I recently wrote this as a response but I thought it deserved its own post. If you haven’t heard, Gas Powered Games led by its CEO Chris Taylor, have a Kickstarter project up for a new game called Wildlman. He recently updated it to make it clear that the Kickstarter project is do or die for his studio and in preparation to see which way things go, he has laid off most of the staff (most of whom can be recalled if the Kickstarter project is successful). Let me tell you a l...
Here’s a weird thing. Stardock turns 20 this year. That’s 20 years since I incorporated it back when I was in college. My mom was the one pushing me. She was afraid I’d get sued by someone. I told her that was crazy. No one would ever sue us. Cough. I was playing FTL and if you don’t already have this game, you really should get it. It’s a reminder that a great game can be made by just a handful of people. It serves as a great exhibit for our internal g...
I am having a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, I’ve been promising my family to work fewer hours and managed to do that to a large extent over the last couple. On the other hand, last year was such a good year and this year looks even better that it presents so many exciting and varied opportunities….if only there were more hours. The accountants haven’t turned over the final numbers but broadly speaking, it appears our sales overall increased by about 3X over 2011, which, in itse...
I was looking very closely at one of the city tiles today in Elemental: Fallen Enchantress and came to realize there is a ridiculous amount of detail that a non crazy person would never notice. So if you zoom in close enough, you can see a dog staring at a pig being cooked. There is a baby Skath in a pen, and a woman appears to be imploring guests to wash their hands before eating. And the tents are actual (virtual) tents that could have things in them. No one can se...
We closed down shop last Friday and migrated to our local movie theater to see “The Hobbit”. I’m very interested in hearing what others thought. Here are my thoughts in no particular order: I did not enjoy 3D 48fps viewing. It’s distracting The movie could be best described as giving unlimited budget and control to the ultimate Tolkien fan and letting him indulge in that. As a border-line obsessive Tolkien lore guy, I loved every single minute of the movie...
For those of you who have bought Elemental: Destiny’s Embers, we’re working on some new DLC for Fallen Enchantress just for people who have the book. Up in the Henge is the fortress city of “Outpost”. Exploring the caves If you ever wanted to see what it would be to go on the adventure that Xander, Geni and friends went on, you’ll be able to see it. Ambrose, Mirdoth, Tandis, Nym and the rest will be there. (in these screenshots I’m using Relias to travel ...
(Map I made where my character starts out in the middle of an abandoned village) For those of you who are taking full advantage of the map editor, here is a list of hot keys to help make it easier to make maps. {'B', MFLG_CONTROL, ELEMENTALUI_MAPEDITOR_KEY_SELECT_CHOKE_POINTS, IMKEY_KEYBOARD, ENUM_VALUE,}, {'C', &#...
Every year I send out a Christmas letter to friends and family full of pictures. Our pictures are taken with whatever the typical consumer grade gadget we have on us. In more recent years, that’s been iPhones. This year marks a threshold being crossed where the picture quality really has gotten spectacular. The sharpness, color balance and just general quality is amazing.
Q: What is the Map Pack? A: It is a collection of pre-made maps and random map stamps. Q: Does it help with randomly generated maps? A: Yes, it includes a host of new stamps that make the random maps richer as well. Q: What’s special about the pre-made maps over a randomly generated map? A: With pre-made maps, we can do things that the random map generator can’t. Q: Like what? A: For example, it includes the Anthys map which is over 5X bigger than the ...
Last week I talked to Brendan Sinclair of GameIndustry.biz regarding the lack of transparency in digital distribution . If you’re a game developer trying to decide whether to make a game for the PC, XBox, Wii U, PS3, iPad, Android, etc. knowing the likely sales outcome is critical. And yet, even at this stage, it’s very difficult to have an idea of how well a game will do on a target platform. For example, last year, we released a little Christmas game for the XBox Liv...
As Fallen Enchantress rushes towards the 100,000 unit sold mark, we are hard at work on v1.1. We are hoping to have it ready before Christmas but I don’t want to make any promises. The main changes in v1.1 will be memory and AI related. There are lots of bug fixes in the pipeline too such as ones that help with modding and just plain good old fashioned bugs that slipped by. People have been asking whether Fallen Enchantress is “selling well”. It’s a h...
So what kind of car do you drive? I've got a Chevy Volt. Best car I've ever had.
Our friends at Nexus Mods have set up a Fallen Enchantress mod site. It’s pretty awesome I must confess. It’s already getting filled up with some excellent mods. You can get to it here: http://fallenenchantress.nexusmods.com/ As a reminder: Save a backup of your \english directory (it’s the <game>\data\english directory) before getting too crazy with mods Make sure you turn on “use mods” in the options screen Have fun! I’ve alre...
Our friends at Nexus Mods have set up a Fallen Enchantress mod site. It’s pretty awesome I must confess. It’s already getting filled up with some excellent mods. You can get to it here: http://fallenenchantress.nexusmods.com/ As a reminder: Save a backup of your \english directory (it’s the <game>\data\english directory) before getting too crazy with mods Make sure you turn on “use mods” in the options screen Have fun! I’ve alre...