Saturday, May 03, 2008

Settler spam and nifty geekiness


Solitaire Settlers of Catan

Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Ca-Tan Ca-Tan Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Settlers Ca-Ca-Ca-Ca-Tan


Nettlers

So we have now at least five working games 'inspired' by the board game "Die Siedler von Catan" hosted on SourceForge.net: Solitaire Settlers of Catan 1.0 (new release), Pioneers 0.12.2 (new release), Settlers3D, Nettlers (Win only at the moment) and jCatano.

No problem really, it's a great game and the projects have something individual in each of them. I enjoyed test-playing Nettlers via Wine. I was surprised by a well self-explaining interface. (Other candidates on the list are rather unclear about how to do what.)


Yes, these are the controls. No kidding.

Stephen M. Cameron released Word War vi 0.08, a retro-looking, good-sounding (98% self-made, CC-BY-SA 2.0/3.0 sounds/music) Sopwith-ish/Side-scroller game. It's slightly geeky nerdy, just look at the 'intro':



In the beginning, there was ed.
Ed is the standard text editor.
Then there was vi, and it was good.
Then came emacs, and disharmony.
Your mission is to traverse core memory and rid the host of emacs.
It will not be an easy mission, as there are many emacs friendly processes.

Word of warning: the controls are horrible... I also unfortunately was only able to compile it without sound. But it is pretty cool!



World War vi


Also, UFO: AI 2.2.1 has been released:



  • Bug fixes. (d'oh)

  • Improved in-game IRC client.

  • Added UFO Theory to Tech Tree.

  • Removed civilian death limit. Instead you will lose if you make too many nations unhappy.

This makes me feel a little warm, as I remember, that there was a forum discussion about the the unfairness of the condition to never loose more than a specific amount of civilians' lives. Ah Open Sourcia, land of the free. ^^

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Word of warning: the controls are horrible... " - looks like you don't use vi(m) too often? ;) emacs left/right/up/down - would be horrible for a game (^f/^b/^n/^p :P)

qubodup said...

well I must admit that I'm a fan of vim (starting to prefer gvim for it's prettier coloring) but I usually use the arrow keys for moving around =(

Anonymous said...

Hi. Thanks for the mention of word war vi.

Try it with a game pad or joystick next time. You think I made that video using the keyboard? :D

And, the arrow keys work as well (or, as poorly :( ). As is the case with vim (but not old-school vi), the arrow keys work, but are not really advertised -- you're expected to just figure that out, it's part of the game.

-- steve (author of Word War vi.)

Anonymous said...

For what it's worth, I tried to improve the response of the keyboard controls (figured out how to get "key up" events in gtk -- so now you can move and shoot simultaneously, strafe, etc.) Still not as good as a joystick but a lot better, I think. It's in CVS, and will be in the next release.

-- steve

Anonymous said...

This game is good, except for no destructible terrain. if a fence, door or wall is made indestructible by the engine, then CHANGE THE DAMN ENGINE !!!!!!!

Using an advanced engine is no excuse !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

qubodup said...

anony: I'm sure they'll do it sooner or later, after all the xcom series had distructible walls too.

Provide feedback:

Due to SPAM issues we have disabled public commenting here.

But feel free to join our forums or easily chat via IRC with us.