posted 05-26-99 08:48 PM ET        

I saw some posts by fellow players celebrating as they heard about Civ3. Boy, how naive we are! We should be protesting instead.
To all those celebrating, I want to ask you a simple thing, is SMAC so different than CiV2? So different that actually deserves a new name?

Just have a look at SMAC, it's so similar to Civ2. They HAVE already made Civ3 (SMAC). They just gave it another NAME. So that they can now make Civ3, how clever! What does this company think we are? Naive? Stupid? They made Civ3 (full of bugs and incomplete) and now they are thinking about making Civ4 and Civ3 expansion (SMACX).

posted 05-27-99 12:52 AM ET            

... nods at Alkis

... glares at KrazyJ and HolyWarrior

... winks at Trippin Daily, OldWarrior_42, Goob, Darkstar, Shining1, et al.

... farts in the general direction of Victor Galis

... snorts a breath of paint fumes

... shrieks: "On no, not again!!!!!"

posted 05-27-99 01:48 AM ET            

Alkis, are you ****ing nuts? Wait!?! L E T M E G O S L O W E R. A R E F U C K I N G N U T S ? What did you say to yourself? Hmmm, now here's a good place to post this really ****ing stupid thread. I'm ****ing stoned off my ass and I couldn't come up with anything dumber than that to say. Dumbass, may I call you Dumbass, Alkis? Ok, good. Dumbass it is then. Dumbass, there isn't much left out there as in ways to implement an empire building game. You got that now Dumbass? If you happen to have ANY ideas whatsoever, oh yeah, and about radically changing TBS as we know it, then let us all know. We would be amazed that you have thoughts. Dumbass, there is this little other thing, its called T E C H N O L O G Y. You see, every day now, T E C H N O L O G Y (I'm saying it slow so you will learn that long word), gets better. It's becomes able to do more. So in order, software (thats what games are by the way) is created to take advantage of that. Sometimes software has to resemble a previous generations in look due to the limits of there is only so far you can change a certain genre. You can't really develop TBS that much more on CIV and SMAC's nitch in that genre. That is the type of game they are.

posted 05-27-99 02:27 AM ET            

He's been like a teapot about to boil.

posted 05-27-99 03:27 AM ET            

Alkis, at least one of the reason SMAC was not called Civ3 is Copyright (Microprose/Hasbro owns it).

I agree that the patches were an attempt to "fix the paint", but (and before anybody fires up their flamethrowers, let me do the usual disclaimer, I love SMAC yadda yadda and you guys know it BLAH) let me tell you that if I hired a painter and he needed 2 additional coats to make the wall look right, I'd be really pissed off.

But I put up with that endless pat- er, enhancement crap because I'm a programmer also, and that I know it's next to impossible to get that kind of program 100% straight.

And to be quite honest, the marks and stains on the paint aren't *that* noticeable.

posted 05-27-99 03:49 AM ET            

SMAC/Civ/Civ2 games are pretty much conceptually complete. All that's left to do with that type of turn based strategy game is refinement on the base engine, with hopefully a few new innovations. (Though please prove me wrong, I'd be most appreciative - new ideas are great things.)

What most of us are expecting are refinements on the old classic games, a breath of new life. Better graphics, better unit options, better base/city options, perhaps better empire management, infra/extrastructure, etc... really when you get right down to it, isn't Civilization an awful lot like that old TBS game called Empire from way back when?

Yeah, it can be disappointing to get a game like SMAC and see refinement where you want a new game. But refinement is exactly what they set out to do with SMAC, and again, it's what they are going to intend to do with Civilization III. If I'm wrong on that point and they intend to be exceptionally innovative with Civ3, I'll be very, very shocked. So I won't be complaining when Civ3 comes out and is very similar (surprise surprise) to Civ2 and to SMAC... it's expected, it was intended and it's what I want.

posted 05-27-99 05:13 AM ET            

The problem is that even after version3 the game, to use a popular expression, is full of bugs. And here comes the question, do you agree with this statement or not? Because if you agree then my metaphor still stands. I don't need an architect or a decorator, I need a painter.

To those who don't agree, just how many bugs/cheats/things to be fixed are there? Give me a number. 7? 8?

I know that few and many is something relevant but would you call 25 few? I put this number not accidentally, I really have 25 bugs listed! I read about many more in the forums but I wasn't able to confirm them yet.

Now about the "incomplete" this will be a lot harder to explain. When you play the opening/early middle game you get the feeling that this game was the product of a really hard work. There is a balance and many interesting choices, you can go for particle gun for a quick attack, or you can go for high energy chemistry for defence or you can go for Cybernetics, or you can try to research the techs who uplift restrictions. Or you can try a combination, it's really very interesting. Later on, you get the feeling that the game was completed in a rush. For instance:

Habitation Domes. It would be very nice to use them; unfortunately they come out too late, the game is almost over.

Quantum chamber. Useless. By the time you get that, you can get as well Singularity engine. In any case the game will soon be over anyway.

Music. Do you like the music of this game? Will you think I' am exaggerating if I say that music is almost non-existant?

I think Firaxis' first priority should be to fix/complete SMAC first.
About sequels to their games, I don't mind even if they want to make 3-4 a year. But FINISH the first one and then go to the second. All I want from them is to do something complete.

posted 05-27-99 09:43 AM ET            

The very thought on bringing in the contemplation of the perverted idea of examining SMAC existance makes me shudder in comparison to your words Why? The point is really: how you put it in this frame, and they way you do makes me not like it. In our universe we gather up justice examo�ne it like it were scoops of persuation in fields of study like freakin Physics and the way painters do their job. I say Burt Reynolds has done his best in his futile attempts while I underestimate the facts of Sid's unduly behaivior in the trend of the computer industry as a whole the last seventeen years. If you don't, let me ask you: have you ever tried it? But "NO" you say. "What's the point?" Well, you and everything all you guys stand for - from buying pizza to ordering new underwear(or was it the other way around?) - that's all I have to deal with and all your points are equally worthless and frankly rude in a way that makes me think on the song "Waterloo" by ABBA and that's is not high praise. So get lost, you freakin three time losers and learn the damn language. Personally, I find a coversation with Bry Unn Renn Oldz more giving so please whine on like a horde of mountain goats. Ah yes, I will just end with a few foreign words:

posted 05-27-99 10:00 AM ET            

Vade Retro, Freddz, GO BACK TO HELL !

posted 05-27-99 12:26 PM ET         

It must be the ones between his ears, that flutter aimlessly amd finally dribble out as crap from one orifice or the other.

The only problem on my machine is the sound, and that will be fixed if ever NT meets Direct X

posted 05-27-99 01:20 PM ET            

Now, having meet the obligatory salutations, I have to ask you Alkis... Are you freaking nuts?!?! First you say you want pay another $50 for yet another buggy game, THEN you say you'd PAY Firaxis $50 just to fix the bugs? THAT'S STUPID! If a painter does a crappy job, you know what? I get my money back and go pay a COMPETENT painter with a reputation the money it takes to get the room painted the way I wanted it. I don't give the slob that did so poor a job MORE money to continue doing a poor job. That's stupid. I know Common Sense isn't that common, but that is what surviving Life gets you. That slob has no reason to do BETTER work. One job yeilds MORE jobs under yours system of econonics.

Unfortunately, that seems to be true in the Strategy Game Genre. We pay big bucks to get the game. And when the company needs a cash boost, they throw a couple of enhancements in on a patch and call it an expansion. And we are so desperate for attention, just like a poor beaten child looked in the basement for 3 days, that we run to get our new dose of attention. Even if we have to bend over and get another beating for it. Sad and stupid, aren't we?

But Alkis, I do NOT think SMAC is Civ3. Sure, it picks up where Civ leads off (the landing on AC). But, its a SCIENCE FICTION game. Civ is more of a Historical Fiction-Fantasy sort of game. As AC doesn't deal with the possible parallel Earths, its not Civ3. I will eventually get Civ, but I may wait until patch #241 or so...

Oh... I have reported over 60 bugs that I have found in SMAC US version 3. Some are very minor. Some are bugs that were in the beta (from what we have heard from beta testers), some since demo v1.0/product v1.0 code... some you can find starting on turn 4 (dealing with AI formers... using Gaians to pod speed build a former on turn 1). Do I think that SMAC was rushed? Hell yeah! Do I think they still owe me a quality product? Yep. But patch version 3.0 brings the game pretty close. Luckily, I know the whole industry doesn't believe (apparantly, rightly) that they owe us by our privates and can lead us wherever they want to as they deliver WHAT they promise. Maybe not WHEN, but they only have a few minor items to patch at worst... not the HUNDREDS that SMAC has been addressing.

posted 05-27-99 02:08 PM ET            

It is also a poor analogy. The skill of painting a room is along the lines of creating a good Access database. While Designing/Programming a game like SMAC is much more like Architecture. (thanks Gord)

A building is intricate, involved, and interactive, and it needs to be finely balanced just to be functional. Then it needs to have specific additional design features and "bells and whistles" to be popular and successful on a broad scale.

Are we nuts to pay an architect over and over to redesign a building where, somebody can turn out the lights in your room from the other side of the building, or where the placement of the windows jsut seems to be a little off, or the elctrical wiring while working just doesn't make sense. The building is livable, many people even seem to enjoy living there more than other buildings but there are frustrating features.

Do we give this architect more money? Do we allow his contracter back into the house to rework a few things along with add on another bathroom, and make the kitchen a little better. Do we pay for this, when the job wasn't qute right in the first place?

If living in this house, and having these new additions allows me to enjoy my life more, then paying for it is completely rational. If there is a better "Architect/Contractor" who have built a better "house" maybe I'll move there, So far I haven't seen one.

Goob

posted 05-27-99 02:37 PM ET            

Only wish the patches would have fixed gameplay glitches, instead in my case at least they seem to have introduced new ones.

posted 05-27-99 03:06 PM ET         

Wonss uhgane eye em fourst two reesepahnd. Eye no ewe geyez dohnt laik mi, buhtt eye wheel pohst eneewai.

Burt ohnlee deed sum uv dee voysohvurs four SMAC (shoe-ed bee BUROAC!!!). Seence hee ease uh relluhteeve uv meyen, eye gaiv heem sum werc.

posted 05-27-99 04:48 PM ET            

1. There is a touch of genius in this game.
2. It ain't Civ2
3. It ain't finished.
4. It never will be.
5. It would have cost Firaxis too much to finish it.
6. It would cost Firaxis too much to get the bugs out, so, a lot of them will stay.
7. The design was too ambitious given the resources Firaxis alloted for it. (else the resources were wasted, who knows)
8. Its still a hell of a game.
9. If CtoP had raised the bar, Firaxis would have had to respond by alloting more resources for Civ3.
10.Activison failed, and therefore Civ3 will not have to be much of an improvement.
11.Civ3 will not be finished when it comes out either.
12.We bought SMAC. We will buy SMACX. We will buy Civ3.

I think that "they" have done a pretty good job of estimating our intelligence.

The AI is my problem. If they would get the bugs out and upgrade the AI, I would throw fifty bucks at it in a sec. But we will get some new bells and whistles and I be disappointed again. But I will keep playing.

posted 05-27-99 04:52 PM ET            

Good job

posted 05-27-99 05:16 PM ET            

Sorry gang, but they really WILL screw us just cause we let them.

posted 05-27-99 05:26 PM ET            

There is a limit to how much anyone can improve any TBS, and if SMAC had a totally different look and feel, how much would we really like it?

There are design issues that should be addressed, including improvements in the AI, changes to the tech tree, and several other.

As a long time app developer/system programmer/propeller head (back when most of you were in diapers or not born yet, in a computer sense. I'm only 39, but have been a prop head for 24 years - do YOU remember the Arpanet, VM, CPM and earlier?) - NOBODY, WITH ALL THE FREAKIN' TIME AND MONEY IN THE WORLD, WILL EVER FULLY "DEBUG" A WIN95/98 APP OF THIS SCALE AND COMPLEXITY. Microstupid can't get their sh*t together and build a stable OSOS (Not a typo - Operating System On Steroids, which is what Windows95/98/etc. is), so how can you expect a company with Firaxis' resources to build a rock solid Win95/98 based app of this scale.

I've had very few and limited problems with real repeatable bugs, and many non-consistently repeatable "bugs" are, IMNSHO, non-fatal Windows Kernel errors, and beyond the ability of any application developer to address. I have one computer I play on and use as a test platform - it has 768 MB of RAM (yeah, you read right) and dual PII 450's, although Win95/98 only recognizes one. I disable Windows virtual memory most of the time, and Voila! the number of non-repeatable problems I have with almost any app drops to almost zero.

For those of you with more humble systems, if you have a lot of "bug" problems, try manually setting minimum and maximum VM to the same size - 192 to 256 MB is a good range, so that you have the old Win 3.1 style permanent swap file. Then run Norton SpeedDisk, so you can make the swap file contiguous - something that the lamer MS scandisk utility CAN'T do.

It's a lot more stable, but do not exceed 256 MB by very much - somewhere between 256 MB and 384 MB, performance goes down and gets less stable as the "permanent" swap file gets larger.

posted 05-27-99 07:08 PM ET            

To piss you off? I couldn't resist "yes". Sorry. I meant nothing ill with my posts really. For those of you who haven't gotten it, read my last line, first post, backwards.

But since I'm involved now with you(I have been through these things so I don't enjoy them as much anymore)...

Let me start by asking you this question - why can't you respect another's opinion even if you think it's sooo ill presented and stupid? To critisize it harshly is one thing but...

I don't wanna wade through your arguments here, but many of them attack how disrespectful Alkis are. Many of them are plain slaunder. Doesn't those arguments sound a bit stupid when one look at your posts? Among things, you try to tell everyone they're justified by saying you are protecting all your friends here from his terrible "slaunder". Was that the real reason?

I think you are actually just downgrading a guy for expressing his opinion. I think the guy is trying to achieve something good in his viewby using a "negative argument"(I know those forwards and backwards).

Trip, you got a few points stuck in that mess you call posts. But,

I just think you are out of line. That's the truth. Nothing else really. And I sure know you have thought me out of line before. Well, get in line of forumers .

Just call me a big idiot once or twice if you disagree and tell me I have done the same or worse things(I can probably stand it... probably), and we'll forget this discussion. If that's not enough, I'll be ready for round two.

posted 05-28-99 04:38 AM ET            

Not that I am defending Micro$oft, but its the generic blame for all apps writers on the MS platform. And you know what? That doesn't cut it. Firaxis did a SERIOUS piss-poor job of coding. Multiple code paths to perform the same function? That's write. They don't obey BASIC laws of coding such us, if you ALLOC it, you have to DEALLOC it (or New and Delete for you C++ and new generation programmers). I'm not kidding about them missing the BASICS. IF Microsoft had as many bugs per lines of code in THEIR product as SMAC, you wouldn't be able to get Windows to run for a hour per session. So give it a rest. Firaxis programmers only had to coordinate a few ten thousand to a hundred thousand lines of code. If they had maintained good practices, most of the bugs COULD have been controlled. UNIX has as many to MORE holes and bugs in it, but thanks to there being a UNIX per machine maker, we just don't have half a million coders suffering through the same bugs. We have one hundred thousand coders suffering through a hundred fractured related flavors instead. If you have been around as long as you say, you KNOW what I mean.

Take your Programmers tools and track what SMAC does. HAH. If those Firaxians worked for me, I'd have sent a number of them back down to the hardware tech pool where many wannabees start. And they are going to repeat this pattern for Civ 3. Without a reason NOT to, they don't have a reason to program like people that work for a living.

So take your "I don't see no bugs, and if I does, theys must be Windoze fault." and go join Victor Galis in a hot tub.

<evil grin> If you think this mouse driven User Interface equipped operating systems are on steroids, wait until you get a GOOD look at the next generation of OSes that revolve around Speech Recognition, Hand and or finger movements in 3-space, and virtual displays illistrating 3-space. They are ballooning by a very large factor... your quad pentium IV 4 Gigaherz system is going to be slower than the first 86 processors trying to run Windoze 3.

BTW, KrazyJ - The only Hackers I know that are Elite are 13 year olds who think that using an ID and PWD that they picked up from a "Hacking" friend and signing into a public NASA system. Noone that gets PAID by obtaining data from equipment not owned by their employing corporations would EVER do anything to attract attention to themselves. And those people that FREELANCE are even quiter when anywhere NEAR public accessable areas. Too many Narcs and general rewards offered to make it a survival trait.

posted 05-28-99 05:27 AM ET            

Aredhran
-La bave du crapaud n'atteint pas la blanche colombe-

posted 05-28-99 12:51 PM ET            

Now, it sounds like Krazy J is missing its nap time. Oh, look! A present. Well, let's change your diaper and put you back to sleep. You just stay away from those big kids and you wont get your precious widdle feelings hurt.

*SH!* I just it him asleep again. The poor kid... neglected and abused by its parents... real shame. I just hate to see a neural net wasted on such a life pattern...

posted 05-28-99 02:37 PM ET            

J, you're hilarious!

LMAO!

Trippin, you getting royalties? Or passing the flame-thrower? This J seems to be trying to rip off your Flame-Broiled 100% Crispy **** (TM) style. Maybe it will call it's the Deep Fried 100% Bull **** (Trademark pending).

HAHAHAHA...

posted 05-28-99 02:46 PM ET            

But, ooooo, KJs post are hitting a little too close to home for me. All except the balding part!

sMaC n ... tED s.

posted 05-28-99 05:02 PM ET            

If I replace my e's with 3's and my shift key breaks then am, I #l##t 2Oo?

posted 05-29-99 02:03 AM ET            

I'm not saying there aren't design or logic issues in SMAC - those ain't bugs. But I have NEVER had any repeatable BUGS in my F*CK WIN98/NT VM machine with SMAC.

The whole DOS/Windoze Conventional Memory/HMA/EMS/XMS/VMswapfilefromhell and RAM drivecache from levels of torture far worse than hell is pure BS, as is having a 1999 OSOS that saddles itself to that poor memory management model so it can run legacy crap from 1985.

Also, an OS with a minimal number of extra device drivers which runs 21 internal threads, and sucks up 86 MB of RAM all on its own, until you tweak it into submission IS on Steroids, IMLTHO "Web browser is an integral part of the OS" My ass!!!!!
Not to mention wholly unnecessary allocation and deallocation of swap file when there's a freakin TON of physical RAM available and not used!

SO LET ALL YOU MICROSTUPID APOLOGISTS PRAY WITH MIRIAM AND BE HER FOOT FETISH SLAVES!!!!
MediumGreyStar: "Oh SPANK me, Miriam, let us pray together that I am worthy to lick the stuff from between your toes while I grovel before you. Oooohhhh YUM YUM"

Just joking (at your expense) BTW, :P~~~

posted 05-30-99 01:28 AM ET            

Hey. Internet Exploder is a part of the OS bundle. Its the replacement for your graphic file navigator. Its just not part of the Kernel. The somantic differences and when they get used WHEN is an amazing thing. Like ActiveX is something new... Bahaha. M$ just keeps renaming their failed products until they win/get accepted. Must be nice...

21 threads is a bit much, but my Sun ran more than that just getting to the XWindows shell. I don't know about these people. Some 17 year old freshman CS student will probably come up with something much better and get it adopted by all of her friends, then get bought out for competing against NT... excuse me, Windows post 98. You gotta wonder how many other great software apps/interfaces/whatever have disappeared down the M$ hole...

You playing on a VM as in Linux via Wine? We've heard you can do that to play SMAC on Linux system. That would be sad to go to all that trouble to run a clean Linux machine and have to soil it with Windoze apps... even via an emulator.

Enough technobabble... Glad to see another voice of Dissent. SMAC isn't the worst thing around, but its certainly not the game in quality that should have been, let alone could have been.

Ew! What a punishment! Well, at least we know what Sister Miriam does with her unlucky opponents once she lets them out of that punishment sphere. So what does Morgan do to them?

posted 05-30-99 01:59 AM ET            

Naw, I'm not contaminating Linux with Winbloze apps - I was referring to the way back when IBM mainframe VM - before MVS. I only had to play with 16k on CPM toys - my early professional life wasn't that miserable - I had big toys to play on.

I don't know about you, but I have a hard time not laughing at the whole Victor Galis thing - I mean who'd actually ADMIT, let alone brag about 1000 posts on this thing? Letting the whole world know how little of a life you really have, and you're a "veteran" if you were ranting on here months before the game even came out?!

In my book, a "veteran" is someone who knows what the f*ck he's talking about, and it doesn't matter how many posts you've got where. IMLTHO

There ain't anybody here, except maybe SM and BR they own selves, who has 1000 posts worth of anything to say that's remotely worth listening to.

So do you and some others who think the AI system can be improved wanna try to get in on the Civ3 & SMACX betas? Maybe if we say "pretty please" someone at Firaxis will read these damn threads and decide a few of us out here have brains which might like to contribute something useful.

posted 05-30-99 04:58 AM ET            

There have been MANY suggestions that Firaxis invite in some of the TI (Transcend Ironmen) club members... The ones that could crush the computer from game one and wrote large essays and discertations on what the AI is doing wrong and how to improve its decision algorithms to make it more efficent or more challenging to human players. Several of those people would probably be a better choice than myself, but I would love to be on the test team. Who here wouldn't? But Firaxis has had the TI club updating their "white papers" and "My step by step guide to tear apart the Expert System that is the Opponent Engine" since at LEAST version 1. And we (SMAC owners) haven't seen them take that knowledge base into account in the slightest. So I doubt they would WANT to listen to us, let alone let us help test and give feedback about either project. Maybe we would have to try bribery. They have enough fan-boys and girls that kissing up or begging wouldn't work.

posted 06-02-99 03:01 PM ET            

SMAC players are really creative when it comes to insulting one another. I'm impressed. Y'all seem to be manic-depressive, too.

Oh well, to be on topic: Sure SMAC is buggy, perhaps a little more so at release than the average game, but clearly Firaxis cares about improving it. You can't say that about every developer, sadly.

It's also not a tremendous departure from past TBS games, but it's the cool theme and the atmosphere that hook me. SMAC really ignited my sense of wonder in a way I haven't felt since the Darklands RPG or X-Com.

posted 06-03-99 12:40 PM ET         

BTW, compared to games like Daggerfall, Fallout 2, and a few others I've had the misfortune to like playing, SMAC is a marvel.

posted 06-03-99 02:01 PM ET            

Civ 2 is the worst piece of plagiarism **** Sid has ever made.
(Yeah he can copy himself as much as he wants but it still sucks).

Actually Civ 2 is so crappy that it qualifies for being a worse follow up than Highlander 2.

In my eyes SMAC is the true Civ 2.

posted 06-03-99 02:16 PM ET         

Personally, I purchased both CivII and SMAC knowing pretty much what I was going to get. Basically the same Civ system, but with some new features (technologies, units, buildings etc) and some tweaking and enhancements in the game.

So I don't feel upset when that's what I get. Or that when companies are successful in selling that, that they come back and do it again in a year or two.

Now, I did get upset when Microprose pulled some of there tricks, such as putting out a multiplayer version of Civ, then releasing CivII with no multiplayer, and then trying to get me to pay more money later for CivII with multiplayer. I didn't buy the last for a long time, until I finally pulled it out of a discount bin.

Personally, I'm looking forward to see what Sid and Brian can do with CivIII now that they are on their own and out from under Microprose's corporate control.

posted 06-03-99 11:58 PM ET            

Love it or loathe it, SMAC compares very favourably to all other TBS games I've played, including CIV2, which was and is a classic game, still worth playing now. Firaxis have done a pretty good job of fixing what bugs they've found, bearing in mind that they have to turn a profit and can't sit on a game for years, perfecting it to the nth degree, while their competitors release less perfect products and steal their market. Patch 3 solved most of my problems, and installing MemTurbo solved the rest... since installing that, I get hardly any terran.exe crashes, which suggests to me that memory leakage must be involved in this particular problem... and what do you blame for that, SMAC or Win98? Difficult to tell.

As far as SMAC being a clone of CIV2 goes, well, you could equally say that Quake2 was a clone of Quake, but who complained about that? For that matter, Quake was a clone of Doom2, which was a clone of Doom1, which was a clone of Wolfenstein, which was a clone of earlier "first person view" RPGs such as Eye of the Beholder. The point is that these are *types* of game, and there's only so much innovation any designer can make within a type. Of course SMAC is similar to CIV... it's a TBS, and therefore looks and acts like most other games in the genre. You could just as well say that a BMW M3 is a clone of a Ford Escort... after all, they all have internal combustion engines, right? Doors, wing mirrors and air conditioning? Just as a car is a car, give or take a few enhancements here and there, a TBS is a TBS, and to expect new and radical departures is not only unrealistic, but also illogical. Exactly *how* should SMAC have been made different from CIV2? What other ways exist to build an empire, save to build bases, build enhancements to those bases, build ever-improving military units and conduct diplomacy/warfare with your opponents/allies? SMAC is different enough from CIV2 to be well worth the �40 I paid for it (yeah, UK software prices are high!) and to demand an utterly different game is to wish for the moon.

Rackam:
At last! Someone else who played (and liked!) Daggerfall!! Now, if anyone on this BBS wants to see a TRULY buggy game, which yet had potential and the ability to keep me playing for weeks on end despite ludicrous amounts of bugs and crashes, go get yourself a budget copy of Daggerfall. It rocks and sucks simultaneously... quite a feat (looks totally outdated now, of course, but I don't mind crappy graphics if the storyline's good).

Just my (very waffly) two pennyworth!

Nell... thinking it must be bedtime... hey the sun's up