firehose

By Tim Stone on August 23rd, 2013 at 1:00 pm.

When covering Pegasus Bridge or Eben-Emael wargames, verbose intros are verboten. You are duty-bound to coup de main your subject… drop right on top of it in the dead of night or at the crack of dawn. When writing about Market Garden wargames the rules are a little different. Not only are leisurely preambles permitted, bizarre Polish language conclusions are fine too. Can’t be arsed to acknowledge the Panzery portion of the game in question? Not a problem. Ignore it. Of course, the thing that really marks out a quality MG piece is liberal use of static. Every paragraph should be festooned wFZZZTTZZZTTating WIEEEEUUUWW the reader KLIK-KLIK FZZZZZZZZZdesperateHISSSSSSSSSSH ZZZPPerated.

Operation Market Garden wargames might be two-a-penny but the prospect of the next (and final) Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy module, still leaves me a trifle giddy. The last time Battlefront tackled Monty’s ambitious attempt to leap the Rhine and shorten the war in Europe, series pioneer Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord provided the facilities. Arnhem ended up an airy collection of bungalows, perfectly square townhouses, and grid-like roads – the iconic concrete-and-steel bridge, a stone eyesore lacking main arch, pillboxes, or parapets. The whole thing, even then, felt like an abstraction too far.

This time out, screenshots suggest we’re about to get one of wargaming’s most atmospheric and accurate 3D battlefields. BF workers have been busy crafting a range of distinctively Dutch structures including handsomely gabled Seventeenth Century patrician houses, van Goghian canal bridges, and, of course, winsome windmills. Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel, they’ve then patiently positioned these objects on the seven vast master maps from which the game’s 14 standalone and 21 campaign mission maps will be cut.

Those campaign episodes are shared between a smallish German sequence in which players use scratch forces in environments ranging from heathery drop-zones to soggy polders and pristine middle-class suburbs, and a larger Allied one focussed on XXX Corps’ slow progress up Hell’s Highway, and the bloody capture of the bridge before the bridge too far by the US 505th Parachute Infantry. While the tenacious Red Devils up at Arnhem don’t get their own showcase, their efforts are likely to be recognised via standalone scraps, and are sure to feature in numerous user-made projects.

The list of CM: Market Garden’s debuting units and formations is as long as a Bangalore torpedo, but look closely and you’ll see that, while many of the incomers might be new to CM:BfN a fair few have appeared previously in sister wargame CM: Fortress Italy/Gustav Line. Genuine strangers include a slew of unfamiliar German halfrack variants, and Allied armoured oddballs like the Crusader III AA Mk II and the does-my-turret-look-big-in-this? Challenger Mk VIII.

In certain connoisseurial corners of the Combat Mission community, official talk of urban fighting improvements has caused just as much excitement as screenshots of obscure weaponry and luscious Low Countries scenery. At present CM:BfN’s failure to model tank gun elevation limits, and blanket ban on the use of bazookas, panzerschrecks, and panzerfausts inside buildings, means urban environments are not quite as perilous as they possibly should be for steel trundlers. There’s no hard information yet on what form the improvements will take, but if they make it possible for desperate infantrymen to employ AT weaponry while inside buildings (with all the back-blast risks that sometimes entails) then they’re sure to be popular.

Third Rail, First Look

While wargame devs have always fawned over Arnhem, the sim variety tend to prefer the city sixty miles down the road. Fresh-ish from a starring role in Ship Simulator and a cameo in Euro Truck Simulator 2, Rotterdam now finds itself at the centre of a rather promising train sim beta.

MetroSimulator, a one-man rapid transit recreation, features a fictional three-line, nineteen-station network inspired by the Rotterdam Metro. Though scenery and lighting are pretty basic at present (improvements are on the way) and Rotterdamers Rotterdamians Rotters are nowhere to be seen, strong physics, detailed systems modelling, and unusually flexible AI suggest creator Michiel is more than capable of crafting the definitive light rail sim.

In the current build, driveable emus include all of the five classes that have bustled along RET rails since they were laid in the late Sixties. There’s also a crude diesel shunter for shuffling stock in the network’s pair of crowded depots. Preparing trains for service is actually a game in itself in MetroSim. Because the ceaseless timetables draw on a finite supply of rolling stock, and Michiel shuns the smoke-and-mirrors spawning of other sims, the option is always there to play as a yard dogsbody forming and positioning trains for the constant stream of AI drivers.

Non-clickable panels, simulated vigilance systems, and local peculiarities like the ATB in-cab signalling system mean going for a spin without first browsing the manual may lead to irritating immobility. Once mastered, however, most of the rides are, thanks to single-lever combined throttle and brakes, a doddle to operate. With underground sections, improved shadows, and replacement of the lollipop trees on the cards, the near-future for Metro Sim should be fascinating.

The Flare Path Foxer

Asked to identify a WW2 tank from its drive sprockets, a 1930s bomber from its wheel spats, or a Great War submarine from its barnacles, veteran defoxers seldom disappoint. The only time you really see them floundering is in the presence of ‘Spot the Schreck’ or ‘Pinpoint the PIAT’-type puzzles. Last week’s ‘Find the Firebomb’ generated a blizzard of bafflement intense enough to bury a KV-2. Rather than return the five unclaimed prizes (copies of WeGo classic Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin) to GamersGate, I thought I’d give everyone a second bite of the cherry orchard.

To make things a little easier this time around, a selection of the unsuccessful guesses have been marked on the grid. Send your new guesses in via the ‘Tim Stone’ link at the top of the column, and if you’re close enough (one square away will do) and swift enough, I’ll reply with a CMBB activation code.

Game Dev Tycoon, a simulation game that tasks you with managing a successful game development studio, is coming to Steam for Windows PC and Mac on Aug. 29, developer Greenheart Games announced on its blog.

The game is available to pre-order for $7.99 (usually $9.99) and those who already own the game will receive a Steam key for free. The development team plans to release a Linux version on Valve's distribution service at a later date.

The Steam version features a longer storyline, new platforms, new artwork and the capability to edit a game name before release. New gameplay features include the ability to unlock multi-platform games, a rebalanced review system along with several new gameplay mechanics including post-release game reports and company expertise.

The Windows Store and Greenheart Games website versions will also receive the updates and the full changelog is available on the Greenheart Games website.

All Game Dev Tycoon versions will also receive language translations soon, the first in Spanish and German, with others languages to follow. Greenheart Games also revealed that the sequel to Game Dev Tycoon, which originally launched December 2012 for PC and graduated Steam Greenlight in May, is planned for "some time in the future" but it won't be the studio's next project.

Director JJ Abrams, who recently signed on to direct the next installment in the Star Wars series, has shots his movies exclusively in film — and it turns out that won't be changing any time soon. Boba Fett Fan Club reports that cinematographer Dan Mindel discussed the use of Kodak film on the set of Episode VII at an industry event in Los Angeles this week, a bold move more than a half-decade after 4K digital shooting first became practical. Episodes II and III were shot digitally, so Abrams' decision is a return to the old school — he may be looking to preserve the look and feel of the original three movies.

Shooting images on a physical roll of film is starting to feel like a ludicrous concept to most of us, but until Hollywood's hottest directors — the ones overseeing nine-figure budgets — write it off, it's certainly got some life left.

After almost three decades working the counter at Capone Foods in Somerville’s Union Square, Albert Capone has become a stranger in his own city. “It’s gone from townies to hipsters,” he said on a recent evening. “The hats, the tattoos, the tight skinny jeans — on the guys. It’s like they’re trying to out-hip each other.”

He gazed out his window at the stylish Bloc 11 Cafe across Bow Street, and at the 20- and 30-somethings biking by, and noted that the grandmothers who used to buy his fresh mozzarella have largely yielded to single adults.

“I am the oldest man in Somerville,” the 60-year-old said.

As the city seeks to reinvent itself — the mayor says his “branding experts” won’t let him utter the word “Slummerville” — it has made such progress that a previously unimaginable situation is emerging: the city is now concerned about becoming too cool.

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Hipsters in Somerville

“We don’t want to lose our soul,” Mayor Joseph Curtatone said.

‘It’s like they’re trying to out-hip each other.’ — Albert Capone, owner of Capone Foods

And yet, with Ana Sortun and other prominent chefs flocking to open new restaurants in Somerville, the pending opening of Green and Orange Line stations, a Yelp Wordmap showing frequent “hipster” mentions in reviews of Davis and Union Square establishments, the development of “luxury” apartments, events like decentralized music festival PorchFest, and the recent appearance of Brooklyn Boulders Somerville, a rock-climbing club, the scene has become so intense the hipsters themselves are worried.

“I’m part of the problem,” K. Adam White, a 27-year-old wearing a plaid shirt, facial hair, and multiple ear piercings, said as he hung out in Union Square on a recent evening. “I’m even an engineer.”

The precise definition of a “hipster” is hard to pin down. Cartoonist Dustin Glick’s “theory of hipster relativity” holds that there is “no such thing as a hipster on its own. A hipster can only exist in comparison.” In one of Glick’s cartoons, the guy with tattoos and a bicycle considers the guy standing next to his own gin still to be a hipster, and that man in turn sees the musician Kyp, from the band “TV on the Radio,” as a hipster, and so on.

But in general hipsters are known — and admired or mocked — for riding fixed-gear bikes, wearing suit vests and thick glasses frames, adopting hobbies like chicken raising, and affecting snobbery for microbrews and a general more-ironic-than-thou attitude.

Whatever they are, they’re amassing in Somerville, which claims to be the only city in the country that conducts a happiness survey. The 2010 Census found that the city has the second-highest proportion of residents between the ages of 25 and 34 in the United States. That places Somerville right after Hoboken “but ahead of Cambridge,” said Daniel Hadley, director of SomerStat, the mayor’s data analysis team.

Take that, Cambridge.

Somerville’s charms are luring high-end chefs, too.

Sortun, of Oleana and Sofra Bakery & Cafe in Cambridge, is planning to open Sarma, a meze restaurant, sometime after Labor Day. Tony Maws, of Cambridge’s popular Craigie on Main, is planning to open The Kirkland Tap & Trotter in early September. Michael Krupp, of Kendall Square’s Area Four, and his team just opened A4 Pizza in Union Square. Tim Wiechmann, the fine-dining chef from Cambridge’s T.W. Food, and his wife recently opened Bronwyn, also in Union Square.

“Somerville presents a diverse community,” Wiechmann said. “I’m not a mainstream chef. I wanted a place that would accept us. We have a German sausage restaurant.”

At 4.2 square miles, Somerville is smaller than Cambridge’s 6.3. Its official population is 77,000, although it’s probably higher, Hadley said. In 2010, the estimated median household income was $61,241, up from $46,315 in 2000. Almost 26 percent of the residents have a bachelor’s degree, 20 percent have a master’s, and 6.3 percent have a doctorate, according to 2011 figures, all well above the statewide averages.

On a recent summer evening, Union Square felt like a hipster theme park. The craft beer and the men’s long hair were flowing. The words “local,” “house made,” and “organic” called from almost every menu. Men in suit vests and beards biked alongside women carrying rolled-up yoga mats. The spirit of Brooklyn was in the air.

This is a city so forward-thinking that its food trucks already feel so last year. “We want to have a roving art truck,” said Rachel Strutt of the Somerville Arts Council.

Sitting in a refurbished garage space off an alleyway, MaryCat Chaikin talked about her new center for urban agriculture, a place called Relish. It offers courses in learning to build your own worm bin, brew your own beer, and raise your own backyard chickens. It also sells small-batch candles. “They’re made by local bees,” Chaikin said.

Somerville has come so far that the derogatory nickname the mayor won’t speak has developed a cachet: the Somerville Brewing Company Inc. has named a line of craft beers Slumbrew. Although some old-timers have groused, cofounder Jeff Leiter says, “The best way to put the old term behind us as a community is to juxtapose its historical sense with the exciting new future of Somerville.”

The future doesn’t come cheap. A survey done last year by a city intern found that the median advertised price for a one-bedroom apartment was $1,700. The city doesn’t have a comparable study from years earlier, but Dana LeWinter, the city’s director of housing, says her department is hearing a growing number of complaints about people having difficulty finding affordable apartments.

Hadley, the director of SomerStat, says the changes in Somerville actually started in the town next door. “To me, the story really starts in back when rent control was abolished in Cambridge, in 1995,” he said. “That’s when you suddenly see a lot of people fleeing Cambridge and coming over the border.”

Dan Zevin, an author who moved to Somerville in 1984, a couple of years after the Davis Square Red Line station opened, recalled what the city was like before the immigration from Cambridge started. “All that was there was Barnaby’s Tap, this old-man alcoholic bar with guys who would meet for their breakfast beer,” he said.

Zevin spent 15 years in Somerville. “Little by little, Barnaby’s became Redbones, the barbecue place, and then a coffee shop opened, and then the Somerville Theatre got revitalized, and suddenly this rundown theater became this cool indie theater.”

How did Somerville become “Slummerville” in the first place? Mayor Curtatone, 47, who grew up in a Somerville filled with meat packing factories and brick manufacturing plants, said “bad decisions” made in the mid-20th-century contributed to the city’s negative reputation.

“We had just short of 20 rail and trolley stops, and we abandoned those,” he said. “I-93 came through Somerville and uprooted and displaced hundreds of families, the McCarthy Overpass was constructed, we brought in the Somerville waste transfer station — but we’re knocking that down within the next 60 days. We had no land use policies, and there was political corruption.”

The Cambridge-fication of some parts of Somerville may have reached a tipping point on a warm Thursday evening in mid-August in Union Square, when the city hosted a ribbon cutting for what was billed as possibly the world’s smallest museum. The beautiful, tiny gallery sits in an indentation between a Subway sandwich shop and a bar selling craft beer and heirloom tomatoes.

As the crowd eagerly awaited the mayor and his tiny scissors, Steve Pomeroy, the outdoor gallery’s engineer (and the boyfriend of its founding curator), explained its features, which include sustainability and accessibility.

“The whole system is solar powered,” Pomeroy said, pointing to minuscule track lights that illuminated the art in the inaugural installation, “Invisible Cities.”

“If someone works the night shift, they can still see the art,” he said, careful not to step on a complementary installation on the sidewalk — a palm-sized parking spot, T stop, and, of course, bike rack.

A few moments later, the mayor was ready to cut the ribbon. An upbeat man in a neat blue suit, crisp white shirt, and light blue tie, he paused for a private moment before taking center stage and gave voice to a dream that may be the savior or the downfall of the city he loves. “I wish I were a hipster,” he said.

After rolling out to developers back in July, Apple's iWork for iCloud beta is now available to anyone with an Apple ID. if you've got an Apple ID, you can head over to the regular iCloud portal, where the web apps will appear after you sign in. If you don't already have an Apple ID, you can sign up at Apple's website, but you'll have to activate iCloud on an Apple device before the web service is available.

Despite introducing updates to its iWork office suite fairly regularly, Apple has been slow to introduce a browser-based service to compete with Google Docs and Microsoft's online versions of Office. We took an early look at iWork for iCloud last month and found that, while Apple is off to a good start, it still has lots of work to catch up with its competitors. For example, none of the web apps have collaborative editing — perhaps the most useful feature of both Google and Microsoft's offerings. To try Apple's iWork for iCloud suite out for yourself, head to iCloud.com.