Review of computer chess online::Which Programs Allow Me to Play Chess against the Computer ...
Review of computer chess online::Which Programs Allow Me to Play Chess against the Computer ...
Time of Defiance puts a new spin on an old videogame genre. It could even be said that this game from UK developer, Nicely Crafted, is in a hybrid genre all its own; it is a massive multiplayer online real time strategy game. This game takes place in a persistent online world where the player begins as a fledgling empire and tries to expand its reach amongst dozens of other players. Time of Defiance's fundamental game play makes it an acquired taste. Whether you are online or not, your empire is fair game to any other player. The game plays out over a designated time ranging from a few days to 28 days. There are always several games running at once so you can join the one that best suits your time commitment and skill level. Special league games award points for finishing in the top ten empires, which are added up and displayed on the Nicely Crafted webpage. Given the length of one game, the pace is slower than all previous real time strategy games. Constructing one Destroyer class warship takes 45 minutes. Sending the Destroyer from one edge of your empire to the other could take a few hours and may even require stopping to refuel. On average, a ship will take between 20 to 45 minutes to get from point to point. The game takes place in the world of Nespanona. The players are members of a people called the Cog. Before the Cog came into power there was a mysterious race that possessed a much higher tech level. Their vehicles, Nespan relics, can be found randomly on the map and captured by players. Another race of people, the Shadoo, also existed. Shadoo buildings and vehicles can eventually be built by players who have bought the ability to access advanced Shadoo technology. Rather than a planet or land map that the player systematically conquers region by region, Nespanona is a post-cataclysmic world that has fragmented into hovering islands. Islands take the place of the standard real time strategy game territory. These islands are held stationary by energy beams connecting them to the former planet's core. Each of these planetary fragments contain varying amounts of resources, such as coal, wood, metal, stone, water, and moss. These resources are used to construct different types of buildings and vehicles. Moss is used as fuel for Nespan and Shadoo vehicles and as currency for purchasing vehicles from the Eighth House, the computer-controlled governing body of Nespanona. For the right amount of moss the player can buy some really powerful hardware from the Eighth House. Among the vehicles are Super Transports that are able to move large quantities of resources, Nespan Probes that are fast and stealthy, Ballistic Missile Launchers that launch long distance attacks on enemy islands, Motherships that act as carriers for squadrons of fighters, and Battle Platforms which are very much like mobile islands. Battle Platforms can construct their own resource mines, vehicle constructors, ballistic missile launchers and other modules. The basic goal of Time of Defiance is conquest. The player starts with control of one map square and a couple of islands within its boundaries. You also begin with a small fleet of ships. From these meager beginnings you will spread out your empire's borders by colonizing new islands and constructing new bases. These island structures consist of headquarters, mines, resource storage silos, weapons platforms, warp gates, and devices used to beam resources island to island. Your fleet will grow as well. Scout ships will seek out resource rich islands to colonize and probe borders of other players' empires. Mining ships can be sent to collect resources from islands not worth fully colonizing. Transports are used to shuttle your valuable goods to production and banking facilities. Equally important are the empire's warships. The smallest vessel is the Pioneer, which is an armed scout with small mining capabilities. The largest warship your vehicle constructor can build is the Destroyer. The Destroyer has immense range but requires a lot of coal for fuel. It is capable of firing a triple salvo of heavy missiles. There are several classes of warships between the Pioneer and Destroyer, each with its own level of weaponry, armor, and range. The construction of new buildings and ships is very streamlined. The player simply clicks on a construction unit and selects what they want to build from the menu. Since this is a persistent world, the designers made it possible to automate all essential actions. Mines automatically unload to resource storage silos. Vessels can be ordered to auto-fuel at certain locations. Transports can be programmed to trade routes, taking on resources at mining points and offloading them at production or storage buildings. This gets rid of some of the pain of micromanaging an empire that could grow to hundreds of islands and over a thousand units by game's end. The fact that your empire continues to operate even when you are logged off makes strategy that much more important. If you hope to even slightly deter an invasion while you are offline, placing defensive weapons and warships on key islands is tantamount. It is also a good idea to make sure transports and mining fleets have a strong military escort. It is encouraged that you create diplomatic alliances with other emperors who can keep an eye on your empire while you are away. A nice touch by the developer is that you can receive emails notifying you of any attack while away from the game. On the face, combat seems straightforward. A player can select a large fleet of warships and send them off to an enemy island and watch as they overwhelm the defenses. If you delve deeper into the complexities of the game you will realize attacking and defending require a lot of planning and anticipation of your enemy, if in fact the interloper has hostile intentions. Is that unknown Scout that popped up on your detectors just looking for new islands to colonize or is it a precursor to a major attack? Part of the fun of this game is predicting your opponents' moves and positioning your war fleets in anticipation. Groups of lightly armed but fast Small Warships usually make up quick reaction fleets that can get to any point in the sector swiftly. They slow or confuse the attacking fleet long enough for the heavy hitters to arrive. If the player has planned accordingly, a number of Transports carrying fuel and Mining ships will be nearby to keep the war fleet operational. The decision to attack another empire is not one to be taken lightly. War fleets require vast amounts of fuel to keep moving and resources to repair and rearm. Many an attacker has initiated battle only to lose momentum as fuel ran short. Their once vast fleet would then be annihilated by defenders that had a secure supply line. It is also possible for the emperor to buy intelligence from the Eighth House. This can be the score of a certain player, the location of a resource rich island, or warp coordinates. The latter can be used to plan sneak attacks on other empires. For the right amount of moss, you can find out where a specific player has a colonized island. Move a group of warships to a warp gate and punch in the coordinates to the enemy's island and your fleet is teleported to that location. Time of Defiance is not without fault. Being an online multiplayer game, there is a small subscription fee of about $6 a month. The graphical quality can be described as retro. Ships and buildings are visually unimpressive. There is hardly any audio save the occasional ship thruster or sound of machinery from a production building. Since the game world is persistent you will find other players that log in during the wee hours of the night, when everybody else is offline, to initiate an attack. The player may wake up to find their empire, which took hours to build up, decimated by a late night invasion. Despite these negatives, Time of Defiance is a unique and charming game that motivates the player to become a better strategist in the world of Nespanona. The mechanics of the game make every decision critical from sending a probe into unknown territory or colonizing an island in the same sector as another player. The game software can be downloaded from the Nicely Crafted website and includes a free trial period. It can also be found in the bargain bin for under $10 at most electronic stores if you would like to have a retail hardcopy. It will be interesting to see what improvements Nicely Crafted will make on this solid and promising game in the future. |
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Review of chess informant::What Are the Biggest Problems in the World Today?
Review of chess informant::What Are the Biggest Problems in the World Today?
The drug saga really kicks into high gear with the episode "Confessions." Plans are laid out, secrets are revealed, and lives will be ultimately destroyed. The twists and turns it takes comes so out of left field that you can't believe the writers came up with something so brilliant. It's also hard to believe that they have five more episodes to match and better the previous ones. It's going to be really difficult to contain my jaw dropping amazement and awe for the final episodes. Not to mention whatever tears may follow. We come back to Todd making an awkward call outside a diner to Walter about business taking a different lead. I don't know why he's calling him since he knows that Walter is out of the business unless he doesn't have 100 percent full confidence with his cooking. He goes back into the diner to regal his Nazi cohort's tales of his train heist with Heisenberg. He tells it with such childlike enthusiasm that it's weird seeing it told by a lifelong criminal. And I knew more characters would tell tales of Heisenberg as they should be told. Epic criminal acts deserve to be mentioned and it gives the recognition that Heisenberg ultimately wants and deserves. While telling the story, Todd says they got away scott free. But he oddly forgets the little tidbit of murdering a child, chopping him up and putting his remains in a barrel to be dissolved in acid. But I guess even Nazis have their limits when it comes to killing kids. They all leave together with the methylamine in tow, passing a welcome to New Mexico sign. There goes the neighborhood. Jesse finally comes out of his tunnel vision when being interrogated by the detectives. Hank comes into the interrogation room trying to dig beneath the layered bad blood between Jesse and Walter. Hank isn't stupid and knows what questions to ask and could tell there much that lies beneath. He hashes out a deal for him to turn informant. But Jesse doesn't budge as he still holds bad blood with him also for beating him senseless. Hank ends up with another dead end as the lawyer cards trumps him once again. Saul comes in playing the pissed off father role to Jesse with his latest screw up. Walters first act of cunning is when he learns that Marie is slowly leaning Walter Jr. away from him by having him stay for dinner. He goes on the defensive by saying his cancer has come back, he then allows him to go. But Walter Jr. wouldn't and doesn't want to leave his father's side with such troubling news as this. Walters quick thinking never seems to goes away or slow down an inch. It's amazing to see how adaptable his mind has become in any and every situation. And the chess match continues. The after effects of the investigation are already taking its toll on Hank and Marie's marriage. She keeps on pushing Hank to tell Walter Jr. about Walter but he needs more time and evidence. Everything is beginning to crumble as Hank balks at Marie for telling him how to do his job. Walters mind is always running at break neck speed as we see him set up a video camera for a confessional. This harks back to the pilot when Walter made a confessional with his first brush with drugs, murder, and being caught. But this seems like something else entirely. Dinner with the Whites and Schrader's just may be the most awkward dinner in the history of dinners. But it's definitely worse than the dinner with Skylar, Walter, and Jesse but nowhere near as funny. But the waiter who I likened to the annoying Chotchkie's waiter from Office Space made it that much more uncomfortable and funny. Him coming back to emotionless, stone faced customers at the most awkward times were hilarious. The faceoff was set with Walter and Hank facing each other, the same for Skylar and Marie. The Whites say they want the kids to never know and be further destroyed by having both parents potentially in prison and leave the past in the past. The Schrader's want nothing more than justice with either suicide or imprisonment and the kids out of the house. They trade barbs with each other like a championship fight wanting everything to hit. With Marie mentioning suicide for Walter and Hank threatening Skylar and Walter with jail felt like a KO punch. That is until he left a DVD on the table. While it plays, he confesses but not for his crimes indirectly. He outlays a lie so big and meticulous that it directly places Hank as the meth kingpin of New Mexico. This has to be the biggest, most brilliantly staged plan I have ever seen on this show. I was in utter shock seeing this unfold and also laughing hysterically seeing this happen. The faces on Hank and Maries faces were so well acted; it's hard to see shock acted any better. Hank later gets an even bigger shock when he learns that the medical treatment for his gunshot wounds wasn't covered by insurance but ill-gotten drug money. If the DVD didn't nail in the coffin, this surely put the dirt on the grave. There's really no way that Hank can get around it without going outside the law which is what he may do with no evidence or leads. The tarantula makes a return in the desert since "Dead Freight". Walter, Jesse and Saul meet in the desert going over their plans. I love the western feel they get when they put these make or break deals in the vast desert wasteland. Walter suggests a change for Jesse using Saul's relocation guy to a new setting. He slowly paints a picture of new beginnings for Jesse but he is quietly seeing through the bullshit he is shoveling. He blows up on him, begging him to stop jerking him off and flat out saying you need me gone to save your ass and that you don't have to kill me. There is nothing more that Walter hates than something in his way. Walter doesn't say a word but hugs Jesse as he lets out a heartfelt cry. Walter has always cared for Jesse no matter how callous he acts. There's no way he can deny the growth Jesse has shown and the intelligence that has been revealed throughout all their time together. The history is just too deep to throw away like that. Skylar is painted in a more zombified state more and more as Walter tells her he's going to chemo. Marie said Walter should kill himself but I'm thinking Skylar may kill herself or another character. Either way I think suicide will be an issue later. Not only are his relationships at home tumultuous, his work relationships are at odds too. Gomey is mad that his guys are watching Jesse because if he found out, he could be sued. The guys are taken off as Gomey leaves distressed. Hank won't tell the DEA but he will tell Gomey. There's no way he can leave this from his partner. He leaves the office with his work relationship suffering. Jesse is ready to leave as Saul sets up everything with the relocation guy. He gives him start up cash and a last bit of angrily fatherly advice when lighting up a joint. He is waiting for the guy with the backdrop looking like a gravesite. He goes into his pocket becoming agitated while seeing his packet of cigarettes. He walks past the car, pissed off ready to make a drastic decision. Jesse rushes in Saul's office and immediately punches him in the face. He then kicks him while he's down ignoring his pleas for mercy. Saul reaches for his gun in the drawer but Jesse gets it first. Pointing his gun at Saul and Huell, he finds out that Saul had the ricin cigarette lifted from him to think he was poisoned by the ricin but having Walt poison him with lily of the valley instead. That whole scene was so tense and shocking; I could have thought Jesse would've killed someone. My mouth was literally aghast the entire time and I was just in a frozen state of shock. Breaking Bad is great that you kind of see what's coming but at the same time you don't see what's coming. What you think will happen is always smaller in scope, scale, and craziness to what actually happens. After Walt gets a call from Saul, he rushes to the car wash. Walter makes a fallible lie to retrieve his 38 in the soda machine and leaves in a huff. Jesse drives like a bat out of hell to the White residence. He gets a container of gasoline out of the trunk and breaks through the door, rigorously pouring gas all over the living room. Learning two of the horrible things Walter has done to Jesse puts him over an edge of no return. If he ever learns of Jane, Jesse may explode in a ball of rage fueled fire. The enemies against Walter are piling up so much that there is no way he comes out unscathed. It's hard to see him gaining an ally of any kind but even harder to see him ask for help in the first place. But that's the way Heisenberg ultimately wants it. He'd rather take on all comers by himself, going out in a blaze of bullets and making no excuses for himself. A lot like another iconic anti-hero who played by his own rules, a man by the name of Tony "Scarface" Montana. Eventually we will all say hello to Heisenberg's little friend. |
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