Stardock''s Brad Wardell and Gamespy have gotten together to write up a Post Mortem on what went right and wrong during the development of Stardock''s hit strategy game, Galactic Civilizations. The article goes into considerable depth and is written from the perspective of a gamer on the trials and tribulations of trying to compete in today''s game industry.

Stardock''s Brad Wardell will be reporting from the floor of E3 for JoeUser.com this week. E3 is the world''s largest game-related expo. All the major new games coming out this year can be found there. Check it out.

For those interested in seeing what happened during Galactic Civilizations'' development, both good and bad, Gamasutra has a post mortem up that Stardock''s Brad Wardell wrote with Alex Dunne from Game Developer. This post mortem is written with Game Developers in mind. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030507/wardell_01.shtml It''ll ask you to create an account but it''s free and pretty easy and contains a lot of interesting details on the nature of developing a PC game in ...

Stardock releases WindowBlinds 4 Windows XP gets skinned For Immediate Release Tuesday, April 15, 2003 Canton MI – Stardock released WindowBlinds 4 shareware today. WindowBlinds is a program that extends the Windows user interface to be fully “skinnable”. Once installed, users can change their title bars, scrollbars, push buttons, Start bar, and virtually every other aspect of the Windows GUI using “visual styles” that the user can make or download from the Internet. By defa...

ObjectDock is a combination program launcher and task manager that is presented as a dock that can be placed on any edge on the screen. When the mouse is placed over an item, it magnifies itself. Users can replace the images used for tasks and programs and submit packaged themes to websites such as WinCustomize.com. New in version 0.90: -Ability to have outward borders on backgrounds added, to allow for simulation of a shadow on the outside of backgrounds. See"Default with Shadow" ...

WindowBlinds 4 has some great new features including: * Command prompt skinning * Skinning of virtually every element of the Windows XP GUI * Skinning of the logoff, shellstyles, and please wait dialogs * Smart painting - makes most WindowBlinds enhanced visual styles run nearly as fast as "classic" * Enhanced integration into Windows XP greatly increasing compatibility with nearly all programs * A new configuration program that makes the features of WindowBlinds mo...

SkinStudio is a program that allows users to create their own Windows GUI. You can make your own title bars, push buttons, radio buttons, Start bars, and virtually every other control. You then save your creation as a visual style that can be used by WindowBlinds to apply it. Version 3 of SkinStudio has a much enhanced user interface. It allows users to work on multiple visual styles at once, can change the color of GUI elements on the fly, and has a much easier and cleaner user inter...

Stardock has released a new version of ObjectBar. ObjectBar is a program that lets users create or download their own bars. The Windows Start bar, Mac''s Finder, Linux Wharfs, etc. are all examples of the kinds of things ObjectBar can do. It essentially integrates the best OS interface features into a single program. The new version allows users to add hot-keys to any item on any part. These hotkeys not only can launch programs but access Windows system commands, URLs, and more. Objec...

The full DesktopX User Manual is now available as a PDF manual (Adobe Acrobat). The manual is over 50 pages long and gives users a thorough explanation of how DesktopX works, how to create things with it, and how you can put it to use. DesktopX is part of Object Desktop. Stardock is in the process of creating PDF manuals of all the major components of Object Desktop in preparation for the Object Destop 2004 CD snapshot (which will be available to all Object Desktop users).

Every wanted to put cool objects and widgets on your desktop? How about make some yourself? You can do this and much more with DesktopX, a program that makes it easy for end users to completely redesign their desktops to look, feel, and function however they want. The Media Guide goes over what is possible to do with DesktopX. DesktopX 2 is a free download at http://www.desktopx.net. The Media guide is at http://www.desktopx.net/media

IconDeveloper is a new program that is part of Object Desktop that makes it incredibly easy to create your own Windows icons. All those .PNG files (or JPG or BMP, etc.) can quickly be turned into standard Windows icons of various sizes. Visit the IconDeveloper home page to learn more about it. IconDeveloper is expected to go 1.0 before the end of the month.

Object Desktop 2004 Announced Desktop Enhancement suite provides unprecedented ability to transform the look and feel of Windows For Immediate Release: Contact: Bradley Wardell bwardell@stardock.com 734-762-0687, x226 Canton MI (TuesdayOctober 21st, 2003) – Stardock announced Object Desktop 2004 today. Object Desktop is a suite of programs that are designed to enhance the base feature set of Windows while allowing complete control over its look, feel, and function. Stardo...

Stardock is in the process of migrating it's web servers to a new ISP and on new servers. To facilitate this migration we are planning on having some down time. On Wednesday, October 8th at approximately 7:00 AM EST we will need to shut down several of our servers during that time. The outage is expected to last approximately 4 hours. The following sites and applications will be affected: www.wincustomize.com www.galciv.com www.joeuser.com Stardock Central Thank you for your ...

This month marks the 10 year anniversary from when Stardock was incorporated. Back in 1993, college student Brad Wardell, looking for a way to pay for school, founded the company. In an article that looks back over the 10 year history of Stardock, Wardell talks about the highs and lows in a year by year round up. URL: https://www.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=328

The first public update of WindowFX in over a year is now available. WindowFX is a program that adds special effects to Windows including: • Shadows under windows • Minimize/Maximize transition effects (windows can spin into the taskbar amongst other effects) • Change the desktop icon size to 48x48 while leaving the rest of the Windows icons their normal size. • 3D icon labels • Window dragging effects (windows can sway and rotate as they are dragged on the screen). • Set what re...