Jon Shafer has a new game brewing called At the Gates and I’m in love. Let me preface all this by saying that if you’re a gamer, you live in a golden age. I say that because thanks to digital distribution, all kinds of games can now be made that wouldn’t have been economically possibly to develop just 5 years ago. At the Gates is a game designed for people who love history. It’s not commonly known that when the Roman Empire fell, the world didn’t just fast-forward to bl...
Not that I expect those people who are wholly invested in their hate to retract or express any regret for the death threats, smearing, or abuse they sent my way, but as any lawyer who is familiar with employment law can tell you, this is as clear of a victory as you can get. I said at the time that we wouldn’t pay out a dime (except for lawyers obviously) and that only an apology letter would satisfy us. Anyone who has ever run a business with lots of employees knows that s...
Been working on the tactical summons code for v1.4 of Elemental: Fallen Enchantress – Legendary Heroes! Should be some fun. While I was in there, I made some tweaks that should let the AI perform magic just generally better. This is one of those things that just takes a lot of play time to master. Knowing WHEN and WHERE and WHY to cast spells is not an “AI” thing. It’s a human judgment call that has to manifest itself in AI. So keep those posts coming. ...
Far be it for me to hype something we make but...HOLY COW is this awesome! GET IT GET IT GET IT!
In the good old days of gaming, the game studios weren’t public and so they could give little sneak peeks and teasers of things they’re working on. Unfortunately, the number of indie studios is dwindled and so there’s very little spontaneity in what companies share (which the Xbox One unveil showed us can be quite a bummer). Below is just some artwork from a few of the things that are in development.
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version 0.50 1992 My friend Bill and I used to come up with comics and draw them out. He would later help on the art on our first game. 1993: Worst. Box. Ever. Started a lifetime suspicion of “business” people. So much retconning. GalCiv for OS/2! My future wife and I got engaged that year. 1994: And married the next year. ...
People ask me quite occasionally, “What did you guys do with the money from the Impulse sale?” The answer is, a lot of things. Over the next 60 days there’s going to be a bunch of announcements as things we’ve been working on start to come to fruition. Today is the first of the announcements! Stardock has opened a mobile game studio in Plymouth Michigan. Technically, we opened it awhile ago but we didn’t want to talk about it until we had something to show and that’s what ...
Greetings! I’d like to introduce you to Stardock’s new Brand Manager, Adam Biessener. For the past decade, Adam has been one of, if not the top strategy game reviewer at Game Informer Magazine and frankly, the games industry itself. You can read some of his excellent work at Game Informer here: http://www.gameinformer.com/members/giadam/default.aspx So what is a Brand Manager? It’s a leadership position that was created to help make sure our games are just plain better....
They’re turning older F-16s into unmanned drones. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24231077
Back in the early days of Stardock, style of dress and the way pictures were taken was very different. Pictured from left to right: Pat Ford (T-Man) Angie Marshall (Karmagirl) Me (Frogboy) Kurt Westerfeld (lead developer of Object Desktop for OS/2) Mike Duffy (lead developer of the Pear game library we used right into 2003) Maurice Saylor (Sales manager) Melanie Westerfeld
My raised garden! Right next to the house, broad day light!
First off, we should all be ashamed that we do not already have a Breaking Bad thread. There. I've said it. We are all bad people. Terrible people really. What kind of forum doesn't have a Breaking Bad forum? I'll tell you what kind: One that has something to hide. A forum that feels like the subject matter hits too close to home. But the time of hiding is over. The final season is here. Discuss. Spoilers. (duh)
I’ve ready a lot of comments on Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes AI. I feel confident in saying that most people seem very satisfied with it overall. But I think most people would say it’s not quite as good as GalCiv II’s. In some respects, the GalCiv series is an anomaly. I’ve been programming AI on GalCiv games for 20 years. Let’s put that on the table for a moment and consider the ramifications. Can anyone think of a game, any game in the history of game devel...
In October 2013, Stardock will be turning 20 (incorporation date). The first software product we made was…Galactic Civilizations. I began working on it in early 1992 while in college and it went into public beta at the start of 1993. It was “published” by a guy going by “Advanced Idea Machines” who also designed, ahem, the box. Galactic Civilizations for OS/2 box (we had nothing to do with this..box) I was going through my stuff today and ...
This Summer I've put some time into putting together an emergency kit. I wouldn't call us "preppers" by any stretch of the imagination but I think it's a good idea to have some basic plan in the event that something catastrophic happened to our infrastructure (like severe disruption to the power grid or something). During the process of figuring out what sorts of supplies we should have, I have found numerous Internet forums that discuss this (they call their kits "bug out ...