I will confess I paid for the "We love Smugglers" bundle more to support Nielsbauer and because it was just four dollars when i bought Smugglers 5 than because I thought I'd get much out of the thing, sinse I manifestly already had Smugglers 3 and 4, and I new from some experiments I did back in the Smugglers 3 days that Smugglers 2, though accessible in all things had annoyingly completely unlabeled pictures for ship upgrades, (a shame sinse otherwise it's as accessible as 3).
Smugglers 1 (or at least the aniversary 2011 version I got with the Smugglers bundle), always looked as if it should! be accessible, after all it was a very standardized Windows program and used very little by way of graphics, however I could never get the dam pages to read quite right, particularly the trading windows. As I decided to have a full bash at a different background story in S5 Secession yesterday, on a whim I decided to have a look at Smugglers 1 and I discovered a quite astounding fact. Smugglers 1 has the worlds most! annoying tutorial window ever! It appears static above the main game window, and though (as with other windows in Smugglers games), I could use ctrl tab to go between it and the mane game window, annoyingly it covered things up quite badly. Once however I hit close, and restarted a new game minus said tutorial (annoyingly the only way to begin a new game), things improved very much. I found all the screens I looked at very readable and had no problems with either trading, traveling, buying special items, fighting or talking to planetary governors. So, why play Smugglers 1? Smugglers 1 is a very much simpler game than any of the later offerings as you'd expect, and indeed a much more casual, and shorter one. Rather than being played with 25 star systems, (or 31 in the case of S5 Invasion), the game just has about six different planets to trade between. Each planet has a governor who's military you can sign up with and might be at war with another planet. One fact I rather like, is that each planet shows it's surplus and shortages of various goods by clicking on it on the travel screen making it easy to look out for good deals, there is also a "Sector information" screen that can show this information for all the planets, though I would strongly recommend navigating via column rather than row to get this information coherently. You can also get full price lists if you like though I don't believe this is %100 necessary. Trading is fairly easy, though you need to go to the trading post to do it. As with smugglers 3 you can select goods with the arrows sinse the game uses a lot of standard Windows radial buttons, alternatively you can just click as needed, though the only fact I will note is that for some reason Supernova called the "buy" button disabled, though it is a fully working control and you can still buy goods. also note that like Smugglers 3 the game has various screens that you need to exit with Alt F4 when your done such as the trading post, sector information and shipright screens, though be careful not to close your game without saving by accident sinse there is no exit confirmation. Combat is fairly static, with options to shoot or flee, however you can buy a number of single use special items to make life interesting, as well as get upgrades and new ships, indeed I'm going to have a look at the manual to see just what upgrades, new ships etc are going. The game has a "Music on/off" option in it's options menu (indeed that is the only option in it's options menu), however I've not noticed any background music, though there are a few combat sound effects, albeit not many. Likewise, the game doesn't exactly have an ending mode, but does have a number of awards and achievements you can work towards. As I said, certainly not a complex game, but fun for some divertion and also a nice bit of more relaxed trading, albeit anyone who has likely already got Smugglers 1, sinse the only way to acquire the game is by buying the "We love smugglers" bundle with s1-4 has probably already tangled with the more major series offerings. All the best, DArk. There is always more to know, more to see, more to learn. The world is vast and wondrous strange and there are more things benieth the stars than even the archmaesters of the citadel can dream. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
