Finally, Starcraft II

I was so sad when I found a note in my mailbox that the mailman had tried to deliver my copy of Starcraft II, the special edition, on Tuesday and I wasn't home. Well yeah, I work full time at the moment, what can I do about that?? And apparently, none of my roomies were home as well, so yeah....unable to deliver.

Wednesday, the same story. I checked the opening hours of the post office, where my package was now stored, and to my dismay it was open from 9:30 - 17:30 on weekdays. I leave the house at 9:00 and come back at 19:00... How the hell can I pick it up then?! Greatly annoyed, I had to surrender myself to the idea that I would have to wait until Saturday to fetch my copy of Starcraft. You can't send anyone else, because you have to show your ID.

Anyway, today is Saturday! Excited like a little child, I went to the post office when it opens, at 10:00 am sharp. At home, I teared the carton box open and there it was, frikkin' finally:







The box looks very cool, completely in theme. When you open it, it reveals all the cool goodies inside.





The special edition contains a lot more than just the DVD with the game: a behind-the-scenes-DVD, a comic book, a book with artwork from the game (my favorite, I LOVE artwork), the soundtrack, and a USB-drive shaped as the dogtag of one of the heroes in the game Raynor James (how cool is that?). I tried to photograph everything:




Stills from the artwork book


The USB drive. I forgot to mention, it comes pre-loaded with Starcraft I.


A still from the comic book


The booklet in the game-DVD


Those bastards from Blizzard are smart. They included a World of Warcraft guest pass, making the temptation to play that game again very high! I'll store them somewhere out of sight for now....

And now, to install the game!!



PS: For those of you who are thinking "What the fuck is Starcraft? A way to craft your own stars?" Lookie here.
And all the pictures in better resolution here.

Nerd alert

Okay, I have warned you now. This post will be about computers and games.

Last week I went through the pain of installing Windows 7 on my iMac. Why? Well, because I wanted to play Anno 1404! I am a big fan of Anno 1701 (the predecessor), I played that game for hours at a time. Anno 1404 was released last year, but I never bothered to try it yet. Now that I installed Windows 7 and have the time for it, I actually bought the game + the add-on. Yes yes, no pirating here.

Anno 1404 is a game that I like because the focus is on trading, economy, building. There are some elements of war in it, but if you don’t want to fight, you don’t have to (as long as you don’t play a scenario).

The centre of your town are, of course, the peasants. They live in houses, around a marketplace. The peasants can advance to the next level if they have certain needs fulfilled. In the beginning those needs are quite simple: fish, cider, a church. But once the peasants advance to the next level of citizens they need more: clothing, bread, beer. Beyond the level of citizens the game gets really complicated. The next levels ‘patricians’ and ‘noblemen’ have so called sophisticated taste. They require wine, leather jerkins, furs, books, a big church, a tavern and lots more.


A beginning settlement

When your town reaches the level of citizens/patricians, it attracts beggars! If you refuse the beggars to enter your town your citizens will pay you gold. However, the beggars might return as bandits. This happened to me in my last game. I had abundant recourses though, so I just built a keep and let it fight the beggars.

The keep fighting the beggars

In order to acquire all the goods your people need you have to build production chains. For fishes, it’s only one building: a fisherman’s hut. But in order to get wine, for example, you need: wood, iron, an iron smelter (which needs coal in turn). From that you have to make barrels at a barrel factory; you need vineyards and wine presses. You can’t make that on one island. So at first you have to colonize more islands. Grapes can’t grow on every island, only some have the required fertility. You see, it’s quite complicated!

New in Anno 1404 is that you can also build oriental stuff. You even háve to build oriental towns, because only when you have a few hundred oriental nomads you are able to build indigo farms, which you need to produce books. The nomads, in turn, have needs of their own. They don’t eat fish and they don’t drink cider. They eat dates and they drink goat milk. Also, they don’t pray in a church, they want a mosque! In order to build the mosque you have to get mosaics. For mosaics you need a quartz mine and clay....

All in all, you are constantly busy attending to all the needs of your citizens ánd nomads.

All the stuff you produce you have to get to and from islands by using ships. You can set up trading routes. I always try to set up the most efficient ones, but I don’t think I succeed! This game is really quite complicated, but that’s what I like about it. You are constantly pondering about how to get these and those goods, to sell goods you have plenty of, to expand your city. But when you expand your city you need more food and products....Ahh, it never ends!


A town with noblemen houses

Open TTD ^__^

I used to be a hardcore gamer. I've even been addicted to several MMORPG's (yes, including WoW). I cured myself from these addictions about 2 years ago and quit gaming altogether, so I could concentrate on school more (and my extinct social life). I've switched from Windows to Mac a year ago, that put a lot of games out of reach anyway.

Sometimes though, I felt a little craving for a nice simple game that wouldn't kill my social life again. I have found it in Open TTD. It's an open source version of Chris Sawyers Transport Tycoon(the guy also developed Rollercoaster Tycoon). The game is pretty old, hence the 'crappy' graphics (which I love).

Basically, a bunch of nerds used the binary code of the original and added a lot of spiffy features and add-ons that form Open TTD. For example, there is a Dutch Train set available which enables you to build dutch trains, trams and stations. The goal of the game is to make profit by setting up transport services for passengers, raw materials, goods etc. This can be done by train, ship, plane, bus or tram. Especially the routes you build for the trains can become pretty complex. As you build (from 1950 to 2050) the towns grow into cities and your transport vehicles can modernise. Trains go from diesel-powered to electricity to monorail to mag-lev. The best function that has been added in the open-source version is the ability to set up a multi-player game. It is really fun to play with friends.

Another reason why I like this game is that it can be played with little attention. If you want to build the most advanced trainsystems you should focus, but if you're doing some reading (studying) you can just let the game run and check up on it now and then, build some new trains and continue doing whatever you were doing.

The website Open TTD has all the info you need if you would like to play the game. You don't need to be a nerd to grasp the concept of the game. It's also not hard to make profit (just start with 2 airports). It's just plain fun :D