Impulse is the greatest thing since sliced bread...yada yada yada.
But how good is it really? Ultimately, only you will be able to decide. What I'm going to do here is give my personal opinion on how Impulse stands on the eve of its launch.
Let's just get this out of the way, Impulse is not Steam or Direct2Drive or Xfire or whatever. It's has a very different design philosophy. So let me just say this: You would have to pry Steam out of my cold dead hands. You should judge Impulse as how well it addresses your problems.
So I double click on the Impulse icon. How fast does it load? On my ThinkPad T60 it's about 5 seconds but YMMV. In its phase 2 edition (August) I think we need to make it more multithreaded so that when you launch it, it comes up like a window. I.e. instantly. But it is pretty snappy (a lot faster for me than the betas were).
My next question would be, how much RAM is this thing using?
On load up, about 15 megabytes which is pretty good given that Internet Explorer uses 84 megabytes!
From a digital e-commerce point of view, the million dollar question is, how good is the selection in the Impulse store? With Steam or Direct2Drive, I can get a gazillion different games. So what about Impulse? The answer depends on what you're looking for.
The first week of the Impulse launch will be spent handling the logistics of getting hundreds of gigabytes of games, utilities, and applications up on the servers. So what is available at say 1pm on the day of the launch will be different from what is available at 5pm of the same day with each day adding more and more stuff.
But by Christmas, I suspect it won't be selection that makes one choose one digital store over another but rather the features and services that these things provide. Impulse, for instance, supports refunds for users having technical issues. That's a pretty big deal IMO. As far as I know, that will be unique to Impulse.
So that we're all on the same page, Impulse isn't just a download manager ala Stardock Central. It is a full blown digital distribution platform. The platform comes in the form of Impulse Reactor which is a server-side virtual API set for developers.
A developer could, for instance, using the free Impulse Reactor SDK (which will be launched in mid August) type into their game: CVP.SaveGame() and save their game to the player's virtual drive. Or CVP.LoadPreferences() to get a game's preferences.
The first game to make use of the Common Virtual Platform will be The Political Machine. Unfortunately, The Political Machine v1.1 wasn't ready by the Impulse launch so we had to hide the "Games" button from the community area for multiplayer match making. As soon as it's ready, the button will come back and players will be able to find games either there or within The Political Machine itself. Other games that will be using it include Sins of a Solar Empire, Galactic Civilizations II v2.0, and Demigod. We are also working with a number of third party developers to begin using this.
I am very biased in favor of non-website whenever possible. I just find website stuff slow.
The blogging and forum behavior on Impulse is pretty fast but I'd like to see it much faster. As in, instantaneous.
I think in the coming weeks you'll see a lot of improvements to performance across the whole thing as the initial launch was largely about just getting stuff in there.
The friends stuff is a pretty big deal for me as both a user and as a gamer. It's only in its beginning stages really. Eventually, you'll be able to easily get games going and filter by friends or friends of friends to help improve the multiplayer experience.
When I play on-line, my biggest gripe is the griefing and such I run into. I'm 36 years old, I just don't have time to waste in a multiplayer game with some 15 year old whose out to "max their ranking".
Features that didn't make to the launch that make me sad
There are 3 big features that had to be put into phase 2 (August) that make me sad. The Impulse side was done but we just didn't have enough time on the game side to make use of them yet.
Those are:
They'll get in there, we just have to update The Political Machine and other games to make use of them so that we can show off what's possible to game developers.
The same is true for NAT negotiation and such. One of the biggest pains in the butt on the PC is getting ports and firewalls set up right for a game. In Impulse phase 3, the Impulse back end will be set up to act as a kind of back-up for games that use our platform. So a user could connect to another user without knowing anything about routers and what not. We're hoping Demigod will be the first game to make use of this.
So right now, there's a tab called "Updates" that shows up if there are updates to ones programs. I'd like to see an option put in asap that simply has Impulse download these updates automatically.
My other request is that when downloading updates, I want to see my actual bandwidth speed. I realize this is cosmetic but somewhere, techies should be able to get some idea of how fast their connections are.
Impulse lets users add new categories to their applications and move things around via the dock (we'll talk about that more soon).
If there's an update, an exclamation point shows up next to it.
What's not in the launch version are forums for every application or a chat channel. Eventually everything will get its own forum and chat channel.
Users can associate various programs with their account. Right now, the only commercial programs that you can associate with your account are Stardock ones and programs you bought from Impulse. But the next step is to let you be able to associate any program with your account regardless of where you purchased it.
This way, when are setting up a new machine, you can just let Impulse download and install all your stuff (freeware, shareware, games, whatever).
Clicking on the orb in the top left opens up additional options. You can set up where things install on a per category basis:
Impulse is designed to customizeable. The initial launch doesn't have the skinning selection features in. That's coming "real soon now(TM)". But you can add and edit your own categories:
Extending Impulse
When you press the minimize to dock, Impulse launches the dock:
Impulse Dock
The dock displays the same content as the Impulse client. By default, it is set to auto-hide so it will hide to the taskbar edge with the user able to bring it up by moving their mouse to the bottom edge of the screen.
The dock is pretty powerful and yet light weight.
We plan to release later on an Impulse Tray applet that users can optionally use to stay in touch with friends, posts, updates, etc. It will not be part of Impulse itself as it will be designed to be as tiny as possible.
I think most people will find Impulse pretty compelling. Initially, its game content is not on par with Steam or Direct2Drive but that should change over time. Obviously on the non-game software side, it enjoys a tremendous advantage.
Impulse itself is pretty snappy but I found the forums and blog services be a bit on the slow side. This will be something Stardock will need to improve.
Download speeds of new programs, by contrast are fast. Faster than anything I've ever used anywhere.
The customization features, while decent, could be a lot better. I.e. I'd like to be able to select from a list of skins. Stardock's the leader in this area so it's something that it will be adding and supporting through its skinning site, WinCustomize.com.
It will be important that Impulse show off the features of Impulse Reactor as quickly as possible. Getting the Multiplayer matchmaking in should be up by the end of the month. Achievements, rankings, etc. are all going to be crucial as well.
I'd like to be able to filter out programs that are available but not installed. I'm an extreme case since I have a ton of things linked to my account but still.
I think people will be pleasantly surprised at how fast and memory efficient the overall program is. Given how pretty it is, on might expect it to be slow and a memory hog but even in its first release, it's really snappy.
I'd like to say that your (plural) replies to Mumblefratz aren't really fairFirst, saying "our target audience is people who like our software, so if you don't like it, then we don't care about you" is not a valid (albeit commonly used) reply at all. Target audience is for authors to consider while they develop their product. It's not a valid classification of actual end users.Second, the things that are lost when moving from downloadable patches to some kind of "distribution platform" should not be so easily ignored. For example, I like to play relatively old games. Recently I bought a copy of Thief 2. If it was tied into some distribution system, it would probably be either unplayable, or unpatchable. In some cases the latter implies the former, since initial releases of many games are not really playable.Essentially, what many distribution and update systems do is to make the game a kind of temporary service rather than a thing you buy. Now, the law treats software as a licensed service, but that's because the law is disconnected from reality. When I buy a game I think about it exactly the same way I think about buying a book. So far nobody managed to show me that this mode of thinking is somehow wrong, and I saw plenty of examples that the alternatives are flawed.Third, what would happen if every publisher tried to push their distribution system with every game they sell? Just think about it....My primary concern is as follows: after I bough the game and downloaded the patches through Impulse, what would happen if I have to resinatall the OS? With standalone patches, I could back them up, reinstall the system, reinstall the game, and apply the patches, without ever connecting to the Internet. I don't like the idea of the game being forever tied to some online service, since their lifespans are incomparable.
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Translation: I don't like what you said, so shut up. That's not a valid reply either. You're not addressing the criticism, just telling people what to do.
There is a good discussion going here and it pains me to see people flaming dissenters. I don't want our forums to be an environment where only advocates feel welcome. If people can't voice their disagreements and concerns without fear of retribution, we'll lose a very valuable resource.
That said, the PC needs a platform like this. It needs it badly. And if it isn't made by Stardock, it'll be made by someone else. And I suspect other alternatives won't be as open as Impulse is.
A combination of unresistable factors are forcing companies to build or use platforms like this. Support costs. Piracy. Cost of development.
The belief that the long term option is something like Impulse or some minimalistic installer is a false belief. It's not going to work out that way any more than people who didn't like GUIs when they were first coming online ever had a realistic option of living totally by the DOS command prompt.
If it's not Stardock it'll be digital river, or Amazon, or EA, or Steam, or someone else. The question is only a matter of which platform do you think is the most acceptable.
The industry has seen how well these things work on consoles. So it's not a matter of if. It's when.
That was one of my motivations for us making Impulse. I know there's plenty of minimalists out there but I also know that we have the capability to make a truly great digital platform that is minimally invasive and works in an open way so that developers aren't tied into us.
So while I appreciate the feedback, this is the direction we've chosen to go. We think it's the direction most of our customers want us to go and the one that will benefit consumers the most in the long haul.
Amazing job this Impulse, feeling homelike here
respect!
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