When we said you could mod Galactic Civilizations II, we meant it.  And one of the features of 1.2 will be the example mod.  The first beta has an early stab at it but it will be in beta 2 (this week) that more meat comes into play for the mod.  One might argue that we went overboard with our example mod as it is arguably a mini-expansion pack unto itself.  These mods could be done by anyone mind you. There is no coding involved.  Below are two screenshots of alternative...

One of the nice things about being an indie title that isn't incredibly mainstream is that you can do things that wouldn't necessarily appeal to the casual player. For instance, the expansion pack for GalCiv II has gotten its features, story, plot, etc. mapped out now.  We'll talk about that more soon. But it will contain a campaign and it will be dark. Very dark.  Two of the major civilizations in GalCiv II will be wiped out. Eliminated. You'll still be able to play them in GalC...

Putting aside the fact that we are talking about a comic book movie which means it is full of cliches and crummy dialog, X-Men 3 was easily the best of the 3. Director Ratner, not a popular guy amongst fans, managed to crank out one hell of a good ride. There was some sloppy editing but overall, the number of times I went "OH MY GOD! I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY DID THAT!" was higher than any franchise film I've ever seen. This movie is no-holds barred. I suspect the more you like the comic book ...

There are a LOT of changes in here. And in fact, the example mod we did (which mostly did not require any code changes) has become quite a journey unto itself.  Paul has been working on an alternative game interface for the mod to show how users can use DesktopX to create their own stuff. The alternative main game UI isn't ready yet so that will go into the next beta but there's a lOT of stuff in the example mod we've included. To use a mod, go to the OPTIONS screen and then select the...

Ever wonder how effective advertising is? I remember when I was a kid hearing how much was spent on TV ads and thinking "What a waste of money" for most of those ads. I think ads about "Branding" or on immediate needs (like food or toiletries) can be effective. But many other ads, I dunno. Magazine ads are something I don't know about either.  And yet here we are, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per quarter. How effective are they?  Does that $20,000 two-page spread in a g...

The GalCiv II team keeps working on new updates. But more and more of that coding is occurring during the spare time of the developers.  For example, I'm only budgeted to work on the game a few hours per week at this point. In effect, most of my time working on the game is during my nights and weekends. On every Stardock game for the past several years, my job has been to manage the overall project and then come in near the end to go hard core on the parts of the game that need the most ...

It's ironic that Democrats despite President Bush so much when Bush has worked so tirelessly to destroy the Republican party.  The Republican party as we know it is dead. It's still moving around, still animated, but as the midterms are likely to show, the carcas has passed on. To be fair, it has taken Bush about 6 years to destroy the Republican party and Democrats, who are certainly not the party of rocket scientists (both literally and figuratively) have seemingly been unaware that Bu...

Anyone who's been around Stardock's various websites knows the pattern.  We find a new way to make things faster or upgrade some piece of hardware to make the sites run smoother and the traffic instantly jumps which brings back the problems for the regulars. The #1 performance hogging feature on all of Stardock's sites (whether it be JoeUser or WinCustomize or GalCiv2.com or TotalGaming.net) is the same thing -- the referrals.  That is, all items actually look at where a visitor is ...

I blew most of my writing wad writing this article on Windows Vista today . Yesterday I did a lengthy audio interview with Apolyton.net . We touched on what features we had to cut out of the game that we wanted to have in there. Two of the features I wanted in were asteroid fields and dedicated legions of troops.  The dedicated legions of troops involved having to raise armies. In this way, your planets would be populated by different aliens and that their approval and productivity ...

Last week I was in south Texas on vacation.  A lot of Spanish speaking people down there.  For years, I've told my wife that for the 3 years I took spanish the only thing I remember is "Donde esta la pluma" (where is the pen). We were at an ice cream place and the lady behind the counter, having taken someone's credit card said "donde esta la pluma". My moment had come.  My entire life was merely preparation for this one moment.  This was the time for me to shine -- where ...

Here is what is new in Galactic Civilizations v1.11 over 1.1: + New AI option - allow AI to use more CPU. Not used yet but will be in future builds. + Civ homeworlds are set when loading a saved game. + AI (some of them) less reactionary to influence concerns (i.e. won't likely build as many embassies) + AI pickier about trading weapons techs + AI sensitive to player going for tech victory + AI designs ships more often (this will be further refined in the future) ...

When I was a kid I never needed to wear sunscreen.  Now we've got all this SPF stuff and I definitely needed it.  The first evening I became intimately familiar with Aloe vera. I could be wrong but I think I'm now technically married to aloe vera. But now I'm back and I can mostly move my limbs again without being in too much pain. This summer is going to be pretty busy.  There's a lot of work going on in our non-games area in preparation for Windows Vista.  On Tu...

I'm on my way back from vacation. I am sitting in the Houston airport with my trustry Verizon aircard which gives me net access virtually anywhere.  And as I start to look over the forums and polls, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that people seem to really like what we did with v1.1.  The bad news is that quite a few people can't run it at all due to memory usage. One of the goals for v1.1 was to make the game even faster and more responsive to users, parti...

Be careful what you wish for. Saying "Oh, I wish I could stay here another day.." can sometimes make it come true.  Our flight is canceled so here we are, still in the Gulf of Mexico.

Tomorrow I'm off to Texas for 9 days. Then I come back and I'm off to Redmond Washington for meetings with some software company there for a week. I heard someone on JoeUser say that only people from Texas would go to Texas on vacation. Well, okay, yes, I'm from Texas. And I'm going to Dallas to visit friends and then to the gulf of mexico.  But it's warm, it's sunny, and I'll get to spend some much needed time with the wife and kids. It's been a real adventure since this past Novembe...