GalCiv DEV Journal: You're in for an AI treat December 20, 2017 by Draginol Just in time for Christmas we released version 2.71 which is almost strictly about AI tweaks based on player feedback and saved games. Now, someone might ask "Why do you need save games to make the AI do [obvious thing]?". The answer is that with so many different ways of playing the game (both in terms of game setup and in-game strategies) it turns out people play the game very differently from one another. It's one of the reasons why you have most people who think the AI is r...

Stardock's Groupy may change the way we use the PC December 13, 2017 by Draginol How's that for a dramatic headline? Groupy is a new program from Stardock that does something so simple that, in hindsight, seems like it should have always been part of the OS. It allows users to drag windows together and create a single tabbed window. Like so: A few years ago at CES, I showed a prototype of it to Mary Jo Foley, Paul Thurrott, Brad Sams and others. The motivation to create Groupy came from the frustrating of having lots of windows open (a very f...

DEV Diary: Galactic Civilizations Fall 2017 November 28, 2017 by Draginol Winter is coming. And so is Galactic Civilizations III v2.7. This version has been in the works for a long time as a general, all around, polish pass on everything in the game. New Data Manager This is a boring feature that most people won't care about, but for those of you who have a lot of custom civilizations, you will find game load times to be much faster. This is because the data management used to be handled by an external process that...

Stardock has a new killer app: Groupy - organize your windows together November 14, 2017 by Draginol From the people who brought you Fences, Start8, ObjectDock, DeskScapes, and countless other amazing programs comes a new one that will transform the way you use your PC: Groupy. At any given moment, people have a lot of windows open. Maybe it's a few Explorer windows, a couple of Excel spreadsheets, maybe a a Word document or a PowerPoint presentation. Maybe they're working with Adobe Premiere and After Effects and a few other windows. In any event, dealing with all these...

Star Control: Origins - The Lore We Know So Far November 14, 2017 by Draginol Players have been contributing questions to the Lore Google doc. There is a lot even we don't know yet about this universe. It's a strange, complicated and ancient place and many of those who do know are not very cooperative with us for various reasons including excuses like "You're just meat" (whatever that means) and "Seriously, you're just meat". So let's go over what we do know as of November 14, 2087. [POSSIBLE MINOR SPOILERS] A few assumptions about you If you have ...

A Guided Tour of Star Control: Origins BETA 1 November 10, 2017 by Draginol It has been over 20 years since the last Star Control game was released. Today, we open up Beta 1 of Star Control: Origins in the form of Star Control: Origins - Fleet Battles. While the main game of Star Control is about exploring the galaxy, meeting various aliens, investigating strange new worlds all within a living universe, we also include a combat mini-game that we call Fleet Battles. In Fleet battles, you assemble a fleet from a group of ships and then engage in battle with...

Star Control: Origins - Beta 1 Schedule November 6, 2017 by Draginol Greetings! Beta 1 is fast approaching and we want to give you a tentative schedule of what to expect. BETA 1: November 16 This is the Super-Melee beta. Super-Melee is a ship vs. ship combat game. In it, you assemble a fleet of ships. You have a total of 100 points to use for your fleet with ships costing between 5 and 20 points depending on the ship. You will be able to battle against the computer with various difficulty level or against other players via the Internet in either r...

Exporting your space ships to share with others with Galactic Civilizations III September 15, 2017 by Draginol [..]You may not have noticed this before but in the Ship Designer of Galactic Civilizations III you can take the ships you have designed (or downloaded) and export them as a .OBJ file. This can be used by 3D printers but also on a cool site called Sketchfab. It's super easy to set up.Here are a couple I've already uploaded:GalCiv Hyperion by draginol on SketchfabAres GalCiv by draginol on Sketchfab Have fun! p.s. Bonus one: https://skfb.ly/6tIOy

GalCiv Journal: August 2017 (Convergence) August 16, 2017 by Draginol Summer continues. Unless you're in Australia or New Zealand. But they're not people. Not really. I mean, they can't feel heat and cold. So what's been up? The boring job of architecture update. We've been spending the past month fixing architectural issues that have slowly built up. This shines through in the form of bug fixes. It's slow, time consuming but important work. We are also working on merging the GalCiv III base game and Crusade core together. ...

Space is Really Really Big July 31, 2017 by Draginol Video games normally take liberties with the size of the universe. We know the universe is big but we frequently trivialize the immense size of the galaxy. Even scientists seem to trivialize this with questions like "Why haven't we detected aliens?". The answer might be because our radio signals haven't even reached a trivial distance of the milky way galaxy. Our solar system out to Jupiter. Zooming way way out to our local neighborhood. Now this is zooming out...

The Human Eye: A design review July 12, 2017 by Draginol Note: This post was originally written by my friend Steven Den Beste who passed away last year. This will be a series of articles designed to preserve his writing for future readers to enjoy the way I did. The Human Eye: A design review Occasionally I see creationists point to the human eye as a miracle of design, as if this somehow is evidence of divine origin for the human form. Unfortunately, from an engineering perspective, the human eye is seriously suboptimal. It simply isn't tha...

PREVIEW GUIDE: Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade April 26, 2017 by Draginol Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade is an expansion pack for Stardock's popular 4X space strategy game, Galactic Civilizations III. Crusade is a top-to-bottom update of the entire game. This article will walk you through what's new, what's changed and try to explain it for those who may not be familiar with the series. The SpecsTitle: Galactic Civilizations III: CrusadePlatform: Windows PC, 64-bitPrice: $19.99 if you already have Galactic Civilizations III, $39.99 for new ...

Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade - The First Turn April 24, 2017 by Draginol Crusade is the space strategy game made by 4X nuts for 4X nuts. Let's do this. What is Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade?In 2015, Stardock released the latest entry in its popular 4X space strategy game series, Galactic Civilizations III. 4X means eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate and is turn-based. GalCiv III was well received (81 metacritic) and has a recent Steam review score of 82. However, coming from Galactic Civilizations II (94 metacr...

Galactic Civilizations through the ages April 23, 2017 by Draginol Galactic Civilizations has the distinction of being the longest running strategy game developed by the same company. Let's take a look at how it has changed. Galactic Civilizations OS/2The game that started it all. I wrote this game from my dorm room in college. Galactic Civilizations for OS/2 (1993) First commercial multithreaded gameFirst commercial game to use more than 256 colorsFirst commercial 32-bit gameIt was written for IBM's OS/2 instead of DOS or Wi...