Old Game Tuesday - Stars!
Apr 29, 2008 PC Games
As I roll through these old games, you are going to notice that 4X games are well-represented. One of my personal favorites is Stars!, released wa-a-ay back in 1995. Jeff Johnson and Jeff McBride created the game for their own enjoyment, and decided to release it as Shareware. People still did that back then, you know. I came in a bit later, after Empire Interactive picked it up to sell in stores.
By the way, a bit on 4X: it means eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate. The details vary game to game, but in general in a 4X game you start with a base of operations (your home planet in Stars!, or your Settler unit in Civ), from which you expand your territory. You have to exploit the resources of the map, and exterminate your opponents. That’s one that varies now, as there are usually less than lethal win conditions.
Stars! has all the 4x standards. You begin with one planet and a couple of ships. Early turns are spent exploring the nearby systems and colonizing whatever ones are habitable by your (customizable) race. During this time your scientific research is progressing, and some basic improvements are being built. Soon enough, you will encounter your first opponent, ripe for destruction. As time goes by, your research ramps up and you start learning of new technologies, from weapons and shields to new terraforming abilities. If there is one downside to the game, it’s the sheer volume of stuff to manage. There are dozens of ship parts, for example, and a whole mess of hulls for custom-designing ships. It really hepls to try and keep a standard naming convention for ships, creative names are fun but not when you can’t remember the stats for each one. There’s a TON of micro-management in the game, which of course is not for everyone, but can get tedious. Thankfully, planetary management has some helpful shortcuts, including the ability to save preset build orders. You can set a default that any new colony starts to build as well.
There is a lot more I could say - this is one of those games that I always come back to, and it never gets old. It’s very hard to find, I’m not even sure if you can get CD keys for it any more, but if you like this style game and find a copy, try it!
Robot Snow Shovel For Places That Don’t Need It
With the incredibly inventive name I-Shovel, to boot. I’ve been expecting something like this, to be honest, but I can’t imagine it will be tough enough to work during a real snowstorm. Spotted at Gizmodo.
Injuries VS Wins
Apr 28, 2008 NHL
Behind the Net has a great article about something many of us wonder about: How many wins do you lose when that top line player gets injured? Here’s the basics of the methodology:
For the last five seasons, I looked at forwards who averaged 19 minutes or more per game and defensemen who averaged 21 minutes or more - and who played between 52 and 74 games with a single team. This roughly corresponds to a team’s top two forwards and top two defensemen. I compared their team’s record with them in the lineup to its record with them out of the lineup.
From this, Hawerchuk determined that a top-tier forward (the guys that get 19min+ of icetime) can cost you about 1.5 wins, whereas a top defenseman (21min+) costs as much as 4 wins.
Tags: behind the net, Hockey, NHL, stats
Are the Bills Doing Well?
Apr 27, 2008 NFL
I freely admit I’m not a College Football guy, haven’t been for years. I have to say, it really seems like the Bills are making some solid picks in the draft this year, addressing needs that they have, and not letting what other teams are doing dictate what they need to do. What do you think?
Loading ...Tags: B-Lo Sports, bills, draft, football, NFL
Just in Time for the Clan Invasion of the Inner Sphere
Gizmodo brings me this little bit of terror…apparently someone wants to make HUGE Forest Fire fighting robots. With MASSIVE SAW BLADES at the ends of the arms. But of COURSE it will NEVER be used for any sort of military purpose, right? And it will stay perfectly within our control, at all times. Okay! I’m glad it’s just a far-off model at this point, don’t know about you.
Tags: forest fire, gizmodo, robot, robot overlords, robots
Kissing Suzy Kolber Outdoes The Onion
Apr 24, 2008 NFL
After Rejecting Other Deals, Bengals Trade Chad Johnson to Tyler Perry
CINCINNATI — A day after declining the Washington Redskins’ offer of potentially two first-round picks for wide receiver Chad Johnson, the Cincinnati Bengals shipped the restive wideout to omnipresent comedian Tyler Perry.
“Chad will fit in well with our stereotype-laden productions filled with embarrassingly silly, shiftless blacks,” Perry said from the set of his latest movie, “Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to The Church Social,” which will be released exactly a week after his current project “Tyler Perry’s Meet The Browns” leaves theatres.
“I got a vision for Chad. This next movie has a need for a goofy black mail carrier who occasionally hits the pipe. Knowing him, it won’t be hard to work in a exuberant dance number everytime he cracks a joke.”
Well played, Ape, well played, but I think the Bengals could’ve gotten more.
Tags: bengals, christmas ape, cincinatti, football, johnson, kissing suzy kolber, NFL, tyler perry
Blog Oh! Blog
Apr 23, 2008 Media
I’ve received some positive comments on the design of my blog (the latest one, that is), and I just wanted to give you folks an idea of where it all comes from. The theme is called Limit, and was designed by Jai Nischal Verma of Blog Oh! Blog. I’m always drawn to the Free Themes from Jai whenever I find them (whether at Weblog Tools Collection or elsewhere). The themes are fully featured, kept up to date (just recently mentioned that he’s updating all of them with the Gravatar tweaks most of you WordPress users read about on your dashboards) and attractively designed. I just downloaded a few more to try out just now, and I am happy with the one I have. If you are a pro blogger (that is to say, making actual money at all this blogging business) and want to go higher tech still, there are very nice paid designs available at BoB. You can also ask for a Custom Paid Theme, giving example sites and your basic requirements.
In addition to the theming, BoB covers WordPress itself, coding (HTML, CSS, etc.) and the blogosphere in general. Jai is currently running a contest to win a PS3 so if you like WordPress and want to upgrade your look, check it out. I’m off to check out those other themes…
Tags: blog, blog oh! blog, contest, playstation 3, ps3, theme, wordpress
Ubuntu Cheat Sheet
Apr 23, 2008 Software
I’m an occasional user of Ubuntu (had a DVR running with MythTV when I had an extra system), and with the release of Hardy Heron coming up, FOSSwire has created a new Ubuntu cheat sheet for non-Linux folks who want to try it out. Many of these things have Windows-style GUIs you can use, but if you want to learn more about the command-line, it’s a great reference. Spotted at Lifehacker.
Tags: fosswire, hardy heron, lifehacker, linux, ubuntu
Old Game Tuesday - M.U.L.E.
Apr 22, 2008 PC Games
M.U.L.E. holds the distinction of being the game I’ve probably played the longest. I was first exposed to it on my old Commodore 64, and though there are many classics from that era (which may be covered here in the future), this is the one that has kept my interest continually since then.
M.U.L.E. is a game of economic strategy. You begin as colonists on the planet Irata (it’s Atari backwards, you see). The goal is to build up the colony for a set period of time based on the difficulty level chosen, and individually, to build your wealth. Up to four players could participate, either human or computer, and there were multiple ’species’ to choose from with various bonuses or handicaps. Each pioneer picks plots of land (with an occasional auction of additional plots) and then takes turns working them. The M.U.L.E.s (Multiple Use Labor Elements) themselves are robotic assistants that are outfitted with equipment to harvest Food, Energy, Smithore (to make more M.U.L.E.s) and Crystite (in Tournament mode). After each player has their turn, their plots of land experience their growth cycle, assuming they have a M.U.L.E. on them that is outfitted properly. Oh, and there is a bit of game balance each turn. The player with the lowest score gets a boon (bonus money from an inheritance, etc.) and the player with the highest gets smacked down a bit (darn glak-elves).
Next up is the auction…and here’s where it gets nasty. Each player gets a chance to buy and sell the various commodities, either to other players or the store. The store runs out at times, though, forcing you to rely on the other players for what you need to survive. Not enough energy, some of your plots go fallow. No food, and you have very little time to work your plots. If the colony has no smithore, no more M.U.L.E.s, or the cost of them go up. There is a fine line, you want to be the winner, but if the colony collapses, you all lose. You can try and hoard all the energy and force your opponents to pay through the nose - they even provided a way to collude with another player as a feature - but an ill-timed global event (pirates stealing all the smithore!) could be disastrous.
The game was developed by Dan (later Dani) Bunten, who also made several other favorites of mine, Seven Cities of Gold and Command HQ. She pioneered several features that are commonplace in games now, including multiplayer and modem/network gaming. M.U.L.E. is widely available via emulation, with the original Atari 800 version being the most popular. I’ll link it up tonight if I get a chance. Now I’m off to hunt the mountain wampus…
edit: Here’s the link, just go to the download page and pick your version of Windows. Has everything you need. You can even play over the network or internet with a bit of work.
Tags: bunten, games, gaming, m.u.l.e., ogt, pc games, pc gaming, wampus
Three Games in Four Nights
Apr 22, 2008 NHL
With the Sabres’ season over earlier than the last two seasons, I thought I’d take a look at something that seems to happen to the Sabres more than other teams - playing 3 games in 4 nights - and see if there is any reason to fear it.
My unofficial count showed 14 instances of 3 in 4 for the Sabres (may have missed one), for a total of 42 games. They got 53 out of a possible 84 points in those games (63% of possible points). Buffalo’s record in those games? 25-14-3. The record in the other games was 14-17-9. Pretty surprising, isn’t it? Were all the 3in4’s making the team tired for the other games, then? Buffalo won all 3 games of these 3in4’s 4 times, and lost all 3 (in regulation, OT or SO) only once. They went 1-2 5 times (including an OTL in one of those) and 2-1 4 times (again, including an OTL for one of the losses). Didn’t see much correlation between home and away for these either, as some of the 3-0 series had 2 travel days (either home/away/home or away/home/away).
A bit later, I’m going to take a lot at some of the other playoff teams that squeaked into the Eastern Conference playoffs and see if they fared better or worse.
Tags: 3 games in 4 nights, 3in4, B-Lo Sports, Hockey, NHL, playoffs, sabres, three games in four nights
