Massive wall of text warning
Hi, I love this game. I find random things where you have an opportunity to just explore very interesting. A couple other games like this, just to let you know where my interests lie is Sword of the Stars by Kerberos Producions, which is a space empire game with pretty simple empire management and customizable ships with a huge variety of weapon and other technologies to use in real time combat. My piece of advice is to start playing on a small (less than fifty or maybe you might want to go to the minimum) Like dwarf fortress, the starts are completely random, as in it does not pull punches. You can be trapped as humans with travel lanes traveling through enemy space, your enemy might find a dozen perfect worlds while you have to go halfway across the map to find something decent, did I mention there are random encounters? I once had "sparky" eat through pretty much ALL my original colonies as human, with a way more powerful AI Tarka player that I was not friends with next to me, and I had to slowboat it something like 20 turns to the next habitable star because he had a colony between me and it. I gave up on that game, in fact, I usually never finish most games I buy. Its fun just for the variety of things it can throw at you, kind of like Dwarf Fortress.
That was way sidetracked, but I think its a game that shares the philosophy of "you never know what you are going to get." Which I enjoy about Dwarf Fortress, I didn't pay money for it, and I'm pretty stingy and I've only had one job as a high school student. Even just to watch the world generating is fascinating for me, it didn't last too long, only a few minutes, on a Athalon X2 4200+ with 3 gigabytes of fast ram (way to much), don't have an exact time, the world generation parameters where a custom seed and from the text file in the directory it says:
Created in DF v0.27.169.33b.
[WORLD_GEN]
[TITLE:SEED]
[SEED:473220798]
I used a ID number for me I know, kind of like the whole telephone-number thing in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, I jumbled it up a bit but it gave good base to just give a different seed. Also, in case your some stalker or something, you won't find anything with that, unless probability really likes you. I want to share it because it is actually pretty interesting.
One piece of advice I have, when you generate a world, export the image, it gives you a very clear, wide view and lets you see volcanoes and seas and mountains and all that stuff. That particular seed is interesting to me because there is a very large ocean and a relatively TINY ocean also. Several Volcanoes, and something I don't think is seen often, TWO major rivers, which have nearby volcanoes. The rivers don't exist in the same spot as the volcanoes, however looking around searching for a site (I'll pick one after I finish this) I noticed that magma pockets (at least if I read the map right) were in the same tile as the major rivers, and the biomes have aquifers and are quite hilly and sandy. I'm fairly sure this might be rare and it was my first seed this release I did, so I wanted to share it. I wonder how an aquifer, magma, and a major river would interact?
I have the image, though don't know how to put it on here, so if someone else does I'll say if its the same world.
I never actually tried going beyond just setting up the party and honestly, I only played continuously for a short while. I might try and make something of the next one though.
There are my thoughts, everything I though where somewhat important. If you read it all, you have quite some time on your hands, kinda like me.
Two more things, maybe a bit off topic but I link with this game.
I listen to the (I don't like the word classical) fine arts station in Chicago when I'm playing Dwarf Fortress, 98.7 wfmt. That station is just plain awesome. I'm streaming it off their site as I'm writing this.
I'm also into Infinity: The Quest For Earth, a space massively multiplayer online game with a massive procedurally generated universe.
The Violoncello is the greatest instrument ever. (according to me)
Boy, is that long, and meandering, and cheese, oh well.
Keep up the awesome work.
edit: small update, first: a question: is the right place for this?
second:Large Rivers must be really common in this version because I found 2 more for a total of 4
third: maybe a topic of discussion: What do you listen to while playing? The music that comes with it is pretty good, even if the music that comes with is kinda sparse. I find the music that comes with can get repetitive, nothing just gets boring, anything on your computer or compact disks needs to be monitored, so I just listen too the radio, all I have to do is remember not to close the browser window. (boy thats a run-on sentence)
Question: How do I underline stuff so I can highlight all the important points, and even more useful would being able to do it on other peoples posts so I can more easily understand them.
[ November 17, 2007: Message edited by: RaSchumann ]
Second edit: how come I can't see my signature, probably just me though, if it isn't there, its a disclaimer that probably belongs at the top of the page. Also I did a subject title change.
The official count on the world I created as far as I can see (I didn't try anything fancy too see hidden stuff, that would be cheating) is 4 large rivers and 6 oceans, plenty of volcanoes, and not too many rejects.
[ November 17, 2007: Message edited by: RaSchumann ]