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Aurora
This game is amazing.
It's a mix of Master of Orion (classic 4X game) and Silent Hunter (a WWII submarine sim), but with the detail cranked way up.
For example, in my current game I've decided to start from the present day, 2010. You have to research nearly all space technology from scratch. You have one spaceship construction facility, which I named the Kennedy Space Center, 10 research centres and four chief scientists (meaning a maximum of 4 research projects at a time), and a bunch of outdated industry that you must convert to either space industry, space mines or space fuel refineries. Somehow you have to take all that and turn it into an empire. Oh, and the minerals on Earth SUCK. Most run out in less than a decade.
I'm a few years into the game, I've built a mining colony on Mercury and one in the asteroid belt, and they send packets of minerals back to Earth via mass driver, great. So, I'm plodding along, when out of nowhere I'm informed that a CIVILIAN SHIPPING LINE (whaaaa?) has built one of my freighter designs and now intends to help me transport stuff to the colonies if I pay them a fee. Awesome. Not long after that, a civilian mining colony pops up on Proteus, a moon of Neptune, and they offer to either sell minerals to me for some space bucks, or I receive some taxes on their enterprise. Now, it's not particularly realistic that a mining colony would just pop up out of nowhere, but the idea of an independent private sector in this kind of game is startling, and AFAIK, unique.
More civilian antics: I had started a colony on Mars, which despite having no Trans-Newtonian minerals, was mildly habitable with the addition of Infrastructure that I made on Earth. So I send my freighters loaded with enough infrastructure to support 100,000 colonists, and soon after, I send two colony ships with those colonists. I repeat the process until about 500,000 colonists have been transported, at which point I notice that the Martians have begun to create their own infrastructure. Not long after that, a shipping line creates its own colony ship and starts transporting colonists - and pays me taxes on every shipload! Not only that, but I read that the civilian lines will begin to transport their own, civilian-made infrastructure if the population of Mars comes within 10% of the maximum population allowed by current infrastructure levels. So, basically, at this point I could sit back and watch as the private sector gradually colonises the entire system! That would leave me free to spend my resources on research, building up a military and exploring the rest of the galaxy.
There is much more I could say about the game (like the mysterious jump gate I found near Saturn, or how you assign, promote and decorate your space navy officers, or how you design not only your ships, but their components too, etc.), but if any of that sounded even remotely interesting, you should go to the game's forum, sign up and download the game, then tell us how your empire is going!
It's a mix of Master of Orion (classic 4X game) and Silent Hunter (a WWII submarine sim), but with the detail cranked way up.
For example, in my current game I've decided to start from the present day, 2010. You have to research nearly all space technology from scratch. You have one spaceship construction facility, which I named the Kennedy Space Center, 10 research centres and four chief scientists (meaning a maximum of 4 research projects at a time), and a bunch of outdated industry that you must convert to either space industry, space mines or space fuel refineries. Somehow you have to take all that and turn it into an empire. Oh, and the minerals on Earth SUCK. Most run out in less than a decade.
I'm a few years into the game, I've built a mining colony on Mercury and one in the asteroid belt, and they send packets of minerals back to Earth via mass driver, great. So, I'm plodding along, when out of nowhere I'm informed that a CIVILIAN SHIPPING LINE (whaaaa?) has built one of my freighter designs and now intends to help me transport stuff to the colonies if I pay them a fee. Awesome. Not long after that, a civilian mining colony pops up on Proteus, a moon of Neptune, and they offer to either sell minerals to me for some space bucks, or I receive some taxes on their enterprise. Now, it's not particularly realistic that a mining colony would just pop up out of nowhere, but the idea of an independent private sector in this kind of game is startling, and AFAIK, unique.
More civilian antics: I had started a colony on Mars, which despite having no Trans-Newtonian minerals, was mildly habitable with the addition of Infrastructure that I made on Earth. So I send my freighters loaded with enough infrastructure to support 100,000 colonists, and soon after, I send two colony ships with those colonists. I repeat the process until about 500,000 colonists have been transported, at which point I notice that the Martians have begun to create their own infrastructure. Not long after that, a shipping line creates its own colony ship and starts transporting colonists - and pays me taxes on every shipload! Not only that, but I read that the civilian lines will begin to transport their own, civilian-made infrastructure if the population of Mars comes within 10% of the maximum population allowed by current infrastructure levels. So, basically, at this point I could sit back and watch as the private sector gradually colonises the entire system! That would leave me free to spend my resources on research, building up a military and exploring the rest of the galaxy.
There is much more I could say about the game (like the mysterious jump gate I found near Saturn, or how you assign, promote and decorate your space navy officers, or how you design not only your ships, but their components too, etc.), but if any of that sounded even remotely interesting, you should go to the game's forum, sign up and download the game, then tell us how your empire is going!
Comments
Also, 'magic' is the right word. You don't mine space you fucking moron, you mine planet cores for magic rocks from
OUTER SPAAAACEa wizard did it. The game would work better if you envisioned the planets as oil platforms.Just to let you know, I called them "space mines" because you use them to acquire the space resources needed to make space ships, not because I thought you used them to harvest resources from the nothingness of outer space. But I can see why you might be confused. Dumbass.
As for the "magic rocks" stuff, I guess you're right - space games with magic in them are pretty lame. Yeah, pretty lame.
Also, DF is programmed less horrible. It is not that is has had more time to improve. It's that it has specifically taken time out of feature-building to improve. It goes through large bug fixing routines before being released and will get several bug fix updates in short succession after a major release before the next arc will be started. If this was done for Aurora, it would be far more playable.
DF's problem is just that it's doing pathfinding for dozens of dozens of creatures, temperature for every square, and weather for the entire world. We'll also be getting dorfs that blink in the next release. That is not at all a bug. It's the result of a default bite attack given to carp, the AI behaviour of the fish when cornered, and the dorfs not having the AI to NOT JUMP INTO THE WATER OH GOD YOU MORON WHY DID YOU DO THAT NOW I HAVE TO SUFFER HAPPINESS PENALTIES AND MY BOOZE IS RUNNING LOW. FUCK YOU, YOU STUPID DORF. YOU JUST INITIATED THE "THIS FORT WILL DIE RIGHT NOW" ROUTINE. Not a bug, result of features.
Also, there IS another option, it's called a graphics set which largely turns it into average sprite game. Further improvements are in the future plans, but at the moment other features are being focussed on because the game is playable. Code optimizations have also already begun, see the OpenGL updates that Andrew mentioned. In the same vein, forumites have started to discuss methods on improving the pathfinding code for Toady to utilize at a later point. People have also created various programs for various goals, some for mass-job changing, some for tile editing, some for outright cheating, etc. It is also still an alpha, it's still ever-changing, like Aurora.
Because the moment you do, you'll get a bunch of twats going "I WANT IT BACK IN ASCII", or, of course, they just will refuse to move to the new version, and will instead keep playing in ASCII. Yeah, the interface is "Fine" - How about moving from "Fine" to actually "Good"?
Just about every argument for the interface I've heard is either "Well I have no problems with it, It must be you" or "If you can't deal with playing in ASCII, then maybe you shouldn't play dwarf fortress" - But never a compelling argument as to why the interface shouldn't get a graphical overhaul. Just variations of "Oh, I can do it, why can't you? It's so easy for Me, You mustn't be good enough for my fantastic game, go play in your sandpit with the other stupid childeren"
Hey, How about this - how about they make a decent fucking interface that doesn't require a decryption key, and you leave the decision if I should play dwarf fortress up to me. Hey, the law is in plain English too! Shit, I'm never hiring a lawyer again! But a dwarf cleaning his eyes with soap is a Hilarious bug feature. So, Tell me how Dwarf Fortress isn't just the underground-dwelling lovechild of Simcity and excel? So, what you're saying is that if I want a decent interface for dwarf fortress, I have to go and fetch an add-on from another part of the dwarf fortress community, and use that. Cool. So, Again, What was that compelling reason that they can't just include that into the game straight up?
Like you said, people are making things for toady to utilize at some point, in the future, it should therefore be relatively trivial to add in a half-decent interface. Oh wait, I remember, I'm stupid, dwarf fortress isn't for me and maybe a shouldn't be playing it, don't mind me, I'll be over in my sandpit.
And now, on to Nine. No, Skiing in Tribes is still a bug. In Tribes 2, due to the skiiing bug's popularity in the community around the first game, they programmed a similar thing into the game as a feature.
As for Bunny hopping being a feature, LolWut? Most Quake engine based games attempt to fix fix that in multiplayer, and the ones that don't are generally leaving it in on purpose rather than fixing it - It's gotten harder, for example, in CS 1.6, with people sometimes even using hacks and cheats so they can do it. A short bit of research shows the developers fixed it in the 1.1.0.8 patch, but with Quake 3 Arena, it was left in deliberately.
Unfortunately, leaving a bug in deliberately does not make it a feature - Unless you also consider the Pinto's Nasty habit of exploding into flames in an accident, to the disappointment(and horrible firey death) of it's occupants a "Feature" Really? Then I'm still waiting for that compelling reason why they don't just do it, instantly, at once, and without any foreseeable problems. Or at least, providing an obvious link to it on the Bay 12 Games site, on the same page you can download the game, instead of forcing people to hunt it down - in fact, if you didn't know to look for it, I'd doubt you'd even know it existed, and would be mighty surprised if you simply stumbled across it.
I'm not asking for every Piece of user generated content. I'm asking for a single one, which would improve the playability of the game for new players, which is an entirely reasonable request. Or are you hoping it becomes mandatory that people prove themselves by deciphering an obscure interface before they get to play your fantastic game? And it's clear that not only are you a fanboy, but you're an arrogant, elitist fanboy. You're verbose and more intelligent in your manner than your regular fanboy, but a pig in lipstick is still a pig.
I'm hardly a fanboy, I'm still learning the game, but I do know a fair bit about it, and what I don't know, I can research easily, thanks to that magical creation called the internet. Don't assume what I do and do not know, as it's simply a waste of your time, as as you've already shown, your assumptions are not exactly the most accurate. You did quite well. In light of that, I even avoided pointing out that when you said It sounded a lot like you were saying that the addition of a graphics set transformed it from an excellent ASCII game into an average sprite game. I didn't ask for a mouse driven interface, I asked for graphics. Silly Dutchman, Graphics =/= Mouse driven interface. You need to work on those assumptions. I suggest that you get to it after the Arrogant fanboyisim, you know, the thing where you assume that everyone who doesn't want to play your object of slavish devotion in it's current form obviously wants something like a simple shooter or the like, rather than having to deal with your object of fanboyisim's shitty interface. I didn't say anything about using anything but the keyboard. Try to stick to insulting me for the arguments I actually make, rather than insulting arguments that you've invented wholesale. Development started in 2002. They've had eight fucking years. I don't want to have to wait until I'm greyer than the hair on the backside of mathusela's balls just to be able to play a game I'd like to play, but don't want to put up with the pile of shit that is dwarf fortress's interface. 1)Your arguments so far are "I think it's perfect" and "It's fine for me" with a dash of "If you don't like my ASCII, maybe it's not for you"
2)You already said they could be implemented tomorrow with no problems, therefore, "It's coming in the future" isn't a good enough excuse - and it's just that, not an argument, not an excuse.
3)My argument is thus - The interface is terrible. There is no good excuse not to improve it, as by your own admission, it could be done instantly and with no problems. Why don't you? I'm sorry? I can't hear you over the sonic boom produced by the point flying over your head at mach 2. See response to your point I made earlier. I was being facetious and insulting, something you're very familiar with. Do I need to lower my opinion of you and use "I'm being facetious and insulting" blue in the same manner as Sarcasm green when something is obvious? So, What you're saying here is that You never said that to get the interface I chose, I have to go and find a mod that gives me the interface I choose to have, instead, you said that to get the interface I choose I can go and find a mod that gives me that interface. Right. Gotcha. Clear as crystal, chief. Because the moment I can use the Vanilla Forums software to play Dwarf fortress, I'll be right fucking there. I Admit it, I lol'ed.
As for the interface, it's irritatingly obscure. It's like having a very complex map with it's legend, when it doesn't need to be that complex. What they currently achieve with ASCII, they could very easily achieve with sprites, or easily provide the option right there either in or with the game to do so, rather than having to download and install a mod. It's partially irritation at the obscure interface, and partially annoyance at why they don't just make the easy improvement, or at least, provide the option along with the game.
And dwarf fortress is dull.
DFII is smalltime.
Pick two.
EDIT: As for documentation, the Dwarffortress wiki is pretty fucking good.