Thursday, 28 March 2019
CP Miniatures Sumerian King
Wednesday, 27 March 2019
Board Game Inspired By Craps - Revisited
When I posted about the game based on Craps, I posited a theme and some basic mechanics, but it wasn't a finished game. Over the years I've remembered this idea, and thought it would be fun to revisit that some day.
Well, recently I started thinking about the idea a little harder. One main problem with a game based on a gambling game is that if it's just a theme on top of craps, then you're just gambling. There's not much agency, and the result is all luck. Gambling can be fun, but not because you're engaging the other players in a battle of wits (or a contest of decision making) -- various forms of Poker excluded -- but because you stand to win or lose actual money. The higher the stakes, the more emotionally invested you are in the outcome.
But in a board game, there's no money on the line. People play board games for very different reasons than they play casino games. Therefore, I believe there has to be something more to the game than simply the gambling mechanics of Craps (or any other casino game). Thinking about it some more, the bigger the effect of the gambling mechanism in the game, the more luck-based the game will be. Any game will have a certain tolerance for luck, depending on the genre and audience, an all-luck game could be just fine. But the games I like to play, and therefore the games I like to make, are ones where luck plays a much smaller role in the outcome.
So, how do you at once utilize the mechanics of gambling games and minimize the role of luck? Well, that's the question I've been asking myself. I haven't got a definitive answer, but so far I've had the following thoughts on the topic:
* In an effort to keep the board game from just being the gambling game on which it's based, there needs to be more to what you do than simply place bets as you would in the casino. Perhaps a good way to proceed is to entangle the gambling choices with other in-game choices. For example, my game based on Craps sounds a lot like a worker placement game -- perhaps the worker spots could resolve to give you game actions, such as collecting, transforming, or cashing in resources, while also acting as bets on a craps table. Thus you may want to go to a space for it's in-game effect, or you may want to go there because at the moment, the gambling odds are in your favor.
* As I mentioned above, if the gambling mechanism is too consequential, then the game may be too much like just gambling. Therefore perhaps the effect of the gambling mechanism should be relegated to a secondary status, a bonus that's not as significant as the basic in-game effect. On the other hand, why base a game on a particular mechanism just to relegate that mechanism to the background?
* In my game based on Craps, about doing projects, I could use the Craps mechanism as I had described in my previous post, but as I said back then, I need something else for you to do with your managers (and laborers). Perhaps you could use them to collect resources with which to finish projects faster, or earn more points for projects. Like when the "complete project" card comes up, you get your payout, and additional benefits for the resources you've collected and spent on that project. Or when the "cancel project" card comes up, you get something for having partially completed the project with resources you have collected (insulating you from losses incurred by crapping out).
A friend of mine is working on a board game based on another casino game (Faro). I'm not too familiar with that one, but I think much of the same logic applies. I intend to get on a skype call with him one of these days so we can chat about ways to implement these gambling mechanisms in the types of euro-style games we like.
Tuesday, 26 March 2019
Lord Of The Rings, Vol. II: The Two Towers: Summary And Rating
Difficulty: Easy (2/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)
Summary:
A shallower, smaller, shorter sequel to a superior predecessor, The Two Towers tells the second of Tolkien's three books from the perspective of three adventuring parties. While the top-down perspective and interface (recalling Ultima VI but with a bigger window) are both adequate, and the game follows its predecessor in offering a number of non-canonical NPCs and side-quests, it remains under-developed in RPG mechanics like combat, character development, and equipment. The switching between parties, over which the player has no control, is jarring, and by the end it feels like no party ever got any serious screen time.
I'm not sure that it's possible to make a truly excellent RPG based on an existing plot with existing characters, particularly ones who live as largely in the imagination as the canonical members of the Fellowship of the Ring. This is different, you understand, than setting a new adventure in a familiar universe. If I had made a Lord of the Rings game, I would have told a story of a group of rangers, or Rohirrim, or even a motley group like the Fellowship, engaged in a struggle ancillary to the main plot, perhaps featuring Frodo, Aragorn, et. al. as NPCs. Games based on Dungeons & Dragons' Forgotten Realms largely seem to take this approach, although with much less well-known source material.
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| Offering an option to execute Gollum took some guts. |
The problem with using existing plots is that either the player is on a railroad towards a predetermined destination, or he's jarred by the detours. Perhaps the only way to do it well is to allow such detours (as Interplay did here) and then give it to a player who doesn't care much about the original (e.g., me). In that sense, the game world worked out very well. Before we get into a litany of complaints, we have to at least admire the flexibility of the plot, plus the game's ability to introduce side quests that work thematically with the main plot points. It was a strength of Vol. I as well.
The game fails, on the other hand, in just about every possible way as an RPG. There is no experience or leveling. Character development occurs through the occasional increase in attributes and the occasional acquisition of skills as a reward for exploration or quest-solving. None of these improvements mean anything because, first, combat is so easy that your characters don't need to improve to beat the game, and second, every party starts with all the skills they need spread out among the characters. Inventory upgrades are scarce and essentially unnecessary for the same reasons. Combat couldn't be more boring, and there's essentially no magic system: "spells" are keywords that solve puzzles, more like inventory items.
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| Very late in the game, Aragorn can learn skills he won't need for the rest of the game. |
Even worse is the way that it undercuts nonlinear exploration and optional encounters, essentially its only strength. While many of the side-quests and chance encounters are interesting, hardly any of them offer anything material to the characters. In fact, every time you stop to check out an unexplored area or building, you run the risk of some extra combats that leave the party weakened for the required encounters. This is related to the game's absurd healing system, by which characters are only fully healed at a few plot intervals, with meals and Athelas curing just a few hit points in between.
Now, it turns out that I missed a lot of side quests, mostly towards the end. The open world is nice, but the game only gives you any directions along the main quest path. I never returned to Dunland, and thus missed the side adventures there. Ithilien had at least three side quests that Frodo and his party didn't do, including a crypt, a Haradrim deserter who will join the party, and recovering the eye of the statue. If I'd gone another way in the Morgul Vale, I would have met Radagast. Aragorn missed the entire "Glittering Caves" sub-area, which culminated in a fight with a dragon and would have given him some powerful gloves. I still don't know what I did wrong here. I did find the way to the Glittering Caves, but I somehow missed the transition to the multiple levels that the hint guide says exist. I guess I was supposed to return after the Battle of Helm's Deep, but that would have meant embarking on a lengthy side-quest while on the threshold of victory for the game at large.
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| I'm not sure how I was supposed to get past this. |
It's also possible that I missed some of these side quests because of another problem: the interface. There are parts that aren't so bad. The top-down perspective, the commands, and the auto-map all basically work, and I like the way you can make the interface go away and use the full screen for just exploration. What sucks is the approach to triggering encounters. You don't see an NPC or group of enemies in the corner of your exploration window. No, they just suddenly pop up because you've happened to walk on the right set of pixels or brushed up against the right object. There's very little correspondence between visual cues on screen and the appearance of encounter options. Sometimes, you see chests but walking up to them and bumping into them does nothing. Other times, you're in a blank room, and you're told about items and people that aren't on the screen at all.
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| Note that there are no orcs anywhere on this screen. |
Finally, we have the matter of pacing. It's like the game itself has no idea what's going to come next. The battle of Helm's Deep involves six combats in a row, in two sets of three, with only a little bit of healing offered between the sets. After this epic battle, the party can rest and get fully healed, then (apparently) go off and find some magic gauntlets, when there's only one more (easy) combat remaining in the game. On Frodo and Sam's side, late in the game they have to figure out how to cut through Shelob's web. The option I chose (use the Star Ruby) causes the hobbits to get burned a little bit, which would suck--except that the endgame happens five seconds later. Why bother to attach a penalty to the choice?
And while we're talking about pacing, it's important to remember how all the erratic cutting between parties makes it hard to keep track of what any one party is doing. I completely missed an opportunity to recover Anduril because the game lurched to a different party when I was on that quest, and by the time it took me back to Aragorn, it was shouting that Helm's Deep was nigh.
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| Making the least-optimal choice hardly matters when the game is over at the next intersection. |
Lord of the Rings, Vol. I had a lot of these problems (except the last one), and it ended up with a relatively-high 49 on the GIMLET. Before we rate this one, it's worth thinking about some of the differences. One is size. Vol. I is quite a bit bigger. Although Vol. II is good in this regard, Vol. I offered more opportunities for side quests, inventory acquisition, character development, healing, and general exploration. Pacing issues were caused as much by the player as by the plot.
Vol. I gave you a lot less direction on what to do next. There was a general sense that you had to keep moving east, but you weren't constantly getting title cards explicitly explaining the next step of the quest. For that reason, NPCs and the dialogue system took on a much greater importance. Here, although you can feed NPCs a variety of keywords, they mostly just tell you what the game has already told you in long paragraphs. You never really need them for any clues.
NPCs themselves were more memorable. They had personalities, agendas, side quests, and even a couple of betrayals. Vol. II only marginally developed any of that. There was a poor economy in Vol. I, but Vol. II had no place to spend money at all despite showing that the characters had it. Also keenly felt is the loss of nice graphical (or animated, in the remake) cut scenes between major areas.
Both games do reasonably well in the area of encounters. I've always liked the way Interplay games (including Wasteland and Dragon Wars) require you to read clues and then figure out the right skills to directly employ. Sometimes, items can substitute for skills. But Vol. I's encounters of this nature were less obvious and a little less generous in the variety of things that would work. You couldn't ignore options to improve skills or acquire quest objects. In Vol. II, you can pretty much just walk from beginning to end, knowing that your starting characters have whatever they need.
The rest might just be a matter of bad memory. Recalling the first game, I feel like the graphics offered a little more detail, that encounters didn't depend on hitting quite such a small set of pixels, that there was a little more character development, a slightly better inventory system, and so forth.
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| The game tries to evoke the majesty of Middle Earth without showing much. |
Let's see how they compare:
1. Game world. The Two Towers definitely makes good use of the Middle Earth setting. The backstory and lore section of the manual are thorough and interesting. It wasn't until I read it that I finally understood some allusions from the films and the previous game, such as what "Numenor" refers to and what Gandalf actually is. While the game doesn't do a lot to build on this setting, it certainly is in keeping with it. Score: 6.
2. Character creation and development. There's no creation at all and only the slightest, near-invisible development. You mostly forget that the attributes even exist. Aragorn started with 70 dexterity, 28 strength, 33 endurance 75 luck, and 75 willpower, and he ended with 74, 28, 38, 79, and 77. Clearly, some development occurred, but never was I notified of any of these increases, and I really have no idea what caused them. The skills system would get more points if the game was a bit more balanced in how you acquire and use them. Score: 2.
3. NPC interaction. I always enjoy keyword-based dialogue systems, but here it's mostly purposeless. When a title card has just told you that "Orcs have ravaged this village and its people are forlorn," you don't need six different NPCs saying, "Orcs destroyed us!" and "We have lost hope!" I did like the few NPCs who could join the parties. Without them, the game would have been forced to either avoid combat with the hobbit parties or make the hobbits uncharacteristically effective. Score: 5.
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| I'm sorry we didn't see more of Eowen. |
4. Encounters and foes. Despite Tolkien featuring a large bestiary, you only really ever fight orcs and men in this game (aside from a few one-off battles). The only points I give here are for the non-combat encounters, which are frequent, require some puzzle-solving skill, and offer some role-playing opportunities. As mentioned, I don't like the way that they appear, but that's more of an interface issue. Score: 5.
5. Magic and combat. Combat features no tactics, no magic, no items to use. Just "attack" and select your preferred foe from a menu. The "magic system," as such, is just the acquisition of some spell keywords that occasionally solve puzzles, but I only had to use one of these words once. (This is in contrast to the first game, where they were constantly required.) Score: 1.
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| The easy, boring combat system. |
6. Equipment. I found a few upgrades throughout the game: leather to chain, chain to magic armor, sword to magic sword, and so forth. It just didn't feel like any of it did anything. Most of the items that burdened my inventory were quest items, and I found no use for a lot of them. Score: 2.
7. Economy. In contrast to the first game, there is none. The game keeps track of a "silver" statistic for each character for no reason. Score: 0.
8. Quests. Perhaps the strongest point. Each party has a clear set of main quests, an equal number of side quests, and even a few options about how to complete them. I enjoyed the side quests most because with them, I was exploring Middle Earth rather than just hitting a series of determined locations and plot points in a row. Score: 5.
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| The staircase to Cirith Ungol hardly seems hidden, tight, steep, or foreboding, especially with the silly "mountains" on either side. |
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| I did like some of the "instant deaths." |
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| ". . . no one." |
Unlike Dragon Wars, which despite its initial disappointing commercial performance has gone on to attain a cult-classic status among hardcore CRPG fans, the reputations of the two Interplay Lord of the Rings games have never been rehabilitated. Indeed, to a large extent the games have simply been forgotten, bizarre though that situation reads given their lineage in terms of both license and developer. Being neither truly, comprehensively bad games nor truly good ones, they fall into a middle ground of unmemorable mediocrity. In response to their poor reception by a changing marketplace, Interplay would all but abandon CRPGs for the next several years.
QuakeExpo2016 16-30Th Of July, Register Your Virtual Booth Now!
https://qexpo2016.com/
Booth pre-registration started on the 18th of June, and the for those that wonder what it is all about:
If you are a qexpo old-timer: The format is virtual 'booths' set up for a limited number of days just like the past. But unlike the past, this site has a built-in comment and messaging system. The site-wide stream of discussion is available on the 'Activity' tab. However, any booth owner may disable comments on their particular booth page by checking the 'Comments Disabled' category.Focus is mainly on Quake1 engine derived projects (Darkplaces Engine for example), but in the past there were usually also a few Quake2/3 engine projects in it. Fully FOSS is not a strict requirement, but quite common, and the engine is of course GPL licensed.
We also have a fancy event calendar to be populated. Events occurring prior to the Expo days may be posted, but it is requested that there be an event coverage booth, news, or other tie-in available during the Expo itself.
If you're a new-timer wondering what the heck this is: The Quake Expo concept is based on virtual 'booths' where people show off projects, provide tutorials, or share nostalgia. See the links at the bottom of the site for previous years. The idea is a bit retro given all the possible online outlets for creativity now. But that's one of the reasons to have it- with so many islands of forums, social media groups, and code repositories, it might be nice to come together for a few days and see what everyone else is doing. The time limitation is key. Booths will only be open for two weeks and afterwards the entire site is closed and archived.
Personally I hope we will see some projects picking up the quite awesome mobileVR port of Darkplaces: http://quakevr.com/
P.S.: Slightly OT, but the Inside3D forums (all about Quake1 engine programming) have a new home at http://www.insideqc.com/
This post was retrieved from freegamer.blogspot.com.
3 Super Monkey Ball Alternatives - Open Sphere Rolling Games
Marbles have fascinated the population of the blue marble for centuries. Today, we take a look at three digital variants that are open source and playable cross-platform.
Veraball



The newest addition to the group of open source ball-rolling games is minimal and was made using the Godot engine.
Rock and jazz music accompanies your through the only two levels so far. None of them are super hard, making Veraball the most beginner-friendly game of the bunch.
Windows (both portable and installer) and Linux releases are available but since Godot Engine runs on Mac OS X, you can play it on that platform as well using the source.
irrlamb
Neverball








Neverball has been around for a while. There are easy levels, there are hard levels, there are levels that were apparently made to challenge the game's developers.
Many levels take place in space, on grass squares floating under the sky, above the sea or above a city at night. Of our three games, this one is least suitable for those with acrophobia.
There is a lot of content (326 maps minus Neverputt levels) and only a small part of it is accessibly due to my lack of balancing skills. So I present to you the most and least favorite aspects of Neverball, as seen by a player with newbie skills:
Best: 1. The oh so many levels! 2. Different ball models available, some have character (by containing characters), making it easier to have some kind of emotional connection to the game. No animated cute animals though unfortunately.
Worst: 1. The old looking non-baked textures of the basic levels 2. The camera (does not allow you to zoom, moves in disturbing ways) and consequently the controls.
Conclusion
"If only projects X, Y and Z could join forces instead of trying to re-invent the wheel!" - what an annoying thing to say, don't you think? I hope you got the chance to play irrlamb, Neverball and Veraball - and if not I hope this review brought you closer to them - so that you can appreciate the different feels to the gameplay and scenery.
All I really want now are video tutorials for creating new levels...
Are there any open source games with similar mechanics that I missed? Are there proprietary games that developers should consider taking inspiration from other than Super Monkey Ball? Please let us know in the comments!
This post was retrieved from freegamer.blogspot.com.
Saturday, 23 March 2019
ouo.io - Make short links and earn the biggest money
Shrink and Share
Save you time and effort
Friday, 15 March 2019
New Domain properties added to your account
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