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MrFlibble

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Everything posted by MrFlibble

  1. MrFlibble

    Eador. Genesis - an old-school indie TBS/RPG

    Civilization was certainly one of the inspirations for this title. The twist here is that there's a global map (astral plane) where you can pick "world shards" to conquer. Each shard contains certain technologies (designs for structures you can build in your home castle) which, once acquired in one of the random encounters, are permanently added to our tech tree. You can preview the technologies and other bonuses you may get from a shard before conquering it, thus planning your tech development in advance. Once on a shard, you can develop your heroes and armies in any way you wish (e.g. by hiring troops of good or evil alignment), and also make alliances with non-human races that happen to populate the shard (if any). Naturally possible alliances strictly depend on your alignment (e.g. you can't ally with elves if your heroes practice necromancy, and faeries or dryads will also refuse to even talk to you, even less join your forces), and also on the diplomatic skill of your heroes (Ranger is the first hero to get the diplomacy skill, but other characters may also get it if they multi-class into Ranger class). Heroes are very important in the game. You can only have a few, unlike HoMM or similar titles, as each successive hero gets more costly to hire; hiring two heroes of the same class is nigh impossible because it's about ten times more expensive than hiring the fourth hero of a different class. With each level a hero gets, you can pick one of three randomly selected hero-specific skills to learn or improve, and at level 10 you can choose a specialization for the hero, which means either going further the path of the selected class, or multi-classing with a secondary class skillset. Each specialization also grants unique bonuses, and in some cases, alignment modifiers, so for example a Ranger that multi-classes as a Mage is not the same thing as a Mage that multi-classes as a Ranger. This way you can customize your heroes in a huge variety of ways, in accord with the playing style that suits you best. Another strategic aspect is the managing of provinces. Each province is populated by a certain species - mostly it's humans but other races like orcs, halflings, elves, centaurs, lizardfolk etc. are also possible (sometimes a province may be barren and unpopulated, often infested with undead or demonspawn). Much of the province's territory starts unexplored, and it is your heroes' duty to scout and explore new areas (there's no fog that conceals a map, you're just reported the percentage of the territory that is explored in the province). Exploration can reveal special locations, which may be encounters with hostile forces, shops, temples, mage towers, libraries, or special one-time events. Most of the locations that are not encounters can also be sources of quests for a hero to complete for a certain reward. Additionally, the income from a province depends on the amount of explored territory, and the growing population also needs more space to live, which is impossible if the territory is unexplored. An interesting example which is nevertheless quite typical of Eador regadring province exploration is this. One of the places where a random encounter may take place is a derelict windmill. Once it is freed from hostiles, it is possible that after some time the population will repair the windmill and put it back into operation, which in turn will slightly increase the income from that province. In each province, up to three structures can be built by the player. The default tech tree allows to build a granary to protect the population from famine and also boost population growth, a tavern that increases morale of the defending troops and also adds a small bonus to province income, and a small fortress that helps to prevent enemy heroes from capturing a province right away (they'll first need to besiege and capture the fortress). Additionally, there is a number of terrain-specific structures that significantly increase income from a province: in the plains you can build a windmill, a lumber mill can be obviously constructed in areas of high forestation, and mines are built in the hills. All those also grant a bonus to income from a rare resource, if such is found in the province. On top of that, each hero can find designs for special structures as a trophy in an encounter or as a reward for a completed quest; those are one-time only, but grant extra bonuses to provinces in which they are built (regarding income, province defence or population happiness). And yeah, there is population happiness. If folks are unhappy, they can revolt or do other nasty things, resulting in less income. It's not always easy to pacify them, but a variety of means includes special happiness-inducing structures, magic rituals, and the good old oppression. If that were not enough, there's a chance that a completely random event will happen in a province, and you as the leader can choose one of the various options in response to what had happened. In the wake of famine, will you send funds from your treasury to help to the population, or force the reduction of prices on food from merchants? Or maybe you'll use this opportunity to get rich yourself? Will you spend money to entertain the citizens from time to time, or brutally punish slackers to force others into hard work? There are lost of such events, and each has several courses of action as the player's response. BTW, some of the events are not completely random, and in fact can build up into a cause-and-effect chain, reflecting the player's decisions. For example, in a discontented province people may appear who will openly speak against your rule. You can choose to publicly punish them but in fact that will anger the population even more, leading to more outcries in the future, and eventually, an open revolt.
  2. MrFlibble

    Eador. Genesis - an old-school indie TBS/RPG

    Wut? It's an excellent in-depth game you can play for hours and hours and still discover something new, with a great replay value, and you say "so much for $5.99"? O_o On another note, speaking of free stuff, have you played C-evo? I'm asking because that's another game of comparable complexity, and it's free.
  3. MrFlibble

    Game Soundtracks for Free

    The site's author is aware of the problem, and takes steps to prevent that:
  4. It's a lot faster (which is quite noticeable on older machines), and the size of the distributive is smaller as well (60 Mb). Unlike the OpenOffice.org family of suites, you don't need a Java machine installed to use advanced functions. There's also an option to install a portable version of FreeOffice on a USB stick, although I'm not sure if OpenOffice/LibreOffice doesn't have a similar function.
  5. SoftMaker Office had come to my attention some time ago - it's a nice and functional office suite from a German developer. They released the old editions of their product (Office 2006 and 2008) as freeware, and now they run a charity campaign: Don't wanna make it look like an advertisement, but the SoftMaker office suite is really good quality software, and besides, it's free
  6. MrFlibble

    Hurry to get Duke Nukem 3D for free from GOG.com

    Not for me Rogue on the other hand, now that's an old game
  7. Sorry for posting it so late, just learned about it myself. The giveaway at GOG.com is not over yet so you may still get Duke Nukem 3D for free there: http://www.gog.com/gamecard/duke_nukem_3d_atomic_edition
  8. MrFlibble

    Are MechCommander 1 & 2 officially freeware?

    Here's an archived downloads page at the official site (from 2006): http://web.archive.org/web/20060903021822/http://mechcommander.org/downloads.html
  9. MrFlibble

    Hurry to get Duke Nukem 3D for free from GOG.com

    Well, it was still free when I posted.
  10. MrFlibble

    Free alternatives to classic games

    Thanks! I didn't notice the links are not exactly functional on the official site...
  11. MrFlibble

    Free alternatives to classic games

    Added the following titles to the list: Robot Odyssey DroidQuest Gate Scorched Earth Scorched3D Super Mario Bros. Giant Sisters & Giana Worlds Wing Commander series RiftSpace L Star Wraith 2 L Star Wraith: Shadows of Orion L Star Wraith IV L Vega Strike
  12. MrFlibble

    Emperor Battle for Dune

    Ordos make for cool hit-and-run tactics with their speed and self-repair. It quickly gets boring though.
  13. Like I said above, that company just serves a different market niche - which is indeed oriented towards online casual, social gaming. The company's CEO's generalizing is just a way to promote himself and his work, I'm guessing no one from either mainstream or indie "serious" game development would take this seriously.
  14. Ahh, I also didn't get it at first that this is a patronym There are obligatory patronyms in Russian names too, and using a patronym alone to refer to a person would be completely incorrect except for very limited number of informal social contexts. On the other hand, using both the first name and the patronym is the default formal, polite way to address and/or to refer to a person.
  15. I've never been an online player, and I remember my feelings of rejection when I heard that games primarily designed for online play were being released (e.g. Quake III Arena). While I'm not as opposed to online gaming now, I don't play online at all. There's a very understandable appeal in multiplayer games for the developers, namely, they don't have to bother with designing AI opponents, or complex mechanics of the game world. There's also a contingent of people - both among the developers and the gaming audience - who believe that the future of personal computers is in permanent online state, preferably within some social network or other. This is what "casual" users, and "casual" gamers tend to believe. But then again, usually those aren't the people who'd join a real-life role-playing game (with a GM and all) either, they just need some quick entertainment to kill time during a coffee break. There's little difference for them between chatting online or playing some casual game with likewise-minded people. And another thing: the guy who's quoted in the OP is a developer of casual games which are played through social networks. TBH, I've never thought of such... products as games at all. To conclude, I don't think this guy's opinion matters. The casual game products have their niche in the market but they don't overlap with "serious" games much. Let the social networkers have their little fun, after all.
  16. MrFlibble

    Emperor Battle for Dune

    Somehow I don't think that the Emperor being a narcissistic figure who lives with his robotic doppelganger and sits on a toilet throne is a very accurate representation of anything in the book.
  17. MrFlibble

    Emperor Battle for Dune

    Thanks for the link to the The Making of... article, I've read it sometime ago but I think it had been down for some time. Here's a couple of interviews with the people from the Dune II team by Gobalopper of FED2k: Joe Bostic Interview The Origins of House Ordos Revealed In fact, the developers took a lot of inspiration from The Dune Encyclopaedia, which was an "authorized companion" to Dune books written by fans (many of them with academic background BTW). Frank Herbert personally approved of the Encyclopaedia, even though some of the facts in it contradicted the later Dune books he wrote after the Encyclopaedia was published. However, when Brian Herbert & Kevin Anderson took on to write MOAR Dune books, they did all they could to make sure The Dune Encyclopaedia did not stand in the way. Here's what Marc Cram says about the role of the Encyclopaedia: The FMV cutscene design in Dune 2000 and Emperor, on the other hand, are obviously based on the visuals from David Lynch's film.
  18. MrFlibble

    Emperor Battle for Dune

    There is no such thing as the "movie universe" of Dune. It's just that David Lynch put his own vision of the book, apparently with Frank Herbert's personal consent, as he had participated in the production. One could say that there's a "Westwood universe" of Dune that deviates a lot from the books but retains some elements and, possibly, continuity with David Lynch's film. As for the ties with Alien, it's about the Alejandro Jodorowsky's version which never came out. It was supposed to feature Salvador Dali as the Emperor, and deviations from the book would have been that big no one would ever complain about David Lynch's version being not true to Frank Herbert's vision if Jodorowsky's film were made. Back to Alien, none other than H.R. Giger participated in Jodorowsky's production as well, and made some creepy designs for the Harkonnens (not sure if those were ever used anywhere).
  19. MrFlibble

    Emperor Battle for Dune

    I did enjoy Emperor for a while when I first played it, but it does get quite repetitive very soon. It didn't help matters either that on hard difficulty, the AI would amass such an army that my decent (for that time) but not top-notch hardware was unable to handle so many 3D action at once, and the game would lag immensely, to the point of being unplayable. To counter this, I adopted the tactics of quickly rushing my starting units to locate and destroy the enemy construction yard before the AI could build any significant army. Obviously, this wasn't fun at all. My overall opinion is that Emperor had a lot of great ideas behind it (randomly generated mission objectives, a realistic global conquest map) but many of them did not receive a proper execution they deserved. I'm certain that if the game were polished enough, it would have been something akin to Rise of Nations (at least, in terms of the planetary conquest campaign). As for the multiplayer part, I really can't judge that as I haven't played any multiplayer games at all. Another thing is of course the representation of the Dune universe, but Westwood's Dune games had never actually aimed at recreating Frank Herbert's vision, they just took the most interesting stuff that would work in an RTS game.
  20. MrFlibble

    Dune Dynasty - a Dune II Windows & Linux Port

    Following the feedback at FED2k Forums, Dune Dynasty v1.2 had been released:
  21. MrFlibble

    Free alternatives to classic games

    You can take a look here and here.
  22. MrFlibble

    Dune Dynasty - a Dune II Windows & Linux Port

    What's wrong with the right-click commands guys?
  23. MrFlibble

    Dune Dynasty - a Dune II Windows & Linux Port

    I'm not sure I understood your question, Dune Dynasty does support rubber-band style multiple unit selection. The original DOS game, on the other hand, cannot be modified to include multiple-unit selection at all.
  24. MrFlibble

    Game Soundtracks for Free

    Also, although this is not official, here's a site with high-qulaity records of MIDI soundtrack from DOS games made using an authentic Roland Sound Canvas: Roland SC-55 Music Packs The games currently featured include such well-known classics as Duke Nukem 3D, Descent and Rise of the Triad. Soundracks are available in MP3, OGG and/or FLAC formats.
  25. MrFlibble

    Game Soundtracks for Free

    FilePlanet also has a Warcraft II official MP3 pack. It's not the CD Audio soundtrack though, just MP3s that are identical to the MIDI files used in the DOS version of the game (identical in length but of higher quality of course), so some tracks are not included. IIRC Blizzard also released a similar pack for Starcraft but I'm not sure if it's available anywhere now. Interplay had released the CD soundtrack of Descent II but it's no longer available from their website. I've found a copy of it here.
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