PC Game Space Race Victory

So much to blog about, so little time

Our regular readers have probably noticed a marked decline in post quantity lately, as everyone here at SRV is currently struggling with a massive set of overlapping deadlines which have left very little time for even playing computer games, much less blogging! On the other hand, these same regular readers have probably also noticed that we've finally upgraded to the new version of Blogger, so you should expect some gradual changes through the spring and summer as we discover Blogger's new features.

Some quick news items of note:

• The extremely exciting news that another expansion pack for Civilization IV entitled Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword is on the way. This pack will apparently include a number of general upgrades to the core gameplay. The Civilization Fanatics Forum (among others) has a more lengthy product description here. Although it appears like this pack won't address some of what we regard as the most glaring omissions from Civ IV (namely, the lack of "Future Tech" items like solar system space colonization and ocean floor resource development), all of the changes we've heard about are extremely welcome. As you might expect, we're the most excited about the new changes to the space race victory, which definitely seem like a return to the Civilization II style of space race victory.
  
• A new version (0.62) of the timeless classic The Ur-Quan Masters (aka Star Control II) has been released, including support for multiplayer SuperMelee! Go download it! Still no word on whether Activision has greenlighted a proper sequel yet, though.
  

Labels: Administrative, Civilization, Star Control

posted by Blood and Glory Possum @ 3/28/2007 12:45:00 PM 5 comments

The 2007 Google Wishlist

Well, it's a little late, and and somewhat repetitive (and really cliche!), but as other heavy users of Google products have done, I'd like to share my "Google Wish List" for 2007. Like many other Blogger users, I've been using Google products more and more over the past year. However, there are still some holes in their lineup; it would be really great if some of these got filled this year:

1. IMAP Support for Gmail. Well, actually, I'd settle for a properly implemented POP. It's impossible to access Gmail on multiple machines because of the idiosyncrasies of the Gmail POP support. Plus, importing old messages into Gmail is a real chore, and severely limits the utility of Gmail as an archiving tool. I have several thousand old email messages in several accounts that I would dearly love to consolidate into my Gmail account, but it's such a hassle to do this that I really shouldn't at the moment. They really should implement IMAP support posthaste, if for no other reason than AOL offers it for their accounts.
2. Google Talk/AIM integration. Google Talk is my favorite chat client, but with a few key exceptions the rest of my family and friends use AIM. This means that I need to keep switching back and forth between the two, which gets kind of tedious. When Google purchased a stake in AOL a few years back I thought that would address the problem, but we're two years in and there's still no sign of the promised GT/AIM integration. Hopefully it pops up sooner rather than later. Video chat support and group chat support for GT wouldn't hurt, either.
3. A To-Do List for GooCal. I'm a heavy user of Google Calendar, but great as GooCal is, it's missing that all-important project management tool, a To-do list/task manager. Some sort of integrated Gmail/GooCal to-do list and task manager would be a very useful thing. I use Lightning for that purpose now, but functionality built into GooCal that approximates MS Outlook's outstanding project management functions would be one of the most useful things since sliced bread.
4. Google Universe. Google Earth is quite possibly the coolest single piece of software on the planet. Standalone versions of Google Mars and Google Moon would not only be really cool, but I imagine they'd be useful for researchers and schools, too. I'll note here that NASA's great World Wind program currently includes cool components for the Moon, Mars, and the Jovian Moons, but I have a sneaky hunch that far more people would use the hypothetical Google-branded product. We need to get people back to thinking that the Moon and Mars are places they'd want to visit, not just ethereal lights in the sky, and Google Moon and Mars layers would help.
5. A Better Google Contacts. Although I use Google Contacts right now to organize my business and personal contacts, that service could use some massive improvements. Integrating across Gmail and GooCal would be a start; a standalone Plaxo-style service would be even better. Of course, a simple acknowledgement that not everyone on the contacts list should be on my GT buddy list would be a huge step forward.
6. Google Presenter. There are actually signs that some sort of Google equivalent to Openoffice Impress/Microsoft Powerpoint could be on the way. The sooner, the better.
7. Graphs in Google Spreadsheets. Ever since it came out, I've been a heavy user of Google Docs and Spreadsheets. It's a great application with a lot of different uses; it's especially great for archiving data and documents in a centralized location. Unfortunately, it's got a gaping hole in functionality: There isn't a charts component. I imagine the reason is that the Excel chart component is so feature-filled that making sure all Excel charts would work in a given file would be a real headache. However, including some basic chart functionality would be enormously useful, especially for collaborating.
8. Assorted Google Docs improvements. Google Docs is more useful currently than Google Spreadsheets. Having said that, the fact that your file size is limited to .5 MB is a real impediment, as most of the word processing files I generate are about 700 K (although if there's a lot of images that number can get monstrously huge). Expecting the Google Docs application to open 40MB TIF-laden files is unrealistic, but increasing the file size to 1 MB would make Google Docs a lot more useful--for me, anyway. Adding multiple column support and header-footer options wouldn't hurt, either. Including a bulk-upload tool for the spreadsheets would be another improvement that I hope happens soon.
9. Searching within Google Reader stories. Some sort of search function for Google Reader would be an enormously handy capability, especially when you're trying to find an interesting story that you forgot to flag.
10. Faster Google Desktop. I was an avid user of Google Desktop, but as useful as that program is, it is such a resource hog that I had to get rid of it. I hope that they eventually release a faster version of that program, which will be a lifesaver for those of us who won't be switching to Windows Vista anytime soon.

Labels: Google

posted by Blood and Glory Possum @ 2/24/2007 01:26:00 PM 1 comments

A Timely Review of SWAT 4

I've never been a big fan of first-person shooters. I thought that Wolfenstein 3-D was pretty cool, but when the original Doom came out and garnered a whole bunch of critical praise, I honestly did not see what all of the hubbub was about. I purchased Doom, but did not especially like it that much. A friend of mine summed things up pretty well when he said "Doom is like Nintendo Duck Hunt with demons". I was positive that the whole FPS thing was a fad that would burn itself out; after all, 1993 was the same year that F-15 Strike Eagle III came out, followed closely by Wing Commander III, and between those games, Civilization, and Star Trek Judgment Rites, I was darn sure that the FPS craze (what was called in Ye Olden Tymes "Doom-style games") would end in short order.

Flash forward 13 years, and now it is more noteworthy when a game isn't a FPS. The popularity of FPS games has outright killed some genres, including adventure games, flight simulators, and space-combat games. Other genres like turn-based strategy are only now beginning to recover. I can honestly say that I really did not see that one coming; To me, FPS games disregard all of the advantages of the PC as a gaming platform, emphasizing mindless and linear action (shoot the monster, find the key, solve the jumping puzzle). So, up until 1997, I stubbornly resisted the FPS onslaught. Until, that is, the release of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. The original Rainbow Six and it's sequel Rogue Spear had it all: Incredible graphics; a visceral "you-are-there" atmosphere; one-shot, one-kill realism; a deep, engaging, and replayable single-person storyline; authentic weapons, tactics, and equipment; and fun multiplayer battles. Rainbow Six was the shooter that both sim and strategy gamers had been waiting for. It definitely opened my eyes to the possibilities of first-person shooters, and got me to grudgingly admit that maybe there was something to this whole FPS thing, after all. Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear are two of my all-time favorite games. As a died-in-the-wool Rainbow Six fan, I picked up R63:Raven Shield the day it was out. I enjoyed Raven Shield a great deal, but I felt that it was missing some of the spark that had been in the previous two games: It had a weaker storyline than the first two games, and continued the proud R6 tradition of the goofy AI that will just stand there as you pick them off, one by one.

Rainbow Six has produced four sequels and a host of expansion packs, as well as a spin-off series of sorts, Ghost Recon (another classic tactical FPS). The only realistic competitor from outside of UbiSoft has been the last two Sierra SWAT games, SWAT 3 and SWAT 4. The fourth installment of Sierra's SWAT series, SWAT 4, was released a little bit after Raven Shield, so at the time I didn't bother. However, subsequent Rainbow Six games have been critical flops, so when the critically acclaimed SWAT 4 showed up in the Wal-Mart bargain bin several months ago at a low-low price, I picked it up.

At first blush, SWAT 4 and Raven Shield are very, very similar. The first-person perspective and the interfaces are virtually identical. However, there are some key differences. First, there's no mission editor. You're given a sketchy map of your target zone, given some objectives (which tend to change, a nice touch), and sent in after the bad guys. This is probably more representative of how a real rapid-response SWAT team would operate, but the lack of R6-style gocodes especially is rather jarring. The weapons selection (featuring generic replacements for the H&K weapons ;)) seems to be fairly representative of nonlethal, light, and heavy weaponry. I didn't really miss Raven Shield's extensive collection of small arms, which in principle shouldn't be needed in a police situation anyway (although as a Stargate fan, I did miss the P90). Interestingly, to complete several of the missions you have to be carrying at least one nonlethal weapon (pepper-spray or a taser) to ensure suspect compliance and complete the mission. Second, I felt that although it was easier to issue your team commands in SWAT 4, it was a lot harder to control your other team members. You can't simply jump from teammate to teammate (which is more realistic, so I won't carp that much about it) but since there's no mission editor you can't use R6-style gocodes to control timing, which makes simultaneous entry kind of annoying. Third, each mission is completely random. Unlike the Rainbow Six series, the position of the AI opponents in single-player changes every time you run a mission. This small change vastly increases the replay value of the game and makes it much more interesting and realistic; on the other hand, I actually like the "practice makes perfect" approach taken by Rainbow Six; in R6, by the time you have a strategy that works, you really feel like you've accomplished something. The flip side of that statement is that, like Wing Commander, it's much easier to simply drop into a mission in SWAT 4 than it is in Raven Shield. Fourth, the AI in SWAT 4 is a vast improvement over Raven Shield's: AI opponents react to what happens around them, seek cover, and converge on your location. The superior AI is probably the biggest single reason to buy this game. Fifth, there's no overarching storyline. Although this was criticized by some reviewers, I felt that the completely unconnected stories were pretty representative of the kinds of missions that a real SWAT team would receive in an actual city and pretty realistic--supervillians are pretty rare things here in real life, after all.

SWAT 4 has a lot going for it: Beautiful graphics, tense missions enhanced by superior opponent AI, and a real sense of atmosphere; the inclusion of the 911 calls in the pre-mission briefings is a nice touch. I recommend it for all fans of of the tactical FPS genre. However, I personally feel that Rainbow Six 3 was a more entertaining game, and I can't help but wonder just how good R63 could have been if the enemy AI in R63 had been like SWAT 4's. I am now hoping that in the future there will be a R6 sequel that combines the strategic elements of R63 with the opponent AI of SWAT 4. Until that point, we'll just have to run through SWAT 4's missions again...

posted by Blood and Glory Possum @ 2/06/2007 12:42:00 AM 2 comments

Happy Holidays!

Happy holidays from all the folks here at SRV! Since we've been buried under a blizzard of work, expect intermittent posting for the next several weeks.

-BNGPossum

posted by Blood and Glory Possum @ 12/23/2006 11:11:00 AM 2 comments

Discovery launches!

There's nothing more awe-inspiring than the nighttime launch of a Space Shuttle.

posted by Blood and Glory Possum @ 12/10/2006 04:26:00 PM 2 comments

Finally: A Civ IV Tech Tree Editor!

posted by Blood and Glory Possum @ 11/21/2006 03:28:00 PM 3 comments

I was excited about Star Trek Legacy, until...

...I saw the hardware requirements. Bethesda has released the official PC hardware requirements for Star Trek Legacy, and as I feared they're awfully darn steep. This is unfortunate, because the initial set of requirements that had been posted on Amazon.com were quite reasonable. This is a lousy decision on Bethesda's part, because it immediately puts the PC version of the game out of reach for most consumers (myself included). This kind of "hardware creep" is one of my pet peeves, not only because it's aggravating to me personally (I was really excited about Legacy prior to finding this out; now I've canceled my pre-order) but because it's the biggest single reason why consumers have been steadily leaving the PC as a gaming platform. I've never been even remotely interested in consoles, but I must admit that in recent years the increasing capability of console platforms (especially the Xbox 360) has made me actually consider switching over to some sort of console. Until manufacturers realize that 99.99% of us can't afford to buy new systems every three months, PC gaming will continue to decline.

posted by Blood and Glory Possum @ 11/07/2006 01:48:00 AM 0 comments

Orbiter 2006: It's not just for fun...

Last week, a group of NASA and industry engineers began a grassroots campaign for a new lunar architecture to supersede the NASA Ares I/V system that is currently being developed. To my admittedly untrained eyes, this new plan seems sensible and worthy of consideration. However, I wouldn't be mentioning this here at SRV unless I had noticed something very nifty in the photos section of the DIRECT website: These folks used Orbiter to do some of the spiffy strategic visualizations of their concept! That's pretty cool. It not only says a lot about how the proliferation of powerful personal computers are letting smaller groups do things that could previously only be done by government or large businesses, but it also says a lot about the fundamental usefulness of easily extensible software platforms like Orbiter.

posted by Blood and Glory Possum @ 10/30/2006 03:00:00 PM 0 comments

Star Trek Turns 40

A few weeks ago, Star Trek celebrated its 40th Anniversary with a whimper, not a bang, although the surprise release of the long-overdue Star Trek Remastered was welcome news. Good thing that Star Trek Legacy is coming out soon, and it's actually looking quite promising if the recent CGW feature article is any indication. The designers continue to say all the right things, the screencaps look great, and grouping all five Star Trek incarnations with a D.C. Fontana-penned (writer of the famed TOS episode "Journey to Babel," as well as the Bridge Commander storyline) story could turn out pretty well. I've officially upgraded my status from "guardedly optimistic" to "cautiously hopeful." Although I'm on record as thinking that a new Star Trek single player RPG or adventure game should be made ASAP, when you throw in the possibility of getting to command your own crew in Star Trek Online, things just might be looking up in the world of Star Trek computer games. Although I'm worried that Legacy might not run on my little Inspiron, I'm a lot more excited about Legacy than I am about Star Trek XI. In fact, I think that the best Star Trek for the forseeable future is in all likelihood going to exist in computer game form. Why, you ask?

Since Enterprise was canceled and Nemesis failed at the box office, there's been all kinds of stories about what Star Trek needs in order to come back. This ignores a simple point: People won't spend time or pay money to watch awful stuff, even if it says Star Trek in the title. A prequel show actually could have been great, but Enterprise-as-aired was just a terrible show: The writing was horrible, none of the characters were memorable, the acting was wooden, and the series didn't just flaunt the established continuity, it barfed all over it. It wasn't until the fourth season that the show started to tell the kinds of respectful and interesting stories that the fans had been expecting, but by then nobody cared. I personally gave up on the show halfway through the second season. Now that I've seen some of the fourth season shows in syndication, I think that the show would still be on the air if it had started telling those stories right off the bat. Quality fourth season episodes nothwithstanding, Enterprise was sufficiently horrible that a "retcon" is in order, and I hope that future Trek producers will decide to ignore that it was ever produced (just like what happened to the Star Trek Animated Series).

The immediate cause of Nemesis failing was that it came out the week before The Two Towers. But the real reason was that like most films in the Internet era, the shooting script had leaked several months beforehand and it was pretty obvious that this movie was just a lame TNG version of The Wrath of Khan, so many fans choose to save their money and stay home. One of the problems that I had with it (besides the gaping plot holes and logic errors) was that the death of Data was was quite contrived and unnecessary from a dramatic standpoint. Mainly, though, my biggest problem with Nemesis was that it was the fourth TNG movie but still had the same friggin' plot as the first three: overblown villian vs. Our Heroes. Bah. This is Star Trek, not James Bond. The critics reached similar conclusions and really pounded Nemesis, which, combined with the LOTR thing, is probably why most casual Star Trek fans stayed home. I'm a big TNG fan so I went to see it anyway, despite my misgivings, largely because I'd seen every ST movie in a theater and didn't want to break the streak.

I read most of the reviews of the movie, and it was pretty obvious that (repetitive plotline aside) the critics had also gotten just as tired of the whole Star Trek concept; I remember one reviewer called Star Trek's characteristic optimism "grating" and others called the notion of space travel "silly". This is an important point that is utterly lost on many Star Trek fans : A society that doesn't find the idea of people exploring space to be inherently awesome will not find a show about people exploring space remotely interesting. Surprisingly, many modern Star Trek fans have forgotten this and couldn't care less about the real-world exploration of space; they care more about the character interaction and philosophy and so forth [Don't believe me? Head over to a Star Trek forum and you'll see a disturbingly high number of "the space program is a waste of money" posts. The irony is lost on them....]. It was the Apollo landings and the development of the Shuttle (and all of the hopes that went with it) that fueled the 1970s popularity of Star Trek (and, for that matter, Star Wars and Close Encounters). I think that it is telling that at the height of it's popularity (circa 1986 to 1992-ish) the Shuttles were flying regularly, we were on our way to the Moon and Mars, and Space Station Freedom was going to be finished by 1997. There was a lot more general excitement about our future in space. I think it's safe to conclude that if Star Trek is ever going to be as popular as it was even fifteen years ago, then society is going to have to be reprimed to acknowledge that human space development really is exciting and important. To that end, the best possible thing for Star Trek fans to do to "save" the show is to simply start doing their part by a) actually paying attention to what NASA and ESA and Energia and NewSpace companies are doing here in real life and b) writing letters supporting space exploration to Congress and newspapers, instead of starting useless "save-our-show" letter writing campaigns. Besides this obvious and important point, what other lessons can we learn from recent Star Trek?

• It's about exploration, stupid. It's right up there in the opening credits, the most famous split infinitive in history and the phrase which really ought to be the NASA motto: "To boldly go where no man has gone before." Even TNG did very little boldly going. If you're on a starship exploring, then you should actually go find exciting stuff at frequent intervals. The last two movies have featured diplomatic negotiation as key plot points. Y-a-w-n. It can be done, and done well: Exhibit A is Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, any episode of which features more adventure and fun than any Star Trek produced in the 21st century. If you aren't floored by the innate coolness of what you're seeing you're not going to want to come back.
  
• Continuity is not a problem. People stopped watching Enterprise in large part because it flat-out barfed on the established continuity. We're not talking about little dippy Nitpicker errors, either. I couldn't care less if in one episode the Enterprise can only go at warp 4.9 and in the next one, it's charging at warp 5.5. Bah. That's small-time. We're talking about big, gaping, monstrous problems: Emotional lying kung-fu Vulcans, a "primitive" starship that looks just like a TNG starship, first contact with the Klingons not causing a war, a heretofore unmentioned Xindi attack, and TNG stuff like holodecks, Borg, and photon torpedoes popping up in Season One. Would it really have been that hard to take a few minutes and look this stuff up in the Star Trek Encyclopedia? I didn't think so. Would the stories on Enterprise have suffered any from doing so? Well, they couldn't have gotten any worse, that's for sure.
  
• Villians are overrated. Yes, The Wrath of Khan is everyone's favorite ST movie (except mine! I'm partial to The Motion Picture), and it happens to involve a larger-than-life villian with a powerful device that could be used as a weapon. Unfortunately, it has established a pattern that has proven almost impossible to escape. This plot device of a scenery-chewing villian who gets a Big Gun and threatens universal peace has now been the key story point of 8 of the 10 Star Trek movies, and it's completely worn out it's welcome. I think that it's quite telling that the absolute, hands down most popular ST movie is The Voyage Home, which made a tremendous amount of money and was a resounding popular and critical success (launching TNG in the process)--all without a scenery chewing villian.
  
• It's gotta be fun. Star Trek at its best has a certain joie de vivre: it should be an optimistic, hopeful, and interesting adventure. Seeing the Enterprise in the first movie? Fun. The battle in the Mutara Nebula? Fun. The Voyage Home? Fun. Worf bounding through infinite parallel universes? Fun. Sisko and company visiting the original ship? Fun. Voyager almost getting home? Not fun. Overblown villian threating Earth with a particle-of-the week gun killing Data for no reason? Not fun. Watching Captain Archer meander his way through a tepid, poorly written, ill-conceived episode? Not, by any definition, fun.
  
• You have to see the Enterprise. The Enterprise got really short shrift in the last four movies. All we got to see of the cool new ship was the bridge and a few lame rooms (the ship's library? who wants to see that, and why would you need one aboard a starship, anyway--don't they have Google Book Search in the future?). It wasn't any different or cooler than the things you ever saw on the series.
  
• It's gotta be cool. The interior design of the ship in the Enterprise show was lousy, too: cramped, dank, and decidedly non-futuristic. I wouldn't want to be on that ship unless I had a big flashlight. Here in real life, the International Space Station has been designed to be open and airy to improve morale and prevent cluaustrophobia. The new ship has to be clean, bright and futuristic-looking if you want your audience to believe that you're in the future. This is one of the big problems with Battlestar Galactica: Everything on that show, even the big ship that can go faster-than-light, looks exactly like present-day stuff, which, frankly, is pretty distracting.
  
• Quit reversing the polarity already. From about the 6th season of TNG on, the answer to nearly every problem has been reversing the polarity on some kind of subatomic particle. They never did that on the old series and things worked out fine. They tried really hard not to do this on Enterprise, but they just couldn't help themselves. Plus, it really wouldn't hurt to talk to a real scientist or engineer occasionally. Enterprise had some aneyurism-inducing scientific blunders.
  
• Grit hurts your teeth. Ever since the success of Battlestar Galactica, I've heard a lot about how ST needs to be "gritty". They tried to make Enterprise gritty, and it was just annoying. Sweaty folks yelling at each other is not the only ingredient behind successful entertainment.
  
• No Time for Time Travel. Ahh, the most overused plot device in Star Trek. Unfortunately, this one has some pedigree, because the old guys did it on the Original Series and again in The Voyage Home, with great success. Unfortunately, since that point time travel has been a major part of two more ST movies and countless episodes, and a ludicrous "Temporal Cold War" that culminated in goofy space Nazis was a big part of Enterprise. A completely mediocre Voyager episode-which I never saw, because I quit watching Voyager early on due to excessive lameness--even suggested that Starfleet would be flying "timeships" through the timeline by the 29th century. Enough already. Again, I point to the opening credits: "Space, the final frontier...." If we wanted to watch a show about time travel we'd watch Dr. Who.
  

In general, my overarching conclusion is that the "problem" with Star Trek stems more from a general lack of creativity and attention to detail, coupled with a society that does not currently value the adventure and breathtaking promise of space, and not from any inherent flaw with the concept or the established continuity.

So, having already said too much, what do I think about the eleventh movie? I think that a Battlestar Galactica-style reboot is a perfectly awful idea no matter how you look at it. The new BSG works well because the old BSG show had certain flaws, a small audience, and was only aired for one season, so there was nowhere to go but up. Star Trek, which has a rich 40-year history and has inspired billions of people, is another story. There's simply no reason why a movie that builds on all previous Star Trek which has come before can't be a huge commercial success; cherry-picking a few elements and disregarding the rest wouldn't really be Star Trek any longer. I'm also not a big fan of going back to the TOS era with new actors, especially with the TNG folks still around wanting to do more. Recasting the TOS actors was tried after Star Trek V and bombed horribly; the idea was a complete non-starter with the fans, so they made the successful Star Trek VI instead. On the other hand, the fan-produced New Voyages series is surprisingly good. Although I'm skeptical, I am forced to admit that a new TOS story with skilled younger actors in the Kirk, Spock, and McCoy roles (especially if Shatner and Nimoy appeared in a framing story), which didn't barf on the established canon, might work in principle if handled respectfully with the greatest of care. But since one the most credible rumors of the moment has Ben Affleck playing a young Captain Kirk, I feel safe concluding that for years to come, the best and most entertaining Star Trek is going to be played on PCs around the world. Star Trek was actually the basis of the first real computer game ever made; it is only fitting that computer games like Star Trek Legacy and Star Trek Online are carrying the torch of modern Trek.

Be sure to also read BNGPossum's earlier take on his favorite Star Trek computer games.

posted by Blood and Glory Possum @ 10/08/2006 10:36:00 PM 1 comments