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I browsed the Unwashed Village Forum a bit and added links to the threads about Fallout 3 and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel.
There are a few new entries for Post-Apocalyptic Games, and I have added a page for Console RPGs.
Corrected a mistake about Shadowrun (SNES): I had implied that the game supported the SNES mouse, but it didn't. In fact, very, very few did, I hadn't known that.
Updated most of the SimCity pages:
I added/updated 176 pages this month, 114 of them in the games section.
Small update on the Ultima Underworld page, mentioning the fact that these two games were the first ones that were truly 3D.
Some time ago, I learned in the discussion about Fallout 3 that there was an Unwashed Villagers board again, but then I forgot to update the page. I did it now. And I found one more homepage of a former Unwashed member, Hatchetman.
There is a new review for Fallout 2; it is actually new, written two days ago. Fallout games never die.
21st Century Oldies seems to be gone for good. I didn't remove all the links on the Abandonware page, since you're just redirected to the main domain it was hosted on, but I've removed all the links from the individual game pages:
Of course I checked all these pages and removed or updated other links where necessary.
Added a page for Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel.
Ben Hanke has created a Tetris Clone called Tinytris, and boy, is it ever tiny. With 3kB, it is the
smallest graphic Tetris ever created (Tore Bastiansen's Small
Tetris has only 2kB, but uses characters). It runs in lo-res
VGA and emulates a Gameboy. Nice to see somebody is still
writing this kind of game. You'll find an Arkanoid clone of
not far larger size on Ben Hanke's homepage, too.
Created a seperate page for Irrlicht, revised the 3D Engines page, completely rewrote the description of 6DX (it is free and open source by now, but seems rather dead as well) and updated Crystal Space. There was nothing to update for Altor, but I added a link to a Nightfall review.
I found that the Programming page was one moor that had been among those that were never uploaded, I fixed that now, added a paragraph about Ruby, created seperate pages for Assembler and Python, and updated the Perl and BASIC pages.
A few changes to the Crime City, Morrowind, and Whale's Voyage II pages.
I have this habit of googling for my name now and then; it pleases my vanity, and besides, it is about the only way I have to find out who might be linking to me, since I have no access to the logs for this site. Guess what, no one less than Home of the Underdogs quotes my description of, and links to my page about, Dammit!. I also noticed they have finally found the three missing games by Robert Roberds they were looking for, Gridly, Guzzle, and Leong. Strange enough, a couple of pages I updated in the progress had been last updated exactly a year, or a month, before.
I came across some older news (from early April 2004) that Chris Sawyer announced he was working on a new version of Transport Tycoon, Locomotion, using the Rollercoaster Tycoon engine, and graphics very similar to those of the original. Main update will be in the AI.
The Fallout 3 discussion on the Elder Scrolls board had been shut down for a short while, but is now open again. I have added a single link to the Fallout page, in the Culture section.
I added Irrlicht to the 3D Engines page. Guess you will soon hear more about it, I'm pretty impressed with this engine.
Small updates (mostly removed or fixed links) for the following:
Found a new review of this timeless gem, Mazes and Monsters. On the same site I found a review for a game called "Distant Frontiers" which can be nothing else but Whale's Voyage. It's rather mysterious for no other source mentions this alternate titel.
I've started replaying Cybermercs (last time I played it was four years ago) and rewriting its page.
Small updates for Fallout and Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel.
Found another one of those prepared-but-never uploaded pages from February: The Sentinel. A very weird game, I can assure you.
I added a page for RealGirls Strip Poker, updated the Strip Poker page adding a few links to games I don't have pages about, and fixed an error on the Poker Party page.
Fixed a broken link in Sword of the Samurai and added a screenshot.
Another big update…
There is a new Fallout mod in production, obviously designed to show the Bethesda guys how to really make a Fallout 3. I wonder if we actually ever will see anything from it. So far, none of the bigger Fallout mods have ever been finished.
I have added a page for Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, and there are some new links on the Fallout 2 and Fallout 3 pages, mainly interviews.
There is now a page for Burntime, I think I have most of the classic post-apocalyptic games covered now.
I found that back in February I had prepared a page for Whale's Voyage, but never uploaded it. I have done so now.
Didn't I say a week ago I had found another neglected page that still has the old stylesheet? That was Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? I have fixed it now.
No updates for two days, that's because I'm in the midst of a big one that tends to become complicated. It started with an email from Joni the Target who pointed out to me a mistake on the Planescape: Torment page. I decided it was time to rewrite the whole page anyway. That took some time. Guess it could still do with some improvement.
Discussion around Fallout 3 has slowed down a bit, and is beginning to get constructive. Due to it I've taken some renewed interest in Interplay games in general and have added pages for Neverwinter Nights and the Infinity Engine, both rather sketchy and mostly there because of the links.
On the Post-Apocalyptic page I added better descriptions for those games I have pages about. And then there are a few minor updates for DOOM, Fallout, and Morrowind.
I decided to upload what I have by now to my new Fallout site and open it to the general public. I added some tools to the download section and moved the weapon list there.
And I moved the links to Falloutish or otherwise post-apocalyptic mods based on other games from the Fallout page to the page about Post-Apocalyptic Games, giving them longer descriptions and adding a new one.
I have written a better and longer introduction to Fallout 3, sketching the history before
Bethesda purchased the license, and I put a cropped Van Buren
screenshot on the page. The screenshot on the
Fallout page is now actually
from the first Fallout game, and I added "last updated" to all
the links to the mod sites.
There is a small update on the Space Quest page, links checked and a new fan production added. I have found another neglected page that still has the old stylesheet, but I haven't fixed it yet so I won't say what it is.
The Fallout 3 forums on Elder Scrolls are growing at a frightening pace. There is at least one new thread a day. I will try to keep up with the changing URLs. The Fallout 3 thread on Something Awful is gone for some reason.
And I listed what I thought the dumbest arguments in these discussions, in the course of which I updated the list of isometric games.
There is a new link on the Morrowind page, a paragraph about the upcoming The Sims 2 on The Sims page, and a link to an interview with Brian Fargo on the Bard's Tale page.
I made a seperate page for Fallout 2, which contains a basic review, the system requirements, and the Fallout 2-specific links. All the rest is still on the Fallout page.
I find I will be unable to keep up with the Fallout 3 forums. On Elder Scrolls alone there are already six of them, or about 200 pages. And it's mainly all the same: Morrowind sucks, Bethesda sucks, they should never have bought the license, Fallout 3 needs S.P.E.C.I.A.L., turn-based combat only, isometric view only, and don't you dare go near consoles.
As Tandi would say, bo-ring.
Interesting news: Bethesda has acquired the Fallout license and will develop Fallout 3. I'm still reading through that thread on the Elder Scrolls forums… nearly sixty pages by now…
There is a new gamepage, Newcomer: a Hungarian RPG for the Commodore 64, first released 1994 but still in active development. Don't worry, the text is in English.
Since I mention it on the Newcomer page, I finally added a description to Circuit's Edge, albeit a rather short and cryptic one. Well, there's always the walkthrough if you want to know more.
It's always rather embarassing when I notice pages I for some reason omitted from my update script and have therefore completely outdated versions. Today I fixed The Cosmology of Kyoto and Enemy Nations.
Wrote a new introduction to The Sims and rearranged the page a bit.
I gave the Strip Poker page a bigger update. There's now actually an article, not just a table of the pertinent games. I checked all their pages, too, updated links where necessary and linked them all back to the Strip Poker page.
21st Century Oldies is down. The domain itself gives a 403 error, any specific pages a 404 error. I noted this on the Abandonware page, but did not yet remove any links. This may be temporary.
There is, once again, a small update to the Fallout page, which I just rearranged a bit. On the Sexy Droids page, I added a link to the Commodore 64 version of Blue Angels 69. And I fixed the Wizardry links on the Macintosh Games page.
Once again, or rather still, Fallout: A few links and a paragraph about the .223 pistol, aka Deckard's blaster from Blade Runner.
Small update on the Fallout page: I mention a few more Falloutish mods based on other games.
I added a list of moddable RPGs to the RPG Maker page. Editing an existing RPG should be seen as a viable alternative to creating a new one in a maker.
Lots and lots of updates today. Yesterday I went through the most popular game pages, today through the maker pages which I had neglected a bit. I completely rewrote the game makers page and renamed it Game Creation Systems, to avoid confusion with Mark Overmars' Game Maker (single link added on this page). It is now mainly an index for those systems I have pages about, and there are several new ones:
I rewrote the RPG Maker page in a similar way, but it's still a bit unfinished and should get another update soon. Then there are some smaller updates on the Write Your Own Games!, O.H.R.RPG.C.E., and DarkBASIC pages. On the latter, it's just the fact that I learned BASIC not on a terminal, but on an Apple ][ clone. This news is gonna change your life.
Back in November 2003, I got a really interesting email pointing out the differences between Ragnarok and its European release, Valhalla. Somehow I delayed and delayed to update the page, then my harddrive crashed, and the email was gone. But I think I remember most of it, and finally made the update, in the course of which I noticed that Boudewijn Waijers' Roguelike Homepage is back as a mirror. This is good news, even if the FTP links are broken.
Times of Lore, I found out, is one of the few games to support the Creative Music System's Gameblaster, and is said to be the only one to have decent music for it. Unfortunately newer sound cards don't support this format, but DOSBox does.
And last there are some minor updates (fixed/removed/added links) for Metal & Lace, Power DoLLS and Pharaoh.
Phew. That's it for today.
The first few days of a month are always interesting, for then I can tell best which pages are currently popular and which not. Now these are the top five as far as specific games are concerned. I've given them all an update or at least a routine maintenance check:
Fallout has become incredibly
popular lately. In general, pages about game creation and game
makers are visited more often than pages about games, but Fallout
has become second for the whole site. Since my personal interest
in it is once again great, I update this page a lot. Today, I
made the list of graphics available through the editor more
precise, added some musings about Fallout and Australia, and
put Lerk's introduction to the Unwashed
Villagers on the page about them. He had recently posted it
on a message board.
Knights of Xentar is second, but it has less than half the visitors Fallout has. I added a paragraph about similar games, removed some broken links, and added a few details about Ohkami Mineko's basically unrelated manga series. While I played Knights of Xentar through to the end, that was quite a while ago.
Morrowind is another game that has risen sharply in popularity as far as this site is concerned, it is now eagerly battling Knights of Xentar for the second place. That's a bit embarassing for me, for I have played it very little and thus have few clever things to say about it. I do maintain a list of sites with mods and plug-ins (the most interesting aspect about Morrowind). Today I added two more and improved some of the descriptions.
Shadowrun (SNES) is a very close fourth. Again, though I played this game through to the end it has been some time. There were no broken links here, I added two more about the SEGA game and made some cosmetic changes. Shadowrun is actually one of my favorites, and I might do more about it in the future.
With a bit more distance, Loom is fifth. I added the fact that the floppy version came with an audio tape (a detail that had escaped me previously) and quoted the reviews I link to.
And in case you haven't noticed, I changed the stylesheet a bit, replacing the Cello-style list buttons that didn't display very well with those from Ariadne.
Fixed the navigational links in Maiko Covington's Life in a Japanese School.
Some updates to the Fallout page, giving more details about the Fallout graphics still present or no more present in Fallout 2, and yes, there is now a little screenshot for viewing pleasure.
Made a few changes to the Dungeon Keeper and Get Paid! pages.
