Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.
Draginol's Articles In Demigod Journals
July 10, 2008 by Draginol
The concept of Demigod is quite simple: A god has fallen and several heroes have stepped up to battle for the right to take his place. The gods, accepting this challenge, have created a number of godly arenas where these heroes can call upon their former allies from the mortal world to help them achieve victory. In a large sense, Demigod is a strategy game. But it's not like Supreme Commander or Company of Heroes. Instead, it is something quite different as it is very tactical in natur...
July 22, 2008 by Draginol
In classic strategy games such as Total Annihilation and in Supreme Commander the player not only had their usual units but also had a commander -- a very powerful central unit that was particularly lethal and capable of doing many different things. Demigod, in many respects, is the logical progression of this game mechanic.  In Demigod, players choose a hero to be their Demigod in a quest to becoming increasingly powerful. In individual games that take place in arenas that, in my opi...
August 10, 2008 by Draginol
If you've ever worked on a game, you know that for 80% of the process, the game is little different from any other development endeavor. It's not "fun". You aren't "playing" the game, you are simply working on it in the hopes that it will be fun at some point. Galactic Civilizations, for instance, was incredibly boring until the final months. We were starting to sweat it but then, like the flick of a switch, it came together and was very fun. Sins of a Solar Empir...
August 25, 2008 by Draginol
I write this from the plane on the way to Redmond which is where Gas Powered Games is located.  Normally, publishers and developers have very explicit division of labor on projects. The developer makes the game, the publisher takes that game and markets, distributes is, and supports it. As people observed with Sins of a Solar Empire , you can get tremendous results when the developer and publisher combine their teams together into a single "big" team. That means Gas Powered Games...
August 14, 2008 by Draginol
If you've been in one of our betas before you already understand what I'm about to talk about. But if this is your first beta, you may find this discussion interesting. Our betas tend to be very beta. That is, rough. Whether it was Galactic Civilizations or Sins of a Solar Empire , our first betas tend to be pretty rough. Unfortunately, the higher the profile the game, the more likely people are going to try to use the beta as a way to judge the final game.  The first GalCiv bet...
August 31, 2008 by Draginol
It was a good week at PAX as we got to show the pre-beta of Demigod to the world and let people play it multiplayer.  Only a few more  days until the engine test beta.
August 9, 2008 by Draginol
The initial inspiration for Demigod was heavily based on the Warcraft 3 mod, Defense of the Ancients. If you've never played it, Defense of the Ancients is an incredibly clever game concept in which players team up on on a single map choosing between many different heroes. How one customizes their hero makes all the difference. Demigod works similarly in that you choose amongst several different heroes (your Demigods). Some heroes are called Generals whose strengths come from their ability ...
September 30, 2008 by Draginol
This week we intend to release the first update to the Demigod engine test beta (beta 1-A).  Under the hood there have been tons of changes made and we're beginning to make room for some of the more significant changes you'll be seeing in Beta 2 (beginning of November). Here are some of the highlights: My friend Soren Johnson has a great article entitled " the seven deadly sins of strategy games ".  The bottom line is to paraphrase Sid Meijer, good st...
November 17, 2008 by Draginol
Gas Powered Games is working hard on Beta 2 of Demigod. We don't have a definitive date for it but we're hoping to get it out before Thanksgiving so people can play it over the break (that would be next week). Now, so far beta testers have only played the engine test. That was basically just to see compatibility and performance.  We've taken that data and the GPG team has increased the game's performance dramatically. Beta 2 is where we get into the "meat" of t...
October 21, 2008 by Draginol
Right now GPG is in the process of implementing generals.  Before I spoil it and tell you how they work it would be cool to hear HOW you guys think they should work? Now, bear in mind, there's balancing and scope involved here. While on paper having assassins play like they do now and have generals play like a Supreme Commander style RTS might sound good, that would be impossible to balance and probably not very fun in practice. So what would you guys like to see? After enough com...
July 10, 2008 by Draginol
Greetings!  With the release of Beta 1 starting to get closer (August) to all those who pre-order the game, we're starting to put together a tentative schedule. Those of you who have been through other Stardock betas know how these things go. Below is what you can expect: August. Beta 1. This will not be a "fun" beta. It's a stress test of the engine. Those of you who were in the Sins of a Solar Empire beta or the GalCiv betas know we're not kidding. There will be ...
December 15, 2008 by Draginol
Testing testing testing.
December 16, 2008 by Draginol
Beta 2, like Beta 1, is multiplayer only. We haven't put in the obfuscation yet for the password so don't logon in front of anyone yet. Beta 2 is about the custom game (which we'll probably rename to skirmishes later). Beta 3 (January) will focus on the Tournaments. THIS is the screen where the pain will take place.  We do NOT have the Internet stuff working very well yet. Let me talk about the issue here so that e...
December 15, 2008 by Draginol
My cell phone's camera is pretty lame but here's the first go around with the collectable Rook miniature that comes with the Collector's Edition of Demigod.  Now, before anyone asks, anyone who purchases the digital version of the Collector's Edition can get the boxed edition sent to them for the $5 difference and shipping and handling but wait until we put up a page for it which won't be until March so don't worry. The Collector's Edition will also have a MyColors theme for ...
February 1, 2009 by Draginol
Beta 2D is the last of the Beta 2 builds which were designed to test connectivity.  Over the weekend we spent a lot of time working on the connectivity server – the “magical” feature that Demigod makes use of to make connectivity a lot better and easier than what has been seen in typical RTS. The release of Beta 2D showed a killer bug in the Impulse Reactor back end that caused it to just fail in setting up connections after a couple hours.  That got fixed (we hope) on Sunday nigh...