Viridian Games

There was this guy, see. He went by the handle Arkiruthis, and he was going to do a remake of Powermonger. He had a blog and everything, and some excellent screen shots and video. This got me really excited, and I did some work to help him out.

Then real life intruded and his blog went defunct. And I was sad.

But now he’s back, baby! Tanned, rested, and ready for another go-round! And you can see what he’s doing here.

Now, I have to reveal that one of the reasons he became disinterested in the project was because he got some flak from people when he revealed he was going to update the game rather than do a “straight” remake. Most of those people found out about his project from the Retro Remakes forums…because I posted about it there.

So, I’m sorry Nick if I brought unwanted pressure upon your project and maybe gave it more exposure than you were ready for at the time.

Brad has taken to calling Elemental a game where you play, not as an adventurer in a fantasy role-playing game, but as the king who has to (among other things) clean up the messes the adventurers leave behind. A-like so:

If your interest is piqued, join us over at elementalgame.com!

I’m going to talk about Hero Core a little more. Because I wanna.

There’s a lot to like about Hero Core. It may be the most perfect one-man band game I’ve ever played (although technically it’s two men because the music was done by Brother Android). It’s a perfect study in overcoming the limits of your own abilities to produce greatness.

Can’t do great art? Design your game so that you don’t have to. Hero Core runs in 320×240 and is in black and white (not monochrome, mind you – black and white are the only two colors used). Almost everything that moves is a particle of some kind, and they are almost all made of simple geometric shapes. The actual levels are made up of square tiles – no attempt to soften or round them was made. The main character doesn’t even have any frames of animation! While the word “retro” is horribly overworked, this game literally looks like it was made in the mid- to late-Eighties for the ZX Spectrum. Practically anyone can do art at this level, and it’s effective. Contrast this with Daniel’s previous game Iji, where the art is by far the weakest part of the game because Daniel isn’t that great at drawing and animating humanoid figures.

The game’s design strikes a perfect balance between challenge and accessibility. Death has practically no sting – all that happens is get warped back to your last save point. And these save points are everywhere, fully refill your health when you use them and allow you to teleport between them. That last bit is the really brilliant part – Daniel Remar has made a Metroidvania that doesn’t have any tedious backtracking in it.

The end result is that Daniel can make the individual rooms (or a sequence of rooms) difficult without making the game frustrating, since all you have to do is make it to the next save point – or teleport elsewhere if you really think you’re not ready yet. And while it’s not quite NES hard, it gets very challenging towards the end and veers into bullet hell territory on the higher difficulties. But practically anyone can finish the game because you don’t need an impossible level of skill; you just need a moderate level of skill and some perseverance. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – allow the player to trade time for skill.

So, to sum up, great design, effective art, excellent music and it didn’t take him four years this time. Bravo, Daniel. Bravo.

Okay, this isn’t Zeta, but it’s got a lot of the feel that I would have been going for with Zeta. And it’s darn fun, so you should try it out. It’s called Hero Core.

It’s done by Daniel Remar of Remar Games, who also did the excellent Iji.

First, the incomparable Jari Komppa has an article in the April 2010 issue of Game Developer Magazine detailing how he went about porting a DOS game – Remedy’s classic Death Rally – to Windows. No DOSBox, a straight code port. Very interesting to see how things have changed and how some things worked his way and some didn’t.

Oh, and if you’re just interested in a free game, you can download the new Death Rally for free at Remedy’s website.

Meanwhile, back at The Ranch, the even more incomparable Fat Man is gearing up to start offering classes in music composition for games at all levels of expertise. If you’ve got ANY interest in composing music for games (or for composing music at all) then even one session with him could be an incredible boost to your career.

As for me…still making Elemental, which is cool, but I can’t talk about it. Which is poopy. And Elemental is taking up so much of my time that I just don’t feel like coding anything else when I get home. I’m sure this will change though.

Okay, I know I promised a whole bunch of stuff that would revitalize this blog and I’ve delivered exactly jack and squat. But there’s reasons! Really!

First, while I wouldn’t say we’re in crunch mode on Elemental, we are working very intently. And the interesting thing is that we’re not working intently to make some publisher happy so that they’ll keep the money drip going. We’re working intently to make our beta testers happy. The current beta (1G) actually has the potential to be – wait for it – fun. It’ll be a nice reward to everyone who stuck with us through the first few betas, which were so un-fun that we felt the need to actually put a warning on the splash screen.

Second, I lost my video card. Well, that’s not really true. I know exactly where it is…it’s in my wife’s computer, since hers flaked out thirty minutes before a raid. I could try to get it back, but I’d probably lose a hand in the process.

So I’m stuck on internal video, which is not conducive to video capture and/or…anything really. The best game I’ve been able to get running on it is Morrowind, and even that is pretty choppy. Hopefully our finances will loosen up towards the middle of the month and I’ll be able to return to the land of the 3D-accelerated.

In the meantime, I’ve found something to keep you occupied. First, GetDaved, who not only has a great YouTube handle but is also one of the best LPers out there now that DeceasedCrab is semi-retired, is currently playing through Galactic Civilizations 2. He did an excellent playthrough of Master of Orion and two (count them, two!) playthroughs of Master of Orion 2, but when he was asked to play Master of Orion 3 he refused, saying he didn’t find that game fun. So he’s playing GalCiv2 instead. Good for him!

We will resume our regularly scheduled programming soon.

I promise.

Again.

I don’t want to turn this site into “All Stardock! All The Time!” but this was too cool not to pass on.

Brad (I’m on a first-name basis with Brad Wardell! Tee-hee!) has designed a boardgame version of Elemental: War of Magic, which five lucky beta testers are going to get to play. The entire game will be public on the forums. Here’s the starting post.

Best. Demo. Ever. And even though I can’t really afford it, I will be buying the game today.

It looks like finally (finally!) Tim Schafer and Double Fine are going to garner the success they so richly deserve.

It’s been a while since I’ve done an in-depth story on a developer I admire. So let’s fix that!

Brad Wardell, as you probably know if you read this blog, is the president, founder and CEO of Stardock, a software development company that specializes in two different types of software: operating system customization software and games.

Brad’s entry into software development was almost accidental. His first serious business foray was into hardware – in 1990 he started building computers and selling them pretty much out of his house (a la Michael Dell). He called his company “Stardock Systems”. In 1992 OS/2 was released and Brad felt that he could gain a competitive advantage by preloading OS/2 onto the computers he sold. In doing so he became quite familiar with OS/2.

In 1993 he realized there could be a market for an OS/2 game. He had never programmed before, so he bought two books: Teach Yourself C in 21 Days and OS/2 Presentation Manager Programming, and using the information in just these two books, he wrote Galactic Civilizations.

As you can see, GalCiv was a bit primitive graphically. At the time, Brad only knew how to create windows and icons, so everything you see in GalCiv consists of one of these two features. But it was a critical success (and not just because it was practically the only OS/2 game at the time). It was well-designed and had some excellent AI. Now, I recall being at Origin at the time and watching GalCiv top lots of “Game of the Year” lists for 1994…a lot of us at the time couldn’t understand how Origin games had lost out to an OS/2 game that…well, looked like that.

But as good a game as it was, Brad made almost no money on it. He was ripped off by his publisher and couldn’t afford a lawyer to fight back. He learned a very valuable lesson the hard way – a lesson that almost sank Stardock.

But what the publishers couldn’t take away from him was the name Stardock on the box. While the success of GalCiv didn’t profit Brad, it did raise the profile of his company. Brad was able to profit by writing an expansion to his own game called Shipyards, which sold well enough to keep him going for a bit. IBM came to Brad hat in hand asking if Brad could create a special version of GalCiv for the IBM OS/2 game pack. Brad did, which he titled Star Emperor.

Brad had always been intrigued by the idea of customizing the OS/2 operating system, and in 1994 became convinced that an OS customization tool for OS/2 could be profitable. This lead to him teaming up with fellow OS/2 enthusiast Kurt Westerfield to release OS/2 Essentials, the software that would eventually become Object Desktop.

And Brad was also able to get the rights to the “Galactic Civilizations” name back and republish the game (with improvements) as Galactic Civilizations 2 for OS/2.

And at this point, he figured the game was over and he’d won. By twenty-four he was a millionaire and Stardock was not only selling tons of copies of OS/2 Essentials and GalCiv 2 but publishing other people’s OS/2 software as well.

And then he made his second mistake – he allowed his zealotry for OS/2 to nearly wreck his business.

IBM quietly dropped support for OS/2 in 1995, and Microsoft released Windows NT 4.0 (the one with the much more usable “Windows 95″-style interface) in 1996. Windows NT 4.0 quickly captured OS/2′s core market. There were lots of people (including some of my friends at Origin (Hi, J. Allen!)) who believed that even if IBM’s support of OS/2 was a bit spotty, the superiority of the platform plus user advocacy and support could make the platform a success.

Needless to say, it didn’t work. Soon Brad began to realize that something was wrong, but Stardock continued to release OS/2 software until 1998. This could easily have been the end of Stardock, but two things saved his company.

The first was an employee, Mike Duffy. Mike was the lead developer on Entrepreneur and decided he would write a low-level, cross-platform library that worked on both OS/2 and Windows. This enabled Stardock to finally start making the transition from OS/2 to Windows.

The second was customer loyalty. Stardock at this point had a whole bunch of customers who didn’t just buy their software – they were fans of the company. They wanted to see the company do well. So they actually bought subscriptions to Stardock’s online ObjectDesktop.Net service before it was actually ready. Because of this, while 1998 was the worst year in Stardock’s history they managed to pull through, and by 1999 they had begun to release Windows products.

By 2000 things were looking up again. Brad’s focus on desktop customization software was paying off, with WindowBlinds, ObjectDesktop and DesktopX all selling well. Stardock avoided the dot-com crash of 2001 by actually being profitable and having a business plan, and by 2002 Brad decided that the company was ready to get back into games again. The first had to be a version of the original Galactic Civilizations for Windows.

But development of GalCiv for Windows slowed when the launch of Windows XP approached. Because Windows XP had more customization features “out of the box”, Brad was concerned that people would feel they didn’t need Stardock’s customization software any longer. In fact, the exact opposite happened – Windows users who had never been exposed to desktop customization before saw it in Windows XP, experimented with it, and then turned to Stardock when they ran up against the limitations of what the built-in customization could do. Needless to say, this was a great relief for Stardock.

In 2003, Windows finally got a version of Galactic Civilizations. This edition included everything from the OS/2 versions of Galactic Civilizations, its expansions and its sequel (thus, GalCiv for Windows is equivalent to GalCiv 2 for OS/2). Plus it now looked like this!

At the same time, Stardock had been beefing up their digital content delivery system. Galactic Civilizations for Windows was available at retail and online on the same day. Retail boxes included a code that could be entered into Stardock Central, which registered the user’s copy and allowed them to download the latest version.

Stardock Central quickly expanded to allow digital delivery of any product Stardock published – and Stardock had gotten back into the business of publishing other software.

And in 2006, Stardock released Galactic Civilizations 2, and Brad briefly became the focus of the DRM debate when he stated that GalCiv 2 had no DRM and never would. This caused some criticism from DRM providers (indeed, a Starforce employee actually posted a link on their forums telling people where they could pirate GalCiv 2) but Brad’s decision does not seem to have affected GalCiv 2‘s sales, which have been excellent.

And in 2008 Stardock updated the perfectly functional but kind of hoary old Stardock Central with a flashy new version called Impulse. Impulse is quite comparable to Valve’s Steam in that it’s a system designed to allow people to buy and digitally download software from a host of different companies, but is different in that Impulse doesn’t require an internet connection simply to play games, but only when purchasing a new game or using other online features.

Brad long ago returned to millionaire status and has stayed there since. His strategy of cultivating a loyal fanbase and shipping excellent software while staying out of debt has allowed Stardock to grow into a major online presence and allowed him to overcome his missteps.

Brad has developed a rather…unique online persona. During his stint on the Poweruser.tv podcast, he effectively acted as the “comic” to host Kristin Hatcher’s “straight man”, saying and doing outrageous things simply to get her reaction.

Brad has also been at the core of several flamewars about OS customization, routinely insisting that the customer is not always right – especially when catering to certain customers would hurt his business. At one point he exclaimed in a forum post, “I’m too old and too rich for this shit.”

His political views seem to lean toward the individualist, and he has a particular hatred of taxes, seeing them as good money given to the government who will then give it to people who haven’t earned it and probably won’t deserve it.

Overall, I think Brad is a great guy who had to overcome incredible disadvantages to succeed. If I had the chance to work for Stardock I’d probably jump at it. Despite having to move to Michigan.

After I mentioned Mike McShaffry’s Game Coding Complete in an earlier post, a lot of people were complaining that the only copies they could get were used ones for $100 or more.

Well, despair no longer! Not only is the book available again, it’s in a spiffy new edition. This time, Mr. Mike has collaborated with other programmer/writers on various subjects. It’s almost like an edition of Game Programming Gems, but it covers game engine creation from the ground up.

And Amazon currently has it for less than $40.

If only I weren’t completely broke…