Monthly Archives: February 2021

Acheron island paradise

coding, nintendo, online play, ranking, switch, Top 100

Just a quickie I’m still alive!

I thought I’d better post something if only to confirm the opening statement.

Decided to take a “break” from Bioshock for a day or two to play, well start Animal Crossing New Horizons.

I know I’m nearly a year late to the party. But I’m here now. I started my island adventures yesterday, and if you stalk me on Instagram or Twitter amongst chihuahua and coffee/food pictures (not much gaming to photograph at the mo) you will be able to follow my struggles with island life.

It won’t be more than a day or so more before I return to Rapture, and get into a daily routine of visiting Acheron between visits to that dystopian utopia!

If you wish to visit Acheron in a dream you can with the dream address below.

Also during this radio silence I’ve made a start rewriting my python game ranking program.

Once that’s complete I’ll repeat the exercise I did in 2017 of working out what my top 100 games of all time are.

Wingspan on the Switch

apps, nintendo, online play, switch

I don’t think it’s a secret (if it is I don’t hide it well) that I’m a big fan of more than one game from Stonemaier Games. Heck Scythe is still my favourite game of all time (I really must redo my code to allow me to run that exercise again).

Further in the interests of disclosure for this post I should point out I love Wingspan and it was my game of 2019 iirc.

So with that information firmly out there in the open you can make your decision about my initial flawed looked at the Nintendo Switch version of Wingspan.

Compared to other board games that have been turned into digital versions, at £17 Wingspan firmly sits on the expensive side. At that price I think more than a few potential players will be put off purchasing it.

One bug bear I have with Wingspan on the Switch is what seems an age for the app to load. Admittedly Wingspan is loading from a 256GB micro SD card. But from pressing my user id to having the main menu pop up I timed it at around 30 seconds.

Once you get to the main menu you can select the “Play” menu and play against AI/Friends, Automa or complete the tutorial.

Before I go on I should point out that I have not played Wingspan in any of those options. I’ve only played it against Jonathan the once. So make of that what you will. And once again feel free to dismiss what I am about to write.

You can also go online and play against other Wingspan owners, and here is the biggie those players can be on other platforms. Which currently means those that own the game on Steam, so basically PC.

I do like the tool tip help that can be switched off or on. As the two images below show.

Below I have highlighted a couple of touches on the online menu screen that I like. The first is the display of the timer showing how much time is left for the current player before they time out. The other is your id with your karma rating. I need to look into this whole karma thing, its a new thing for the app, and is used I think in online game matching.

Wingspan can be used using a mix of touch via the Switch’s touchscreen or the joycons. I like that I can using my finger drag a card from my hand on the reserve space I want to play it.

The game uses the art from the board game really well with some nice little animated bits. The music really compliments the art and game play. It’s so relaxing. Something you could just chill out to. I also liked that when you play a bird to your reserve this is a brief bit of audio that tells you about the bird.

Below is the final state of my game winning reserve. I got lucky and had the raven early on in the first round, and then got two cards that complimented it really nicely. After the gull joined it, I didn’t need to go to either of the other two areas of my reserve. I could take eggs, draw cards and get food at the same time. It was a pretty powerful combo. If my memory isn’t failing me the first time I have had the raven in a game.

A nice touch (sadly not captured) is the end of round objectives screen during the game. It shows you and the other players current positions when it comes to scoring the objective, plus your current total number of points.

The end of game scoring is nice and I like that you can view the scoring with or without points annotation.

At the end of a game you can save the end of game state which then can be viewed from the main menu via the preserve archive. Always handy for showing Jonathan how much you beat him by.

While I am talking the main menu again below are the two setup screens that the app gives you to change the settings for audio and for the game.

The bottom image below shows the birds menu option, which basically lets you see the cards you have seen during game play. It’s almost Pokemon like in you will want to collect them all.

The image above the birds screen are the options when you setup a custom online game. Which allows you to enter a players name (cross platform option) or select a friend from your Nintendo friend list.

One thing I do miss and this is also missing from the Steam version as well (I checked this with Jonathan), are alerts for when it is my turn. I would expect that these will be present when the mobile versions are finally released. However this is a limitation of the platforms that Wingspan is currently on.

During our game at the end of round 2 there seemed to be a glitch. I don’t want to call it a bug as the behaviour we saw may well have been correct. But the app skipped through from the end of round 2 to the start of round 3 without showing the end of round scoring, and the bit that threw off John’s plans tucked a card that he wanted to play!

I did find when I first started playing the game the screens to be a bit confusing. But that’s because I jumped right in. What I should have done is the tutorial first. But after a very short period I got used to the controls.

Like Jonathan I prefer the view of the complete reserve, as it shows everything on the screen, food, the food dice, etc. Although the individual reserve screen does look really amazing.

Overall my initial impressions are I like the app. It’s a nice implementation of the board game. But the price does seem excessive.

Meet thy Doom … memoirs of a classic

nintendo, switch

Visiting the Nintendo eshop is dangerous. Especially when they have stuff on sale to tempt you.

The latest temptation for me was something that I own or have owned on several other gaming platforms over the years.

And yet I found myself buying the game again on the Switch!

That game is…

I’ve been playing Doom since it came out in the early 90’s as shareware on the PC.

I owned an Amstrad clamshell 16Mhz 386sx laptop back then. Which had I want to say a 40MB hard drive and 4MB of RAM. I seem to remember that I did upgrade the RAM at some point as well.

At the time I was playing Doom for the very first time I was working in Byfleet for a credit card manufacturer, writing PC software to control desktop credit card embossing machines and cheque printers.

We were a young team, all of us in our twenties. Obviously one ore two were more mature than the rest. But the majority of us were not. Practical jokes were often played. Several times that involved strippers! Like the time I was told I was needed to give a demo of my new software and the hardware it controlled to a client. They let me do the demo for over 20 minutes before giving the signal to the stripper to start her act!

It was a different age. Times were a changing, but they hadn’t reached our office. You couldn’t do that sort of stuff now days and I’m glad. I was a different person then to the one I am now. I’m embarrassed and ashamed of who I was back then.

That was were I was when Doom came out.

I had played and completed Wolfenstein 3D, so Doom was a no brainier for me.

Where I got the game from initially I’m not sure. I think the shareware version was on the cover of a PC magazine.

But wow I was hooked, as were one or two in the office as well. I think we had more than one lunch hour that saw the definition of what a lunch hour was stretched a bit.

I think it would be fair that the competition between those of us playing the game drove us onwards. It was especially fuelled by the end of level stats that told you how many of the secret rooms you had found, and items collected.

The strange thing is we never networked up our PCs and played multiplayer. We played it solo at our desks or at home. Networking PCs together then was a bit of a hassle, which probably put us off the idea.

By the time I had completed Doom I think I was the only one in the office still playing it.

During the years after if Doom was released for hardware I owned then I got it. I had Doom on my HP ipaq pda, and on the gba. I rebought it on the PC. I have it on the 360 and PS3. It’s on a raspberry pi I own. You get the picture.

So it was no surprise that with the game and it sequels (Doom 2 and 3) on sale on the Nintendo eshop it seemed the right time to grab them all.

I like playing original classic Doom. Now days it is almost a comfort thing and like getting to know an old friend again. With the gap between plays being several years there is a haziness to what I remember, it is familiar and yet new!

Anyway I will look more into Doom and how it plays on the Switch in a future post. But first I have Bioshock and the underwater world of Rapture to finish exploring.

If you are a fan of Doom you really must read “Masters Of Doom: How two guys created an empire and transformed pop culture” by David Kushner, and “DOOM Scarydarkfast” by Dan Pinchbeck. The later is a more academic look at the game. There is a Game Engine book about Doom that I haven’t read and don’t own (it’s expensive).

Nan turns 94 today

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Today is a day of celebration as we celebrate Nan’s birthday.

Nan turned 94 today.

Below are some recent photos of Nan with her little guardian angel, Loki. He really is a Nannies boy. A bit like me I suppose.

Before opening Nan’s birthday cards, I asked her what day it was, and if she knew the date. Her reply was it’s not my birthday. So I pointed out it was.

Reading Nan her birthday cards this morning made me feel like those presenters on Anglia tv from my younger days who did the birthday club spot between programmes during the kids part of the tv schedule.

I’m wishing Nan many happy returns for the day. With many more ahead.