Cossacks – The Art of War: Mission 2 of the 2. campaign

Mission  2 of the 2. campaign of "Cossacks-The Art of War" (The Bohemiam Border) is one of those tough missions where you need a lot of patience and stamina. The Austrians permanently attack from three sides ( blue arrows ), accompanied by the Saxons who attack from northwest as well ( middle blue arrow ).

The bandits in the North are not of much help. We get the hint to send some pack horses into their city to get their support but this doesn’t work: their gate simply won’t open.

Luckily we have sufficient gold, coal and iron at the beginning and lots of deposits around. Thus the first two things to do:

• Hire lots of infantryman and dragoons through the embassy to ensure sufficient forces to defend ourselves
• Explore the deposits ( including the 2 gold deposits a bit further away ) and build mines and advance them to level 2 ( higher levels would get too expensive for now )

Next ensure proper wood, stone and food productions. We need those resources later to exchange against coal and iron. Thus it is also a great idea to advance the appropriate technologies for these resources through the academy and also by building a blacksmith shop and inventing the scythe.

Also don’t forget to produce pikemen and gunneries in the barracks to gain cheap additional units for defense and later on attack.

Discovering the embassy of the Saxons

Once the situation stabilizes – defense under control and resource production has reached a sufficient level – we can think off striking back. The first attack ( red arrow # 1 ) should target the Saxon settlement in the West. In the meantime we also should have built an artillery depot and some howitzer. The attack starts by starting to send our defense troops located in the southwest westwards and thus make them attack troops. They will have to deal with incoming Austrians al the time until they reach the Saxon settlement.

The fast Cossack is the best unit to quickly explore the enemy territory and find their embassy to become a target for our  howitzer. As soon as we have destroyed this building we feel a relief: no more green attack waves. This is an important milestone to finally win the game.

For our 2nd attack wave we send our troops northwest towards the Austrian settlement. Their primary objective is to destroy the towers there ( they also will need howitzer for that ) and the Austrian troops located south of the Austrian city. This opens the path for the 3rd attack ( we can use the troops who have taken over the Saxon settlement ) to get close to the Austrian city and attack it from the south, then circling around the city clockwise.

Our primary target: the Commander of the Austrians

First we should focus on taking out the riding stables which produce all the cavalrymen in a high frequency and number who have made our life that difficult. Once the riding stables have been  destroyed by the howitzer we won’t experience any heavy attacks anymore.

Now we can concentrate on winning the game by taking over the Austrian city. Which is easy once we know that we just have to get their commander. A tricky way to do so is to put him under fire by the howitzer. This will motivate him to do something stupid: leaving the city and attacking us. When this happens it is a piece of cake to get him and the well deserved victory over the Austrians.

Cossacks – The Art of War: Mission 1 of the 2. campaign

The mission  1 of the 2. campaign of "Cossacks-The Art of War" (Under the flag of King Frederick – Trade Route Battle) is one of the most difficult missions of this game, and since no walkthru can be found in the internet (anymore) I will publish one here in my blog, after initially I thought this mission is impossible to win. I have found one reference to this mission here , mentioning  it got Cossacks a lot of negative fan mail

At the beginning it is important to find the right route to the settlement at the coast in the south. The one resident a bit further down in the south should not be followed: he will get you into a trap. Instead head to the east to reach a larger village there. Even this route will get you into some skirmish, but only with swordsmen the Prussian pikeman can handle easily, and with some gunmen who will decimate your little troop a bit . Therefore you always should keep the officer and the three horses in the background. It is important to bring all three horses to the settlement in the south, to ensure later on when attacking the Austrians on the island enough coal and iron is available to fire your weapons.

After some time you reach the village in the east. If you are friendly to their leader the gates will open and let you pass thru towards the south.  Soon you make it to the coast where you run into more swordsmen you have to fight your way thru, then you turn west and follow the coast to reach the settlement there.

There you must resist a massive attack, while the horses will be unloaded. You get the commandership of the settlement and this gets you additional pike- and gunmen. The cavalier approaching from the west you best attack right away with your pike- and gunmen, especially also since the cannons on the mountain in the west take down your fences there, Then it is a good idea to withdraw into the settlement,  while more mobs attack from north. The two towers in the north will get them into some trouble, and you can add to that by using your howitzers, which you also got recently. At some point start attacking with your gun- and pikemen, but be careful: you will need a sufficient number of units for the real mission objective, the expulsion of the Austrians from the island in the southeast.

After finally you have withstand the attack you start attacking the island in the southeast using the three warships you got as well. First destroy the four towers and especially also the two block houses on the beach. A landing there is still almost impossible or a suicide mission. It took a while until I discovered that you can land in the north at the cliff line  where one of the towers was located before.

So: distribute remaining units on the two ferries; the boarding only works outside of the Prussian settlement! With the first ferry land your units at that location mentioned before. Wait until the two cannons have fired to avoid big loss, then get out. Now quickly overpower the soldiers out there and gain the two cannons. With those and your three howitzers you got from the Prussian settlement, continue your attack against the settlement in the center of the island. The warships can provide assistance from north by using their artillery.

After you wiped out the folks in the settlement and gained their cannons finally it is time to deal with the remaining troops in the south of the island and get their cannons as well. Finished, game won!

My favorites for week 14, 2011

Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about sports

The high gas prices are a nice additional motivator to do more walking / running, aren’t they ? At least according to this Moderately Confused comic strip. Well,  I must say, I usually walk when I can anyway. Having to go shopping for something here in the village I live ? I almost never use the car, either I walk or use my bicycle. Per pedes it is may be 30 minutes  extra time to walk rather than taking the car, but I think 30 minutes well invested for my health, my back, my legs, my fat balance. Even when doing lots of sports – I play Badminton or Squash four times a week – sitting for too long is a health risk, as I learned this week through the following two articles: Study: The longer you sit, the shorter your life on USA Today Why your desk job is slowly killing you  on Men’s Health via msnbc.com Thanks, Cody J. Schaff, for blogging about it ! We actually should get up from our chairs every 20 minutes, at least for 20 seconds or so.

Something to watch: my favorite video clip of the week – about an amazing card trick

How about an amazing card trick this week ? It actually works, as I tried it with my own card deck. Anyone out there who can explain mathematically why this works ? http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/x8yxw6?theme=none The Final 3 – Amazing Math Card Trick von mismag822 … Discovered through StumbleUpon

Something to discover: my favorite bookmark of the week – about games and brains

Lifehacker showed us today how to game our brain, how to train special skills through computer games: from better memory, language or typing skills to being better in games or even escaping  a burning house. One of my favorites is Simon, a great memory tester for your brain. The author of this game, Paul Neave, has more or those classic arcade games on his web page implemented in flash, like Pacman of course, or Tetris. A SecondLife Version of Simon is located here, by the way. And here is another great web site: pokkisam, a collection of awesome, very creative photos used for commercial advertising. I usually hate commercials, always skip them when watching recorded TV movies or shows, simply because there are too many of those and they attack you everywhere. But I admit: some are very creative and awesome, like the photos you can enjoy on this site. … Discovered through Delicious Random Pick.

Something to enjoy: my favorite photo  on flickr under a Common Creative license – about the right place to be

"Tropical Sleepaway, Bora Bora, French Polynesia" by foreverseptember. You are sitting in your crowded cubicle landscape and try to focus on your work while you have to listen to several meetings and phone calls around you ? You have a red sea of unhandled e-mails in front of you and don’t know where to start ? You are rushing from conference call to conference call talking to hundreds of people you don’t know ? Look at that picture, then close your eyes for a minute or so, and imagine how it would feel to be there now …

Something to talk about: my favorite quote of the week – about advertising

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half. John Wanamaker (1838 – 1922), US department store merchant As I mentioned my love-hate relationship to commercials in this blog posting this quote is a nice fit. Isn’t it amazing to see how much is funded through commercials, like free TV shows or internet sites ? Sometimes I wonder about the huge effort to provide these services for free and whether that ever would pay off. I probably underestimate the number of consumers of these services and the amount of profit they generate even only a small subset is actually “caught” by these advertisements. If only half the money is wasted, this is probably still a good business case !?

Can the Structures of Gaming Help You Work Better?

“Can the Structures of Gaming Help You Work Better?” has been a question asked by Lifehacker today. Here are my thoughts about this. If you think work really has nothing to do with killing monsters, think twice: how many ( ugly looking ) problems do you have to move out of your way every day ?

I am always astonished to see how well some games are designed to keep you going .. for hours and days. I am also astonished to see how badly some business applications are designed to actually hinder you as much as possible to achieve what you are trying to achieve. In that sense I am a big fan of games @ work, or better: design work like a game.
In the era of smart project planning and activity centric computing this should not be too much of a challenge: imagine you get some sort of credit for every activity you accomplish. A project manager or architect or some smart computer system has determined the complexity of your activity; the more complex it is, the more credit points you receive. The faster you accomplish it, the more points you get. There is some acceptance criteria assigned to the task; depending on how good you fulfill it, the more points you receive.
Based on number of points you receive you advance to higher "levels of expertise" ( depending what type of activity you accomplished ) in your company, or higher "level of reputation". Credit points can be converted to
. extra money ( I am sure CFOs will love this option
. free time
. extra resources to get your work done, like file space on a network drive or your own virtual server, or even a small budget for your own projects
Work could be so much more fun ( and thus productive through motivation boosts ) if carefully "designed". Will it ever be possible to "design" work ? Or should we stop dreaming and realize that there is a major difference between work and fun ?

More of my thoughts on this in “Playing, learning, growing … “ I wrote in August 2009.

My favorites for week 4, 2011

Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about books

Do you still read books ? Or do you spent just too much time with your e-mail, instant messenger, mobile gadgets and rss reader / feeder ? And if you still use books, are these the once made of paper where you manually have to turn pages ? Or do you prefer electronic or even interactive books meanwhile ? Moderately Confused ? Don’t worry too much. Finish reading my blog, then grab a book .

Something to watch: my favorite video clip of the week – about computer pixels escaping into the real world

“PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.” is a well done video on Dailymotion showing how computer pixels escape into the real world. If you are from an older generation like me you probably will recognize a lot of those older classic computer games you spent some time with when you were younger, or may be even today sometimes. Thanks to tools like DosBox you can still run those old games on modern computers. I must admit: I started playing “Oh, no more Lemmings” again. And again got stuck at level 16, Rated Crazy. Some day I’ll find the solution. Or cheat here.

Something to enjoy: my favorite photo  on flickr under a Common Creative license – about two relaxed hippos

"Xmas in Sthn States 2010 314" by Stonestreet’s Coaches – The Extra Mile. I never heard of the Sthn States, but apparently they are in Australia, most probably the Northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland regions.. That’s where this photo “Xmas in Sthn States 2010 314” has been taken. Those two guys look pretty relaxed, don’t they ?

Something to surprise: my favorite "I really didn’t know this" of the week – about the internet 2010

Did you know that in 2010 107 trillion e-mails have been sent over the internet ? ( If you are uncertain about how large that number is, WolfframAlpha can help; it is 5.4 times the number of red blood cells in the human body. ) 294 billion e-mails have been sent per day, 89 % of those have been spam ? ( That’s roughly the number of stars in our galaxy ) 1.88 billion people on this world use e-mail, and 1.97 billion use the internet ? there are 152 million blogs available in the internet ? 2 billion videos are watched on youtube every day, and 35 hours of video are uploaded to youtube every minute ? ( I already mentioned this in week 45 last year ) 5 billion photos are hosted on flickr and 3000 are added every day ? Source: These and more interesting facts and numbers you can find in “Internet 2010 in numbers”.

Something to discover: my favorite bookmark of the week – about a audio-visual wiki

Lifehacker today presented Qwiki – a mini, visually-rich Wikipedia that reads to you.  After watching the presentations about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Albert Einstein, General Relativity and Gravitation I checked out the one about IBM.

Something to talk about: my favorite quote of the week – about good and bad, wrong and right

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion. ~ Abraham Lincoln, (attributed), 16th president of US (1809 – 1865) ~ A large enterprise apparently needs Business Conduct Guidelines, and tons of other rules like export regulations for example or IT security guidelines and social computing guidelines. And apparently there is a need to re-train all employees every year and get them "re-certified". This simple rule by Abraham Lincoln does not seem to be sufficient to find out what is right and what is wrong in our daily decisions about how to behave. What a pity, life could be so simple if we just would trust our gut feelings.

Descent 1 – Escaping the Martian Gas Mine

Descent to me is one of the best computer games ever. That game has been released 15 years ago and I still enjopy playing that game. Graphics are not state-of-the-art anymore, but still good. It is a true 3D ego-shooter. Thanks to the DXX-Rebirth project this game still runs fine, fluently and error-free on a modern  operating system like Windows Vista.

You enter a mine somewhere on a planet or moon in a small vehicle and have to battle mad mechanic robots who took over the facility. You have to find access keys to the yellow, blue and red area of the mine, you have to find weapons, shield power-ups and energy as you make your way through the hostile labyrinth. Finally you have to rescue some hostages and take out the reactor. After reactor melt-down you have 40 seconds to reach the emergency exit opening only in that case, providing your only way out of the mine. You can read more details about that excellent and thrilling game here on Wikipedia.

After making it through all the 30 “official” levels now I am working on the 100+ levels of the “Levels Of The World” package. Descent 2 & 3 and the sucessor Freespace are still waiting to be played.

Even I play this game since years and have spent many hours on all these levels yesterday I encountered a level where I had to come up with a new tactic and learn something new to finally get it done. You think you know everything … but you never can be sure. No matter how long you spend practicing something – you never know what you don’t know, you never know whether you know everything.

This actually also is a nice example of out-of-the-box thinking: when you have done something a hundred times one way and this suddenly stops working, you really need to step back and outside your own box you created yourself ( experience can be bad, experience can be your worst enemy ! ) to come up with a solution.

In every level I played so far it was possible to get to the exit within 40 seconds after the reactor has been hit. Sometimes it was difficult: you way out suddenly was blocked by additional robots showing up or the way was really long, but it was always possible. In the level “Martian Gas Mine” I have been playing apparently there was no way to get to the exit within 40 minutes; the way simply has been too long.

I started thinking about how I can delay the reactor destruction a bit to get me the extra valuable seconds to make it. And finally I came up with this solution – and noticed that this level has been designed for this:

1. Damage the reactor as much as possible without destroying it; two rounds of Plasma fire should do it.
2. Get yourself a Cloaking Device and some bombs. Luckily in this level "Martian Gas Mine" a Cloaking Device can be found in the large dark chamber before the Red Area, and bombs are released by the little blue explorer robot leaving the reactor room when you visit it the first time.
3. Make yourself invisible using the Cloaking Device
4. Enter reactor room and place your bombs around the reactor. Don’t get too close, otherwise the reactor starts firing and things end earlier than you would like it.
5. Leave the reactor room and start your journey to the exit.
6. After a while bombs go off and reactor with them. Hopefully you have been getting far enough to now use the remaining time to get out.

I had almost 20 seconds left when reaching the exit. By destroying the reactor directly there was no way to get out in 40 seconds ! The delayed destruction gives you sufficient time to make it.
As it is said: there is always a way out !

The screen shot above shows how the reactor room looks like before leaving to the exit: lots of bombs have been placed around it.

On YouTube I have published a video showing the final escape from the mine.

My favorites for week 31, 2010

Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about another cheap flight

We have had that topic already in week 25: the joy of travelling and cheap air lines. Here is another one: Welcome to Air Ma…. whatever. How about: Air Madness ?  Nice one from Herman.

Something to discover: my favorite bookmark of the week – about Ice Breaker

In week 27 I showed you Miniclip.com, a nice gaming site with lots of fun little games, ideal for a quick play anytime. One of my favorite games is Ice Breaker, a really new type of game for me. You have to cut Vikings out of ice blocks and depending on how you cut you get very different results. Either they get stuck or miss your boat. The physics of sliding and falling pieces of ice are nicely modeled in that game. So far I did not get beyond level 9, it suddenly became quiet challenging. The screen shot on the right shows level 4. Not so difficult, but you can easily fail with the left most guy: one wrong cut and it won’t work. It is one of those few games currently which makes me coming back again and again.

Something to learn: my favorite tip of the week – about some useful short cuts in MS Excel.

Recently I joined an interesting educational phone call about MS Excel. Most things I knew already, but here are three interesting short cuts I did not know before: CTRL+END allows you to jump right away to the last cell in your spreadsheet ever used. CTRL+SHIFT+Down or CTRL+SHIFT+Up allow you to quickly mark a block of data from your current position to the next blank cell. Without the SHIFT key to’ll just jump there. CTRL+SHIFT+END allows you quickly mark a block of data from your current position to the last row ever used in your spreadsheet. CTRL+SHIFT+HOME does the same thing up to the top most row of your spreadsheet.

Something to enjoy: my favorite photo  on flickr under a Common Creative license – about crew members from the Space Shuttle Atlantis

"P072610PS-0024" by The White House. The offical photo stream of the White House on flickr. is worth to check out once in a while.  Here is one of their last postings: “P072610PS-0024”. In the description to this photo we read: President Barack Obama greets crew members from the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station in the Oval Office, July 26, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Something to talk about: my favorite quote of the week – about knowledge and wisdom

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. ~ Immanuel Kant, German philosopher (1724 – 1804) ~ Super quote by a German philosopher, don’t you think ? Especially since we can not simply rely on knowledge, no matter how good we organize it. It is actually the job of scientists to question existing knowledge every day and to probably turn what is valid today into the invalid knowledge of the future. Which might become valid again in a much later future. Anyway, knowledge simply can be wrong, and even the knowledge of the crowd can be wrong, as this great Lifehacker article this morning emphasized: “Think Twice About What "Everybody Knows"”. Part of wisdom probably is how you handle knowledge.

Playing, learning, growing …

Since October last year I am playing Atlantica, one of those MMPORGs which I think is similar to WOW ( I guess since I don’t know WOW yet ), but this one is free to play. I am fascinated by the real smart reward & reputation system of this game and how it keeps your motivation on a high level and thus keeps you going.

You level-up based on your experience and of course the higher you get the more experience you need to level-up. On a higher level you gain only little experience by fighting low level monsters, thus you have to deal with the difficult ones to grow your experience. At the beginning of a typical quest you just have to fight one party of monsters, occaisonally you might run into a second or third party in parallel if this place is very crowded. Later in the quest you are forced to enter those called shadow dungeons where it is almost guaranteed that you have to fight two or three parties in parallel. If you are not strong enough at that time you might decide to collaborate with other players and form parties yourself. Fighting in a team is rewarded by gaining extra experience points; basically experience made by one of your team members contributes to your experience growth as well.
I love this concept since it simply pays back to collaborate and get in touch with other players to accomplish missions. This "shared experience" gaining has given birth to what is called LDP in the game ( "Long Distance Parties" ): these are parties of player who are actually strong enough and don’t need to fight in parties, they just form one to boost their experience growth. Or if someone isn’t fighting currently he joins the party of someone else just to keep experience points coming in.
Atlantica also has a mentor concept and often a mentee joins the party of his mentor who typically is on a much higher level to profit by his experience growth.

As I said already: on a higher experience level you gain little experience points when fighting low level monsters. But sometimes you have to do it simply to gain important items or money. This then is a typical trade off you also have to make in real life sometimes: money versus experience, dollars versus skill improvement, learning and excitement. In other words: sometimes you have to do the boring stuff to earn money instead of doing "exciting projects" to grow your skills.
In that sense it is amazing how close such a game matches with reality. One blog article is actually not sufficient to describe all aspects of it, one could write an entire book about it. And even I play it almost a year already ( and have reached level 79, 120 is the maximum currently ) there are still new aspects of that reward and reputation system I learn from my guild buddies or other friends each day. It must have taken the developer of that game years to come up with a clever and complex system like that.

Let me simply list a few more features of the game I have not mentioned so far which also play a role for your "career" and "business" in Atllantica as well:

• Like in real life money plays a role as well.
• You can carry it with you or keep it on your bank account. In the first case you risk some loss when loosing a fight against an opponent.
• You get some interest rates for money you keep on the bank, but you have to pay for transactions ( deposit or withdrawel )
• You get money through fighting
• or crafting items and selling on the market
• or exchanging books and selling on the market
• You learn extra ( magic ) skills through books
• You can boost your intelligence, dexterity and other attributes in several ways, e.g. also through getting equipement and weapons. You can craft those on your own, buy it on the market, get it during a battle, upgrade it. To craft you need to have an appropriate crafting skill and you have to buy or collect material. You can also learn crafting skills from other players. The higher your level is the higher level equipment you need, which of course gets more and more expensive, thus you need more and more money.

In some sense this reward & reputation system mirrors real life to a great extent. In some sense I wished the reward & reputation system in large companies would work the same way: e.g.

• a straight and objective experience measurement system. No "self-certifications" any more, you get experience points right away after you have accomplished something, not once a year based on some fuzzy rating delivered by your boss which might be more based on statistical or political aspects than anything else,
• a reward for team play and mentoring
• a permanent growing of your skills by ensuring your future missions ( e.g. projects ) fit to your current skill level in a way that they ask you to do a little more than you have done before; that’s what a healthy growth is all about: the "little more" over time.
• earning money or some form of virtual credits you can use for future projects

This motivation mechanism in those games actually is that efficient that it can become dangerous. In the recent "bild der wissenschaft" magazine there has been an article about pathological gambling, a new disease of modern societies. WOW is mentioned as THE example of a dangerous game making people addicted and disabling them to survive in real life. MMPORGs are drugs for those people who use it to escape their real life, even to an extent where it becomes pretty dangerous for them: they loose their jobs or stop finding a new one, they even forget to eat and sleep.
Used in the right dosage however those games can provide a great experience. I know, reality is not a game. And of course we do not fight monsters, instead we try to help our customers and sell our solutions. But wait a minute, all the obstacles getting into our way – technical defects, plan changes, issues, change requests, budget cuts, team conflicts, politics, conflicting stakeholder interests – aren’t those like monsters in those games lurking at every corner waiting for us to get them out of our way ? What else can we learn form games like Atlantica for our corporate culture and the way we do our business ? Probably more than we initially thought when we said: "Hey, that is just a silly game !"

Still playing ATLANTICA …

Today has been the first time that I met someone in a MMPORG and we built a relationship and collaborated for a while. He actually became my mentor and we made a deal that he would bring me from my current level 18 to level 30 to earn 200.000 bucks for both of us. This is actually a very nice concept in this game to encourage player to help other players. I wish the bonus system in my company would work like this as well.

We spent a couple of hours together, he helped me with a challenge I had failed to get through so far and gave me a lot of training, info and hints.

A real new experience for me and something which really distinguishes a MMPORG type game from an offline computer game I was used to play so far: getting to know real player – or at least an avatar with a real person behind.

His name is MuaDib in the game and he shared with me some other interesting information: he used to play Metin2 by Gameforge and mentioned that this obviously is a type of game where finally you have to spend real money to get further in the game by buying necessary items, passports or maps. A clever trick of the provider to make money. He revealed some more interesting stories: that people pay up to 3.200 Euro for avatars, that companies hire kids or unemployed people to let them play and make play money or develop characters which they then sell for real money. This is called china farming or gold farming and a huge multi-million business for some companies !  

He also mentioned that pretty soon a new game by the Asian company  NCSoft will be coming out: Aion. ATLANTICA obviously has been developed by another Asian company – Ndoors- and it took 3 years to develop it. Impressive.

Learned enough for today, about ATLANTICA and MMPORGs in general. Time to get some sleep.

Playing Atlantica

Atlantica is the first MMORPG I am really playing. Their ads on www.unitedmedia.com or wherever I saw those made me curious, thus I signed up and started playing. It is in beta and seems to be free for now.
Registration went smooth and after the 2 gigabyte download and 5 gigabyte installation I fired up the client and started playing.
I am pretty much impressed, I have to say. Not only is this a really well designed game, it also shows a great performance. And it’s a good candidate to become a drug. The day before yesterday I went to bed after midnight. That has to stop, of course

To me this is a great example of a well designed game. It is pretty complex but it allows you to start easy and learn additional functions and skills step by step while playing. The initial training just takes a few minutes before you can have some fun. Early experiences of success keep you going. Later on it let’s you “train”  new user interface functions and gives you feedback right away whether you have done this right ( like e.g. when you learn what you have to do to craft new items ). These learning steps are like missions and are
presented to you when needed. This keeps you motivated to go through this and learning the software becomes real fun and part of the game.

Besides, it has nice graphics and sounds.