Octopus Overlords

Steam tells me at least 5 of you are already playing it and a few others have it on their wish list.

Sepiche, what's the deal?

jztemple2 wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:Halcyon 1 sank into the swamp, as did Halcyons 2-4. Halcyon 5 burned, fell over, and then sank into the swamp.

It's killing me that I can't think of the cultural reference of this. What is it?

Monty Python on building a castle.

You might like this one Kraken, some people call it a mash up of Faster Than Light: FTL and XCom as well as a few other things. I know you're a fan of those 2 at least.

I'm enjoying Halcyon 6 for the most part. I'm a little ways in and the combat is starting to feel a bit samey, but it's got a fun campaign, well thought out mechanics, turn based ground and space combat, and charming graphics.

If you're in to turn based RPG style combat (think early Final Fantasy) with a XCom Lite style campaign I think it's well worth the normal $20 price tag.

Halcyon 6 hasn't grabbed me as I thought it might. It sounds awesome on paper, but implementation isn't very fun. I don't mind the pixel graphics, although admittedly I've never been a huge fan of them and I think they are past their kitch date.

in other news, developer attempts to sue steam users for posting bad reviews about it's games, Steam drops the developer and 3 or 4 of it's games from Steam.

article

i remembered tonight i have a Desura account, so i logged in - it struck me how ... vintage it all looks now. "the face of Steam competition, half a decade ago." doesn't help that about 2/3s of the games i own there are reallllly low budget.

Try as I am doing to get into it, I fear that Fallout 2 is just too dated for me. The elements of Fallout that we all know and love are all there but struggling with the interface and graphics sucks all the fun out of it.

Ive been trying to push Starship Corporation to my friends after finding it online. Its FTL and a ship building sim too.

in other news, developer attempts to sue steam users for posting bad reviews about it's games, Steam drops the developer and 3 or 4 of it's games from Steam.

Im surprised the courts even allowed that to start. Id counter sue them. My bet is the fly by night dev loses their case and the one that will surly come against them and then fold shop. Their name seems to mirror their actions...Digital Homicide.

Daehawk wrote:Ive been trying to push Starship Corporation to my friends after finding it online. Its FTL and a ship building sim too.

in other news, developer attempts to sue steam users for posting bad reviews about it's games, Steam drops the developer and 3 or 4 of it's games from Steam.

Im surprised the courts even allowed that to start.

i'm not understanding why, either. anyone knowledgeable enough in law here who could explain?

hitbyambulance wrote:

Daehawk wrote:
Im surprised the courts even allowed that to start.

i'm not understanding why, either. anyone knowledgeable enough in law here who could explain?

Probably for the same reason that someone was allowed to sue Yelp because of a negative review. They claimed libel.

Libel is something you get to sue people over, and there is no law preventing someone from suing you over it because it is on Steam. You absolutely could libel someone on Steam (note that criticizing someone for real problems or simply not liking their product is not libel.) Unlike the Yelp case, this wasn't about a no-public-criticism contract the users signed (something that is now illegal.)

How in the hell they expect to prove that all of those people lied in a subjective review is beyond me. Filing a lawsuit is easy. Winning it is another matter. Not having the judge slap you upside the head when you waste his time with this kind of nonsense is, too.

I don't understand why you'd go through the trouble of re-mastering an older game (BioShock), add in support for FOV adjustment but then only allow the FOV to be raised from 60 to 75. I wish I could play more, but it's giving me incredible motion sickness.

EDIT: And BioShock 2 is exactly the same. No FOV adjustment and it's hurl city. I guess I can officially mothball them.

I think I read somewhere they were going to expand the FOV settings in a patch.

That would be welcome...I just don't understand why it wasn't part of the remastering relaunch.

You could try Widescreen Fixer. I used it with Amalur. It says it supports Bioshock. Presumably that hasn't changed with the new release. Not sure if support for Bioshock 2 has been added.

Smoove_B wrote:That would be welcome...I just don't understand why it wasn't part of the remastering relaunch.

FOV should be a given for every single FPS game on the market. It's bunk that everyone knows a bad FOV setting can make a lot of people nauseous and developers just disregard it. I have the same issue with a lot of FPS games myself, and it's really put me off them in a big way. I should be able to sit down and play without feeling sick 10 minutes later - or have a headache 2 hours in if the setting is only slightly off.

Nothing makes me sick but it sure throws off my play and also just feels weird at times. I can play anywhere between 60 fov and 100 fov but Im most comfortable at about 75 or 80.

I just recently played Front Mission Evolved. The FOV felt like it was set at about 50, and nobody seemed to have a fix or hack for that thing. I felt like I was driving a car with binoculars strapped to my face.

I think they're remastering them for consoles and just saying "f-- it" in terms of figuring out how PC gamers might be impacted...because it would take time and resources to make sure the textures and UI scale correctly. I mean, I appreciate the free update but it comes off half-assed.

The fact that I couldn't change it off of the 360 controller, and don't feel like mucking with trying to move my save game over means that I probably will never touch the Remastered for 1. Whether I want to fight with it when I get to 2 remains to be seen.

Isgrimnur wrote:The fact that I couldn't change it off of the 360 controller, and don't feel like mucking with trying to move my save game over means that I probably will never touch the Remastered for 1. Whether I want to fight with it when I get to 2 remains to be seen.

I was able to change it off the controller. There's a setting in the menus that disables it.

Smoove_B wrote:I think they're remastering them for consoles and just saying "f-- it" in terms of figuring out how PC gamers might be impacted...because it would take time and resources to make sure the textures and UI scale correctly. I mean, I appreciate the free update but it comes off half-assed.

What I want to know is who the fuck is out there demanding things like mouse acceleration and smoothing support in their games? Who the fuck is playing an FPS right now and thinking "Jesus Fucking Christ I'm sick of my mouse moving in a predictable, linear fashion. I need some fucking erratic mouse movement and input lag here!"

How is basic mouse control an issue in PC games in the year Two Fucking Thousand and Sixteen?

And I'd ask "how do you fuck up a remaster?" but apparently the answer is "easily". Hell, earlier this year Team 17 launched a remaster of Worms World Party and that was also a piece of crap. The mind boggles.

I have this sneaking suspicion that early adopters are the beta testers of the digital age.

At least I no longer have to wait 4-6 weeks for a patch to be shipped to me.

my brother also got a patch shipped on 3.5" floppies for Pool of Radience (the original Gold Box one, not the remake) due to a hilarious but game-breaking vampirism-effect bug.

Smoove_B wrote:That would be welcome...I just don't understand why it wasn't part of the remastering relaunch.

$$$$$$ now

PC world was where I read it. Improved FOV and mouse smoothness controls coming per 2k.

link

hitbyambulance wrote:my brother also got a patch shipped on 3.5" floppies for Pool of Radience (the original Gold Box one, not the remake) due to a hilarious but game-breaking vampirism-effect bug.

I had that happen on Darklands. Multiple disks for multiple patches. I think they lost money on that game. Such great promise. So utterly broken out of the box.

Darklands was an original engine that basically broke MicroProse amongst many other things. The game was so complex the engine ran out of memory. The only way you can keep it running properly is to remove EVERY driver there is and make as much of the main 640K available with DOS=HIGH and other memory managers, and even then it crashes quite a bit.

Ah... memories. I had a "boot menu" back then, something that I set up to give me different boot configurations depending if I needed expanded memory or extended memory, QEMM or not, how aggressively I needed to get drivers loaded high and all of those old DOS shenanigans. Seem to recall one option just for Darklands. And I believe Betrayal at Krondor needed it too.

Still have the Darklands game stashed away, floppies and all. Plus the patches they sent out.

Smoove_B wrote:I think they're remastering them for consoles and just saying "f-- it" in terms of figuring out how PC gamers might be impacted...because it would take time and resources to make sure the textures and UI scale correctly. I mean, I appreciate the free update but it comes off half-assed.

The Bioshock remaster is similar to Skyrim's remaster, in the sense that it's mostly for the current console generation's benefit. On the PC side of things, I don't think there's much of a point. But the Skyrim remaster strikes me as even more pointless, given that it still feels quite recent, but done because of how popular it was.

Speaking of Elder Scrolls, I'd much prefer them to work on a Morrowind remaster for current gen. This is a game that could use a little love. Given that this is the game many people first started to take notice of Elder Scrolls, it wouldn't be far-fected to maybe expect them to release something for its anniversary and I think many new fans would love to go back and play it but with a current engine.

Having grown up a AH board gamer and then going on to SPI and others I always loved the standard military wargames with the NATO ids on the counters.
Now I find,much to my dismay, with dozens of those type games on my computer I don't like that genre anymore.
Here I am set for life with wargames and I don't like them.
I still enjoy military games like the Panzer General clones and others, but not the board wargames of my younger days.
Maybe it's the graphics or the number of units you control. I like the smaller counts now.

dbt1949 wrote:Having grown up a AH board gamer and then going on to SPI and others I always loved the standard military wargames with the NATO ids on the counters.
Now I find,much to my dismay, with dozens of those type games on my computer I don't like that genre anymore.
Here I am set for life with wargames and I don't like them.
I still enjoy military games like the Panzer General clones and others, but not the board wargames of my younger days.
Maybe it's the graphics or the number of units you control. I like the smaller counts now.

I wondered for a minute there if I had created a new identity for myself, since what you said really applies to me as well.

I grew up the same way, played my first game of Tactics II at nine years old. Kept AH in business, bought pretty much every SPI game ever made. I made the transition to computer games pretty well, playing a lot of the John Tiller Campaign series and Squad Battles and other HPS Sims games as well, but in the past few years I just can't really seem to get into computer war games. I played a few hours of Pike and Shot: Campaigns, but it didn't get me hooked. And I bought Sengoku Jidai: Shadow of the Shogun to use up a Matrix Games coupon but just haven't gotten the urge to give it a try. On the other hand I put in over 150 hours on Fallout 4. So I guess my tastes really have changed.

Do game developers really think I like playing a fight against the big bad boss over and over and over and over again?

dbt1949 wrote:Do game developers really think I like playing a fight against the big bad boss over and over and over and over again?

That's why as I've gotten older I've started play games on Easy. I just don't have the interest or energy to do a mission over and over again, just to try to beat some damn overpowered character. And it's why I never finished Sleeping Dogs, there was no difficulty adjustment and I just couldn't get past one of the big martial arts fights.

'fighting all the previous level bosses (now palette-shifted) in a row, all of whom have mysteriously come back to life is so much fun!!' said no one ever

i'd be ok with ending the whole 'boss-fight' cliche.

I don't remember if I used cheats or not on Sleeping Dogs. I'm pretty sure I finished every mission including the expansion packs, races, and so on. There was a couple bugs about stuff I can't get, and just got bored.

Kasey Chang wrote:I don't remember if I used cheats or not on Sleeping Dogs.

I searched for cheats for the PC version but didn't find any. I'd love something that get me past the martial art fights.

jztemple2 wrote:

dbt1949 wrote:Having grown up a AH board gamer and then going on to SPI and others I always loved the standard military wargames with the NATO ids on the counters.
Now I find,much to my dismay, with dozens of those type games on my computer I don't like that genre anymore.
Here I am set for life with wargames and I don't like them.
I still enjoy military games like the Panzer General clones and others, but not the board wargames of my younger days.
Maybe it's the graphics or the number of units you control. I like the smaller counts now.

I wondered for a minute there if I had created a new identity for myself, since what you said really applies to me as well.

I grew up the same way, played my first game of Tactics II at nine years old. Kept AH in business, bought pretty much every SPI game ever made. I made the transition to computer games pretty well, playing a lot of the John Tiller Campaign series and Squad Battles and other HPS Sims games as well, but in the past few years I just can't really seem to get into computer war games. I played a few hours of Pike and Shot: Campaigns, but it didn't get me hooked. And I bought Sengoku Jidai: Shadow of the Shogun to use up a Matrix Games coupon but just haven't gotten the urge to give it a try. On the other hand I put in over 150 hours on Fallout 4. So I guess my tastes really have changed.

I've discussed this at length several times before. There are a few reasons why: presentation is perhaps the largest.

When you are playing a board game, you can take in an incredible amount of information at a glance. You can see the entire map. You can see strong and weak positions and evaluate the entirety of the situation. You can focus in on a portion of the map or units and immediately grasp how that fits in with the greater whole.

In a computer game, it's a lot more difficult to assimilate this information. Maybe you can zoom out and see the entire map, but there is no detail to go with it. Mentally you need to concatenate small chunks of map, and often the unit data is not present directly on the map but on a side bar or pop-up when the unit is selected. This can be tedious and exhausting, especially when you add up all of the mouse-clicks necessary to view then position large numbers of units.

Monitors are getting larger and resolution is getting better, but you're still not going to get a 4' map on a computer screen. There's been a few board games that, largely thanks to their design, have been successful conversions on the computer but the best ones that come to mind I don't think are available for modern systems (1830 and History of the World immediately come to mind). I can picture other, more abstract games (say, Storm Over Arnhem) also be more playable on a computer than most other wargames. Smaller scenarios in some systems (like Tiller's or SSG's) can be fun to play, but if you have a game based on the Battle of Waterloo, how fulfilling is a scenario covering the action to take the outhouse at Hougemont?

The classic wargame style is just not a good fit on computers. Just because it can be done doesn't make it nearly as fun, and I'd rather see a different paradigm that addresses all of these issues. But there's also a numbers game: basically, the number of hard core wargamers is too low to support radical development or cater to higher end systems. The development teams are too small and quite frankly many of the developers are too locked into conventional designs that they never will be the creative force that addresses these problems. I haven't played an actual wargame in years now, they became such work and besides, my time is limited now so when I play something, I best be having a lot of fun doing it.

Speaking of wargames I wish they'd come out with another version of Axis and Allies.
And since Jeff mentioned it Storm over Arnhem was one of my favorites too. AH's Cassino would be another.

dbt1949 wrote:Speaking of wargames I wish they'd come out with another version of Axis and Allies.

Many years ago, a buddy and I would play the board game every weekend in his basement. We'd leave everything set up in between sessions and sometimes his cat would jump on the table and knock pieces around during the week. Amazingly, we always remembered where the pieces belonged. Good times. I never played the computer version though.

ColdSteel wrote:

dbt1949 wrote:Speaking of wargames I wish they'd come out with another version of Axis and Allies.

Many years ago, a buddy and I would play the board game every weekend in his basement. We'd leave everything set up in between sessions and sometimes his cat would jump on the table and knock pieces around during the week. Amazingly, we always remembered where the pieces belonged. Good times. I never played the computer version though.

I'd like a good Axis & Allies game! Not the RTS type though. Found a few independent/free games that were kinda cool.

Found one that added China as a faction. Added a few more territories and reduced the values some and a few other changes. China got like 6 provinces iirc. Can't remember the name of that game. I could never do well with China. Computer often did amazingly well with Japan. Not so much with anyone else. Japan was often taking Alaska on turn one and keeping the US Navy off key and frequently hitting Russia on the coast in a little ways. I'm not a particularly good player, so the AI wasn't horribly bad to me, but a skilled player would probably find it little challenge. Though, to be fair, would be hard to imagine a good AI for this game against skilled players.