[HN Gopher] Sid Meier's Memoir
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Sid Meier's Memoir
Author : animationwill
Score : 163 points
Date : 2020-10-09 12:55 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sidmeiersmemoir.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sidmeiersmemoir.com)
| s_dev wrote:
| Alternative to Amazon:
|
| https://wordery.com/sid-meiers-memoir-sid-meier-978132400587...
|
| Bought it the other day. Still waiting for Stripe Press to not be
| Amazon exclusive as well.
| iguanayou wrote:
| This is a great book! Just finished reading it.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I was really hoping this was somehow a new game.
| v64 wrote:
| Same, I saw the headline and thought this was gonna be Sid
| Meier's version of the Sims
| smoll wrote:
| Based on the title of this thread, I was disappointed that the
| title of his memoir did not end in an exclamation mark, but then
| was happy to discover that it is indeed titled "Memoir!"
| yreg wrote:
| Only a few of the games had bang in the name, e.g. Sid Meier's
| Civilization or Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon are bangless.
|
| Still, I find the cover of this book so delightful!
| the_af wrote:
| True. But we were all thinking Pirates! :P
| r00fus wrote:
| SMAC is also bang-free (and the best games IMHO).
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
| barumi wrote:
| Flip the "i" in "Centauri" upside down and there's your
| bang.
| tunesmith wrote:
| I don't know why I love this comment so much.
| TimSchumann wrote:
| This reminds me of a comment a friend made over dinner last week
| about Civilization. Totally bought us each a copy, thanks for
| sharing this.
| volkl48 wrote:
| He recently did an hour-long interview/panel about it and his
| career for PAX Online, should anyone be interested in watching:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blah1hNDmdA
| nrjames wrote:
| This is a good light read. Working in game dev, I found some of
| his thoughts around prototyping, production, and design to be
| insightful and gladly would have read more of those. I also would
| gladly have read more about Sid Meier's CPU Bach, since that was
| ahead of its time and seems interesting algorithmically. His
| stories are a bit more interesting in the early years and the end
| of the book drags a bit, as he goes from Civ IV to Civ V to Civ
| IV.
| ianai wrote:
| Wonder if he logged his ideas and work significantly more for
| those later pieces of work than the former.
| kyuudou wrote:
| I love the web 1.0 design. Gandhi might deploy nuclear weapons!
| b20000 wrote:
| does the book go into details about how the games were marketed
| and sold, and bootstrapped to market, on almost no budget?
| acdha wrote:
| For someone who's bored with combat-focused games and misses the
| open nature of games like Railroad Tycoon, who's following in
| Meier's footsteps? I was thinking that if there was a rebooted
| RT2 I'd buy it in a second but fell off the Civ train due to
| wanting either less or more plausible combat, not to mention QA.
| krajzeg wrote:
| Actually working on a non-violent indie 4X right now, called
| Slipways [1][2]. It's set in space, but I do owe lots of
| inspiration to Railroad Tycoon and Transport Tycoon, and the
| core of the game is about connecting places together so that
| goods can flow from place to place.
|
| It's a much more condensed experience than either of these -
| 40-60 minutes per playthrough depending on playstyle.
|
| [1]: https://twitter.com/krajzeg/status/1304447134209585152
|
| [2]: https://slipways.net
| afterburner wrote:
| Why use ESDF instead of WASD
|
| Fun game btw.
| krajzeg wrote:
| The web version is a PICO-8 game. PICO-8 is a very
| constrained fantasy console (posted here on HN a few
| times). ESDF are actually the "player 2" keys of the
| "console", so they're easy to access from within, unlike
| the actual keyboard - letting me save precious code tokens
| (you only get 8192 for the whole game on the PICO-8) for
| actual gameplay.
| acdha wrote:
| Oh, neat - I'll take a look tonight!
| danbolt wrote:
| I love the PICO-8 version as a way to spend time when waiting
| for a compile to finish. Thanks for making it!
| mhudson125 wrote:
| You might want to give Europa Universalis IV, Crusader Kings
| 2(free on steam), or Crusader Kings 3 a try. Definitely more of
| a learning curve than Civilization, but can be really fun.
| mdavidn wrote:
| I would also add Stellaris to this list.
| kyuudou wrote:
| Yes and in fact, that might be an easier start to a Paradox
| Interactive game. My first PI game was Stellaris which I
| quickly racked up hundreds of hours in and despite several
| major changes by the devs in mechanics it's still easy to
| jump back in to. I feel like it's a worthy successor to
| SMAC with its own uniqueness.
|
| But EUIII, EUIV, CKII, HoI? Considerably steeper learning
| curve, IMO! I've spent over a hundred hours just trying to
| take over Ireland (the traditionally newb scenario) in
| CKII.
|
| I would not suggest jumping from a Civ to any Paradox title
| except Stellaris. There's enough of Paradox's goofiness in
| the space combat ("whaa... I slaughtered the enemy, how do
| I not get their planets... war exhaustion, wtf is that...
| oh that kind of makes sense") and lots of visual feedback
| to keep you interested without making you cry too much.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| SS13 on the BYOND engine is the ultimate open game experience
| in my opinion
| MatekCopatek wrote:
| Take a look at OpenTTD, Banished, Tropico 5, Cities Skylines
| and Frostpunk. It's a diverse list, but they all fit your open
| non-combat strategy criteria.
| acdha wrote:
| Thanks - I've definitely heard good things about Skylines
| before but went on a hiatus for the last few years after my
| son was born.
| corobo wrote:
| Transport Fever 2 scratched the itch for me when I last had the
| urge for makin' trains
| mdavidn wrote:
| Transport Fever is a very satisfying train game. The early
| game is all about making the business profitable. After that,
| resources are basically unlimited. The end game plays like a
| giant tabletop train simulator, with a focus on fitting to
| terrain while minimizing gradients and tight turns.
|
| Factorio also has a very satisfying train mini-game, with a
| focus on complex signaling and dynamic pathing. Thankfully,
| there are dials to tune down combat. I like to use the "rail
| world" preset, which disables enemy expansion.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Grabbed one of the signed copies. I'm not sure when I'll get the
| chance to read it, but Sid's games were some of the first
| computer games I played, and definitely influenced me towards a
| career in computers. Much respect and appreciation to Sid. Thanks
| for the time well wasted :)
| T-hawk wrote:
| If it's truly a Sid Meier product, once you start, you'll keep
| doing one-more-page until it's suddenly sunrise :)
| chaostheory wrote:
| I wish this was on Audible. It's a bit strange that the only
| audio option is a $30 CD
| frompdx wrote:
| I recently finished Sid Meier's Memoir! I found it fascinating
| and highly readable. If you like games you will like this book.
| Meier's inspirations and insights into what makes a game fun make
| this memoir well worth it to anyone who is interested in game
| design.
| frankcort wrote:
| Book looks interesting but I'm curious... how do we know this is
| Sid Meiers's site and isn't just a site with a bunch of affiliate
| links on it?
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Sid links to it on Twitter.
| rektide wrote:
| the Amazon category is "microprocessor design"!
| 1123581321 wrote:
| At Barnes & Noble it was tucked away near the D&D books.
| Impossible to find without floor staff help.
| simonh wrote:
| Ordered. Funnily enough I recently came across this GDC
| presentation by Sid and Bruce Shelley on the development of the
| original Civilization[0]. Highly recommended.
|
| The influence of Empire as one of the inspirations of the game
| was obvious to anyone familiar with it. If you're interested
| there's an excellent updated implementation of Empire on the App
| Store[1]. I'd love to be able to get a version of Civ 2 on
| mobile. It's still by far my favourite iteration of Civ. Or
| Pirates!
|
| [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts
|
| [1]https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/mother-of-all-
| battles/id425160...
| gbraad wrote:
| This for Android:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.windowsgam...
| or Windows: http://www.windowsgames.co.uk/mother.html ?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| As long as you're referring to the original version of Pirates,
| it works great on phones in an emulator (I've used the NES
| version)
| tomashertus wrote:
| It's amazing to see them sharing the stage and talking about
| their first achievement with such dignity and depth.
|
| It's even more mind-blowing when you realize that Shelley went
| ahead and started Ensemble Studios[1] that created the Age of
| Empires franchise which is still alive today[2]. And
| Civilization is today still under development and even more
| successful than ever before.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensemble_Studios
|
| 2. https://www.ageofempires.com/games/age-of-empires-iv/
|
| Edit: Formatting and grammar
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I bought The Settlers 7 purely because I knew Bruce Shelley
| worked on it. It was a nice game, interesting take on the
| "casual economic sim" genre
| n3k5 wrote:
| People who liked these tips might also like:
|
| Bruce Shelley was on Soren Johnson's podcast _Designer Notes_
| (ep. 9, 2015). Sid Meier is in episodes 23--25 (2016).
| acheron wrote:
| And Brian Reynolds did two episodes as well. All recommended
| if those names are interesting to you.
| offtop5 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, just ordered my copy !
| gbraad wrote:
| No plain ePub option?
| inetsee wrote:
| Doesn't Barnes and Noble sell ePub versions? (They call them
| "Nook Books".)
| jugg1es wrote:
| The site matches the style popular when Civ2 came out!
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(page generated 2020-10-09 23:00 UTC)