At least it'll be more interesting than the 'Zombie Apocalypse'...Those movies/shows bored me to death!

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Tuesday, November 21, 2017 - 02:52 pm: Edit

Actually, I have been waiting for the movie where the Aliens invade during the robot apocalypse which triggers the zombie apocalypse.

By Steve Zamboni (Szamboni) on Tuesday, November 21, 2017 - 02:53 pm: Edit

Zombies do make a convenient transport platform for mounting robotic subsystems, though. No need for fuel or maintenance, and a simple metal plate over the forehead makes them invulnerable to most attacks.

By wayne douglas power (Wayne) on Tuesday, November 21, 2017 - 03:15 pm: Edit

Oh no a, Zombie Robot Apocalypse.

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Tuesday, November 21, 2017 - 03:20 pm: Edit

Those denying the existence of robots may be robots themselves.

By Marc Michalik (Kavik_Kang) on Tuesday, November 21, 2017 - 03:36 pm: Edit

I'm with Petrick on this one... there is nothing worse than robots!

Unity is among the more common engines used by indie devs these days, and Space Hockey is entirely multiplayer so there is no AI.

I am not a programmer, although I have spent a lot of time editing data files working with programmers. I'll let the lead programmer I find, assuming I find one, choose the engine. The know a lot more about it than I do, and may have a preference that simply suits their style.

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Tuesday, November 21, 2017 - 04:30 pm: Edit

As someone who has worked on the periphery of game design and dipped a toe in helping on a few projects unless you have programming ability, graphic modeling ability, or a LOT of money to pay people to do both you do not have enough skin in the game and are unlikely to find anyone competent willing to work to make a game for you.

I am a good writer and I helped with some dialogue, backstory stuff, edited, and made some suggestions for some friends who worked on games. I did it in my free time pro bono because I liked a project and got nothing except a free copy of the game.

The guys and gals with the ability and the drive to handle and manage small indie game development projects create their own games or work with others equally driven. They are not twiddling their thumbs waiting for a great idea to come along so they can hop on board. Ideas are a dime a dozen.

By Marc Michalik (Kavik_Kang) on Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - 11:33 am: Edit

Believe me, I am aware of the problems of attempting to be a pure game designer in the computer game industry. Like I said in the other thread, they essentially don't exist. This has been my primary problem for the last 30 years.

I created the first mod ever, for Sierra's Front Page Sports Football, and have worked at a "AAA" developer before. I had "retired" from banging my head against exactly the "brick wall" that you are describing about a decade ago.

A couple years ago I was inspired to try this one more time. This time around has been a lot different than it was in the past. Things seem to be heading in a good direction right now.

I am a fairly well-known figure in their world these days;-)

EDIT: I should also add that their often repeated mantra "Ideas are a dime a dozen" should actually be "Bad ideas are a dime a dozen", which perfectly matches their process of "Blindly blundering forward through trial and error, praying that things work out well in the end." I've been among these people since the dawn of their time. There have only ever been a handful of actual game designers who have worked in their industry. They don't like game designers, and believe that anyone can design a game as well as anyone else can.

They also absolutely insist, and defend the position, that any 20-something who has gradutated from the Devry School of Game Design is qualified to design games, and a former member of the SFB Staff with over 30 years of experience designing games is not. I am not making that up.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - 01:58 pm: Edit

One of the games I played a lot was Flying Buffalo's "Nuclear War" and I would get the expansions of it when I could.

I still think of the game fondly.

Especially since it was the only game I have ever played that could be over before the very first turn.

We set up to play one time, and after everything was set up and the initial hands dealt, we had to deal with any "secrets" that were dealt as part of those hands (secrets could not be held for use later, but had to be used when received).

The initial secrets wiped out one of the players and even though the game had not 'started' since he was wiped out by 'secrets' that triggered "final retaliation" by that player which annihilated a second player, who (having been destroyed by nuclear attack) was allowed to initiate his own final retaliation against another player, who was also destroyed, and threw final retaliation at the fourth player, who (if I remember correctly the number of players) found himself launching final retaliation at the fifth player (who was then the only player remaining, i.e., there was no sixth player to retaliate against had the fifth player been destroyed). The fifth player, as it happened, survived with something like 3 million population left, all looking up and going "what happened?"

We had not even gotten to the first turn, and the game was over.

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - 02:55 pm: Edit

Still play Nuclear War occasionally. Gotta love a game where over half the games end with everyone dying.

By Marc Michalik (Kavik_Kang) on Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - 03:58 pm: Edit

One of New World Computing's early games was "Nuclear War", which they had losely based on the card game. It was very good.

The most memorable thing about it too me was that they gave all the leaders funny names, and I always thought that "Ronnie Raygun" was just a perfect name for him (SDI).

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Thursday, November 23, 2017 - 08:26 pm: Edit

I'll just leave that here....

https://www.amazon.com/Mega-Bloks-Enterprise-Collector-Construction/dp/B01ARGB91K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511486685&sr=8-1&keywords=mega+blocks+enterprise

:-)

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, November 24, 2017 - 06:06 pm: Edit

Let's face it. "Nuclear War" required a certain macabre sense of humor and of the absurd to enjoy playing, especially considering we were supposed to be growing up under the constant threat of impending nuclear annihilation. Yet there we were, gleefully watching 10 million of somebody's population were "mysteriously vaporized" or "Super Germ" might eliminate 25 million of someone else's population.

The great victories in "Nuclear War" as few as there were when, during a period of peace, you managed to get all of an/the opposing player's population to defect to your country, the only means of taking a player out of the game without triggering "final retaliation." (But does any want to bet that if the North Korean population all spontaneously made a run for it that Kim Jong Un would not throw everything he could in a final tantrum in any case?)

I did see a few players actually eliminated by the propaganda cards (as opposed to the "secrets" and nuclear weapons).

Of course I also saw one player survive quite literally because, despite the population deck being shuffled thoroughly before it was dealt, he wound up with ALL of the 25 million population cards, and by the time all the rest of us figured that out, we were all pretty much already dead, and he still had a 25 million population card in his hand. (I think by that point it may have been the only card in his population, but memory gets blurry over the years ... might be the fallout affecting my memory.

By Oliver Upshaw (Oliverupshaw) on Saturday, November 25, 2017 - 08:16 am: Edit

Scott and anyone else interested in that Enterprise Kit, I bought it a couple of months ago and I would like to pass on a few observations.

One was that the sections that you have to build and then slide into other sections are quite tight. I would recommend not building quite as far as the instructions call for in the case of the Saucer and Neck connections. If you fallow the instructions you will not be able to see where something is a little off and is now blocking the parts from mating correctly.

Two is that the ship rests on the stand with an extension from the neck through the secondary hull. So if you want to display the ship without using the stand you will have to deal with this hole in the bottom on the hull somehow.

Third is that the top of the saucer section is not a very good fit. I worked on trying to get the pieces to mate for quite some time without full success. I mentioned this to an employee at a Lego store when I picked up the Saturn V kit and he confirmed that he had bought the Enterprise kit as well and also had that problem.

It is an impressive kit once you get it built, but I do wish that Lego had put it out as their quality in how it all fits together seems to be higher.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Saturday, November 25, 2017 - 08:43 am: Edit

I always thought that the Nuclear War game was a marvellous bit of anti-nuclear-warfare satire. On the surface it's a light-hearted game, but when you think about it, it's all about killing people by the million, and killing the enemy's population has no effect on their ability to wage war. At least, not until they're completely wiped out. And if a player is eliminated, their best strategy is to try to ensure that EVERYONE ELSE also loses. It points out just how insane nuclear war really is.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Saturday, November 25, 2017 - 08:46 am: Edit

Cthulhu Dice has a similar dynamic to Nuclear War in that once a player goes insane, their best bet is to ensure that all the other players go insane as well, so that Cthulhu wins and none of the human players do.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Saturday, November 25, 2017 - 10:14 am: Edit

By Oliver Upshaw (Oliverupshaw) on Saturday, November 25, 2017 - 08:16 am: Edit
...

It is an impressive kit once you get it built, but I do wish that Lego had put it out as their quality in how it all fits together seems to be higher.

It's not a Lego kit, it's a Mega Blok kit, a competitor. Mega Blok's quality control has always been lower than Legos

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Sunday, November 26, 2017 - 04:47 pm: Edit

David... I initially also read it wrong.. but that it precisely what Oliver is saying - he wishes Lego had done it (and not Mega Blocks)

Having just supported Lego - and being neutral - anyone got the new Lego UCS Millennium Falcon (75192)?

It seems only re-sellers in the UK actually got to buy any as it was never available as far as I know on the Lego site - but E-Bay has had 100s of sets available (at between 50% and 600% more than what Lego was charging!).

I know its not a set for Children....but it annoys pretty much every adult builder!!!!

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Sunday, November 26, 2017 - 04:52 pm: Edit

Good catch, my apologies.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, December 23, 2017 - 03:48 am: Edit

This looks cool: Khet = Chess with lasers


Garth L. Getgen

By Dana Madsen (Dfm330) on Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - 10:40 pm: Edit

I wasn't sure where to put this, but had to post it. Star Fleet Battles mentioned in the media. The article is talking about how great German influenced board games are, but I was shocked to see the author reference SFB.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/german-board-games-catan/550826/

Dana

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - 02:38 am: Edit

A really good article - and so many points are true (may gaming group nearly banned Diplomacy as it got that bad - and that was 20 year ago - although not banned - I haven't played it for probably 20 years!).

It does raise a good point on one aspect - so many conflict games (Axis and Allies for example) can be won in the first couple of turns - that the loser ends the game early - Power Grid is a really good example that those doing 'badly' can get a massive boost during the game (for those that haven't played it - the better you are doing, the earlier you have to bid on Power Sites (and once you have bought or passed, you can't bid for the rest of the turn) and so the person going 'last' can buy something at a lower price - and then they get to buy resources first, with the cost of resources going up as people buy them - and then build new power lines first*) - so it's not possible to get knocked out early or have no chance of winning.

* - The current tactic is therefore to in effect get the worst start possible....so you get a boost for the next turn!

In other words - no setting up a game for 30 mins...playing for 15 mins and then wasting the next 2 hours with no chance to win

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - 03:25 am: Edit

Pfft... three hour games...

Give me F&E!

By Stephen J. Schrader (Brinn) on Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - 06:41 am: Edit

"Pfft... three hour games..."

Yeah, Wargaming should be a commitment!

"War in Europe" + "War in the Pacific"

"Europa"

By Vincent Solfronk (Vsolfronk) on Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - 05:21 pm: Edit

"World in Flames"

"Empires in Arms"