cornchip

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Posts posted by cornchip


  1. I like Gallipoli. It has the same Victorians-vs-misbehaving-pure-hearts kinds of themes as Weir's other movies: (Picnic at Hanging Rock, Cars that Ate Paris, Truman Show, Witness, etc.) The running is an effective way to show the Great War squeezing broad human talents into specialist roles required by trench warfare, penny-wise-pound-foolish selflessness (trading places), Australian pastoral life vs. English unconcern use for the products of that life, etc. My biggest complaint is that the Ottoman defense is portrayed as heartless and monolithic when it was a much more interesting battle, but the movie isn't really about the battle.


  2. Enjoyable discussion, especially when comparing the series to the Paradox model. I think that the core concept is looking a bit primitive after so many years, but it's still such fun and I appreciate the variations and updates for modern systems. I really hope that Firaxis will have a playtesting methodology breakthrough that lets them make the last half of the game better. Then again, quitting after dominating the bronze age rather than finishing early might just be more fun!


  3. Thing is, crossruff, that's basically the same story as the chess episode. They would have to get on someone who would do it differently. And at least with chess, Michael is a fan. I don't think any panelists really get Bridge so an episode about the game would be more of the 'polite interview' type.


  4. I'd rather not have too many After Dark episodes, though I enjoyed it. I think I have a good reason for wanting this. The premise of the After Dark podcast was to gather topics too small for their own episode and deal with them. These fragment topics had built up over time and 'proven' themselves to not be full episode material. If the After Dark episodes become more frequent, I think that it'll 'use up' some topics that would have matured into full episode topics in a few more months or a year or so, and those topics probably won't be revisited since it'd be too repetitive.


  5. Come to Chicago! I take back the bad things I said about Illinois in the other thread.

     

    Bridge isn't just a game for retirees, guys. There are a lot of young people (mostly math-y types, admittedly) who play it competitively. It's an interesting game with a lot of community conventions I would love to see make it into the board game world. That said, like Go, I think a bridge episode would mostly be a rehash of the chess episode. What about an episode about bidding, or 2v2, or cheating ( :( ) that discusses bridge in addition to other games?

     

    Defense of the Oasis is an excellent ipad strategy-puzzle game. I paid $5 for it and got great value, and it's $3 now. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/defense-of-the-oasis/id380887857?mt=8


  6. Enjoyed listening to this, though I didn't have a lot of context for it.

     

    There is a "megagame" movement taking off in the US (after 30 years in the UK) that's essentially casual, more random, double-blind wargaming meets model UN. Any thoughts on how megagamers can inherit some of the depth that wargamers have been enjoying for decades?

     

    Thanks for the book recommendations. Illinois is indefensible, sorry.


  7. I like Slay.

     

    Mother of all Battles is another small strategy game of his I liked. Although some of the large maps took hours to complete, the small ones with larger land masses could be done in a short break. It didn't have a good production information management interface, so after the climactic struggle to establish yourself, you'd tend to check out and mass-produce paratroopers and bombers to keep things simple.

     

    Critical Mass is another of his I liked. It was a simultaneous-turn-based space combat game (with customizable ships, Rob!) It also had a sort of "campaign mode" where you built up your fleet over time, but it didn't have much challenge once you got over an early hump. Also, the scenarios didn't vary nearly enough. Fun, though. I think it is an ancestor of Flotilla and the board game Galaxy Truckers.


  8. If I wanted a super deep analysis of Dark Reign gameplay I'd be disappointed by this podcast, but the game was obviously just was a springboard into some very specific nostalgia, which I really enjoyed. There are a lot of moving parts in the transition in gaming between the mid 90s and ~2010 and I thought it was well analyzed. All the stuff I was planning to write about Gray Goo in this comment was said by the end of the episode. :)

     

    One thing that was only touched on a bit was how the RTS genre was scratching the itch of a fantasy: to control your own army. That's why we got into it initially, and all the depth of gameplay, immersion strategies, design, etc. has emerged over time and defined the genre, which has become different than the fantasy.

     

    Edit: the comment about how Gray Goo failed, and now Petroglyph is doing some sort of pixelated retro C&C game, did remind me to ask when the nostalgia train will get to where we are making new "retro" RTSes in that turn-of-the-century style a la Empire Earth, MechCommander, Emperor: Battle for Dune, etc. We probably just need mobile devices to be a little more powerful, develop a couple innovations in touch controls, and have the right resource pack for Unity become popular.


  9. Enjoyed this discussion.

     

    I've mentioned it before, but I'll throw out Flamebreak (http://store.steampowered.com/app/399640/) as a great bite-sized strategy game. Imagine if, in FTL, you had the tools to figure out, with a little luck, optimal routes through each zone and were able to pursue some high-level strategies to beat the game based on your starting ship and crew with more reliability. New players will probably complain that it is a roguelike, but everything in it is extremely fair, and beatable, and most odds you care about can be manipulated in your favor to where most games can go the way you want with enough skill.

     

    However, the combat is much more action-tactical, like Binding of Isaac or DOTA. Games take 30-45 minutes and a speedrun takes maybe 10-20 minutes. I have over 100 hours into this game.

     

    I completely agree with Dave that idlers are eating up the mobile/casual strategy market. Regarding why, one thing overlooked is that the more intense is a strategic decision, the more time and design is needed to build up to it and wind down from it. That is why most people cannot handle a quick SC2 ladder game between meetings at work, just like they can't squeeze in an intense work task like deciding whether to lay someone off in 15 minutes. Idlers appeal to lazy people and people who like big numbers, but the thing they do really well is provide context and gradual introduction to a few decisions, and then, brilliantly, they require zero wind-down because you just leave them running!

     

    And I agree that as long as board game development has lower fixed/upfront costs than Video game development, we'll see more design diversity there. 

     

    Troy, I'll get to work on that naval idler game because I want to play it myself.


  10. Outstanding episode still worth listening to four years later.

     

    Tying together the SMAC and Civ discussion, it seems like SMAC was successful in part because it had seven very strong characters developed by the novella, all the quotes, the characteristics of their factions, diplomacy text, etc. I don't think this approach has been repeated, but just as the panelists wondered why no one really goes after Civ, it should be possible to go after the heart of SMAC, the characters, rather than the peripheral characteristics as Pandora and C:BE did.


  11. Agreed this isn't Early Access in the bad sense, though I do think Rimworld's lowest-tier price is a bit high for the game's value.

     

    It would be interesting to have a panel of well-regarded static content designers and procedural generation designers discussing games like DF and Rimworld, and the advantages and disadvantages of their approaches to strategy game design in general.