marti

I heartily recommend trying out some CityBuilder servers. You claim a small town and provide it different types of cargo as it grows. It really tests your TTD skills, as you need to provide constant streams of cargo every month to keep the town growing.

There are probably several CityBuilder servers, but I mostly played on the BTPro[1] ones. Everyone starts at the same time and the goal is usually timeboxed to 3 hours, after which the server resets with a new map.

I haven't played the game for a few years, but these goal servers kept me hooked for months.

[1] https://openttd.btpro.nl/

I've also picked up AOE2:HD again and agree with all the frustrating parts you mentioned. Age of Mythology (and AoE III) seems to have much better unit AI, saner move command chaining (shift+click), nicer chaining of research and training, less micro management of villagers (e.g. farms are infinite), visible UI for idle villagers and control groups, yet most of my friends have only played AoE2 in their teens, so that's what we go with the rare times we get together to play.

I agree, embedding a browser doesn't seem lightweight at all. What it does give, however, is a common and comprehensive framework for laying out and styling your UI elements. Every web developer can now be a game UI designer.

Some of the benefits I see with HTML+CSS(+JS) based UI:

  * Comprehensive feature set
  * Easy prototyping
  * Easy modding
  * No recompilation required
  * Web full of documentation & examples
  * Common skill for developers/designers

The main disadvantage is probably the performance hit of having a full-blown browser engine in your game, but it seems to work OK for AAA games. I believe Anno 2070 uses Awesomium for some of its content: http://www.posidyn.com/games/anno2070/anno2070-09.jpg

Many game developers seem to build their own UI libraries from scratch. Wouldn't it make sense to use Chromium Embedded Framework[0] or Awesomium[1] instead? I haven't used them myself (yet), but writing a UI in HTML+CSS sounds a lot easier than learning a new API.

[0] https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef [1] http://www.awesomium.com

You are talking about the Model B/B+ then, as Model A and A+ do not have an ethernet port.

Ruby >= 1.9 also has a built in libffi wrapper, "Fiddle"[1], which can replicate basic Ruby-FFI functionality with some glue code[2]. There aren't many examples, but I've successfully used it to call Windows API (GDI+) functions.

[1] http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.0.0/libdoc/fiddle/rdoc/Fiddle.h...

[2] http://www.slideshare.net/tenderlove/hidden-gems-of-ruby-19/...

Here's a link to it: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1ndvh3/serious_wh...

Between the two 'extremes' of standing and sitting, there's also the saddle chair [1]. I've used one at home for over a year now, but only up to a few hours a day, so can't really tell how much it has affected my posture in addition to regular exercise.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_chair