In What Electronic Entertainment Have You Been Partaking #18: Reticulating Splines

[thecrazyscot]

Our home base is rapidly expanding, plus it's a proper walled town now. We now have a burgeoning population of villagers, brought in by the villager resettlement program. You can see the market stalls, as well as comfortable communal housing along the right side of town. In order to protect the population, a high wall has been constructed around the entire town. Additionally, the clamor of industry has arrived, with an automated wool mill, automated sugar cane mill, and automated apiary all churning out goods as fast as they can be produced. There is also an automated chicken farm underground, safely hidden from view so that we don't need to view the horrors it necessitates. There are plans for an expansive kelp mill on the finger of land surrounded by the river to provide fuel, and a golem penitentiary (iron farm) at some spot a bit removed to automate iron production.

The Spire complex, on the left side, is the crowning work of one of my brothers, and you can see that it has progressed as well. Some additional villagers were generously given housing on the ground floor of one of his galleries, and they now earn their keep by tilling the soil and paying outrageous rents.

The villager resettlement program selected a nearby village for the honor of volunteering, and a long raised rail line was constructed for safe completion of the project.

 

[Arakhor]

Is this Creative? I like the mediaeval theme.

 

[thecrazyscot]

Is this Creative? I like the mediaeval theme.

Survival, actually! And using the default textures. The screenshots are from a mapping program that I've set up on a Raspberry Pi to view the explored portions of our world (automatically updated daily). Here's a screenshot of it zoomed out:

 

[Takhisis]

I've always been curious about those. For me, PC games are not yet a good storytelling medium. Games that lean into story frequently just leave me feeling like I'd have been better off reading a book or watching a movie. I haven't played games like The Last of Us or Life is Strange, but I've read about them, and people seem to rave about them. Maybe I've just been playing the wrong story-driven games.

You just need a good storyteller. I'll always recommend Invasion from the Unknown.

OpenTTD: there’s a lot for me to like about this game. I’ve always thought logistics was an interesting field of study, so the challenge of networking all of these industries and the raw inputs and then connecting them to the cities gives me a sense of accomplishment, moreso than the SimCity or Civilization series.

If Civ3 had the logistics/economics of OpenTTD I'm not sure I'd ever play another strategy game.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I got Rune Factory 4 on 3DS and it's pretty good so far. It's basically Harvest Moon with more traditional RPG elements tacked on. So I still have to raise crops and improve my village, but I also have to put together parties to go on raids against monsters in dungeons. I like it a lot.

The one drawback is so far the story is completely nonsensical and pretty childish and falls back on a lot of lame anime tropes. One cool thing is that when major new characters are introduced, they give neat little anime intros for them, and they even took the time to make the short videos in full 3D. I'm not really into anime but I can appreciate the effort.

 

[AdamCrock]

OpenTTD: there’s a lot for me to like about this game. I’ve always thought logistics was an interesting field of study, so the challenge of networking all of these industries and the raw inputs and then connecting them to the cities gives me a sense of accomplishment, moreso than the SimCity or Civilization series.

Logistics are essential !!

Not only when playing "Heroes III"

Our home base is rapidly expanding, plus it's a proper walled town now. We now have a burgeoning population of villagers, brought in by the villager resettlement program. You can see the market stalls, as well as comfortable communal housing along the right side of town. In order to protect the population, a high wall has been constructed around the entire town. Additionally, the clamor of industry has arrived, with an automated wool mill, automated sugar cane mill, and automated apiary all churning out goods as fast as they can be produced. There is also an automated chicken farm underground, safely hidden from view so that we don't need to view the horrors it necessitates. There are plans for an expansive kelp mill on the finger of land surrounded by the river to provide fuel, and a golem penitentiary (iron farm) at some spot a bit removed to automate iron production.

The Spire complex, on the left side, is the crowning work of one of my brothers, and you can see that it has progressed as well. Some additional villagers were generously given housing on the ground floor of one of his galleries, and they now earn their keep by tilling the soil and paying outrageous rents.

View attachment 566878

The villager resettlement program selected a nearby village for the honor of volunteering, and a long raised rail line was constructed for safe completion of the project.

View attachment 566879

Nice City You've got there ....

People are like that ....

And they call us CIVILIZED

 

[Commodore]

On a whim I picked up Let Them Come for $9 on Xbox Live. All I can say is this is the most fun I've had with a game in ages. It's a "last stand" type game where you have to fight off endless alien hordes with boss battles every 25 waves or so. You will die a lot though, but that's part of the experience. You hold out as long as you can, then use the points you earned to buy upgrades so you can last a little longer next time, rinse and repeat. It mostly mindless fun, but I think that's what makes it so awesome. Every now and again you need to play a game where you can just shut your brain off and just have a good time. The only time you have to any kind of thinking in this game is during the boss battles since there are only certain weapons that can damage each one, so it's just a matter of figuring out which weapon works on which boss.

The game is short too. I beat the campaign and the new game plus campaign in about 6-8 hours of total game time. The replay value in this game though comes in the form of a challenge mode where you are given a fixed point budget to plan a load out and try to survive as long as possible. Your score is then recorded and put on an online leaderboard. Despite the short length of the campaign though, I still feel like I got my $9 worth from it and will definitely come back to it when I just need to relax and shoot some disgusting aliens.

Oh and there is a Steam version of the game too if you don't want to or are unable to play it on console.

 

[Arakhor]

I finally finished playing Subnautica and I've dived back into Star Wars: The Old Republic to see what I've missed in the last 2.5 years or so. (Spoiler: quite a bit.)

 

[EgonSpengler]

I finally finished playing Subnautica and I've dived back into Star Wars: The Old Republic to see what I've missed in the last 2.5 years or so. (Spoiler: quite a bit.)

I couldn't get into SWTOR, I think because I'd already played a few MMOs by the time I got around to it. Subnautica, otoh, is among my favorite games.

I don't know enough about the nuts n' bolts of making these games to know whether Subnautica could be moddable, but I'd love to see new base components, new vehicles or animals, or even whole new biomes. I have in mind something featuring a labyrinth of narrow caves and corridors, too narrow for any of the vehicles, requiring the use of pipes for air. As it is, the pipes don't serve much of a purpose in the game, and the narrow "spelunking" caves that are in the game, even the ones that go down a couple of levels, are designed to be explored on a couple of tanks' worth of air.

 

[Arakhor]

I mostly only played SWTOR for the story missions and for MP sessions with friends. It's not nearly as grindy as i used to be and it has noticeably better graphics than, say, Star Trek Online. I only ever really played it as a single-player or co-op game and, these days, you really can play it just as an always-online, traditional single-player action game.

The exploring was the best part of Subnautica, definitely, but if I play it again in the future, I'll turn off the food and drink requirement. It was tolerable for one game, but I don't think I need to have that same experience if I go back again.

 

[Synobun]

When I played SWTOR a couple years ago, there was zero grinding involved. However, I did upgrade to a premium account early on to remove the caps and such. Maybe it's a chore with a free account.

I really appreciated that you could solo the whole game, especially that your quests were their own instances so you also rarely had to wait to kill mobs. In the shared worlds you still had to do that, but quests were pretty isolated from the unwashed masses.

@Arakhor, you say a lot's changed. Like what? I played a little later than you, and I remember there being six(?) main quest lines and a couple expansion packs (not sure if I actually ended up playing them). Has the gameplay itself noticeably changed?

One thing I didn't like about Star Trek Online was the difficulty of soloing it. I reached a point pretty early on where I just outright couldn't progress. I also couldn't make heads or tails of the interface, so I never even got around to upgrading to premium. I found it exceptionally non-user friendly. I've seen lots of Steam news things about it in the meantime, so maybe it's changed quite a bit since then.

I've considered returning to both games soon, but I'm not sure if enough time has passed for it to feel familiar but not too familiar. I'd also want to be sure I can invest enough hours so I only need to pay the subscription fee for one month instead of two.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I mostly only played SWTOR for the story missions and for MP sessions with friends. It's not nearly as grindy as i used to be and it has noticeably better graphics than, say, Star Trek Online. I only ever really played it as a single-player or co-op game and, these days, you really can play it just as an always-online, traditional single-player action game.

The exploring was the best part of Subnautica, definitely, but if I play it again in the future, I'll turn off the food and drink requirement. It was tolerable for one game, but I don't think I need to have that same experience if I go back again.

I liked Star Trek Online for the ships and for being able to assemble a bridge crew. Those were the things that set it apart from other MMOs. The ground combat was atrocious - although I read they've worked on that since then - and the layouts of the maps were clearly designed to make jogging from A to B as long and as tedious as possible.

I also turned off the food & drink requirements in Subnautica and it was immeasurably better that way. Very, very few games have gotten 'survival' gameplay right. 99% of the time, it's just tedious micromanagement that gets in the way of the game's actual gameplay features.

When I played SWTOR a couple years ago, there was zero grinding involved. However, I did upgrade to a premium account early on to remove the caps and such. Maybe it's a chore with a free account.

I really appreciated that you could solo the whole game, especially that your quests were their own instances so you also rarely had to wait to kill mobs. In the shared worlds you still had to do that, but quests were pretty isolated from the unwashed masses.

@Arakhor, you say a lot's changed. Like what? I played a little later than you, and I remember there being six(?) main quest lines and a couple expansion packs (not sure if I actually ended up playing them). Has the gameplay itself noticeably changed?

One thing I didn't like about Star Trek Online was the difficulty of soloing it. I reached a point pretty early on where I just outright couldn't progress. I also couldn't make heads or tails of the interface, so I never even got around to upgrading to premium. I found it exceptionally non-user friendly. I've seen lots of Steam news things about it in the meantime, so maybe it's changed quite a bit since then.

I've considered returning to both games soon, but I'm not sure if enough time has passed for it to feel familiar but not too familiar. I'd also want to be sure I can invest enough hours so I only need to pay the subscription fee for one month instead of two.

I soloed Star Trek Online all the way up to Admiral with little trouble. There were some things you couldn't really do alone, but they weren't required to progress. But I played both SWTOR and STO shortly after they debuted, so probably a lot has changed in both games since then. I played STO again a couple of years ago, when they introduced the storyline that takes place during the time of the original series, with period-appropriate ships, uniforms and interiors. I just played that part, though, and didn't stick around to explore what else they've added. I know you can play Romulans now, two factions that want to rebuild either the Republic (e.g. Romulans who ally with the Federation) or the Empire (e.g. Romulans who ally with the Klingons) in the wake of the loss of their homeworld. I took a peek at that, but didn't really dive into it. I'm pretty sure I played STO with a free account, but I could be misremembering. I think there's a lot of "premium" stuff - alternate versions of ships and so forth - but there was just so much content in the game that you could play it for a long while on a free account, without ever buying anything. I think there a juiced-up version of a Nebula-class ship that I wanted but would have had to pay for, and I didn't bother.

 

[Synobun]

I must just suck at the game, then. I couldn't get past the mission at DS9 where you're stuck in your shuttle and have to dogfight... somebody. I forget the enemy. There was a timer on the mission too, but I couldn't take on the ships anyways. I tried and tried and tried and then finally rage quit.

 

[Arakhor]

I remember trying to solo an early ship battle in STO whilst an episode of Doctor Who was on in the background and when I looked up at the end, the episode had already ended and I hadn't the faintest idea what had happened in the programme.

As for SWTOR, there are eight main stories, two faction stories for each planet and then various expansions - Makeb, Shadow of Revan, the Dread Lords, Fallen Empire, Eternal Throne, the new Onslaught and whatever else I've forgotten about. They've raised the level and crafting cap again and they seem to have removed the conquest grind for epic-level gear at max level, but since I'm no longer max level, I don't know what's replaced it (if anything). There's a new legacy crafting material section, so all materials are now shared between all characters, and there's now an option to go directly to your ship from the star map, provided that you've unlocked that particular quick travel option.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I must just suck at the game, then. I couldn't get past the mission at DS9 where you're stuck in your shuttle and have to dogfight... somebody. I forget the enemy. There was a timer on the mission too, but I couldn't take on the ships anyways. I tried and tried and tried and then finally rage quit.

I don't remember that one. Maybe they added that after I was playing regularly. I do remember visiting DS9, and I remember that I had a Jem'Hadar crewman, but I can't remember how I got him.

 

[PhroX]

Yeha, SWTOR isn't a great MMO, but it's a solid story driven single player RPG these days (or at least, it was when I last played which was just after Eternal Throne finished). Not up to the KoToR games, but worth a play if you're into that kind of thing. The best of the old class stories (BH, Agent, Smuggler) are still the best story stuff in the game, but then newer stuff is still pretty enjoyable, although it much of makes a lot more sense if you're playing as a force user - which is a little disappointing given half the classes aren't....

 

[Arakhor]

I found the Soldier and Bounty Hunter to be boring - I only did them to complete the set of class stories.

 

[PhroX]

BH was probably my favourite. It didn't tie into the overarcing plot very well (doing the planet missions as a BH was odd - you're there hunting down a bounty, and as a side job help the Empire conquer the place....), but the various bounties you hunted down were interesting, the BH him/herself was a fun character and you had some great companions. Soldier was indeed pretty uninteresting though. Not the worst though, that was the Jedi Knight - and I know I'm probably in a minority saying that, as it seems quite popular, but I found it utterly ridiculous even by Star Wars standards. By the end of Chapter 1 you've already single handedly saved the Republic half-a-dozen times. There's no build up to anything, no development, just "Your the chosen one, go save us. Now save us again. And again. And again." After the second or third time, it got really dull.

 

[Arakhor]

My favourites were the Inquisitor and the Agent, though I found the Knight perfectly serviceable. The Jedi are supposed to be the big damn heroes of the setting, after all.

 

[Synobun]

I only played the lightsaber-focused class for the Light Side and then the Dark Side. I tried a Light Side trooper, I think, but bailed pretty early on in the tutorial section. It seemed some of the classes don't lend themselves to mindlessly slaughtering mobs and require thought into ability casting, which wasn't/isn't my speed at all.