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Turn-Based Games: What Happened?
WarSpite self-promotes: "Over at Firingsquad we have an editorial on the fate of turn-based gaming. We explore how real-time games have taken over from their slower brethren, some of the consequences therein, and try to find the answer to that universal question - "why?" At the least it's an interesting read which gets the brain going - feel free to check it out."
Perhaps, but the trend even in chess is towards shorter time controls and faster games that run more on reflex than on deep thought. Outlive the rest it may, but at what price?
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
A whole group of us actually went out and purchased copies of Stars! (yes, Stars!) for the sole purpose of having legitimate copies so we could start some lengthy e-mail based campaigns.
;)
It makes so much more sense too. We get about 18 hours to complete our turn, which means we can do it at our leisure, or you can really sit down and play out several different options to see which is best for a really nasty battle/trade agreement/whatnot. We're thinking that with so much more time to make our next move, that our games will be incredibly aggressive, and definitely some of the best gaming we've ever had. Plus there's so much to anticipate. We plan on 1 turn a day... just imagine our anxiety waiting an entire day to find out the outcome of an assult!
Not exactly a stressful game either. Runs on a 486 just great, Windows 3.1 and it runs in Wine just fine. You can order it straight from the UK for about £10.06 (about $14.05 U.S.) from Empire Interactive with shipping included.
Who says turn based gaming is dead?
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Evidently, they haven't discovered Planetarion -- the most addictive (and free (beer)) turn based game around. More addictive than Empire or Civilization (although, oddly enough, not nearly so interesting), Planetarion will take over your life if you let it. Turn-based games are dead? No, I think it's just game magazine editors.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
Remember playing Civilization? (or later Civ 2, Alpha Centauri..) How many times did you stay up all night because it's so easy to take a break? :)
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Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
I'm with you on that all the way. Nethack is still my favorite game.
But we mustn't forget the other interfaces available besides the Qt thingie.
http://www.pinn.net/~jry/allegrohack/ ... AllegroHack uses the Allegro libs to enslicken (shutup, that's a word :P) the graphical interface that us DOS users can use. If it works, it's awesome. ... Falcon's Eye is a really neat "isometric 3d" interface with mouse control and everything. Still in development, but cool nonetheless.
http://www.pinn.net/~jry/allegrohack/
The Nethack Site lets you set up a career ont heir server and then telnet in and play there, so that all the scores can be collected and people can compete against one another. Cute.
Also, there are many other Roguelikes out there... Rogue (the original roguelike, hehe), Angband, ADOM, etc.
I'm still partial to NetHack. I could list the reasons, but it's better if you play it for yourself and see.
Diablo is a roguelike, really, just shinier and with realtime action. Durn newfangled games.... ;)
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Many may initially balk at its "graphics", but playing Nethack is like reading a book... your eyes see the characters, and your imagination makes up the rest. I play the original (all ASCII) vesion on a color console, and there's nothing better... I've seen the X versions, but they spoil the magic for me; by attempting to make Nethack graphical, it ruins the atmosphere. (My attitude towards game graphics is all or nothing... either Nethack on a terminal, or Q3A on a GeForce2).
If you really need a graphical Nethack, try Diablo and Diablo 2. (Stop your bitching -- everyone reading this site has access to a PC or a Mac, and no amount of zealotry will change that.) Despite the fact that at times these two games degenerate into repetitive mouse-clicking frenzies, I find them extremely entertaining and addictive, and I have yet to play either Diablo game online . . .
Nethack is great, make no bones about it. (Har har.)
The_Messenger -- killed by a kitten named Fluffy.
PS - UNIX newbies will find Nethack an entertaining way to practice cursor movement in vi. ;-)
PPS - Am I the only one who thinks that the long Nethack manual is perhaps the only coherent document ESR has ever written?
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Ellison: How are you gentlemen !! All your database are belong to us
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I like to watch.
As nice as it is to play Diablo II with my IRC friends, I miss turn based games. When we were dating my husband and I would sit together talking about stuff and taking turns at Warlords. My parents have only one computer, and my little brothers fight over who gets to play with it. It doesn't occur to them that there are games that they could play together, both at the same time. While real-time games are great if you're sitting in your house alone, turn-based games can be played with a group of people all at one machine. So you get to play computer games and get the social interaction parent-types seem to think we should get, all at once. And without the bother of carrying your machine to a LAN party.
Turn Based RPGs aren't gone, they're just hiding.
Angband is possibly the best game ever. Granted the plot is totally lacking, but I can distribute the complete file on a floppy; and I judge every game against it. Its graphics are simplistic, yet convey more information than most gaming interfaces today. The controls require some learning, but allow the user to execute any command without delay or mouse movements. I've been playing it since 1996. Did I mention that it was Open Sourced in 1984, before the GPL was thought of, and can run on ANY OS that came out since then.
But its strongest aspect is that it is turn based. I can stop, walk away, smoke a cigerate, come back, walk a step, then go to the bathroom. Or I can run down a hall and assult a vault in less than 30 seconds. Because it is turn based the game runs at MY speed. I never feel that I had to make a split second decision. When I'm getting my ass kicked, I can slow down and analyze the situation.
The game kicks ass. I have wasted many a day playing it. I lost a keyboard when my HDD crashed and killed my best character. Check it out, read the help files, read rec.games.roguelike.angband and get hooked:-)
--Cam
All jocks think about is sports. All nerds think about is sex.
It simply isn't realistic. Life doesn't pause for you and let you take a breather. Granted a lot of real time games suck (because they stress building crap and then rushing with everything.)
Actual, life runs closer to turn-based in terms of actual time. "Real" time games are usually accelerated by orders of magnitude, at least in war games like Starcraft.
At operational and strategic levels(battalion and up, for our purposes), an operations order for a single mission is the size of a book - you don't ever want to work on part of one. These behemoths are typed by an entire staff of officers. Yep, we type orders up before we start fighting. The detail involved in planning a real military operation is just staggering.
Turn-based games give you a chance to experience this is in real-life - the sheer complexity of large organizations. A turn-based game is possibly somewhat realistic, just sped up by 10^4 or 10^7. A "real"-time game is completely lacking in realism - your forces appear out of little buildings after 30 seconds, and you all run right at the other side like a bunch of 29th century Soviets. Don't get me wrong, they can be fun. But they're devoid of realism. Turn based games feel more like "the real thing", at least from higher levels.
At the least it's an interesting read which gets the brain going...
Isn't that what I'm not supposed to be doing on a Friday night?