Frogboy

Microsoft took out the blur abilities in Windows 8. We're working on implementing our own but it's going to take some time.

If we can simulate a human brain, down to the very atom (and we most certainly will be able to do that in coming years), I don't see any reason why we won't be able to simulate a mind soon after. I suspect we'll be able to replicate a mind long before we can understand the mind. :)

@Valve's take: Valve only takes 30% if it's purchased on Steam. But by "requiring" Steam to download the game, we can manage all the channels (including direct sales where Valve gets 0) using Steam Pipe. Putting everything else aside, that one feature is enough to justify requiring Steam for most ISVs. And no, putting up a ZIP of every change and requiring users to piece together all the ZIPs to get the latest update is not realistic would be a support nig

I'm going to check in what I've done on Sunday and hopefully it'll go into the next update. There's a lot more to do of course but I found some issues with pathfinding and city construction that make a pretty big difference. Also worked a bit on the tactical battles. I'll probably need to spend a whole update cycle on tactical AI though since it's going to require a lot of YouTube watching.

Thanks!

It's something brand-new. Not an update to anything.

Got a few emails already regarding Soren. Here's a general reply: I'm not sure how many people remember this but back in 2010 we released this game called Elemental:War of Magic and it was kind of crummy. When we evaluated what went wrong we realized that the problem was that we were spread too thin and didn't have a dedicated game designer (in the sense that the position literally didn't exist here). Apparently writing "Make a Master of Magic game with good grap

[quote who="DrJBHL" reply="3" id="3324140"] I’ve seen people make threats against me, my wife and occasionally even against my kids. When this type of threat occurs, law enforcement should handle it. You simply aren't equipped to. Jafo is 100% correct.[/quote] I've talked to the police in the past. There's not much they can/will do unless the threat seems credible. And what I get is nothing compared to what political bloggers

Same as always: Challenging.

[quote who="parrottmath" reply="32" id="3260587"]Do the AI bribe each other to go to war with factions they are going to war with? It's something that I can do, pay loads of gildar / influence to get the AI to attack another nation. Do the AI just have loads of money to spare and bribing each other to go to war?[/quote] They do indeed.

If SDC is being a problem, you can also get it via http://download.stardock.com

I hope playing the current build Before voting. Some of the bugs mentioned were fixed in the most recent version. And some of the usability issues mentioned have been addressed in the latest version as well.

No hard feelings Noobfakaire. You're welcome here any time.

We're working on it. Not trivial to do though. ;)

As far as I know, there are no plans to do an upgrade path.

Unless Microsoft were to some how try to legally force us not to do something to Windows, there's no real technical way for them to prevent us from doing what we'd like. We know the system internals of Windows as well as anyone at Microsoft at this point.

They're getting ready to put up beta 2. Stay tuned.

[quote who="DsRaider" reply="3" id="3104772"]I usually play on medium maps with 6 players. Laggy frame rate and actions taking long times is usually a bigger problem then long turns late game. [/quote] There are things you can do to help with frame rate. 1) Turn off anti-aliasing 2) Turn off pedestrians 3) Turn off the outlines Those 3 things can make a pretty big change if you're video card is older.

Read a really good article at Gamespot today about the dangers of gamer entitlement. http://au.gamespot.com/features/the-dangers-of-gamer-entitlement-6350732/

On a $40 game we net about $15 these days at retail. There's MDF, which is effectively a slotting fee, as well as the manufacturing, the distributor's cut, the retailer's cut and that's before taking into account the costs of having a retail sales force to go out and negotiate with each retailer, attend their shows, etc. That's just how retail is. They still sell more units than digital (at least for us) but there is also a lot of risk and

I don't know what you guys are talking about. I'm using it and it's great! ;)

Ok, this conversation needs to be locked. I will say this, we often have to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it was. Stardock plans to make considerable use of Steam as we go forward. Not because there's a conspiracy or that we love Steam in particular but because it provides services and features that we, at Stardock, need in our gaming software. Similarly, if/when Gamestop is able to introduce features that we can make use of, we'll ha

There's been a lot of shift in culture here over the past couple years to only talking about things once they are pretty far along.

Yea, we've been pushing the date back as needed. Basically, someone at Stardock or Ironclad comes up with a cool idea and once accepted we calculate the time needed and push back the date. We just want to make sure what comes out is a home run.

Here's a good article that goes into some detail on the Gamestop / Impulse / Stardock team up. http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/31/stardocks-brad-wardell-talks-about-selling-impulse-to-gamestop/