Civilization V

I recently uploaded a new Civilization V mod onto the Steam Workshop. The new mod adds a National Park building that is unlocked with the Scientific Theory technology. The National Park can be built in cities that contain natural wonders, and the National Park will provide bonus Gold, Science, and Culture to all natural wonders within the city radius, as well as provide 3 global happiness.

Civ V mod - National Park
National Park building adds gold, culture, and science to all natural wonders within the city,
as well as providing 3 global happiness.

UPDATE (July 18, 2013 9:35 PST): National Park updated for Brave New World expansion

I have updated this mod for the new Brave New World expansion. If you have BNW installed, the National Park will now be unlocked with the Railroad technology, and the building will improve the Tourism output of your city.

If you are still playing Gods & Kings, the mod does not change the prereq or functionality of the National Park for that expansion. Updating the mod should not affect saved games for G&K players.

Thanks for playing, and enjoy!

UPDATE (July 24, 2013 10:30 PDT): National Park changed to provide +5 tourism instead of percentage modifier

Version 4 of my National Park mod has been published. The update changes the 25% conversion of culture to tourism so that the building provides a static +5 tourism. This was accomplished by using the TechEnhancedTourism and EnhancedYieldTech properties so that Railroad (the unlocking tech) adds +5 tourism to the building. This is the same method that is used for the Eiffel Tower world wonder.

This was done so that the National Park will always provide a substantial tourism output to the city (equivalent to 2 1/2 Great Works), regardless of how culturally strong the city is. Since many Natural Wonders do not generate large amounts of culture, I couldn't expect that a city containing the National Park would necessarily have enough culture for the 25% conversion to be worthwhile.

The only major downside to this change is that the Airport and Hotel don't synergize quite as well with the National Park. Aw well, can't be perfect, I guess...

UPDATE (March 5, 2014 11:15 am PST): Yields of BNW natural wonders fixed

Apparently, I had neglected to include yield modifiers for the new Brave New World natural wonders. I have just uploaded a revision that addresses this issue so that all natural wonders in the game now include the bonus culture, gold, and science from the National Park building.

This fix is available in Version 5 of the National Park mod.

I did discover one other issue: it appears that Isabella's trait ("Seven Cities of Gold") does not double the bonus yield provided by the National Park. It seems that the core game does not check the Buildings_FeatureYieldChanges table when applying Spain's trait. This will likely require an update to the game DLL, which I do not have the time to implement at the moment. I hope to be able to update the mod to address this issue at a future date.

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Tomb Raider (2013) game banner

Crystal Dynamics really missed the point with this game. It seems like the creative team started the project with one creative vision to make a “lost on an island adventure story”, and then early on, they all got fired and replaced with people who were instructed by corporate overlords to make “Uncharted with a girl” and the final product turned into a mindless shooter.

Tomb Raider - limited edition box
The only things you'll be "surviving" for most of this game is bullets and explosions.

The game is called "Tomb Raider”, but the bulk of the game is an action shooter instead of exploring tombs.

The tagline on the back of the box says “A survivor is born”, and the first objective in the game is to find a bow and kill a deer for dinner, but then you don’t ever have to hunt or treat wounds or take refuge from the elements or do any other “survival” things.

A sheer majority of the game is shooting hordes of enemies in tedious gunfight after tedious gunfight after tedious gunfight. Maybe over the course of the game, you’ll stumble across a tomb or two. But if you do, it’s just a 15-minute detour while you solve a single environmental/platforming puzzle in order to collect an arbitrary and useless reward. The rest of your time will be spent running around the levels that you just cleared of bad guys and collecting random items.

Tomb Raider - hair physics
Hair probably isn't the part of Lara's anatomy that many ... um ... "fans" were hoping to see benefit from real-time physics, but then again, at least this is something innovative.

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Civilization V

In anticipation of the upcoming Brave New World expansion pack for Sid Meier's Civilization V, I've been working on some mod projects.

Today, I published a small resource mod called "Just a pinch of salt" that adjusts the yield of the salt luxury resource. By default, salt is a very strong resource to start near, as it provides +1 food and +1 gold base yield. Since it shows up frequently on plains, these tiles give your fledgling city a 2 food, 1 production, 1 gold tile out of the gate. With the addition of a mine, the food and production yield goes up by 1.

Civ V mod - reduced-yield salt Civ V mod - Granary improves salt
Extra food from salt requires building a Granary.

This mod aims to scale back the power of salt a little bit by removing the base +1 food modifier and moving that bonus to require the construction of a Granary building. In addition to it's existing bonuses, the granary now adds the +1 food to salt.

  • Salt: +1 Gold base yield.
  • Granary: +1 Food from salt worked by the city.
Civ V mod - Max salt yield
Total salt yield after building Granary and mine.

Once you have mined the salt and built a granary in the city, the total output of the salt tile is the same as in the unmodded game.

The mod can be downloaded from Civilization V's in-game mod browser by searching for "just a pinch of salt", or through Steam by visiting MegaBearsFan's Workshop (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=145306648).

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Civilization V

In anticipation of the upcoming Brave New World expansion pack for Sid Meier's Civilization V, I've been working on some mod projects.

Today, I published a small resource mod called "Copper Buff" that improves the effectiveness of the copper resource in the game. Currently, copper is a fairly weak luxury resource, since it doesn't get buffed by any buildings in the game. This mod adjusts the Forge and Mint buildings to provide a bonus towards nearby copper as follows:

  • Forge: +1 Production from copper worked by the city.
  • Mint: +1 Gold from copper worked by the city.

Both buildings can be constructed in a city if copper is present within the city's borders.

Civ V mod - Forge improves Copper Civ V mod - Mint improves Copper
Forge and Mint improve nearby copper.

The mod can be downloaded from Civilization V's in-game mod browser by searching for "copper buff", or through Steam by visiting MegaBearsFan's Workshop (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=144822605).

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Resident Evil

I've heard that a lot of players are complaining about the save system of Capcom's new Resident Evil 6. I haven't played the game yet because RE5 sucked, and the demo for RE6 sucked, so I can't comment on that game. What I can do, though, is take a moment to reflect on the genius of the classic Resident Evil save system.

Most of my readers know me as a Silent Hill fan [boy], so it's uncommon for me to heap praise upon Resident Evil. But I actually am a big fan of the original game (it was one of my favorite PlayStation games). Maybe some day, I'll get around to writing about how Resident Evil 4 killed my interest in the franchise...

Resident Evil - typewriter
Would you like to save your progress?
[YES] NO

Resident Evil took a unique path in terms of it's save-game system. I'm not sure if it was the first to use this particular style of system, but it was definitely one of the best implementations that I played!

During the PSX era of the late 90's, game saves generally took one of 3 forms:

  • Level saves: games like Devil May Cry and many level / mission-based action games and arcade fighters required the player to complete a whole level or mission before being allowed to save. This broke the game up into distinct segments and create natural stopping points.
  • Pause menu saves: games like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII (in the Overworld), and most sports games gave players the ability to save in the pause screen (or other menu). Sometimes there would be restrictions, such as not being able to save when enemies are present, but this is generally the easiest save system from a player's standpoint. Unless you forget to save...
  • Ico - saving on a couch
    Ico allows players to save by making the characters rest on these magic couches. Both Ico and Yorda must sit in order for a save to be permitted.

  • Save points: many RPGs and action/adventure games such as Ico or Silent Hill required the player to activate a specific item located in the game world in order to save. This had the advantage of giving the player a visual reminder to save, but limited the ability to save and forced the player to backtrack if you wanted to save before reaching a new save point.

Resident Evil falls firmly in that last category, but with one significant (and game-changing) caveat: in addition to only being able to save at pre-defined locations, the ability to save was also tied to a consumable inventory item!

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Grid Clock provided by trowaSoft.

A gamer's thoughts

Welcome to Mega Bears Fan's blog, and thanks for visiting! This blog is mostly dedicated to game reviews, strategies, and analysis of my favorite games. I also talk about my other interests, like football, science and technology, movies, and so on. Feel free to read more about the blog.

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