Idle Thumbs 235: Plaited Haircut of the Whale

[Jake]

Idle Thumbs 235:

Plaited Haircut of the Whale

Our attention is split three ways this week, all thanks to Anno 2205. Jake sits in his island city patiently awaiting the new Super Mario Maker update. Nick spends his time on the moon, never sleeping, launching missiles until there's nothing left to nuke. Spaff sits alone in the arctic, huddled for warmth. Meanwhile, buried deep beneath the earth in a recently unearthed fortress of his own design, Chris sits down in a barber chair. "Give me an Erich Schaefer," he says. His barber knows exactly what he means.

Games Discussed: Anno 2205, Rebel Galaxy, Downwell, Super Mario Maker, Fallout Shelter

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[robotslave]

Did any of The Thumbs play the Impressions Games city builders:  Caesar, Pharaoh, etc?

 

These were the direct predecessors of (and for a brief while, contemporary and competitors with) the Anno series, and would be a much closer point of comparison than either Sim City or Civilization.

 

I loved Pharaoh particularly, and I can't tell you how difficult it is to both listen to your discussion of Annos while also maintaining a running commentary/comparison in my own head.  Or maybe out loud, not sure.

 

Edit:

 

So, while listening to the "Nick Go East" fugue, I could only think of the hair salon I patronized while in high school, called "Head East."  This was in the Chicago near suburbs, and the east coast was weirdly romanticized at the time.  So by all means, yes, Go East.  That's where all the culture and thinking and fashion is!  Or was.  Not sure.

[Nappi]

Can you post the Downwell on cinema screen pic/video?

[DocRandal]

Moon Terrorists before the majestic launch:

 

[Salacious Snake]

  On 11/5/2015 at 8:49 AM, robotslave said:

Did any of The Thumbs play the Impressions Games city builders:  Caesar, Pharaoh, etc?

 

These were the direct predecessors of (and for a brief while, contemporary and competitors with) the Anno series, and would be a much closer point of comparison than either Sim City or Civilization.

I was thinking the same thing. They even share kind of annoying combat that I'd usually prefer to ignore!

[Cordeos]

Supreme Commander had some information warfare aspects. Radar, sonar, stealth and false radar signatures were all part of the game. 

 

I used to try and play games with the Dreamcast fishing controller. The reel mapped to accelerate for San Francisco Rush 2049 so I could only ever hit about 30 mph reeling as fast as i could.

[elmuerte]

[zerofiftyone]

Jake, I'm totally gonna need to see that cloud sticker.

[Cordeos]

  On 11/5/2015 at 8:14 PM, zerofiftyone said:

Jake, I'm totally gonna need to see that cloud sticker.

 

[SecretAsianMan]

For this week's pedantic post:

 

Dwellers in Fallout Shelter take half as long to return to the shelter as they've been exploring.  So sending one out for an hour means it will take 30 minutes to get back.  Also it's loosely related to Fallout 4 in that some of the legendary characters and weapons you can get from lunchboxes are from Fallout 4.

[zerofiftyone]

Thanks Cordeos!

[Badfinger]

I have felt the no exposure to Fallout 4 thing, and then I remember they released another, wildly successful video game to promote that first game, and Chris talked about it on a podcast.

[mastercko]

  On 11/5/2015 at 8:52 AM, Nappi said:

Can you post the Downwell on cinema screen pic/video?

 

Agreed, I would love to see this as well.

[Gormongous]

In the Diablo system of naming for randomly-generated magical items, armor that increased health was given the name of large mammals, like "bear." "Whale" was the highest rank in this line of names. Likewise, armor that increased its own armor class was given the names for deities, so that's why it's "godly."

 

 

EDIT: Yeah, I thought that there was a restriction on more than one max-level affix spawning on an item, thanks mrwynd.

[mrwynd]

The "Godly Plate of the Whale" was not in the original Diablo, it was created in editors and distributed online. It was not considered "legit" by those who tried to avoid rampant cheating. I was the leader of a legit guild, it was my first and only attempt at running a guild. We "signed" an online form saying we would not cheat or play with anyone who did cheat. We were allowed to run one editor program to verify other players didn't have "hacked" equipment.

http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Diablo_(Game) - scroll down to Prefixes and Suffixes which describes this.

"For example, the item "Godly Plate of the Whale" (abbreviated on Battle.net as "G.P.O.W.") cannot be generated by any monster or vendor in the game. It was made, and then duplicated, using third-party software known as item editors."

[Jake]

Thank you all my suspicions about Nick and Chris are confirmed.

[RubixsQube]

I am excited for one of the tiers of a future idle thumbs kickstarter 2.0 being the level codes for jake's secret Mario Maker levels. 

[McDoom]

Jake: Is 2015 ready for dickmonsters?

 

Cut to Tychus Findlay in a Starcraft II cinematic..."Hell, it's about time."

[syntheticgerbil]

I was listening to this in class and I had to take off my headphones to talk to someone. I didn't pause and the instant I put my headphones on again there was just all this yelling about tit monsters and ass monsters.

 

It was good.

[Dewar]

  On 11/5/2015 at 6:17 PM, Cordeos said:

Supreme Commander had some information warfare aspects. Radar, sonar, stealth and false radar signatures were all part of the game. 

 

I used to try and play games with the Dreamcast fishing controller. The reel mapped to accelerate for San Francisco Rush 2049 so I could only ever hit about 30 mph reeling as fast as i could.

 

Chrome Hounds had the awesome capture the communication towers mechanic that was unfortunately ruined by alternative modes of voice chat becoming more and more available.

[Vasari]

It's a shame that voice-based game mechanics can be circumvented like that. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory had a feature in co-op play where talking over the microphone also created sound ingame, so if an enemy was near you had to whisper to your coop buddy, and if you were sneaking up right behind him you couldn't speak at all or he'd notice you.

 

Now that I think about it, that Steel Battalion multiplayer game had voice chat stuff too. If you had a certain piece of equipment on your mech, you could listen in to the other team's voice chat and hear what they were planning. It was even cooler because it required physically turning a knob to the correct radio frequency. I think to talk to other teammates you had to turn the knob to their channel, so you only could only talk to one other person at a time. If someone wanted to listen to you they had to find which channel currently had people talking. My memory is fuzzy though, I might be wrong about some of that.

[Spaff]

  On 11/5/2015 at 8:49 AM, robotslave said:

Did any of The Thumbs play the Impressions Games city builders:  Caesar, Pharaoh, etc?

 

These were the direct predecessors of (and for a brief while, contemporary and competitors with) the Anno series, and would be a much closer point of comparison than either Sim City or Civilization.

 

I did, i loved them! I was sad recently when i checked to see if any modern versions existed and found out that no, they don't.

The reference point of Sim city / Civ is still useful because no one has heard of those games except you and me.

 

I also played a crap ton of Settlers I & II, I'd say The Settlers battles Monkey Island 2 for the game i played most on my Amiga.

I feel like Anno 1404 especially is a direct descendant of those early settlers games.

 

p.s the artwork for this thread is remarkably similar to the thumbs utopia banner above it, but nowhere near as interesting. We discussed architecture of the future Anno games being a bit of let down in the cast. It's a real shame because people could easily be imagining a more interesting future architecturally and that banner is proof, snowmen and all.

[Merus]

I also played the Impressions Games city builders, and am surprised to discover that they're apparently unknown.

[Badfinger]

I played a LOT of Ceasar 3. I was probably better at that than I was at either Civ or Sim City. Our family also played quite a bit of Lords of Magic. Not a city builder, but an Impressions game.

[Jutranjo]

Ceasar 3, Pharaoh and Zeus were played a lot in my group of friends. I bought Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom but I never got into it. It did add Feng Shui building placement mechanic but I have no idea how it worked.

 

This is a pretty weird mechanic http://emperor.heavengames.com/strategy/fengshui