It is nice to see some clarification of some of the questions that have been asked on this forum, and I thank you for the link.

After the experience we have had with previous interviews, would it be possible for StarDock to capture the contents of this interview and put it up on a StarDock server, perhaps accessible from the "Journals" tab above? Some previous reviews are no longer accessible to us and we end up debating from our memories of what was said, instead of being able to confirm exactly what was said, and this is getting a bit contentious.

Since you're working on the tech tree take a look at Pandora. They have tech era like civilisation combined with a randomized tech tree. Also you an option to only see the next tech to research linked from already researched items instead of the whole tree - which i realy like.

Yes. It's too bad, the play with a friend on LAN thing Sins did was a great way to introduce the game to people. 

Functionally it will be using Steam so you'll need 2 copies anyway. they dont seem to be implementing hotseat mode so you'd need 2 copies on steam to play anyway. Steam does all the matchmaking and "NAT punching" required to get online gaming working. If you want to do that kind of stuff yourself, it's kind of a pain in the behind.

http://www.gaslampgames.com/2014/01/15/stickiness-and-networking/

Steamworks is really all about the middleware. Sure I could try to reinvent the wheel... or hey steam does all this stuff for me! Unless you're really really really hard core on giving DRM free versions, it's a hard sell from a resourcing perspective to not take advantage of all that Steamworks has, especially since it's free.

AstralWonderer in the comments gave me cancer.

The hater needs to be purged! Glory to Stardock! Glory to Gal Civ!

Just kidding... not really

But seriously, I wish Stardock was a little less vague in answering questions, the alpha tests are only a few weeks away!

This is something I don't understand besides steam windows uses free programs like paint. If it's there you mysaswell use it/ I agree on that if steam gives it away they should use it.

Basically given that video games are increasing complex, and that players expect a certain 'baseline', it's basically common now for many game companies to use middleware for specific things. The idea is to trade money, for a savings in time. It's a process of determining whether the time/effort/money required to build a system from scratch is more expensive than just buying middleware.

For example

* You could make your own physics engine, or you could just buy Havok middleware

* You could make your own game engine, or you could use Unity for low end and cost, or higher end ones like Gamebryo or Unreal Engine which can cost $1 MILLION to license

* You could create code for a scalable 3d UI design menu, or use Autodesk's Scaleform (you'll see this in literally EVERY AAA game)

* You could make your own matchmaking infrastructure and master servers and networking protocols with NAT punching for ease of use, or use Gamespy or Steamworks

* You can try to make your own achievment API with a centralized profile management. Or you can just use Steamworks.

* You can try to package and distribute patches to your users via you website, torrents, or build out your own custom client and infrastructure. Or you can just use Steamworks.

Middleware is so ubiquitous because it's cost effective for all the 'boring nuts and bolts' stuff. Remember that resouces/money/time is a finite thing for game development. So you have to choose where to spend time/energy/money and if the payoff for that is better bulding it yourself, or going with middleware. Steamworks just makes the money part of that equation really attractive because it's free.

I didnt mean an exact copy of that system - just a randomized techtree + an option to research blind would be great

Not exactly free. Or perhaps what part is free to whom is the real question. If Valve wasn't making money from it it would not exist.

Of course, with what has been already said here and elsewhere, we all know that Valve gets a piece of each sale. That in itself says it is not free.

In case you haven't guessed, I just LOVE TV commercials that say something is free.

Tridus,

    Please understand something. I have spent the better part of 74 years hearing about how this is free, or that is free, and finding out that the words are false. Buying something off the shelf instead of re-inventing it yourself may provide savings, but the cost is still there. It has to be paid for somewhere, somehow. Buying it may result in a savings somewhere else, but that still does not make it free. I tried hard to warn you in my previous post how much I hate the way advertisement tries to say something is free while they gladly take our money.

If it is worth it to me to buy something I will, and I may save some money when I do, but I will never believe that any part of it was free.

But Valve spent something to create it. Any developer spending time integrating his game into Steamworks, no?

Valve did, yes. It wasn't free for them, it was an investment. But if I go pump some water and then just give you a glass, it's free water to you (and not free to me).

The time spent integrating it is time on features. Take achievements:

1. They could not have them, which costs no time.

2. They can have them and build the system to do that themselves, which costs time.

3. They can have them and have Steamworks do it, which costs more time than 1 and less than 2.

This isn't really time spent on "integrating Steamworks", it's time spent on the achievements feature. Steamworks makes that take less time than it would have otherwise, so it's saving time (and developer time is money). It then saves more time in testing because they just need to test the integration, the Steamworks achievement code itself is used in hundreds of games and is proven. Writing their own means testing all that code as well.

So yeah, if they didn't want any of those features, then integrating Steamworks would be a waste of time. Since they do want them, Steamworks is actually saving time. If a tool cuts the work I have to do in half, that's not a cost.