T w e n t y S i d e d
Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
Link (YouTube) |
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #304: The Take Two Backstab, Obduction, SpaceX”
Diecast #304: The Take Two Backstab, Obduction, SpaceX
Civilization Part 3: Rifle Race
In the previous entry I talked about how well this game handles the passage of time to funnel progression into historical norms. To put it more simply: The game is really good about keeping fighter jets out of the middle ages without resorting to ugly brute-force limits like, “Nobody can research flight until 1903”. The changing time scale means you can’t drift too far from what we have in the real world.
Or does it? Assuming some sort of improbably optimal starting situation, how much can we break history?
Rifles are Game-Changers. Or Not. Maybe?
This battle is SO unrealistic. There's no way players would fight a war over worthless tundra tiles.
To test this, I decided to see how early in history I could get rifles. Now, I admit that getting rifles early isn’t that big of a deal in terms of power. The early firearms were things like a blunderbuss or a rifle with a bayonet . Those things had absurdly impractical reload times. Using one boiled down to something like this:
Fire one wildly inaccurate shot with very little stopping power. Even if you hit someone, you might not incapacitate them right away. They might eventually die of infection / lead poisoning, but that won’t necessarily stop them from trying to stab you to death in the next few minutes. Once your shot is spent, you’re done with this thing as a firearm. You’ll never get it reloaded before your foes close distance. So now what you have is basically a lousy spear. It’s too unbalanced to use overhand, and too heavy / expensive to throw. Just heave it at them underhand and hope they haven’t been trained to use their sword properly.
Don’t get me wrong: Early rifles are still good vs. swords. (We know this, because armies of the time didn’t switch back to swords.) They’re just not magical insta-win weapons like today’s rifles would be.
Or so I thought. Based on the discussion in last week’s thread, it’s actually way more complicated than this and opinions were all over the place with regards to the usefulness and practicality of early firearms. Most of the people in the debate seemed to know a lot more about the topic than I do, so my generally uninformed opinion isn’t worth that much.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Civilization Part 3: Rifle Race”
Skylines of the Future
Like I said in my last article about this game, the assumption seems to be that the team at Colossal Order is working on a sequel. They haven’t announced the game yet but they’re putting out less content these days, so it makes sense that the team is either making a sequel or they’re all playing Doom: Eternal.
Assuming they are working on a sequel, it means that the game is still in the early stages of development. So now is a good time to offer some suggestions and constructive criticism to the developers.
Dear devs: You folks made an amazing game. According to Wikipedia, you had just 9 people on the team when you made Cities: Skylines. Making a full-scale city simulation with a team that small is a tall order. But making the BEST city simulation and beating the behemoth of EA Maxis isn’t just a tall order, it’s a…
oh. Right. I get it now.
What I’m getting at here is that I got really into this amazing game you made. It killed my productivity over the past couple of months and I basically stopped talking to people. This was hard on my family and kinda unfair to my Patrons. But look: I’m willing to forgive you for all of that. All you have to do is implement all of my ideas from this video, and we’ll call it even. Cool? Cool.
Link (YouTube) |
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Skylines of the Future”
Diecast Unplugged
No Diecast this week. Like I said last week, we’re gearing up for a move and things are going to be a little chaotic until we get settled in the new place. However, to fill the podcast-shaped hole on Monday, here is a bunch of stuff that I would have discussed on the show. I know Paul has been playing Obduction and I’ve been looking forward to his thoughts on that, but I guess we’ll have to wait for next week.
So here are some topics I might have talked about on the show… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast Unplugged”
The Other Kind of MMO: The Half-Roguelike
The obnoxious white line is still there. I’m leaving it in, otherwise I’ll never learn. I’ll fix it before next time.
Now that introductions are out of the way, let’s discuss the game’s progression and some of its mechanics.
It’s common for an EVE player to follow a certain progression through the game: start in highsec (the safe section in the center of the galaxy), learn the basics of the game there, accumulate a bit of property, get bored, and move out to lowsec or nullsec (areas on the outside, more friendly to PVP) and live there. That’s more or less what I did. I didn’t venture outside highsec until I’d been playing the game for almost a year, during which time I only occasionally did any PVP.
PVP-focused EVE players sometimes say that the game’s PVE is boring, which in a way is true – but for me, that was kind of the point. Instead of “boring,” someone who genuinely enjoys the game’s PVE aspects would probably call them “relaxing.” EVE is, overall, a slower-paced game than most MMOs. First of all, its combat (which I’ll go into more detail about later) is less twitch-based than your typical hotbar MMO. Second, there are in-game professions that don’t feature combat at all, like hauling, mining, industry, and playing the market (a game unto itself in some ways).
If there's an MMO with a more complex and involved in-game economy, I haven't played it yet.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Other Kind of MMO: The Half-Roguelike”
Civilization Part 2: Games that Stand the Test of Time
So now you’re wondering, “Hey Shamus, is this series about Civilization, or about your dislike for Civilization VI?” I’m afraid the answer is “yes”. It turns out I had a lot to say about this series, and so this retrospective has become a dumping ground for 20 years of pent-up questions, complaints, compliments, and observations.
The first thing I want to talk about is…
The Flow of Time
Civ games usually have some way of recognizing your progress that's gratifying but ultimately pointless in terms of gameplay. (Like upgrading your throne room.) I really like the Civ 6 version of this, which is an ever-growing timeline.
One of the really clever tricks in the design of these games is that the flow of time varies by what era of human civilization you’re in. If you play by the default rules, then the game begins in 4000BC and ends in 2050AD. This span of time is divided into 6(ish) eras. These are obviously based on a historical model of human progress, but there’s quite a bit of artistic license taken to keep things simple and comprehensible. That’s fine. This is a game, not a history course.
Here are the eras in terms of gameplay:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Civilization Part 2: Games that Stand the Test of Time”
Noita: Sim Misfortune
This game is bonkers. It’s bonkers in terms of gameplay, where you have to deal with the chaos that emerges from large, unwieldy, unpredictable simulations that run over a large area. It’s also bonkers in the sense that the developers decided to make a game built around large, unwieldy, unpredictable simulations that run over a large area, and were 100% successful at it.
Noita is a side-scrolling game where you play as some sort of robed practitioner of magic. You begin at the mouth of a cave and descend ever downward. Creatures try to kill you, and you try to prevent this using your collection of randomly-generated wands. Every so often you’ll reach the end of a zone where you can take a breather, top off your health, and purchase some upgrades. Then you resume your descent into ever-more dangerous underground locations.
What’s at the bottom? What sort of prize lurks at the heart of this endless cave system? What sort of reward could motivate our nameless protagonist to endure this endless cavalcade of violence, murder, and misfortune?
I have no idea. I’ve never beat the game. All I can say is that it had better be really good.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Noita: Sim Misfortune”
From The Archives:
Juvenile and Proud
Yes, this game is loud, crude, childish, and stupid. But it it knows what it wants to be and nails it. And that's admirable.
Push the Button!
Scenes from Half-Life 2:Episode 2, showing Gordon Freeman being a jerk.
The Truth About Piracy
What are publishers doing to fight piracy and why is it all wrong?
The Best of 2019
I called 2019 "The Year of corporate Dystopia". Here is a list of the games I thought were interesting or worth talking about that year.
Was it a Hack?
A big chunk of the internet went down in October of 2016. What happened? Was it a hack?
Skylines of the Future
Cities: Skylines is bound to have a sequel sooner or later. Where can this series go next, and what changes would I like to see?
Steam Summer Blues
This mess of dross, confusion, and terrible UI design is the storefront the big publishers couldn't beat? Amazing.
Chainmail Bikini
A horrible, railroading, stupid, contrived, and painfully ill-conceived roleplaying campaign. All in good fun.
TitleWhat’s Inside Skinner’s Box?
What is a skinner box, how does it interact with neurotransmitters, and what does it have to do with shooting people in the face for rare loot?
Denuvo and the "Death" of Piracy
Denuvo videogame DRM didn't actually kill piracy, but it did stop it for several months. Here's what we learned from that.