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Topic: Serf City Life is Feudal

mxb2001
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Joined: 2019-05-20, 18:49
Posts: 282
OS: Linux
Version: 1.2
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Location: The land of the thirsty spider
Posted at: 2022-04-07, 20:03

So I found I've had this for about 10 years on a damaged CD I just repaired and had never tried it. Back then I didn't know widelands of course so when I saw it now I just HAD to try it.

It is quite similar and amazingly the complexity is close to that of WL. The graphics aren't much different although they are as is normal for 1994 a bit "chunky". I grew up with this look so I like it. There is a SVGA mode but ironically it (while quite sharp) makes everything so tiny as to be useless (on my 1366x768 laptop screen anyways). The hardest thing about it was the lack of text to help identify ANYTHING. You literally had to memorize how each building looks from the manual. It's like playing WL with C toggled off permanently. Road building was also painful, no ctrl click to build a road with flags in one go. Have to lay each road one by one (as you can if you want in WL) and then place each flag too.

The economy (which I only briefly skimmed over) seems quite complex, almost as much as WL. Also one thing was there WL actually lacks: The computer players actually have different styles (this is normal for good old DOS games of this type though).

I also found Settlers II on the same disk. Might try that next.


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tothxa
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Joined: 2021-03-24, 12:44
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OS: antix / Debian
Version: some new PR I'm testing
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Posted at: 2022-04-08, 17:25

I used to have a Gravis UltraSound Max at the time I played Serf City. The music was truly amazing with it. Not many games were able to use the GUS Max's potential like Serf City did.

Before coming to Widelands, I tried it in DOSbox, but it's unique left+right click didn't work with touchpad, and I seldom have place for a proper mouse.


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mxb2001
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Joined: 2019-05-20, 18:49
Posts: 282
OS: Linux
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Location: The land of the thirsty spider
Posted at: 2022-04-09, 02:17

Yes the music is quite nice, even on my Soundblaster AWE32. The 160W speakers probably helped more though. Back in 1997 I got these two massive speakers with my Pentium 166.

Heh, I also tried it first via DOSbox under Linux. Oddly I think that special click did work for me. The lack of mouse is a pain but the biggest killer for laptop gaming old games seems to be the keypad missing. All the old ones assume it exists. Serf City doesn't use it though. It's totally mouse based, likely a inheritance from its Amiga origins.


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