> > [...] They're all basically the same. [...] 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?
You could definitely say the same about Linux distros. Some entire Linux
distros could just as well be a small set of theme packages for other
distros.
The big thing I like about Ubuntu is the fixed release schedule, and
the available set of packages as wide as Debian. That and it does
have a decent package management system. I really like decent package
management systems.
> Choice has its ups and downs.
It is easy to get overwhelmed with choices, too.
> If you wrote an ncurses front-end to FreeCiv, I would totally play that!
Hmm... I'll have to put it on my list of projects. :)
I know it has a flexible interface setup, as there are multiple
interfaces available. Perhaps I should take a look at it to see how easy
it would be...
> I must confess that I play the commercial, proprietary Civ IV more
> than FreeCiv, though.
I understand. I rarely play either one at this point, primarily due to
the insane amount of time I've been known to dump in to it in the past.
> 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.
Yeah, I hear you there.
I make do by discounting all the art and audio. This leaves just
storyline and gameplay. The 3D models, art, music and sound effects
are all developer intensive. If you cut them out you need far fewer
developers -- however you still need a good design.
> > 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*! ;-)
Recently I've been really enjoying podiobooks.com. I can listen to a
story while working on my projects.
> 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.
I find few movies that are actually on par with the books. That's a
given, though. The media are significantly different, what works well
for one media works poorly for the other.
Interestingly, even written books and audio dramas are fairly
significantly different media. I was listening to the audio drama
'Space Casey', and the author mentioned that some of her choices were
specifically made for her media.
> 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.
Yeah, it can add to the game. I admit that. Some games do really well
with the added flash. Some of the horror console games, in particular,
really come off creepy due to their flash.
There are times when you just want the flash. I admit that, too.
Sometimes you feel like smashing and killing things. In these cases,
graphics are nice, and you're frequently willing to forgo some of the
finer details in the plot and game design.
My gripe is just that it would be a lot easier to focus on game play,
plot, and design if people stopped focusing so exclusively on the
pictures and audio.
> 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.
While I played Civ IV, I didn't really notice that the 3D aspects played
any part. There were some cut scenes here and there, but... I just
didn't notice it too much.
Cheers,
--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
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