Sunday 12 September 1999
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The colors of summer gradually lose out to the brown of fall. Here
illustrated by a field along the road. The trees are still green,
though, only a few leaves have started to change colors. And the
weather is still pleasantly mild here on the south coast of Norway.
Tonight something happened: The burglary alarm started howling. Armed with a metal staff, I searched for any shady characters. And then nothing happened, luckily. There were no intruders. Perhaps a large moth or something, or perhaps it was just a system failure. The landlord is going to have it checked. He was quite apologetic, whereas I was just happy that it wasn't a real break-in. Does this count as "real life"?
Apart from this, and taking a long walk, I've spent the day doing very
nerdy things. Sleeping in till over ten, reading e-mail, and playing
Daggerfall till my arm hurts. I've been touring the province of Tulune,
to send information on the various cities to the Daggerfall Gazetteer.
It's a nerdy job, but some nerd has to do it... Sadly for the
Gazetteer, I am known to not finish the things I start on. That's
one reason why I'm rarely bored: I just stop when things become boring,
and do something else. Good thing I'm not married or something.
How nerdy can you get? I'll show you. As I was out walking, I passed a building site. A new home is being erected, the pale timber of the roof still naked like a rib cage against the blue sky. I looked at it and thought. Now what did I think? Did I think of the family that is looking forward to moving into their new home? Their financial worries, which almost all families have at such a time, the stress of moving, the happiness of having their own house in the countryside ... Or did I think about myself, dream about having my very own house? (It cannot be anything but a dream, such as things are now, but still dreams are free.) Perhaps a family of my own to fill my dream house? Nah. None of the above. I automatically thought of Sim City. I have had the Sim City series from the start up to Sim City 2000. I don't have SC3000, but I have played and loved almost all the other Sim games. But my favorite Sim game has never been made - though I keep hoping. I want a cross between a Sim game and a roleplaying game. A more detailed game than Sim City or even Sim Town, the children's game in which you plop down houses and tiny sims move in. I want a game where you start with an empty map, wilderness and a few natural resources: Farmland, a natural harbor, a seam of coal, or even a stretch of highway passing through. Then you would roll your first characters, like in a role playing game, and assign them to their careers. And then distribute the starting capital, which would be limited: The more characters you roll, the less money for each. Then loose your sims on the unsuspecting terrain, and see them act according to their basic nature. I used to play Ultima 7 for this. I loved to just stroll along and see the non-playing characters live their lives. The baker baking, the weaver weaving ... you get the point. And then after work they would all rush off to eat and drink at the tavern or in their homes. Come night, they would go home or to a Fellowship meeting, before they finally tucked themselves in for the night. This is one feature I really miss in the otherwise wonderful game of Daggerfall: The characters there don't have a life... |