So yesterday the art team gave me a tour of the new rendering technology being used for GalCIv III.  If you’ve been with us for many years, you know that I’m not a graphics guy.  I drew the original OS/2 version “art” myself with the built in OS/2 icon editor.  As you can imagine, that means I have only a little understanding of all the cool stuff they’re doing. To me, I thought the GalCiv II ships looked pretty good. But the art team cringes when I say that.  I am intim...

I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that GalCiv III is moving along on schedule.  The bad news is that we’ve decided to change the feature requirements necessary for GalCiv III to be considered a “beta”. Originally, we were going to release the beta in May/June and have it not include combat/diplomacy/etc.  However, we’ve determined that we’re better off continuing with the Alpha series until some of those features enter into the game which isn’t sc...

Greetings! The team is really excited to get Beta 1 of Galactic Civilizations III out there.  The target date is one week away. The Founder's Edition, which is what provided access to the Alpha builds along with a lifetime subscription to everything we make for Galactic Civilizations III (all expansions, DLC) will not be offered anymore once the beta comes out.  On the other hand, the beta Early Access edition will be $5 off the list price of $49.95. So what's up? ...

Greetings! Well, my friends, there’s so much going on around here these days that I don’t even know where to start.  Please forgive me for my rambling in advance. Galactic Civilizations III As a developer, having a 64-bit only game engine is amazing. As I type this, old man Kael is testing to see what a GalCiv game with a hundred or so AI players will play like.  Can you guys imagine that? A game where the galaxy is alive with hundreds of empires (not counting min...

We’re getting pretty close to Beta 2 for GalCiv III. This one is the diplomacy beta series.  Part of the challenge is having UIs that can handle potentially hundreds of players.  In this screen, Kael has made his own custom players using Star Control players but players will be able to make whatever they’d like.

Greetings! The team has been hard at work on Beta 2 of Galactic Civilizations III.  Galactic Civilizations III is a space based strategy game that puts the player into the position of leader of a 23rd century interstellar civilization that is expanding out into the cosmos. As they expand, they will encounter other galactic civilizations that are doing the same.  How players react to dealing with “aliens” is up to them. Trade? Cultural Exchange? Alliances? Warfare? It’s all u...

Greetings! Welcome to the sausage factory! Beta 3 of Galactic Civilizations III has arrived with lots of new changes and improvements. We still have a long way to go but progress is swift.   A few highlights Beta 3 brings the Yor into the game.  We’re still playing around with how they “breed”.  The current plan is to have the player actually manufacture more Yor on the planet.  The Yor are a synthetic, pre-singularity lifeform.  Long...

Well the party is almost over for you humans. I’ve never hidden the fact that I consider human beings playing my AI a necessary evil.  I need your money to fund my AI work. This time around, I’ve got a talented young developer working with me.  He makes me feel old. Very. Very old.  A lot has changed over the past 20 years.  It is still technically C++ but it’s all very different from what it used to be. Example code //GalCiv III:  ...

Greetings! I was thinking the other day on how Galactic Civilizations has evolved over the years.  Let’s take a look: Feature GalCiv OS/2 GalCiv I GalCiv II GalCiv III Core 4X mechanics x x x x United Planets x x x x Moral Dilema Events x x x x ...

Drengin are somewhat bigger.

Little shout-out on 23rd century Earth…

One of the things we were excited to add to GalCiv III was more detailed race customization.  This time around, we’ve made it a lot easier for people to create their own truly unique civilizations. You can set your leader to be different from your species Right now, you’re doing the eating but later, they’ll be eating you. Of course, when making a GalCiv race you get to play AS that race and then later play against it if you so choose. So when designing them, you al...

Don’t judge me. So, in the next public build we should start to be able to give players access to prototype components.  These are components that require one of the special resources (Durantium, Elerium, etc.) that give your ships an early head start.  Since you won’t have many of them, they make those early ships very unique. I enjoy making odd looking ships just to house these special modules.

Gameplay notes Every game of Galactic Civilizations III is different.  You can play as any of 8 pre-made alien civilizations who have their own histories, technologies, etc, or you can literally create your own.  After release, we expect players will share their civilizations with one another.  You can play against up to 128 different opponents but in this case, we are only playing against ~8 civilizations. This example is just one game.  The infinitely replayable...

By beta 5, it should be pretty clear that GalCiv III is an entirely different beast from GalCiv II.  This post won’t go into the game play differences, which are pretty vast. This is about something a little more dear to many of our hearts: modding. Why GalCiv II was the way it was The thing about GalCiv II that I would like you guys to understand is that I wrote nearly all the economic, diplomatic, AI and other code personally.  I enjoyed doing it but it also meant that *I...