Here’s an interesting A9 update from Japan which came as a complete surprise: It appears that Artdink are preparing to release what they call the ‘Building Kit‘.
The kit, as far as I can discern, will come on a CD available from high street stores – rather than it being a digital download. The price will be ¥3800 (£29) for the data CD on its own, or ¥14,490 (£109.530) for the data CD PLUS a copy of A9 which, because of the current strength of Japanese Yen feels a bit pricey at the moment. Read more »
It’s taken a while to get comfortable with A9. Until last weekend I had mostly spent my time blinking at the numerous menus, experimenting with the schedule dialogue box, randomly building and just looking – It’s easy to get distracted and find yourself exploring the landscape via the excellent intuitive navigation control.
I awoke one morning determined to play a proper scenario – get a better feel for the flow of a game in A9. I chose the first scenario (the designated starter map of the game), consisting of a well-developed office district surrounded by three satellite towns – all eventually, I guess, to be swallowed up as the city expands. Anyway, my point here is that it isn’t until you begin to play for real that attention is drawn to the differences in game play, some subtle – others obvious, and how they’re combining to enhance the game overall.
So, starting today, and for the next few updates, I’ll be looking more closely at the gameplay features new to A9 that are making all the difference. Read more »
I’m busy exploring A9′s nuances. This weekend I’ll hopefully be in a position to share more detailed impressions from actual game play – really, there seems so much about this game that has been tweaked, improved and expanded. It’s such pleasure to sit down and play…
The other day I purchased a new graphics card for my gaming PC. It’s an ATI Radeon HD 5570 – a ‘low profile’ card to fit the small design of my Aspire X3810. It’s about the best LP card I’ll be able to fit into the casing and has pushed the frame rate whilst playing A9 up to a very steady 50 fps on 1600×1200, full AA. The only thing I find that’s killing the frame rate is shadowing which drops it by around 30 fps.
More soon…
What a start to the weekend! I’ve spent most of this evening toying about with my copy of A9. It’s almost bedtime now so I wanted to share a few initial impressions and screen shots of the full game before I turn in. Read more »
Since building my new site from scratch involves far more effort and time than anticipated I have re-opened A-TrainHX.com until I’m ready to go live with version II.
I don’t plan to update the ‘old’ site and the forum is now closed so the link for that will not work.
I was going to add the walkthrough here as a post but decided the more logical approach would be to simply re-open so that those who want to can browse for information.
It still hurts my eyes to look at it, however…
Let’s take another close-up look at some of the features we can expect in A9 (which is released on the 29th of this month).
To begin with here’s a video demonstration (taken by a guest at the recent Artdink unveiling of A-Train 9 in Tokyo – which explains the average picture quality) of the map construction. There is no translation, but you really don’t need it….
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There are now a few A-Train 8 maps for download over on the Fan Site.
Just follow the link, read the instructions and enjoy. At the moment there are just two: One from Renfro and another from me which was based on the A-Train HX map ‘Clear River and Rice Paddies’. I hope you enjoy them. It should help to extend the life of A8 for those still playing and enjoying it since I know that most people have neither the time nor patience required to get the maps made.
If you happen to make a map of your own you can email it to me (using the email address provided on the Fan Site). I’d prefer maps that have at least a little creativity to them, to be honest, since plain, flat landscapes are very easy to create.
Here are a few screens of A9 that I found the other day. They were taken by someone in the audience at the A9 preview in Tokyo. The game was projected onto a huge screen in an auditorium, this explains the oblique angle of some of the shots.
Looking at them I’m really pleased with how natural and organic the cities will look.
Compare these two city shots of A9 and A8 and immediately you see how Artdink are moving away from the trademark blocky, toy-like quality. I found A8 roads a bit too inflexible and only really suitable for creating the squares that the AI builds automatically around clusters of buildings.
Read more »
A-Train 9 | MarkE231 | 
29/08/2010 15:25 | 
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