Tag Archives: games

Mystery is important, and so are stories

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Most who played The Longest Journey will probably remember unexpectedly stumbling across the name of its writer inside the game. At the entrance of a movie theater, the player can look at a movie poster for “A Welsh Ghost Story, written and directed by Ragnar Tørnquist”. I always wondered whether this was a reference to something he had actually written, foreshadowing something to come later or simply his way of inserting his name into the story.

Then some years went by, the sequel Dreamfall was released, and while I eagerly await Dreamfall Chapters which is due to be released this fall I had mostly forgotten about this little cameo. Then here the other day, Ragnar Tørnquist posted a link to a screenplay called “In the Dark Places”. And the interesting part is that the working title had been “A Welsh Ghost Story”! So not only does it exist, but we’ll get to read it as well. He also posted another story, “Rules are Rules”, which he now considers a sort of precursor to The Longest Journey. I’ve only skimmed parts of them so far, but both look like interesting reads.

Sign up for the Widelands tournament 2012

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Since the first Widelands tournament back in 2010, we have been waiting for another one, and now it’s coming. Later this month the Widelands tournament 2012 starts, and everyone who signs up before January 21st can join in. For more information, and instructions for how to sign up see the announcement or the wikipage.

The first matches will coincide with the next offical Widelands Play Day (held the last weekend each month) taking place at January 28th. This means that even if you aren’t joining the tournament, you will still have the opportunity to play some multiplayer.

Ships in Widelands

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A ship sailing from a port transporting stonesYesterday, ships were finally added to Widelands! Strictly speaking the ships have been in since build 16 was released, but now they even do something. Eager to test them out I took a look at the latest version, I edited the allowed buildings of Atlanteans and used the editor to set up a quick map with a small lake. I built a port on both sides of it, and then a ship which sailed between them, transporting wares and workers. Transportation was easy to set up by adjusting priority in the ports which worked just like a regular warehouse. The advantage of course is that with ships you can transport resources across the map as long as there is a port on both sides.

Personally, I’m really happy to finally get to play with ships. Those familiar with Widelands will know that it is similar to the older Settlers-games. And while Settlers II introduced ships, I have to admit I have only ever played demo versions of it. Ships, of course, were one of the promised features which was only included in the fullversion. They did include teaser screenshots and descriptions of how the ships worked though, and in some way I have been waiting more than 10 years to get the ships sailing back and forth on my screen.

And I think it looks awesome. At the present no scenarios or maps are built around ships since they have not been available and even now they are not enabled by default. However, I think that in time this can offer some significant changes to the gameplay. I look forward to how expeditions, colonies and dealing with territories split across the map works out.

For those who are impatient and want to try it out for themselves, grab the latest development build or compile the latest version yourself. (Beware that changes happen rapidly in the development versions and are not guaranteed to be free of bugs or issues.) For the rest, seafaring will be included in build 17 (unless something unexpected happens) which is due to be released some time next year. I look forward to it.