dpk’s weblog

I just got Civilization 4 in the mail yesterday.
Amazon sure shipped it quick. I am thoroughly enjoying this game. It plays reasonably well on my laptop, and I haven’t run in to any bugs so far. It’s very similar to the past Civilization games, but now breaks up the monolithic “government” entity into multiple groups, including state religion, which makes for far more interesting development. I’m spreading Islam throughout Germany and Egypt, and I’m loving it!

If you liked the past Civ games, I strongly believe you’ll love Civ4. As far as I can tell, it only added to the fun, without taking anything away.

It was refreshing to be able to install a game, click “update”, and have it find no patches. It’s almost as though the game company tested the software before releasing it, to reduce the launch bugs. This seemingly novel concept, if spread throughout the industry, could lead to a Golden Age of gaming!

10/10. I think I’ll be playing this one for quite a long time.

Thompson attacks Penny Arcade; seeks arrests
Jack Thompson, if you’re not familiar with him, recently offered $10,000 to a charity if someone would produce a game where the main character specifically targeted to be killed, individuals at a large game company, along with many other acts involving his weapon of choice, a baseball bat. Then, when someone got close, he took it back, as it was not something he was actually going to do.

He’s now decided to ask the Seattle police department to arrest the PA authors for “harassment”. You can find a copy of the fax he sent at their website: www.penny-arcade.com (note the dash!)

Jack Thompson, according to the fax, apparently feels that the Penny Arcade folk, along with the industry as a whole, and the game players, want to stop him from speaking on an issue he’s passionate about — video game violence. Of course, that would be hypocritical of us (I’m one of the game players) since we’re arguing the developers should be allowed to make these games, as protected speech — the very same protection that leaves Jack Thompson free to discuss his opinons.

The harassment appears to be that the PA creators emailed him a couple times and created a “I Hate Jack Thompson” t-shirt. While I believe the t-shirt is in poor taste, I doubt it can be deemed harassment, as this man quite publicly has taken it upon himself to fight the industry with little but apparent hatred in his heart. No reason the industry can’t respond in kind, in my opinion.

Sure hope Seattle’s Police department sees the complaint for what it is — petty media whoring — and roundfiles it.

I’ve got 3 PC game mini-reviews here. Granted it ain’t much for each game, but it covers my basic impressions.

Guild Wars – 6/10 – Enjoyable to a point. Easy to find groups, but provides an entirely lonely world compared to EQ, UO, WoW, etc. Almost every zone is instanced for you (and your group, if applicable) instead of just certain zones. That means, unless you’re in a big guild, you’re going to have very few people to chat with while playing. You’ll also spend a lot of time running through the same zones you’ve already fought through, and most if not all creatures are kos (EQ term, kill on sight, means they’ll attack you when you’re in range). That’s actually really annoying, since they don’t provide you with any experience if they’re low enough level. PvP might be more fun in this game, but I haven’t tried that yet. Hey, it has no monthly fee, so I won’t be cancelling at least.

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 – 8/10 – Quite fun. I enjoy building my own rollercoasters, and then “riding” them. The interface is a tad cumbersome — I wish it worked more like SimCity’s — but it works OK. There’s a ton of micromangement, though. Like, you place an ATM machine, and then you have to “turn it on” after placement. Heh. There is an inspector “NPC” walking around the park to tell you when things aren’t working out well, at least. You can play in sandbox mode to avoid all of this.

Black and White 2 – ??/10 – Very slow. Barely runs on my laptop, which is above the minimum specifications. 5, maybe 10 frames per second at the lowest settings. The forums are recommending that you wait until more patches come out. Of course, just like B&W 1, the first patch broke save games. Who knows if future patches will. Didn’t give a score because I can’t play it as it is. Wish I could return this, but it appears Fry’s policy forbids returns of opened software. Whoops. :(

I realize these games have been out for a while, except perhaps BW2. I’m not sure how worthwhile it is to write about older games. It certainly makes sense for MMOGs, and I’d like to see the real reviewers write “followups” 6 months later, or at least let us know if the game held their interest. Maybe the reviews of older offline games would be good for a used game site or something.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 Coming in Spring 2006

Here’s the most interesting thing about the PS3, IMO:

The PS3 is going to support the highest hi-def display resolution of 1080p, on up to two HD screens.

This ought to be great for racing games, as well as first person shooters, fighting games (a first person fighting game might be fun), and even platformers. One other category, one that is sorely underrepresented in the gaming world, would benefit even more: Co-op.

Project Eden (the only co-op console game I’ve played) is pretty fun when you have two or more people playing, but the screen gets so tiny it’s hard to read anything, even on a large TV. With 4 people, it’s no longer enjoyable. With two HD screens you could easily have 8 people playing that sort of game. You could easily make out the puzzle pieces and coordinate solutions to the various “mazes”.

Even if co-op games don’t get the development they deserve, I am really looking forward to the future of gaming hardware. It just keeps getting better!

When I played EverQuest, Saga of Ryzom, or Ultima Online, and now World of Warcraft, I primarily play solo. Most of these games are designed to play in groups. Often, that requires joining up with random, anonymous people you’ve never met before, and will never meet again. Given that your character in these games are part of a particular “class” (for the most part), these random, anonymous people tend to judge you on your class alone, and often your equipment. Groups are always of limited size, so they will pick the “best” random people they can to fill the group.

Obviously, this is not optimal for those of us like me who are “casual” players, unable to get (and uninterested in getting) the best of the best equipment/spells/items.

My idea (although I don’t claim that I am the first to come up with it, I just haven’t seen it in a game I’ve played) is loosely inspired by Planetside’s gameplay. In Planetside, there are three factions of warriors, and you’re playing PVP against the other two factions trying to take over bases. Everyone in your faction is working towards the same goal. Everyone in your faction near a base is working towards the same specific goal — taking over the base. When the base is captured, everyone gets a porportional allotment of experience for being part of the assault.

In more traditional MMOGs, the PVE ones, I propose eliminating the concept of “grouping” as it stands. In its place, I propose that every player automatically join and leave “groups”, as they arrive and depart from dungeons or buildings or small outdoor regions. As long as you’re within the group, and killing things, you get a share of the experience from everyone killing. You can spend half an hour and still help out the “greater cause” — the elimination of whatever pest it is the game is having you kill.

This takes care of a number of problems:

• No more “kill stealing” — Since everyone’s working on the same goal, and everyone shares in the experience, there’s no more need to worry over kill stealing. You can feel free to help that guy who’s trying to solo more than he could handle.
• No more “we don’t need any druids|warlocks|warriors” responses when people want to join a group.
• Less crowding in popular zones — As more people show up, there would be less XP to go around, so people would naturally spread out more
• You can contribute even if you don’t have much time to play. You don’t have to join and then leave a group, causing hard feelings if you have to leave early.

Of course, the traditional way of splitting XP earned from kills would have to be redone, so we don’t end up killing a dozen creatures and getting 1 XP for our troubles. That would be a trivial modification however.

The key to it is its automatic nature. Nobody would ever get left out, even on accident. Another bonus is that “raids” (massive attacks on enemies) are automatically handled with no additional code.

I haven’t been able to find a place to have a good debate on this idea, so I guess I’ll leave it here and call it good. Anyone can have it. I hope to one day play a game which takes advantage of this. Soloers win. Groupers win. Everyone has fun.

I’ve played a number of MMOGs — Ultima Online, EverQuest, Anarchy Online, Asheron’s Call, Lineage II — none of them have come close to Saga of Ryzom in terms of freedom and enjoyment.

Great steps forward, above the alternatives:

• All “loot” from monsters are either crafting ingredients or quest items
  • No reason to bother “camping” mobs
• The game is heavily crafter-based, and items do not last forever.
  • People can play entirely as a crafter and still have a very rich and rewarding game experience.
• The game engine is GPL-licensed.
  • I do not like the GPL, but this is still a step forward. A “major” game available in stores based on an engine they developed under an almost-free license is pretty significant.

I’ll try to add more to this as I go, but for now I can easily recommend trying it out. Website is http://www.ryzom.com/ and they have a friendly forum there as well (It has some haters, troublemakers, but it’s still pretty good).