Why I love this game

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Farmer Glob
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Why I love this game

Post by Farmer Glob »

This game was a treasure to find in the Ubuntu repositories.

I had been looking for games as a new Linux user, and while a lot of the smaller games (board games, puzzles, etc.) are very well crafted, they aren't the kind of games I like to play for a long time. I wanted something deeper.

Many of the larger games I'd tried (for Linux) are hard to get into to, sometimes they do not have enough documentation, help, etc. in the beginning and you are inundated with too much to figure out right away.

So I installed a bunch of games, one of which happened to be Globulation 2, and tried them, one after the other. I was disappointed until I got to Globulation.

The thing that hooked me first was the tutorial - you guys really put together an excellent introduction to the game. I do not see tutorials in open source / free games usually, they must be really hard to program I imagine: having a game do all the things it does already, but then making it have some options disabled, adding new options while detecting when a player has followed the directions properly. Well, this one was great and by the time I was making a swimming pool I knew I had found a quality game. The tutorial was on par with commercial games I've played - first impressions are a big deal, so well done.

The game does a fantastic job of balancing simple and complex. It is quick to learn but there are multiple ways to win. I love the image/impression of the glob units: there is an abstract, chess-like quality to the units and structures in that they aren't exactly humanoid. It works perfectly for the whole no-micro-management theme, which is of course, the core of what makes it unique.

My favorite part of the game is resource management. I love how the living resources work, how they regrow, and how you can use the different patterns of restricted area to shape crops and make them come right up to an inn, but still have the field navigable. Or shape a living wall of forest. Sometimes I create a messy map and play against an AI None opponent just to shape the farms. Again, I love the somewhat abstract image of the colorful round wheat berries and that the globs live on wheat and fruit, a sort of vegetarian agrarian utopia. Oh, and the globe style map really adds to that little-world feeling. It took a little getting used to but it is liberating to play a strategy game without artificial black void-borders.

By the way, I'm curious, what's the deal with prune trees? :D Their diet is already full of fiber, I doubt irregularity is an issue. ;) Is that a translation thing with plum, maybe, or fully intentional? Over here (US) a prune is a dried plum, what a raisin is to a grape. I'm wondering if maybe its like the whole french fries/chips thing. Maybe this has been discussed before, I'll have to check the forums. Either way, I like it - but I tend to stick the prune trees with the enemy and keep the cherries when I make a map. :)

I really like the music as well, it fits with the theme, and the attack music is serious but not too harsh. (Kind of like the CH Ch ch ch when Jason is stalking someone in Friday the 13th). It was a nice touch how the music segues without ending abruptly, even across menus/map editor. I still haven't figured out what condition is happening when the drum beat is added to the normal theme...does it have to do with idle globs? I'll have to look up that one too.

Overall, great game. I want to thank everyone involved. I'm very eager to play the new 10.09.2007 Beta version, I can't wait to see the new color scaling for the farm land - but I am very new to Linux and the prospect of installing a tarball is scary to me. I'm tempted to dive in and try anyway, but I don't want to wreck my current version and then have nothing. I don't know how long Deb packages take to come out, or who makes them, what the process is, etc. I know that Ubuntu takes a while to put new things in its repos. But that question is for my next post!

Thanks again, sorry for the long post!
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Giszmo
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Post by Giszmo »

Hi Farmer Glob

First of all I'd like to thank you in the name of all contributors for your warm words on glob2.

You liked the tutorial. Did you check out the videos?
Prunes are not fresh? Well I'm not english neither :)
You like building maps? Well would you want to add some to the game so everybody can play them? (Sorry. I don't see developers and players but contributors and potential contributors.)

Greetings, Giszmo
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Donkyhotay
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Post by Donkyhotay »

It's funny but english is my primary language and I have never noticed that. He's actually right though, a prune *is* a 'raisened' plum and so don't grow on trees. I went ahead and mentioned that on the bug tracker.
do not be afraid to joust a giant just because some people insist on believing in windmills.
Farmer Glob
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Post by Farmer Glob »

Giszmo wrote:Hi Farmer Glob

First of all I'd like to thank you in the name of all contributors for your warm words on glob2.

You liked the tutorial. Did you check out the videos?
Prunes are not fresh? Well I'm not english neither :)
You like building maps? Well would you want to add some to the game so everybody can play them? (Sorry. I don't see developers and players but contributors and potential contributors.)

Greetings, Giszmo
Guten tag! Took two years of German back in high school (three if you count failing and repeating German II :lol: ). Unfortunately, they didn't cover many fruits, fresh or otherwise ;)

I checked out the videos - good demonstration.

Recently reinstalled my Ubuntu, I just went clean install, and among other things lost my maps. Have a separate /home partition now, so in the future hopefully that won't be an issue. But that would definitely be cool to submit some maps once I build a couple up again. My favorite pre-installed one at the moment is probably Muka.
Farmer Glob
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Post by Farmer Glob »

Donkyhotay wrote:It's funny but english is my primary language and I have never noticed that. He's actually right though, a prune *is* a 'raisened' plum and so don't grow on trees. I went ahead and mentioned that on the bug tracker.
Yeah - interesting though - recently came across some Chinese candy, artificial "prune" flavor (with a picture of a plum on the wrapper) so it definitely exists elsewhere as the de facto translation of plum.
NightStar
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Re: Why I love this game

Post by NightStar »

This is just a great game, really great! Congratglobulations! ;-)
oldrocker99
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Re: Why I love this game

Post by oldrocker99 »

The gameplay reminds me of the old PC game Majesty, in which you had only indirect control of the characters.

This game, however, is nearly wholly original and deep. After M*cr*s*ft screwed me for the last time with a Critical Update, I went to Ubuntu and haven't looked back. Thanks for something that can keep me this entranced!
nonamesplease
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Re: Why I love this game

Post by nonamesplease »

In reference to the prune/plum issue, I wonder whether the translation has anything to do with the botanical taxonomy: the "Latin name." The genus for plums (and cherries) is Prunus. Seems likely to translate to "prune."
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Re:

Post by Koert »

Farmer Glob wrote:
Donkyhotay wrote:It's funny but english is my primary language and I have never noticed that. He's actually right though, a prune *is* a 'raisened' plum and so don't grow on trees. I went ahead and mentioned that on the bug tracker.
Yeah - interesting though - recently came across some Chinese candy, artificial "prune" flavor (with a picture of a plum on the wrapper) so it definitely exists elsewhere as the de facto translation of plum.
In my experience, China is not a good point of reference when it comes to English :P
Then again, most countries aren't (including the English speaking ones)
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