I have been playing AC Odyssey lately, and still feel I am rather close to
the beginning, despite nearing the 60 hour mark. That all is a bit weird,
as previous ACs even if they were good had some serious issues keeping my
interest after about 20 or 30 hours or so. Last summer I was playing AC
Brotherhood, and even though it was a good game, at one point I just
wanted it to be over. I managed to get Black Flag past the 50 hour mark,
but I had to stop and restart twice because I lost interest.
Odyssey on the other hand it much closer to that real kind of RPG gameplay
that I like, to the point where the repetitive missions become a bit
grating.

One interesting part of the experience is that despite advertising the
presence of a medusa in the cover art used for Steam... there actually is
very little fantasy in there so far. Besides the typical Assassin's Creed
fare of people who can hang on to tiny precipices with their fingertips
while wearing heavy armor, and the ability to survive falls from any
height as long as there's a small heap of leaves on the ground. But that's
all explained in the more sci-fi elements of the setting.
Which makes the game the most low fantasy RPG I have played so far I
think. The setting is ancient Greece at the time of the wars between
Sparta and Athens, which also is rather convenient because that was one of
those periods we learned about in school really well.

If there's one thing that annoys me though it's the crowded world it
presents. Unlike World of Warcraft for example, which is a great example
of building a world that is both small but looks big, this one grates my
suspension of disbelief almost immediately. It's all ok when you are on
the tiny island at the start, but once you find an Athens where the walled
passage to Piraeus is a 100 meter wall section, and where you can see the
houses on Salamis from the port... yeah. Everything's a bit... small.

Am 13.08.24 um 15:29 schrieb kyonshi:
> If there's one thing that annoys me though it's the crowded world it
> presents. Unlike World of Warcraft for example, which is a great example
> of building a world that is both small but looks big, this one grates my
> suspension of disbelief almost immediately. It's all ok when you are on
> the tiny island at the start, but once you find an Athens where the walled
> passage to Piraeus is a 100 meter wall section, and where you can see the
> houses on Salamis from the port... yeah. Everything's a bit... small.
My main problem is the repetitiveness of the side missions just to fill
the world, less would have been more for this game. It would have been
an excellent game if they just focused on the main story and added a
little bit of fluff and reduce the open world to semi open!
But basically you go into every town and every town has the same 5-10
soulless side missions which partially you have to perform to get the
stats ramped up until you can continue the main mission. Thats the
reason why I only play this game in chunks, I usually get bored by it
after 5-10 hours. Also given that I live in Europe and have been to
Greece several times, the setting is historic for me but not exotic!

On 9/2/2024 8:20 AM, Werner P. wrote:
> Am 13.08.24 um 15:29 schrieb kyonshi:
>> If there's one thing that annoys me though it's the crowded world it
>> presents. Unlike World of Warcraft for example, which is a great example
>> of building a world that is both small but looks big, this one grates my
>> suspension of disbelief almost immediately. It's all ok when you are on
>> the tiny island at the start, but once you find an Athens where the
>> walled
>> passage to Piraeus is a 100 meter wall section, and where you can see the
>> houses on Salamis from the port... yeah. Everything's a bit... small.
> My main problem is the repetitiveness of the side missions just to fill
> the world, less would have been more for this game. It would have been
> an excellent game if they just focused on the main story and added a
> little bit of fluff and reduce the open world to semi open!
> But basically you go into every town and every town has the same 5-10
> soulless side missions which partially you have to perform to get the
> stats ramped up until you can continue the main mission. Thats the
> reason why I only play this game in chunks, I usually get bored by it
> after 5-10 hours. Also given that I live in Europe and have been to
> Greece several times, the setting is historic for me but not exotic!
>

Well, I live in Europe as well, and it's quite nice to see an
approximation of what the world looked back in the day.
Still. It's just an approximation. A theme park version.

On Tue, 3 Sep 2024 12:35:41 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 9/2/2024 8:20 AM, Werner P. wrote:
>> Am 13.08.24 um 15:29 schrieb kyonshi:
>>> If there's one thing that annoys me though it's the crowded world it
>>> presents. Unlike World of Warcraft for example, which is a great example
>>> of building a world that is both small but looks big, this one grates my
>>> suspension of disbelief almost immediately. It's all ok when you are on
>>> the tiny island at the start, but once you find an Athens where the
>>> walled
>>> passage to Piraeus is a 100 meter wall section, and where you can see the
>>> houses on Salamis from the port... yeah. Everything's a bit... small.
>> My main problem is the repetitiveness of the side missions just to fill
>> the world, less would have been more for this game. It would have been
>> an excellent game if they just focused on the main story and added a
>> little bit of fluff and reduce the open world to semi open!
>> But basically you go into every town and every town has the same 5-10
>> soulless side missions which partially you have to perform to get the
>> stats ramped up until you can continue the main mission. Thats the
>> reason why I only play this game in chunks, I usually get bored by it
>> after 5-10 hours. Also given that I live in Europe and have been to
>> Greece several times, the setting is historic for me but not exotic!
>>
>
>Well, I live in Europe as well, and it's quite nice to see an
>approximation of what the world looked back in the day.
>Still. It's just an approximation. A theme park version.

I mean, that's true of pretty much every game placed in a 'real world'
setting. Manhattan in "The Division" isn't really like the real New
York at all. The Tokyo in "Ghostwire" isn't the same as its real-life
counterpart either. Paris in "The Saboteur" was completely different.
They're _all_ theme-park versions of the real thing.

But I get what you're saying. These something secretly joyful about
roaming streets you know, seeing sights _mostly_ familiar, and having
fantastic adventures in those locales.

The only game I can think of to truly nail the real-world look is "MS
Flight Simulator 20202"... and even then it's a bit theme-parky at
times. But at least the geography is (more or less) correct. ;-)

On 9/5/2024 2:14 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Sep 2024 12:35:41 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 9/2/2024 8:20 AM, Werner P. wrote:
>>> Am 13.08.24 um 15:29 schrieb kyonshi:
>>>> If there's one thing that annoys me though it's the crowded world it
>>>> presents. Unlike World of Warcraft for example, which is a great example
>>>> of building a world that is both small but looks big, this one grates my
>>>> suspension of disbelief almost immediately. It's all ok when you are on
>>>> the tiny island at the start, but once you find an Athens where the
>>>> walled
>>>> passage to Piraeus is a 100 meter wall section, and where you can see the
>>>> houses on Salamis from the port... yeah. Everything's a bit... small.
>>> My main problem is the repetitiveness of the side missions just to fill
>>> the world, less would have been more for this game. It would have been
>>> an excellent game if they just focused on the main story and added a
>>> little bit of fluff and reduce the open world to semi open!
>>> But basically you go into every town and every town has the same 5-10
>>> soulless side missions which partially you have to perform to get the
>>> stats ramped up until you can continue the main mission. Thats the
>>> reason why I only play this game in chunks, I usually get bored by it
>>> after 5-10 hours. Also given that I live in Europe and have been to
>>> Greece several times, the setting is historic for me but not exotic!
>>>
>>
>> Well, I live in Europe as well, and it's quite nice to see an
>> approximation of what the world looked back in the day.
>> Still. It's just an approximation. A theme park version.
>
> I mean, that's true of pretty much every game placed in a 'real world'
> setting. Manhattan in "The Division" isn't really like the real New
> York at all. The Tokyo in "Ghostwire" isn't the same as its real-life
> counterpart either. Paris in "The Saboteur" was completely different.
> They're _all_ theme-park versions of the real thing.
>
> But I get what you're saying. These something secretly joyful about
> roaming streets you know, seeing sights _mostly_ familiar, and having
> fantastic adventures in those locales.
>
> The only game I can think of to truly nail the real-world look is "MS
> Flight Simulator 20202"... and even then it's a bit theme-parky at
> times. But at least the geography is (more or less) correct. ;-)
>
>

My main issue is that AC:O it just is a bit too small. In a lot of ways
it doesn't keep you from seeing the next region. You are aware that
there is a region right next door in a lot of cases (because a lot of it
is set on the open sea).
World of Warcraft (at least the Vanilla regions) is really good about
that. Sure, it still isn't big, but when you are in any region, except
maybe at the edges, you can easily forget that this is just a small
area. AC:O on the other hand puts a lot of important scenes and
locations at the edges, which means you see the next region constantly,
even though otherwise the areas are likely much larger.

On Fri, 6 Sep 2024 10:13:39 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 9/5/2024 2:14 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>> On Tue, 3 Sep 2024 12:35:41 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 9/2/2024 8:20 AM, Werner P. wrote:
>>>> Am 13.08.24 um 15:29 schrieb kyonshi:
>>>>> If there's one thing that annoys me though it's the crowded world it
>>>>> presents. Unlike World of Warcraft for example, which is a great example
>>>>> of building a world that is both small but looks big, this one grates my
>>>>> suspension of disbelief almost immediately. It's all ok when you are on
>>>>> the tiny island at the start, but once you find an Athens where the
>>>>> walled
>>>>> passage to Piraeus is a 100 meter wall section, and where you can see the
>>>>> houses on Salamis from the port... yeah. Everything's a bit... small.
>>>> My main problem is the repetitiveness of the side missions just to fill
>>>> the world, less would have been more for this game. It would have been
>>>> an excellent game if they just focused on the main story and added a
>>>> little bit of fluff and reduce the open world to semi open!
>>>> But basically you go into every town and every town has the same 5-10
>>>> soulless side missions which partially you have to perform to get the
>>>> stats ramped up until you can continue the main mission. Thats the
>>>> reason why I only play this game in chunks, I usually get bored by it
>>>> after 5-10 hours. Also given that I live in Europe and have been to
>>>> Greece several times, the setting is historic for me but not exotic!
>>>>
>>>
>>> Well, I live in Europe as well, and it's quite nice to see an
>>> approximation of what the world looked back in the day.
>>> Still. It's just an approximation. A theme park version.
>>
>> I mean, that's true of pretty much every game placed in a 'real world'
>> setting. Manhattan in "The Division" isn't really like the real New
>> York at all. The Tokyo in "Ghostwire" isn't the same as its real-life
>> counterpart either. Paris in "The Saboteur" was completely different.
>> They're _all_ theme-park versions of the real thing.
>>
>> But I get what you're saying. These something secretly joyful about
>> roaming streets you know, seeing sights _mostly_ familiar, and having
>> fantastic adventures in those locales.
>>
>> The only game I can think of to truly nail the real-world look is "MS
>> Flight Simulator 20202"... and even then it's a bit theme-parky at
>> times. But at least the geography is (more or less) correct. ;-)
>>
>>
>
>My main issue is that AC:O it just is a bit too small. In a lot of ways
>it doesn't keep you from seeing the next region. You are aware that
>there is a region right next door in a lot of cases (because a lot of it
>is set on the open sea).
>World of Warcraft (at least the Vanilla regions) is really good about
>that. Sure, it still isn't big, but when you are in any region, except
>maybe at the edges, you can easily forget that this is just a small
>area. AC:O on the other hand puts a lot of important scenes and
>locations at the edges, which means you see the next region constantly,
>even though otherwise the areas are likely much larger.

That's a problem with a lot of games. On the one hand, they want to
appear huge and open... so make a big map with long sight-lines. But
actually creating huge worlds is really expensive, and traversing them
is often quite dull. So you need to find a balance: make the world
small enough that you can afford to populate it with enough things
that it's actually fun to wander through, and still make the game FEEL
large.

It's a balancing act. Create a world too big and people complain about
how annoying it is to cross. Make it too small and people bitch about
that too. Tighten the sight-lines with mountains and hills that
obstruct the view, and the world feels claustrophobic. Make it so you
can see for miles and you destroy the illusion you're trying to
create.

Some games do it better than others. But the falsity of those worlds
is often easy to see.

Some games go overboard with their size. "Fuel" (a racing game from
2009) gave players a map roughly the size of Denmark (or the US state
of Maryland) and it was endless swathes of nothing. "Grand Theft Auto
5" had a map roughly 80 square kilometers and -while it was plenty
diverse and had a surprising amount of interactivity- after twenty or
thirty hours you started running out of things to do. "Assassins Creed
4: Black Flag" had an even bigger map... but much of that was ocean,
and even then you sometimes felt like cities were just next door.

[One of my favorite games is the original "Gothic" game,
released way back in 2001. And one of the reasons I like
it so much is because how it dealt with the size issue.
Like most CRPGs, it wanted to have multiple regions with
different cities and 'cultures'... but the technology of
the time only allowed them to create a fairly tiny map
(~3 square kilometers). So instead of pretending this
tiny region was a whole huge world, they put the whole
thing into a small isolated valley and created a fiction
that explained the diversity. (Sadly, by the time of
"Gothic 3", they reverted to the old standard of
creating a 20x20 km map and expecting us to believe it
was a huge continent ;-)]

But in the end, it's all illusion, and it rarely takes too much prying
to see the edges of the fakery.

Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Sep 2024 10:13:39 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 9/5/2024 2:14 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>>> On Tue, 3 Sep 2024 12:35:41 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 9/2/2024 8:20 AM, Werner P. wrote:
>>>>> Am 13.08.24 um 15:29 schrieb kyonshi:
>>>>>> If there's one thing that annoys me though it's the crowded world it
>>>>>> presents. Unlike World of Warcraft for example, which is a great example
>>>>>> of building a world that is both small but looks big, this one grates my
>>>>>> suspension of disbelief almost immediately. It's all ok when you are on
>>>>>> the tiny island at the start, but once you find an Athens where the
>>>>>> walled
>>>>>> passage to Piraeus is a 100 meter wall section, and where you can see the
>>>>>> houses on Salamis from the port... yeah. Everything's a bit... small.
>>>>> My main problem is the repetitiveness of the side missions just to fill
>>>>> the world, less would have been more for this game. It would have been
>>>>> an excellent game if they just focused on the main story and added a
>>>>> little bit of fluff and reduce the open world to semi open!
>>>>> But basically you go into every town and every town has the same 5-10
>>>>> soulless side missions which partially you have to perform to get the
>>>>> stats ramped up until you can continue the main mission. Thats the
>>>>> reason why I only play this game in chunks, I usually get bored by it
>>>>> after 5-10 hours. Also given that I live in Europe and have been to
>>>>> Greece several times, the setting is historic for me but not exotic!
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Well, I live in Europe as well, and it's quite nice to see an
>>>> approximation of what the world looked back in the day.
>>>> Still. It's just an approximation. A theme park version.
>>>
>>> I mean, that's true of pretty much every game placed in a 'real world'
>>> setting. Manhattan in "The Division" isn't really like the real New
>>> York at all. The Tokyo in "Ghostwire" isn't the same as its real-life
>>> counterpart either. Paris in "The Saboteur" was completely different.
>>> They're _all_ theme-park versions of the real thing.
>>>
>>> But I get what you're saying. These something secretly joyful about
>>> roaming streets you know, seeing sights _mostly_ familiar, and having
>>> fantastic adventures in those locales.
>>>
>>> The only game I can think of to truly nail the real-world look is "MS
>>> Flight Simulator 20202"... and even then it's a bit theme-parky at
>>> times. But at least the geography is (more or less) correct. ;-)
>>>
>>>
>>
>> My main issue is that AC:O it just is a bit too small. In a lot of ways
>> it doesn't keep you from seeing the next region. You are aware that
>> there is a region right next door in a lot of cases (because a lot of it
>> is set on the open sea).
>> World of Warcraft (at least the Vanilla regions) is really good about
>> that. Sure, it still isn't big, but when you are in any region, except
>> maybe at the edges, you can easily forget that this is just a small
>> area. AC:O on the other hand puts a lot of important scenes and
>> locations at the edges, which means you see the next region constantly,
>> even though otherwise the areas are likely much larger.
>
> That's a problem with a lot of games. On the one hand, they want to
> appear huge and open... so make a big map with long sight-lines. But
> actually creating huge worlds is really expensive, and traversing them
> is often quite dull. So you need to find a balance: make the world
> small enough that you can afford to populate it with enough things
> that it's actually fun to wander through, and still make the game FEEL
> large.
>
> It's a balancing act. Create a world too big and people complain about
> how annoying it is to cross. Make it too small and people bitch about
> that too. Tighten the sight-lines with mountains and hills that
> obstruct the view, and the world feels claustrophobic. Make it so you
> can see for miles and you destroy the illusion you're trying to
> create.
>
> Some games do it better than others. But the falsity of those worlds
> is often easy to see.
>
> Some games go overboard with their size. "Fuel" (a racing game from
> 2009) gave players a map roughly the size of Denmark (or the US state
> of Maryland) and it was endless swathes of nothing. "Grand Theft Auto
> 5" had a map roughly 80 square kilometers and -while it was plenty
> diverse and had a surprising amount of interactivity- after twenty or
> thirty hours you started running out of things to do. "Assassins Creed
> 4: Black Flag" had an even bigger map... but much of that was ocean,
> and even then you sometimes felt like cities were just next door.
>
> [One of my favorite games is the original "Gothic" game,
> released way back in 2001. And one of the reasons I like
> it so much is because how it dealt with the size issue.
> Like most CRPGs, it wanted to have multiple regions with
> different cities and 'cultures'... but the technology of
> the time only allowed them to create a fairly tiny map
> (~3 square kilometers). So instead of pretending this
> tiny region was a whole huge world, they put the whole
> thing into a small isolated valley and created a fiction
> that explained the diversity. (Sadly, by the time of
> "Gothic 3", they reverted to the old standard of
> creating a 20x20 km map and expecting us to believe it
> was a huge continent ;-)]
>
>
> But in the end, it's all illusion, and it rarely takes too much prying
> to see the edges of the fakery.
>
>
It's probably better to err on the side of "too big." I played Zelda:
Breath of Life and found it about right. I ended up going to a website
to discover the location of two shrines I was missing in running over
the area. Breath of Life did it really well, but that is about as AAA a
game as you can find, being Zelda. You know they did some research on
the matter.

On Fri, 6 Sep 2024 11:49:17 -0500, Altered Beast <j63480576@gmail.com>
wrote:

>It's probably better to err on the side of "too big." I played Zelda:
>Breath of Life and found it about right. I ended up going to a website
>to discover the location of two shrines I was missing in running over
>the area. Breath of Life did it really well, but that is about as AAA a
>game as you can find, being Zelda. You know they did some research on
>the matter.

YMMV. I've grown increasingly tired of all these huge-for-the-sake-
of-being-huge games. Partly because I just don't want to dedicate 500
hours to exploring every nook and cranny. But also because -in order
to fill out all these aforementioned nooks and crannies- developers
are increasingly turning towards procedural generation and the result
is just boring grind. I'd much rather a smaller, better paced
adventure.

But that's just me. The nice thing about modern video gaming is
there's a game to suit EVERYBODY'S taste these days. ;-)

On 9/7/2024 6:16 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Sep 2024 11:49:17 -0500, Altered Beast <j63480576@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>> It's probably better to err on the side of "too big." I played Zelda:
>> Breath of Life and found it about right. I ended up going to a website
>> to discover the location of two shrines I was missing in running over
>> the area. Breath of Life did it really well, but that is about as AAA a
>> game as you can find, being Zelda. You know they did some research on
>> the matter.
>
> YMMV. I've grown increasingly tired of all these huge-for-the-sake-
> of-being-huge games. Partly because I just don't want to dedicate 500
> hours to exploring every nook and cranny. But also because -in order
> to fill out all these aforementioned nooks and crannies- developers
> are increasingly turning towards procedural generation and the result
> is just boring grind. I'd much rather a smaller, better paced
> adventure.
>
> But that's just me. The nice thing about modern video gaming is
> there's a game to suit EVERYBODY'S taste these days. ;-)
>
>

I get you. Some of those games are just too damn large and not
interesting enough. I even count Skyrim to that, which I have started
twice and never finished because I keep losing interest.
But of course Elder Scrolls always had that procedural generation stuff
down, I remember Arena and it's endlessly boring randomly generated areas.

On 9/7/2024 9:16 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Sep 2024 11:49:17 -0500, Altered Beast <j63480576@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>> It's probably better to err on the side of "too big." I played Zelda:
>> Breath of Life and found it about right. I ended up going to a website
>> to discover the location of two shrines I was missing in running over
>> the area. Breath of Life did it really well, but that is about as AAA a
>> game as you can find, being Zelda. You know they did some research on
>> the matter.
>
> YMMV. I've grown increasingly tired of all these huge-for-the-sake-
> of-being-huge games. Partly because I just don't want to dedicate 500
> hours to exploring every nook and cranny. But also because -in order
> to fill out all these aforementioned nooks and crannies- developers
> are increasingly turning towards procedural generation and the result
> is just boring grind. I'd much rather a smaller, better paced
> adventure.
>
> But that's just me. The nice thing about modern video gaming is
> there's a game to suit EVERYBODY'S taste these days. ;-)
>
And some that suit nobody's taste but the one person who created it.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On 9/7/2024 9:35 PM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
> On 9/7/2024 9:16 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>> On Fri, 6 Sep 2024 11:49:17 -0500, Altered Beast <j63480576@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> It's probably better to err on the side of "too big."  I played Zelda:
>>> Breath of Life and found it about right.  I ended up going to a website
>>> to discover the location of two shrines I was missing in running over
>>> the area.  Breath of Life did it really well, but that is about as AAA a
>>> game as you can find, being Zelda.  You know they did some research on
>>> the matter.
>>
>> YMMV. I've grown increasingly tired of all these huge-for-the-sake-
>> of-being-huge games. Partly because I just don't want to dedicate 500
>> hours to exploring every nook and cranny. But also because -in order
>> to fill out all these aforementioned nooks and crannies- developers
>> are increasingly turning towards procedural generation and the result
>> is just boring grind. I'd much rather a smaller, better paced
>> adventure.
>>
>> But that's just me. The nice thing about modern video gaming is
>> there's a game to suit EVERYBODY'S taste these days. ;-)
>>
> And some that suit nobody's taste but the one person who created it.
>

Well, but there were examples of that before. Anyone remember
Battlecruiser 3000AD?

On Sun, 8 Sep 2024 12:02:56 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 9/7/2024 9:35 PM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
>> On 9/7/2024 9:16 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

>>> But that's just me. The nice thing about modern video gaming is
>>> there's a game to suit EVERYBODY'S taste these days. ;-)
>>>
>> And some that suit nobody's taste but the one person who created it.

>Well, but there were examples of that before. Anyone remember
>Battlecruiser 3000AD?

Shhhh! Not so loud! HE is still around, lurking, just waiting for
somebody to say his name. Do not let him loose again. It took us long
enough to bind him the first time. ;-)

On 9/8/2024 9:16 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Sun, 8 Sep 2024 12:02:56 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 9/7/2024 9:35 PM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
>>> On 9/7/2024 9:16 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
>>>> But that's just me. The nice thing about modern video gaming is
>>>> there's a game to suit EVERYBODY'S taste these days. ;-)
>>>>
>>> And some that suit nobody's taste but the one person who created it.
>
>> Well, but there were examples of that before. Anyone remember
>> Battlecruiser 3000AD?
>
> Shhhh! Not so loud! HE is still around, lurking, just waiting for
> somebody to say his name. Do not let him loose again. It took us long
> enough to bind him the first time. ;-)
>
Was that project ever actually released?

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On 9/8/2024 7:07 PM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:

>>
> Was that project ever actually released?
>

I got it on a magazine cover disc back in the days when PC magazines
still had cover discs. I never was able to get it running though, so I
don't have a clue if it actually worked.

On Sun, 8 Sep 2024 23:21:30 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 9/8/2024 7:07 PM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
>
>>>
>> Was that project ever actually released?
>>
>
>I got it on a magazine cover disc back in the days when PC magazines
>still had cover discs. I never was able to get it running though, so I
>don't have a clue if it actually worked.

It came out, and was never really very good.
He-who-shall-not-be-mentioned worked diligently on it for numerous
years (and there were several updated retail versions reflecting this)
but most of the changes were focused on bugs and performance issues.
Unfortunately, it was the underlying mechanics that were the problem.
The game just wasn't _fun_. It had a god-awful control scheme, and a
general lack of focus.

But credit to The-Name-That-Shall-Not-Be-Said. He was trying to create
a sandbox game, before the technology was up to the task (or before
the idea of 'sandbox games' had even crystalized). The conceit behind
the game was to give you full control over the eponymous
battlecruiser; you could, the idea was, take on the role of captain,
or navigator, or gunsman, or engineer, or fighter pilot, or space
marine.

[The biggest problem with the game was that these roles
actually weren't optional; you were required to take on
ALL the roles, which was just added too much complexity and
micromanagement to be fun... or doable.]

While the Unnamed-Demon-Spirit-of-Usenet wasn't up to the task of
creating such a game, but he definitely had vision. Ten years later
(and with a skilled team) the game might actually have been worth
playing.

Am 07.09.24 um 20:49 schrieb Kyonshi:
> I get you. Some of those games are just too damn large and not
> interesting enough. I even count Skyrim to that, which I have started
> twice and never finished because I keep losing interest.
> But of course Elder Scrolls always had that procedural generation stuff
> down, I remember Arena and it's endlessly boring randomly generated areas.

Skyrim more or less is the anti thesis of an interesting open world
game, despite not procedurally generated it is a generic run of the mill
fantasy world with characters you can forget after talking to them once.
If you want a really good open world game, play the 2 new Zeldas, they
are absolutely the anti thesis to Skyrim and have a very ultima like
feel to it, where every nook and cranny you can find is interesting and
counts and every character has an interesting story to tell!
I just wished developers would make smaller but interesting open worlds
instead of boring generic ones they then fill with a spreadsheet table
of TODOs which repeats ad infinitum. The older open world designs of the
80s and 90s from origin and a few other studios were way better than
most of modern waypoint/spreadsheet open worlds regarding this aspect!

Am 08.09.24 um 18:16 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:
>> Well, but there were examples of that before. Anyone remember
>> Battlecruiser 3000AD?
> Shhhh! Not so loud! HE is still around, lurking, just waiting for
> somebody to say his name. Do not let him loose again. It took us long
> enough to bind him the first time. 😉

Voldemort?
Sorry I said his name!

Am 08.09.24 um 19:07 schrieb Dimensional Traveler:
>> Shhhh! Not so loud! HE is still around, lurking, just waiting for
>> somebody to say his name. Do not let him loose again. It took us long
>> enough to bind him the first time. 😉
>>
> Was that project ever actually released?
yes buggy as hell, but it was quite impressive for a one person project,
it is clear DS was way over his head with this one, but he released it
nevertheless!

Am 09.09.24 um 17:43 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:
> While the Unnamed-Demon-Spirit-of-Usenet wasn't up to the task of
> creating such a game, but he definitely had vision. Ten years later
> (and with a skilled team) the game might actually have been worth
> playing.
Very likely but the question is whether he ever had the finances for
such a game. Btw. recently saw a video about how Elite was created, the
code is pure genious!