Author: littlemute

New Dwarf Fortress Release

I have made statments to the effect that while Minecraft owns the limelight at the moment, Dwarf Fortress will eventually be the game you’ll want to be playing long term as Minecraft is really just a timewaster that runs out of steam pretty quickly. Given that Dwarf Fortress is probably a decade away from a release most people would want to play, Minecraft has a long long time to be the darling of procedurally generated mining games–however, if you can brave the incomplete-ness, there is a new Dwarf Fortress release. Clay, Caravans, Bees, Sheep shearing– tons of stuff in this build– but I wonder if you can still build a ton of fishing infrastructure only to find that fishing hasn’t been implemented…

First Game with Cosmic Conflict!

I got in on a 4 man, 4 planet game with the new expansion and it was great, though I got my ass kicked all across the galaxy during this particular game.  Fantasy Flight continues to prove that they are making the ultimate version of Cosmic Encounter with no let up in sight.  The new expansion is mostly about the new set of 20 aliens, but the 7th player cards and ships helps (black looks much better than I thought it would).

As for new rules and stuff in the box, the Hazard deck was entertaining in our first game, but it definitely made the game more crazy.  One of the Hazard cards shuffles all the cards in the hands of the player and redistributes them (same number of cards, just random ones) and this was a game changer as the landscape of Flare cards was instantly different.  A second hazard card is proof that the fantasy flight version of Cosmic Encounter will never have the Reverse Cone as one of the new Hazard cards did just that (Defensive allies get a base, offensive allies get cards).  Really thinking about the Reverse cone and the hassles surrounding it (it comes up too often in the Mayfair version) I don’t think I will miss it in the FF version.

Though others may dig it, the alien power I played in this first game did I was not a huge fan of: Warhawk.  Essentially, the Warhawk never negotiates and gets either a free Morph or a negotiate card converts to a 00 attack card.  I am a wheeler and dealer and not having the option of negotiating with other aliens is tough to swallow tactically, and also means you are always going to have to fight for your bases. With so many better combat powers out there, Warhawk is going to have a tough time competing when he can only fight it out all the time.

All in all, art, components and new rules in Cosmic Conflict are top notch and if we needed even more excuse to just play Cosmic Encounter over all other games, here it is.

Empire: Total War commentaries on completion

Finally, I was able to press END TURN enough to get the short, generic VICTORY movie at the end of the grand campaign in Empire: Total War (I had completed the victory conditions 30 turns before the end of the game).  It was a long, long slough as Sweden, moving through Russia, south through the Caucases  into Kashmir and then shooting west through Pomerania, Bavaria and onto France.   Empire is a giant game, encompassing the biggest map of the world so far in a Total War game (I actually got to fight a battle near my house in the midwest!).  The idea of conquering all of it by the time alloted is pretty daunting, but once you get on a roll, entirely possible.  I had little trouble with any of the enemy nations with the exception of Spain and England.  England managed to keep my Swedish ships out of the water for decades at a time, and against Spain, I actually lost some major land battles before they finally succumbed to a three prong attack from France, Portugal and up from the Mediterranean.

Overall, Empire: Total War was a big step up from the graphically excellent, but rather mediocre Midieaval Total War 2, with major refinements to the campaign mode, the removal of the management  of families and lineage, reduction of the importance of religion and missions from the pope or some governing body (I’m my own governing body dammit!).  In the Grand Campaign, I felt a lot more free to hack through whatever part of the planet piqued my interest at the time, regardless of race, creed or religion.  I love the fact that each of the nations speak in their own language— a really wonderful touch that I didn’t realize until I couldn’t understand anything my Swedish troops were saying on turn 1.

As for the real time battles, I found the engine to be more fun and more intense than anything in MTW2 as well, handling musket and pistol just as well as arrows and swords.    The typical AI quirks fans of the series have learned to love after all these years are still around, making flanking and harrasment your best tools against an easily flustered AI.   Sieges are still not very fun, and I would have to say they are worse than their Rome/Midieaval TW counterparts because they don’t follow what was going on during the period at all.   Sieges during this time rarely went into initial assault, instead the attackers would build, over time, a massive mine and trench system around fortifications.  Eventually, if left unmolested, the attackers would get bombards close enough to fire over the walls at which time the defenders would either surrender or prepare to receive 3 assaults through breaches, after which they could surrender with their colors.  None of this is represented in TW: Empires and I feel that’s a grevious lack of attention to detail as well as simply not being very fun to play out.

We did finally get sea battles in this version and it’s something I am really looking forward to as Creative Assembly continues to revisit the series (Shogun next!).  The sea battles are slow and tactical, but the first time you see an enemy’s magazine blow up all the build up is worth it.  That said, most of the time I let the auto-fight figure out who won unless it was a major throw down.

As for the special people: Spies, Gentleman and Priests, I really didn’t do much with two of the three.  Priests are necessary if you want the people that you just conquered to be happy by being converted to your religion, but they just sort of stand around.  Gentleman give bonuses to research and production and can duel other Gentleman, but I really didn’t pay much attention to them other than using them as semi-spies here and there.  Spies I used a great deal and were a key to success in most of the campaign, nothing new here from the early days of the series.

To conclude, Rome Total War is still my top dog in the 4X genre.  Sure the graphics are no where near TW: Empires and the campaign game is certainly not as mature, but Rome just something  about it that resonates with me. Possibly that the scale seems more appropriate, or the period is one I find entirely more compelling.  Next on my list is Napoleon Total War, but that will have to wait until I upgrade my tired socket 939.

Agile is 10!

Back in 2001 a bunch of project managers and software developers got together somewhere in Colorado, drank some beer, smoked some of them tweeds (I can only assume) and came up with a document that has since defined my career as a project manager.  I LIVE it every work day and fight the battles with my teams to balance out the left and the right of it with a focus on what works uber alles.  What I’ve seen in the years I’ve attempted to reach the Agile goals is that the Manifesto continues to be wholly relevant to every single day I work and has come to reside as a core philosophy, even when I’m stuck on some dismal waterfail project (yes, even I believe that not all projects are a good fit for Agile).

Another thing I’ve seen as companies and project groups start to implement Agile more (and in almost all cases fail in the beginning) is that there are so many ways you can get it wrong if you forget to keep referring to the Manifesto itself.  One of the old companies I worked for tried to implement Agile recently and even got a consultant to help them– but their implementation decries from great heights that they don’t even have a basic understanding of the underpinnings of the why of it all– and it has already descended into scrumfailland and to be blunt, abject stupidity.

Just like any discipline, you have to understand the philosophical underpinnings, the why of it all, to form the core beliefs that lead to success– and the creators of the Agile Manifesto has handed us this on a platter for easy consumption.  I’m never one to sit around on soft pillows talking about theory– I don’t think any project managers in existence are– but that is no excuse to not understand what the core system forming your tactical methods is all about and continuing to refer to it as arguments on systems escalate.   Granted there have been mass tomes written since on how to actually utilize the Agile methods tactically, some far better and more accessible than others so it’s much easier today to start implementation in your organization, but I feel you still need to really look yourself at the Manifesto and glean from in what’s going to work for you–then start in on the massive amounts of tactical implementation literature.  I reiterate that the tenants put forward by the writers of the manifesto are as relevant today as ever and though battles have been won against the PMI generic project management waterfail methods (i.e.: as a PMI, you can project management anything! Sorry, no.) across the planet, the war against bad software project management has only just begun.

Cosmic Conflict is on sale for you to go and buy

xenophile
Ready for Love!

It’s not quite around in stores (at least around here) but FF posted that the expansion is for sale.  Now that this is out– will there be another?  Really only your cash on the galactic barrel-head can determine it.   I read the list of aliens, as well as the list of previously published aliens that didn’t make it in and my only slight sadness is no Silencer this time.

Here is the list of (non Lucre) alien powers that are still out there to be included in a new expansion.  The bold ones are Aliens I absolutely think should be in the game. (thanks boardgamegeek’s ‘Barney Bustoffson’):

ANOMALY Changes Luck – Mayfair
ARISTOCRAT Picks Hand And Draws Flares
AURA Makes Others Reveal Hands
BERSERKER May Challenge Everyone – Mayfair
BOOMERANG Challenges Challenger
BUSYBODY Can Replace A Challenge Card – Mayfair
CONNOISSEUR Draws Double Cards – Mayfair
CRYSTAL Tells Allies Number To Commit
DELEGATOR Assigns Main Players
DEMON May Replace Offensive Player
DIPLOMAT Can Negotiate 3-Way Deals
DOPPELGANGER Gets Opponent’s Cards
GHOST Uses Tokens From Warp – Mayfair
GORGON Freezes Others’ Tokens – Mayfair
GRIEF Gets Cards In Sympathy – Mayfair
INSECT Copies Opponent’s Power
JUDGE Assigns Extra Win/Loss Terms
LASER Makes Opponent Play Blind
MAGNET Attracts Or Repels Allies
MESMER Can Change Own Artifacts
NEGATOR Reverses Decisions
OBVERSE Switches Signs – Mayfair
PAVLOV Can Reward Or Punish Opponent – Mayfair
PENTAFORM Has 5 Life Stages – Mayfair
PHANTOM Has Ghost Tokens – Mayfair
PROLONG Can Extend Challenge – Mayfair
QUEUE Selects Order Of Play – Mayfair
SCHIZOID Changes Goal Of Game
SERPENT Leads Others Astray – Mayfair
SILENCER Stops Communication By 1 Player
SKEPTIC Doubles Risk Of Challenges
STING Switches Dying Tokens – Mayfair
SUBVERSIVE Lures Opponent’s Allies – Mayfair
VAMPIRE Uses Eliminated Tokens – Mayfair
WITCH Casts Spells
WORM Repositions Cone
WRACK Tortures Opponent
WRAITH Keeps Tokens Off Board – Mayfair

wasted weekend

Ah the wasted weekend. No not the good kind, you know when it’s Sunday and you realize that all you’ve done is gone to Checkers twice and had sex with your girlfriend 13-17 times since Friday,or been in a single room with smellnerds playing Terrible Swift Sword (note I’ve never done either of these).  This weekend was nothing like that,  but sick like a fucking animal with a fever, hacking dry cough disallowing any sleep at all (literally) and lots of snot, kids screaming and crying. Delirium.  Awesome.  Given that I was in a state of semi-consciousness for almost 36 hours straight, I decided to do something I rarely do– watch movies, or rather, have movies on while I stared blankly into space.    I always watch Ninja Scroll when I’m sick– sometimes on repeat the entire time.  The main character is dying of poison and all the rest of the characters hate each other so much (or pretend to) it just works.  I’m worried that if I ever do watch it while well, I might start to get sick.  However the real gems this weekend were found hitting up the Netflicks for some of the instant view Godzilla movies.

Now, having grown up in the late 70’s, I used to walk every Saturday afternoon to my neighbor’s place up on the hill as they had a GIANT antenna and could get channel 44 out of either Madison or Chicago.  Every afternoon this station would have a double feature monster movie– usually a kaiju one and then a real monster/horror movie after that (which I didn’t want to see!).  My neighbors were good kids but loved giving beatings, especially the oldest one who was in 7th grade. If he wasn’t out shoplifting or trying to fingerblast some bezitted hoyden on a Saturday afternoon, he would grab a bean bag chair, throw me to the ground and then sit on me for most of the film.   Sometimes I couldn’t even see the films (let alone breathe).  The worst was when he would make me watch the movie following the kaiju movie instead of letting me run home– which was invariably shit like Bucket of Blood or some movie with a chick melting in a volcano (I was forced to watch that fucker TWICE)–enough to creep me out for a week or more.

Most of the time he was off fingerblasting and I actually got to see the movies– Godzilla Vs King Kong, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla, Godzilla vs Mothra, and even some Gamera here and there.  All awesome incarnate, but I really hadn’t seen or followed the Godzilla films since then–except both Godzilla 1985 and the shit-stain Americanized ‘Godzilla’ movie with Matthew Broderick.  Both of these flicks were not too good, and I figured whoever controlled the IP, just didn’t have what it took to get to the same level of awesome the 60’s and 70’s allowed.   I think I was sort of wrong, though the 80’s certainly was not a good period for our radioactive friend, the 90’s (that I always think of as the 70’s 2.0) gave us some good films it seems, none of which I’d seen.

The first flick I watched was Godzilla Vs the Smog Monster; AKA Godzilla Vs Hedorah from ’71.  While not one of the worst Godzilla films, this is an odd one with all these crazy ass people dancing around, some Monty Python-esque illustrated bits and all the Godzilla/Hedorah fight scenes taking place at night– and shot in such a way that you can’t see a damned thing.  I watched this with the sound off, so I don’t really know why all the people were dancing around but it seemed like a bad people-bullshit / Godzilla ass-kicking ratio.  Now I had see this before as a kid– I just didn’t realize how fucking weird it was.

The second was the only newish Godzilla film on instant play: Godzilla vs Destroyah from ’95.  That’s right: Destroyah.  I watched most of it with the sound off, lying in a feverish haze as I was and I didn’t realize that there were actually two Godzillas in this film:  the main one that looked like he had been attacked by red hots on his rubber suit and the other that didn’t have big back fins. Most of the beginning of the film is about this red hot Godzilla being real pissed off and destroying shit and then people talking about it.  Then he gets frozen by some ice ray contraptions on an airplane and sinks into the ocean.  Then the second one shows up on the beach and I wasn’t sure what was going on there.  Meanwhile, some aquarium fish are attacked by some small red crabs that grow into crazy big crabs that shoot lightning.  These crabs go to a power plant, kill some people and then get attacked by squads of swat-like dudes in an Aliens homage sequence.  The swat guys even have the swivel-style heavy weapons that the Marines in Aliens had.  The swat guys take a terrible beating, but eventually they burn up some of the crabs. Apparently there are a lot of them and one of them keeps growing into, of course, Destroyah.

In the end, the little Godzilla and the red hot Godzilla take on Destroyah, little Godzilla gets his ass kicked and Red Hot has a melt down that destroys Destroyah and while he dies (yes, Godzilla dies) it heals the little Godzilla.

Overall, the monster battles in this one could have been awesome, with some great cityscape models, tanks and planes flying around blowing up, yet piss-poorly edited– one minute Destroyah and Godzilla are fighting close up and Godzilla knocks Destroyah to the ground and next we see Godzilla wandering through the city as if the editors forgot that the two were in close combat, only to have Destroyah fly out of nowhere for an attack.  I honestly though it jumped a reel.  Another example in the same fight: Godzilla gets swarmed by the ‘little’ crabs — one second he’s covered in them and knocked to the ground and the next he’s thrown one (just one) to the ground and then he’s wandering through the city with none of the others around.  Where was the sucker punch from Destroyah while Godzilla is fighting off the younglings?  It doesn’t happen!  Its unbelievable all the effort that went into the explosions and model design (and yes even the acting) only to have the editing fall flat. Inexcusable really. Despite all that, this is a pretty badass movie, for, you know people wrestling around in rubber suits as is the kaiju way.  Godzilla is SUPER pissed off in every scene he’s in– obviously in terrible anguish as he’s all red hot with radiation. Both the special effects and direction did a fantastic job with this there’s little confusion to the viewer that GZ is out to just terribly fuck shit up all over the place.

All in all this wasted weekend whetted my appetite for more Godzilla flicks– especially the most recent ones (Final Wars and the mega titled: Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack –  yes that’s the title).