SimTower actually runs OK with Windows 10 (64 bit) the UI can be a bit small with modern resolutions. It’s been a few years, but I believe it was the winevdm solution cited on PGW. I ran a bunch of 3.1 era games for fun.

I played SimTower a lot as kid. Turns out the developer of SimTower (Maxis was the publisher outstide of Japan where it was released as The Tower) released a sequel called Yoot Tower. It is nice upgrade even if the core of the two games are extremely similar. It also works on W10.

But it’s always good to try new games. :)

Cheers!

I would personally be OK with engine updates (with a focus on getting that timeless look like in HL 1/2) and a continuation of the story.

Unless they decide to go with a hybrid genre model, it will be difficult to make a game as innovative as HL1/HL2.

Sounds cool enough, although the reviews suggest gameplay is middling which is OK as long as it’s got other good/unique things.

I don’t mind walking simulators if they are done well have something to offer in terms the overall package. I actually played Soma with a mod, I didn’t find the bosses to be scary, just a bit tedious, so I disabled them, they just walk around, it’s actually a bit unnerving.

That being said, I don’t think it’s a game for me as it feels very US suburb-centric (I lived in the US for several years). It wouldn’t strike the right notes.

I feel like it was somewhat big back in the day. I played it back then I wasn’t the only one. :)

I was a big fan of RtCW back in the day (played through it multiple times) and this is the first time I am hearing of Cursed Sands.

Also very strange that it’s not on Mobygames.

Maybe I missed the sarcasm, but this was back in the mid 2000s when Valve was planning to switch to an episodic model. As we can see (from both Half-Life and SiN), that approach didn’t really work (at least in an industry-wide way).

It’s a great game! Didn’t realize save game editing would be that involved.

It’s not a matter of continental purity, I would have no issues with ML services from any democratic-leaning country as long as they have the capability to choose an independent path that’s not subject to American/Chinese pressure.

I will also note that it was Brussee himself that pitched the notion of an European game engine. The concept doesn’t really work if you are using American services (Anthropic or OpenAI) for core elements of your game engine architecture.

Reliance on OpenAI/Palantir/Anthropic in the ML space is asking for trouble as you give the Americans your data and you open yourself up to blackmail, threats and extortion.

I also wouldn’t hope for any fundamental change in attitudes towards things like crime, corruption among the leadership elements of American society in the next 20-30 years. For better or for worse, the median American is too well off to have any incentive to put pressure on their leadership to address crime. And when they start wondering

I would love to be completely wrong on all of this, but I am afraid it’s a bit too naive and careless to just assume all problems will magically disappear just like that.

I am sure you didn’t mean it in a bad way, but usage for the military is not necessarily a bad thing. It all depends on your real life situation.

I live in Ukraine and I would only be happy for ML tech to help save Ukrainian lives (both military and civilian), increase the efficiency of killing of russian invaders (on an absolute and cost basis) and enable more efficient strikes on military facilities and oil infrastructure in the imperial core of russia.

If it’s based on LLMs from Anthropic or OpenAI, it’s still dependent on Americans.

Le Chat/Mistral seems to have improved quiet a bit for my LLM use cases since I last tried it, but I have no clue how well their services work for game development use cases.

I would argue a European alternative needs to have something different to beat the American oligarchic “freedom polemics in the front, corruption and crime in the back” model. Open source seems like the best way to develop services that can resist corruption and focus on making a good product. This doesn’t seem to be open source, would be interesting to hear what their USP is beyond alignment with EU regulations and deep integration with ML tech (that is still dependent on US service providers).

Never heard of this (probably because the only console I ever had was the Sega Mega Drive which was abandoned after we got a PC), surprised to hear it was made by DMA Design. DMA Design were revolutionary in the 90s; GTA2 is one of my favourite games (I like GTA3 a lot too).

It’s interesting how it seems indie games releases with a similar genre/concept always come out around the same time, in clusters.

Yes, there was definitely an Unreal Tournament map built around the cannon.

I was even curious and it turns out it was an Assault map called Overlord for UT99 based on the WW2 operation.

https://unreal.fandom.com/wiki/AS-Overlord

There might have been another one.

Although you definitely don’t get to manage them on a day to day basis in UT99.

Heading screenshot looks beautiful!

Interesting concept, I am surprised something similar have never been done before. That being said, it’s possible that someone made a more primitive version of this gameplay concept on newgrounds and it just never got big.

Timberborn is a lot of fun, you can build some crazy worlds when you reach the end game.

Fwiw, for non serious writing, I’ve been using the “x” form since I was teenager.

For Threadi headlines, it’s a useful space saving measure since the title has a limited number of characters.

I haven’t played it, but from the let’s play it looked closer to something like They Are Billions than a classical tower defence game. I would say the RTS elements may be somewhat more pronounced than in They Are Billions.

I wouldn’t discount this as a pure (classical?) tower defence game.

In video game terms, I think the 90s can be referred to as a classical period of sorts (at least on PC). 2000 is right at the tail end of the period though.

Vast majority of PC-focused genre were created (or refined in to their current forms) sometime between the tail end of the 80s and the end of the millennium.

It’s one of those (relatively) well known indie success stories. Not at the level of say Stardew Valley, but in the same category.

The game is good example of how people look for different experiences in gaming.