Over the past 20 years there has been a lot of changes in how games are made. When I first got started, I had Deluxe Paint, Vista Pro and graph paper as my non-compiler tools.
My latest, favorite gadget is the Wacom Cintiq which lets me, very quickly, whip up UI designs to pass on to the team for critique. Below is a screenshot of a UI mockup for something we’re working on.
Greetings!
For those of you not familiar with our Elemental game universe here it is in brief:
Elemental is a fantasy world made up of many different civilizations vying for control the world. There is a great deal of history and lore to tap into and we decided to begin making games in this world back with 2010s release of War of Magic. Unfortunately, when it came out, it was pretty buggy and got some negative reviews. We fixed the bugs but the game itself was still pretty meh.
So in 2012, we released the second game in the Elemental universe called Fallen Enchantress which was good and we're pretty proud of that game. We followed it up with an expansion pack called Legendary Heroes that further refined the Fallen Enchantress game mechanics.
We do intend to follow Fallen Enchantress with a third strategy game in the Elemental universe but it'll be very different from either War of Magic or Fallen Enchantress as it focuses largely on, well I can't really go into that yet.
When Fallen Enchantress was released, we discontinued War of Magic. I don't think it's available for sale anywhere anymore. My question is, would anyone be interested in us revisiting War of Magic in the future to release a kind of "War of Magic: Director's Cut" or something where we refined the WOM game design, updated the visuals.
WOM had some interesting game mechanics such as a pretty big emphasis on a dynasty system and a number of other distinctive mechanics that could be refined further.
Let us know what you think. Would we be opening up "old wounds" or would be restoring faith to those who believed in the original "not-MOM" concept?
vs. 
Actual impressions (putting aside the specs)
Got any questions? I’ll answer as best I can.
I haven’t got to design an AI since…well 2006. It’s been a long time and the Stardock games team of 2013 is insanely awesome and the tech is just amazing too.
Now, I programmed the AI in Legendary Heroes and helped on the AI in Fallen Enchantress (I wrote worker functions for War of Magic). But I haven’t got to sit down and make something from scratch since GalCiv II.
And wow, things are so much better now. Virtualization, lots of cores to handle threads (GalCiv II was written for a single core with 1 hyperthread). The things I can do now are, well they’re just plain sick.
While I am quite proud of the AI in Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes, it was something I had to retrofit onto Elemental: War of Magic. It was a miracle to get it to work as well as it does because War of Magic was single threaded. I had to make it multithreaded after the fact (if there are any programmers here, please feel free to comment to explain how nasty that is).
In GalCiv III, the AI is able to operate on a virtual machine version of the game state. So I can monkey around in real-time without it affecting other players. I can not only have every computer player have its own thread, I can have different components of the AI have their own threads and in multiplayer, I can distribute the work up across the different players.
There’s a lot more too. From crowd sourcing ship designs, tech tree strategies, planetary improvement strategies, etc. to throwing raw number crunching stuff onto the player’s video card. We’ve come a long way from 2006.
It's Thanksgiving!
And I have a lot to be thankful for. In no particular order, here are some things that I am very very thankful for.
#1 My Wife and kids.
My wife and I have been together over 20 years. I love her so much. We met in college during an..incident in EE lab (you do not want me to work on anything that actually involves electricity). Since then, we've had 3 wonderful children. I am very thankful for them in ways that I think many can appreciate. My two sons love video games and are now old enough to play games with me. In my office we have 3 PCs where we play as a squad in BF4 and played Diablo 3 together. My daughter is sweet, kind and smart as a whip. She's the one who can tell when I'm stressed and will give me the kind of hug that only a 7 year old little girl can provide.
My wife loves Christmas. She's one of those people. But I tell ya, having someone with a pure, genuine joy for the holidays is contagious. She's brilliant, beautiful and wonderful.
#2 My friends
There have been some tough times for my family and I these past few years. As some of you know, there was a frivolous lawsuit filed against me a couple years back that accused me of a laundry list of disgusting but totally false allegations. My friends, especially those who were familiar with the events, were very important to me in a world where lots of strangers were eager to jump on the hate bandwagon. While victory in that case brought some vindication, it was my friends (and family) that carried the day for me. I am very thankful for them.
#3 My colleagues
This is kind of a repeat of #2. I really enjoy the people I work with. They really are more than just coworkers. They're my friends too. I really enjoy talking to them. They're fun, interesting, and fascinating. I get to go to work with them every day or interact with them online. It brings something to my life that I am very thankful for. They make every day an adventure.
#4 My health
This is totally selfish but I never want to take for granted that I have been blessed with unusually good health. When I look at the material success I've been able to achieve I never forget that my God given health was a prerequisite for this. Never being tired, never having a cold, flu, or other physical obstacle makes a lot of things possible and helps keep me somewhat grounded as reminding me that my success isn't due only to my own hard work or cleverness but also a roll of the cosmic dice.
#5 YOU GUYS!
I am a creature of the Internet. I make no apologies for this. I've been continuously online since 1986 when I was involved in BBSes. I know I say things on the record that get me into trouble from time to time. But that is part of the experience. I am thankful that I have the opportunity to talk directly to the people who like our software or play our games or about anything else under the sun. It is, and I mean this, the single biggest motivation I have to keep doing what I do. Take away the ability to talk to you guys and I would have retired by now. There is no business reason for me to keep writing computer AI, for instance. In fact, it's problematic in that it keeps me from my CEO responsibilities. But it keeps me in the trenches talking to you guys and I love it.
No matter where you are, I hope this message finds you well. Thank you for sharing your lives with me. I want you to know I really appreciate it. It matters. You matter. Have a happy Thanksgiving!
If you haven’t read this I highly recommend it:
CEO Brad Wardell on Stardock's big picture: strategic development and rise of the managers
There is a lot more to come. But this gives you an idea of the direction we’re taking in helping bring forth the next generation of game studios.
Many years ago, when I was trying to come up with a villain for what I called, at the time, Earth Space Wars, I wanted an enemy that was brutal, ruthless and most importantly, inhuman. An enemy that would look at our system of ethics, morals and honor and laugh at them as being hopelessly naïve and primitive.
Below are images of the Drengin over the years.
Early Drengin image from early 90s.
Drengin painting from 1995
Lord Kona, Galactic Civilizations I
Lord Kona, a few years later in Galactic Civilizations II
Early GalCiv III version of Kona where he was blended with Korath concepts.
Elderly Kona
I’m putting this up so that it’s not lost to time. This is an article I wrote for Computer Games Magazine about my son playing World of Warcraft back when he was 8 years old and how he played it differently from adults.
GalCiv I UI
GalCiv II BETA
GalCiv II release
GalCiv III Alpha (final should look even better).
Visit www.galciv3.com to follow the continuing evolution of Galactic Civilizations!
For all you Demigod lovers out there, there's a great interview with Bert Bingham, the Associate Producer of Demigod at Gas Powered Games.
He talks about everything from the original concept, the networking and the future of Demigod.
Check it out here: