You can now order Galactic Civilizations for OS/2 directly from Stardock
Systems Inc. (SDS)!

October 10, 1994 -- Stardock Systems, a leading developer of native OS/2
multimedia software, began selling Galactic Civilizations to end users
today. Users are urged to try to get it from non-direct sources if
possible in the hopes that retail sales of GalCiv will be good enough to
encourage future titles from SDS and other OS/2 developers.

"Stores have been wary of OS/2 products because they have not traditionally
sold well. But with OS/2 3.0 (warp) on the verge of release along with
GalCiv being a mass market product available ONLY on OS/2, we hope to see
a good retail showing. Once retailers see that OS/2 products can sell
well, getting future OS/2 products on the shelves will be much easier. If
they can't find it at the store, tell them to stock it (and other native
OS/2 software). However, if our customers just can't get it at retail, or
do not want to wait for their local store to carry it, they always can
come directly to SDS to get it from us." said Brad Wardell, the project
manager for GalCiv.

There are a number of retail distributors that stores will be able to
obtain GalCiv from such as Microcentral, Ingram, etc. Moreover, users can
expect to see GalCiv in mainstream retail stores such as CompUSA, Egghead,
Software Spectrum among others in the weeks following OS/2 3.0's release.

Galactic Civilizations was produced in response to overwhelming demand from
the OS/2 community that a game be made from the ground up for OS/2 that
would demonstrate that OS/2 can be a superior games platform. The OS/2
community's outcry and input to SDS are responsible for GalCiv's
existence.

GalCiv is a space based strategy game with a powerful multithreaded 32bit
artificial intelligence engine to control several computer controlled
players against the single human player. It was designed from scratch
exclusively for OS/2. It uses OS/2's native multithreading, multitasking
power to deliver a rich universe full of wonders, alien civilizations,
political intrigue and outright warfare.

Specifications:

  OS/2 32 bit Presentation Manager Program.
  MMPM/2 support
  Very multithreaded
  Multiple Resolution and Color Depth support.
  Designed/Produced by Stardock Systems Inc.
  Marketed and Distributed by Advanced Idea Machines Inc.

** The Game **

In the near future, mankind begins to colonize the stars. On its first
venture into the unknown, a colony ship called the "Santa Maria"
encounters a one way wormhole that teleports it to a distant galaxy. This
galaxy is already populated by up to 5 computer controlled alien
civilizations. It is up to you to colonize the star systems of this new
galaxy. Among other things, you will guide your people through new
technologies, diplomatic negotiations, trade agreements, and of course
defense.

The game is won either by uniting the various civilizations together under
a United Planets (by allying with everyone) or by conquering everyone
through sheer military might.

Because it is a native OS/2 game, GalCiv can have much larger playing
fields than competitors such as Civilization and Masters of Orion. While
you consider your moves, for example, the AI is in a background thread
computing its moves. As a result, in a universe with thousands of planets,
the time between turns on a typical system is comparable to other strategy
games such as Masters of Orion (even though GalCiv's universe can be set
to be over 10 times as large). Moreover, unlike most strategy games, the
computer players don't cheat to play well.

One of the most impressive features of GalCiv is its ability to adjust
itself to your environment. Unlike most games written for a GUI such as
Windows or Presentation Manager (PM), GalCiv will adjust its size to fit
the entire screen. Moreover, it can also sense how many colors your
systems can display. For example, if you are running in plain VGA, the
ships have their own unique 16 color versions. If you have 256 colors, you
get a unique set of 256 color ships and graphics. Surprisingly, there is
even a unique set of graphics and ships for 16.8 million color users!

"One thing that has bugged me about GUI games that I have played is that
they try to lock you to a specific resolution. On those games, if you have
a high resolution like 1024x768 then their game only takes up 1/4 of the
screen. From the onset, we made sure that GalCiv would adjust the sizes of
everything so that whatever resolution you were running at would seem like
the resolution it was designed for, whether it be 640x480 or 1024x768 or
anywhere in between" said Brad Wardell of SDS.

GalCiv supports many of OS/2's multimedia features as well.

Multimedia features include:

  MMPM/2 support for:
  Digitized Sound
  MIDI Music
  Playing of Ultimotion Video (which uses DIVE)

GalCiv also went through a very long (nearly a year) beta program to help
ensure that it works well on a variety of systems and configurations.
Moreover, the beta was very public with new features debated on open
usenet forums.

"In a way, the OS/2 community helped design this game" said Brad Wardell.

GalCiv is intended for users who enjoy strategy games and world building
such as Empire, Simcity, Civilization, Masters of Orion, and Warlords.

Requirements:

  Comes on 5 disks.
  14 megs hard drive space for full install.
  386DX-25 with 8 megs of ram.
  VGA (SVGA is much nicer).
  Mouse
  Soundcard recommended.

Quantities of GalCiv will be very limited at first as it is just coming out
of manufacturing and beta testers will be getting their packages first. We
will ship them out in the order in which we receive your order.

 Galactic Civilizations: $59.95(US)
 Shipping in USA/Canada: $5.00
     -or-
 Shipping outside USA/Canada: $10.00

* Orders can be sent via internet to: x90wardell@wmich.edu
* Phone orders can be directed to: (313)/782-2248
  (Starting Oct11)
* You can fax your order to: (313)/782-9868

Stardock Systems Inc.
13405 Addison
Gibraltar MI 48173

Stocks will be limited at first, orders will be handled on a first come
first serve basis.

You can cancel your order any time before your order is shipped to you (so
if you find it at your local store before your order is in the mail, you
can simply cancel your order and get it at the store thereby letting the
retailers know that there is a demand for native OS/2 software).

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