> I started playing ASCII-based games back when they would actually look
> better than their 4 color 320x200 graphics counter-parts.
>
> What annoys me is that a lot of games are 3D just because they think
> that automatically makes them better. The game play will either suck,
> or be almost identical to half-a-dozen other games, just with different
> graphics and different music.
I *think* I agree with you here.
While I enjoy a well-done game that uses 3-D, in the now immortal
words: "You can put lipstick on a pig..."
> First-person shooters are the culmination of this. They're all basically
> the same. The only thing different between the vast majority is the
> graphics, music, and perhaps the map. (Oh, wait, sometimes 'you' are
> actually a vehicle, and not a person.) They teach their audience that
> what they change is enough... but to me, it is not.
Mmmmm....well, couldn't the same be said about, say, Linux distros?
Choice has its ups and downs.
> I do enjoy some turn-based and real-time strategy games. They, too, are
> almost the same with different graphics and music. I acknowledge that.
> At some point, I would love to do an ASCII-based turn-based strategy
> game.
If you wrote an ncurses front-end to FreeCiv, I would totally play that!
I must confess that I play the commercial, proprietary Civ IV more
than FreeCiv, though.
Civ IV is 3-D but the 3-Dness feels like a thin, flashy (and
admittedly slower than I'd like) interface built over a solid game
that really does add a whole new dimension to the game experience (not
to actual play), rather than as the main focus with a crappy game
constructed underneath to prop it up.
It makes me feel sad and conflicted, but I've yet to see an
open-source game project that brings the sort of unified vision and
cohesion of art assets, audio, storyline, gameplay etc. that a good
(in the sense of capability, no moral connotations) proprietary game
company can.
Not to mention Leonard Nimoy.
(SIDEBAR: I've got Civ IV running under Crossover which I got when
they made it free for a day. The only thing that really sucks is that
it doesn't detect the game media to verify that I have a legitimate
copy. I had to go find a no-cd crack to apply to a game I paid money
for, and I cannot upgrade and benefit from *any* of the bug fixes and
such. I used to have an entire Windows install dedicated to this game;
I just got tired of shutting down in order to boot into Windows to
play my game, then shutting down in order to boot back into Ubuntu to
do anything else so I just stopped playing the game until I decided to
give the Crossover stuff a shot.)
> However, I believe that abstraction is a valued part of gaming. I value
> putting things back in to the imagination and simplifying the playing
> pieces. I also acknowledge that I am a minority.
Psh, I bet you still read *books*! ;-)
While I agree with your points, I don't declare a preference one way
or the other.
What makes a story worth absorbing is the story itself, not the media
it's presented in. I *love* books, and would say that they're better
than movies. On the other hand, sometimes I'd rather see a movie.
Sometimes, though not often, the movie even helps me to appreciate
aspects of the book that I hadn't noticed before.
What makes a game worth playing is the fun, not the flash. I sometimes
want the flash, though. And sometimes, though not often, well-done
flash can add to a game.
For example, in Civ IV (it's the only 3-d game I play regularly, sorry
for beating it to death), the flash really does add a LOT to the game
experience in terms of usability. Civ-type games can become insanely
huge and complex, in terms of the information you have to manage and
juggle in your brain, so any added usability is awesome. I'd say the
Civ IV flash helped me to appreciate aspects of the game that I didn't
notice in the earlier (and alternative) 2-d incarnations.
> --
> Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
> Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
--
Simón Ruiz
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