Ten Year Civ II Game? Incredible!

So. Hard. To. WIN!

A member of Reddit called Lycerius has been playing the same Civilization II game for the last ten years. What makes it more interesting is the fact that he is a stalemate with two other A.I. players and it's been total war for the last 1700 years in game time. There is starvation, pollution and war. Lots of nuclear war.

I've been playing the same game of Civ II for 10 years. Though long outdated, I grew fascinated with this particular game because by the time Civ III was released, I was already well into the distant future. I then thought that it might be interesting to see just how far into the future I could get and see what the ramifications would be. Naturally I play other games and have a life, but I often return to this game when I'm not doing anything and carry on. The results are as follows. [via Reddit]

The this is an interesting concept and the comment sections to read are interesting too. Especially the parallels this game to George Orwell's 1984.

If you are a Civ 2 player, have a copy of the game and have some free time you might want to download a copy of the game save file and give it a run.

I'll be watching this thread pretty closely. I love when people do stuff like this.

That's Not How You Do It or Data Driven BASIC Adventure Games!

I'm way better than Windows!

I was reading an online book that was originally published in the early 80s on writing DnD style text adventure games in BASIC.  As a matter of fact it's a book I used to own but somehow and somewhere between the 80s and now it disappeared.

I have several things that have done that and I often wonder where they've gone. Probably that sacred place where all my socks go during the dry cycle when doing laundry.

As I was reading I came across this page where the author shows how to implement room descriptions for your nasty little dungeon.  Go ahead and take a look. I'll stick around until you get back.

Back? Good! Did you notice what was "wrong"? Not really? Okay, let me point something out.

1020 RETURN
1030 REM ************
1040 REM ROOM 1
1050 PRINT "YOU ARE IN THE HALLWAY"
1060 PRINT "THERE IS A DOOR TO THE
SOUTH"
1070 PRINT "THROUGH WINDOWS TO THE NORTH YOU
CAN SEE A SECRET HERB GARDEN"
1080 RETURN

Here's the problem. He should have used data statements and an array to store the data. Instead he hard coded everything into the program.

New Dark Star Wars Game...Wow, this Might be...Interesting!

"Who ate beans?"

So I saw on Gamasutra that LucasArts is looking to release a dark game in the Star Wars.  This looks interesting and I hope they are able to pull this off.  From the article:

Players will take control of a bounty hunter exploring the Coruscant underworld, as he attempts to uncover a criminal conspiracy. The game promises third-person gritty combat, as opposed to supernatural Force powers. [via Gamasutra]

 This bodes good things to me as I am getting sick of robed Jedies or Sith wandering around with their laser swords deflecting blaster bolts and levitating stuff.  What is also nice is the fact that the game is going to take place on Coruscant which is one of three favorite locations of mine in the Star Wars universe.  The other two being Tatoonie and Naboo.