I like exploring in computer games, music, cricket, drawing and pizza and sharing those with people. Oh and I also inherited the name Sleepydwagonman too ! The site is a work in progress at the moment but it's getting there, features will come in over time !
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.
Watch for paladins
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).
Boom tomorrow ?
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).
Put everything on red
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 …
A galaxy awaits
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 !).
I have managed to pull myself out of Mars Horizon (It really is silly addictive) to drop Day 6’s post … What’s behind the door ?
Triangle ?
Some kind of triangle starfighter … another variation of TIE brought in for the Rise of Skywalker movie. A curious design … the triangles allow for more visibility up and down to the sides at the cost of a bit of blanking at the level position.
Probably good for combat, not so much for docking up at the end of the mission.
Today’s game is Elite … but I think I’ll be diverting off to other things as well. The original Elite dates back all the way to 1984, for the BBC B Micro. It was a marvel of programming, managing to fit an incredible amount into the limited amount of memory available in that computer while still delivering quite a decent little game.
Wireframe 3d !
The graphics were the limit of what could be done at the time, so a bit of imagination was needed to fill the gaps. No worries there. They started you off in a pretty basic Cobra Mk3 and the aim was to trade up to build a ship capable of bounty hunting and then grind up the combat ranks towards Elite.
There’s a bit more about the game here (including pictures that I’m not going to steal). Linky !
Ahh there we go. You’d get a “RIGHT ON COMMANDER!” on screen every time you got 256 kills. You needed 512 kills to get Dangerous ranking. I managed to stay in to get Deadly a couple of times (2560) but always resetted before going on to Elite.
I still like the early game in games like this, even in the new Elite. I’ve been having those temptations to reset the character again and build up from scratch.
Tea ?
Elite’s come a long way since those humble beginnings 36 years ago. I played on the Atari ST as well, which was a nice upgrade to the original with better graphics and some subtle adjustments to the combat model.
I’ve been meaning to do some more flying in Elite Dangerous too, although that’s kinda holding due to an addiction to Mars Horizons. Let’s see what I posted before …
To infinity ! Well, to the Moon
The sparks and vortices around the side of that rocket were not concerning at all.
Don’t ask what happened shortly after
That was the first shuttle. Oh well.
Someday, Valerian and Lorelei might live there
Must watch Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets again some day. That was a very silly movie but I enjoyed it.
I found a new spaceships game … More like rockets perhaps though.
Before that though … today seems to be not such a great day today. I was having trouble getting to sleep last night (probably dust inhalation affecting my breathing) and I’ve emerged today with a headache. So it’ll probably be a quieter day today with less sources of input. Maybe.
Before I dive into rockets – a small thing about being cautious about how you market … The new blog came with a few things that are either useful or I’m steadily disabling as the truth of what they are reveals itself. The latest is OptInMonster. From its blurb :
“Instantly grow your email list, get more leads and increase sales with the #1 most powerful conversion optimisation toolkit in the world.” and they do this through popups, popouts, annoying things on the site (like an abandonment thing when I clicked on another window). Oh and they want money to do this, even for the free trial. They also appear to be heavily involved in botting, even with one of their bots writing in the name of their CEO.
Anyway, I started going through the “free” sign up suggested by their plugin and hit the close tab button as soon as it demanded a credit card number for the free trial. I then get an email purporting to be from their CEO (the bot) with the details that were in the form but not committed to be sent. If you are not recoiling in horror at that, then you should be. Oh and I couldn’t reply to the bot’s email because their reply-to address was a bad redirect and the content of their email was being flagged by the spam filters. I could not demand a deletion of my data on their system without deleting their email text in my reply.
It’s not a particularly rosy look there. If you’re getting someone to do your marketing for you, think very carefully about the image they are going to give you. You don’t want them to give you an image that you find abhorrent.
TLDR – OptinMonster bad, addon now removed from the site.
Kaboom
New game what’s this ? I’ve gone a little further in the Elite Galactic Circumnavigation quest but that one’s suffering a little due to the pain spikes (and Elite needs a little set up so I can’t munch dinner while playing). I went a little further in Deus Ex Human Revolution too and I’m at the point where the DLC comes in. Still not sure if I’ll play that DLC. Another Skyrim character got started …
A Tomb to Raid. Oh wait …
There’s my warrior lady in front of the next place she’s going to raid. Skyrim is a beautiful game even after 9 years after release. It’s had some work though, I’m now on the Special Edition rerelease that came out in October 2016 and that’s got improved texture packs and weather mods that make it prettier still.
But that’s not the game that has got me addicted since it came out …
Zoom in for Zoom Thing
You may need to zoom in a bit to find the thing on the pad. One very nice feature I spotted follows on from something I said about Elite in one of the discords :
Nice
The comment on Elite was about some of the neutron stars that are epilepsy inducing. Their rate of rotation is incredibly fast, which means they become nasty flicker on screen. While I don’t have the epilepsy triggers to make me react dangerously to those, it’s still a very unpleasant surprise to come out of a jump at something I find difficult to look at due to the violent flickering. It was good to see options like these in an Accessibility section, even in a game where these effects are very minor.
Disclosure note – before I go on, I would HEAVILY recommend this game with the obligatory disclosure thing being that it is a copy I paid money for on Steam.
So what’s the game about ?
Beep beep beep
You start off in the late 1950s, as one of 5 space agencies and the aim is to get a manned base on Mars. It’s fairly open ended, although you want to get to the milestones along the way quicker. Cos it’s a game and you want to win, having fun along the way. The agencies involved are USA, Russia, ESA, China and Japan, although you can customise one of those to your liking with boosts and handicaps. My agency is the Dragon Space agency.
A bit bigger
You start with sounding rockets and then move on to bigger and bigger things. It feels like it follows other games like the Buzz Aldrin game but it has its own very easy and simple gaming loop. Every spacecraft has an upper stage and booster below and each need to be beefy enough for the job in hand.
Bit slow in Moon Attempt
This was the first attempt at going to the Moon. The rockets have scaled up a bit since the sounding rocket. Sadly despite the great conditions, this one was also my first rocket to go boom (screenshot above). RIP Computer Astronauts.
One more thing about this game, it’s also teaching the resource management. You have Science, Money and Support as the aspects that let you advance faster. Science leads to newer and better facilities, missions and rockets. You need Money to build the rocket. And increased Support leads to more monthly funding, although you can’t rely on the monthly funding alone.
One thing that the original XCom game and others taught me was that if you spend all the money early on frivolous items, you have to wait longer to do more fun things and waiting is no fun. So my people were a couple of years behind history in getting people on the Moon.
Almost thereDragon on the Moon !
But they made it in the end. One curiosity …
Kinda looks familiar ?
I wonder if the licensing fell through there. As Japan, I’m seeing familiar rocket names appear like Atlas, Titan, Delta. Ariane is available for ESA and I suspect China and Russia have their own distinctive names. That’s something for a later run. There is no Wyvern Heavy by the way and the space shuttle has a different set up.
If you’d like to watch more, what sold me on the game was Aavak’s livestream which he’s uploaded to his second channel (playlist link). He’s a lovely chilled out guy to watch with a very relaxing voice too. Nice fella. Beware, watching those videos may lead to buying of game.
But yeah ! Highly enjoying that one, learning its systems, going through the missions, figuring out optimal play. I’ll definitely be back for further runs because it’s one of those where you can play in a more relaxed style and those fit well with me when my arms aren’t happy.
It’s one that should be a cracker educationally as well for :
The resource management aspects I mentioned before. A close resemblance to historical space programmes. Easy to figure out gameplay loops. A wealth of Spacepedia information that I haven’t looked through properly yet. And it looks nice too.
The same publisher also has a Bush Flight Simulator game coming which I’m going to keep a very close eye on. There’s actually a few really promising looking games coming. Per Aspera will follow on from Mars Horizon by setting you as an AI building the first colony on Mars. Flight of Nova is an aerospace flight sim and there are a couple more I have my eyes on.
Actually feeling a little better now that I’ve done a bit of typing ! Hope you all have a great day, stay safe, be well.
