Beta 5 is now here! LOTS of changes. + NEW: Ascension Victory is now enabled! + To win by Ascension Victory, build starbases on the Ascension Crystals scattered throughout the galaxy to absorb their aura. + Each starbase on an Ascension Crystal will give you 1 point per turn towards the necessary 1000 points to win + AI will use specific ascension-based flavor text to describe why they are going to war with you if that is the reason. + AI will now list ascension as one of the reasons why ...

We have some usability changes in the works for JoeUser 2. Here are a few highlights: 1) Ignore user. A given user's posts would simply no longer show up (though their comments probably would as there'd be a significant slow down there). 2) Filter category.  Categories you're not interested could be turned off and the site would re-adjust based on that. 3) Blog Friends. You will be able to set given users as friends and be kept up to date on what they're doing on your own blog o...

 

UGO has reviewed Sins of a Solar Empire with the conclusions "This is the game Star Wars: Empire at War should have been". W00t!

Rating: A

You can see it here.

So what's going on at Stardock these days?  The answer is, LOTS of stuff. Where should I start? I guess first, you're going to notice that we're going to start branding things to simplify what part of the company you're working with: My Games . For Stardock's million+ gamers. My Desktop . For the millions of people who use Stardock's desktop experience software. My Tools . For the growing user base of next-generation utility software programs. My Community . For users o...

Since no one will stand up for greedy evil capitalists these days, I'll take a stab at it.

A harsh lesson in dealing with the Advent - focus fire can kill you. The Advent have a whole set of abilities that deal damage back to enemies.

  Every year it's the same thing. I get emails asking me if I'm going to have time at GDC to meet with them about some game, industry partnership, licensing opportunity, etc. And each year I respond "Sorry, I won't be at the GDC" (Game Developer's Conference). They're almost universally shocked that I don't attend. It's not that I'm boycotting it. I think the GDC is a great conference. I just don't see what particular benefit it would be to go.  From a social aspect, I'm only ...

 

The April 2008 edition of PC Gamer has a very thorough review of Sins of a Solar Empire. 91% and Editor's Choice!

Lots of stuff going on at the office. We meant to get Beta 5 out this week, there's a ton of changes to Twilight that we're working through. Unfortunately, I have the flu which is slowing me down. But on a brighter note Scott (boogiebac) and his wife just had their first baby but that means he's been out this week. One of the new features we've put in is that players can choose to have the AI design ships for them. While most players choose to design their own ships, this gives new pl...

With all the talk about Apple's really thin notebook and the upcoming ThinkPad X300, I can't help but wish that both would take a book out of the lightest, most usable notebook ever made: The ThinkPad X40.

MyColors Theme Manager in action.

For those of you who purchased Sins of a Solar Empire Collector's Edition (which is what you automatically get when you purchase directly from Stardock either digitally or the CE box) you get the Sins of a Solar Empire MyColors theme. Just type in your CE serial # (visit here to have Stardock email your serial #) into MyColors. If you have the CE version, you should be able to see it from the update page within Sins of a Solar Empire.

It's a whole new JoeUser. The site has been completely rewritten from scratch. Some features haven't been completely re-implemented and there are bound to be some glitches. But we now have the kind of backend and application support to do all kinds of cool stuff. In the coming days, various usability tweaks will be made as we discover what key little features we've overlooked. Then, in the next few weeks, we'll start to add in new abilities and such. We hope you like the new setup. I...