Michael Straczynski, said he wanted a “ novel for television,” with a story that extended from over 5 years, with clues to the big reveals (mostly in season 4) set up from the very start. X-Files demonstrated that you could construct a mythology that informed a show, even as they still mostly relied on the episodic format. Soap operas, of course, have been doing this for a long time, building melodrama across episodes, but shows like X-Files, Buffy, and Babylon 5 produced more serious, if still initially niche, versions of the long story arc. Science-fiction was among the earliest genres to recognize the long-form storytelling potential of television. Television, much more than cinema, enables narrative patience, but also demands we pay attention for week after week. Writers don’t always have to wrap up everything by the time the credits roll, but across the board are using multiple episodes and even seasons to tell long, deep stories. Even network shows have freed themselves from the tyranny of the half-hour or one-hour time slow. ![]() Everywhere you look, in all genres, you can find spectacular storytelling. But with Syfy renewing The Expanse for a second, expanded, season, don’t worry – they aren’t going to break your heart like FOX did with Firefly and cancel too soon. There are good reasons for this, including the Peak TV phenomenon, the emphasis on character and setting in the opening episodes, the related slow reveal of the plot, or maybe you just ate too much over the holidays to keep up. I don’t expect that many mainstream critics, let along TV watchers, to get excited about what’s too easy to dismiss as Space Opera, but even many hard-core speculative fiction fans have not been as engaged with the show as I expected. ![]() We are about two thirds of the way through the first season of not only the best damn space show we’ve had in years, but for my taste the best new show on TV this winter.
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![]() It can be assembled quickly and easily, without the help of any tools, and can be quickly dismantled when you get to the water. This C-TUG cart is designed to make your life a little easier. Transporting your kayak to and from the water can often be a challenge if you don’t have the right equipment. Video: YakAttack GearTrac (rail for accessories) How you do it will often depend on the type of accessory you’re mounting and the mounting points on your kayak. There are a few ways you can mount accessories on your yak. We actually compiled a dedicated list of the best kayak fishing accessories here. A fish finder can be a good choice as it’s made with kayaking in mind, so it has a portable carrying case with sealed battery, charger and cable management system. If there’s one thing you might want to add, it’s a fish finder, as this can help you locate the fish more easily and help you find your way back. But there are still lots of accessories you can add to customize your vessel for even more successful fishing days. If you have a dedicated fishing kayak, you probably have plenty of features that are designed to make your fishing trip a little easier. A four piece paddle means you can easily store it in a backpack or inside the storage hatch on your yak. You can also fashion other accessories from it, such as paddle holders.Ī spare paddle can also be a good idea to have on board your yak, just in case anything happens to your original one. On the other hand, you might need accessories that can help you get your yak from A to B or help you store it more conveniently.Īccessories can be a great way to personalize your boat and give it the extra features you always wished it had.īungee cord can be a practical accessory to add to your kayak, whether you want to customize your kayak with additional storage options or even replace your existing bungee rigging. For example, you might want accessories that can make fishing easier or you may want to keep gadgets charged while on a camping trip. The type of accessories you might need for your kayak will often depend on the activities you plan to do when you’re on the water. What Sort Of Accessories Do I Need For My Kayak? 23: Aqua-Bound Manta Ray Hybrid Kayak Paddle.20: Malone Auto Racks SlingOne Kayak Storage Sling.14: CreekKooler Floating Insulated Cooler.13: YakAttack GT175 Generation II GearTrac.2: SealLine Black Canyon Boundary Dry Pack.What Sort Of Accessories Do I Need For My Kayak?. ![]() These two sets are in the more southern guard tower of Arkham East. You'll find these two sets as you're making your way to the Botanical Gardens, looking for Harley's fingerprints. They don't appear until the story directs you to the mansion, however, and you'll definitely want to get rid of the two snipers on the overhang above first. These are halfway up the stairs to Arkham Mansion's main entrance. Once you can hack your way inside that office with the sequencer, you'll find both an interview and a trophy. Where those two walks meet, there's an office. The two guard towers here are linked by catwalks. Use your gel or your Ultra Batclaw to get inside and find the tablet. You should notice a patch of destructible wall on the side of those stairs. Grapple over the wall, drop down and check the righthand wall - behind the railway - for a tablet.įace the Botanical Garden staircase from the graveyard. Left of the Arkham Mansion stairs is a locked-off courtyard. The dot is on the floor at your feet, but the top half of the symbol is spread out upon the roofs below. Climb to the very top of Arkham Mansion's tallest tower and face south. This is a question mark alignment puzzle. ![]() "My challenges appear to those with the correct position in life." Just find Wayne Tower on the horizon, zoom in and scan the giant "W". "Gotham's greatest family towers over the city." Zoom in and scan the face of the tomb to solve the riddle. It's well-lit and the headstone is shaped like an "A" for the asylum's founder, Amadeus Arkham. Head to the cemetery and look for the open, sunken grave. "The legacy of this island has been well and truly buried." Once you can hack your way inside that office with the sequencer, you'll find both the trophy and an interview tape. You just need to wait until you have the sequencer to gain access. This one's in the ground floor guard room closest to the Arkham Mansion stairs and statue of Warden Sharp. Use your explosive gel and take the trophy underneath. Smack dab in the center of this courtyard is a destructible piece of flooring. Left of the Arkham Mansion stairs is a flat courtyard. Located on top of the northwestern guard tower, the one closest to the Arkham North door. A trophy is there - just glide down and grab it. If you're on the tallest mansion tower, and look down towards the circular tower, you should spot a rectangular recess between the slopes of the roof. On the side with the clock face is the trophy. Grapple and climb your way to the top of the mansion's tallest tower. The door is open and the trophy is right on the desk. ![]() In the middle of the cemetery is a small wooden shack. If you look at your map, you can also see that it's the narrowest part of the roof, separating the northern and southern halves of the mansion. This one is above the previous trophy, on a flat section of Arkham Mansion's roof. Behind the column here, facing the view of Gotham City, is a Riddler trophy. Grapple over the wall, run to the back and grapple onto the upper balcony. You’ll find this trophy at the very back of the graveyard, near the cliff shore. It's near the southern view of the water, though, not the northern. ![]() This one's sitting out in plain sight, on a little jetty overlooking Gotham harbor. You can't get in, however, until you've received the security-hacking sequencer. The Riddler's secrets map is in them closest to the Arkham Mansion stairs and statue of Warden Sharp. You'll find it while crawling into the pipeline. ![]() His previous books include Bloomsbury Rooms: Modernism, Subculture, and Domesticity (winner of the 2006 Historians of British Art Book Prize in the single author, post-circa 1800 subject category) and the edited volumes A Roger Fry Reader and Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture (both 1996). Likewise, it will be enthusiastically received by specialists in cultural studies, political science, sociology, the history of the book, and the anthropology of science and technology.Ĭhristopher Reed, Author Christopher Reed, who holds a doctorate in art history from Yale University, is currently associate professor of English and visual culture at the Pennsylvania State University. ![]() Its conclusion contests scholarly arguments that view China’s technological development as slowed by culture, or that interpret Chinese modernity as mere cultural continuity.Ī vital reevaluation of Chinese modernity, Gutenberg in Shanghai will appeal to scholars of Chinese history. This book, which relies on documents previously unavailable to both Western and Chinese researchers, demonstrates how Western technology and evolving traditional values resulted in the birth of a unique form of print capitalism whose influence on Chinese culture was far-reaching and irreversible. Under diverse social, political, and economic influences, this technological and cultural revolution saw woodblock printing replaced with Western mechanical processes. ![]() It finds the origins of that revolution in the country’s printing industries of the late imperial period and analyzes their subsequent development in the Republican era. Shanghai Terrace’s private dining room seats up to 30 guests in semi privacy with an Asian-inspired menu.In the mid-1910s, what historians call the “Golden Age of Chinese Capitalism” began, accompanied by a technological transformation that included the drastic expansion of China’s “Gutenberg revolution.” Gutenberg in Shanghai is a brilliant examination of this process. ![]() In the months of May through October, weather permitting, Shanghai Terrace opens its doors to an outdoor dining venue called The Terrace.For corporate events, wedding engagements or private celebrations, look no further than Shanghai Terrace, one of Chicago’s most acclaimed restaurants. On finer evenings, Chicagoans and visitors alike flock here to indulge in an array of exquisite cocktails and innovative small bites. The piece de resistance is the restaurant’s spacious terrace, which at night is lit by the glittering lights of the Chicago skyline. The elegant nouveau interior at Shanghai Terrace blends wood chevrons, elegant furniture and walls adorned with Chinese silkscreen paintings. At lunch, bamboo baskets of freshly steamed dim sum contain favourites such as barbecue pork buns, Peking Duck and shrimp and chive dumplings. With Chef de Cuisine Elmo Han at the helm, the menu encompasses a magnificent blend of traditional dishes and creative rendition of classics. Step into the seductive setting of the restaurant and savour distinctive cuisine, consistently honoured with the AAA Four Diamond Award. Voted the number one "Chinese Restaurant in Chicago" by Zagat Survey, Shanghai Terrace offers Cantonese delicacies amidst a 1930s supper club décor, or outside on The Terrace with spectacular skyline views and cocktails. ![]() Or to notify a friend/neighbor for someone who live by themselves. This was used to notify a relative if there had been no movement in a specific area of the home, typically the kitchen, for a long period of time. However, if you want a variable notification (“If any of the following sensors is open at 10 pm, tell me which one”), you may need to use a third party app like SharpTools. If you just need a static notification when a specific event occurs, the good news is that Routines in the new artichecture can do this quite well. The old groovy integration has stopped working, but connected has created a new cloud to cloud integration, which works fine. Manage Rental Lock Codes And Home/Away after Groovy? Since the very popular Rboy apps are not working, and there’s no timeline for replacements, here’s a discussion thread for possible alternatives: Options for Hosts and Landlords to manage locks and modes remotely If you have a pro subscription to sharptools ($30 per year at the time of this writing), one community member has figured out how to create an alternative there:ħ. Different people are trying different alternatives. ![]() This one works, but will require that you have an additional server device. The old community-created integration won’t work anymore, but the same author has now created a new edge driver integration. ![]() There is a discussion of alternatives in the following thread:Ĥ. The company has announced that it does not plan to create an integration for the new smartthings architecture. Contact their support for further information.ģ) Life360. They released it briefly on 12 January, but then withdrew it again, presumably because of glitches. The company has announced that it is working on an integration that will work with the new architecture. See the alternatives discussion thread for a number of possibilities:Ģ) IFTTT. There are no plans at present for anyone to create a new version of Webcore that will work with the new smartthings architecture. If the problem is that you had a virtual device that you used to Trigger Alexa Routines and that stopped working, see the following community FAQ for options:įAQ: Creating Virtual Devices with the new architecture (Without the IDE) (2023)Īnd here’s a list of some known alternatives for popular smartapps that have now been discontinued, in no particular order:ġ) Webcore. See the official transition FAQ for a list of those: SmartThings Support Some official integrations are not going to be available on the new platform. If your integration stopped working because of a groovy DTH instead of a smartapp, again, contact the author of the original code to see if there’s an alternative. WHAT IF THE ISSUE IS A DTH, NOT A SMARTAPP? If they say they do not intend to update their integration for the new architecture, you can come back here and search the forum to see what alternatives other people are planning to use. If this was a third-party integration, the best thing to do is to contact support for that service/device and ask them if they have a transition plan to the new architecture. I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THIS WAS A CUSTOM SMARTAPP, IT’S JUST THE WAY I WAS TOLD TO SET IT UP Replace Groovy with Automations-what’s your plan? It’s frustrating for many people, but it shouldn’t really be unexpected.Īnd here’s a discussion of general alternatives: That also includes some third-party integrations which worked via custom groovy smartapps hosted in the SmartThings cloud. (Basically, any smartapp that you had to install yourself through the old IDE.) So all of those smartapps no longer work. As they have been saying for over a year, Samsung has finally turned off the hosting in the smartthings cloud for custom Groovy smartapps. ![]() ![]() Also, a scale-down event is initiated when 15 consecutive data points for consumed capacity in CloudWatch are lower than the target utilization. Application Auto Scaling automatically scales the provisioned capacity only when the consumed capacity is higher than target utilization for two consistent minutes. Application Auto Scaling initiates a scale up only when two consecutive data points for consumed capacity units exceed the configured target utilization value within a one-minute span. You activated AWS Application Auto Scaling, but your table is still being throttledĪWS Application Auto Scaling isn't a suitable solution to address sudden spikes in traffic with DynamoDB tables. ![]() With the burst capacity feature, DynamoDB reserves a portion of the unused capacity for later bursts of throughput to handle usage spikes. Note: DynamoDB doesn't necessarily start throttling the table after the consumed capacity per second exceeds the provisioned capacity. For more information, see Error retries and exponential backoff. If you are using the AWS SDK, then this logic is implemented by default. To resolve this issue, make sure that your table has enough capacity to serve your traffic and retry throttled requests using exponential backoff. However, if all the workload falls within a couple of seconds, then the requests might be throttled. The total number of read capacity units or write capacity units per minute might be lower than the provisioned throughput for the table. However, driving all 3600 requests in one second with no requests for the rest of that minute might result in throttling. For example, if you provisioned 60 write capacity units for your DynamoDB table, then you can perform 3600 writes in one minute. However, the DynamoDB rate limits are applied per second. The metrics are calculated as the sum for a minute and then averaged. Your DynamoDB table has adequate provisioned capacity, but most of the requests are being throttledĭynamoDB reports minute-level metrics to Amazon CloudWatch. Use one or more of the following troubleshooting options based on your use case. These metrics might help you to locate the operations creating throttled requests and identify the cause for throttling. Your table's traffic is exceeding your account throughput quotas.įor information on DynamoDB metrics that must be monitored during throttling events, see DynamoDB metrics and dimensions.You have a hot partition in your table.Your DynamoDB table is in on-demand capacity mode, but the table is being throttled.You activated AWS Application Auto Scaling for DynamoDB, but your DynamoDB table is being throttled.Your DynamoDB table has adequate provisioned capacity, but most of the requests are being throttled.Here are some of the common throttling issues that you might face: So now is a great time to transition or even just try out the free to use download version of EverWeb. If you’re interested in a quote for this service just fill out the iWeb to EverWeb Contact Form. As always we recommend EverWeb as it’s the spiritual successor to iWeb sharing a familiar to iWeb user interface, blogging and there’s also a migration service where the EverWeb Team will convert your exiting iWeb site in to an EverWeb project. With only about a year left of 32 bit support, now is a good time to be thinking about transitioning to a new website development tool. Don’t forget to quit and relaunch iWeb after installing fonts. If you have access to the font files you can use Font Book to reinstall them on your Mac. You’ll see a warning box displayed if any fonts have been removed. When using iWeb under macOS Mojave you may now find that fonts used in iWeb Templates, such as Handwriting-Dakota, are no longer available in the OS. This file is located in your user library in the path: Home Folder/Library/Application Support/iWeb. iWeb website data is stored in a file called domain.sites2. Make sure you save and backup your work regularly just in case your iWeb project gets corrupted in the process. You may find that after publishing your website the app crashes. Phone support is included FREE for all EverWeb + Hosting accounts. However the the same caveats as they do with macOS High Sierra. Speak to one of our support agents at 1-88 (North America) or +44 8 (Europe). It even exists with no problem in macOS Mojave’s new Dark Mode. Yes you can still use iWeb today with macOS Mojave. However, indicating that macOS Mojave is the last OS to support 32 bit apps seems to indicate that there is about a year to go until new versions of macOS will support only 64 bit apps.Ĭan I still use iWeb today on macOS Mojave ![]() Whilst Apple states that the transition from 32 bit to 64 bit apps is still underway, it does not commit to any firm dates as to when support for 32 bit apps will cease. In this way Apple is trying to remind and encourage app users to either update their app software or find suitable alternatives. Whilst macOS high Sierra only showed a one time message when opening a 32 bit app, macOS Mojave will show you the warning message every 30 days when launching apps such as iWeb. As Apple discontinued iWeb in 2011 there won’t be any new iWeb updates. macOS Mojave will warn you when you launch a 32 bit app that it is not optimized for your Mac and should be updated. ![]() Seven years is a long time in the world of Tech.Īpple signposted the end of 32 bit application support in its WWDC stating that macOS Mojave will be the last macOS to support 32 bit apps. ![]() iWeb’s last update was to version 3.0.4 in July 2011. Apple is currently transitioning macOS to work with only 64 bit applications but iWeb is only a 32 bit application first created in 2006. This possibility arose again earlier this week with the release of macOS Mojave to the public. In what has become almost a yearly tradition for iWeb users when Apple releases a new version of its Mac Operating System there’s always the possibility that iWeb will no longer function with the new OS. ![]() The Comet goldfish usually comes in colors such as red or orange, and are either bi-colored or mono-colored. They are also very tolerant of a range of temperatures, so they can be kept in both ponds and heated aquariums. Comet Goldfish Source: to the common goldfish, the Comet goldfish is another extremely popular type of goldfish found in many pet stores. The common and feeder goldfish diet includes commercially available goldfish flakes or pellets combined with fresh/frozen foods such as brine shrimp. The common goldfish can either be bi-colored or mono-colored. Other colors more typical of the common goldfish include red/orange and white/silver. AppearanceĬommon goldfish can appear plain grey or brown. Though prettier and larger than feeder goldfish, common goldfish are typically more expensive. They are quite inexpensive and can tolerate a wide range of temperatures (they don’t need a heater and can survive in tropical set-ups, making them affordable and easy to care for.Ĭommon goldfish may or may not be feeder goldfish depending on the store. ![]() Common Goldfish Source: common goldfish is probably the type of goldfish we’re used to seeing the most in our local pet stores. The goldfish was in fact one of the earliest models used to study mendelian genetics and variation before the discovery of zebrafish. Chen, a modern Chinese geneticist was able to prove that mendelian inheritance was present in goldfish through the evolution of transparency and mottling.Īfter centuries of breeding, hundreds of changes in body shape, eye style, coloration, and other traits have made the goldfish one of the best genetic models for studying fish physiology and the general concept of evolution. Through the idea of evolution and its presence in goldfish, Darwin was able to determine that selection, either natural or artificial, was the key driver of evolution. Thus, they act as very good models for studying the genetics of morphological features. Goldfish are capable of laying thousands of eggs, and many of the resulting offspring can be raised in the same pond as their parents. In the Tang Dynasty, goldfish with the preferred physical traits were selected and bred in ornamental ponds and water gardens.īy the Song Dynasty, the golden variety of the goldfish was considered the imperial or “royal fish” and became known as the symbol of the imperial family.īy the beginning of the 17 th century, goldfish were introduced to Japan and Europe, and by 1850 to North America, where their popularity quickly spread. The appearance of red scales on the typically gray or silver crucian carp was first observed during the Chinese Jin Dynasty. Goldfish were first domesticated from the crucian carp, one of the most farmed fishes in global aquaculture today, in ancient China. Let’s have a closer look at how this came to be and learn a bit more about this fascinating species. The Background of Goldfish Source: are one of the most well-known fish species in the world, with them being present in nearly all public aquariums and fish tanks. In this article, we hope to give you a comprehensive guide to all the types of goldfish you’re most likely to come across so that you can have a stress-free time when you visit the pet store to pick up your new fish. If you’ve ever decided to raise a fish as a pet, you’ve no doubt come across the idea of choosing a goldfish.īut with them coming in all different shapes and sizes, it can be hard to determine which is best for you. Visitors come and go from the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary on Monday, April 24, 2023. “From what I understand, Albertans pay more into the CPP than what we receive from it, and our younger average age we also have here in the province is a huge net benefit.”Īlberta surgeon calls for plan to fix health-care staffing gaps, no matter who wins election “There’s two points regarding even the merits for looking at it,” he said. In an interview with Postmedia Monday, UCP candidate and incumbent MLA in Spruce Grove-Stony Plain Searle Turton, said they are just looking into all options to present to Albertans and that no decisions have been made. Smith tapped Finance Minister Travis Toews to look into the potential of such a move this fall and they are still waiting on the department’s report. ![]() The poll showed only 21 per cent support for the such a move, including only 33 per cent of UCP supporters - 25 per cent of all Albertans said they did not know where they stood. ![]() The NDP pointed to a number of issues with leaving CPP, including losing the portability of the current plan for those who may move out of province, the security of the size of the plan, its indexation to inflation, and the time-consuming difficulties in leaving the CPP. She’s really not willing to answer the questions of electors during an election period.” ![]() I mean they’re unwilling to talk about things that Daniel Smith has campaigned on. “We saw it with AISH now we’re seeing the CPP. “They say all kinds of things to get attention to get elected and then they flip,” she said at a press conference in St. Albert) said despite assurances from the UCP, it’s a matter of being able to trust them to stick to their promises, especially if Danielle Smith is not taking questions on it at this point. “I don’t want the CPP belonging to anybody in this room to be subject to the discretionary decisions of the Alberta cabinet and pulling us out of CPP would create that level of uncertainty for all folks,” she said at a press conference from the Marlborough Community Centre in northeast Calgary over the lunch hour.Īn hour later, Marie Renaud (St. NDP leader Rachel Notley said this is not an indictment on AIMCO. The NDP responded on Monday to the UCP’s continued look into leaving the Canadian Pension Plan for a provincial option.ĭespite Leger polling showing support for the shift being low and the party last week reiterating it would require a plebiscite to make the change, the NDP used two press conferences to address it. NDP attacks UCP for looking into leaving CPP When asked about the 2021 comments during a press conference Monday afternoon, Smith directed reporters back to her statement. “I would hope we can all move on to talk about issues that currently matter to Albertans and their families.” “I apologize for any offensive language used regarding this issue made while on talk radio or podcasts during my previous career. “However, the horrors of the Holocaust are without precedent, and no one should make any modern-day comparisons that minimize the experience of the Holocaust and suffering under Hitler, nor the sacrifice of our veterans,” Smith said, going on to call herself a friend to the Jewish community. UCP Leader Danielle Smith apologized Monday after a video surfaced in which she compares Albertans vaccinated against COVID-19 with supporters of Nazi Germany.Īppearing on a November 2021 video podcast from Calgary business Integrated Wealth Management, Smith discusses watching the Netflix documentary How to Become a Tyrant, and draws a parallel between the three-quarters of Albertans who had taken the COVID-19 vaccine and supporters of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. “I know what we all want, for ourselves, for our parents, for our loved ones, is to spend those glorious retirement years at home doing the activities that we love,” she said.Ģ021 video shows Danielle Smith comparing vaccinated to Nazi followers The expanded program, which includes health supports as well as things like snow shovelling and transportation, would help seniors continue living in their homes as they age, Notley said. As of 2021, Alberta had more than 132,000 home-care clients. The NDP leader said her party would create capacity for 20,000 more home-care patients over four years, a commitment she estimated would carry a $100-million price tag. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt. ![]() Just as Thompson describes the sense of being alive in that corner of time and the world, there was a similar sense of knowing that you were part of something special when playing SimCity 2000, a testament to constructive expression and augmented imagination, instead of pre-scripted storytelling and showboating special effects. It was a time when the energy of a whole generation of computer hardware and game developers came to a head in a round shiny disc, for reasons that were hard to fully grasp at the time and even harder to explain in retrospect. Thompson's description of mid-sixties San Francisco, represented a harmonic convergence of factors that established a high-water mark of game design. That's fine if you're already tuned in on SimCity as a game and crave a higher challenge, but if you're new to these kinds of games, Cities: Skylines is just too much.Ībsolutely! SimCity 2000 was a masterpiece, striking the perfect balance between the immediate grokability and comprehensible simplicity of the original SimCity "Classic", plus the judicious addition of rich immersive CD-ROM quality graphics and sound. SimCity (before the final game) is a sandbox toy that lets you build a super dysfunctional city but y'know, as long as the taxes don't go in the red, you're doing fine! Cities: Skylines otoh has way harsher feedback tools if you don't build a highly functional city. ![]() Its the difference between SimCity and Cities: Skylines. Most 4X games, because they copied the Paradox approach, kinda suffer from the fact that they pretty much demand immediate mastery of the systems if you want to succeed, unless you're playing with friends (in which case you have more control over each other's bumbling and one person can just hyperfocus on learning one system, while the other can focus on another.) which unfortunately translates to the games devolving into spreadsheet simulators with fancy graphics.Ĭivilization was the right mix between "flavorful civilizations", "fun endgoals" and "reasonable to achieve victory against the computer". ![]() ![]() Yes, technically you can still play a bunch of cool 4X games, but most people still making them (with the exception of like, CAs Total War, which also notably defocused the 4X part in favor of RTS combat) is copying the Paradox approach and Paradox is largely known for its absurd depth and mechanics. The difference with sim/4X/any genre that's fallen outside of the general "popular games" trend is that they ended up becoming overly specialized and inaccessible to newcomers. So you can sit back (with a cold beverage of your choice) and enjoy a nice relaxing time playing mayor and seeing your little city develop before your eyes! It’s quite balanced (when you resist the temptation to use cheats) without being overly hard. It’s just a really solid and super fun game. The added complexity didn’t bring any new profound shifts in thinking or strategy, it just created more busywork for the player. My beef with SimCity 4 is that it added a bunch of details that make it less fun, like micromanagement of the funding of individual hospitals and police stations. Probably the most extreme example of this is chess: way more enjoyable than real warfare.īack on topic though. Realistic simulation in games is almost universally less fun than simple, predictable game logic. I feel like it hit a pretty good sweet spot between simulation and fun (which is to say, not even a vague gesturing at anything remotely realistic). |
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