I personally find the best Civilization to be Civ IV. In hindsight, Civ III is probably the most "disapointing" version, but I still think it's better than the previous one. Nowadays if I feel like doing old-school civilization I just play FreeCiv with it's default ruleset. Similar enough to Civ 2, but way more balanced (especially for multiplayer),
I love Alpha Centauri too, but it suffers from a few gameplay problems. Such as that the game is usually decided relativly early on in the tech tree (compared to other Civ games), yet there is a long road to the end... which is annoying. Plus I got a strong feeling it was suffering from feature overload, which explains some of the balance problems.
The social engineering system was slightly more interesting than the Civics one in some aspects, but on the other hand the Civics system made more sense as a replacement for the old "goverment" system of Civ I-III. I found out that as I got better, the civics was more balanced than I first thought.
I play Civ IV and Freeciv and... I actually find both good to their own points. I find Freeciv Stronger than Civ I/II/II balance wise, but Civ IV have way different strategies which makes it interesting, especially with how you specialize cities. After getting used into thinking of terms of "cottage spam" and "specialist-based economy", I can't help but to find Freeciv rather basic. The irony is that while they removed a lot of old annoying micromanagement in Civ IV, they introduced new kinds of it. (I belive FreeCiv removed some micromanagment elements, such as making the game handle production/commerce "overflows" of various kinds).
Personally I don't find the 3D view a nuisance. I actually find it useful in RTS games, where you can pan the camera around buildings that blocks the camera. Isometric 2D games are annoying when it comes to handling buildings that is in the way. If it's a 2D RTS, I prefer a birds view style ala Dune 2/Tiberian Dawn/Red Alert.
There is no time-constraint to the tech tree in Civ IV. Civ IV simple made it harder to tech really quickly (especially since SmallPox/ICS was majorily nerfed). I play FreeCiv with friends at times, and it's almost ridiculous how fast you can go through the tech tree in a 1 vs 1 game.
Unfortunatly Firaxis have already stated there's licensing issues regarding Alpha Centauri due to the rights being owned by EA Games.
What I would like to see is probably the game being more clear with what each difficulty actually means. Probably would be over the head of most people, but at least marking how much advantage you get vs computer. Other than knowing that me and the AI is on equal footing at noble difficulty... it's not really as clear it could be in Civ IV.:)
You just set your profile to private, it's that easy. Infact by default it's set on private mode, and you have to opt in for the community features. Even the JSON/XML pages for fetching various Steam stats aren't accessible by others when your account is set on private mode (Valve cites apparent legal reasons for this).
Keep in mind that if you buy a laptop, it should never be for gaming but for portability (yet I still see too many laptop users keeping their computer in one place). Personally I prefer to buy a separate mid-end desktop computer with a mid-end laptop than wasting the money on a high-end laptop. I spent something a bit over 1000 USD on my last computer 3-4 years ago and it was able to run Bioshock with full FPS at max settings for the most part (some slight but acceptable hitches at places, not enough to detract from the game). I would still be using that computer if I just wasn't a nerd itching for new parts.:)
Unless you're going for the lowend, majority of desktop GPU's are quite large and requires their own fan. A laptop needs to be more compact, so there's less space for cooling, and can't clock as high. The components being put tightly together only adds to the heat issue.
It could be argued that in my case I can only depend on spell checking 80% of the time, and the other 20% I have to do without. Which might be enough for me to not be too dependent on it.
Languages have always changed and simplified as far I know.
I wouldn't be surprised if words like "ok" was shortened down to "k" in maybe thirty years or so in official dictionaries. I really hope shorthands like "u", "cuz" doesn't become a acceptable spelling over time because they actually make the text harder to read...
Emotions never bothered me as long they're used sparingly.:) In formal contexts they should be outright avoided but can be acceptable in very few situations. I don't think I would mind a;) emoticon in formal speak done in first person. I don't mind them as long they're not mixed with txtspk.
Personally the spell checking have slowly improved my spelling over time as I quickly learn what words I misspell. I then try to avoid using same words. Of course I use common sense and look around on the Internet manually if the spell checker isn't helping.
Hell I picked up the bad habit of typing "alot", but stopped when my spell checker would constantly point out my error.:)
The only flaw is that spell checkers can (and usually is) suggesting words that have a way different meaning than the one that you intended. But that's when you're supposed to double-check it in a real dictionary anyway...
I belive Maxis was infact saved from near bankruptcy by EA just before Simcity 3000. Infact I believe the EA acquisition is probably what enabled to push Dollhouse (The Sims) from idea to a full game. Will Wright mentioned the idea of The sims in a old interview done shortly after Simcity 2000, but it's possible staff in Maxis either didn't believe in the idea or didn't have the funds for it.
Simcity 3000 development wasn't really going anywhere apparently. They were originally planning to make the game fully in 3D, but changed their mind and made it isometric 2D.
Simcity 4 with it's expansion pack is probably the peak of the Simcity series (anyone saying Simcity 2000 probably hadn't seriously gotten into Simcity 4). Sadly EA thought the Simcity series needed to be more casual (as it's easy to screw up in Simcity 4 for a newbie), and the result was Simcity Societies which got a fairly lukewarm reception. I yet have to see a city simulator to replace Simcity 4 (open source clone developed by fans would be really nice).
Maxis always been bit of a cash cow milker even when independent from EA. There were a lot of Sim games in the early 90's, some good, some bad ones.
You're right, Steam is opt-in. It usually encourages someone to set up their profile as public, but it dosen't force you to.
I believe it's also illegal in Sweden (where I live), but I'm not a lawyer. I guess they just play safe and give the choice to everyone over the world.
WoW also does business in Scandinavia so I wonder why they hadn't done the same thing. I guess someone need to send a angry letter.;)
However unlike WoW, you can opt out as player info can't be obtained from private player profiles. When someone asked Valve why you can't grab "information" from a player who marked their profile as private, they said it was a recommendation from their lawyers. Interesting...
I noticed the deletionist attitude as well. I think honestly Wikipedia would benefit by lowering it's standards on what is noteable, and I noticed it got stricter over the years. I rather see too many articles rather than too few.
I was discouraged the time when I added a seemingly true statement, but without stating source. I was being bold, and was hoping someone would fill it in for me, and the only sources I found were blogs... which for some reason isn't acceptable sources (which I consider a growing problem in this age). Instead of being marked with "citation needed" the statement was rejected outright, despite that anyone who would had spent 10 seconds into said case would seen it's true. That was the last time I personally bothered with Wikipedia.
Oh yeah, and it was about the webgame Cevo ripping off AoE2 graphics.
Reminds me about the various NTSC filters used in various emulators (such as Nestopia).
It's kind of funny how some people strive for simulating the original display, but I have to admit that I personally use the NTSC filter when possible. (and I avoid using filters like super eagle which have a tendency to make stuff look like blobs...)
You can easily hide server slots from the public anyway, so this point is moot. You can have a 24 players server with two reserved slots to show up as 22 player one. Infact it might be useful to have a extra reserved but hidden slot just for admins to be able to intervene on a full server.
People with reserved slots who wants to join have to use the console to join, but that's hardly a problem anyway.
The computer upgrade treadmill have actually slowed down, compared to like, the end of the 90's. I remember back then, if your computer was older than two years it most likely wouldn't be able to run the newest games. That doesn't feel like the case anymore.
Most games produced today should run fine on a average (non-budget) computer from 2005 (and perhaps even older than that), even if not with the prettiest graphics.
There's also source ports that run Duke Nukem 3D well. Infact, I usually use the ports since they aren't as awkward to use as the DOS version (I like having my games Windowed:)).
Well.... yesterday I tried out M.U.L.E. for the first time. Despite it's aged apparent, and it being one of the earliest simulators I still had a blast.
My point is... Because a certain genre have more advanced games doesn't necessarily mean the old classics in the same genre suddenly isn't as good anymore.:) I play Team Fortress 2 a lot for example, one of the latest and biggest FPS games... yet I still enjoy playing Doom from time to time.
Of course, I admit some old games that was apparently huge classic bored me... that was the case for Pitfall. I guess Super Mario Bros spoiled me too much. On the other hand, I enjoyed Adventure on the same console... even if somewhat simplistic.
Slashdot Mirror
I personally find the best Civilization to be Civ IV. In hindsight, Civ III is probably the most "disapointing" version, but I still think it's better than the previous one. Nowadays if I feel like doing old-school civilization I just play FreeCiv with it's default ruleset. Similar enough to Civ 2, but way more balanced (especially for multiplayer),
I love Alpha Centauri too, but it suffers from a few gameplay problems. Such as that the game is usually decided relativly early on in the tech tree (compared to other Civ games), yet there is a long road to the end... which is annoying. Plus I got a strong feeling it was suffering from feature overload, which explains some of the balance problems.
The social engineering system was slightly more interesting than the Civics one in some aspects, but on the other hand the Civics system made more sense as a replacement for the old "goverment" system of Civ I-III. I found out that as I got better, the civics was more balanced than I first thought.
Just wondering, did you at some point try Civ IV?
I play Civ IV and Freeciv and... I actually find both good to their own points. I find Freeciv Stronger than Civ I/II/II balance wise, but Civ IV have way different strategies which makes it interesting, especially with how you specialize cities. After getting used into thinking of terms of "cottage spam" and "specialist-based economy", I can't help but to find Freeciv rather basic. The irony is that while they removed a lot of old annoying micromanagement in Civ IV, they introduced new kinds of it. (I belive FreeCiv removed some micromanagment elements, such as making the game handle production/commerce "overflows" of various kinds).
Personally I don't find the 3D view a nuisance. I actually find it useful in RTS games, where you can pan the camera around buildings that blocks the camera. Isometric 2D games are annoying when it comes to handling buildings that is in the way. If it's a 2D RTS, I prefer a birds view style ala Dune 2/Tiberian Dawn/Red Alert.
There is no time-constraint to the tech tree in Civ IV. Civ IV simple made it harder to tech really quickly (especially since SmallPox/ICS was majorily nerfed). I play FreeCiv with friends at times, and it's almost ridiculous how fast you can go through the tech tree in a 1 vs 1 game.
Unfortunatly Firaxis have already stated there's licensing issues regarding Alpha Centauri due to the rights being owned by EA Games.
What I would like to see is probably the game being more clear with what each difficulty actually means. Probably would be over the head of most people, but at least marking how much advantage you get vs computer. Other than knowing that me and the AI is on equal footing at noble difficulty... it's not really as clear it could be in Civ IV. :)
Stolen X-box or not, this Portal update is PC only.
You just set your profile to private, it's that easy. Infact by default it's set on private mode, and you have to opt in for the community features. Even the JSON/XML pages for fetching various Steam stats aren't accessible by others when your account is set on private mode (Valve cites apparent legal reasons for this).
Unfortunatly, steam client is broken in Wine now http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=19444 , but it doesn't seem to be webkits fault!
Hopefully it might eventually wind up being working better than the old Steam client ever was now that the IE dependency is thrown out.
Keep in mind that if you buy a laptop, it should never be for gaming but for portability (yet I still see too many laptop users keeping their computer in one place). Personally I prefer to buy a separate mid-end desktop computer with a mid-end laptop than wasting the money on a high-end laptop. I spent something a bit over 1000 USD on my last computer 3-4 years ago and it was able to run Bioshock with full FPS at max settings for the most part (some slight but acceptable hitches at places, not enough to detract from the game). I would still be using that computer if I just wasn't a nerd itching for new parts. :)
Unless you're going for the lowend, majority of desktop GPU's are quite large and requires their own fan. A laptop needs to be more compact, so there's less space for cooling, and can't clock as high. The components being put tightly together only adds to the heat issue.
It could be argued that in my case I can only depend on spell checking 80% of the time, and the other 20% I have to do without. Which might be enough for me to not be too dependent on it.
Languages have always changed and simplified as far I know.
I wouldn't be surprised if words like "ok" was shortened down to "k" in maybe thirty years or so in official dictionaries. I really hope shorthands like "u", "cuz" doesn't become a acceptable spelling over time because they actually make the text harder to read...
Emotions never bothered me as long they're used sparingly. :) In formal contexts they should be outright avoided but can be acceptable in very few situations. I don't think I would mind a ;) emoticon in formal speak done in first person. I don't mind them as long they're not mixed with txtspk.
Personally the spell checking have slowly improved my spelling over time as I quickly learn what words I misspell. I then try to avoid using same words. Of course I use common sense and look around on the Internet manually if the spell checker isn't helping.
Hell I picked up the bad habit of typing "alot", but stopped when my spell checker would constantly point out my error. :)
The only flaw is that spell checkers can (and usually is) suggesting words that have a way different meaning than the one that you intended. But that's when you're supposed to double-check it in a real dictionary anyway...
I belive Maxis was infact saved from near bankruptcy by EA just before Simcity 3000. Infact I believe the EA acquisition is probably what enabled to push Dollhouse (The Sims) from idea to a full game. Will Wright mentioned the idea of The sims in a old interview done shortly after Simcity 2000, but it's possible staff in Maxis either didn't believe in the idea or didn't have the funds for it.
Simcity 3000 development wasn't really going anywhere apparently. They were originally planning to make the game fully in 3D, but changed their mind and made it isometric 2D.
Simcity 4 with it's expansion pack is probably the peak of the Simcity series (anyone saying Simcity 2000 probably hadn't seriously gotten into Simcity 4). Sadly EA thought the Simcity series needed to be more casual (as it's easy to screw up in Simcity 4 for a newbie), and the result was Simcity Societies which got a fairly lukewarm reception. I yet have to see a city simulator to replace Simcity 4 (open source clone developed by fans would be really nice).
Maxis always been bit of a cash cow milker even when independent from EA. There were a lot of Sim games in the early 90's, some good, some bad ones.
Rest in peace Westwood Studios.
You're right, Steam is opt-in. It usually encourages someone to set up their profile as public, but it dosen't force you to.
I believe it's also illegal in Sweden (where I live), but I'm not a lawyer. I guess they just play safe and give the choice to everyone over the world.
WoW also does business in Scandinavia so I wonder why they hadn't done the same thing. I guess someone need to send a angry letter. ;)
Steam shows how much you have played a certain game in total: http://steamcommunity.com/id/robinwalker/ and you can view the inventories of TF2 players ( http://www.tf2items.com/ ).
However unlike WoW, you can opt out as player info can't be obtained from private player profiles. When someone asked Valve why you can't grab "information" from a player who marked their profile as private, they said it was a recommendation from their lawyers. Interesting...
I noticed the deletionist attitude as well. I think honestly Wikipedia would benefit by lowering it's standards on what is noteable, and I noticed it got stricter over the years. I rather see too many articles rather than too few.
I was discouraged the time when I added a seemingly true statement, but without stating source. I was being bold, and was hoping someone would fill it in for me, and the only sources I found were blogs... which for some reason isn't acceptable sources (which I consider a growing problem in this age). Instead of being marked with "citation needed" the statement was rejected outright, despite that anyone who would had spent 10 seconds into said case would seen it's true. That was the last time I personally bothered with Wikipedia.
Oh yeah, and it was about the webgame Cevo ripping off AoE2 graphics.
Just keep in mind it would be distributed as a "patch" which users have to add to a original ROM. The patch only contains the changes to the ROM.
It's like handling out transparent sheets of paper with a mustache on to apply on copyrighted posters at home.
Reminds me about the various NTSC filters used in various emulators (such as Nestopia). It's kind of funny how some people strive for simulating the original display, but I have to admit that I personally use the NTSC filter when possible. (and I avoid using filters like super eagle which have a tendency to make stuff look like blobs...)
Actually the GoldSrc engine (aka Half-life) was based on Quake World.
You can easily hide server slots from the public anyway, so this point is moot. You can have a 24 players server with two reserved slots to show up as 22 player one. Infact it might be useful to have a extra reserved but hidden slot just for admins to be able to intervene on a full server. People with reserved slots who wants to join have to use the console to join, but that's hardly a problem anyway.
Anyone else read the title of this Slashdot story, and thought it was about how much anime and furry fans fail? ;)
Use a modern NES emulator, like Nestopia. Nesticle is old as hell, and I wish people would stop using it.
The computer upgrade treadmill have actually slowed down, compared to like, the end of the 90's. I remember back then, if your computer was older than two years it most likely wouldn't be able to run the newest games. That doesn't feel like the case anymore.
Most games produced today should run fine on a average (non-budget) computer from 2005 (and perhaps even older than that), even if not with the prettiest graphics.
There's also source ports that run Duke Nukem 3D well. Infact, I usually use the ports since they aren't as awkward to use as the DOS version (I like having my games Windowed :)).
Well.... yesterday I tried out M.U.L.E. for the first time. Despite it's aged apparent, and it being one of the earliest simulators I still had a blast.
My point is... Because a certain genre have more advanced games doesn't necessarily mean the old classics in the same genre suddenly isn't as good anymore. :) I play Team Fortress 2 a lot for example, one of the latest and biggest FPS games... yet I still enjoy playing Doom from time to time.
Of course, I admit some old games that was apparently huge classic bored me... that was the case for Pitfall. I guess Super Mario Bros spoiled me too much. On the other hand, I enjoyed Adventure on the same console... even if somewhat simplistic.