, a new UI for the planet screen, etc.  Maybe these things will say. Maybe they won’t. That’s what the alpha will help us decide.  That is the point of it.

So to emphasize the point again: Do not play the alpha expecting to have a fun game (though, ironically, the 1 on 1 multiplayer might have some bit of fun based on the playtesting I’ve seen).  But do play it with an open mind to see what things you like, how well it works on your box, what things you think should be changed and share those things with us after giving your own concepts serious consideration.

Cheers!

Greeeeeeeeeeeeetings my friends!

This post is more for indie developers who want to know how much money things make. 

First some basics on game budgeting:

1. Every person on your game you should budget at $10,000 per month. It’s a good rule of thumb. 
2. You should target a 25% “profit” on your game to cover the unexpected as well as for future growth
3. Steady State income represents the gross income of your game without sales, promotions, new releases, etc.
4. Steady state takes 6 months to eliminate the “new game” anomaly.
5. You need to take opportunity cost into account when budgeting (am I better off working on this versus that?)
6. Opportunity cost is hard to calculate and is what kills most studios long-term.

The steady state of LH is $40,000 per month.

That doesn’t mean its annual income is $480,000 a year because there are lots of events that cause income spiking (Christmas is a 4X spike, Thanksgiving is a 2X spike, and the Steam July sale is a 3X spike.

For LH, that means I could justify 3 resources on it before taking opportunity costs into account.  Once I consider opportunity costs, the number declines to 1 because those other 2 resources are better off on Galactic Civilizations III or Star Control or “Elemental 3” or what have you.

Before anyone poo-poos 1 resource, bear in mind that I made the original Galactic Civilizations by myself. So 1 person can still get a lot done. But that’s where we are.  1 person means that the game can continue to evolve.  Some months it might be an artist. Another month a developer.  In January, it was Charles (programmer) fixing bugs and tweaking.  In February it was Kael doing new balance changes.  In March it’ll probably be me (I have anger management issues with the game’s pathfinding). 

The main funding source: DLC

DLC is really the funding source.  The base game is doing $25k and DLC is picking up the remaining $15k.  In effect, DLC purchases are providing the $10k resource and the $5k profit necessary to keep the game going.

The next DLC: Spouses

For those of you reading this, the next DLC is going to allow players to have spouses. Kael has meticulously designed a spouse for each player (and to be honest, they’re way cooler than the sovereigns because Kael got to really go crazy with these).

The one AFTER Spouses will probably (but not certainly) be Random Map expansion. That is, a lot more “interesting” stuff for random maps. I plan to do this one myself as I’d like to see random maps made a lot more interesting and I’ve had a lot of practice in the past year in my own “for fun” mods.

Cheers!

While the world endlessly debates on what is an indie developer, one thing that is very common at indie developers that is not common at major development houses is the requirement to work with teammates that are spread across the world, all day, every day. Another difference is that optimizing every bit of juice out of your development setup is a major priority.

So here are some suggestions I have from spending many years online:

#1 Use Skype

I started out using IRC to communicate to my teammates around the world. In the past few years, we’ve migrated to Skype and it has made a huge difference in communications.

#2 Turn of Skype notifications

As nice is Skype is, it’s default is obnoxious. By default, Skype really isn’t very good as a development communication setup because it is constantly trying to distract you.   The first thing I do when I first install Skype is to go to tools->options->notifications and turn off pretty much everything.

#3 Turn off Skype sounds

As if that’s not bad enough, Skype likes sound effects.  So again, go to tools->options->sounds and disable all the sounds.

#4 Use Google Drive

I use SkyDrive (OneDrive or whatever it’s going to be called by the time you read this), Dropbox, and others. They’re fine but Google Docs gets the edge because it’s soooo good at collaboration. You get a news feed on what’s been changed in a given directory, it has really nice online tools for creating docs, and it’s really good at collaboration.

#5 When testing your program, DO NOT RUN IT FROM THE DEBUGGER. 

This is a mistake that even pros make regularly.  If you’re launching your program from the debugger you are probably losing a lot of wasted time.  Instead, run it normally, get to the point where you need to debug and then attach the debugger to the process.  

#6 If you’re not using Incredibuild or some other tools, make sure you’re using all your CPU cores when you compile.

This is not on by default for some reason.  In Visual Studio, go to the project properties, open C/C++, go to command line and MAKE SURE the /MP is there.  I’ve checked out a lot of our own projects and found it not to be there and that’s incredibly wasteful.  I have 6 cores on this box, that means a literal 6X perf gain.

#7 Make sure you invest in an SSD for compiling.

The time difference is worth it and if you’re an indie, time is your most valuable resource.

Hope this helps!

Lots of cool stuff going on around here.

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes 1.6 is due out in April and there will be a new DLC released shortly after that.  It involves spouses. That’s all I’ll say.

Legendary Heroes 2.0

Also, as some of you may have heard, Legendary Heroes 2.0 has been approved and budgeted. This will be a free update of some significance.  I don’t have a due date for it yet but it does have some interesting changes in it including ZOC for monster lairs and possibly some changes with regards to the way champion inventory is handled. 

Other things on our “want” list for Legendary Heroes 2.0 include:

• Updated diplomacy options to help build longer term relations
• More performance boosts (we’re working on redoing the way trees are handled)
• Some tweaks to the way magic is done
• More effective alliance handling (this is something we really want to see)
• Some changes to the way the Spell of Making is handled

That’s just a bit of it.

Obviously, this all boils down to having enough revenue to pay for it.  The numbers for LH are quite promising.  In January, about half of LH’s revenue came from the DLC. So that’s a good sign.

Next DLC

Like I mentioned, we have new DLC coming out next month. It’s already in QA.  Kael has gone pretty crazy with it.  Anyone from the Civ IV world knows the crazy stuff Kael can do so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. But it’s pretty neat.

But AFTER that one I have two questions I’d like to get your views on:

1. How OFTEN do you want to see new DLC?  (Monthly, Quarterly, Every couple months, etc.)

2. What would you like to see our NEXT DLC be?

a. Stamps pack (for more random map generation interest)

b. More tactical battles maps

c. More magical spells

d. New factions

e. More loot

f. More quests

g. Something else (if it involves writing c++ code, it’s not DLC so has to be content that is downloadable).

Other sneak peeks…

Stay tuned!

First off, for those of you not familiar with our forum structure, I go by 2 handles: Draginol and Frogboy.  Draginol came from the old idea that when I posted from home, I’d use a different handle. Bah. Now I never get them straight.

Anyway, I need your help. 

As concisely as possible, can you list the things in Legendary Heroes that you find the most FUN.  Not unique. Not stand-out. But FUN. Can be something that you love in many games.

After a few posts, I’ll list my own favorites but I really want to hear your thoughts on this.

Thanks!

I’m going to do a follow up article soon on how I almost killed myself with cough suppressants.  Long story short, I came down with a bad cold in January but I’ve been traveling like crazy so to function, I just took a bunch of cough suppressants to control the cold.  Unfortunately, that led to a pretty severe case of bronchitis which has basically taken me out for the past 3 weeks.

Lots of stuff going on in the Elemental universe though.  An additional year of development effort on Legendary Heroes was approved in January. While we shouldn’t expect a bunch of updates on LH this year, there will be some across the board.

We also have something new in store which we’ll talk about more when it gets closer. 

There's a Steam sale this weekend for Fallen Enchantress (and now Legendary Heroes) which is bringing many thousands of new players into our community.

Please welcome them!

Clearly my offensiveness is a genetic condition.  Therefore, I have a disability and nothing is my fault.

Seriously though, here’s some fun my teenage son had with photoshop he sent me.

Top X rejected flavors for chips.

I won’t post the others he sent.  They’re unprintable…