Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Come for the pizza stay for the Pie!(charts)

cliffski

The Positech Games Eurogamer Expo 2013 booth will not have booth babes, or even booth kittens, but it will have Strategy! Sci-fi Puns! PIE CHARTS! What is not to like? Plus it’s cunningly near to the pizza express bit apparently…

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Anyway, here’s hoping this proves worthwhile and lots of people enjoy trying out Democracy 3 and Redshirt. We have badges and fliers that we are literally giving away, starting tomorrow, for four days. I will have lost my voice and be unable to stand by Sunday, I’m sure.

pizza

Do those monitors look small to you? they do to me. I am itching for an excuse to replace both my home monitors with big silly ones. If I hypothetically did a Gratuitous Space Battles sequel, I’d definitely plan on showing it off with big ridiculous 40 inch monitors if I ever did any shows to promote it.

I know there are some of you people out there that amazingly do not live in the UK and will not be able to come try out the games, so my honest, considered opinion is that you should just PRE-ORDER THEM NOW, and then you can play them immediately at home without having to pay £10 for a sandwich in central London.

Yay?

9 thoughts on Come for the pizza stay for the Pie!(charts)

  1. Once you’ve upped the graphics and tactics, what other way is there to make it more gratuitous than to show it off on a 40″ (minimum) screen? ;-)

    Speaking of Redshirt and GSB in the same post now has me thinking of a crossover game. “The cruiser [name] will be unavailable for this battle as the janitorial staff are on strike.”

  2. Nice title. :)

    Regarding monitor size;
    I work on a 40″ screen and it’s great – makes everything easier to see (especially when modeling). I had thought about getting a 50″ but after measuring up realized it wouldn’t quite fit on my desk.

  4. I saw you at the show, lines were a joke so came back later but no one was there to help and i struggled with redshirt lol

  6. Really enjoyed playing about with Democracy 3 at Eurogamer! Things went horribly wrong and I got voted out of office after foolishly implementing a carbon tax a week before an election but it was definitely one of the highlights of the show.

    One bit of feedback is that I’d still like some way of seeing the membership of each of the demographic groups from the main screen – unless I missed something and that information is available there. You could adjust the colour of the opinion bars for each group based on its membership with lighter ones having fewer people (and so mattering less) , though perhaps this wouldn’t work well with people identifying with multiple groups?

  7. Hi, couldn’t see anywhere else to send suggestions for the beta (the forum seems to only deal with Democracy 1 and 2?)

    Just a few balance issues;

    Its too easy to get assassinated at the moment. I’ve had trouble even playing fairly moderately without being assassinated within the first 20 turns or so. For example, in Australia, if you increase technology spending at all, you’re almost guaranteed religious assassination plots. In America, if you implement the tax shelter policy it is almost impossible not to be assassinated by socialists I’ve found, even with prisons/armed police/police/spy network maxed out. I think it is a cool idea having the possibility of being assassinated, but it doesn’t really reflect the reality of these modern countries if it happens almost every time.

    My other big gripe would be members of your cabinet; it doesn’t seem like your members of cabinet actually have any relation to your party. This results, in my experience, with 1-2 cabinet members resigning every turn. It might be good if you could choose members of cabinet who are actually aligned with your party/cause at the beginning of every game, closer to as it is in real life.

    The final point I’d make is that the credit rating jumps around a bit too easily. Again, a cool idea but almost any fairly moderate change to taxation or public spending seems to get a credit rating change.

    Just as an aside, one suggestion I would make is that it is currently still a little difficult to make any attempt at privatizing healthcare/utilities. You could have the option to actually sell government assets, the effects of which would be a short term windfall followed by long term loss of income with corresponding popularity changes with capitalist and socialist/trade unionist/state employees. Further utilities such as telecommunications, emergency services, council services, etc may be good too.

    Sorry for the wall of text.

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