Sim Isle - First Impressions - long
Robert Court
486 at 33MHz (66MHz recommended)
MS-DOS 5.0 or above
8 MB RAM
6 MB of HD space
SVGA (640 x 480 x 256 colours 512K Video RAM)
CD-ROM drive
Optional support for Sound Blaster and 100% compatibles
The installation and sound-card recognition was easy enough, although
the program refused to run at first in Win95. A quick search of the CD
revealed Win95.txt and a PIF, (thanks Maxis), so everything was soon
OK. Incidently, there is a wide range of VESA drivers on the CD, so
you should find one to suit your card.
The video introduction sequence is impressive - a seagull's eye-view
as it flies by a South Sea island. Unfortunately, once the game
begins, the graphics are disappointing. The sea is just a flat blue
without any animation, the cities consist of a few clunky looking
sky-scrapers, and villages are all represented by four small mud-huts.
It compares badly with SC2000 or Transport Tycoon. There is some
animation within the game......bulldozers move around logging camps,
buses jerk around poorly defined roads, and ferry-boats chug in and
out of harbours, but it is all rather crude and wildly out of scale.
There are three levels of zoom and a 2D top-down view. Moving around
the island is rather jerky but you soon get used to it.
The manual is 100 pages, mainly devoted to describing what all the
buttons do. There is a tutorial game to guide you through the main
principles but I found it rather limited.
Now for the important stuff.....the gameplay. The game consists of a
tutorial island (easy), 24 different scenarios of varying degrees of
difficulty, and a free-form island which is randomly generated with no
set objectives. Each of the set scenarios involves you completing a
given task within a time limit and you get a score according to how
well you did. Having been steeped in capitalism, I found it quite hard
preventing myself exploiting simple villagers in order to get
seriously rich. Some of the scenarios allow you to do this but others
penalise you and kick you off the island in disgrace. I must admit I
didn't find much fun in being a representative of Greenpeace, it all
seemed a bit too holy for my liking. But that's my problem, not the
game's.
Actually getting down to converting a bunch of mud-huts into a
throbbing metropolis of tourism is not easy. You have at your disposal
12 agents, all with different talents, which you can hire or fire at
will. This leads me to my first serious criticism of the game. In
order to develop a village into a city, you must send the "correct"
agent to achieve each of the various stages of development. It is not
clear from the manual, or the on-line help, which is the best agent to
send. Maxis assume that you will have fun finding, by trial and error
presumably, which combination of agents works best. Well, I didn't
find it much fun. I ended up sending 10 agents to one village whilst
trying to find the right one. This will probably happen less as my
experience with the game increases.
My second criticism involves the placing of various structures on the
island. Let's say you have the right agent(s) at a site plus the
relevant materials and money, so you decide to build your structure.
Placing this new structure has to be pixel-perfect, otherwise nothing
happens. I spent about 10 minutes trying to find the *exact* spot
where a ferry-port should be built. This is *very* tedious.
Those two criticisms apart, the game has the potential to become quite
addictive. On a minimum specified PC, it may be rather slow. I don't
know quite what uses up all the CPU power. The graphics are crude for
SVGA and the animation is poor. There must be a lot of maths going on
I suppose.There is no island editor (yet), and no modem or PBEM
facility. Do I regret buying it? No, not really. It is quite difficult
to get into but that's no bad thing.....I think the game has depth and
a long playability life. Once I get the hang of placing structures and
can memorise the talents of the agents, I think I'll quite enjoy
myself......exploiting the natives of course :-)
rc
**********************
Robert Court
**********************
ca...@dircon.co.uk
CompuServe 100544,1001
**********************
Robert Court
Someone has just pointed out to me me that there is no such problem if
I do the following:
1. make sure the mouse driver that ships with Win95 is installed
2. make sure that the relevant agent\materials\workforce\money are all
present at the site before placing the structure
that all will be OK.
I've just installed the driver and everything works fine :-) So
the only criticism I have with the game now is figuring out who to
send where to get the job done. Things are getting better all the
time. Oh, I forgot to mention......the music is terrible and the sound
effects irritating, but fortunately both can be turned off.
gary anderson
[...]
: Actually getting down to converting a bunch of mud-huts into a
: throbbing metropolis of tourism is not easy. You have at your disposal
: 12 agents, all with different talents, which you can hire or fire at
: will. This leads me to my first serious criticism of the game. In
: order to develop a village into a city, you must send the "correct"
: agent to achieve each of the various stages of development. It is not
: clear from the manual, or the on-line help, which is the best agent to
: send. Maxis assume that you will have fun finding, by trial and error
(It's 24 agents, btw.) I *really* wanted to like this game. In spite
of being disappointed with SIM-TOWER and perhaps another title or two,
I am a life-long fan of Maxis and their philosophy of "software toys."
But this "agent" business is spoiling for me what looks like an
otherwise very interesting game. I spent most of this afternoon
trying to *do* something on one island or another -- build an airport,
clear a forest, enlarge a hotel, *anything* -- but most of my time was
spent just trying to find the "right" person to do the job, and not
often succeeding. It's a needless bit of chrome on the interface
which obstructs more than it entertains or educates. As I said, I had
really been looking forward to this game, but so far -- unless this
"agent" system starts to grow on me, which is doubtful -- I'm
disappointed. It's lovely to look at, and the sounds are nice, and
the simulation seems to be rich and deep; but it's damn hard to *do*
anything....
Mark Dobie
>find it much fun. I ended up sending 10 agents to one village whilst
>trying to find the right one. This will probably happen less as my
>experience with the game increases.
It seems that if you right click on a greyed out button the message bar
will tell you what you are lacking, including any agent skills that are
required.
>happens. I spent about 10 minutes trying to find the *exact* spot
>where a ferry-port should be built. This is *very* tedious.
Don't you just place it somewhere when the cursor is white (instead of
red)?
One thing that seems clumsy to me is exploring. Do the explorers only
explore where you send them or do they explore along the way too? Is it
just random chance whether you find things or do you have to comb the
island?
Another small bug - if you turn the music off and save and quit, when
you reload the music is still off in the options but is playing anyway.
>know quite what uses up all the CPU power. The graphics are crude for
>SVGA and the animation is poor.
I agree the graphics could be better, and the interface too, like having
several windows open at once. I think some more summary information
about the island would be good too, like how many villages and power
stations you have.
Mark
--
Mark Dobie
M.R....@ecs.soton.ac.uk University of Southampton
http://diana.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~mrd/cv.html MS Windows? Linux and X!
gary anderson
not sure who wrote this originally):
: Sigh... so many of their should have been great Sims over the years have
: suffered from this very same syndrome and it tends to scare off even us
: die-harder sim fans... to say nothing of the newbies who might want to
: bust into the genre and thus expand the market scope for many of these new
: young companies that Maxis brings in under their wing...
After another 24 hours with it, I will say it's getting a little
easier -- and a little more fun. But certainly this game is not as
"welcoming" as SC2000. I'm also a little disappointed that some of
the elements I was most looking forward to are merely abstracted,
like exploring, discovering new flora/fauna, and maintaining a
rainforest ecosystem. The game so far seems to be variations on a
theme: a balancing act with the natural world on one side and
industrial development on the other.
I think SIM-ISLE could/should have included, without sacrificing any
of the sim's integrity, a "learning mode." So I could, for example,
put down an airport *here,* whether or not I had sufficient resources
and the proper "personalities" in place, and let me watch the
ecological fall-out. It would make getting into the game a lot
easier, not only for kids (who may have to pass this one by) but for
us die-hard sim-heads.
As to your justification for hacking the code to give yourself more
money:
: 3) They have seemingly modeled this sim to echo reality in developing
: third world island economies and they themselves have implied corruption
: of one form or another may be a part of the model... therefore I'm just
: adding another layer of corruption to their's... after all... in the
: real world economy... Money Talks... plain and simple...
Heh. :-) This is a truly inspired rationalization! Love it! :-)
You sound like the young Jim Kirk re-programming the "Kobayashi Maru"
simulator. Live long and prosper!
Robert Court
>One thing that seems clumsy to me is exploring. Do the explorers only
>explore where you send them or do they explore along the way too? Is it
>just random chance whether you find things or do you have to comb the
>island?
I'm afraid you do. If you want to be methodical about it, put the grid
lines on and click on each box in turn. What a pain :-( You can
also make the explorers more efficient by training them up to 100, it
seems to help. I doubt that all the effort is worth it though because
after finding various archeological sites, temples, caves, and
deposits of Newcastle Brown Ale beer bottles, (I'm not kidding), they
did nothing to reverse my slow decline into the red.
Elsewhere in this thread, Ray Kasycz writes an interesting posting
about hacking the save file for more money. Don't apologise for
bringing up the thorny subject of cheating Ray, just post me the hex
addresses to save me searching for them ;->
>Another small bug - if you turn the music off and save and quit, when
>you reload the music is still off in the options but is playing anyway.
Yep, it happens to me too. Has anyone else noticed that structures
previously built suddenly close down? I've noticed that logging camps
vanish after a while. I think the message bar may inform the player
of this but if you're looking elsewhere at the time you'll miss it.
I've also had my best hotel suddenly vanish, along with all the
thousands I'd spent on improvements and extensions. There was no
warning that I was aware of.....I may have missed it on the message
bar of course......the first indication I had that it was missing was
my sudden drop in income.
Other things that bug me:
In order to get the tankers to call at my oil pumping stations, I have
to import some oil first.
To build an ore mine requires 5 Heavy Machinery, but to produce HM I
need iron ore, so I have to import HM to get started. And it seems to
take forever to start making HM in significant numbers.
Creating a non-undustrialised paradise is very difficult. Has anyone
managed it yet? With just fishing villages, a small hotel plus
attractions, the money still ebbs away. (Send those hex numbers Ray)
You all probably know this, but just in case: print out the
README.TXT on the CD, it contains vital info on building costs, and
upgrade cost to all the structures. (Why wasn't this in the manual?)
I hope I can get to grips with SimIsle before Caesar 2 drops through
my letter box ;-)
Raymond Kasycz
> Elsewhere in this thread, Ray Kasycz writes an interesting posting
> about hacking the save file for more money. Don't apologise for
> bringing up the thorny subject of cheating Ray, just post me the hex
> addresses to save me searching for them ;->
I can't begin to tell you guys how much this moral support means to me and
now if I could just get some help with the jelly doughnut problem... ;-)
Seriously I'm afraid that right now I don't have much to contribute in the
way of more serious game play comments as most of tonight was lost to
wrestling win95 on to the dx2-66... but SimIsle is still safe on the
untouched p100 altho I understand Robert that you're running yours under
win95 ;) Anywho... enuff of that and on to other more pertinent techie
stuff...
It seems the saved game files are not of consistent size altho if you
inject the money right at start-up I think you're OK as the saved money
location is in what I will refer to as the first 'page' of the file and
always seems to be in the same place...
A funny little aside here is I tried the scenario island just to the right
off the upper left(tutorial) island as a second test and the injection
worked fine altho when I re-loaded the game I had immediately won as the
challenge in that scenario was to raise 'X' amount of dollars... :)
The following is a basic screen capture from Norton's Disk Editor which I
have edited slightly to make it more palatable for unix e-mail and I have
indicated with those little 'hats' the location: Offset 144 hex 90
I hope this helps guys and remember to use this cheat for good and not for
evil and keep up the great game play comments and stuff as there are a lot
of us out here counting on you To Boldly Go Where... Whoops... Here comes
the Star Trek stuff again... ;-)
Mundo
.. Disk Editor
Object Edit Link View Info Tools Help
Offset 0, hex 0
00000000: 67 61 6D 65 2D 32 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000030: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 E8 03 05 00
00000040: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000050: 00 00 00 00 17 06 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000060: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000070: 03 00 00 00 32 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000080: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000090: FF FF FF 00 00 00 00 00 - 14 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
000000A0: ^^^^^^^^ 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
000000B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
000000C0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
000000D0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - E8 03 00 00 00 00 00 00
000000E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
000000F0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000100: 00 00 00 00 00 00 .. 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000110: 00 00 00 00 00 00 .. 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000120: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000130: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
.. File C:\SIMISLE\SAVEGAME\sisle1.si
C:\SIMISLE\SAVEGAME\sisle1.si Offset 144, hex 90
gary anderson
: but SimIsle is still safe on the
: untouched p100 altho I understand Robert that you're running yours under
: win95 ;)
I'm also running mine under Win95 with no problems. (There is a Win95
help-file and a Win95-ready icon on the SimIsle CD, but for me it also
ran fine right out of the box.)
I gotta go on record and say the game is growing on me. I still think
the "agent" system is a little clunky and could have been abstracted,
but one does eventually get the hang of it. I will, however, employ
our time-honored cliche and state that the game has a fairly steep
learning curve.
Here follows a little chart that has helped me in
hiring/firing/placement decisions. Yes, I know this same info is on
pp 62-63 of the manual -- I've just re-formatted it to make it easier
to use.
-------------------------
CONSTRUCTION
Bob Moon
Ian Banwell
Marty Henson
Mike Rune
Molly Heart
Morven Sloan
Randy Gates
CRIMINAL CONTACTS
Andy Knitt
Joan Brett
John Balker
EMPLOYMENT
Dee Jarvis
Ian Banwell
Paul Smith
EXPLORATION
Bob Moon
Karen Krelin
Rick Groves
FAUNA & ZOOLOGY
Andy Knitt
Iain Mcneil
Joan Brett
Morven Sloan
Tod Swann
FLORA & FORESTRY
Doug Hammer
Karen Krelin
Kevin Ward
Sandra Jenkins
Tod Swann
INDUSTRIAL
Bob Moon
Doug Hammer
John Balker
Kevin Ward
Neil Crossbow
Nigel Dennis
Paul Smith
Randy Gates
LOCAL CULTURE
Andy Knitt
Billy Tell
LOCAL ECOLOGY
Emma Herby
Iain Mcneil
Matt Stibbe
NEGOTIATION
Billy Tell
Dee Jarvis
Mike Rune
Neil Crossbow
--------------------------
Keith Hearn
I picked it up this weekend and have played the tutorial, and poked
around one other scenario. I was up until almost midnight before I
realized that it was getting late. This one will burn a lot of
midnite oil.
In general, I agree with Robert Court's review, with just a few
comments:
In article <440od6$5...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk>,
Robert Court <ca...@dircon.co.uk> wrote:
[snip]
>The installation and sound-card recognition was easy enough, although
>the program refused to run at first in Win95. A quick search of the CD
>revealed Win95.txt and a PIF, (thanks Maxis), so everything was soon
>OK. Incidently, there is a wide range of VESA drivers on the CD, so
>you should find one to suit your card.
I'm getting some crackling noises when animations are happening. I
suspect a conflict between the VESA driver the program auto-chose for
me and my Soundblaster card. I'll play with some of the VESA drivers
before I start calling it a bug.
>The manual is 100 pages, mainly devoted to describing what all the
>buttons do. There is a tutorial game to guide you through the main
>principles but I found it rather limited.
Yes, I'm finding the manual somewhat limited. It can be hard to figure
out how things work together. For instance, to build an iron ore
mine, you need 'heavy machinery', but the manual doesn't happen to
mention what you need to do to get any (you have to build some
industry). There are lots of other things. For instance, in the
tutorial, you build a game preserve, and have to export animals. At
one point, my animals were mysteriously dying off. I had no idea
why, and the docs didn't help at all. I finally figured out that my
power plant, halfway across the island was polluting too much. Then
I had to figure out that the way to cut down on the pollution is to
reduce the output at my coal mine (thus slowing down the power
plant). The docs give no hint as to the way things interact like
this. They do mention that things interact, but leave you largely on
your own to figure out how.
There is an online 'notebook' that gives some general idea how things
effect the environment, and it's fairly well done, but doesn't go
into game mechanics very much.
I can see that a FAQ will be *really* useful for this game.
>Actually getting down to converting a bunch of mud-huts into a
>throbbing metropolis of tourism is not easy. You have at your disposal
>12 agents, all with different talents, which you can hire or fire at
>will. This leads me to my first serious criticism of the game. In
>order to develop a village into a city, you must send the "correct"
>agent to achieve each of the various stages of development. It is not
>clear from the manual, or the on-line help, which is the best agent to
>send. Maxis assume that you will have fun finding, by trial and error
>presumably, which combination of agents works best. Well, I didn't
>find it much fun. I ended up sending 10 agents to one village whilst
>trying to find the right one. This will probably happen less as my
>experience with the game increases.
This wasn't all that hard for me. Bring up the village window, and
click on the greyed-out button for the task you want to do. In the
message line at the bottom of the screen, it will tell you what
skill(s) are needed for that task. Then, you click on each or your
agents (or look in the manual, which does list each agent's skills),
and find the agent with that skill.
>My second criticism involves the placing of various structures on the
>island. Let's say you have the right agent(s) at a site plus the
>relevant materials and money, so you decide to build your structure.
>Placing this new structure has to be pixel-perfect, otherwise nothing
>happens. I spent about 10 minutes trying to find the *exact* spot
>where a ferry-port should be built. This is *very* tedious.
I also didn't have problems with this. When trying to place a
structure, you're mouse pointer will become a picture of the
structure, with a cross below it. You can only place the structure
where the cross is white. It'll be red if you've got it at an
illegal place. Remember that the structure will go where the cross
is, not where the picture if the structure is floating. I had no
problem placing the ferry port, it just had to me in one of the two
squares of land (not beach) that were next to deep water.
I wouldn't call the placing 'pixel-perfect', as there was a
reasonable area in which it could be placed. This took me well
under a minute.
Placing mines is harder. You have to go to the 2D map and see where
ore deposits are, memorize the location, then go back to the 3D map
(which is oriented differently), figure out about where you want to
put the mine. Then get your construction agent there, and try to
build the mine, moving the cross all over until it turns white.
This took nme longer than a minute, but nowhere near 10.
>Those two criticisms apart, the game has the potential to become quite
>addictive. On a minimum specified PC, it may be rather slow. I don't
>know quite what uses up all the CPU power. The graphics are crude for
>SVGA and the animation is poor. There must be a lot of maths going on
>I suppose.There is no island editor (yet), and no modem or PBEM
>facility. Do I regret buying it? No, not really. It is quite difficult
>to get into but that's no bad thing.....I think the game has depth and
>a long playability life. Once I get the hang of placing structures and
>can memorise the talents of the agents, I think I'll quite enjoy
>myself......exploiting the natives of course :-)
I think this one has the potential to become a real classic, too. The
graphics aren't particularly fancy, but they aren't what the
program's all about. It looks like the game play will be deliciously
complex. The biggest problem I see is the scanty docs (but the
online help is somewhat useful, just not detailed enough).
I expect they made the docs incomplete so they could sell lots of
'Official Guide to SimIsle' books. I'm assuming that there is/will be
one out.
I think they've got a winner here, If people can get past the
learning curve. You can be eco-friendly, or eco-hostile, but I
suspect that a balanced approach is best in most cases.
Keith Hearn
khe...@pyramid.com
Robert Court
Raymond Kasycz (rka...@emr1.emr.ca) wrote:
> untouched p100 altho I understand Robert that you're running yours under
> win95 ;)
Without any problems at all Ray :-)
(I seem to be missing some postings from this thread so apologies if I
haven't replied to anyone)
>Here follows a little chart that has helped me in
>hiring/firing/placement decisions. Yes, I know this same info is on
>pp 62-63 of the manual -- I've just re-formatted it to make it easier
>to use.
<.....>
Thanks for that Gary.
I've just been over to Maxis on CS to see how others are getting on.
Lot of complaints about the game crashing or failing to install
properly. Seems to be video cards causing trouble. Game runs slowly
for some folk as well. Some complaints about high boredom levels
whilst others seem to be enjoying it. I'm sticking with it for a bit
longer....pass on those tips if you find any....I need all the help I
can get 8-)
Ian Bowes
khe...@pyramid.com (Keith Hearn) wrote:
>
>I picked it up this weekend and have played the tutorial, and poked
> around one other scenario. I was up until almost midnight before I
> realized that it was getting late. This one will burn a lot of
> midnite oil.
manual to tell you the logical progression when trying to make a few
quid. Scenario 2, I cannot seem to get past.
Does anyone have any tips on how the relationships between the industries
towns, cities and villages interact.
Also if the agents had their respective skills listed just under the mug-shots
that would make their utilisation much much easier.
Anyone got past Scenario 2, and willing to share a few tips?
Perhaps we can cobble together a pre-FAQ ?
Cheers
Ian Bowes
I.B...@soton.ac.uk
Jimbone
rka...@emr1.emr.ca (Raymond Kasycz) wrote:
>gary anderson (gand...@unlinfo.unl.edu) wrote:
>> (It's 24 agents, btw.) I *really* wanted to like this game.
>
>little nervous and I had only just scratched the surface on the tutorial
>when I had to leave off last nite due to the lateness of the hour...
>> It's lovely to look at, and the sounds are nice, and
>> the simulation seems to be rich and deep; but it's damn hard to *do*
>> anything....
>
>suffered from this very same syndrome and it tends to scare off even us
>die-harder sim fans... to say nothing of the newbies who might want to
>bust into the genre and thus expand the market scope for many of these new
>young companies that Maxis brings in under their wing...
>
A few things to help you along:
1. In my opinion, cheating is fine, as long as it adds to your enjoyment of
the game. You bought it, enjoy it.
2. There is a table in the readme file that tells you how difficult the
different scenarios are. This should allow you to accomplish some of the
easier scenarios, while preparing you for the most difficult.
3. Clicking on an object that you want to build (or interact with) when an
item is greyed out will tell you in the status bar what (or who) you are
lacking.
You can E-mail me with any more questions.
Thanks,
Jim.
Live like you're going to die tomorrow.
Work like you're going to live forever.
***** I can be annoyed at: *****
jim...@emf.net or jsie...@maxis.com
Jimbone
m...@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Mark Dobie) wrote:
>In <440od6$5...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk> ca...@dircon.co.uk (Robert Court)
writes:
>
>explore where you send them or do they explore along the way too? Is it
>just random chance whether you find things or do you have to comb the
>island?
>
Additionally, if you train your explorer, his range of exploration will
increase dramatically. The greater his skills, the farther he will explore
from each spot.
>Another small bug - if you turn the music off and save and quit, when
>you reload the music is still off in the options but is playing anyway.
>
Sorry about that. This is, I believe, a design flaw. The setup information
should be saved with the game itself (a .cfg file or the like), and it is not.
Hopefully we can change this soon.
Jimbone
>Other things that bug me:
>
>In order to get the tankers to call at my oil pumping stations, I have
>to import some oil first.
Shouldn't need to do this. I will take a look. Sometimes, it just takes a
little while.
>
>To build an ore mine requires 5 Heavy Machinery, but to produce HM I
>need iron ore, so I have to import HM to get started. And it seems to
>take forever to start making HM in significant numbers.
Depending on the scenario, some will begin with the HM that you need. You
might be on the more difficult scenario's.
>
>Creating a non-undustrialised paradise is very difficult. Has anyone
>managed it yet? With just fishing villages, a small hotel plus
>attractions, the money still ebbs away. (Send those hex numbers Ray)
Keep an eye on your labor costs. This is usually the culprit, ditch agents
you do not need, etc. Don't create more unskilled labor than you need.
>
>You all probably know this, but just in case: print out the
>README.TXT on the CD, it contains vital info on building costs, and
>upgrade cost to all the structures. (Why wasn't this in the manual?)
>
The cost info was changed a great deal during the "tuning" phase of
development. We had to have the manual to print during that period, and
decided we would have too much inaccurate info (as in the early SimTower
manual) and wanted to avoid that.
Jimbone
rka...@emr1.emr.ca (Raymond Kasycz) wrote:
>Robert Court (ca...@dircon.co.uk) wrote:
RE: Win95 and DOS games.
My experience with this subject has come down to a relatively easy solution
that works perfectly in every case.
Basically, set up a DOS shortcut where you have gone into the
properties/program/advanced menu and select ONLY the top option (prevent MS
DOS program from detecting windows.) leave all other parameters unchanges. I
have found this to work on everything so far.
I hope this helps.
Jimbo.
Jimbone
> around one other scenario. I was up until almost midnight before I
> realized that it was getting late. This one will burn a lot of
> midnite oil.
>
Thanks for the kind assessment.
>
>Placing mines is harder. You have to go to the 2D map and see where
> ore deposits are, memorize the location, then go back to the 3D map
> (which is oriented differently), figure out about where you want to
> put the mine. Then get your construction agent there, and try to
> build the mine, moving the cross all over until it turns white.
> This took nme longer than a minute, but nowhere near 10.
On the 2D map. If you right-click on a location, it will take you to that
location on the 3D map automatically. This should make it easier for you to
place mines. Should go into the keylist on the next rev.
Matthew Stibbe
It's a needless bit of chrome on the interface
which obstructs more than it entertains or educates.
<<
I suppose it can be frustrating at first to figure out which agents
do what, but it is very easy to find out - just click on their faces
to get a summary and then click on notes to get a full bio. This
isn't really a user interface tweak, it simulates an important
aspect of real rainforest management and economic development,
namely skills and people, and it also differentiates the game from
other god games by grounding it in the world of real people. I
suspect that people react badly at first to it because it spoils
their preconceptions of what a Sim/god game should be like, but we
find that people quickly get used to it and soon learn which agents
do what (faces are very easy indeed to remember).
Anyhow, I do hope you will persevere with the game.
Matthew Stibbe
Managing Director
Intelligent Games
Matthew Stibbe
things effect the environment, and it's fairly well done, but
doesn't go into game mechanics very much.<<
Actually the notebook has a *lot* of this kind of information and
you can find out about how individual objects interact with others
by clicking on an object and then clicking on the 'i' button in the
top right hand corner to take you to the information page for that
object.
>> [summary] placing mines
The easiest way to do this is to go to the 2D map and right click on
the location of the minerals there. This takes you back to the 3D
map centered on the location of your right click. Simply send a
builder to the center of the map and voila!
Matthew Stibbe
Managing Director
builder to the center of the map and voila!
Matthew Stibbe
Managing Director
Matthew Stibbe
Managing Director
Matthew Stibbe
route to that place. They will explore a bigger area if you train
them - 75% = about a quarter of a screen full at a time. You should
explore the whole island!
The map uses real time 3D graphics, with light sourcing and texture
mapping. It has thousands of polygons so it takes a lot of
processing. You can move about the map quicker by right clicking on
it rather than scrolling.
RICHARD ABBOTT
>I suppose it can be frustrating at first to figure out which agents
>do what, but it is very easy to find out - just click on their faces
>to get a summary and then click on notes to get a full bio. This
>isn't really a user interface tweak, it simulates an important
>aspect of real rainforest management and economic development,
>namely skills and people, and it also differentiates the game from
>other god games by grounding it in the world of real people. I
>suspect that people react badly at first to it because it spoils
>their preconceptions of what a Sim/god game should be like, but we
>find that people quickly get used to it and soon learn which agents
>do what (faces are very easy indeed to remember).
>Anyhow, I do hope you will persevere with the game.
It is good to see some online prescence from the producers of this game.
My first impressions of the interface are that it is by far the best way to
run a sim/god game I have seen. The agents rapidly become part of a team and I
feel that I am just a part of the team. As for knowing what agents do what
that comes with a bit of experience and at the moment I still have a skill
list of them on paper beside me just as an aide memoir.
A couple of glitches that I have noticed are when reloading a game that had
the music set to off - it plays in the background despite the control panel
saying it is off really a nitpickers point that one.
Secondly in villages the 'Batch Train' option is lit up even for agents who
don't have the necessary 80+ skill level and can be activated though it seems
to only have the effect of a normal train but at 500 -vs- 150 cost. Something
that is very easy to work around but I would assume equally easily fixed.
The tutorial is the best way to learn the use of agents though I would have
liked an additional one which looked at the interrelations of industries more.
In my few game that I hav eplayed getting a balanced industrial setup working
is very difficult.
Richard Abbott
RJAb...@its.dundee.ac.uk
"Baldrick, I want to be young and wild,
then middle aged and Rich,
and then be old and annoy people by pretending to be deaf."
(By E.Blackadder Butler to the Prince Regent)
RICHARD ABBOTT
>>> [summary] placing mines
>The easiest way to do this is to go to the 2D map and right click on
>the location of the minerals there. This takes you back to the 3D
>map centered on the location of your right click. Simply send a
>builder to the center of the map and voila!
>Matthew Stibbe
>Managing Director
Suely it is even easier to send the builder from the 2D map by a move orde
given there - though it can be tricky if there is a lot of jungle about.
Walt Mazur
>I suppose it can be frustrating at first to figure out which agents
>do what, but it is very easy to find out - just click on their faces
>to get a summary and then click on notes to get a full bio. This
>isn't really a user interface tweak, it simulates an important
>aspect of real rainforest management and economic development,
>namely skills and people, and it also differentiates the game from
>other god games by grounding it in the world of real people. I
>suspect that people react badly at first to it because it spoils
>their preconceptions of what a Sim/god game should be like, but we
>find that people quickly get used to it and soon learn which agents
>do what (faces are very easy indeed to remember).
One of the features of computer games is the ability to control
something one normally couldn't: a jet aircraft, a fleet, a city, an
island. God games, especially, are founded on letting the player
control the simulation. Having to work through agents makes that
control less direct and, perhaps, less exact if the agent only does
approximately what you want. When players often manipulate save files
to grant themselves more money and capabilities--i.e., more control--
having agents lessen the amount control does not seem especially
desirable.
However, it's one thing to make the above theoretical objection and
another to see how (whether?) it actually works in a game. I shall
probably try Sim Isle to see just how much agents decrease the sense
of control that attracts people to god games. Certainly, it is more
realistic to be unable to exactly control operations; how entertaining
that loss of control is, is the open question.
Robert Court
>Suely it is even easier to send the builder from the 2D map by a move orde
>given there - though it can be tricky if there is a lot of jungle about.
>
>
>Richard Abbott
>RJAb...@its.dundee.ac.uk
>
>"Baldrick, I want to be young and wild,
>then middle aged and Rich,
>and then be old and annoy people by pretending to be deaf."
>(By E.Blackadder Butler to the Prince Regent)
Agreed. My preferred method is:
1. at 2D map click oil/gold/silver/coal/iron etc button
2. click the construction agent into the middle of the colour
required. If the agent can't land, the PC will beep. If he can you'll
see the white dot where he is.
3. goto any 3D window and click on the agents face, and finally click
on the location square and the program will dump you right on top of
the agent, and you can use him to build straightaway.
RICHARD ABBOTT
>However, it's one thing to make the above theoretical objection and
>another to see how (whether?) it actually works in a game. I shall
>probably try Sim Isle to see just how much agents decrease the sense
>of control that attracts people to god games. Certainly, it is more
>realistic to be unable to exactly control operations; how entertaining
>that loss of control is, is the open question.
The use of agents adds a great deal to the game IMHO. There is a better feel
of managing the island compared to the games where you just choose an option
to do and do it.
In effect there is little difference in that the constuction agents will only
build whta and where they are told to build, but the time lag and the way that
they are fixed to that site for the constuction time are more realistic than
the buildings appearing instantly on demand. With good timing it is possible
to be using several agents at once.
I have taken to it though others may not. As a direct answer there is next to
no loss of control.