bowesy.net

I’ve been on a mailing list for 15 years now, it sort of grew out of an original playstation mailing list, discussing games for UK folks. Well, after all these years dwelling in the underground I’ve finally managed to motivate myself and a few others on the list, to get a blog site going. Check it out.

UKGamer - As sponsored by Gary

It has to be said all this WeeWar stuff has got me into a right lather about strategic war games, but WeeWar is a bit light, for those quick lunchtime sessions, so I’ve been looking into other similar games with much more depth.

I was recommended Advanced Tactics: WW2 (which is more of a war game engine with a comprehensive scenario editor), and it has totally enchanted me.

The level of depth to the play is quite refreshing for someone who plays a lot of lightweight strategy and is always frightened off by the proper ‘grognards’ stuff. The supply mechanism alone is worth its weight in gold, because now you have to factor in logistics as a major part of the battle. Chains of supply, and troop movements are all necessary. It comes across more like a Steel Panthers with added depth. The interface is a bit quirky, but it does the job, and the photo stuff is a nice touch. Plus it even supports bonus cards and research trees for unit upgrades. Anyway, I could spout on all day about this feature and that complexity, its no easy ride to begin with, because the tutorial scenario is very brief and the manual is more of an interface and rules list than any sort of instructional guide.. however, there is a decent community on Matrixgames forums, and looking over their AAR’s (After Action Report) has opened the game up a bit more for me, after my tentative steps into getting my ass handed to me by the basic training scenario.

If you have some time, and you are interested in complex fulfilling wargames then give this AAR a read, it has pictures and turn by turn based explanations. Its by a person who has just begun exploring the AT game, so it also presents the beginners view on things, and some of the old vets chip in here and there to help out.

This really spices up the tiles and hexes for me, and gives a blow by blow account of what he encounters and how he reacts to the games AI.

There is a scenario building community here, complete with a Scenario bank full of downloads for extra games to spend hours mulling over..

Its been a while since a PC strategy game has caught me by the nollocks and worked me up into a frothy latte. Worth the entrance fee, and I’m ashamed I’ve put this game in the same mail as ‘WeeWar’.

I cannot praise this game highly enough. Its an action RPG by the FROM SOFTWARE people, that really captures twitch combat, and strategy, along with quite a harsh progression, that ups the stakes and makes it even more tense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon%27s_Souls

Its not available to America or Europe at the moment, but can be imported (as the Asian copy has full English text and audio)

You can import it at Renchi
http://www.renchi.com/renchi/PS3_Games_Asia_Demon_s_Souls_AS.htm

Anyway, the key features to the game that make it stand out

* A detailed fantasy “twitch” combat mechanism that just feels right (without remembering strings of combo’s), melee, magic and ranged combat all covered.
* Huge multi-pathed levels, that open up shortcuts and exploratory mechanisms of getting around.. some of the parts to a level require actual thought and strategy to get through without dying.. this isn’t a chug a health potion diablo game, you need to use the right weapon, time shield blocks, backstabs etc..
* Impressive bosses, with an array of tactics required to take them down
* Online co-op and PvP capability
* Looks absolutely gorgeous, and captures mood and lighting very well, with some stunning set pieces as you fight your way through

Anyway, the unique features are that you play in one of two modes, either as alive, or as a soul, destined to slay demons to revive yourself. As a soul, you’ll only have a smaller percentage of your original health. As you play through your single player levels, you’ll see ghosts of other players souls online flash by you, for a brief moment, other players can etch ectoplasmic messages so you get tiny twitter style hints and tips (or misinformation from evil players), you’ll also see pools of blood where other players have died, and by activating them you can watch their death moments as a ghost figure, so these can give you a warning of trouble ahead. Once you’re into the game and have earned your soulstones, as an alive player, you can pick up bluestones and summon the phantoms of other players into your game, and they can help you get through the levels and beat the boss. You collect the souls throughout the level and share it with them.. If they beat the boss, they are then revived back to alive status. If you are a soul, you can lay your bluestone down and other players can summon you to their game.. its quite a unique mechanism for online play. After a level you can rate a player, and their ratings are shown with their bluestone, before you summon them. One thing though, as an alive player, with other phantoms in your game, you can have black phantoms (PvP players) break into your world, and hunt you and your players down!

The game has quite a harsh death mechanism, in that you respawn at the beginning of the level, and remember these levels are huge, and you have to battle everything again. You also lose your current stash of souls collected, but you can return to your blood pool and retrieve these - if you make it that far. You also have some wera and tear on your armour. However, because of this, you will tread very carefully, because getting to the boss is the ultimate aim of the level, but even then you’re not secured a win, and so the penalty is just enough to make it very tense, but although frustrating at times, you can make progress, over time, if you shift your tactics, if something is not working and is getting you killed.

Overall, the game is outstanding. And if you’re serious about your RPG’s and you have a PS3 this is a must grab title. Its a shame its not out over here at the moment, and it comes in a little expensive on import - about 60quid in total for me (but that was with delivery that had it to me in 5 days from Hong Kong).

It mechanism reminds me very much of Phantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast, with its central Nexus and multilayered levels and impressive end bosses.. its just so much more intense, and so much more strategic.. and the combat plays out brilliantly. Top Marks. I was worried about the harsh death penalty, but this is so good, it doesn’t feel like a penalty at times it just feels like a tactical lesson.

Well after being inspired by another players’ (Warsign) customisation efforts, I thought I’d love to have a go at integrating the Battlestar Galactica DRADIS console into EL. I found a screengrab of the Galactica DRADIS system from a scene in the new series, and thought it would be kind of exciting to mould it into EL’s cockpit…

Screen Capture of DRADIS Console from newly imagined Battlestar Galactica series

DRADIS

Evochron Viper Mk II

Viper Mk II DRADIS HUD

Evochron Raptor

Raptor DRADIS HUD

So here are the files… you can download them and unzip them into your /hud directory.. these files aren’t a total cockpit, just custom console screens, NAV compass, gunsights and some warning messages..

DOWNLOAD DRADIS HUD for the VIPER Mk II

DOWNLOAD DRADIS HUD for the RAPTOR

Hope you enjoy the custom HUD’s and fingers crossed, with the help of others, we can attach them to custom cockpit designs too.

http://starwraith3dgames.home.att.net/evochronlegends/index.htm

Evochron Legends (EL) is a space combat, mining and trading simulation set in the Evochron Universe. Since it is a simulation, it will take you time to come to terms with the mechanics of basic space flight, navigation, mining and trading - but the investment of effort early on will pay out later. The demo of the game is time limited, but the tutorials for the game don’t count against this. So it is encouraged that you play through the tutorials one by one, taking in the information presented. Although they can be daunting at first, with the ‘wall of text’ presented to you, that text is accompanied with spoken word, which helped me ease into the cockpit. I can see that without the tutorials, just diving in may leave you lost and abandoned. I can also see why people try to skip over the tutorials, their enthusiasm and impatience egging them on to get flying and fighting, but since the finesse of combat and all other matters are derived from your basic skills as a pilot in a void using Newtonian physics, I’ll stress it again, these tutorials and the information they impart is the key to opening the wonders of the Pandora’s box that is EL. Once you “get it”, you’ll uncover the depths that the game offers.

The Evochron Universe is a seamless experience, once you are in the cockpit, there are no zones or loading screens to bother you. You have a fulcrum warp drive which you can use to jump through space, and there are connected jump gates between systems, but it is equally possible to use your fulcrums to get to any system if you are a good navigator. Another plus is the ability to Planet fall and switch to normal flight avionics, and drop through the atmosphere and land on planet based stations. You can even land gently on the planets surface and go strip mining by focussing your mining laser downwards. The Universe is distributed about systems and they all have their points of interest and anomalies, as well as a main storied mission that you can choose to follow throughout the game. At space stations, you can enter the shipyards, or trade in precious goods, or re-fuel and re-arm, or take on local missions, such as cargo drop offs, ship protection, enemy ship destruction, races, solar panel cleaning, and asteroid clearance. You can even read the local news, and market changes, as well as get a feel for your standings with the various system wide factions, whether that be with the military, or the rebels. Your reputation amongst system factions influences equipment and costs, and how various other craft will react to you. To gain very good reputation with one faction, you may need to actively lower reputation with another by hunting and destroying their ships.

The game is an evolution of the StarWraith series of games, dating back many years, particularly Legends is a sequel to the Evochron Renegades (ER) game, with updated graphics, and many features requested by the previous games players.  In fact one of the key selling points of this game is that you’re not just buying into the dry downloaded software, you’re actually supporting the StarWraith community, you’re enabling the developer to continue evolution of the series. Uniquely, we have a dedicated person as the games sole developer, Vice, who takes a very active part in his community. He is willing to listen, to evaluate and to modify the game based on ideas and suggestions presented by his player base. A sort of symbiosis exists whereby the developer nurtures his players through his game, with hints, tips and advice, and they feedback, enthuse and cultivate his community and popularity by word of mouth.

The game is a simulation and as such, you are encouraged to master inertial flight, and the use of the IDS (Inertial Dampening System) which ultimately controls where you’re going and how fast, and how much fuel you will expend. Firing your afterburner with IDS off, and zero thrust, will hurtle your craft in a particular direction at maximum velocity, cutting the burners will maintain that velocity without expending any fuel. Meanwhile you can spin on your axis and take in the sights, or gun down incoming missiles, or perform those ‘flip on a sixpence’ Viper turns you see in the likes of Battlestar Galactica. Switching on the IDS, engages a whole array of thrusters and compensators to maintain your position and direction set by your steering and your main engines. Learning to take advantage of inertial flight and its manoeuvring possibilities, especially in combat, is the key to being a good pilot in EL. Combat can be very hectic and you’ll spend a while getting used to missile interception or avoidance (with countermeasures) as well as utilising beam weapons to drain your enemies shields, and particle cannons to blast holes in their hulls. I’ll warn you now, the game can be quite brutal and unforgiving in terms of there are so many ways to die, my advice would be quick save often and learn from your mistakes.

Graphically speaking Evochron Legends isn’t at the front of the pack, however, what it lacks in bloated textures, it makes up for in disk space conservation (the is a 45Mb download, with a 130Mb footprint) and artistic beauty. Some of the scenes available in the game are simply breathtaking.

In customising your spacecraft, EL surpasses most other space combat sims in the flexibility of your ships overall appearance, with many of the upgrade able parts (engines, wings, cargo holds, fuel tanks, shields) having distinctive looks, but also in that you can change the positioning of the parts, and their scale in all dimensions by using the custom slider bars. So you can build a truly unique vessel, symmetrical or not, with components you place and size up. Your craft’s hull for instance has a specific form, but what you do with the components attached to it, is completely up to you. All of this, and the spaceships look like space travelling craft, some space combat simulations struggle at delivering believable vessels, but EL manages to give you flexibility and integrity. The game’s visuals are also scalable so that you should be able to get the game running on quite a low specification machine and still enjoy it.

Both the multiplayer and the single player experience are interchangeable, meaning you can load a pilot profile and play offline, save it and then take the same pilot profile onto one of the player hosted dedicated servers. The servers can host 32 players online at any one time, and the software and configuration files are available for download, so you can run your own private Universe if you want to. Knowing that you can log onto a server, and continue your gameplay, only be able to chat to other pilots, or have them join you in some co-operative missions, or even go head to head against them in Player versus Player (PvP) combat, is extremely exciting. The StarWraith Community forum is a considerate, mature, friendly and very helpful place to converse about the game, and to organise meets and match ups online. So you’re never far away from someone who wants to impart knowledge about the game, or who is willing to give you a coaching session online. In fact there are a number of clans there that have grown together through the development of the StarWraith games and who like to take part in organised leagues. Theres even a Capture the Flag style setup in one of the systems for players to experience more than just your normal deathmatch style PvP game. The main difference between the multiplayer and single player game, is that the multiplayer game doesn’t affect your faction reputation.

As much as possible the developer has built the game to be mod-able. You can change a lot of the HUD and interface, textures and ship models, you can customise all manner of gamepad controllers and joysticks, and you can even set the game up for TrackIR’s 3d head control mechanism for managing you in cockpit viewpoint.

The game has a few rough edges, it is a labour of love, and it has a number of idiosyncrasies (”close up” low textures, quirks in the interface etc), however, if you are willing to be a part of the StarWraith community, your suggestions can help forge the future for this game. Imagine being a part of the process of something so inspiring and so exciting… that is what EL opens up to you. For example, since launch last week, and ultimately down to many suggestions on the forums, the game has gone through 4 or 5 patch iterations, including function changes to the Nav console itself, and more multiplayer information linking and optimising. This is community based ‘hands on’ gaming at its best.

Overall, you just can’t find a more compact and elegantly evolved space combat simulation game. If Elite had a cool big brother this would be it.

Some points to note:

• affordable and very re-playable
• large explorable universe with factions
• freeform open gameplay, exploring, trading, building and customising, racing, fighting, mining, transporting, protecting
• the space flight physics (inertial flight actually helps you reduce the cost of fuel)
• planet fall, and switch to gravity based flight model
• the ability to customise your ship uniquely, by adding, placing and scaling parts
• the ability to play as a twitch pilot doing missions, and combat and mining (asteroid and planet surface) and trading, fuel scooping from stars and nebula
• the small download (45Mb) and install footprint (130Mb)
• single player profile can be used interchangeably on a multiplayer server and play co-operatively or competitively with up to 32 other players
• run a dedicated server of your own
• part of the StarWraith community

http://starwraith3dgames.home.att.net/evochronlegends/index.htm

Those StarWraith people, have released their latest Space Sim Evochron Legends, which updates the graphics and adds more functionality than their previous games. The demo is up for download now.

http://www.thespiritengine.com/tse2-download.html

This is a nifty little find, a sequel, but its got a lot going for it. Good presentation, in a 2d spritey way. Some believable characters even though the dialogue is a bit OTT sometimes. But what sets it apart is the battles, on a timer, but sped up can become quite arcadey in a way. And the tweaking and setting up of attack chains is very well done. The skillsets take a bit of getting used to, and your party composition is almost certainly going to be Knight, Musketeer and Priest to cover all your bases, its refreshing to have such a complex and satisfying battle mechanism tied up into such a bite-size casual RPG. Well worth the 9 quid if you ask me.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

An ascii based “Settlers like” game or a rogue-like if you want, with procedurally generated landscapes and a whole lot of depth. But until now, the joys and complexities of it have been locked away in an interface thats confusing and positively hostile… however, some kind souls have unlocked pandora’s box and thrown together 14 x 10 minute video tutorials/guides on how to get started with the magic within…

Video Guides
http://uk.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5A3D7682BDD48FC2&page=1

http://www.datarealms.com/

Bloody good game this, imagine Worms, but with proper physics, proper guns, and deformable terrain, with resource collection, in real time. The demo only gives you an hour of gameplay, but after that I was hankering after much more… the only downer is the game is still mid-development, however, they allow you to purchase it, as is, with its 1 tutorial level, and 2 other levels, and the level editor, and the multiplayer skirmish mode. I bought it because I was having so much fun on just the tutorial level, I couldn’t stop playing after the hour. Its cheaper to purchase at the moment, because its not finished, but as it gets done, the price will go up, until at final release it will be full price.. its an odd way of marketing, and I’m not sure they’ll get enough interest to finish it.. but they should.. its got a whole lot of potential, especially if the level editor is up to scratch.

Its quite a brutal game, to control the ‘actors’ you have to master jetpacks and the physics of not getting stuck, or smashing into things, every bump will take your health down a notch, ordering new materials, has rockets landing and dropping off, but you can’t guarentee that it won’t tip over and blast your other men with its exhausts.. very entertaining. Give it a try and play out the tutorial.. I failed the tutorial level about 10 times before completing it, and normally that would turn anyone off, but this just made me want more and more.. amazing.. worth a look anyway.

Tis a proper game of Mah Jong and not just a solataire tile matching game. Its quite well done, its worth a look if you want to play the real game (a bit like gin rummy really). They’ve missed out a bit, in that it uses its own AI players and their cutesy anime faces, but didnt incorporate NXE avatars into the play. Which would have helped it out a lot - in terms of more mass appeal.

If you haven’t played Mah Jong before, I’ve tried to summarise the rules here, the game itself has a tutorial, but it is a bit wordy… it does however go through all the possible sets you can get in your first game.

Mah Jong for Dummies..
Essentially its quite a simple “collect the sets” game.

The “suits” being, bamboo, coins (they call them dots), characters (numerical kanji) - with a few honour tiles thrown in (dragons, winds and flowers). Each suit has 1 to 9 and each game has 4 of every suit tile in it.

To win, each player picks a tile off the “wall” (a deck) and tries to make

• a set of three of the same tile in the same suit (eg, three tiles of 4 bamboo) - which is known as a Pung
• a set of four of the same tile in the same suit (eg. four tiles of 5 coins) - which is known as a Kong or
• a set of three of ascending tiles in the same suit (eg, 4,5 and 6 of bamboo) - which is known as a Chow (or a straight)

Each player plays anti-clockwise, and instead of drawing off the wall, you have the option of picking up the tile the last player laid and using that (if you can make a set out of it). However if you can make a Kong then you can take the last laid tile in any order, and you reset the order of play (so people can miss a turn etc). Once you pick up a tile from the wall or last played, you have to discard one from your hand.

The winning hand has to consist of a combination of these sets (can also be called melds) and an “eye” which is basically just two of the same tile in the same suit. Thats about it really. The honour tiles are a little different (as theres only four of them), and flowers are just points multiplyers that get instantly replaced when they hit your hand.

Once a player declares Mah jong, his hand is scored and the others receive a negative score, and then play is resumed in another round, and another wall.

It does come across as complex, because of all the weird naming jargon, and the odd looking tile images, but essentially its very similar to the Gin Rummy card game.

Once you get used to it a bit more, its quite a groovey game that should see more people play it on live, and its infinitely more entertaining that the Mah Jong tile matching games..

Lots of info here, if anyone is interested in it..
http://www.sloperama.com/mjfaq.html

Plus Wiki has a decent enough explanation of the game
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahjong