10 Year Apocalypse

It was the ten year anniversary, on the 3rd July, of the launch of the browser game Urban Dead, and to mark this special occasion the games owner \ designer, Kevan, has sent out a survey for players to fill in. Which was not quite what I was expecting for this landmark occasion.

 Given that the game has not had any significant development in the last five years it's a bit of a surprise that the survey strongly hints at a new wave of features, and that he's finally asking players for feedback\ideas (other than the game wiki suggestions pages, which was little more than player squabbling). But I do feel that this is 3 to 5 years too late to have a major affect.

www.FurnessWargamers.org

Furness Wargamers have finally got a new blog based website, after the old .uk domain one disappeared a while back. A few of the recent members had asked about our web presence as they had done a search on the web for info only to get the holding page for the domain.

Furness Wargamers

The site is now set up and the domain registered with Google Apps.

Also a message board has been set up using google groups (furness-wargamers@googlegroups.org)

¶

Dead Again

The Urban Dead online game has finally left the doldrums! The balance of power has shifted in Malton and, according to the stats page, the zombies now outnumber the living by 4:1.

The cause of this shift? The Dead have returned after having launched an invasion a few years ago, organised by the Something Awful forum in early 2008 as an attempt to ruin the game. Apparently they are at it again, The Dead have returned.

The first invasion was a big one, but was, in my opinion, one of the best times to play the game as it had a real apocalyptic feel to it, what with hiding and sleeping in ruins, because all the 'safehouses' were overrun and ruined. There was real difficulty in finding vital resources such as first aid kits and revivification syringes until Kevan, the game's designer, tweaked the search rates and sort of spoilt things. I feel too many people are stuck in their comfort zones in the game; and the furries that occasionally pop-up in Malton Zoo are even stranger than the idea of a zombie Apocalypse so kudos to the Dead for hunting them.

A certain amount of revisionist history in the linked forum thread above, as they didn't come close to their intent of trashing the game the first time round; ruined buildings always were viable locations for searching and living in, it's just that the standard survivor is afraid to use them and prefer huddling together with the lights on waiting to get eaten. Also those who whinged about being dead (lowercase) are probably without friends to priority revive them. The original Dead had a good rampage, trashed the place big style and then things went quite, with only around 10% of invaders carrying on; This still made them the biggest single group in Malton.

Unfortunately, regardless of the current record ratio, the numbers are not currently as much as last time and despite the Danger Map on the wiki being mostly red (for zombie controlled) or grey (ghost town - few zeds or survivors) the humans are still holding out, they just can't hang around one spot too long. Time for the old 'river tactics' of ducking and diving behind the zombie 'wavefront'. Thankfully the actually density of the zeds compared to map locations is low enough to make hiding possible. The 10000 locations in the game (more if you include inside of buildings as distinct) are too much for even the 1500 members of The Dead to cover.

Update: (22 May) The maps slowly changing to a more friendly colour, less Red and more Orange, but not in the area I'm currently camped. Kevan has tweaked the search percentages again so very easy to find first aid kits and revive syringes. My group is currently trying to set up a series of decoy repaired buildings to distract the zombies a bit and continues to work on the still long revive queues.
¶

Furness Facebook Wargamers

The Furness Wargamers website has bitten the dust recently.

Welshy, the web designer who set up the original site has been trying to get a replacement up and running, but given his dislocation around the country it's a bit unfair to expect him to get it done.

So the Clubs web presence is pretty limited at the moment, basically consisting of the Furness Wargamers Facebook Group, which doesn't have much activity at all on it, so not dissimilar to the original FW forum, that slowly petered out after a decent start.

There seems to be an healthy gaming community up in Ulverston judging by the Ulverston Gamers group. At least the all too brief existence of the Jabberwocky shop seems to have left some sort of gaming legacy. Plenty of members signed up to the group but not much actual activity, this seems to be true for Gaming Clubs web sites the world over, regardless of the age range of the participants .

Also new to the blogging world is 6Sided, a new dedicated wargames blog site. I'm going to use it as an archive site for my existing material. The new blog is called Tel's Athenaeum to reflect it's dusty archive status. Already had teething troubles trying to import from Blogger, so used my now outdated Wordpress Blog as a source for import.
¶

Diet 2 Night

Got suckered into playing another online Zombie game after seeing an advert on the Urban Dead login page.



Die2Nite is very different to UD in that you are humans who are facing an inevitable demise in a small desert community (each isolated town only has a population of 40). The goal is to survive as many nights there as possible, each night more zombies attack, and it is a race to find and use a limited amount of resources to build more defenses. Once your zombie food your soul moves to another town and you hope you can do better.

It is apparently an adaptation of an existing french site, which might explain some of the strange selection of objects available and some of their unusual uses. Unlike a lot of games it actually comes with decent tutorials and a wiki.

There are achievements that can be obtained, some automatically just by surviving or dieing. I've already manage to obtain the cannibal one, well you've to eat haven't you! It's currently free to play, but like a lot of games you can get bonuses by coughing up some money.

Still visiting the Urban Dead game, but not much is happening and if any thing the survivors now clearly have the upper hand in an increasingly thinning active population, so it's boring playing a human and futile playing as a zombie.
¶

Going Up

Well a surprisingly good season in Battrick has come to an end, with 2 first places and a second place, in a season where I feared at least one relegation.

Managed to clinch FC promotion with a game to spare. It was only at near the half-way point of the season that I figured that I had a chance at success, and from then on fielded a near full strength side. Almost blew it straight off as for one game I forgot to set orders and my default side, which was filled with useless players, took the field. This was my only FC loss for the season.

Bats Abroad

The new Battrick season is upon us, and it's all change in my One Day league with three new teams, two promoted and one demoted. The camper at the top of our league was neatly disposed of by the team that finished second, but not by beating him but by deliberately losing so badly as to force the offending team into the final automatic promotion spot available for the next level.

Gone Batty

News from the Battrick site... And not an April Fools joke this time either.

Battle of London

Still plodding along in eRepublik. Been playing this game in auto mode for quite a while now, spending a couple of minutes a day to click the relevant buttons. Have been dipping in and out a bit as my interest waxed and waned.

Due to my persistence I've now enough freebie gold stored up to do a bit of 'tanking' where you can burn gold to get extra health and so extra attacks, also enough money to get better weapons but not sure whether to stick with the 1* quality weapons or to upgrade and do more damage.

The reason to tank? The current on going invasion of the UK (aka eUK).

Easy as One, Two, Six

The Battrick season has once more come to an end, with a better than expected final standings.

Managed to bounce back and earn promotion in the First Class after being demoted down to Div VIII last season. This was despite messing up my team selection on a couple of occasions. First using my outdated default team, who scraped an unlikely draw with my nearest rival, and then forgetting to set a lower declaration point against another team, the match petering out to a draw. Still managed to go the season undefeated, 8 wins, 2 draws.

Pumpkin Head

It's Halloween in the zombie infested city of Malton. And that normally means that the great creator Kevan the programmer has laid on something special.

This year it was Pumpkins. By going to the various parks in Malton, and dodging zombies along the way, a survivor can pick a pumpkin and carve it.

So my brave character took the risk and ducked out of the hospital in Dartside to wander to a park and pick pumpkins. Turns out that though extremely heavy they don't affect you encumbrance; I picked three and ended up at 150%+ encumbrance, which lead to a slight problem when I tried to carve the things.

Apparently a hand axe is no good for this, and with no knife there is not much I could do. There was no point in searching for one as I'm already over encumbered, so I decided to get creative and started attacking people with pumpkins! Turns out they're not one shot weapons and doesn't turn people or zombies into pumpkin heads.

Malton itself has gone a bit quite. It's increasingly difficult for zeds to go on city wide rampages and they are now restricted to certain districts and small travelling hordes. Nothing as fearsome as The Dead invasion.

I run both a survivor (part of Tikhon Medical) and undead (mainly acting feral and hovering around Grigg Heights) characters to keep some form of balance, but having both maxed out in levels things have descended into familiar routines.
¶

Three Thirds

Another Battrick season comes to a close and somehow I've managed to finish all three leagues in 3rd place despite not even having an average team in all three.

First Class
In the final First Class match of the season I managed to grab the points needed to keep third place despite an heavy loss to one of the pre-season favourites who managed to lose their first three matches but still bounced back to take second.

This was the first season of the new look FC leagues and I think the new shorter season and re-alignment of the leagues are a big success. Things are now much more even between the teams but without the massive relegation trapdoor that could previously end an FC season before it even starts.

One Day
The One Day league was also a shock as I somehow avoided the relegation dogfight to finish a comfortable third in my division 4 league, and winning 9 out of 14 games along the way. The two auto-relegation spots had long been decided, but the playoff spots went down to the wire with three teams entering the final round on the same points. Our camping friend is again champion but this time in an auto-promote spot and so will be leaving my league. If the guys in the forums have got things right with the team coming down from division 3 then it looks like I'm going to be facing an old rival next season, one I competed with but always lost too when in division 5.

20-20
I think most of the people were throwing matches in the 20-20 league as that could be the only explanation for me finishing so highly against what were mostly better teams despite me not really trying. Despite it's real life success 20-20 does seem to be the unwanted relative of the other leagues. This is despite of the new international league structure that saw me face off against a number of suposedly quality Aussie sides.

Also of note is that John's team has finally bitten the dust after he got feed up with the game. That just leaves Ray and me as the remains of the four bar-flies who joined up within a couple of months of each other at the start of 06.
¶

Zork's Back!

Possible the oldest (fully realised) computerised adventure world in this world is back! Legends of Zork is now online as part of the Jolt network. It's free to play but with buyable bonuses.

Given the recent demise of Dave Arneson, who gave us the oldest role-playing world in Blackmoor. (see OotS for a good tribute) it's sort of appropriate that the world of Zork (a.k.a. The Great Underground Empire) is back, but admittedly in a form totally different from before.

Zork was always more mind over matter in its text-based game play (the more warped the mind the better). Myst sort of nicked the baton of the Zork series with its visual, cryptic, problems; which Zork tried to follow, but both sort of ran out of steam and their many sequels failed to capture the uniqueness of the originals.

Legends of Zork is totally Web based and massively multi-player; and first impressions is that of a simple bash along, with XPs, levels, equipment lists, and a lot of conventional RPG trappings (plus the promise of guilds etc in the future, the game is very much still in development). So where has the traditionally emphasise on problem solving, the mainstay of many a text adventure, got to?

Maybe it's subtly hidden within in the new game with the Fanucci cards that you randomly pick up and in the design of the related gambit. Working out how these cards relate to each other can increase you chance of success in a given combat dramatically. Of course this means that once people work out the card play (and the solutions inevitable distribution on the net) will there be a game left to play?

Given that the game isn't too deep I think so, it sounds counter-intuitive but I've found that the simpler the game the more incentive to role-play and get communities together, especially in games that can't be 'won' - possibly the true definition of an RPG campaign world.
¶

Seasons End

The Battrick cricket season has finally come to an end and it has been a tough one. Managed to finish 6th in the One-day League and 5th in the First Class. Got through to the K.O. stages of the 20-20 but went out in the 2nd round.

I managed to survive the relegation playoff from division 4 in the one-day league. The other team had decided to throw the game, but I would of been favourite to win anyway (unless I had decided to throw the match as well! You do see some silly matches where both teams are desperately trying to lose.)

The OD league leader failed in his promotion playoff and it was my fault that he had to play that match in the first place. I had defeated him the previous week, in the final match of the regular season. This suprise upset denied him an automatic promotion slot on run rate! He must hate me, as his biggest rival for the title in the upcoming season has now strengthened his own team greatly. Once again I'll be happy to survive automatic relegation next season.

It's all change in the other competitions as there has been a complete reshuffle of the First Class leagues, and new 20-20 international leagues to replace the 20-20 Knockout Cups. Both of the new divisions that I am in are difficult ones. At least the relegation trap-door isn't as big in the FC as it use to be (8 in league, 4 down! is now league of 6 and 2 down.)
¶

War in the eRepublik

eRepublik is now officially out of Beta and at v1. This also means that the war module that had been tested as then disabled is now back online and the two big power blocks in the game (ATLANTIS and PEACE) can get back to fisticuffs. Following historic tradition, this involves invading France.

The way war works is, in my opinion, and that of a few others, deeply flawed, and favours uber-Rambos burning gold (and therefore real-life money) to heal up and purchase all-important weapons. Given that Gold can be transferred between players this leads to one-man armies. The number of fights you can participate in is governed by your Wellness and with each fight knocking some off. But with gold purchased wellness packs you can heal more and so fight more fights, getting more experience, and level up and fight better.

Add to this that there are 'bugs' still in the system, and some people have accused the admins of favouritism to the French in this regards, as these bugs, such as not having hospitals enabled, only seem to affect the British. I think its actually just bad luck, but some sort of acknowledgement and refund to people who have used gold\money on a lost cause would have been good.

I'm also not too happy with Britain's military structure as it seems detached from the countries actual military history. The Royal Navy has been set up for newbies in the Reserves and uses Army ranks. The other section of the Reserves is the Royal Guards (the only Royal Guardsmen I know of had a minor hit in the 60s with 'Snoopy vs the Red Baron'), Lieutenants out rank Majors, and organisation, in general, seems pretty limp. This isn't the fault of the game or its designers, but of the eUK's government who have set up the 'armed forces' as a meta-structure on top of the game.

Also, as the war continues, Jingo-ism is starting to creep in with bad taste insults flying in from elements on both sides. It's sort of a strange situation in that I want things to be more real but not that close to real life that the nasty stuff gets carried over.
¶

NationStates vs NationStates2

So NationStates2 has finally entered public beta, and I've finally been able to create and log in to my reserved nation (but only after a bit of hassle with the game crashing repeatedly under the setup procedure) and have been actively playing for a couple of weeks now.

v2 just does not seem to be a natural progression from the original. It's almost as if someone had seen the original game and decided to do a slightly different version of it. Given that it is done by a different set of developers this is probably the case.

Its now more of a Sim than a political parody, with resources and trade between Nations, and the rankings lists, one of my favourite parts of the original, seems to of been downgraded and also has become more serious, with things such as GDP and Birth rates being ranked rather than the old 'Furniture Restoration' style rankings that exists in v1. Also to get full features requires 'donations' to purchase 'Jennifers' that you use to enable features. Obviously the onscreen Google ads (that advertise rival games!) does not earn the company enough; whereas the original can cope with a few banner ads.

NationStates2 has lost the fun factor that NationStates had. If they had expanded on that rather than add the Sim elements then it would be a better game. My last hope for it is that the Nations from the original alliance on v1 can get organised enough to reconstitute it on one of the worlds of v2. Unlike v1 the nations are split over different worlds and, apart from a one off transfer, the only way to travel between them is to burn some money!

Unfortunately NS2 is hitting the numbers on v1 as members of the alliance has nearly halved in the last few months. So someone out there must like v2. I just hope they don't pull the plug on v1 too soon.
¶

Urban Dead Set

From Urban Dead News

Latest News - 28th October 2008
With the launch of Charlie Brooker's Dead Set on E4 and 4DVD, the Borehamwood outbreak is now open to Urban Dead players, with permanent zombification, fast zombies and a battle for the Big Brother house. The map will remain open for four weeks.

The login page has also turned bright red with some horrid wallpaper background.

Not seen the series yet, but hope to catch it on E4 when its shown this weekend. With it being from Charlie Brooker it's probably either going to be funny or totally condescending to its viewers.

Hope this one turns out better than the Diary of the Dead promo tie-in. That failed initially due to the permanent take-down rule for both zombies and humans and the fact that the Map of Monroeville was too big. The modifications then tilted it into a Zombie\Player Killer heaven. In fact more survivors were probably killed by other survivors than Zombies. Monroeville being based on the real-life Monroeville stateside, famous for being the location for 'the mall'.

In the main Map, our survivor group is planing a bit of 'Trick or Treat' for our local neighbourhood. Normally on Halloween in Malton things get a little different, with shops suddenly having sweets available to loot, and Zombies the ability to knock on doors!

Also according to the spellchecker: Nearest match to zombification is syllabification; which could do with exactly that.
¶

NationStates vs ERepublik

For few years now I've been playing NationStates, a very primitive game but entertaining (but also very repetitive). A few months ago the news came out that NationStates2 was on it's way and in a beta state, so I signed on for it. At the moment I've not been selected to trial it but it is suppose to be coming online proper in the near future.

I've also signed up for the beta release of eRepublik, which initially appears to be from the same school of simulations but is very different in outlook and I'm not sure that I am enjoying it too much. Being a simulation of this world rather than an imaginary one has tied things closely into the real-life situations. Things have apparently gone so far that ePakistan has been described by the developers as a military dictatorship, despite the aim of the game\simulation to be 'western' style democratic government, and the first thing to happen when war was introduced was eIsrael being wiped out by an eTurkey invasion.

I will continue to play it in the hope that things will change once it goes live (Scheduled for early October) but I'm not sure how things will pan out.

The element of 'Gold' purchase, which the developers intend to finance the game with, is also a big negative, especially at the 'exchange rate' that is currently set. There is only a restricted supply of political appointments and as the user base expands there is little chance that Joe Bloggs will get that power. Especially as sock puppets and off site invasions appear common. I'm not sure that a game where the only thing that happens is you working in a factory is going to have much traction in the online community.

I can only hope that NationStates2 is better than this and without the overt racism. Information is only now filtering out of the play testing and it sounds like there is going to be a number of different 'worlds' and the potential for conflict between nations. This would be a big departure from the current setup.

With NationStates things aren't personal, despite the fact that it sort of encourages extremism due to the mixture of tongue in cheek policy selections and the satiric responses. My Nation currently hovers between being a Psychotic Dictatorship and being a Corrupt one! but importantly I'm not actually griefing anyone else by being so.

End of Season

This week was the end of the Battrick regular season, the First Class and One-Day seasons are now over.

Some how I've managed to get 4th place in the one day league despite predicting a relegation fight at the start of the season, and have all managed to get promoted in First Class, moving from division 5 up to 4. Playing at Div 4 level in both leagues is going to make things hard next season.

Unfortunately it looks like we have got a camper in my OD division as, despite dominating the division, he has thrown the last few games to ensure that he does not auto-promote and instead gets a throwable playoff match. I'm sort of hoping some quality teams come into into the division next season just to make life hard for him.

There is only the knockout stages of the 20-20 cup to play for and most people rate it as as 'Mickey Mouse' cup anyway. And possibly detrimental to the teams well being in the following season due to the fitness hits, which can get large as its almost mandatory to use the 'Go For It' setting. I've managed to win the first couple of games in the KO but will go out next round, and I'm not sad to see the back of it.

Half Term Report

We at the half way point of the current Battrick season with the weeks break in both One-Day and First-Class leagues.

20-20 qualifying is in full swing and I should be able to top my group but may throw one of the games to conserve my players fitness for the second half of the season. I should still be able to qualify safely in 2nd place but it all depends on how other results pan out, I would want to risk falling down to 3rd. Given the lower level of a number of teams, I'll be playing my 2nd XI for a few games anyway.

Doing a lot better than expected in the One-Day league, my original target was to win 4 games so as to avoid automatic demotion from Division 4 and force a play-off. As it now stands I've got five wins at the halfway point! One win was lucky and another due to a mistake by my opponent in setting his team, but the morale boost should help in get the three further wins I need to secure my position.

First Class is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be, despite only playing in Division 5. Currently leading the league but not convincingly. Re-promotion to Div 4 is by no means certain and the way things are scheduled will probably go down to the final game of the season.