Tag: advent

Leave a comment on Day 3 ! One for the pew pew

December 3, 2024

9:47 pm

games

Hello everyone, what’s behind door number 3 ?

Picture. We're looking at the snow scene, with red dwagon to the left, Leia figure rear right and the XWing is behind a starfighter with two black hexagonal wings either side of a little pod in the centre.

I think I have a little behind the scenes stuff to catch up on here :-D. I’m seeing a “Generate with AI” button on the picture uploads, which I will never use and kinda object to the WordPress mod people adding there ! Oh dear, just started and we’re massively tangenting already. Only one thing to do there … grab that tangent and dive right on in !

Tangent 1 – AI generated pictures … I won’t call them art because I don’t consider it art in the same way as someone putting their soul into what they make is art. But I have seen some wonderful pictures where people take a number of objects and a theme and weave them together into something that looks absolutely stunning. That’s a bit different from people just putting “a fierce dragon with a sword in a fantasy setting” into a picture generator and getting something out that looks almost identical to something Askren (aka Exploding Dice) has taken days to make and was paid to create.

(Askren is a good egg, check him out, that’s the Twixxer link above which probably won’t last that much longer).

Tangent 2 ! Social media. I’ve been struggling to keep up with these lately. I’ll monitor Instagram closely because I have that tightly curated down to only show me a small number of selected individuals who post content on there that makes me happy. I’ve been enjoying the general vibe on Bluesky, the artist and author community there is fun to keep up with. Twixxer is dying a death due to the policies being introduced to it and … Farcebook is algorithm driven and doesn’t let you keep up with people without spam being introduced.

The main thing there is … social media can be very overwhelming. It can be a bit too much trying to keep up with it all. It’s ok if you need to withdraw from it and go a bit lower profile on it. Look after yourselves. If it’s getting too much, consider dropping the follows of people who don’t bring you joy or otherwise reduce how much you feel obliged to keep up with it all.

Picture. Star Trek Meme. We're looking at two men in overalls, red at the top, black lower down with black shoulder areas. The bald one on the left says "I've never written a trigonometry paper", then "But I cosigned a few". The black haired fellow on the right is now holding his head in his hand.

I’m mostly going to be doing fairly random posts throughout advent (including tangents when they hit) but also maybe getting led by the day’s model … It’s a TIE Fighter today, which is taking me back (way back) to the first space fighter game that had me addicted on PC. It’s TIE Fighter from the days of the 486 based machine. Yep. Last century. TIE Fighter was a really, really good game in its time. Excellent graphics and a tight, responsive flight model. There was a decent story running through as well, TIEing all of the missions together.

Game screenshot. Tie Fighter. We're looking out of an octagonal window into space, from a small fighter ship. The lower part of obscured by a target display showing a boxy shuttle. Top left and top right are a couple of circles with dots showing what is around us.

I went to the X Wing game a little later, I actually enjoyed TIE Fighter more. The missions were difficult but I managed to complete them all. Whereas some of the missions in XWing got me stuck and I couldn’t get past them.

Fast forward a whole heap of years and we get to …

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. Our character is in the foreground wearing blue jacket and faded brown trousers. In the background, a boxy grey white spaceship pointing left with engines to the right. It's a day scene with hazy clouds in the sky.

That’s from Star Wars Outlaws and has our player character, Kay Vess, looking at a spaceship called the Trailblazer. I really enjoyed this game. I’d effectively rented it from the publisher because … it’s really expensive. I can easily afford the asking price to buy it (£95 for the version with a season pass for expansions), I just don’t want to pay that much for a game. I did massively enjoy it though and will happily play it again when the discounts are low enough. 25% (current Steam sale) is a decent start at a discount but …. I got other games to play first before going back to Outlaws.

It was a lot of fun though and I did love feeling immersed in the world that the developers created for us. They gave us something special here. That’s my honest opinion there, lots of other opinions are out there about this one. If you’re deciding whether to play it, please go by the opinions of people who have actually played it, not the ones who see : female protagonist, Star Wars not what they would have done and all of the other weird prejudices people get.

I think I might be getting a bit too excited there and it’s telling in how my shoulder is behaving :-D. (It’s a little sore and is making my right hand start to be numb again).

I better leave it there, maybe another epic screenshot ?

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. We're on a desert planet, looking at sandy blocky buildings in the background with mountains behind there. In the foreground, our Kay Vess and lined up behind her are 2 speeder cars and 3 speeder bikes.

That’s from the Mos Eisley space port, first seen in the original movie. I loved seeing the little Easter Eggs that they seeded through the game, including this line up of the various speeders from the various movies.

Also oh look, just under a day to go on the Steam sale. I have the following in the cart and should really buy :

Mass Effect Legendary edition – I enjoyed going back to Deus Ex Human Revolution again and playing this fresh. So the Mass Effect games at 92% off (£3.99) have the attention.

Slipways and soundtrack – a somewhat speculative one at 50% off (£8.08). This one is a space strategy game.

Tank Mechanic Simulator – ok, a weird one but I did enjoy Car Mechanic Simulator 2021. This one is 76% off for £3.71.

Tavern Master’s Pirate Cove DLC – no discount, this one is £4.29 and I did enjoy building a legendary tavern in the original game which looks like its lost its discount early.

Ok, that’s it for me for tonight, enjoy the rest of your evening, see you tomorrow. I’m going to be concentrating on enjoying the rest of Billietrixx’s Twitch (with link) stream, Tessachka (linky) is on the laptop and there’s a Mike Oldfield album playing in the background.

Nite all 🙂

Advent Day 2 and a little … reading ?

Leave a comment on Advent Day 2 and a little … reading ?

December 2, 2024

9:15 pm

books

advent, books

Hello everyone,

What’s behind door number 2 ?

Picture. We're looking at the snow planet scene on the advent calendar box. The small space fighter ship is to the right, to the left is our (big) little red dwagon and in the centre, a Lego figure. She's got the dark hair in the circular bun style of the Princess Leia from the first movie. She's wearing white on her legs and a blue jumper with a scene from the second movie.

Good jumper, also lots of alt text that time. I do like the jumper there, I’d wear one of those IRL. (Blue with a walker vehicle to the right, a defence laser lower left and a snow speeder attack craft in the sky)

I thought I’d talk books today … I’ll be back with more Cruise Things later but I’m trying to space things out a bit. Space ?

That’s what I’m reading at the moment, with Aftershocks by Marko Kloos. It’s the first of a set of 4, which was a bit of an impulse buy with all 4 books on offer for 99p each. Can’t resist a bargain like that and the reader reviews were really good. I’m enjoying it so far, it’s set in the aftermath of a huge system wide war five years after peace was declared or rather imposed on the people who started it. It’s being an intriguing set up so far, it feels like there’s a lot going on. With a lot of hints about how the situation is being steadily developed from people behind the scenes who we haven’t met yet.

Worth checking out.

Picture, meme. We're looking at an orange and white cat, with their head resting on a closed book. The captions are "I finished my book" "And now I don't know what to do with myself"

Solution … buy another book !

I actually went through 3 on the cruise. I finished off the excellent Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky. He’s someone I had a bit of a rough start with on his books because I didn’t gel with Children of Time much at all (too much swapping between viewpoints and timelines) but Eyes of The Void is a really good continuation of what started with Shards of Earth. It’s post apocalyptic scifi, where just as humanity was getting started with expansion into the universe, moon sized alien things appeared and started reworking planets into artworks. With the people on. Eyes of the Void is a really good middle book, building on how the characters and universe got established in the first book and moving on the story at pace. I’m curious to see how the author finishes off the story.

Much recommend. I’ve enjoyed all of the Adrian Tchaikovsky books since going back to them with Dogs of War.

Before then was Starter Villain by John Scalzi. Another fun romp, where you’re drawn into the world that the main character has suddenly found themselves dropped into. John Scalzi has a wonderful, easy to read style, with fun varied characters that get the chance to breathe. Oh and surprises along the way, you can see some of the bits of the end coming but it’ll be a fun surprise all the way. I started reading John Scalzi’s books with Redshirts, which is an essential if you’re interested in the Star Trek universe.

Oh and he’s a standard bearer over on Bluesky too, showing the way to go to have a good time over there and generally make it a fun chilled out space to keep up with.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cat, sitting on a wooden bench, with a towel on their legs. They have a book open in front of them and they are reading, intently. The caption is "Oh Tigger, I enjoy your crazy antics."

Suitably for cruise times, I chose Michael Palin’s Around the World in 80 Days. It dates back to a journey made well back in 1988, when the world and the technology with us was a very different place. I think mobile phones existed ! But they were massive chunky things with battery packs, not exactly like the massively portable, massively capable things we have now. And the political situation evolves too, including how open the travel is. I think this was in the days before travellers in the Suez Canal area needed to be as wary of pirates, plus the world was as dangerous in places for all the different reasons.

Michael Palin has a dry humour running through his books and it’s an honest commentary often showing and explaining things that we didn’t see on the series. I’ll keep collecting and reading his books. Oh ! One fun coincidence was seeing someone on the cruise bring Michael Palin’s Erebus to breakfast with him one morning. Cue a little natter about books while ignoring the 3 other people at that table who switched from speaking English to speaking French as soon as we arrived. (Almost all of the other guests were lovely and not like that)

Picture, meme. We're looking down at the open pages of a book. Looking over the top of the page, a curious orange cat. The caption is "Hey Man What Ya Reading?"

Yes. Meme game is strong tonight.

I’ve finished off a series called The Belt by Gerald M Kilby. It’s the last of a set of 6, set in a future solar system where humanity has spread out as far as the gas giants. They’re quite short books, not much to them to be honest but they have a decent story running through them and I’m glad I saw them through to the finish. All I ask for in a book or a series is that the end either wraps everything up really well … or it leaves it at a place that is satisfying yet leaves you hoping there will be more. The Expanse worked well for that, it wrapped up its major story arc while leaving lots of room for more stories in that universe.

And that’s all you can ask, that you enjoy what you’re reading. I’ve seen comments on the socials that people think that authors are all in competition with each other. It actually works as completely the opposite. The authors encourage each other to do the best they can and keep on writing. They’ll understand that what they take months to write, us dedicated avid readers could demolish in less than a day (I’m not that quick). That just means …

More authors is great ! We’ll happily buy all of the books from the people we enjoy reading. And the more authors in the game, the more there is for us to enjoy. We need all the authors so that we have something new and fun to read while we’re waiting for that most favourite author to give us something new and wonderful. One day we’ll be in a Gareth L Powell, then an Aliette de Bodard, over to John Scalzi, following an Adrian Tchaikovsky novel, enjoying not feeling smart enough for the John D. Clark science book (rocket fuel, very complex) or even going back in time for a bit of Heinlein.

Sketch. We're looking at one of my rough sketches. It's a green dragon sitting on his butt, looking to the right. He's holding up a book, which he's examining with his bespectacled eyes.

Enjoy your reading, have a wonderful day. See you tomorrow.

Back from cruise, advent day 1 !

Leave a comment on Back from cruise, advent day 1 !

December 1, 2024

9:07 pm

travel

advent, cruise

Hello everyone,

It’s been a while again, I did mostly intend to do some posts while I was at sea but it didn’t quite work out that way. A lot of that is down to where my own headspace was (it’s improved now) when I disappeared. Some of it down to enjoying the cruise as well. Sometimes you really do need that time away from the world to get centred again and do a little reset.

Advent ? Here we are :

Picture. We're looking at the top of a box, with a snowscene. There are numbered doors on the box, it's an advent calendar. A small grey space fighter is lower left, being looked at by a red plush dwagon.

There we are, I’ll hopefully find something suitable for you every day. Like I’m not going to drop 12 days of cruise all at once :-D. Little X Wing there for day 1, with little Ellardy there for scale. The cruise turned into a bit of a Dwagon On Tour with the pictures. The little fella wasn’t in all of the pictures but was definitely in a lot of them. Let’s see …

Picture. We're on the outside deck of a ship, looking at the little red dwagon looking at us. It's night time and in the distance behind, disappearing into blur, is the rail defining the edge of the deck and the blurry lights of the city we are departing.

This time around, it was the Mystery Cruise with Fred Olsen, going from Southampton to Portsmouth and 6 ports in between. We’d find out where we were docking up when we arrived (although there were niceties with international shipping conventions that meant we could find out early). There was much speculation as to where we were going … Some thought we might head East to south Scandinavia (my theory). Others were looking south.

We headed south in the end, although that did lead to a couple of uncomfortable crossings of the Bay of Biscay. It’s not a forgiving place for shipping :-D. So I spent the first day and a bit being quite uncomfortable from a combination of not having my sea legs and my own metabolism and psychology ganging up on me. (I unconsciously don’t do a number 2 unless I trust the place and it takes a couple of days to get that unconscious trust – it’s silly and I don’t know why it’s in my head!)

Picture. Our little red dwagon is perched on top of a pole, looking off to the right. In the background, our huge cruise ship is docked up alongside. She is blue at the base, with a thin red line separating upper decks in white. There are red funnels on top and yellow lifeboats half way up.

That’s us in our second port of Ferrol in Northern Spain. This’ll be a quicker kinda intro overview for the cruise. I’ll go into each port separately in later ports.

The whole thing about cruising is that the ship will go from port to port, where you’ll see new things at each place. And then you can retreat back and be extremely well looked after when you’re back on board. And we were very well looked after by Fred’s people.

There’s a certain etiquette that each cruise line will go by. Hurtigruten were very casual. Fred’s ship was a bit more formal than that but still somewhere you could happily relax as a casual person that doesn’t really do formal stuff. Other cruise lines are more formal, like I won’t include Cunard on my samplings of the different cruise lines because I think they’re Too formal.

I have to admit that I was rethinking my life choices on the first Wednesday, when I had the bloating and the sea sickness from crossing the Bay of Biscay. But managed to reset my head (and body) during the first port visit on the Thursday.

So – cruise as a whole : really enjoyed it. Wanting to go back on a cruise as soon as I can get away with it. Probably not with Fred’s people just yet … however I would happily recommend them to people looking at a good company to go on any holiday with. (I’m just wanting to sample everyone’s offers but there is a tempting August 2026 solar eclipse cruise …)

The excellent customer service started when preparing for the cruise, I think I commented before that it was making me happy seeing the details steadily come in through the post. And that continued on board with my cabin being looked after by the lovely MT (hello MT !) and our dining table in the main restaurant was being looked after by a chap from India who, true to form for me, was a lovely guy and super polite. They’d be asking me about what I was seeing and I think they were being as invested in the adventures of the Little Red Dwagon as everyone else who was seeing me suddenly bounce off somewhere to set up a picture.

It was a genuinely fun time.

I won’t go into it too much more here outside of a little : people can look really fine on the outside when they are definitely NOT fine. I needed a chance to get out of the world for a little while and the cruise let me do just that. Whereas a hotel trip can be … good while you’re cozy, there’s still the travel involved. A cruise handles all the travel for you, plus the crew are wonderful people. It makes for a lovely time and, as it was last year, just what I needed.

Picture. It's a sunny day with clouds in the sky. We're looking out over a beach. Our little red dwagon is sitting on the wall separating beach from the city areas. In the distance, we can see a ferry and our cruise ship with the two funnels.

We were looked after incredibly well. Food was great, I could always have something compatible with my curious requirements. (I’m find with fish but have trouble with steak these days) And I really enjoyed being able to wander around the decks, including doing circuits of the Promenade deck looking out to the sea and the view we were getting from the open part of the upper deck.

I think that’s it for me for this post, have a lovely evening everyone. I’ll be aiming to do an advent post every day, so more cruising posts interspersed with other things like gaming, reading and the music. I haven’t got a theme in mind this year, I did that a few times over previous years and I think it burned me out on the blog posting a fair bit. Maybe doing 3 themes in a post every day was a bit much.

Still, time’s turning, hope you all have a good holiday season and you get the chance to be able to look after yourself :-).

Day 23 ! Home of Darth

December 23, 2020

9:44 pm

Comments Off on Day 23 ! Home of Darth

advent, games, space

Hello everyone,

Day 23, what’s behind the door ?

Two models today, the frontage of Darth Vader’s palace place and a tiny little TIE craft.

And a return of the Master of Orion 2 cd … I meant to talk about these games a while ago but got sidetracked. There are a few games to talk about today, first a bit of fantasy.

This one is Master of Magic, an all time legendary classic from the 90s again. This one was a real headache to run … As well as needing 4MB of system memory to give you enough Expanded Memory, it needed a huge amount of Conventional Memory too. It’s really good that those terms have been consigned to the dustbin of history and we don’t need to think of them any more !

So, what’s the game ? Think Civilisation. But add in magic and a fantasy world. You play one of 5 wizards, aiming to be the first to learn and cast the Spell of Mastery, at which point all of your competitors would be banished from the realm and you’d win. You could also banish them the traditional way by storming their castles. Instead of different civilisations with minor differences, you could play as Humans, Elves, Orcs, Halflings, Dark Elves and so on. The differences were much more pronounced, with certain races having buildings locked away from them. There were also 5 colours of magic too, which was probably inspired by the Magic the Gathering card game.

No one refuses the Girl Scout Cookie Squad

It also had a nice little tactical battle sequence, which was another major plus that set it aside from the Civilisation games. It’s a wonder that there has never been a Master of Magic 2, because this game had absolute legend status in its day.

Next up is Master of Orion (Moo).

This one was a space strategy and one of the earliest of its genre on PC to break through. You colonised stars, created fleets and attempted to dominate the galaxy again. One curious wrinkle was that the tech tree was randomised for each game, with some techs being locked out. That introduced a certain amount of variation between games. Another classic of its day and the follow up was Master of Orion 2 (Moo2).

I see someone was adopting my favourite colour in these games, the blood red banner. Whereas Moo allowed you to build incredibly massive fleets with up to 32,000 ships in a stack (each capable of firing multiple warhead missiles), Moo2 had a fleet point mechanic. The limit is off to the right there, the 23 ships owned (50 ships supported). Bigger ships needed more fleet points. Moo2 also allowed extra food grown on one planet to be moved by freighter to hungry planets.

Moo had some aspects which were better but Moo2 was the game I was hooked on for a couple of decades until Stellaris came along.

We don’t talk about Master of Orion 3.

There’s a new Master of Orion game out as well, I was too addicted to Stellaris to properly check that one out but … there’s a Steam sale on at the moment …

On Stellaris …

I still go back to Stellaris, although I don’t think it’s quite the game it used to be. Complication has been added, which is ok if the AI is equipped to play that complication. It’s felt like the AI might have been left behind a bit.

That said though, it’s still an incredibly good space strategy game.

I think I need to hit post now though (getting late !).

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Day 22 Stormies ! And shooty games

December 22, 2020

7:50 pm

Comments Off on Day 22 Stormies ! And shooty games

Hello everyone,

Had a bit of drama yesterday … The plan was to get a couple of things before Xmas. In particular, a card and to top up the fuel tank. Things did not go to the plan.

So, TLDR, my car is a hybrid and has two batteries. When it’s on, it runs off the big traction battery. This isn’t a problem, it holds the capacity for a pretty long time. However, to start up the car, it uses a 12V battery. This can go flat after a while … It’s charged up off the main battery but if you’ve only done under 2000 miles in a year (pandemic things), then the 12V doesn’t get the chance to replenish itself.

And so I couldn’t get into the car last night. It’s a quick 5 minute fix by the AA man to sort it (they arrived within 10 minutes of a call today, I was proper shocked and impressed). Good job AA man. I have a Tool now though that’ll mean I can bootstrap the car on myself if it does it again.

This did, sadly, mean I had to People again tonight. Oh well. The feeling of being wary around other people has increased with the news of the Brexit mutation … But enough of the apocalypse, what’s behind the door ?

Stormtrooper today ! A traditional one too from the original movies.

I was going to talk about some more important entries in gaming history today … The game in the box is Halflife but I’m going to start with a couple of others.

The first Doom game came out in 1993 and kickstarted a revolution in PC gaming. Let’s take a look :

The first game these guys did was Wolfenstein 3d but Doom was the one that took off. One reason was that a third of the game was released as Shareware, so it quickly got copied and passed around on floppy discs. (Yep. No cd’s yet). But the massive other reason was that this game had networked multiplayer, which took multiplayer gaming out of the realm of text based Multi User Dungeons and into immediate first person deathmatches, creating a legend.

Looks crude … but it had enough to keep people happily blasting at each other. So .. Doom, probably one of the most important games in computer gaming history. I played my fair share of it too, when I wasn’t in Master of Magic, Master of Orion or Tie Fighter.

Next up is Dark Forces, a Star Wars game following the adventures of Kyle Katarn. This first game was another first person shooter with an innovation and a sign of things to come (it was the first game needing 8MB of system memory).

Actually two innovations this time. The first was a shield which would recharge but the massive one was being able to look up and down. Doom was restricted purely to shooting flat, although there was up and down in the levels (I think !). Dark Forces was followed by Dark Forces 2 Jedi Knight, which introduced lightsabers and advanced the graphics into the polygon era. (Quake started that).

The next major innovation and the cd in the box was Half Life … This game is another one of the legends.

Half Life saw you appearing at the Black Mesa research facility as a new researcher. They hurry you along to the test chamber, where you push a trolley into the Arcy Sparky thing and then all hell breaks loose and bugs are jumping on to your friends’ heads and eating their brains. One innovation with Half Life was I think smooth transitions between levels with no loading screens. Previously, games like this had been broken up into levels.

Modern games are a bit of a mix here. Some manage to do their thing with no transitions, others keep in the transitions for memory reasons and others are instanced. So World of Warcraft would have a loading screen if you fast travel or if you go from one continent to another, the loading screen is the instance swapping over. Elite Dangerous swaps you between instances while you’re going through hyperspace between systems.

Back to Half Life … this one had a decent story running through it too. As did Half Life 2, which brought us the Source Engine which was then adopted for projects like Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines.

I wonder whether we’ll ever see Half Life 3 ?

What’s my next game in this style ? I finished playing Deus Ex Human Revolution the other day, so I’ll be switching over to something different “soon” … I think the favourites are between Alien Isolation and Prey. Here’s the Alien game :

The look of this game is incredible, as is the atmosphere. It’s one where I’d want to have the external noises down to a minimum.

And then there’s Prey …

This one excels in the atmosphere … Anything could be a mimic, waiting for you to turn your head away so it can jump at you.

Very tense.

Time to sign off for now though, stay safe, be well.

Day 21 ! And it’s aliens …

December 21, 2020

5:38 pm

Comments Off on Day 21 ! And it’s aliens …

Hello everyone,

Day 21 … Shortest day of the year. And :

Special snow man Gonk droid today. I wonder if they’ve switched to covering a few old favourites now for the last few doors.

That’s what I’m doing now with the games, there’s a few that I want to cover before the series comes to a close. For today, it’s the XCom / UFO Enemy Unknown series … This started in 1994 with Julian Gollop’s UFO Enemy Unknown, another one from the very prolific studios who had Microprose as a publisher.

The game starts you off on 1 Jan, 1999. UFOs have been sighted in the skies and strange abductions are becoming more common. The nations of Earth decide they need to answer this new threat and the secretive XCom agency is created. There can only be one leader of XCom …

The game is divided into a Geoscape section, where you manage your base, your people, the research and the production, culminating in attempts to intercept UFOs and send troops over to check them out. And then there is the ground assault section where you send your people in. The above pic has them about to knock on the door of a small scout UFO.

A hallmark of these games is that they gradually ramp up the strength and menace of the aliens and you need to be able to keep up with the research to allow your people to stay having a chance at defeating them. The game also included a fairly sophisticated seeming line of sight and light model, so if you went into a ground mission in the dark, enemies that could see in the dark could pick off your people.

Oh and it was also incredibly tense … aided by futuristic styled music.

UFO Enemy Unknown had a sequel called Terror From The Deep, which moved the aliens from the sky and had them menacing the oceans instead. (Never played this one).

The cd in the picture is for XCom 3 Apocalypse, which was based in a megacity instead of encapsulating the world. That megacity felt more alive though.

The city was filled with factions, who would get upset if you ignored aliens knocking on their door. You needed some of the factions to sell you kit, so if they got too upset then they’d stop selling you goodies.

The aliens were very different too, with brainsuckers going to a few varieties of soldier alien and the feared Popper who would dash up to your people and explode.

I’m not sure if I remember the tension quite so much in XCom Apocalypse but a real time mode added nicely to its gameplay and was the only counter I knew for the Poppers. (Firing squad massed fire tactics !) There was a neat art-deco look for everything as well in this game which set it aside nicely from the others.

The next one in the series to be released was XCom Interceptor.

This one was set in space, with you being in charge of an increasingly wide network of stations that were there to mine materials to go towards building the Mega City in Apocalypse. Aliens appear again, so it’s up to your people to go out there and shoot them down. One major change here was that instead of being a passive overview commander, you were one of the pilots. I don’t think this worked and it was probably a big mistake to do so. The space combat engine was nice … but it was too fast (as a veteran of the Tie Fighter game) and had bugs. I didn’t finish Interceptor.

The original series was fizzling out at this stage and the eagerly anticipated XCom Alliance was cancelled before release with the bones being turned into some other game that got the XCom tag thrust upon it (Enforcer), much to the chagrin of the fans of the series.

Since then, there has been a fan made recreation called Xenonauts. I watched a Scott Manley series on this and they did a great job updating the UFO EU mechanics and expanding the equipment available. Haven’t played it. There was also a spiritual successor trilogy in the UFO Aftermath series. I looked at Aftermath, it was actually pretty good. Not sure why I didn’t stick with it.

And then there was the reboot …

I haven’t got any action screenshots of this one sadly … This one came out in 2012 and was a great reboot for the series. It was a bit simplified, with squads of up to 6 instead of a maximum of 36 in Apocalypse but one of the things I read about this one was that they examined everything about the games and took out things that they didn’t think were fun.

It was great having such a big army in the original game but it did make the battles take longer than they needed to … and you’d have to fight an increasing number of fairly meaningless police action battles in order to keep up. They also simplified the air interception system.

And then came the latest game …

So, another small unit tactical combat thing. XCom 2 picked up the story a decade or so after XCom 1. Earth lost … in a big way. And you are expected to be the leader of a resistance that saves the day.

One of the strengths of these games is the customisation …

That one was going to get “Truthseeker” added as a nickname as soon as it let me.

Yep. That’s what she’d go by when she wasn’t using the name HeyChrissa.

I’ve been thinking about going back into the XCom games … although I’ll stay with the new ones and keep the nostalgia of the old ones intact. That might happen sooner rather or later because Per Aspera isn’t really working out (it has bugs it shouldn’t have).

So there we go ! A massively important series of games where you’re out there sorting out the alien threat and saving the Earth. There was also XCom Declassified, a shooter style game. Must actually play that. The latest is XCom Chimera Squad, which I am highly likely to get in the impending Steam Sales.

I think that’s it for me today. Have fun everyone, stay safe, be well. See you tomorrow.

Day 20 – Shields up

December 20, 2020

7:06 pm

Comments Off on Day 20 – Shields up

Hello everyone,

We got the news yesterday that everyone should have been expecting but really didn’t want to hear. Lockdown again. And today we have the news of people behaving very predictably and attempting to get out of where they are before that lockdown hits.

In my opinion, it’s too little, too late. I’m not surprised at all that our numbers have been climbing again over the past week, it’s about due for when the last lockdown was lifted. Perhaps :

If the lockdown had been initiated again in October when the climb in cases was starting, the peak wouldn’t have gotten so high again.

If the lockdown had been extended another week or two, we would have been in better shape now.

But I don’t want to talk about virus things too much here. You see far too much of that on the news. Advent ?

I did wonder what this was for a moment but it follows the trend of the last few days of being based on Empire Strikes Back themes and this time it’s the Hoth Echo Base shield generators. Nicely done.

That got me thinking about base building games today. The book there is an original manual from Settlers 1. The original … One of the best maybe too ? It had a pretty simple aesthetic, as demanded by the processing power of the day. But behind that, massive complexity.

You had your main castle, where your people lived, with the castle acting as a stockpile too. Your territory was marked out by guard huts and upgrades of these. Everything was linked by paths, with a settler carrying goods from one end to the other. You had to think carefully about your logistics as this game depended on your people being able to get those goods to where they’d convert from wheat to flour to bread. Or ore to iron to weapons.

There was a pretty simple ritualistic angle to the combat, where you’d send soldiers over to another player’s guard huts to take their territory. The soldiers would fight one on one.

Gosh this one took a long time though. Games would take a couple of sessions to play through.

The other game in the series that I played a lot was Settlers IV. This had similar mechanisms to the first few games but opened up a couple of different ways to play with alternate races.

One key difference here was the lack of roads. Settlers would be able to take the goods where they needed to go, direct, without having to pass the parcel along the logistic system.

This also made for massive battles too, I’d usually wait until I had a massive army together and then steamroller over an enemy area. Usually the one that had been left out of fighting that had already been occurring … One of my strategies for these games is sometimes “Punch the strong one”, because if you’re picking on an enemy that’s recovering from massive losses, then the strong one can take that as an opportunity to jump on your place while you’re looking the other way.

I mentioned above that there’s been a whole series of these games come out … There are 7 of them now. I haven’t played the others though. Maybe one to look at ?

Another one for today is Planetbase …

In this one, you land on a hostile planet and your job is to set up a self sufficient base and expand from there.

There are enemies, both in invaders that come in and attack and the planet/moon itself. The moon in the picture is an airless rock, which means if the sun flares, any colonists outside need treatment (fast!) for radiation sickness. Other moons have lightning storms. The conditions also impact things like whether wind turbines will work (not on the airless moon) or how good the solar panels are.

It’s a simple game but I enjoyed it massively.

Looks like I played with annotations while talking about the game a while ago. That’s an almost self sufficient base, with a farm for growing food, a factory for turning raw material into bioplastic and metal, a canteen, an oxygen generator and a dorm. Plus an airlock for getting to the facilities outside.

It’s a game where you had to be careful in a few ways … The initial materials had to be conserved. That’s a 2×2 farm there, you can build bigger at the start but don’t have enough people to look after the plants and it would take required materials away from other vital structures.

Almost done with that base and it was much expanded over the original there. The green highlight is for a visiting trading shuttle at the spaceport.

Planetbase has its flaws (a single minded colonist AI) but what it does, it does extremely well. It’s one of very few games where I’ve stayed around to pick up all of the objectives. Writing this, I’m tempted to go back in again now.

However … there’s another colony builder game in the library called Per Aspera that just came out. I haven’t spent enough time in that yet. My shoulder was giving my little pain jab reminders for most of today too and Per Aspera’s more hands off style should suit that.

Later !

Be well, stay safe everyone.

Advent Day 19 … Tauntaun

December 19, 2020

6:46 pm

Comments Off on Advent Day 19 … Tauntaun

advent, games, star trek

Hello everyone,

I think it’s a Tauntaun today … Trusty mount of the Rebels of Hoth. And leaving me with not a clue for the games to run alongside it today. So it’s off to Star Trek !

Three games that could probably sum up as The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. But first … something arrived in the post today (also card from the Mum <3).

It’s one of the Team Luminary cards from a lovely person who streams under the name of Tashnarr. (linky) And it arrived with a lovely message inside and a picture of a sleeping dragon which has resisted all attempts to take pictures of it so far (one had one of my out of control hairs on it, the other didn’t focus).

Anyway, Tashnarr. Chirpiest, bubbliest, chucklyist person I know on Twitch and a real pleasure to watch. She’s one of only two people who I’ll switch over to watch as soon as they come on. She’ll occasionally cover crafting but has had to walk away from streaming that due to issues that lead to painful hands. More often now seen streaming variety games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Sub-noot-noot-ica and joining in with chat with jigsaws on Tabletop Simulator and Rainbow Six Siege. Maybe on later.

Games ? Three today … Let’s start with the Bad.

Star Trek Birth of the Federation came out in 1999 and was another competitor for Master of Orion 2.

The premise of the game was one of empire building. To take the Federation, Ferengi, Klingons or Romulans from basic beginnings and build them up to dominate space. It was a nice idea too. Except … the execution was really poor. I can’t remember this being a crashy game, just that the mechanics of it were really, really bad. In that shot above, the first group to fire torpedoes would win the battle. And that was that for the combat.

The empire building wasn’t much better with the colony build up process being very flawed. There was a lot of lore in the game and it borrowed from sources from Star Trek Next Generation, although apparently due to licensing issues, that was it. Alas though, despite it looking pretty decent, it was a really bad game and a waste of whatever licensing they had managed to secure. Back to Moo2 again.

Next up is the Good, Star Trek Armada.

Fire at Will ! He’s in that thing over there

This was a rather decent Real Time Strategy variant game that came out in 2000. (Crikey, that long ago?) It was set just after Star Trek Insurrection, with the early missions picking up straight after that movie. The missions took you through Federation, Romulan, Borg and Klingon campaigns.

It felt pretty good as a game and I enjoyed the time I spent within it. The story was decent and you could rush through it and its varied missions.

There was a decent amount of variation here as well, which always makes for a good game for me, especially when the variation is balanced.

The last one for today is Starfleet Command II, which sits alongside another couple of games in the series as well as Star Trek Online which I think borrows and updates its gameplay. (And then there’s Battlefleet Gothic, which stole that gameplay).

This game was a computer port of the tabletop Starfleet Battles game. It didn’t look great, hence the Ugly. But it took what it had to work with and made a really good, pretty detailed game.

There were aspects and races within that you’ll have never heard of from Star Trek (Mirak with missiles) but were in the tabletop game. They did a great job including the detail of managing all those starship systems.

The game expanded its remit in Starfleet Command II, which was still set in the TOS era but also contained an online enabled Dynaverse mode. When you finished the campaign, you could join a Dynaverse server and find things to do there. Alas, this was still before when internet thingys really took off (SFC II released in 2000) so the online mode didn’t really go anywhere.

There was another followup released in 2002 called Starfleet Command III.

Again, not much of a looker. They’d simplified the mechanics somewhat as well, with a reduction to 4 shield facings from the original 6 which would have been a carry over from the tabletop game.

There was a decent campaign as well, which would see you steadily upgrade your ship from the humble Sabre frigate above, up to the big Galaxy and Sovereign classes by its finish.

Ugly … but a great game and another one I considerably enjoyed playing in its day.

And I think it inspired the space engine of Star Trek Online too, which carries over some of the mechanics from SFC III, upgrading it to be 3d space as well.

That’s it for games today ! Have a great evening everyone.

Be well, stay safe.

On the Eighteenth Day …

December 18, 2020

9:56 pm

Comments Off on On the Eighteenth Day …

advent, games

Hello everyone,

Day 18 ! And for many people, start of Xmas break. For those who are still at it, I hope it all goes ok. This can be a nutty time, as I hear from those I see online who are in healthcare (especially now !), retail and entertainment. Be well, stay safe, hope the idiots stay away.

I actually started my leave today and something inside me was saying “Have a really quiet one”. I tend to crave more and more input. It’s probably an addiction … And too much can be, well, too much. So I’ve only watched the latest ST:Discovery today, watched the Enterelysium and Fuzzyfreaks streams, made another couple of animated things for EE and watched Ready Player One tonight.

Oh I’ll log into the Internet Spaceship game when RP1 has finished playing out as well (the bluray player shares a USB slot with the flight stick and I’m very wary of the game deleting my control settings) but that’s only to pick up the free ARX points that they’re offering daily.

What’s behind the door ?

Don’t worry, Dwagon will be back later.

Snowspeeder today. And another example of the lovely items we got with the old games sometimes. In this case, it’s …

Draw me like one of those French Dwagons ?

There we go. The box is for Neverwinter Nights and its two expansions. The game came out in 2002 and it was the next in the line of D&D roleplaying games based in the world of the Forgotten Realms. That’s been a very popular destination over many decades. They did a great job of creating a fantasy world and filling it with all sorts of ways for adventurers to have shenanigans.

In this case, the player arrives in the city of Neverwinter in the North West of the Realms. They’re one of many who were attracted there by promises of gold in return for helping to find the cure for a plague ravaging the city. The name Neverwinter coming from the local fire elementals who kept the city state free from snow.

When you arrive, the paladin Aribeth leads the way to the hope for curing the plague, 4 mystical creatures who’s essence is believed to be the only hope. Except … in a raid, they escape. And then it’s up to the player and their companion to get them back. The creatures aren’t exactly impressed with their intended fate though.

The story happily turns and twists along the way too, with betrayal, dishonour and a bit more betrayal along the way. Also skullduggery.

It was criticised when it came out because it exchanged the complexity of the Baldur’s Gate games for an all new 3d spinny rotatey presentation. It was the way games were going in those days. 3d was in, predrawn backgrounds with sprites on top were old hat. How did it look ?

Looked alright. It presented what you needed to see pretty well. The sacrifice was probably less bodies on screen and a shorter story. Part of what they did with the game was to create a sandbox system where outside people could create further modules and player created content. There was also a Dungeon Master mode, which was far ahead of its time. The Roll20 app does something similar now and is very popular for playing D&D over a Zoom (or other telecon app) call.

I played through Neverwinter Nights a multitude of times. The thing about D&D is that there isn’t really a perfect class. They all have their strengths and weaknesses and different balance. I think I played through on probably all of the classes, with different companions available to balance the weaknesses out.

Neverwinter Nights grew two expansions after release too. Shadows of Undrentide added another new story to play through, the legendary Kobold bard, Deekin and a collection of prestige classes.

Hordes of the Underdark followed the original story and opened up the level cap to include the Epic Levels system. It also had a particularly epic story where you investigate weirdness occurring under the city of Waterdeep, find your way into Hell, fight your way out of Hell and reclaim lost souls along the way.

The modding community brought more Stuff to the game as well. Probably the most notable being the Player Resource Consortium pack which added pretty much every race and prestige expansion class imaginable.

It was a great game. It’s stood the test of time as well, being one of those very rare games that’s still played now. The streamer DistractedElf (great emotes, here’s a link) had it as a staple stream to keep going back to, with an online role playing server that’s still running now. (No link to that for reasons).

There was a sequel game called Neverwinter Nights 2, which spawned a couple of expansions as well. I bought this but bounced off it, mostly because my Windows installation at the time was broken in very odd ways (you looked at a campfire and it would white out the screen, happened across a lot of games). NWN2 updated the game engine to be more like a 3d first or third person style game. I don’t think it really worked and I went back to the better original.

The name has been used for other game projects before and since as well. But for me, Neverwinter Nights was an old favourite. I might actually go back to it at some point. It was one of the great games.

And it’s been good to talk about it again !

I think I need to retreat back into my quiet zone for now though with a book and some videos in the background.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Day 16 ! And return of the racer

December 16, 2020

9:30 pm

Comments Off on Day 16 ! And return of the racer