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[MrGimp]

lol...need I say more?

I remember following this game for a couple years before it came out.  I wasnt one to rush in and pre-order, I sensed shenanigans from the beginning.  The original lead developer guy Alan Emrich touted 25 years writing strategy guides as proof he knew what gamers wanted (he repeated the '25 years' line EVERY chance he got).  The dev team were assholes.  Alan actually got rude with me one time when I mentioned that the whole IFP idea behind the original MOO3 design was flawed from a gaming perspective (who wants to 'fight' the game?).  IFPs were his pride and joy.  Then the game license gets sold to a series of different developers.  Two years into the project they fire Alan Emrich and rip out the IFP system (because DUH, its not FUN) but IFPs had been soooo integral to the game that they pushed the release back a whole year and even then, what they published bombed miserably.

I was reading a Dwarf Fortress review, and on that review site I bumped into a MOO3 review from years back.  It reminded me of the fiasco.  I even googled some info on it, stuff I had forgotten (like that douchebag lead artist ASSHOLE 'rantz' that took over after Alan got fired...that guy was an idiot!  You know a project is doomed when the ARTIST takes command).  I found an old thread from the official board, and it was the 'first impressions' thread from right after the game was released.  It was sad.  It was only three pages long, only a few people bothered to post, they were almost all negative, some scathingly so.  Even ones that were positive were 'I like this game BUT...'.  

Way to go Rantz!  You took a project die hard fans had been drooling over for years, you went over budget and over deadline, and you produced absolute crap that killed a series that was once the BENCHMARK for sci fi games.  Wow.

This Rantz guy was such a liar too.  Before release, the reason for the delay was 'to polish the multiplayer'.  After release, he admits that the game was entirely gutted and rebuilt two years in.  The game was offered for FREE on Amazon.com (buy it for 20 bucks, then send in the 20 dollar rebate = free game).  Thats how crap it was.  lol

When it first came out, people would let the game run itself, do NOTHING, and they would WIN!  Heres Rantz' excuse for that -

"As for the AI, testers were having a problem beating the game on the difficult game settings. They just couldn't win, so the AI was dumbed down about two weeks before shipping by adjusting certain modifiers that determined how aggressive the AI would be. However, this in turn affected other things because the game is so intricately intertwined. "

BULLSHIT!  NO developer in the world would shy away from an AI that could beat a human player.  Thats the GOAL of AI development.

Anyways...Ive just been reading up on this crap game for a while and thought it was funny/sad.  Who else remembers this bomb?  Or who else has a similar tale of idiots who 'know it all' crushing a once great title?

[McDoomhammer]

Actually, a friend of mine was talking to me about it not that long ago.  He still plays it- apparently there's an active modding community who have been working on, you know, making it worth playing.  I don't know the details, as I haven't played it in forever, but I seem to recall mods known as vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry... and from there a trio based thereon of which boysenberry is the only one I can remember.

I still have my CDs.  It's such a shame.  MOO2 was one of my formative games.

[MrGimp]

Yeah I heard that too.  Its a shame the fans had to hack the freaking game to make it playable.  Its such a messed up story.  How can they take something people loved so much, something that should have been money in the bank for them, and then screw it up sooooo bad???

Heres a quote from an article about it...

quote:Both Hoseley and Nelson acknowledge that the game is very complex. "It was overdesigned and the design was never fully completed," Nelson said. "Even a year after the design should have been done, it wasn't."

Hoseley said that the criticism that the game has a learning "cliff" instead of a learning curve are rightly deserved, but the game in its current state is a lot better than it was. "We went from 110 user interface screens to 20, but it is still overwhelming for the player," he said.

"We even cut the policies from 90 to 5, and there are still complaints that there is too much to do," Nelson said.

110 user interface screens?  90 policies?  How can you POSSIBLY let it get THAT bad?  At 50 user interface screens, at 30 policies, didnt somebody say...hey uhhhh....this is getting tedious and not very fun?

This is why games shouldnt be made by big bureaucracies.  Look at DF.  Two guys who love video games made this.  You dont need all this other mumbo jumbo.  Indie developers should make games.  And then, the games that are good should get attention from a publisher, who pays for a few artists to dress it up for commercial consumption, and then ship it to the masses.  Thats ALL these guys can do right, so let em do JUST that.

[McDoomhammer]

Yeah, the industry is messed up.  There are a few sparks of hope out there.  For all its evil corporation-ness, I like what Nintendo is doing with consoles, bringing in new ideas and some genuine innovation, and perhaps even starting to change or at least challenge the conventionally-held idea of what a gamer is.  Valve are beavering away, thumbing their noses at conventional ideas of how to run a games company and from what I hear, churning out some wonderful shiny things.  And Spore lingers on the horizon, promising much if it can only be made to deliver.

DF is something special, though.  I've never seen anything quite like this.  Amazing to thing that there are games out there with credit lists longer than a baroness's beard, sold for money, that don't approach a tenth of the complexity in this game.

[MrGimp]

Yeah I rarely spend money on games, because, like movies and tv shows, most of them are absolute crap.  When I buy games, its usually years after theyve been released, when I can get em for 9.99, or when I can get em in a pack of 5 games for 20 bucks.

DF is crazy.  I dont need excessive graphics.  Most people wouldnt even bother to TRY an ASCII game.  But I didnt care.  I did end up downloading a new tileset after I got hooked, but only because I didnt want to keep hitting 'k' to know what things were.  lol  But its not just that its complex.  Its that its art.  All the mythical beasts, the lava, the world generator...man.  It has atmosphere.  Thats what most games dont have.

If I ever get rich, and if Toady and Zach ever finish this game and be willing to do this, Im gonna start a game studio JUST to publish DF with some flashy graphics and a marketing campaign.  Ill just take enough money to cover costs and they can have the rest.  They would absolutely sink every developer out there.  Seriously.

They could be the next Microprose.  Remember them?  Man...EVERYTHING they touched turned to gold.  They were the greatest company ever.

Oh, and X-Com was another good game that got ruined by its sequels.  Ugh...Apocalypse was alright, even if the look and feel of it was funky.  But Interceptor sucked balls.  TFTD was just X-Com but harder.  And more annoying.  The first X-Com was and still is the best of the series.  Shit...I need to go see if I can download it somewhere.  lol

[Sowelu]

Moo1 > Moo2.  :/

Did anyone ever play Malkari?  It was a MOOalike, with a vastly brilliant design and a totally flawed execution.  It needed better programmers and a better engine--The basic design was wonderful.  Ship building was more fun in neat ways, research was deeper, politics was quite interesting, multiplayer was ridiculously burdensome, the graphics were terrible (I don't mean ASCII, I mean 'What the heck is going on anyway?'), and it doesn't run on anything more recent than Windows 98.

I mention it so that it doesn't get completely forgotten, and so its memory lives on--instead of getting garbage collected by the universe and ceasing to exist altogether.

[Boksi]

As you can see, I've got a few of the games mentioned here:
   
X-COM, X-COM3, MOO and MOO2. Also Master of Magic, the game Microprose made in between MOO and MOO2. It's also awesome.

And I can play them all, on a computer running Windows XP. Thankies, DOSBox!

EDIT: Odd, it doesn't show MOO on the picture. Oh well.

[ March 11, 2008: Message edited by: Boksi ]

[Sowelu]

Is that Alien Legacy I see in the corner there?

>.>

[SHAD0Wdump]

dude wheres mule?

I've heard quite the legacy about that thing.
Then again it could be sarcasm.   :confused:

[ March 11, 2008: Message edited by: SHAD0Wdump ]

[MrGimp]

lol Boksi...it almost looks like you took that screenshot from MY computer haha

Moo1 is pimp, MoM is awesome, they REALLY should do a sequel to that...but...only if its the same people who made the first.  Or something like that.  Emperor of the Fading Suns!!!  AWESOME!!!  Ascendancy was cool...I liked its dark feel...but I never got into it as much as Moo2 or even Moo1.  

I just downloaded Xcom, got it to work in windows XP, and now Im killing sectoids and floaters.  Good times.

You know...Im talking like an old fogie gamer, and Im only 23.  lol

[McDoomhammer]

lol.  As it happens I'm replaying Apocalypse right now, another of my favourites which I couldn't get to work for years, and as it happens I just discovered Albion (www.abandonia.com).  Other than rating Apocalypse a bit higher, I agree with your assessment.
My small claim to fame is having been thrown on the floor repeatedly by a man who used to be high up in Microprose.  He's managing director of Pivotal Games now (the brains behind the Conflict series, which I confess I haven't played) and attends the same university Aikido club I used to.

[MrGimp]

True...Apocalypse DID have its moments.  I liked how you could make buildings come down.  The physics were a definite plus compared to the original.  One of my favorite tactics to raise money in the early game was to raid the slums repeatedly, blow the building to hell with high explosives, and take the drugs from the gangsters and sell em for cash.  Thats what video games should be about.  Killin people and sellin drugs.  Thats why GTA is so popular!  hahaha

[Kagus]

Hey, what about Dominions?  That's made by two guys, and they've gone pretty far.  People actually know about Dominions, and I think that they've made a fair bit of money off of the series.

And then there's little ol' Malfador Machinations, a group of college kids who decided they wanted to do a little project.  Behold the Space Empires series, now sold in commercial retailers.   However, their fantasy RPG apparently didn't interest them as much, so it remained in its little hole.  And that's the one game of theirs I played the most.

There are actually some indie devs out there who are getting noticed, it's just that there aren't enough of them.  And then you have the ones who can't go indie, and so cling to a 'big brother' company which will ivariably swallow them whole as soon as they release a nice game.  Bullfrog comes to mind.

Hey, should someone start a Dominions thread in here?  I've felt inclined to talk about it recently, as I have absolutely no luck with it unless I'm playing Ermor, and I'd like to know what strategies other folks have.

[ March 12, 2008: Message edited by: Kagus ]

[Torak]

quote:Originally posted by Kagus:
<STRONG>Hey, should someone start a Dominions thread in here?  I've felt inclined to talk about it recently, as I have absolutely no luck with it unless I'm playing Ermor, and I'd like to know what strategies other folks have.</STRONG>

I play Ulm. It's fun to make a super-god in about 2 years who can wipe pretty much everything off the map.

[Kagus]

Yes, well, there is that...  An earth-mage cyclops with 30+ protection and iron-studded boots can make a rather nasty impression on enemy forces.

But nothing compares to the armies of Ermor.  Not even such a great beast as a cyclops clad in black steel can withstand a force five thousand strong of unfearing death.  It is the Dominions equivalent of "you pass out from over-exertion".

I happen to like playing Man when I get a chance.  There's just something cool about longbowmen.

[ March 12, 2008: Message edited by: Kagus ]