Draginol

What I learned about life from Steve Jobs in Business JoeUser Forums

I started my company when I was still a teenager. And I can tell you, looking back, I wish I knew now what I knew then. Starting a company with no capital and no partners is most definitely the hard way to do things. But I had no money and none of my friends were comfortable taking the necessary risks. The result was many years of long hard slogging. Sheer brute force in terms of hours being put in. Capital trumps time. Anyone who says time is money really has no idea what they’re tal

Random worlds make things…interesting in FE Sneak Peeks JoeUser Forums

The random maps are definitely getting better and better. I’d almost have g

Life on the Battlefield in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

What’s the best Battlefield 3 weapon? I don’t know. But for me, I’m using a decked out F2000. It fits my particular, admittedly crappy, style of playing. My style, such as it is, comes from playing too many years of Duke Nukem 3D where I was rewarded for charging in, Leroy Jenkins style and killing a bunch of people. It doesn’t work so well in a game where one hit means you’re dead. The F2000 assault rifle is nice because it has little kick to it so I

AI: Thing’s I’ve got that you don’t in FE Sneak Peeks JoeUser Forums

Elemental has rally points. Oh, you guys d

Random Maps in Elemental Dev Journals JoeUser Forums

One of the big but largely under-appreciated features of Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is the new random generation. In Elemental: War of Magic, the maps were random but the continents were not. This meant, after awhile, players knew “the lay out of the land”. Now, having a random world generator is a non-trivial thing as those who have written them can tell you. Especially if you want a map that is “fun” (i.e. no one cut off, reasonably fair, and always interesting).</p

OWS: Where’s the media coverage? in Politics JoeUser Forums

We heard endless about the unsubstantiated charge that some Tea Partier spat on an African American congressman but amazingly, the atrocious behavior of the Occupy movement has largely been ignored or excused. I have friends and family who practically seethe with hatred towards “fucking tea baggers” who I know are sympathetic for the Occupy Wall Street people. What the hell is the matter with these people? While I don’t consider myself a “Tea Partier”, I cannot grasp the antip

It’s not that I have to blame Derek, it’s that I can… in FE Sneak Peeks JoeUser Forums

Stardock is a pretty silly place to “work” at. So my new rule of thumb is, blame Derek for all my problems. Compiler problem? Derek. VPN issue? Derek. Incredibuild glitch? You get the idea. Now, if the airs are let out of my tires again…well, who knows what caused that. <img style="border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none" class="wlEmoticon wlEmoticon-smile" alt="Smile" src="http://www.draginol.com/images2010/Its-

How memory was saved in Fallen Enchantress in FE Sneak Peeks JoeUser Forums

This is not a story that will make all people happy. In War of Magic, we had a requirement that the game would work on netbooks. And the good news was, it did. But it came at a price: Pixel Shader 2. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with graphic tech, video cards support various types of on-chip programs with the best known one called Pixel Shader. Pixel Shader 2 will work on really old machines going all the way back to the Radeon 9800 series and the Geforce FX

Character Portraits in FE Sneak Peeks JoeUser Forums

There’s been a lot of talking about the character portraits shown in screenshots. One thing to bear in mind: Developer journals are not marketing screenshots. I take them in the debugger while I’m working. It’s the only way we are able to have so many developer journals. That means the lighting, particle effects, etc. are disabled. Here are some of the character portraits for FE: <a href="http://www.draginol.com/images2010/Character-Portraits_9C6C/K_Lady_Procip

Flavor Text in Fallen Enchantress in Elemental Dev Journals JoeUser Forums

In every Stardock game ever, from 1993 on, the “flavor text” was done by whoever had a moment to throw something in there. Often times, it meant I did it since I type 120wpm and could crank out a lot of stuff. The GalCiv technology descriptions are notorious for this. In War of Magic, we decided that we would keep the tongue in cheek text to a minimum which in reality just made it dry and boring. Since we didn’t enjoy doing it and our fans really wanted to see o

Brad’s land of AI pain and suffering in FE Sneak Peeks JoeUser Forums

How aggressive should monsters be? Make them too nasty and people get frustrated. Make them too passive and they’re a joke. I’ve got to tweak them in both directions. Gonna have to be a lot of subtlety in the difficulty levels.

Elemental: October Status Report in Elemental Dev Journals JoeUser Forums

Derek and his team have been busy working on the sequel to Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, the sequel to last year’s War of Magic.The final release date for Fallen Enchantress hasn’t been set yet but we do expect to go into beta around Thanksgiving. Beta and Release The initial beta will only be available to those who already have War of Magic. A later beta will be available to anyone who wants to pre-order it. The beta will be available via Stardock’s ne

Solar Power, First Month in Home Improvement JoeUser Forums

My house uses a lot of energy. Specifically, it uses a lot of electricity. A good portion of that electricity is because of the Geothermal system which uses Geothermal heat pumps to heat and cool the house. To offset that, I had a 20KW solar array installed. While October is not the most ideal of months for solar power (lot of rainy days), the results are looking somewhat promising. Now, let me first be clear: Even with all the subsidies involved (which are a lot

Edit and Continue absurdities in Game Developers JoeUser Forums

Yea, a great feature…if I could ever get it to work on something more complex than HelloWorld.c View the video on the crazy edit I perform to cause edit and continue to fail… <a title="http://screencast

Ever wanted to write a book? in Elemental Dev Journals JoeUser Forums

I had the story for Elemental: Destiny’s Embers in my mind for over two decades. Twenty Years. That’s a long time. And when Random House asked me to write it, I had no problem providing them with my first draft. Then a second. And so on. What ended up being printed and available to purchase at your local book store is nothing like what the original drafts were. The story is the same. Make no mistake, I didn’t have to sacrifice the story. But the way it wa

Elemental: Destiny’s Embers POV thoughts in Fiction Writing JoeUser Forums

Ever dream of writing the great American novel? I did and I got to do it. And holy cow was it nothing like what I thought it was. I had originally written the story in omniscient. i.e. Like Lord of the Rings. But nothing is written that way. Random House asked me to rewrite it in first person (from a character POV). This was tough for me as I had to write a lot of exposition that was, to me, not very fun and sometimes the book showed it. I’m very proud of how Dest

The never ending quest to find meaning in Life Journals JoeUser Forums

I don’t know the exact date when I reached the point where I didn’t “have” to work anymore. It was something like 2006 or 2007. That was the point where anything I earned after that was as meaningful as earning points after the 9th key in Pac-Man (which, admittedly, is a pretty big deal). It’s been a real journey. When I was a kid, I was “poor”. Generation X is probably the last American generation where you could, realistically, be skinny as a result of a lack of food. So

11 reasons why the Chevy Volt is the best car I’ve ever owned in Automotive JoeUser Forums

There's been a number of negative articles about the Chevy Volt for some reason. Let me tell you, it's the best car I've ever owned. Here are some of the cool things about it (and please feel free to ask anything you'd like to know because a lot of what I'm writing here hasn't been talked about): So I've had it 6 months. And in 6 months of normal driving, I have never had to fill the gas tank. It's still using the gas that came with it from the dealership. Something like 2500

Outlook vs. Gmail in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

I’ve been an Outlook user for years. But in the past several months, I’ve been migrating more and more to Gmail. The email still goes through our company server to and from ultimately but Gmail is just a better mail reader. Here’s what’s changed: Gmail now has a way of identifying “important” emails. I don’t know how its algorithm works but it works quite well. Gmail has insanely good spam filtering. Gmail has mouse gesture support (I hold

Google PowerMeter RIP in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

I just got email from Google that they are discontinuing their Google PowerMeter product. Google PowerMeter allows people who have a supported device to track the energy use of their house in real time as well as look at graphs and such to determine what is consuming their energy. It’s like Google web analytics except for electricity. After September 16, it’s gone. Total bummer as it was a very useful service. One I would have been willing to pay for.

Children a good practice run for dogs in Pets & Nature JoeUser Forums

My puppy can be pretty disgusting. The things it tries to eat. The things it rolls in. It’s all bad news. And if it’s an indoor dog, it becomes your problem. And I have to say, I’m glad I waited until after having 3 children because when it’s your own child, you grin and bear it as you learn to deal with icky gross stuff. By the time you get the dog, you’re numb.

iPhone got wet, won’t come on, how to fix in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

So this weekend I had to take my boat out of the water. In the process I had to wade into water that was up to my waste. Unfortunately, my iPhone was in my pocket. Like an idiot, I immediately try to turn it on and got just the Apple logo which came on and then would go off. After a few tries of turning it on and off, I didn’t even get the Apple logo. Ruined. Dammit. $500. @#$@#$@#! So then I started searching online. Surely, I wasn’t the first person who had done this

Growing up on the Internet in Internet JoeUser Forums

I've been online since I was 15. That was 25 years ago. Back then, it was BBSes using C-net 10.0. You could say that I've grown up entirely living online. Before people used twitter for facebook to express their every inappropriate thought, I was mouthing off on things that I really shouldn't be mouthing off on (or at least, things that shouldn't be held up to scrutiny). This year I started to live life in "the real world". And

test in Misc JoeUser Forums

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War of Magic: v1.3– City levels matter again in Elemental Dev Journals JoeUser Forums

Once upon a time… A city level in War of Magic had two key game mechanics attached to it. First, it determined what improvements you could build. The higher the level, the more powerful improvements you could construct. But secondly, it limited the number of improvements you could build as well. Unfortunately, this had the effect of being very frustrating to users who quickly discovered that they couldn’t get their settlement to the next level without wr