I've been a member of WinCustomize since about 2003. I mostly lurked the forums and downloaded skins for a while, and then started to participate in a community which I viewed as awesome (and still is). I really enjoyed downloading all the various skins and watching how the community worked. It was all just fun and that got me inspired to start creating some things, which just furthered my enjoyment of the site and community. After a few years I was asked to be a mod and eventually that...
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to our amazing community! We hope you have a great holiday season and a wonderful new year! Thank you for being part of our great community!
Pacing in 4X strategy games is crucial. So I decided to look at GalCiv II, GalCiv III and the GalCiv IV alpha to take a look at how fast things move along. Turn GalCiv II (Twilight of the Arnor) GalCiv III (Retribution) GalCiv IV [Alpha] 1 · Researched New Propulsion Techniques [7 turns] · Planet Project: Innovation Complex [16 weeks] · Music: Haunting · Startport: Rush bought Colony ship with monthly p...
The mosaic (left) and geographic (right) maps of Jupiter's moon, Ganymede. Image courtesy of NASA.In case you haven't figured it out by now, we love space here at Stardock. While the premises for our games tend to be fictional, we do our best in many cases to try and adhere to real-world science, and that includes referencing and showcasing planets that actually exist in our solar system. In Star Control: Origins, for example, you start in our solar system. All of the planets in Sol are ...
Supergiant’s Hades made history earlier this week by becoming the first video game to ever win a Hugo Award. Awarded annually, the Hugo Award is a prestigious literary award presented to the best science fiction or fantasy works for the previous year. Typically, this is reserved for works like novels or short stories, but a newly added video game category for 2021 gave Hades an opportunity for recognition. The game was up against others in the science fiction and fantasy genre, includin...
The Galactic Civilizations games are known for their ship design features. But ship design occurs before the ship is made. What about after? Galactic Civilizations IV will be introducing a new feature for upcoming Beta version (this Winter) called “The Vault”. The Vault is a set of special items the player either produces or, more commonly scavenges across the galaxy. Destroying the monster ships, pirates, enemy fleets, etc. will result in scavenging thing...
It's been quite a while since we've mentioned promotions here in the forums, though a few people have been quietly promoted over the years. As some of you may know (more on this in another post soon), this will be my last month at WinCustomize so I wanted to get a few members promoted to Journeyman. These members deserve recognition for their time to create and upload skins and themes here, and for their contributions to the forums and community. Let's say a big congrats to the following memb...
When it comes to teaching a person how to play a video game, there have been two extremes over time that have been prevalent in gaming: “too much hand-holding”, and “throw you to the wolves and see how many times you get shredded alive.” Earlier video games - long before gaming became a mainstream hobby for millions of people - typically skewed toward the latter category. Old school NES games would drop you right into a situation with no explanation of how to play - an...
When you think about objects that you can invest in for hopefully high returns, you tend to think of things like gold, jewelry, art, antiques, and so on. A new study from the economists at the Higher School of Economics in Russia recently released a study that presents a new and unique lucrative alternative: Lego sets. Throughout the course of their study, the economists discovered that the market prices of the retired Lego sets sold on the secondary market grow by at least 11% annually, ...
Christmas is approaching fast, and I hope you are looking forward to a fun and festive holiday season! Animated wallpapers for DeskScapes is a fantastic way to add some holiday decoration to your desktop. Whether it's Christmas trees, Holiday lights, or a beautiful winter scene, we have a variety of wallpapers for you to check out. Here are some of our favorite holiday animated wallpapers! Here Comes Santa Christmas Winter Window Christmas Tree
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For many years, I have put the Galactic Civilizations games through their paces to see how well a given game does at feeling like a story. I do this to help nitpick things we need to change. With the beta for GalCiv IV just around the corner, I thought I’d see how well the game stacks up so far. I also will be inserting comments that normally we would have at internal meetings, but for you aspiring game developers I wanted to show some of the feedback the team gets fro...
As a general rule, most everyone thinks of Pong as the first actual video game (it isn’t technically, but it was the first one commercially available).We’ve come a long, long way since then - both visually and technically. I have grown up on video games, starting back in the 1980’s with Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers. At the time, I don’t recall being particularly enamored with the graphics of even the technological marvel that it was for its time period -...
Stardock Releases Fences 4 with Peek, Support for Windows 10 and 11 Get it NowStardock released Fences 4, an app that allows users to automatically organize shortcuts and icons on their PC desktops into custom-sized spaces called fences. Building upon previous versions of Fences that are used by millions of users of Microsoft Windows®, Fences 4 introduces new features that will streamline workflows while keeping desktops organized. ...
A cube-shaped object has been spotted by scientists working on China's Chang'e 4 mission on the far side of the Moon. Pictured below, you can see the object standing out against the blackness of space, practically begging in the Yutu 2 rover to come over and examine it. While the object is probably something like a displaced boulder, scientists want to complete their due diligence and fully intend to send the Yutu 2 over to investigate. Our Space, a Chinese language science outreach...
It's crazy to think that we're already at the end of 2021! At least we have the Christmas and Winter holidays to celebrate while we wait for the new year to approach. As always, a new month means we have a new desktop screenshot thread in the forums so our awesome community members can show off their desktops. Let us know what skins and themes you are using, especially if you have a holiday themed desktop! Post your desktops to the monthly thread here: https://forums.wincustomize.com/...