From 9840cb52f02f63a572a582c091fafb3c554d41a1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: uvok cheetah
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2025 10:17:42 +0100
Subject: Publish gaming article
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+---
+layout: post
+title: Computer games I (used to) play
+lang: en
+categories: game
+date: 2025-03-18 10:17 +0100
+---
+
+I'm not big on computer games. Usually "I don't have the time" to deal with
+them. Or rather, spending so much time on the computer at work, I'm quickly fed
+up with sitting on the computer. Also, I get frustrated quickly at times, when
+I can't make progress or repeatedly fail. So I usually only play computer games
+on vacation.
+
+So, as for games I played (recently-ish)? Roughly sorted by time last played
+ascending:
+
+- Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in my childhood (in no specific order):
+ - [Civilization](https://archive.org/details/msdos_sid_meier_civilization)
+ [^civ1], [^civ2]. Yes, the original one! If I remember correctly, I always
+ got destroyed sooner or later… - [FreeCiv](https://www.freeciv.org/) is an
+ open source game inspired by it.
+ - [3D Pinball Space Cadet](https://alula.github.io/SpaceCadetPinball/). I
+ spent hours on that one. Never quite succeeding on hitting the targets…
+ - Anno 1602. I think the first game I searched for cheats to improve my
+ chances… - [Unknown Horizons](https://unknown-horizons.org) is a similar
+ game in open source. [^unkhor]
+ - SimCity 2000 [^simcit] -
+ [LinCity-NG](https://github.com/lincity-ng/lincity-ng) is a similar open
+ source game.
+ - Need For Speed III
+ - Empire Earth (quite like Age Of Empires, as I found out later) - As far as
+ open source goes, [0 A.D.](https://play0ad.com/) is probably the closest?
+ - "Die Völker" (apparently, "Alien Nations" in English, "The Nations" was
+ actually the sequel. Yeah, what?). I sunk quite some time into that one as
+ well.
+ - "Funk-Flitzer", which was on a "Mickey Maus" comic magazine. Go search for
+ "3-D Ultra Radio Control Racers".
+ - Worms 2 - [Hedgewars](http://www.hedgewars.org/) seems to be the open source
+ alternative.
+ - Moorhuhn, Winter Edition
+- Sometime later deep in the past: Minecraft (I stopped way before Microsoft
+ acquired it), recently followed by [Minetest, or rather,
+ Luanti](https://www.luanti.org/) (Though, "it's just not the same anymore".
+ I'm not sure what exactly it is, maybe my changed mindset, maybe I liked the
+ original soundtrack and game elements more…).
+- [Starbound](https://playstarbound.com/), very shortly
+- [OpenTTD](https://www.openttd.org/): Trains and buses! Though, admittedly, I
+ never quite "got it" (why do you have to manually "park" passengers on train
+ stations, instead of unloading them completely, so they continue taking the
+ train?)
+- [Dwarf Fortress](https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/). Go with
+ [LNP](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Utility:Lazy_Newb_Pack) if you
+ wanna give it a try, or the Steam version.
+- [Stardew Valley](https://www.stardewvalley.net/) (on Android tablet)
+- [Factorio](https://www.factorio.com/) - Shaking my head over the people
+ arguing over how to perfectly optimize everything ;). I disabled biters in
+ recent play-throughs, it got to annoying for me.
+- [Terraria](https://terraria.org/). Another one where I had to resort to the
+ Wiki for the bosses.
+- [Cattails: Wildwood Story](https://cattailsgame.com/). Got through the main
+ story, had to resort to YouTube for looking up how to beat the final boss.
+- [Turing Complete](https://turingcomplete.game/)
+- And, the most recent one,
+ [dotAge](https://www.michelepirovano.com/dotage.html)
+
+The latter [^dotnote1] one is a "turn-based village builder", with challenges. I
+*guess* I can *kinda* compare it to Dwarf Fortress, as in, it can be incredibly
+hard, and you have to build a civilization [^dotdwarf] and take care of it, as
+in terms of food and drink, for example. Only you don't have to deal with goblin
+or forgotten beast invasion, but, basically, nature. And DF doesn't have tech
+research… Okay, maybe they're not comparable after all.
+
+The first play-throughs are rather rough, since you will only unlock additional
+content, such as farming, with play time. So your first villages will cease to
+exist quite quickly, I think. That's expected. Probably to show you the failure
+modes?
+
+From personal experience: Don't build some new buildings too quickly. The game
+allows you to build them even though they're "useless" at that specific point in
+the game, and you need additional tech research to make them usable.
+
+{% linked_image
+img="https://pics.uvokchee.de/_data/i/upload/2025/03/17/20250317185230-40c102c2-me.jpg"
+url="https://pics.uvokchee.de/upload/2025/03/17/20250317185230-40c102c2.jpg"
+alt="Screenshot of the game dotAge, of fairly early game play."
+%}
+
+[^dotnote1]:
+ Yes, kinda unfair I only go into detail into one. I wanted to start
+ "reviewing" only this one, but then thought, "well, might as well list all
+ games I played so far". Maybe that's a chance for future blog posts.
+
+[^simcit]:
+ I didn't like SimCity 3000 as much. And *don't get me started with Cities:
+ Skylines*.
+
+[^dotdwarf]:
+ General advice seems to be not to go over 50 in dotAge. In Dwarf Fortress,
+ you have to deal with the pesky Nobles instead. Something similar seems to
+ exist in dotAge as well?
+
+[^civ1]: Go drop archive.org a small donation, won't you?
+
+[^civ2]: You can actually still play it thanks to [DOSBox](https://www.dosbox.com/)
+
+[^unkhor]:
+ Not sure about the current state. The port to the Godot
+ engine seems still to be a WIP. Last blog post is quite some time ago, but
+ the [GitHub repo](https://github.com/unknown-horizons/godot-port) is active.
+
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