The Android is... an Android (AI), The Android's an Amateur Developer (Ideas), The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Custom Rims (Mods and modding)

Thoughts on modding

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As Pike revealed yesterday I’ve been working on a mod for Victoria II lately. It came to me while I was playing the rather good Fallout mod for Darkest Hour, because one of the challenges the modder faced there was dealing with the need to have a lot of land empty as ‘wasteland’, for the powers to colonize and claim. If you’re familiar with HoI2 and derived games you’ll know that this isn’t an easy feat, because HoI does not work like that, there are no empty provinces as in EU3 or V2 to colonize.

But hang on, there are empty provinces in those games and mechanics for claiming and settling them. So I thought, why not make a mod for one of them revolving around a similar idea? And now here we are, working on a post-apocalyptic setting for Victoria II, starting shortly after said apocalypse and covering the reclamation of the ruined Earth, the development of new technologies, and ultimately the emergence of new political ideas.

A planned political faction is a cybernetic one.

It’s a lot of work, even the fairly simple stuff like putting in new countries and editing provinces. But what’s really struck me on this project is how tough it is to keep things balanced. Now partly this is because I’m in no position to mod the AI, so I’m working with the thing as it stands, but it’s really difficult to ensure that people don’t just dominate. In the regular game the UK is the dominant power and unless you’re a decent player or the USA they’re staying that way. With so much more land available to colonize however, the ability of countries to simply run away with the game by claiming more and more land is acute here, and my biggest challenge has, as I say, been working with that.

As I work on the mod the problem decreases but it’s still something I’ve been struck by; balancing is something of a totemic idea that holds less real value than might be assumed at first blush. To take vanilla V2 again, playing as Cambodia should not be as easy as playing as France and there’s nothing wrong with that. Still, there needs to be a semblance of the ability to compete even if you can’t expect to conquer the world, and it’s both interesting and daunting to experience first-hand what developers must struggle with every day.

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Custom Rims (Mods and modding)

Mister Adequate Has a Secret

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I’m surprised he hasn’t mentioned this yet (or maybe he has and I just haven’t seen it)– but our dear Mister Adequate has been hard at work on a mod for Victoria 2.  He has this whole alternate history scenario in his head that he’s translating to a game and adding all sorts of fun countries and that sort of thing.  He’s been working on it on and off for weeks now– he’s very dedicated!

Have you ever tried to mod a game?  How did it go?

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's Mother's Basement (MMO), The Android's Red Flag (Quasi-political ramblings)

Goodnight, Sweet Prince pt. 2

I only just heard the news now, but apparently the word came down from on high at NCSoft last week – City of Heroes is being shut down.

Now I’ve really got two separate but related topics in mind here, the first of which is City of Heroes itself and the second of which is gaming companies and their attitudes, so this post might be a little longer than usual as I delve into both. I do apologize to those who prefer snappier posts but I only have so much control over my sesquipedalian loquaciousness.

Long ago, I played City of Heroes back when it was very new. Before the first ‘Issue’ (as they call their patch-expansions) even came out. It wasn’t a perfect game by any means but it was a great deal of fun, with an obviously massive amount of care and love put into it. Along with FFXI it was my first MMO, and it’s one that’s stuck with me since even if I haven’t played in a good long time. It still has an active community today (Though not for much longer, obviously) and it’s pretty sad to see how surprised and shocked everyone was by this news. It really came from nowhere and I’d hate to think about a community I’ve been part of for years just being unplugged.

My visage upon hearing of this news.

When I say people were shocked and surprised, it should be noted that this seems to have included the actual devs at Paragon as well. One day things were fine, they were excitedly discussing the next issue and their plans for the future, and the next they got a phone call saying to wrap it up, the show is over. There was no forewarning, no discussion, not even a hint of anything like this coming until NCSoft made the call. NCSoft have had a terrible year so far, in large part because they were banking on Guild Wars 2 being a success (and by all accounts it, monetarily at least, is). They’re also insisting on keeping Aion limping along even though who the hell plays Aion. But City of Heroes, a steady game with an active fanbase, and in the green? It gets cut. Apparently NCSoft don’t see as much of the money from CoH as they do from other games, presumably because of something in the arrangement when they handed it from Cryptic over to Paragon, and this warrants ending the game and closing the studio.

I don’t want to get into a big ol’ anarcho-syndicalist rant here (actually yes I do but) but it seems to me like certain people, both within gaming and without, could stand to take a longer-term look at their income sources. Something doesn’t have to beat a Hollywood blockbuster to be worthwhile; look at Paradox Interactive. Their games are never going to outsell Halo and they know it, but they’re not dumping their core franchises for this. They’re carrying on, making investments some of which work out (Darkest Hour) and some of which don’t (Magna Mundi), but they’re not sacrificing beloved games like Europa Universalis in order to try and beat Modern Warfare 4 to market. City of Heroes was still making money, and even if the projections suggest that will stop, they could have at least had the decency to A) give the devs some forewarning and B) give them time to put out a final issue to wrap up loose ends. Give both Paragon and the game’s players some respect, in short.

Of course we all know that gaming is not a business to get into, even if you love games. It’s a long, hard job with absolutely stupid hours, atrocious pay, filled with nepotism and hierarchies, and with companies run by either college kids who happened to get lucky in the 80s and never learned proper business, or by businessmen who don’t know the first thing about videogames. Except Valve. Valve is actually a great place to work, apparently – and it shows.

The Android's Aural Receptors (Music/Sound), The Android's Deranged Killing Spree (Action), The Android's Favorites, The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's POG Collection (Retro)

Goodnight, sweet prince.

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As you may have recently heard, SCE Liverpool – formerly known as Psygnosis – is being shut down. To anyone who grew up playing the games I did this is a moment for reflection and, yes, perhaps a little bit of mourning.

Psygnosis was founded in the early 80s in Liverpool, UK. It didn’t take long for them to get noticed because of games like Shadow of the Beast, but they really started to shine in 1991 when they displayed some seriously canny foresight by publishing DMA Designs’ Lemmings. DMA Designs, you may or may not know, went on to change their name to Rockstar. In 1993 Psygnosis was acquired by Sony, though they would keep the name for eight further years, and it was here under Sony that they made their real gems.

Wipeout was the flagship title for the Playstation One, and the then-impossible level of graphics and the cool use of contemporary music to race holy shit flying race cars certainly sold the console to me, and to a few of my friends. It was like nothing we’d ever seen before. It was also hard as hell, which was pretty great. They complimented this by retaining their publishing acumen to help games like Destruction Derby, and made the little-known but extremely silly and enjoyable giant mech game, Krazy Ivan. Later was Wipeout 2097, the best iteration of the franchise and an extraordinary game still worth playing today.

When I was a kid their owl logo gave me nightmares.

But it would be another year or two, in 1997, that Psygnosis put out the two games for which I will always remember them, despite the brilliance of Wipeout. Colony Wars and later in the year G-Police were both superb, amazing sci-fi games, the first set in space (and with a wonderful, narrated in-game encyclopedia) and the second on Jupiter’s moon Callisto. Both featured all the things you could wish for in such games; dystopia, violence, futuristic weapons and vehicles, and “The Tsar and his battle fleet saw everything… knew everything… punished everything“. That same year also saw the release of their weird, experimental game Sentient, which was one of the most unique games I’ve ever played.

When the 90s closed the spark seemed to have gone out of the company, and despite the great sequels to G-Police and Colony Wars they fell back on Wipeout games and on their Formula 1 line, all very solid but somehow never as impressive as taking chances on Lemmings or the Discworld point’n’click games. Still, they will be missed, and not soon forgotten, by those of us from that era who grew up with all these amazing games thanks to Psygnosis.

The Android's Deranged Killing Spree (Action), The Android's Favorites, The Android's Sandbox (Sandbox/Open World)

Sleeping Dogs

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Here’s a game I’ve been playing a lot over the last week or so. Sleeping Dogs began as True Crime: Hong Kong, which wasn’t tremendously promising because True Crime was never a very good series in my eyes. But after much kerfuffle, being dropped by Activision and then picked up by Squenix, and being renamed to Sleeping Dogs, it managed to come out. Anyone familiar with vaporware and the like will know that commendation must be given just for getting a working game out the door after that; what’s all the more surprising is that this game is damned good.

You are Wei Shen, a cop on loan from the San Francisco PD to the HKPD in order to go undercover and infiltrate the Sun On Yee, a large and powerful branch of the Triads. You do this through basically being a far greater threat to stability, the innocent, or the police than the Sun On Yee ever could. It’s great! The game features fairly typical free-roam gameplay on the surface, but it has a lot of polish and features inspired by other games. For example melee combat, which is by far the mainstay of combat in this game, with guns and shootouts being somewhat rarer than is common in the genre is similar to the Batman: Arkham games, whilst there’s a lightweight implementation of freerunning that, when done properly by you, makes getting around on foot through Hong Kong’s dense urban maze a good dear smoother and quicker. If this sounds derivative or shallow then I’m here to reassure you, because the game may take inspiration from other places and it may not implement any one thing with the same depth as its inspirations, but everything works together so well that you’re going to be enjoying yourself pretty much no matter what part of the game you’re partaking of.

The story – so far at least – is surprisingly well-realized, with some great characters who you grow rather attached to before terrible things happen to them. The voice acting is especially brilliant, with a mix of Cantonese and English that is quite unique and fascinating. On that note I’ve never been to HK but this game really sells the atmosphere like few others do; the look, the sound, the music, everything is pitch-perfect and makes you feel like you’re there, even if you’ve never been. (And I’ve seen people who have been there say it’s a pretty striking representation.) The only real downside of the game is that the city is fairly small, but the extent to which it feels small varies considerably. They used a lot of tricks to make it seem bigger than it really is, and for me it works great because I’ve never yet felt at all confined. And what is there, generally speaking, is absurdly detailed.

Pic entirely unrelated, we just find it hilarious here at The Android’s Closet.

The music deserves a special mention. There are some absolutely great tunes in this game, and it definitely features the best (and best-named) classical station I have ever heard in any such game, Boosey & Hawkes. Tell me that’s not the best possible name for a radio station. And rolling through a nightclub, screaming people everywhere, having a shootout while Hudson Mohawke’s FUSE is blaring out? Baller as all hell.

So if you’re looking for an open-world crime game you could do a lot worse than Sleeping Dogs. It’s not just a game that escaped from development issues to be released; it’s a game that did that, then both shed a rather ropy pair of predecessors, and then came out to be seriously impressive. I challenge anyone who plays it to refrain from starting to use Chinese words.

And in closing, Activision can eat all of the shit.

The Android's Mother's Basement (MMO)

Oops! I Did It Again

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If you are anything like myself or Mister Adequate, then you will be well-acquainted with that obnoxious insect that comes around every six months or so and nibbles on you and makes you nostalgic for World of Warcraft and won’t stop nibbling until you actually re-sub. This invariably results in a few weeks of playing little else but WoW until the bug is satiated and flies away– for the time being, anyway.

I was visited by this bug about a week back and after several days of trying to ignore it and swat it away while it hummed the Karazhan theme in my ear, I recently caved and re-downloaded the game. I know, I know.

Now I haven’t played in months and months and one of the things that I always felt bad about was that I left my long-time main, Tawyn, rather unceremoniously dumped in Stormwind in a bunch of greens from the new Cataclysm content– basically I played for about a month after Cata launch and then realized “You know what, I’m still bored of raiding and heroics” and logged out and didn’t return. So poor Tawyn wasn’t retired in her level 70 epics or her level 80 epics– no, she was retired wearing [Boring Uldum Pants of the Whale] and such. Obviously this wasn’t going to do, so the very first thing I did was transmogrify into old stuff from my favorite ever raid instance, Karazhan, and various assorted BC heroics. For the first time in years, Tawyn matched my figureprint of her and the mental image I have when I think of her. I… really can’t express how good this felt.

Suddenly, playing my character was fun again. Because suddenly, I didn’t look like a scrub in greens. Nor did I look like a mishmash of epics from the current content. Rather, I looked like my character— something I was proud of.

Don’t get me wrong. I still don’t feel like raiding or doing heroics or really any sort of endgame. But at least I can deal with dailies and things like leveling once MoP comes out (should I get the expac– I’m still not sure if I will.)

The new patch comes out tomorrow and it gets rid of hunter stat sticks, which means I’ll lose my lovely Sonic Spear and I won’t be able to sport my Legacy in the future. But you’ll have to pry Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle out of my cold, dead, purple hands.

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Favorites, The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Grand Strategy and 4X

We got a question yesterday via twitter from reader Fuggle/Math asking how we would describe the difference between 4X games and Grand Strat games. Well, the reply would take longer than 140 characters so here we are~

Now, these two genres are pretty closely linked for obvious reasons. Both tend to involve the control of countries on a quest for dominance, be it local, global, or galactic. Both tend to involve building up your infrastructure and military and pushing large groups of units around. And if you play both then it’s hardly surprising that you’d end up trying to figure out what the difference is supposed to be. But let’s dig into it a little deeper and see if we can tease some answers out.

Let’s define 4X first, for anyone not sure of what it means. It should be 4E actually, because it stands for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate. But X is the coolest letter, so there we are. Anyway the idea of a 4X game is to do exactly that; to begin from a single settlement (be it a city or a planet) and first discover everything around you, then move in to occupy and make use of it, and then to annihilate everything else you meet.

So far, so strategic. How does this differ from Grand Strategy? Well, a Grand Strategy game has a couple of key differences. You still Expand and Exploit, but the Exploration and Extermination aspects tend to play second fiddle. This is not to say that they are absent or that no GS game cares for them – EU3 has a strong exploration aspect for example, whilst almost all of them involve SOME degree of Extermination. But you tend to be able to win without needing to conquer everyone. Indeed that may be perfectly possible, as in Hearts of Iron, but it may also be fairly tricky, as in Victoria 2.

And in some cases it is the categorical imperative of those workers who have already set themselves free.

Perhaps the other big difference is that 4X games are almost invariably turn-based, whilst Grand Strategy tend to be Real Time With Pause. Both encourage you to take your time and think about things, but GS still leans towards being a bit more fast-paced thanks to this. GS generally tries to implement the diplomacy side of things with more rigor and depth than 4X, as well – though the extent to which any given game succeeds in this is, of course, up for debate.

The much, much quicker way to tell is by asking “Was this game made by Paradox Interactive?” If yes, it’s a Grand Strategy. If no, it’s not. Unless it is, but who buys anything made by Matrix Games at those prices?

The Android's Jetpack Augment (Platform)

Sonic the Hedgehog 4

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You may not be aware that Sonic the Hedgehog 4 is even a thing. Well, it is. Sega has been releasing “episodes” of what is supposed to be an old fashioned, oldschool Sonic adventure for the past couple of years, and I finally broke down and bought them the other day, despite some misgivings.

Well, I’ve played both Episode 1 and 2 quite a bit, and here’s what I’ve got to say about them:

THE VERDICT:

The games play pretty much like Sonics 1 – 3&K. Sonic gets the homing attack which he got later on his life, and which at first annoyed my inner purist before I realized that it actually fit in rather nicely and adds some neat new play mechanics and allows for new level design ideas. In Episode 2, you also get Tails as a sidekick, which introduces a couple additional new moves which also fit in nicely. The Episode 1 Sonic feels a bit “floaty” to me but Episode 2 fixes that right up.

This is the best Sonic gif you will ever see.

The levels are almost entirely based off of classic ones from the Genesis era. That’s not to say they’re remade with few changes, or even rebooted a la Sonic Generations. Rather, they’re all new levels that feel like they could take place in Aquatic Ruin Zone or Oil Ocean Zone or Metropolis Zone or a combination of them. You will recognize many, many familiar enemies and level mechanics. Unfortunately none of them seem to stand up as strongly as their original inspirations, even though some moments come close. Oddly, the best levels are the ones that are the most unlike prior Zones. (A level where you dash along roller coaster tracks and another that takes place during a night filled with fireflies come to mind.)

The art is passable and fits the style of the game. Episode 1 goes for a sort of… halfway-cel-shaded thing that is kind of weird but, like as with many other odd things with Sonic 4, this gets axed with Episode 2.

The music is the weakest part of Sonic 4 by far. I wish I could say it wasn’t, because I love classic Sonic music, but in this game it ranges from being “almost good” (one or two tracks) to “barely tolerable” (most of it) to “MUTE, MUTE NOW, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING” (a few unfortunate tracks).

OVERALL: I don’t know if the steep price (Somewhere in the vicinity of $30 for both episodes) is worth it for anyone who isn’t a die-hard Sonic fan, but if you can snag these on sale and you enjoyed the Genesis Sonics then they’re not bad buys. If you’re just going to get one, get the second, although getting both will open up a secret “third” episode featuring Metal Sonic which is kind of fun. Sonic the Hedgehog 4 may not live up to the first 3 (and a half) “numbered” Sonic games, but if you like going fast, it’ll keep you entertained for more than a few hours and give you a few thrilling moments that remind you of your very first time playing Sonic. And isn’t that worth almost any price?

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Kickbacks (Gog/Bribed)

Europa Universalis IV announced!

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Yes yes, I know. This happened last week and we’re slow. We apologize. Any-who!

Good ol’ Paradox has been dropping hints about a new game in the works for a while, now, and although I think just about everyone was hoping for a new IP, the result turned out to be a new installment in Paradox’s flagship series. Here’s the trailer they’ve given us:

Things I get from the trailer:

  • Okay, so what we’ve got here is a very Crusader-Kings-2-inspired map…
  • OMG THAT MUSIC IT MAKES ME WANT TO PLAY EU3 AGAIN

And that’s about it. Fear not, though! Paradox has also provided us with some screenshots:

spongebob wallet.jpg

Now I don’t know about you guys, but I really like the look of this screenshot. It does indeed look like a lovely mashup of Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis 3 and I am very okay with this.

Of course, that’s just talking about the visual direction. What about the actual gameplay? It’s probably too early to tell much at the moment, but this is what we’ve got so far:

Europa Universalis IV Main Features:

  • Make your own decisions: Nation building is completely flexible
  • Use your Monarch Power: In this new system, a leader’s traits will direct the ebb and flow of gameplay
  • Experience history coming to life: The great personalities of the past are on hand to support you as you make your mark on thousands of historical events
  • Turn the world into your playground: Enjoy over 300 years of gameplay in a lush topographical map in full 3D
  • Gain control of vital trade routes and make the wealth of the world flow to your coffers in the all-new trade system
  • Bring out your negotiating skills in a deeper diplomatic system
  • Go online and battle against your friends in an all-new multiplayer game mode that features hot-join, improved chatting, a new matchmaking server, and support for a standalone server
  • Create your own history and customize your game: Europa Universalis IV gives you the chance to customize and mod practically anything your heart may desire

So basically it sounds like EU3, except better. Again, I’m okay with this. The apple tends not to fall far from the tree with Paradox games, and truthfully I wouldn’t want it to in this case. EU3 is already a very, very solid strategy game, and if Paradox is basically just upgrading the graphics and adding some new stuff then I’m more than happy with that.

We’ll bring you more announcements and discussions on this as it occurs, so stay tuned! In the meantime, the Paradox forums have got a subforum going.

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's Mother's Basement (MMO)

World of Warcraft on Your Resume

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So Europa Universalis IV has been announced, which is something that we’ll no doubt be talking about in greater detail within the next few days, but for today’s Friday post I want to share a video I found the other night.  Basically it’s a guy talking about how an MMO guild or raid leader is probably better equipped for a leadership position than someone who has just gone to school and has no other experience, and how the guild/raid model could be applied to businesses.  In other words, he’s reiterating stuff any MMO player has already known for years.  It’s kind of nice to see other people realize it, though.  Now if only we could clone this guy and put him in charge of employment around the world, right?

[disgusted noise]