The Settlers - Blue Byte

         PC demo 'preview' reviewed by Jean Childs.

Cover disks do not normally interest me, but when I saw that issue
one of PC Games contained a demo of The Settlers I was tempted
into buying it. I thought the magazine was quite good but here and
now I am looking at The Settlers. The game is described as "a mix
of Populous, Lemmings and Sim City".  Personally I don't see the
connection with Lemmings, but the other two - definitely. The
magazine states that to run the demo you'll need at least 590k or
more of free base memory and 4MB of expanded or EMS memory. There
is a README file that gives some information on the game (not a
lot) and also tells you that as a demo there are many functions
that are not included, for example the SVGA graphics mode, and
also that the demo will only run for one hour before returning to
the main screen. Unfortunately, you can't save and restore either.

First things first, the main menu screen at the start of each
game. The mouse control here was VERY bad, let's hope that this
only applies to the demo. It was slow and jerky and difficult to
place on selections. You can select one player mode, two players
(using a mouse and a joystick) or demo mode. You can also select
to play against one to three computer players, and these opponents
can be selected according to their intelligence, stock and
birthrate. Then click on start and away we go.

Luckily there is no problem with mouse movement in the main game,
and you can move about the 'world' in two ways. By holding down
the right mouse button and moving in the direction of your choice,
or by selecting the map icon and clicking on the area you want to
go to. The first thing you have to do is select where you want to
start. You get your first building, your castle, free but all
other buildings have to be built. In the castle is a limited
supply of goods and you have to build various buildings to get
more. The first buildings you should build are a woodcutter's
house and a stone mason's house, as you need these to supply you
with more wood and stone for building.  A practical hint here
would be to select your starting position for your castle near
trees and stones.

You also have to connect your buildings with paths for the little
people to travel on. When you choose what building you are going
to build and where you are going to build it, you get a foundation
stone and a flag. You must then click on the flag and choose a
direction for the path, eventually meeting up with the flag of the
castle or another building. When you click on the flag, new
symbols appear around it showing the directions that are possible.
These symbols vary from flat to very steep. A yellow and red
striped symbol means you can't go in that direction. Once you have
connected a path between your castle and the flag of your first
building, out of the castle comes the builder and his labourer.
You get one labourer working between every two flags, whose job it
is to fetch and carry the materials.  Of course the steepness of
the path determines how fast the little men can walk on each
stretch of path.

The erection of a building is a delight to watch. First you see
the framework being built then the place begins to take its proper
shape from the bottom up, and all the time the builder is moving
around banging with his hammer. If the builder gets ahead of the
labourers or the supply of material, he paces up and down outside
the building like the proverbial expectant father. Once the
woodcutter's house is ready, the builder returns to the castle and
out comes the woodcutter. He goes to his house (probably to check
that it's been built to his liking) and then goes about his
business of cutting down trees. You actually see him cut down the
tree and chop it into a log. This he takes to the flag of his
house, where the nearest labourer goes and collects it and it goes
'pass the parcel' style back to the castle.

When you select to build a new building, the map shows little
symbols of small houses, big houses or flags and you choose where
you want to build. Depending on whether the symbol was a small
house or a big house decides the type of building you can erect.
If it was the small house symbol you are limited to seven
buildings, the woodcutter's, the stone mason's, the forester's,
the knight's, the fisherman's, the boat builder's or the miller's.
I've already given a description of the woodcutter, so now I'll
give more details of the others. The stone mason cuts up large
stone into usable pieces and these are used in the building of
other buildings. The forester plants new trees to replace the ones
the woodcutter cuts down. These new trees appear as small replicas
of the big trees which 'suddenly' grow into full sized trees, but
it takes a while.

The knight is very important. When you first select your starting
place and get your castle, you are given a boundary within which
you can build. When you build a knight's hut near the edge of your
allotted land, your boundary (once the knight takes up residence)
is extended. But more on him later.

The fisherman is a real treat to watch. He wanders off to find
some water and then sits there casting and re-casting with his rod
until he catches a fish. The boat builder's boats go into the
water as long as you have laid a 'path' across it and wait for the
labourer to carry the materials. However, builders and future
residents of property being built on the far side of the water
cannot cross by boat. An alternative pathway around the water will
need to be built.  The miller, of course, lives in a windmill. As
soon as any bags of wheat are delivered there, the sails start
going round. Every now and then the miller's face appears at the
window, and then the sails stop and he comes out carrying a bag of
flour which he deposits by his flag.

If you choose the larger building symbol you have an even greater
choice. As well as the seven I have described, you can also choose
between twelve more. These are treated a little differently as
before the builder can start work another worker has to come and
level the ground. Instead of a foundation stone you get a cross
marking the spot where the ground has to be levelled. There is the
butcher's home, the bakery, the blacksmith's forge, the sawmill,
the iron foundry and the gold foundry. There is also the wheat
farm, the pig farm, the locksmith, the knight's keep, the watch
tower and an even bigger knight's keep. I haven't built all of
these but I will explain about the ones that I have. The bakery is
quite simple. When the miller has done his bit at the windmill,
the bags of flour are 'passed' to the bakery and made into bread.
At the blacksmith's forge all manner of tools are made. At the
sawmill, the woodcutter's log is cut into a plank of wood suitable
for building with. The wheat farm is one of my favourites, and
once built you can watch the farmer walk about scattering seed.
This then gradually grows into little circular 'fields' of wheat
which, when fully grown, are harvested by the farmer. The pig
farms produce - yes, you're right - pigs. The pigs stroll about
the little farms occasionally rolling over as pigs do, supposedly
in the mud. The locksmith is an odd one. It says locksmith in the
magazine but I couldn't work out what was being produced or why.

The land you build on is adequately 3-D produced, with the green
ground being in various degrees of steepness and the mountainous
regions in brown with white snow on top. Shadows are present where
the ground level is steepest and there are also shadows for the
trees and buildings and the men.

The shadows of the buildings are very well represented and change
with the progress of the building. In other words, if the building
is only at its framework stage then so is its shadow. The flags
blow in the wind, and the water shimmers. Even the leaves on the
trees 'rustle'.

If you choose to build on the brown mountainous regions, you get a
different menu to choose from. Here there are four different mines
that you can build - coal, iron ore, gems and gold. These are
quite cute as, once built and occupied, you can see the miners go
up and down in the lifts. One thing I did discover by watching the
demo mode and also by trial and error, was that you can 'survey'
the mining regions before building. By selecting a flag and then
holding down the right button and clicking the left, a 'transport
info' menu pops up.

If you then click on the face on that menu, a geologist will leave
the castle and survey that area. He marks the ground with little
black signs and if he discovers something, these little signs have
coloured dots on them. The black dots for coal do not show up very
well, but the red for iron ore and yellow for gold are
unmistakable. My geologists never did discover any gems, so I
can't tell you what colour they are represented by. The entire
procedure of producing food - the fishermen, the bakers and the
butchers - is for the miners, and they won't work without any.

So what is the aim of the game? Well I have to admit that I had
never heard of The Settlers before, and as it is already out on
the Amiga with 'overwhelming ratings all over Europe', I'm sure
some of you know the answer better than I. Unfortunately neither
the README file nor the magazine told me, and an hour's play was
not enough to get far enough into the game to find out. One thing
I did discover was how to take the land of your opponents.  My
builder had just finished building a knight's hut, so I was
watching for the knight to come and take residence and extend my
boundary. While waiting, I suddenly noticed that one of my
opponents had also just completed a knight's hut. The two
boundaries were very close and I wondered what would happen if
they overlapped. Well, fortunately, my knight reached his new home
first and 'poof' the other hut went up in flames. When a boundary
is extended, any opponents' buildings and paths that now lay in
the newly acquired land are burnt.

There is a lot more to the game than I have explored. Let me
explain why. At the bottom of the screen are various icons.  Apart
from the map icon and the building icon, there are three other
main icons. One is for removing either paths or buildings that you
decide you have built in the wrong place, one shows statistics of
men, food, buildings etc., and the other is the option menu.

This last one is obviously important as regards to play, but
unfortunately there is no information on how to operate it at all
on the demo disk. I tried experimenting with it but couldn't work
out what effect I was having as it was so complex. With proper
instructions I'm sure that this would prove to be the main area of
game play. It may even be possible to control who gets priority of
material deliveries. There is nothing more frustrating than
watching an opponent knight's hut being built too close for
comfort, when the building of your own knight's hut is at a
standstill due to all materials being shipped elsewhere. But then
again, it may not.

There is also a 'message' icon at the bottom of the screen, which
flashes when there is a message for you. Such as 'emergency
program activated/neutralized', 'an enemy building has been built
which has caused you to lose some land' and 'a geologist has
found gold', to name but a few. If the message is relevant to a
particular place on the land, the screen switches to that place
and you then have the option of switching back to where you were.

Well I for one can't wait until the full game is released. I LOVE
IT! Like Populous and Sim City I shall probably play it to death,
but it will be a slow agonizing death. In fact, this review has
taken me ages to write as at least four times I have had to stop
and return to the game because I was getting withdrawal symptoms.
It's a game you can loose yourself in and forget the 'real' world.
So, if you're having a bad day, remember - Settlers bring express
relief.

@~The sound effects in the demo are quite good and not
@~overpowering - the chink of an axe as the woodcutter fells a
@~tree, bird song etc ... Sue


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