There are two main problems game developers, particularly *strategy* game developers are trying to deal with these days: 1. Memory and 2. Feeding the GPU There's almost a third which involves CPU starvation which has to do with the poor way we handle our data structures but that's a lesser issue. Now, with regards to memory, we can say all day that graphics shouldn't matter but they do. Forums are full of people saying how much they still like some old game but ...

I was struck by how many Steve Jobs biographers have emphasized how important it was that Jobs got kicked out of Apple. That experience changed him and in the long-run, made him a much better businessman. Pride before the fall is a truism and even being aware of it doesn’t prevent one from falling into into that trap. Right now, as I write this, Stardock is doing better than at any time in its history. But it’s only doing so well now because of changes we made 3 years ago. Because 3 ye...

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on Walt Disney recently and he tale is both amazing and quintessential.  His professional life was a conflict between his desire to do amazing work with the challenges of running a business. Early in his career, Disney was devoted to moving “cartooning” into being a serious art. His first true sound cartoon, the famous Steamboat Willy, required the invention of numerous new technologies in order to synchronize the sound with the animation.  It w...

A Promising Start It was 165 years since the cataclysm which had wiped out nearly all civilization in the world. In that time, monsters, thugs and other beasts had taken over the land. In the far wastes of Ishira, a land long forgotten in the world of Elemental, a young adventurer named Thalan had risen and intended to bring civilization back to the land. That summer, Thalan founded Aduron, which means “Civilization” in the ancient tongue of the Magi.  The land aro...

Doing nothing but AI work today.

If you had to list 5 game sites that you go to regularly to get reviews, news, etc. on games? What would they be?

Greetings! Every year Stardock sends out a survey to the millions of users in its database to get a better understanding of where the market is, what people would like to see from us and just get a better idea of who is using our software. We also include a summary description of all the things we’ve been working on and some sneak peeks of what we’re planning to do over the course of the year. So without further delay, here it is: [The Stardock 2012 Customer Report]

   

The number of tech companies in Michigan is…well not very high.  And I’ve noticed a trend over the past 20 years: As time goes on, an ever increasing percentage of my friends that I talk to socially boil down to one of 3 categories: Lawyers.  When I started the company, I didn’t know any lawyers. The first lawyer I hired I found through the yellow pages. At our 10 year anniversary, I think about a quarter of my active friends were lawyers. Today, it’s probably about half....

I was thinking about writing a series of articles on the history of Stardock. That is, how we got started and some of the challenges that are involved in running a small technology company.  But I wanted to find out first if there’s interest in this before I put in the time to write them. Let me know in the comments area if you’re interested in such a series.

Stardock’s ModernMix has officially been released. Version 1.0! I’ve been using Windows 8 as my main machine since its launch and I still can’t believe Microsoft is forcing PC users to run the new Windows 8 “RT” apps (aka Modern UI or Metro) in their own separate, full-screen environment.  It’s amazing how useful these new apps can be if you can run them in a window on the desktop while you’re doing other things. To get ModernMix go to www.stardock.com/products/modernm...

As some people know, Stardock’s main business isn’t games. We make games because we enjoy making them.  Lots of individuals do this every day – they spend their “off hours” doing what they like and their day jobs doing what needs to be done.  That’s not to say that we don’t enjoy making “regular” software. We do. Multiplicity, Fences, ModernMix, Start8, WindowBlinds, etc. are crazy fun to work on. But games, I just love to work on games. I spent this weekend coding AI on Ele...

I’m glad people are liking the new tactical battle maps.  I normally stick to AI coding but I always found myself auto-resolving battles in FE and felt that if we could just make initiative matter more and get the battle doing quickly that it would be a lot more enjoyable.  The maps in LH were the first tactical maps I did and I’m slowly getting the hang of making them better. Here are some I worked on this weekend: Fallen City Kingdom City ...

Overall, we’re pretty happy with how Elemental: Fallen Enchantress turned out. It’s sold pretty well and it’s looking like it’s going to end up with an average review score of about 4 out of 5. Obviously, there’s always room to improve. And that’s where Legendary Heroes comes in.  This expansion pack is a top-to-bottom revisit of Fallen Enchantress. We’ll have a full change list up soon (and it’s many pages long) but here are some of the highlights told in screenshot form.   ...

The goal is to have the Legendary Heroes beta out this week.  It’s been held back mostly because we’re having trouble with the self-shadowing. Shadows are a pain in the butt.  In Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, more engineering hours were spent on the self-shadowing than anything else. But ya gotta do it. It’s one of those uncanny valley things. Game Geeking Derek (Kael) and I have been going over various UI elements, particularly regarding the behavior of selected ...