Sleepypete's Pillow

Back to what’s pretty much my roots again 🙂 Today is a chance to recalling some of the games I spent far too much time on in the past.

Thirteen Things about Classic Games 1…. First and Foremost – Elite ! The original computer space game. You’re on your own with a beat up ship. No weapons to speak of and minimal equipment. Your aim – to shoot your way to the top ratings and to trade your way into all-shiny bits for your ship. Elite’s gone through several versions and is about the only game I know to have a version for Every! computer platform and some consoles too. 2…. Pacman. Another really old classic. This one has the gift of being oh so simple to play and incredibly addictive. 3…. Civilisation. Simple in theory, epic in scale. However, it did get a little frustrating though when your tank army got held up by a spear toting savage. (One for the aliens in Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar books!) This one has sprouted 3 sequels so far, with a multitude of other games also using the same game concept. It’s always a sign of a top game when others copy it. 4…. Revs. Another BBC Micro game. This one wasn’t the first racing game to hit a computer screen but it was probably the first to really go for accuracy. If you’ve heard of Geoff Crammond’s Grand Prix series, then this is Geoff Crammond’s GP Version Zero. 5…. Badminton. Hey ! You thought I was going to put 13 pooter games in here 🙂 Quick, fast, energetic but there’s still a chance for the old git with a little bit of skill to put one over on the young ‘uns. I haven’t played enough of this game lately, I still love the game despite it being the reason why my right shoulder has pretty much disintegrated. 6…. Master of Orion 1 and 2. I’ve mentioned this one before and it got me the link to the Moo2 Blogspot site. Another pair of strategy games here, this time set in space. You start with just your homeworld and before the end you’ll have a Star Empire sending ships across the galaxy through immense stargates. You’ll have not just one Death Star but a fleet of them. You’ll turn asteroids into planets and dead planets into garden paradises. In between defeating all enemies and crushing all resistance of course. Moo3 was a bit of a let down. It was much bigger but kinda missed the thing that makes a game Great. 7…. Pen and Paper Role Play Games. Lots of people go down the pub to have a laugh with their mates. I’ve never really been into that, I enjoy it more having a cleric or a mage or a mad warrior going down the pub in some fantasy place. And then there’s the mysteries and the monster slaying too. 8…. World of Warcraft … Up to level 60/70 ! Making an important distinction there as this is a game that changes utterly when you get to the maximum level. Before, it is most certainly the best game I’ve played. Full of content, variation and before a recent patch, well paced. However, when you get to the maximum level you’re at the mercy of the other players around. It only takes a couple of people to turn a few hours play into severe hard work when it should be fun. 9…. Cricket. Another one where anyone can play it. The big skinny lanky bloke can bowl fast, the short chubby batsman makes the fielders run to the boundary. The whippet boy will terrorize from the close field. The youngster provides the energy and spirit that drives the rest on. Crafty guy will put the batsmen in a spin and the crotchety old git will be the rock that holds the batting together. 10.. UFO Enemy Unknown. Also known as X-Com. This one has you as the commander of an elite group charged with saving the world from alien incursions. It blended a real time portion where you had fighter aircraft to intercept UFOs with a take turns based portion where you sent in the boys (and girls) to give those aliens a jolly good kicking before stealing all their loot. This one spawned a clone of a sequel that I never played and an exceptional second sequel called X-Com Apocalypse. Apocalypse was a little different and a good evolution on the first. There was also X-Com Interceptor, same again but in space with light fighter craft and finally the ill-fated X-Com Enforcer. 11… Karting. I’ve had a chance to race in a few karting sessions and it’s always a thrill. A kart is pretty much just a frame with a seat bolted to it, a lawnmower engine, a little steering and four wheels at the corners. The driver is connected to it through the seat of their pants and they’ll feel every bump and every slip where the tyres are itching to go in a different question to the one you intended. Far more immediate than driving something with springs, plus it’s competition and competition always gets me interested 🙂 12… Mischief Running. Otherwise known as seeing whether you can get away with winding people up. Mischief because that’s the fun part. Running because that’s what you’ll end up doing if you push it too far 🙂 13… Microsoft’s Windows games ! Many a lunchtime has been spent chilling out to Freecell, Spider, Solitaire and Minesweeper.

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I love the longer evenings myself. Our light starts to fade at around 8pm here and so going out for a walk while it’s still light is a novel concept lol.

Sorry to hear about the problems with your legs though, that kinda sucks.

I’m finally mostly recovered from the vacation. It’s a weird feeling to say that I need a vacation to recover from the vacation lol.

After my week and a bit skive, I’ve been back at work for a couple of days now.

Yesterday was a bit of a bust, we could get email but we didn’t have access to the server that holds all of our data. And without data, there’s not much you can actually achieve. Unless you can get to other servers with more data on them 🙂 We got our shared area back midway through the afternoon, so most of us were back in business. That would be the people who had gone through the recent server migration unscathed.

Today was more like it, although it ended up being one of those days where you’re scurrying around doing lots of stuff except for what you intended to do 🙂 Which would be set up a heap of spreadsheets that will make my life easier over the next year as well as getting me the odd brownie point.

The week off seems to have done me some good 🙂 I was charging around yesterday with far more zip than I’ve had for months. Could have been something to do with the company I had on the way in from the car park. Miss L is always a wonderful person to talk to, although I tend to babble too much when I see her.

Hopefully the zip will last me for a while, as I’m already suffering the effects of the various injuries I live with. The most prominent is currently shinsplints. There’s two areas where the shins can suffer, the first being where the bone gets weak. I get around that by trying to drink around a pint of milk a day for the calcium. The second is more complex, it’s when the problem is in the lower leg muscles. I have rather over developed calf muscles, so the problem is probably due to the muscles that oppose the calves not being strong enough.

It’s ignorable 🙂 And I think my walking style where I try and walk fast but quiet should ease it a bit.

Last thought and this is one shared yesterday with Miss L – it’s really good to be in British Summer Time again. The light is just going here, at 7.30 in the evening. Dinner bell is going off, so I’m about to turn the room light on before settling down in front of Raiders of the Lost Ark with my dinner. And maybe some popcorn for the second half 🙂

Lol – popcorn’s good for making you think you’ve eaten lots when the net value of what you’ve had is absolutely nothing 🙂 So more healthy than munching a big chunk of chocolate cake 🙂

No carport here … and I wouldn’t trust the fella one up with anything. CK on the other side is ok but he works similar hours to me. Amazon fella finally appeared at about 4.30 🙂

Popcorn can be healthy. 🙂

“As for books and TV/movies – I have a rule to never see the movie if I can read the book instead/first. The book is always better.”

I think this is why I reacted so badly to Star Trek Nemesis when it came out. I was bought the book for Xmas/birthday before the film came out and then devoured the book rather quickly. When it came to watching the film, the editing people had cut out all the humour bits leaving behind something rather cold and depressing.

Bit of a disappointment ! It’s made Nemesis join Legend of the Rangers (Babylon 5 spin off) as something that doesn’t belong in a long running series …

PS I’m a Spider solitaire addict at work … It lets me switch my brain into a “no-thought” mode as a break from work stuff 🙂

“…they leave your hands free for popcorn” LOL pete

I can’t comment on games, I only play silly games on pogo.com to slow down my mind.

As for books and TV/movies – I have a rule to never see the movie if I can read the book instead/first. The book is always better.

I’ve been watching rather a lot of telly over my week off, as well as reading around 1000 pages on and off. I’ve managed to avoid the games, although I’ve still played them a little. What I’m thinking about at the moment is the relative merits of the 3 methods of telling a story. I’ll start with games …

The games I like tend to have a strong aspect of Role Play type involved in them. They either follow the story of your character or the story of your empire. The “protagonist” will evolve over time, either expanding as an empire or improving as a character. Almost all games will have a story planned out that guides the evolution of the character, as it gains abilities, weapons or just places to go. However, where most fall down is the amount of variation they allow with games without variation being called Linear. The games that will be remembered have multiple endings or multiple paths to get through to the ending. Each time you play, you’ll have a different story. There’s also a chance for choice, although I almost always go the “good” path and struggle to maintain an “evil” path if the game allows one.

The big drawback of story games though is the effort that needs to be put in to progress. There’s usually a difficulty level built into the game, some games are pitched at a level that’s so high that it gets frustrating. Yes, there may be a cracking story built in there but it can get extremely tedious banging on the shell over and over again to get the chestnuts out. It’s still a decent way of telling a story but needs the difficulty pitched just right to avoid it being an Interactive Movie but also to avoid it being too hard and an exercise in masochism.

On to TV … Telly and film is the lazy way of being told a story, it just involves sitting in front of a screen and allowing the story to wash over you. It has the advantage of allowing timing and hopefully a little originality. The actors and actresses put their own stamp on how the story comes across, although some are better than others. I’ve become a big fan of both House MD and NCIS over the past few months because as well as presenting good stories, they have excellent character interaction. The screen also allows the director to show the imagery required by their story, instead of relying on the imagination. Babylon 5 is an excellent example here of imagery that supported an excellent story, instead of hiding the lack of story that was 10,000 BC.

Trouble with TV and film though is that often the budget will interfere. Either they don’t have the money to afford the imagery, sets or sheer number of people or they can’t fit what they want into the time. The film 300 was excellently paced, it was as long as it needed to be. However, I had a chance to watch again a documentary on the battle of Thermopylae and associated naval battle and again found that documentary to be relying on padding to make it fit its slot of 2 hours with ads. We see also the Star Trek Syndrome, where there will be a problem running through the whole episode, that’s only solved in the last 10 minutes. Or a double episode that’s been split to add in a cliff hanger, even though the story to be told could only really support 1.5 episodes.

There’s a good contrast with the Sharpe stories. There’s a symbiotic relationship here, with the books and TV series depending on each other. The TV series depends on the books to get the story, however the series has no hope of keeping up with the scale of the Napoleonic Era engagements in the books. The TV series relies on adaptations that are of a scale that can be afforded and concentrates on character interaction. The books can go full out with the scale, with the reader’s imagination painting the picture of 10’s of thousands of men facing each other with muskets. The circle of symbiosis comes from the TV series providing publicity for the books, I don’t think there would have been so many Sharpe books without that publicity.

On to books. These can break all the rules that both games and TV have to deal with. The reader’s imagination translates what the author has put on the page and the only limit is the skill of the author at describing what’s happening. Books can also take a break from narrative for a page or two to add in descriptions of the situation, the hardware or the customs. TV and film can’t really do that, except as narration from people on screen. There’s still the chance for fun, although the timing tends to depend on the reader’s speed.

Some authors are better than others though. I’m taking a break from Harry Turtledove’s WorldWar series because I found the first two a bit long and tedious. In comparison, David Weber’s At All Costs was well paced at 900 pages. I’ll still read the WorldWar books but I’ll read some better ones in the meantime. The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks got read through this week, next step is Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds.

Coming full circle, I had a moment of weakness this week and gave Amazon a bit of trade … I acquired the first series of Blakes Seven, which had its first three episodes watched last night. The excuse was me acquiring the D&D Players Handbook, which will see some extended service starting tomorrow night. I covered Role Play Games via computer above but it’s a bit different when you’re playing them with other people, away from the computer influence. It’s a lot more fun, plus the tediousness of computer RPGs gets taken away by a person acting as the Game Master. They’ll interpret the rules, some will try their hardest to kill players 🙂 but they’ll also know that it’s more fun to finish the story which is easier to do with players that are still alive.

TV, games, books all have their place and they all allow a different scope in how they allow their stories to be told. Games are let down by excessive repetition, although the online game Eve is a good leader here because groups of players write the story by which its universe is developing. The developers just write the rules they play by. Games like Warcraft have fixed content that you can only experience if you put an insane amount of time in. TV series often don’t get the time to get the wider story underway, Babylon 5 only just got a 5th season approved and the spinoff Crusade was cynically axed before it had a chance to blossom. For books, sometimes I think that a series will go on a bit too far. Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon series suffered when it sprouted a history that I think broke its self consistency. Other series need to keep raising the stakes until things get a bit silly. I have a feeling this may be where David Weber’s Honor Harrington books will fail, although that point hasn’t been reached just yet. This isn’t just books though, Stargate SG-1 went on for two series too long when it could have ended properly with a season ending time travel episode.

Right – time for a closing bit … I haven’t touched Baldur’s Gate 2 for a good few weeks and I last left my mercenary army on the outskirts of Meduna, preparing for the final push. There’s the story of the escaped prisoners in Blakes 7 to remind myself of plus I’ll be looking to check out Chasm City and an author who I’ve not read before.

Oh – TV and film have one major advantage – they leave your hands free for popcorn !

Our youngest son (he’s 7) consistently wears mismatched socks, and I think it’s delightful that he does. I suspect he gets it from me, because I always used to ask my mom why I had to wear two of the same socks.

As long as the tender little feet are comfy, right? I guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Poor kid 🙂

My house needs to be attacked by vacuums and dusters and Mr. Clean – OH MY!

One of the benefits of having a carport is that the delivery guy can leave stuff w/out a signature and it will actually still be there when I get home. I’m sure that’s worth the mortgage payment I can’t afford 🙂