Screenshot thread

[Peter]

Fuck yeah, Death to Spies is fucking great and more people should play it.

It's a shame the third one was cancelled a couple of months ago

 

[DwarvenFood]

What is happening on that screen, looks like something from Fallujah..

 

[Jaesun]

 

[Phelot]

Title: Elvis in a peacoat marvels before a candle

Title: Green Jesus gives peace sign

James also shrinks back from the moaning noises coming from Greg and Kent's room.

 

[Malpercio]

 

[Zlaja]

^

Which is better and why?

 

[potatojohn]

Oh look it's that crazy game that I've been meaning to check out for years but never remember to.

Divine Divinity looks cool too.

 

[Ashery]

Spoiler

For those poor bastards that don't know what the game is, it's Pharaoh (Part of the series based off the Caesar3 engine).

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Forgot how goddamn bland Fable 1 is. Not exactly a bad game for a simple ARPG, just bland. Was sorta interested in replaying since it's been years, but after dicking for an hour I'm not sure I will.

 

[asper]

First one was pretty lacklustre though, the only thing going for it was the excellent art design and the story.

They got bought up by Atlus? Hmm..

 

[poocolator]

Sometimes I clench my buttcheeks and pretend that were I to fart, then and there, I'd propel myself to the moon.

 

[potatojohn]

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

 

[Metro]

Forgot how goddamn bland Fable 1 is. Not exactly a bad game for a simple ARPG, just bland. Was sorta interested in replaying since it's been years, but after dicking for an hour I'm not sure I will.

Got it for $2.50 during the last Winter Sale on Steam. Played through it once. No desire to ever go back. Bland or generic are good descriptions for it. The story is just utterly cliche and uninteresting as are the enemies, world, itemization, etc.

 

[Comte]

A night at the Museum

 

[asper]

I have finished this Hound of Shadow text adventure. It's a rather mediocre game. The character system is taken directly from Chaosium CoC and is totally useless, I've seen only three instances where my character's skill gave me a bit of flavour text. No skills affect the story. The game is linear with only one choice in the endgame and is full of useless locations. I have even seen one that had its own image, and played no role whatsoever. The action of the game is mostly driven by your friend called John, which is pretty annoying, you're constantly just doing what he tells you, never taking any decisions or taking any independent action. Your friend does it all for you. The story is kinda bland as well; a simple tale of a curse and seeking a way to circumvent it. The parser is very bad and requires the exact correct sentences, which makes finishing the game without a walkthrough impossible, unless you're spending hours typing in variations of "ask about the hound". The game is also full of moments where the only option is to wait, but you have no way of knowing this, so you think you're stuck and end up running around the gameworld trying shit, for nothing.

Here's my character:

Re-rolling endlessly did wonders I like the "no oil painting" characteristic.

The creators intended a "simulation of a PnP session", but the game doesn't have nearly enough skill-checks, choices, and branches in the story to pull it off. Also, they implemented the possibility of playing another game in this engine with the same character, but as far as I know not many have been made. This is why the character generation system contains all these skills that aren't used in the computer game.

Some random scenes from the game.

It starts with a spirit conjuring occult session... At which the medium gets possessed, points to one of the participants, and says the Hound of Shadow is out to get him...

The last paragraph was a skillcheck...

An occult shoppe... classic!

This last paragraph is one of the two instances where I noticed that my 'occult knowledge' skill made any difference in the game.

Reading books in the library...

Note the nice attempt at oldfashioned English...

I discover the horribly mutilated body of the guy the medium pointed at at the seance...

Reading about it later in the papers...

A curse is placed on my friend... but it will affect me first, before it gets to him...

Horrible implications!

A solution is found... we must create a "homonculus"...

We travel to a small English town called Blythburg...

There were portals leading from my apartment directly to this town, through which I could travel. However, when I had to see a character in this town, the game would not advance if I use dthe portals. The church doors are closed like this:

I had to buy a ticket and take the train, and only then I would be able to find the priest

The priest is helping me to create a "homonculus" to subvert the curse...

(spoilers!) A summary of the game plot... Just before the ending:

Man, it sounds ridiculous when you read it all together like that, haha... By the way, obtaining the sulphur was done by asking a waitress for... "sulphur". She then gave me matches.

The Hound of Shadow attacks, but is confused by the homonculus, destroys it, and disappears. I wasn't able to capture all of the text...

Despite all its flaws this is a charming game

All that remains is to continue on my quest to play every single Cthulhu game ever made....:

Reporting back in a few weeks

 

[Ashery]

More Pharaoh, but this time with a bit more of a description:

Secondary housing block. A basic U design (Cut off from the industrial road by roadblocks) with most of the services at the base to maximize efficiency, unlike the design in my previous screenshots that had less housing on each branch (2/3rds what I have here) with services at the end of all branches. Minimizing the number of schools that I have is incredibly important because they continuously burn papyrus that I need to import (Well, I import the reeds, make the papyrus locally, and then export the excess), but the high employment efficiency actually ended up backfiring. Despite spamming as many police stations as possible (The 1x1 blue structures you see on the far left), I was still sitting at 20% unemployment at the time of victory.

The only things that are lacking from my earlier screenshots are shrines, as I just haven't had the money to burn on buildings that don't employ people. This is why there are regularly spaced open tiles in the middle of my housing blocks.

My military a month or two after returning from a foreign battle. I kept the infantry home because I didn't want to burn through 240+Db per infantry casualty (They require weapons that I need to import), but my archers were more than enough as was evident from their low number of casualties.

Also featured are my logging camps that net me an easy 10k Db/year at the cost of only 64 workers (Less, actually, as I overproduce by a pretty wide margin) and some more police station spam.

Primary housing block. A similar design to the earlier one, but the distance between the two lakes/water "access" areas prompted me to build that giant temple complex to fill out the center. This is the first mission where the temple complexes are available. Also, unlike the traditional god gifts/punishments, they provide benefits that are continuously in effect. You can also build additions to the complex that provide additional benefits as well. In this case, I built the Seth (God of war) complex that provides a bonus to troop experience and "protects" them (I'm pretty sure that applies when sending them to fight abroad), but elected to not build the add-ons as they were useless in this mission (Reduced linen use at mortuaries (I can't even build them this mission) and allowing priests of Seth to act as police officers (...and I certainly don't need more of those)).

A major portion of my industry is also on display here. Both warehouses are in the lower right portion of the screen and the bottom-right of the two stores and distributes imported reeds to my papyrus makers (Below and to the right of the warehouse) while the upper-left one does the same for the imported clay that my potters use (Below and to the left of the warehouse). All pottery and beer production is consumed locally (You can see the edge of my beer production in the secondary housing block screenshot) as they are consumed on a per household basis, but, due to the fact that papyrus is *only* used in schools/libraries and I have only two of the former, I produce a significant surplus of papyrus that can be sold with a pretty damn nice profit margin.

The location of both housing blocks was determined by their proximity to ostrich breeding grounds as they're the only non-imported food option this map (There's no visual indicator of where they spawn at present; You have to note where the herds are at the start of the map). Each triplet of hunting posts are located within a few tiles of a breeding ground.

And, of course, there's more police station spam (Without this spam, I'd probably jump to 40+% unemployment).

Prosperity would've easily climbed to (at least) the high 60's, but it's not updated in real time (And, god forbid, you "lose" a significant amount of money one year. That can cripple your "prosperity" for several years as it can only grow so much per year), but culture had a hard cap of 35 as I couldn't build the mortuaries required to get above that.

 

[poocolator]

Ashery's post reminded me: this is my pharao/cleopatra city "Meidum" (game-assigned name). I compiled it from print-screenshots, a few years back (no zoom in this game). I was pleased as it was the first city I'd built during the campaign where I'd begun to feel comfortable with my skills & knowledge. I hadn't felt the need to tear my hair out. I had more peasants than were necessary to satisfy the mission goals, but then my building style of using warrens/quarters ensured that the population would increment by 'x' every time rather than continuously. I had to employ the unwashed bastards somehow, so I figured a rush towards completing the monument goal (building the stepped pyramids) would be the best way. I don't remember whether you could vary the wage rate to affect the labour force like you can in Rise of the Middle Kingdom or Zeus.

Oh, those rectangular copy-pasted structures are altars dedicated to various gods. I used them as walls to block the murderous hippopotamuses who would've otherwise disrupted the fucking transportation of goods to/from the docks. The docks' footprints require a goddamned razor-edge-straight strip of coast to be placed.

Farms can either be built on floodplains (the marshy-looking shit next to the river) or on designated "fertilze zones" on land, which are normally very limited and sparsely placed. In this mission, I don't think I had any other crops to worry about (no insolent demands of fig deliveries by the Pharaoh). As missions progress, you have to juggle timed demands of crop deliveries with demands for military assistance. It's like Caesar III in that regard, but far less obnoxious. Also, roadblocks!

It's a great game to play. When I got to the stage where I was comfortable enough to dick around, I'd use the map editor to build myself challenge maps. Like, I'd have a single oasis tile in the middle of the desert for drinking water, and no food crops. I'd have to mine copper for export, and import all my foodstuffs. The city size reached maximum once I couldn't find any more trade partners from whom to import food. If you like city-builders in the vein of Caesar III, you should try this one. I'd also recommend Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom and Zeus: Master of Olympus with its expansion pack Poseidon: Master of Atlantis.

 

[Ashery]

Ashery's post reminded me: this is my pharao/cleopatra city "Meidum" (game-assigned name). I compiled it from print-screenshots, a few years back (no zoom in this game). I was pleased as it was the first city I'd built during the campaign where I'd begun to feel comfortable with my skills & knowledge. I hadn't felt the need to tear my hair out. I had more peasants than were necessary to satisfy the mission goals, but then my building style of using warrens/quarters ensured that the population would increment by 'x' every time rather than continuously. I had to employ the unwashed bastards somehow, so I figured a rush towards completing the monument goal (building the stepped pyramids) would be the best way. I don't remember whether you could vary the wage rate to affect the labour force like you can in Rise of the Middle Kingdom or Zeus.

<Snip>

Oh, those rectangular copy-pasted structures are altars dedicated to various gods. I used them as walls to block the murderous hippopotamuses who would've otherwise disrupted the fucking transportation of goods to/from the docks. The docks' footprints require a goddamned razor-edge-straight strip of coast to be placed.

Farms can either be built on floodplains (the marshy-looking shit next to the river) or on designated "fertilze zones" on land, which are normally very limited and sparsely placed. In this mission, I don't think I had any other crops to worry about (no insolent demands of fig deliveries by the Pharaoh). As missions progress, you have to juggle timed demands of crop deliveries with demands for military assistance. It's like Caesar III in that regard, but far less obnoxious. Also, roadblocks!

It's a great game to play. When I got to the stage where I was comfortable enough to dick around, I'd use the map editor to build myself challenge maps. Like, I'd have a single oasis tile in the middle of the desert for drinking water, and no food crops. I'd have to mine copper for export, and import all my foodstuffs. The city size reached maximum once I couldn't find any more trade partners from whom to import food. If you like city-builders in the vein of Caesar III, you should try this one. I'd also recommend Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom and Zeus: Master of Olympus with its expansion pack Poseidon: Master of Atlantis.

I don't think varying the wage rate does anything but help increase the rate of prosperity gain (Prosperity is capped based upon the average housing level, but it can only rise so fast).

What's worse than the hippos are multiple fucking hyena packs that are present in one of the mid/late missions. You pretty much have to burn through 1k Db surrounding them with statues (Cheapest "solid" building that won't burn down/collapse) in order to prevent an early game economic catastrophe where they start killing every fucking immigrant that arrives on screen (I'll never claim the game's perfect).

If you really want to challenge yourself, though, avoid using all the minor exploits that are commonly used. The big one that I stopped doing a playthrough or so back but noticed you use in the above picture is to avoid using single, isolated huts/tents to provide labour for a large amount of distant industry. You've got the lone hut just above the warehouse in the upper left corner, another hut on the far right side by the work camps/flood plain farms, and others as well. This doesn't mean that you have to have all housing at the highest non-patrician level (Housing evolves in a straight path, but once it develops high enough, the tenants become patricians/whatever and no longer participate in the work force), but you need to at least feed them and LARP a bit to make up for the lack of realism in the number of jobs that can be filled by the people living in one hut (Employment is determined only based upon a walker passing by occupied housing. This means that you can have 500+ jobs filled by a single hut that houses only five people max).

Oh, and seriously, how much fucking food do you need stored? Seven full granaries and a warehouse for, what I'm ball parking to be 8k people, is completely obscene, heh.

 

[poocolator]

I like my cities to be contiguous blobs. Although that's not always the case especially with planned palace districts, who don't participate in the labour force, like you said. Anyway, yeah like I said this shot is from when I played through it two years or so ago. While ugly, I used the lone-house technique to achieve the look of the city that I wanted. I guess one could LARP that the lone houses scrounge for food, those gypsy bastard; and that the labourers haul ass to their place of work from their residences within the city. I didn't used to pay them peanuts for sitting around bitching about living in such glorious cities, enjoying all the amenities my magnanimity deigned to provide them.

The granaries... heh. Well, I like hedging against demands and droughts.

 

[potatojohn]

Battlezone 2 & Nexus TJI

​

 

[Jaesun]

Frogs in an icecube? Looks like a boring shit game.

 

[Ashery]

I like my cities to be contiguous blobs. Although that's not always the case especially with planned palace districts, who don't participate in the labour force, like you said. Anyway, yeah like I said this shot is from when I played through it two years or so ago. While ugly, I used the lone-house technique to achieve the look of the city that I wanted. I guess one could LARP that the lone houses scrounge for food, those gypsy bastard; and that the labourers haul ass to their place of work from their residences within the city. I didn't used to pay them peanuts for sitting around bitching about living in such glorious cities, enjoying all the amenities my magnanimity deigned to provide them.

The granaries... heh. Well, I like hedging against demands and droughts.

Eh, didn't mean to imply that it's ugly, just that isolated huts reduce (and thus simplify) the necessary planning. My house rule is that I avoid feeding a massive industry off of a single house. If I need to build a large slum (Because there's no nearby water, for instance), then it's fine, but I just want to avoid a house with twenty people (Which means around seven workers) "housing" the workers to several hundred jobs.

 

[felipepepe]

Trying the Dynasty Warriors MMO, it's free!

I'm still on the starting zone, but just the fact that it uses the game mechanics from the PS2 era already makes it 10x better than the new PS3 games...

 

[Excidium]

I like your in-setting name.