FAUG demo of Powermonger by E.A. -- long review
Kent Paul Dolan
Electronic Arts demonstrated Powermonger for the club Tuesday night. First
the bad news: the game is not hard drive installable, and won't multitask.
Paraphrasing:
They do these user surveys, you know? And the answer they get
back from all these guys in Europe is "I'm going to add memory
to my A500 and bring it up to an awesome one meg Real Soon Now."
And that's 5/6ths of the game market, A500's with 512K of memory.
To put a game like this in that box, you haven't got any choice;
you have to nuke the operating system and take over the machine.
Make it HD installable or multitasking, and it won't run in 512K,
and you just threw away 5/6ths of the Amiga market. It was the
great sales response in Europe that made it possible to bring
Populous out in the states, and the same holds true for Powermonger.
Sigh. You can't argue very hard with that logic. They have to pay the
bills.
Next the quasi-good news: you can back up the disks, though you have to
use a commercial disk copier: without the OS, they chose a disk format
of their own, and Workbench's DiskCopy chokes and dies on it. Anyway,
besides my having to buy pirating software to back up my disk
legitimately, at least they've had the sense to go to manual-oriented
copy protection schemes.
OK, maybe some _real_ good news. ;-) The game looks great! It starts out
with an introduction sequence of maybe half a dozen, animated, full
screen pictures with castles, armies, couriers, a mean looking warlord,
great music, some text to tell you what's going on, etc. Then you drop
into a completely Amiga style game, with mouse, menus, vaguely the same
screen layout as Populous, only prettier: a local map on a work surface,
with control gadgets built into the surface, an overview map up in one
corner, various other stuff. The work surface is a "table", and behind
it stand your warlords, planning their strategy and controlling their
armies.
To start playing, you pull up this _huge_, scrolling, multiscreen map of
the world. The worlds of Populace have become territories in one world
for Powermonger. To win the game, you have, not to conquer the whole
world, but to island hop from upper left to lower right along any
orthogonal stepping path you choose. (Doesn't say you _can't_ arrange
your path to nail every single territory, just that you don't have to.)
You can save games, it looked like maybe nine possible save files from
the back of the room, so you probably need a blank floppy.
You get no choice in where you start, but you have the choice to redraw
it with a random territory button if you don't like what you see. As
you conquer territories, they are marked with a dagger driven through
them; neat bloodthirsty touch!
Your game motivating scenario is that you and your small battle force
have been driven out of your homeland and put ashore on this small
island to conquer or perish.
Like Populous, the game has people off in various parts of the current
territory "doing their own thing". These people have an incredibly
rich level of detail. Each person has a trade, a name, an alliegance,
possibly a carried weapon, a current health, and at least half a dozen
other stats I didn't pick up from the back of the room. In addition,
the game is _rife_ with livestock, bleating, baaing, mooing, crowing,
whatever, and you can click on even the livestock and get some stats.
The land is covered with villages, and if it is a farming village, then
it is surrounded by fields, and the farmers are in constant circulation
between the fields and houses. Villages have "manufacturies", too, and
if you conquer a village, you can conscript some and put others to work
"inventing" things, and keep others at work in the fields. Did I mention
that your army needs food?
If it is a fishing village, (near the water of course), then the
fisherfolk come out of their houses, walk down to the water, enter their
coracles, and go out to catch fish. If it is a mining village, then
folks are working on a mine, and, since the map is a 3D cross-section of
the world, like Populous, if you move to the right spot you can watch
the mine's progress underground. If there are some woodcutters, then
they go to the nearest forest and cut trees, and we watched them flush a
flock of birds up out of the woods.
The game has equal opportunity killing and dying; characters of all
types may be male or female in stats and names; I wasn't close enough to
judge appearances.
Unlike Populous, your goal is not to terraform the land but to conquer
its towns and villages. You get not one computer opponent, but up to
three, or you can modem out to a friend (2400 baud is plenty fast) and
the two of you compete against each other and compete with zero to two
computer opponents' armies.
The difference is striking; you work from camps or settlements, and when
you decide to attack a village, your army pours out of its base, and
marches to the target settlement. Your troops carry close in weapons
like swords and pikes, or at-a-distance weapons like bows, and your hand
weapon troops close the enemy, while the remote weapon troops stand back
and pick them off from afar.
Did I mention you march slower if it's raining or snowing?
One of the controls you have is for the aggression level; you can set it
to "win, but don't hurt anybody" for those easy first conquests; I guess
you can set it to "take no prisoners" further on in the game.
If you lunch one of the autochthons, or more likely vice versa, up floats
a little ghost, and if you select it before it gets away, you'll learn
that so and so "died for the glory of Xland".
It's no wonder you march slower in rain or snow; the designers believe in
whole gales and blizzards; it can get hard to find your armies.
If you conquer a town with a warlord of its own, there is a chance you
can win his loyalty. With two warlords watching over the playing table,
you can split your army, and send commands by carrier pigeon from one to
the other. Of course, if the starving hostiles shoot your pigeon down
and eat it, the message doesn't get delivered, and your subordinate
carries on under the old orders. This can probably get very
inconvenient. I think I heard that you can have up to half a dozen
warlords at once.
You start with a few weapons, but you have to put conquered towns to work
making more. Don't put everyone in the factory, though, or the crops will
fail and they and you will starve. Same problem if you conscript too many
people; things stop working with no workers.
If you're having trouble following the action because the terraine blocks
your view, don't despair; the local map pans and zooms and rotates in real
time. We zoomed in on an idle army, and they were encamped in a circle
around a commander who was sitting by a crackling fire.
Did I mention your warlord grunts "yes" when you give him an order? Did
I mention the clash of battle, the screams of the dying, the whistle of
the wind as winter approaches?
This game is a rich visual, audible, and tactical experience. Minus the
few problems noted at the top, and granting that I left out 90% of the
stuff I saw, this game is a winner that got a great round of applause
after the presentation, and a few cheers during, especially when the
presenter casually zoomed and rotated the map in one smooth motion to
follow an army around a mountain.
I have no idea at all how they got this all in one little box. It was
demoed on an A1000, and the presenter said it runs on an A500, an A2000,
an A2500, a 68030 accelerator board system, and an A3000, and "probably
an A5000 when they make one of those".
The good points far outweigh the bad points. We only watched a couple
of territories get conquered, but the human interface, even with the
same set of gadgets, seems much smoother than for Populous; it doesn't
look so easy for the computer to overwhelm you by attacking everywhere
at once. Of course, no game should be too easy, and we were conquering
kindergarden-land! ;-)
Additionally, there is a hook in the game, supported by a gadget in a
requestor, to incorporate a data disk, although none is available now,
so probably there will be a "Promised Lands" extension for this game,
too.
Even this many words just can't convey the overwhelming amount of detail
and programming skill shown in this game. It is due out in the states
in a week, apparently is already available in Europe. If your letter
to St. Nick isn't in the mail yet, this is a likely entry.
I waaaant one! ;-) This review ought to sell a few thousand; think
they'd think to send me a free copy? Ha!
Oh, yeah, I got to stand up for a few minutes and describe the c.s.a
reorganization to a room half of whom had never heard of USENet, and
were bored out of their minds between the few laughs I managed to
acquire. They raffled off a donated copy of Amigavision, and two games
(Bandit Kings of Ancient China and Ghengis Kahn, from Koei) demoed by
another presenter, sold FAUG disks, another person demoed Perfect Sound
(good enough that I bought one at the meeting, 25% off list). For SF-Bay
area locals, checking out FAUG might be a really good idea; dues $35 per
year, and the action packed meeting was in a Hyatt conference room!
/// It's Amiga
/// for me: why
Kent, the man from xanth. \\\/// settle for
<xant...@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xant...@well.sf.ca.us> \XX/ anything less?
--
Convener, ongoing comp.sys.amiga grand reorganization.
Keith Hanlan
a very detailed and favourable review of PowerMonger. He cautions
that it is not HD-installable although it is possible to back the
game up.
Kent, my question is this: Does the game take advantage of extra memory
if available? If it does, I'll buy it. If it doesn't, I won't. Caching
data files takes maybe 1000 bytes of code - there is no excuse for
not providing it.
Generally, how much does the game gronk the floppy disk?
Thanks for the effort you put into the review.
Keith Hanlan kei...@bnr.ca Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada 613-765-4645
Nathan J Pfluger
To kill the sorcerer you must first surround him with flux cages. That
means that he has no way out. Don't worry, I don't think he can move
diagonaly.
#
#S#
#
# - Flux Cage
S = Sorcerer.
If he can get out diagonally, which now seems to remind me he can.
###
#S#
###
Once he is surrounded, you flux cage him, then blast him with fuse.
By the way, what are you maximum levels.
My best, carrying the ferral pendant and firestaff were, I think
4th master Fighter
4th master Ninja
5th master Magician
4th master Priest
All levels may be up or down one.
Nathan Pfluger
/* Sorry no Sig file */
Kent Paul Dolan
> a very detailed and favourable review of PowerMonger. He cautions
> that it is not HD-installable although it is possible to back the
> game up.
> Kent, my question is this: Does the game take advantage of extra memory
> if available? If it does, I'll buy it. If it doesn't, I won't. Caching
> data files takes maybe 1000 bytes of code - there is no excuse for
> not providing it.
My bet is no, on an 85% or so confidence level, but I'd suggest calling
the company for valid info. My reasoning is that 1) they nuked the OS,
so they'd be spending more than 1Kbyte on supporting a ram: based
alternate file structure, and 2) the game, running on an A1000, was
obviously pushing the 68000 really hard; I'd be surprised if they had
taken the little extra time for a two way test to see where files should
be found. I could be wrong on this whole thing, though.
And, of course, since the OS is gone, you can't use FACC II or
addbuffers to make things work better. I brought my system memory up to
9 megs, so I share your frustration with having that ignored and the
floppy drive kept warm. Still, if you have friends to whom you'd like to
really show off a dazzling Amiga application, I'd go for buying the game
and live with the realization that stuff with moving parts wears out and
is consumable, not a permanent part of your system.
A letter to EA conveying your concern would not be at all out of place.
I get the feeling, for all the bitching that all of us do here about
games, that sending a well composed, polite letter laying out the terms
under which you will be willing to buy their games to various game
manufacturers will do 100 times as much good. Modulo the occasional kid
who bought his/her Amiga as a Nintendo clone, you're preaching to the
choir here.
I also get the feeling that no one ever writes to these people. I know I
haven't, except for an occasional margin note on a warranty card.
> Generally, how much does the game gronk the floppy disk?
I was 20 rows of chairs back -- no idea. We watched the game via FAUG's
projection TV, and listened to the presenter over microphones. This is
a _big_ users group.
> Thanks for the effort you put into the review.
I enjoyed doing it.
>Keith Hanlan kei...@bnr.ca Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada 613-765-4645
Kent, the man from xanth.
<xant...@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xant...@well.sf.ca.us>
Francois Rouaix
Well, PowerMonger hit the shelves yesterday in France.
So I spent a good amount of last night playing it ;-)
Rough comments are:
- as said by Kent, the simulation is really amazing. This game
really uses the sound to convey information. You have to listen to the
noise to figure out if you're doing right or not. So much for the good
points, you'll find them in the previous posting.
On the other hand, I was rather deceived by the graphics. There are
some nice things, such as full 3D rotation of the detailed map, but I
find the display to be less readable than Populous's one. There are
many little objects (soldiers, farmers, sheeps, trees, objets), and
there are difficult to distinguish. On the global map (maps all the
word), the objects of the game are represented by points (one pixel)
of different colors. I find it difficult to tell a yellow point among
white points !.
- on the game itself: if you found Populous hard to play, then
you will have a hard time with PowerMonger. The game *is* complex, and
will require much experiment to find out the good strategy. It took me
about 10 minutes for the first level, but almost 4 hours for the
second... and there are 195 of them. The results of the commands
(orders to your captains) are much less intuitive than expected.
I think there are many things to discover in the game. A first
example: to get food for your army, the natural thing to do is to
kill a sheep. However, in spring, you will notice that there are flocks
of birds in the woods. If you give the order to attack the birds, all
your soldiers will begin to chase the birds around. This is amazing !
- copy protection: the game is protected BOTH with special
disk format AND look-in-the-manual. The manual protection is
*tedious*. I fudged the first time, and was offered only ONE
chance to get the good answer. It seems that you have to
*reboot* of you don't want to stay in demo-mode.
- save game: the game nukes the system, to the point that if
you have a second floppy drive, you HAVE to leave a disk in it to be
able to save a game to df0:. This is mentionned in the docs, although
quite unbelievable !
- documentation: very good (and translated to french in my
case).
- works in NTSC and PAL. The display is nicely centered on the
screen.
To conclude: although I mentionned mostly bad points in this posting,
PowerMonger appears to be one of the best simulation games in its
kind. Don't hesitate ! It's cheap as well (at the current FF/US$
exchange rate for SOFTWARE, it would be around 30$).
--Francois
--
*- Francois Rouaix // We are all prisoners here, *
*- rou...@inria.inria.fr \X/ of our own device *
*- SYSOP of Sgt. Flam's Lonely Amigas Club. (33) (1) 39-55-84-59 (Videotex) *
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are my own, not those of my employer.
Martin S. Stoller
>In article <1990Dec5.1...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xant...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
> a very detailed and favourable review of PowerMonger. He cautions
> that it is not HD-installable although it is possible to back the
> game up.
> Kent, my question is this: Does the game take advantage of extra memory
> if available? If it does, I'll buy it. If it doesn't, I won't. Caching
> data files takes maybe 1000 bytes of code - there is no excuse for
> not providing it.
really know how to program. There is such a thing as overlays, which every
half decent Linker has. And checking to see what memory is available is
easily enough done. Even in Low Level Languages, like C and Assembler.
> Generally, how much does the game gronk the floppy disk?
make the Floppy drive sound like King Kong imitating a broken car...
>Thanks for the effort you put into the review.
>Keith Hanlan kei...@bnr.ca Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada 613-765-4645
reviews, and I trust Kent's judgement. And after all, ECA was once the
leading Producer of Software on the AMIGA... Maybe they'll be again, soon.
(I saw their add in an english (british) computer paper. They are looking
for Assembler Programmers. Hm... I prefer C, probably 'cause I am a lousy
typer...)
--
Regards,
UUCP: [{(uunet|pyramid|rutgers)!cbmvax}!cbmehq!cbmcel!stoller
Keith Hanlan
.I wrote:
.> xant...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
.
.> a very detailed and favourable review of PowerMonger. He cautions
.> that it is not HD-installable although it is possible to back the
.> game up.
.
.> Kent, my question is this: Does the game take advantage of extra memory
.> if available? If it does, I'll buy it. If it doesn't, I won't. Caching
.> data files takes maybe 1000 bytes of code - there is no excuse for
.> not providing it.
.
.My bet is no, on an 85% or so confidence level, but I'd suggest calling
.the company for valid info.
.[...]
.A letter to EA conveying your concern would not be at all out of place.
OK. Can somebody post their address and phone numbers.
Thanks,
Mike Farren
> To put a game like this in that box, you haven't got any choice;
> you have to nuke the operating system and take over the machine.
> Make it HD installable or multitasking, and it won't run in 512K,
> and you just threw away 5/6ths of the Amiga market.
>bills.
*I* can argue with that logic very easily:
- the unrecoverable use of system resources by the full system is minimal,
in comparison with the resources available. Almost all of the system's
memory, for example, can be reclaimed by the application, if needed.
- it is easy to determine if you are running on a 512K machine. If so,
and if, in spite of the previous, you still need more resources than
are available to you, you can selectively take over - in other words,
only the 512K 500s would be taken over, the higher level machines would
be left alone.
- it is possible to actually save resources by NOT taking over the machine.
For example, if you use the standard I/O resources or graphics resources
supplied by the OS, you are using ROM code - not taking up valuable RAM
with redundant routines.
- in extremis, it is always possible to split a program such that only
those portions of it actually in use are resident in memory at any given
time. Careful design will result in a program which runs nearly as
efficiently as one which remains fully in memory. In the case of Populous,
for example, there is no reason not to load the "control panel" routines
at the time they are used - the delay will be negligible, and game play
will be affected not at all.
My translation of EA's statement would go more like this: "They were too
lazy to do it right, and we let them get away with it, 'cause we don't
particularly care."
--
Mike Farren far...@well.sf.ca.us
Stuart Pierce
I've added an A2620, I can barely keep Populous from crashing in EITHER 68000
or 68020 mode. This is the only game I own (out of more than 100) that now
fails to work in 68000 mode.
Stuart Pierce
Kent Paul Dolan
>xant...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>.My bet is no, on an 85% or so confidence level, but I'd suggest calling
>.the company for valid info.
>.[...]
>.A letter to EA conveying your concern would not be at all out of place.
>
>OK. Can somebody post their address and phone numbers.
Electronic Arts
1820 Gateway Drive,
San Mateo, CA 94404-2496
(415) 571-7171
Stefan Becker
>use a commercial disk copier: without the OS, they chose a disk format
>of their own, and Workbench's DiskCopy chokes and dies on it. Anyway,
Nope. You can use TurboBackup to make a copy.
>I have no idea at all how they got this all in one little box. It was
>demoed on an A1000, and the presenter said it runs on an A500, an A2000,
>an A2500, a 68030 accelerator board system, and an A3000, and "probably
>an A5000 when they make one of those".
But not (yet) on an A3000 with 2.02 :-(
Stefan
--
Mail : Stefan Becker, Holsteinstrasse 9, D-5100 Aachen /// Only
Phone : +49-241-505705 FIDO: 2:242/7.6 Germany /// Amiga makes
Domain: ste...@informatik.rwth-aachen.de \\\/// it possible..
Bang : ..mcvax!unido!rwthinf!stefanb \XX/ -->A3000/25<--
Brian Pelletier
[Lots of details on how Powermonger nukes the OS]
>A letter to EA conveying your concern would not be at all out of place.
>I get the feeling, for all the bitching that all of us do here about
>games, that sending a well composed, polite letter laying out the terms
>under which you will be willing to buy their games to various game
>manufacturers will do 100 times as much good. Modulo the occasional kid
>who bought his/her Amiga as a Nintendo clone, you're preaching to the
>choir here.
>
Amen! :-) I heartily agree that most of us will fire off a letter to a
software company only if we are extremely unhappy/pleased with a particular
product. I'm going to try to be a lot more aggressive in this regard from
now on. Hell, I've shelled out enough bucks for games and the like; why
shouldn't I let the companies know what I like/dislike about them? Issues
like copy protection , HD installability, and platform compatibility are
important to me, and should be important to anyone (with the exception of
the Nintendo clone mentality folks). A few well-written letters will go
a long way.
[Comment about not sending letters to software companies]
Guilty as charged. I have at least two letters to write this weekend, and
could probably fire off a half-dozen with a little patience. Not all of these
will voice complaints either; Interplay will probably get a nice letter
from me about Dragon Wars.
>Kent, the man from xanth.
><xant...@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xant...@well.sf.ca.us>
Brian Pelletier, Hardware guy | Disclaimer: These are MY opinions, not SKY's.
Sky Computer Chelmsford, MA | Amiga! UUCP: pell...@grove.uucp (home)
UUCP: br...@sky.com (work) | Plink: TACK
Thorsten Ebers
>Well, PowerMonger hit the shelves yesterday in France.
>So I spent a good amount of last night playing it ;-)
I have it since 4th december here in Berlin Germany.
I have paid 85 DM.(54$ change rate)
I love the game.
>many little objects (soldiers, farmers, sheeps, trees, objets), and
>there are difficult to distinguish. On the global map (maps all the
>word), the objects of the game are represented by points (one pixel)
>of different colors. I find it difficult to tell a yellow point among
>white points !.
really true.the manual describes yellow dots as a city or some simular,but
clicking on it leaves you on plain land or something else.
> - on the game itself: if you found Populous hard to play, then
>you will have a hard time with PowerMonger. The game *is* complex, and
>will require much experiment to find out the good strategy. It took me
>about 10 minutes for the first level, but almost 4 hours for the
>second... and there are 195 of them. The results of the commands
I have solved the 4th landscape on the first row.
Still trieing to get to the second row but no chance yet.
>(orders to your captains) are much less intuitive than expected.
>I think there are many things to discover in the game. A first
hard to get some birds killed.
> - copy protection: the game is protected BOTH with special
>disk format AND look-in-the-manual. The manual protection is
>*tedious*. I fudged the first time, and was offered only ONE
>chance to get the good answer. It seems that you have to
>*reboot* of you don't want to stay in demo-mode.
I can make a backup with turbobackup.no problems.
>PowerMonger appears to be one of the best simulation games in its
>kind. Don't hesitate ! It's cheap as well (at the current FF/US$
>exchange rate for SOFTWARE, it would be around 30$).
it should work also on turboborads but after a short time of playing
my Amiga gurus.dont know why.
>--Francois
>--
>*- Francois Rouaix // We are all prisoners here, *
>*- rou...@inria.inria.fr \X/ of our own device *
>*- SYSOP of Sgt. Flam's Lonely Amigas Club. (33) (1) 39-55-84-59 (Videotex) *
>Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are my own, not those of my employer.
Thorsten
Colas Nahaboo
writes:
> Well, PowerMonger hit the shelves yesterday in France.
> So I spent a good amount of last night playing it ;-)
Same for me! (What? already 3 in the morning! :-))
First: This game is AMAZING... be prepared to spend much more
time than populous, however, you don't see time passing while playing, there
is always something going on.
There don't seem to be any disk access during game, apart for saving games.
(But since I have 3Megs on my 500, It may use this memory as a ram disk)
Did somebody run it on a 512K machine, and if so, are there disk accesses
during game?
Some (totally minor) "bad" points:
- landscape get often a bit too high on the screen when zooming in mountains
- seeing things on global map is more difficult than in populous
> - copy protection: the game is protected BOTH with special
> disk format AND look-in-the-manual. The manual protection is
> *tedious*.
Pcopy backups it without problem (Fish disk #402) or turbobackup.
The manual protection is *nice*, because they tell you at what pages you must
look, so you don't have to browse the entire manual. I think being able to
backup my copy is a VERY GOOD THING, even if for that I must browse in the
manual, and this only at the start of the game. Be fair to Bullfrog, most
manual-protected software are more annoying than this one!
Besides, the floppy disk is well organized (by B.A.D.?), so loading is very
fast.
> - save game: the game nukes the system, to the point that if
> you have a second floppy drive, you HAVE to leave a disk in it to be
> able to save a game to df0:. This is mentionned in the docs, although
> quite unbelievable !
As long as it is documented, it's a "feature" :-) too bad it doesn't use it
for save games, though...
> - works in NTSC and PAL. The display is nicely centered on the
> screen.
works in NTSC with palboot on my PAL screen for full display.
> PowerMonger appears to be one of the best simulation games in its
> kind. Don't hesitate !
Should I say more?
> It's cheap as well
It is in fact one of the cheapest games for the amy!!!
PS: Just PLEASE stop bashing about non-use of OS resources. I think that by
making it fast loading, without disk access during playing, and with no
disk-based protection, Bullfrog is really trying to make life easier on the
player, so I feel it a bit unfair to criticize them, especially from people
who didn't try it!!! For instance, Marc Farren, instead of speaking of
overlays, etc, did you realize there is no disk accesses during game?
--
Colas Nahaboo, Bull Research France -- Koala Project -- GWM X11 Window Manager
Internet: co...@mirsa.inria.fr, Phone: (33) 93.65.77.70, Fax: (33) 93 65 77 66
INRIA Sophia, 2004, rte des Lucioles, B.P.109 - 06561 Valbonne Cedex, FRANCE
Peter Hjalmarsson
>Ok, let's start speaking of Playing PowerMonger...
Hey, it sounds great, but...
Is it HD installable?
Does it multitask?
I want to run this sucker during Christmas, but I want to run it from HD.
Peter Hjalmarsson
...{uunet|rutgers|pyramid}cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmswe!hjalmar
P A Dale
>> Generally, how much does the game gronk the floppy disk?
>
>I was 20 rows of chairs back -- no idea. We watched the game via FAUG's
>projection TV, and listened to the presenter over microphones. This is
>a _big_ users group.
Let me put your fears aside on the disk crunching. It does grind during
saving and loading but during gametime you have no worries at all.
Everything is quiet an wonderful :-) The good thing is you can backup
with a commercial copier and the manual copy protection isn't going
to interrupt things (Awesome screws my diskdrive :-(, Powermonger
doesn't :-) I think the starting animation is not too hot. Good
backdrops but lousy animation. Musics o.k. though.
As for the game, it promises a hell of a lot. I've played the first few
islands and enjoyed it tremendously. Check out catapults when you invent
them ! Don't go crazy on a village with one of these or there won't be
much left (2 swords on agression only :-) The cannons make one huge
bang when they go off. Kent didn't mention the sound volume of on map
activity depends on the zoom factor. If you watch up close things are
much louder (useful when you're out hunting sheep in winter and there's
a blizzard :-)
I found the manual adequate but not very helpful. There is an included
note mentioning, not only data disks, but a book on the hidden depths
of Powermonger. The manual describes the icon's function but doesn't tell
you how to use them (if you get what I mean :-). Some errors in labelling
occur on the overview display in the manual.
Some of the higher level design doesn't seem tremendous. The way you
must island hop with no continuity is hard to justify (you do get a few
extra men but have to leave your cannons behind (blub) :-(. It is
understandable in terms of scale. You could quickly have unmanageable
armies. Still, a minor gripe.
Some icons are much too small, people without monitors will have
problems (a friend of mine does, I've seen it too and definition is a
problem). This is mainly on the overview map where some features are
a mere pixel (e.g. a workshop in a village is a yellow dot).
>
>> Thanks for the effort you put into the review.
>
>I enjoyed doing it.
I enjoyed reading it and I've got the Game! Hope your letter gets
to the Pole in time.
>
>>Keith Hanlan kei...@bnr.ca Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada 613-765-4645
>
>Kent, the man from xanth.
><xant...@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xant...@well.sf.ca.us>
Enquiries welcome :-)
Paul Dale
pyp...@uk.ac.bath or to get me when I'm working :-)
ccs...@uk.ac.bath
Mike Farren
>PS: Just PLEASE stop bashing about non-use of OS resources. I think that by
>making it fast loading, without disk access during playing, and with no
>disk-based protection, Bullfrog is really trying to make life easier on the
>player, so I feel it a bit unfair to criticize them, especially from people
>who didn't try it!!! For instance, Marc Farren, instead of speaking of
>overlays, etc, did you realize there is no disk accesses during game?
That's Mike, not Marc :-)
So what? There's also no multitasking, and no hard drive. I enjoy a good
game as much as anyone, and will likely buy this one (I really liked Populous),
but that doesn't change the fact that it's just sloppy. No disk accesses?
What the hell difference do disk accesses make, if you can limit them to
the times when there's going to be a break in the game action anyway? I
presume that there are things like setup screens, option screens, and the
like, just like in Populous - so what do you lose by having those loaded
only when needed, since they are going to cause a break in the action
anyway? And with the extra memory you've just gotten as a gift, you can
give me back my system, which is worth a few seconds delay any time, as
far as I'm concerned.
Hell, at the very least they could check to see if the system's already
up, and run with overlays if they need to, and otherwise take over everything.
Even DPaint gives you the option of overlays or not. But no - Bullfrog has
to decide FOR me what's right and proper. Not to mention the fact that
they're going to be sitting there, letting most of MY memory go to waste,
idling away its time, and probably getting into trouble :-)
--
Mike Farren far...@well.sf.ca.us
Levin F Magruder
came out on 8088s, didn't it?
If only available on amiga, perhaps the discussion of what a great
game this is should be moved/copied to rec.games.misc, so all those
people with misc. computers will know what they are "miscing."
Andy Hartman - AmigaMan
ordered it yesterday and they said they would have it to me by Christmas.
I'm really looking forward to it. Cost: 31.95 for the game and 4.00 for
shipping.
BTW, no flames/discussions about the reliability of Computability please.
AMH
* Andy Hartman | I'd deny half of this crap anyway!| "Somedays, you just
* Indiana University | amha...@silver.ucs.indiana.edu | can't get rid of a
* // Amiga Man | AMHA...@rose.ucs.indiana.edu | bomb!"
* \X/ At Large! | or just "Hey putz!" | - Batman (original)
Moriland
Powermonger will be available for other platforms in the near future
if it isn't already so. Populous can even been found on the Sega Genesis
(which does a good job of it despite the no save feature. I believe it uses a
form of password entry) so I haven't any doubts that Powermonger won't be
far behind on the other machines...
SIMEARTH is out for the Mac and IBMs!!! I got to play it at a friends house
and all I can say is I WANT MY AMIGA VERSION! Cool. Totally Cool.
SimCity on the IBM also has two new graphics disks I wouldn't mind seeing on
the Amiga. Same game, just allows you to have different look to it. Ever want
to build a city on the moon?
-Moriland
--
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
"As if things weren't bad enough already...."| Founder of: "Young Evil
Please excuse my ramblings as they come from | Mutants For A Better Tommorow.
a diseased mind. -Moriland | hast...@vela.acs.oakland.edu
Colas Nahaboo
How do you cope with the 12 carrier pigeons limitation? I find this the only
dubious point of the game, since it is easy to send by mistake 3 ou 4 pigeons
to a commander (forgot that the 2nd commander is selected, then change your
attitude... a pigeon takes off). Populous didn't have anything irreversible,
so you could battle fiercely for hours... PowerMonger seems more
"irreversible" (new towns do not appear)
Of course this may be only a first false impression, the game seems so rich...
Michel Buffa
> co...@avahi.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) writes:
> >PS: Just PLEASE stop bashing about non-use of OS resources. I think that by
> >making it fast loading, without disk access during playing, and with no
> >disk-based protection, Bullfrog is really trying to make life easier on the
> >player, so I feel it a bit unfair to criticize them, especially from people
> >who didn't try it!!! For instance, Marc Farren, instead of speaking of
> >overlays, etc, did you realize there is no disk accesses during game?
>
> That's Mike, not Marc :-)
>
> So what? There's also no multitasking, and no hard drive.
Hard drive compatibility would have been great, but multitasking makes only
bad games when animation speed is essential.
I enjoy a good
> game as much as anyone, and will likely buy this one (I really liked Populous),
> but that doesn't change the fact that it's just sloppy. No disk accesses?
> What the hell difference do disk accesses make, if you can limit them to
> the times when there's going to be a break in the game action anyway? I
> presume that there are things like setup screens, option screens, and the
> like, just like in Populous - so what do you lose by having those loaded
> only when needed, since they are going to cause a break in the action
> anyway? And with the extra memory you've just gotten as a gift, you can
> give me back my system, which is worth a few seconds delay any time, as
> far as I'm concerned.
True.
> Hell, at the very least they could check to see if the system's already
> up, and run with overlays if they need to, and otherwise take over everything.
> Even DPaint gives you the option of overlays or not. But no - Bullfrog has
> to decide FOR me what's right and proper. Not to mention the fact that
> they're going to be sitting there, letting most of MY memory go to waste,
> idling away its time, and probably getting into trouble :-)
>
> --
> Mike Farren far...@well.sf.ca.us
You compare Powermonger and Dpaint. Are you mad ??? I haven't got 5 megs of
memory, and I don't want disk access only because one crazy programmer wrote
his game so that people with a lot of memory won't have any disk access.
Powermonger is nice in the fact that it didn't make any disk acess once the
games is started. Between a lot of disk access (overlays) and multitasking
(which I really don't care on my "normal" amiga) and people with a lot of
memory happy, and no disk acess for everybody (more fun to play a game without
disk access) and some Mike Farren's unhappy on the net, my choice is evident.
And don't forget that in the world thare are 5/6 of Amiga 500 with 512k,
single drive.
HEY MIKE ! What games did you write so that you can give such "good" advices ?
Did you write better games than Populous and Powermonger ? Using only the Rom
code ? Well, why don't you write your own version of Powermonger, with
multitasking capabilities, overlays everywhere, HD installability, full
compatibility with every computer on the earth, better animation, better
graphics... Why aren't you on the cover of a magazine ?
I'm really fed-up with all these people who talk about programming techniques
and never wrote a GOOD game. Mike, I tried once one of your game in a shop,
and I'm sorry but it was terrible. The animation was slow, slow... Ans so long
to load with a single drive... I can not even remeber the name of this game.
Tell us what good games you wrote. We'll make a vote, and if it seems for
everybody that they are good games, then we will listen to you.
Bullfrog wrote Populous, wrote Powermonger, Flood. They are all good games. Do
you think they never thought about writing the game only using the Rom code,
multitask, and so on... They are good programmers, they are not Dumb people.
They certainly tried this before and discovered that making a good scrolling
with the Scrollraster function is impossible, that multitasking games that use
a lot of computing power are too slow on Amiga without accelerator cards.
You know mike, in 10k, you can put a lot of nice sound effects. I prefer
programmers who give me good sound effects (like in Powermonger) than
programmers who write a bad multitasking OS friendly game with poor sound
effects.
Tell me ONE good arcade game that multitask on the amiga.
And don't forget, I want to know the games you wrote.
--
------------------------------------------
Michel Buffa: Projet Robotvis, INRIA, France
Internet: bu...@sardaigne.inria.fr
Surface Mail: Michel BUFFA, INRIA - Sophia Antipolis,
2004, route des Lucioles, 06565 Valbonne Cedex -- FRANCE
Voice phone: (33) 93.65.78.39, Fax: (33) 93 65 77 65
------------------------------------------
Francois Rouaix
>
>How do you cope with the 12 carrier pigeons limitation? I find this the only
>dubious point of the game
Well, another dubious point is that you have to send a pigeon to tell
a captain to kill a sheep... I thought that the captain has some
initiative after all.
BTW, did someone find out the criterions for joining new captains ? It
happened to me only once or twice, and I didn't understand why.
Colas Nahaboo
oops... Sorry!
> So what? There's also no multitasking, and no hard drive.
Let me try another explanation for nuking the OS. I am new to the amiga world,
but multitasking on the amiga with many processes accessing the drives seems
to me an error-prone situation... By doing this I often get corrupted I/O
which I dont get by doing things sequentially. (*)
No, I'm not saying that AmigaDos is at fault, it may be one of the 10 resident
drivers/utilities I use which is at fault, but this stresses my point: If you
want PowerMonger to multitask, it is because you are a power user, and thus
are using tons of little taks whose interaction may lead to problems, making
you say "PM doesn't works", but the problem may be in your super-hyper-duper
screen saver...
So they perhaps want to avoid having bad reputation because of other people's
fault... Or they have discovered a bug in the OS preventing safe multitasking
for their purposes.
(*) As an example: Seems to me that using two concurrent processes to read
MSDOS disks via MSH yields you corrupted buffer I/Os, but I'm not sure
ma...@vger.nsu.edu
> In article <22...@well.sf.ca.us>, far...@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) writes:
>> co...@avahi.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) writes:
>
>
> You compare Powermonger and Dpaint. Are you mad ??? I haven't got 5 megs of
> memory, and I don't want disk access only because one crazy programmer wrote
> his game so that people with a lot of memory won't have any disk access.
Here, take this, its a tissue. Wipe the tears from your eyes. Maybe
Santa will be good to you this year and get you a memory upgrade.
>
> Powermonger is nice in the fact that it didn't make any disk acess once the
> games is started. Between a lot of disk access (overlays) and multitasking
> (which I really don't care on my "normal" amiga) and people with a lot of
You don't care about multitasking? I wonder why you bought a Amiga then.
Personally I detest programs that shut down the multitasking system when it
is not necessary. There *are* programs (games) that *require* the dumping
of the Amiga operating system for speed etc., however most games that I
have seen do nothing all that special. It appears that most game writers
don't want to learn the Amiga environment; and opt for the 'easy'.
> memory happy, and no disk acess for everybody (more fun to play a game without
> disk access) and some Mike Farren's unhappy on the net, my choice is evident.
> And don't forget that in the world thare are 5/6 of Amiga 500 with 512k,
> single drive.
For those people who think I was wrong about the seperating the Amiga line.
I offer you this gentleman for your review. He bought his amiga to play
games, he doesn't appear to want (need?) AmigaDOS 2.0, as it might require
more memory. Lets get Commodore to rename the A500 to Nintendo Plus
before it is too late! :-)
>
> HEY MIKE ! What games did you write so that you can give such "good" advices ?
Whoa! Are you saying that Mike is not entitled to an opinion? From what
platform do you spout your stuff from. Too me, you sound like a frustrated
ex-Commodore 64 owner.
> Did you write better games than Populous and Powermonger ? Using only the Rom
> code ? Well, why don't you write your own version of Powermonger, with
> multitasking capabilities, overlays everywhere, HD installability, full
> compatibility with every computer on the earth, better animation, better
> graphics... Why aren't you on the cover of a magazine ?
Please...
>
> I'm really fed-up with all these people who talk about programming techniques
> and never wrote a GOOD game. Mike, I tried once one of your game in a shop,
> and I'm sorry but it was terrible. The animation was slow, slow... Ans so long
> to load with a single drive... I can not even remeber the name of this game.
I think you can get your memory loss problem solved by seeing a doctor.
It seems strange that you can remember an author and not a title of a
program.
I am fed up with people who don't want to push the manufactures to do what
ought to be done, just because it does not effect them. I am fed up with
the memory-whiners. I can't possibly believe that you said you tried one
of Mike's games and found it to be lousy. What programs have you ever
written for public consumption!?
My friend, you speak from a un-informed viewpoint. I have written
several PC (text) games for the BBS market, and text oriented game
programming for the commercial market is no piece of cake. I
strongly suggest that you write a program and support it.
>
> Tell us what good games you wrote. We'll make a vote, and if it seems for
> everybody that they are good games, then we will listen to you.
Rude.. very rude.
>
> Bullfrog wrote Populous, wrote Powermonger, Flood. They are all good games. Do
> you think they never thought about writing the game only using the Rom code,
> multitask, and so on... They are good programmers, they are not Dumb people.
> They certainly tried this before and discovered that making a good scrolling
> with the Scrollraster function is impossible, that multitasking games that use
> a lot of computing power are too slow on Amiga without accelerator cards.
> You know mike, in 10k, you can put a lot of nice sound effects. I prefer
> programmers who give me good sound effects (like in Powermonger) than
> programmers who write a bad multitasking OS friendly game with poor sound
> effects.
Lets name this the "Nintendo mentality". Note this paragraph and allow
it to sink in. This type of thinking will be the un-doing of the Amiga.
>
> Tell me ONE good arcade game that multitask on the amiga.
>
Perahps if you define good. I happen to like MindWalker.
> And don't forget, I want to know the games you wrote.
> --
> ------------------------------------------
> Michel Buffa: Projet Robotvis, INRIA, France
>
> Internet: bu...@sardaigne.inria.fr
> Surface Mail: Michel BUFFA, INRIA - Sophia Antipolis,
> 2004, route des Lucioles, 06565 Valbonne Cedex -- FRANCE
> Voice phone: (33) 93.65.78.39, Fax: (33) 93 65 77 65
> ------------------------------------------
-mark=
+--------+ ==================================================
| \/ | Mark D. Manes "Mr. AmigaVision"
| /\ \/ | ma...@vger.nsu.edu
| / | (804) 683-2532 "Make up your own mind! - AMIGA"
+--------+ ==================================================
ma...@vger.nsu.edu
> In article <22...@well.sf.ca.us>, far...@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) writes:
>> That's Mike, not Marc :-)
>
> oops... Sorry!
>
>> So what? There's also no multitasking, and no hard drive.
>
> Let me try another explanation for nuking the OS. I am new to the amiga world,
> but multitasking on the amiga with many processes accessing the drives seems
> to me an error-prone situation... By doing this I often get corrupted I/O
> which I dont get by doing things sequentially. (*)
Really? Corrupted I/O? Funny I have been using Amiga's since 1985 and
have had only one occurance under 1.1 that resulted in a disk corrupt
requestor.
Can you give us an example where this happens and with what programs?
>
> No, I'm not saying that AmigaDos is at fault, it may be one of the 10 resident
> drivers/utilities I use which is at fault, but this stresses my point: If you
> want PowerMonger to multitask, it is because you are a power user, and thus
> are using tons of little taks whose interaction may lead to problems, making
> you say "PM doesn't works", but the problem may be in your super-hyper-duper
> screen saver...
All true here. However that does not mean throw the baby out with the
bath water. I am always cautious about any program that attempts to modify
the way AmigaDOS operates (read my rantings on ARP). However no one is
causing (forcing?) you to use utilities that 'play' with Intuition to
make it do something it was not designed to do.
I run with a near vanilla Amiga and have had next to zero problems
multitasking. I would never encourage anyone to not write a program
that does not multitask.
>
> So they perhaps want to avoid having bad reputation because of other people's
> fault... Or they have discovered a bug in the OS preventing safe multitasking
> for their purposes.
No, they are probably thinking it would be easier for them to write the
code if they ignore coding standards and the Amiga operating system. It
has nothing to do with support.
I doubt that most game writers would be familiar enough with the Amiga
Operating System to know a bug or not. However that is just an
opinion.
>
> (*) As an example: Seems to me that using two concurrent processes to read
> MSDOS disks via MSH yields you corrupted buffer I/Os, but I'm not sure
>
MSH is PD. CrossDOS does not have this problem.
> --
> Colas Nahaboo, Bull Research France -- Koala Project -- GWM X11 Window Manager
> Internet: co...@mirsa.inria.fr, Phone: (33) 93.65.77.70, Fax: (33) 93 65 77 66
> INRIA Sophia, 2004, rte des Lucioles, B.P.109 - 06561 Valbonne Cedex, FRANCE
-mark=
Dan Barrett
>Tell me ONE good arcade game that multitask on the amiga.
Mindwalker.
Prospector in the Mazes of Xor.
BallyIII.
Of course, your definition of "good" may be different from mine. For me,
an arcade game is "good" if it is fun and addicting.
Another thing: there is a difference between ignoring the OS and
nuking it. I sometimes don't care if a game takes over the machine. But I
HATE games that force me to COLD BOOT my Amiga. Yes, cold boot. The idiot
programmers trash the Kickstart.
Dan
//////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
| Dan Barrett, Department of Computer Science Johns Hopkins University |
| INTERNET: bar...@cs.jhu.edu | |
| COMPUSERVE: >internet:bar...@cs.jhu.edu | UUCP: bar...@jhunix.UUCP |
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////////////////////
Pete Ashdown
>Is powermonger available on other PCs, or only amiga? Populous
>came out on 8088s, didn't it?
Populous came out for the Amiga/ST first. I'd imagine that Powermonger will
be out sooner or later for the PC, but only if you have a super-duper 33mhz
386 with VGA and SoundBlaster!
>If only available on amiga, perhaps the discussion of what a great
>game this is should be moved/copied to rec.games.misc, so all those
>people with misc. computers will know what they are "miscing."
Why? Just read c.s.a.g to see what you are missing.
--
"While you are here, your wives and girlfriends are dating handsome American
movie and TV stars. Stars like Tom Selleck, Bruce Willis, and Bart Simpson."
-- Baghdad Betty
Pete Ashdown pashdown%jav...@dsd.es.com ...dsd.es.com!javelin!pashdown
Chris The Bartman Seaman
< far...@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) writes:
< > co...@avahi.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) writes:
< > >PS: Just PLEASE stop bashing about non-use of OS resources. I think that by
< > >making it fast loading, without disk access during playing, and with no
< >
< > So what? There's also no multitasking, and no hard drive.
<
< Hard drive compatibility would have been great, but multitasking makes only
< bad games when animation speed is essential.
This is a valid point. There are cases where animation speed can be
impaired by multitasking. There is, however, an alternative to forcing
me to reboot after the game ends. Why not simply return control of my
Amiga to me?
< > but that doesn't change the fact that it's just sloppy. No disk accesses?
< > What the hell difference do disk accesses make, if you can limit them to
< > the times when there's going to be a break in the game action anyway? I
< > presume that there are things like setup screens, option screens, and the
< > like, just like in Populous - so what do you lose by having those loaded
< > only when needed, since they are going to cause a break in the action
< > anyway? And with the extra memory you've just gotten as a gift, you can
< > give me back my system, which is worth a few seconds delay any time, as
< > far as I'm concerned.
<
< True.
I see that you agree with Mike here. This is good.
< > Hell, at the very least they could check to see if the system's already
< > up, and run with overlays if they need to, and otherwise take over everything.
< > Even DPaint gives you the option of overlays or not. But no - Bullfrog has
< > to decide FOR me what's right and proper. Not to mention the fact that
< > they're going to be sitting there, letting most of MY memory go to waste,
< > idling away its time, and probably getting into trouble :-)
<
< You compare Powermonger and Dpaint. Are you mad ??? I haven't got 5 megs of
< memory, and I don't want disk access only because one crazy programmer wrote
< his game so that people with a lot of memory won't have any disk access.
But above you agreed that disk access is alright, if it is limited to
'breaks in the action'. What is it you are really trying to say?
< Powermonger is nice in the fact that it didn't make any disk acess once the
< games is started. Between a lot of disk access (overlays) and multitasking
< (which I really don't care on my "normal" amiga) and people with a lot of
< memory happy, and no disk acess for everybody (more fun to play a game without
< disk access) and some Mike Farren's unhappy on the net, my choice is evident.
You are free to make your choices, but so am I. I often choose not to
purchase a game because it does not fully support my system, such
as the 68000-bound (albeit popular) Immortal.
< And don't forget that in the world thare are 5/6 of Amiga 500 with 512k,
< single drive.
While this may be true, it is also true that those who can afford to
expand their Amigas are also more likely to be able to afford more
software (including games).
< HEY MIKE ! What games did you write so that you can give such "good" advices ?
< Did you write better games than Populous and Powermonger ? [ ... ]
< Why aren't you on the cover of a magazine ?
Now the gratuitous insults begin. Whether Mike, or anyone else for
that matter, has written a 'better version of Populous' is irrelevent.
Mike has pointed out some valid problems with the arguments used by
those who would 'trash the OS'. You have not addressed any of them.
< Tell us what good games you wrote. We'll make a vote, and if it seems for
< everybody that they are good games, then we will listen to you.
I would rather listen to Mike's intelligent remarks than to rantings
such as yours, hands down.
< Bullfrog wrote Populous, wrote Powermonger, Flood. They are all good games. Do
< you think they never thought about writing the game only using the Rom code,
< multitask, and so on... They are good programmers, they are not Dumb people.
< They certainly tried this before and discovered that making a good scrolling
< with the Scrollraster function is impossible, that multitasking games that use
< a lot of computing power are too slow on Amiga without accelerator cards.
I suspect that Bullfrog has never given any thought to multitasking,
expanded systems, overlays, or any other sensible extensions to their
products which just might expand their market. You should also remember
that there are more games out there than blast-the-hideous-beast style
of shoot-em-up. Many games DO multitask, DO give resources back, CAN BE
installed on a hard disk, AND can still run quite well on 68000-based
Amigas.
< You know mike, in 10k, you can put a lot of nice sound effects. I prefer
< programmers who give me good sound effects (like in Powermonger) than
< programmers who write a bad multitasking OS friendly game with poor sound
< effects.
Why do you always speak in such extreme terms? Is it impossible, in
your mind, to have a game with good sound effects, which also happens
to multitask (or at least give system resources back when it is
finished)?
< And don't forget, I want to know the games you wrote.
Why? Do you wish to compare all the wonderful games you have written
with those written by Mike? If so, then 'put up or shut up'.
Regards,
Chris
--
Chris (Insert phrase here) Seaman | ___-/^\-___ qatul batlh.
cse...@gateway.sequent.com <or> | //__--\O/--__\\ qatul Huch.
...!uunet!sequent!cseaman | // \\ qatul roj.
The Home of the Killer Smiley | `\ /'
sullivan - segall
>> >making it fast loading, without disk access during playing, and with no
>> >disk-based protection, Bullfrog is really trying to make life easier on the
>> >player, so I feel it a bit unfair to criticize them, especially from people
>> >who didn't try it!!! For instance, Marc Farren, instead of speaking of
>> >overlays, etc, did you realize there is no disk accesses during game?
>
>and never wrote a GOOD game. Mike, I tried once one of your game in a shop,
>and I'm sorry but it was terrible. The animation was slow, slow... Ans so long
>to load with a single drive... I can not even remeber the name of this game.
>
>Tell us what good games you wrote. We'll make a vote, and if it seems for
>everybody that they are good games, then we will listen to you.
>
describe what qualifies IMHO as a good game .vs. a bad one because I haven't
written any games. I don't *want* to write games. I want to *play* them
but many manufacturer's of games I would otherwise find acceptable, are
destroying their games by not supporting my hardware.
I'm glad that you like the game. Unfortunately I don't, so the game is
*bad* for me. And the reason I don't like it isn't because of graphics,
or sound, or playability, or price, but because I can't use it in my free
time. My free time is between compiles, too bad Populous and PowerMonger
are both incapable of running in my environment.
-kls
David Tiberio
I think that SimCity gets too boring after the city is developed (meybe
20 years or so). Is SimEarth really better? What features are added? I am
interested in the game! :)
ma...@vger.nsu.edu
>> In article <94...@mirsa.inria.fr>, bu...@kish.inria.fr (Michel Buffa) writes:
>> > In article <22...@well.sf.ca.us>, far...@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) writes:
>> >> co...@avahi.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) writes:
>
> deleted]
Ok,
I will try one more time Michel.
Would you agree that:
1. If it is not necessary, then the Amiga OS should not be tossed?
2. Game manufacturers should cater to the biggest audience possible?
Unfortunately you seem to be a product from the "me" generation. If
it doesn't affect me then it surely doesn't matter. Unlike you, I bought
my Amiga to do work and on the side play games. Yes, I *am* a power
Amiga user, certainly no crime in that.
When I spend a great deal of money on a system that has some of the
greatest features of any microcomputer, it is unbelievable to me that
a game manufacturer would toss the best features so that they can
do their "specail programming" techniques, without exhausting
the possiblities under the given programming environment.
I will grant that there _are_ situations where the graphics and game
play that can be achieved by going directly to hardware is greater than
what you can get using the standard Amiga operating system. HOWEVER,
in my opinion, MOST games that I have seen certainly have not pushed
the Amiga to its limit. Most of the time it appears that the programmers
opted to NOT learn the methods for good high speed programming under
AmigaDOS, but went for their own custom (easier?) method. Why?
Mostly for copy protection reasons, with the excuse that they are
making the most of the hardware.
As far as the Amiga 500 is concerned; I think it is a great machine
and certainly capable of wonderful things. You need to have another
look under the hood and realize that there is a reason for the
rabidness of the Amiga community. You go ahead and play on your
all-to-expensive SPARC station, but when the world passes you by
don't cry, don't even sniffle.
In 8 short years we have seen computer technology jump from trivial
to quite powerful. Wonder what will happen in the next two years?
If programmers adhered to certain standards all of the community
prospers not just the few who don't give a damn about anyone but
themselves.
I don't have a Amiga 500 and I don't just have 512k. I refuse to
purchase a piece of software that hoses my operating system unless
it is something very very significant. Like Toaster and yes,
Powermunger.
Now clear the tears from your eyes. It really is ok. You can
still play games on your A500. I promise not to take it away
from you. After all, we need to have someone to flame besides
MB.
>
> ------------------------------------------
> Michel Buffa: Projet Robotvis, INRIA, France
^^^^^^
Isn't this the country that would not let us fly our bombers over their
skies when we wanted to give a big box of chocolates to Kadaffi?
Pete Ashdown
>Tell me ONE good arcade game that multitask on the amiga.
Mindwalker. For that matter, all of Bill Williams games are very OS friendly
and work on all platforms. He also programs exclusively in assembly language.
I haven't seen any European hack-slash programmers animate HAM like what was
done in Pioneer Plague.
Also keep in mind that Mindwalker was one of the first games out for the Amiga.
I believe it came out around Kickstart 1.0. Because Bill Williams followed
guidelines, the only fix that has been needed for it was fixhunk and this is
forgiveable because there weren't any specs on fast-ram at the time.
> Internet: bu...@sardaigne.inria.fr
Chris The Bartman Seaman
< pash...@javelin.es.com (Pete Ashdown) writes:
< > bu...@kish.inria.fr (Michel Buffa) writes:
< >
< > >Tell me ONE good arcade game that multitask on the amiga.
< >
< > Mindwalker. For that matter, all of Bill Williams games are very
< > OS friendly and work on all platforms. He also programs exclusively
< > in assembly language.
<
< played it for years to check that it is still a good arcade game, but
< if I remember, the game was very good. But it's an exception.
It is no exception. It proves that a game can be:
A) System/OS friendly
B) Multitasking
C) Technically superior
D) Fun
The fact that it (Mindwalker) has accomplished these things proves that
anyone else who is willing to invest the time can do the same, and
anyone who says otherwise is either misinformed, lazy, or greedy (or
some combination of the three).
John H. Lee
>> That's Mike, not Marc :-)
>
>oops... Sorry!
>
>> So what? There's also no multitasking, and no hard drive.
>
>Let me try another explanation for nuking the OS. I am new to the amiga world,
>but multitasking on the amiga with many processes accessing the drives seems
>to me an error-prone situation... By doing this I often get corrupted I/O
>which I dont get by doing things sequentially. (*)
>
>No, I'm not saying that AmigaDos is at fault, it may be one of the 10 resident >drivers/utilities I use which is at fault, but this stresses my point: If you
>want PowerMonger to multitask, it is because you are a power user, and thus
>are using tons of little taks whose interaction may lead to problems, making
>you say "PM doesn't works", but the problem may be in your super-hyper-duper
>screen saver...
>
>So they perhaps want to avoid having bad reputation because of other people's
>fault... Or they have discovered a bug in the OS preventing safe multitasking
>for their purposes.
>
>(*) As an example: Seems to me that using two concurrent processes to read
>MSDOS disks via MSH yields you corrupted buffer I/Os, but I'm not sure
Wrong. Two concurrent processes accessing the disk will not corrupt buffers,
even if they use MSH. Before you make another blatently false statement
like that, you should learn about the system first and make sure you know
what you're talking about. You may be using an older version of MSH with
a bug in it. I do often exactly what you describe with no problems. If a
utility or other system addition made by the user does something wrong, it
is the user's problem and *not* a justification for taking over the system.
Just because a person wants his game to multitask doesn't make him/her a
poweruser. Plenty of other games with high performance graphics multitask
fine. There is no OS bug to hinder the sort of things a game needs to do.
Sorry, you've seemed to have earned my wrath today. I have seen too many
games take over the system for no good reason and too many people defending
it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The DiskDoctor threatens the crew! Next time on AmigaDos: The Next Generation.
John Lee Internet: john...@cs.cornell.edu
The above opinions of those of the user, and not of this machine.
Baird McIntosh
pash...@javelin.es.com (Pete Ashdown) said:
>bu...@kish.inria.fr (Michel Buffa) writes:
>
>>Tell me ONE good arcade game that multitask on the amiga.
>
>Mindwalker. For that matter, all of Bill Williams games are very OS friendly
>and work on all platforms. He also programs exclusively in assembly language.
>done in Pioneer Plague.
Does Pioneer Plague multitask? I'm truly curious...
| Baird McIntosh | c50...@umcvmb.missouri.edu <-or-> c50...@umcvmb.bitnet |
| COOL DRIVING TECHNIQUE #11: No turn signals! That's right... NO SIGNALS! |
| Wanna left turn? Right? Lane change? Parallel park? Screw the signals!|
Database Work
taskingin invole ved without have ing background tasks . IU r realize that many of you
havbe e faster systems, but t fpo or the majority of the people the ,. the extra time
making it compatible with AmigaS DOPS S is not worth it. I have fdou ound that people
on the next t generally have better ss ystems than the average joe-blow with an
Amiga. DO you think the though snads of users in Europe are complainin gh g that
games don't go on a HD they don't have, or multi-tasking theyt ddon't worre y
about because they only have 512k, . I would very much like to see games
wi tjhayt ha at multi-task , but I don't have a HD. Think of the small percentage of
users with thi e rec sources avai ilable to do what you want games to do, and see
if you feel the extra effor t t is justified.
Ryan NEwman
Michel Buffa
> > In article <22...@well.sf.ca.us>, far...@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) writes:
> >> co...@avahi.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) writes:
> >
> > [Relatively good comments about OS Resource Usage from Mike..deleted]
> >
> > You compare Powermonger and Dpaint. Are you mad ??? I haven't got 5 megs of
> > memory, and I don't want disk access only because one crazy programmer wrote
> > his game so that people with a lot of memory won't have any disk access.
>
> Here, take this, its a tissue. Wipe the tears from your eyes. Maybe
> Santa will be good to you this year and get you a memory upgrade.
Good argumentation isn't it ? I haven't got money to spend for this. I just
want to have fun, and people like you think a game should be written like a
word processor. I hate computer freaks like you, people who masturbate
themselves in front of the screen of their sacred machine. Have you got
commodore shares ?
> > Powermonger is nice in the fact that it didn't make any disk acess once the
> > games is started. Between a lot of disk access (overlays) and multitasking
> > (which I really don't care on my "normal" amiga) and people with a lot of
>
> You don't care about multitasking? I wonder why you bought a Amiga then.
Playing games. Huh !!! This is comp.sys.amiga.games. not
comp.sys.amiga.multitasking.
> Personally I detest programs that shut down the multitasking system when it
> is not necessary. There *are* programs (games) that *require* the dumping
> of the Amiga operating system for speed etc., however most games that I
> have seen do nothing all that special.
You haven't tried many games apparently. Try X-OUT, R-TYPE, BATTLE SQUADRON,
SILKWORM, TURRICAN, LOTUS ESPRIT TURBO, and you'll understand quite easily why
these games don't multitask.
It appears that most game writers
> don't want to learn the Amiga environment; and opt for the 'easy'.
Easy to write Powermonger ? Come on...
> > memory happy, and no disk acess for everybody (more fun to play a game without
> > disk access) and some Mike Farren's unhappy on the net, my choice is evident.
> > And don't forget that in the world thare are 5/6 of Amiga 500 with 512k,
> > single drive.
>
> For those people who think I was wrong about the seperating the Amiga line.
> I offer you this gentleman for your review. He bought his amiga to play
> games, he doesn't appear to want (need?) AmigaDOS 2.0, as it might require
> more memory. Lets get Commodore to rename the A500 to Nintendo Plus
> before it is too late! :-)
And so ? Why do you think most people buy an A 500 ? For playing games. In
europe the A500 is considered as the best micro computer for playing games. If
I really wanted to work, I wouldn't have a simple Amiga. I'm doing a Phd in
computer engineering, and spend all the day with my sparc station, compiling C
programs. Do you really thing that once at home, I'll make programs, type in a
report using a word processor ?????? NO ! I put a game in, push CTRL-A-A, and
just have fun. What's wrong with that. We are talking about games, don't
forget that.
> > HEY MIKE ! What games did you write so that you can give such "good" advices ?
>
> Whoa! Are you saying that Mike is not entitled to an opinion? From what
> platform do you spout your stuff from. Too me, you sound like a frustrated
> ex-Commodore 64 owner.
No. I had an Apple II.
> > Did you write better games than Populous and Powermonger ? Using only the Rom
> > code ? Well, why don't you write your own version of Powermonger, with
> > multitasking capabilities, overlays everywhere, HD installability, full
> > compatibility with every computer on the earth, better animation, better
> > graphics... Why aren't you on the cover of a magazine ?
>
> Please...
Why please ? Mike farren always says the same thing on the net, when we try to
talk about games he doesn't say "what a great game, I had hundreds hours of
fun", he says "the game doesn't multitask, don't buy it". I'm just fed up !!!
> > I'm really fed-up with all these people who talk about programming techniques
> > and never wrote a GOOD game. Mike, I tried once one of your game in a shop,
> > and I'm sorry but it was terrible. The animation was slow, slow... Ans so long
> > to load with a single drive... I can not even remeber the name of this game.
>
> I think you can get your memory loss problem solved by seeing a doctor.
> It seems strange that you can remember an author and not a title of a
> program.
Yes, because the game wasn't noticeable at all and Mike is.
> I am fed up with people who don't want to push the manufactures to do what
> ought to be done, just because it does not effect them. I am fed up with
> the memory-whiners. I can't possibly believe that you said you tried one
> of Mike's games and found it to be lousy. What programs have you ever
> written for public consumption!?
You don't understand. Buy a magazine about games, and read it. They never talk
about multitasking, HD installability... I really don't care of Commodore. If
tomorrow there is a better computer for games, I'll buy it. I'm not defending
my computer like it was my wife. I havent' got any commodore shares. I
expected people in this newsgroup to talk about good games, but the newsgroup
is polluted by people like you. I posted a lot of messages with reviews of
Turrican, cadaver, Flood. This is what should be in comp.sys.amiga.GAMES.
>
> My friend, you speak from a un-informed viewpoint. I have written
> several PC (text) games for the BBS market, and text oriented game
> programming for the commercial market is no piece of cake. I
> strongly suggest that you write a program and support it.
Why ? I just talked about Mike Farren's games. I don't care if he writes bad
games, but if he wrote good games, I just want to know which ones. I then will
go to a shop, try them, and if they are good I'll certainly buy some. But I
hate people who say "this game is not well written" when they talk about a
very good game, and talk like they could have done the same thing much better.
> > Tell us what good games you wrote. We'll make a vote, and if it seems for
> > everybody that they are good games, then we will listen to you.
>
> Rude.. very rude.
Rude, but normal. If Mike says simple thing like "Wow, in the level five of
X-out this is the way to beat the big monster:..." I'll listen to him. But
instead he says "Don't buy this game, the autghors are lazy programmers, it's
not well written, I know very well the system...."
> > Bullfrog wrote Populous, wrote Powermonger, Flood. They are all good games. Do
> > you think they never thought about writing the game only using the Rom code,
> > multitask, and so on... They are good programmers, they are not Dumb people.
> > They certainly tried this before and discovered that making a good scrolling
> > with the Scrollraster function is impossible, that multitasking games that use
> > a lot of computing power are too slow on Amiga without accelerator cards.
> > You know mike, in 10k, you can put a lot of nice sound effects. I prefer
> > programmers who give me good sound effects (like in Powermonger) than
> > programmers who write a bad multitasking OS friendly game with poor sound
> > effects.
>
> Lets name this the "Nintendo mentality". Note this paragraph and allow
> it to sink in. This type of thinking will be the un-doing of the Amiga.
Forget the Amiga. The amiga 500 market is very much the same as the nintendo
market. The only difference is that the variety of games is much bigger on the
amiga. As Kent sayd in the very first review of Powermonger, 5/6 of the amiga
market for games is made of A500 owners with only 512k. Should they be killed,
or maybe should they all buy a memory expansion for you to be happy ?
> > Tell me ONE good arcade game that multitask on the amiga.
>
> Perahps if you define good. I happen to like MindWalker.
One point for you. Tell me another one !
Ron Birk
are VERY BAD!!! They decided this time to only have manual-protection, but
WHY using a special disk-format?? And not regular Amiga-Dos files, and WHY
block the whole computer. At least they could have an option for A500 users
with only 512K, and another for use who have som ebetter machines.
Ans the worst thing is ALL DISK ROUTINES. They STINKS! No disk-access
during the game one said, but why not turn off the disk-motor after
reading the last file? Then the drive is working through all the game,
which will be some hours!! Then if you have two drives you MUST have a
disk in DF1: to get no trouble, but the game CAN'T handle data/save-disk
in DF1:. You must swap disks!! Very BAD!
Etc etc etc, If it wasn't for the game, I would already give the game
to my dog..
Ron Birk
DXB...@psuvm.psu.edu
>but that doesn't change the fact that it's just sloppy. No disk accesses?
>What the hell difference do disk accesses make, if you can limit them to
A very big difference!!! I hate endless disk access; I hate ANY disk access!
I'm sure lots of people feel the same way. The most playable games usually have
little or no disk access. I don't really care if such a game is system-nasty,
either. On the other hand, massive 3-disk games MUST be hard disk installable,
or take advantage of my 3megs of RAM, to be playable. Being system-friendly is
a real advantage here.
By the way, of all the people I know personally here at school with Amigas,
only ONE person does not have a hard drive. (He has 1meg & 2 floppies). In
fact, the vast majority have 2000s with 40MB hard drives & 3MB of RAM. Not all
the world is running 512K Amigas with 1 floppy. And yes, we all play lots of
games!
-- Dan Babcock
Pete Ashdown
>> I haven't seen any European hack-slash programmers animate HAM like what was
>> done in Pioneer Plague.
>Pionner plague is not a good game. Very repetitive action, not so good
>animation compared to all the new 60Hz animated games.
I didn't say it was a good game, I said it was a technically excellent game.
The HAM animation RIPS in comparison to any other HAM animation out there.
How about "Knights of the Crystallion"? Another Bill Williams game. This
one is a better game, and the HAM animation is even more incredible. Plus,
unless Bill suddenly moved to the UK and started using Seka, I'd imagine
that "Crystallion" is friendly to all platforms and multitasks. So Michel,
whats the excuse now? You asked for examples and I gave them to you.
Michel Buffa
> bu...@kish.inria.fr (Michel Buffa) writes:
>
> >Tell me ONE good arcade game that multitask on the amiga.
>
> Mindwalker. For that matter, all of Bill Williams games are very OS friendly
> and work on all platforms. He also programs exclusively in assembly
language.
I think you are right. I've got to try Mindwalker again, as I haven't played
it for years to check that it is still a good arcade game, but if I remember,
the game was very good. But it's an exception.
> I haven't seen any European hack-slash programmers animate HAM like what was
> done in Pioneer Plague.
Pionner plague is not a good game. Very repetitive action, not so good
animation compared to all the new 60Hz animated games.
--
Nigel Tzeng
^In article <361.27...@vger.nsu.edu>, ma...@vger.nsu.edu writes:
^> In article <94...@mirsa.inria.fr>, bu...@kish.inria.fr (Michel Buffa) writes:
^> > In article <22...@well.sf.ca.us>, far...@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) writes:
^> >> co...@avahi.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) writes:
^> >
[memory comments deleted - like buy some more...]
^
^Good argumentation isn't it ? I haven't got money to spend for this. I just
^want to have fun, and people like you think a game should be written like a
^word processor. I hate computer freaks like you, people who masturbate
^themselves in front of the screen of their sacred machine. Have you got
^commodore shares ?
Ohhh...what a witty comeback. An interesting comment. I don't know what games
cost over in france but they average about $40+ over here. Don't buy four or
five games and you should be able to afford a A501 card. This makes sense even
for just game playing as a lot of games are going to the 1 meg required mode.
After all there is just so much you can cram into 512K.
^
[multitasking and other comments deleted for brevity]
^
^> > HEY MIKE ! What games did you write so that you can give such "good" advices ?
^>
^> Whoa! Are you saying that Mike is not entitled to an opinion? From what
^> platform do you spout your stuff from. Too me, you sound like a frustrated
^> ex-Commodore 64 owner.
^
^No. I had an Apple II.
Doesn't matter if you write programs or not in order to have an opinion. For
instance I don't build cars but I have minimum specifications for the car that
I will buy (0-60 in under 9 sec is a min ;-). If it doesn't meet my specs I
won't buy it. I will also tell people who are looking for the same thing not
to buy it.
^
^> > Did you write better games than Populous and Powermonger ? Using only the Rom
^> > code ? Well, why don't you write your own version of Powermonger, with
^> > multitasking capabilities, overlays everywhere, HD installability, full
^> > compatibility with every computer on the earth, better animation, better
^> > graphics... Why aren't you on the cover of a magazine ?
^>
^> Please...
^
^Why please ? Mike farren always says the same thing on the net, when we try to
^talk about games he doesn't say "what a great game, I had hundreds hours of
^fun", he says "the game doesn't multitask, don't buy it". I'm just fed up !!!
^
You know...I'm curious...just how many games have you written? Not fair to
ask? Okay how about how many games do you own? I own at least 15 (memory is
going...at least two shelves full) which at say $25 apiece means I've dumped
$375 bucks into the entertainment industry (more...most were bought for about
$45 each...like Harpoon, Battle of Britain and so on).
And I agree with Mike. I expect high quality work in my games. This means no
kludges. This means that it better work on my system with no hassles.
[more whining over whether or not Mike Farren writes decent games deleted]
^
^You don't understand. Buy a magazine about games, and read it. They never talk
^about multitasking, HD installability... I really don't care of Commodore. If
^tomorrow there is a better computer for games, I'll buy it. I'm not defending
^my computer like it was my wife. I havent' got any commodore shares. I
^expected people in this newsgroup to talk about good games, but the newsgroup
^is polluted by people like you. I posted a lot of messages with reviews of
^Turrican, cadaver, Flood. This is what should be in comp.sys.amiga.GAMES.
Bullshit. I want to know which games will work on my machine without killing
everything else on it. I want to know which game will grind my drives for no
good reason. If it won't run I don't care if it is the hottest game since Pong
because it WON'T RUN.
^>
^> My friend, you speak from a un-informed viewpoint. I have written
^> several PC (text) games for the BBS market, and text oriented game
^> programming for the commercial market is no piece of cake. I
^> strongly suggest that you write a program and support it.
^
^Why ? I just talked about Mike Farren's games. I don't care if he writes bad
^games, but if he wrote good games, I just want to know which ones. I then will
^go to a shop, try them, and if they are good I'll certainly buy some. But I
^hate people who say "this game is not well written" when they talk about a
^very good game, and talk like they could have done the same thing much better.
^
^> > Tell us what good games you wrote. We'll make a vote, and if it seems for
^> > everybody that they are good games, then we will listen to you.
^>
^> Rude.. very rude.
^
^Rude, but normal. If Mike says simple thing like "Wow, in the level five of
At the risk of sounding rude myself...but I've noticed that German (and other
European) posters tend to be more polite than...say...French ones. I certainly
can't recall another post by anyone that claims I masturbate in front of my
machine ;-). Veeerry kinky but not quite my style.
^X-out this is the way to beat the big monster:..." I'll listen to him. But
^instead he says "Don't buy this game, the autghors are lazy programmers, it's
^not well written, I know very well the system...."
^
[more deleted]
^>
^> Lets name this the "Nintendo mentality". Note this paragraph and allow
^> it to sink in. This type of thinking will be the un-doing of the Amiga.
^
^Forget the Amiga. The amiga 500 market is very much the same as the nintendo
^market. The only difference is that the variety of games is much bigger on the
^amiga. As Kent sayd in the very first review of Powermonger, 5/6 of the amiga
^market for games is made of A500 owners with only 512k. Should they be killed,
^or maybe should they all buy a memory expansion for you to be happy ?
Okay, lets be blunt. I find it hard to believe that anyone who can afford
dozens of games can't come up with the cash for a A501 card. Even at European
prices. After all this lets you run more games...one might think that you
really can't afford games at all if you're really that cash tight.
Besides, given that since I have more money to spend on computer gear and
probably more to spend on games than such a poor person then the majority of
the purchased games will be bought by me. Therefore they should listen to me
when I say this or that is important in a game...and I bloodly well say that
HD installation and no copy protection is what I want. Multi-tasking is nice
but I generally take hour long breaks from programming so the reboot time isn't
so bad for me (compared to the break time...I gotta run to the loo sometime).
It is a big plus since downloading still takes a lot of time and Tetris can get
real dull after while ;-).
^
^> > Tell me ONE good arcade game that multitask on the amiga.
^>
^> Perahps if you define good. I happen to like MindWalker.
^
^One point for you. Tell me another one !
^
^------------------------------------------
^Michel Buffa: Projet Robotvis, INRIA, France
^
NT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// | Nigel Tzeng - STX Inc - NASA/GSFC COBE Project
\X/ | xr...@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov
|
Amiga | Standard Disclaimer Applies: The opinions expressed are my own.
David Pochron
>In article <1990Dec1...@avahi.inria.fr> co...@avahi.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) writes:
>>
>>(*) As an example: Seems to me that using two concurrent processes to read
>>MSDOS disks via MSH yields you corrupted buffer I/Os, but I'm not sure
>
>Wrong. Two concurrent processes accessing the disk will not corrupt buffers,
>even if they use MSH. Before you make another blatently false statement
>like that, you should learn about the system first and make sure you know
>what you're talking about. You may be using an older version of MSH with
>a bug in it. I do often exactly what you describe with no problems. If a
Ahhh, I think you may be wrong - there is a bug in MSH somewhere, because I
have SuperPlan and the LATEST version of MSH (the one w/o the requesters
popping up all the time) and it crashes when used with MSH - saving a file
seems to work, but as soon as I try to read it back, the system crashes.
This does not happen when saving to Amiga disks. I haven't tried "mixing and
matching" AmigaDOS and MSH filesystems and device drivers yet, and it may show
specifically where the problem lies in MSH.
I am following up this thread to c.s.a., as it doesn't belong here anymore.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David M. Pochron | from Rescue Rangers, _A Fly in the Ointment_
poc...@garfield.cs.wisc.edu| Gadget to Dale: "Keep the hands off the body!"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Moriland
granted, there are aspects of the game that are poorly done in terms of
lack of multitasking, HD Installability, etc, but the basic thing I think
MOST folks want to know is: How good is the GAME?
To me, being able to multitask, HD installability, etc, if supported by the
game, are like added extra bonuses that increase the appeal. I don't really
cry about it if they aren't there. (Unless, as in some Seirra On-Line games,
those features are really needed!) The bottom line is still the fact that if
the game isn't any fun, I won't really care if it multitasks and it can be
put on my HD cause I'll probably trash it and use the disk from something
useful like ray tracings.
I think this debate on whether or not Bullfrog was right/wrong for not adding
those features probably belongs in another newsgroup. This is just my
opinion, of course, and so doesn't really mean anything. ;-)
So, to get to the bottom line: How's the game?
Personally, I think it's great. Lack of certain features aside, the
game itself is amazingly deep and fun to play. The fact that you can look
at each individual and they will have a different name and status all their
own simply floors me. The combination of strategy and action set it in a
class by itself. IMHO, it should be high on every Amiga owner's Christmas
Wishlist. Go to a store and try it. I think most of you will like it despite
the lack of HD support or multitasking.
Let's give the bickering a rest and get back to talking about the games
themselves. Bickering isn't any fun, gaming is. Just my own humble and twisted
views....
Colas Nahaboo
stupidity of some the postings, but I wanted to react to some.
ma...@vger.nsu.edu writes:
> You can still play games on your A500
I have 3Megs on My A500, Michel Buffa has an A2000. If I don't have a hard
drive, it is deliberate: I can't stand the NOISE!. I didn't buy a machine
for its super sound just to be annoyed by an horrible noise you cannot boot
without. In fact I even bought a HD, and returned it after a day.
(and guess why I have a A500: because of the 2000 fan)
Here at work we refuse to buy non-deportable CPUs or disks, why should I do at
home?
DXB...@psuvm.psu.edu writes:
> By the way, of all the people I know personally here at school with Amigas,
> only ONE person does not have a hard drive.
If commodore only sold A2000, they would be out of business. People you don't
know who only have A500 are the people allowing you to buy better machines
from commodore.
And now, I can't resist including what is I think the winning entry:
ma...@vger.nsu.edu writes:
> Isn't this the country that would not let us fly our bombers over their
> skies when we wanted to give a big box of chocolates to Kadaffi?
...
BTW: These flames had good side-effects: The confirmation of MSH bugs, and
Ron Birk's very informative posting about no checksum in powermonger routines.
PS: and I won't cry because some game doesn't make use of my 3Megs memory.
Granted, Wings uses it, but I'd rather have it load from floppies if this
could speed up the (now jerky) animation.
(and before somebody tells me, yes, I will buy a more powerful CPU as soon as
enough games support them)
--
Colas Nahaboo
Larry Phillips
>I don't know why everyone is sweating about this whole thing so much. I mean
>granted, there are aspects of the game that are poorly done in terms of
>lack of multitasking, HD Installability, etc, but the basic thing I think
>MOST folks want to know is: How good is the GAME?
>
>
>So, to get to the bottom line: How's the game?
A friend of mine loves onions.He likes them cooked, raw, steamed, fried, and in
soups, salads, casseroles, and on hamburgers. He like some kinds of onions more
than others. When raw, he especially likes the large, sweet, spanish onions.
When cooked, he likes the yellow-skinned, medium sized onions.
Unfortunately, onions don't like him. If he eats a hamburger with onions on it,
he knows he will suffer some gastointestinal discomfort a few hours later. If
he eats a raw, spanish onion sandwich, he will suffer a lot more.
In the interest of furthering rational discussion, I asked him if he buys
onions a lot. He said he didn't, because he knew they would cause him grief,
and said grief was in a way that was very noticable to him, and thus, very
important to him. I replied that yes, I understood that, but still, how did the
onions taste? I mean, if he liked them, he should buy them, regardless of the
effect they had on him. He said that no, he felt that the discomfort was more
than he cared to put up with, and that no matter how good the onion tasted, it
was just not a sufficient reason for him to eat it. I pressed on, insisting
that the taste of the onion was the important factor, not whether it made him
ill, or how it looked, or whatever other criteria he might apply.
Funny... I couldn't convince him. I wonder why?
If you like a game, and it doesn't have other characteristics that annoy you
enough to matter, by all means buy it, for that is your right. For me, I will
not buy it if it has enough annoying characteristics, and that is my right. I
won't bore you with the details of what I consider to be too much to bear in a
game, but I will say that if it first does not meet my minimum criteria, I will
never find out what the game plays like, and frankly, it would not matter if I
did. If a company wants me (and many others with the same feelings), to look at
the game, and to buy it, they must first get rid of its annoyances. Otherwise,
I will let those who don't care, support the product. They will get what they
deserve, which is what they will put up with in the interest of playing the
game.
-larry
--
The best way to accelerate an MsDos machine is at 32 ft/sec/sec.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| // Larry Phillips |
| \X/ lphi...@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca -or- uunet!van-bc!lpami!lphillips |
| COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322 -or- 76703...@compuserve.com |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
Reinalda M.
for serious purposes most of the time. When I'm rendering a picture
in Sculpt THEN I want to multitask and startup another program. When I'm
writing a text in VizaWrite THEN I want to be able to startup DPAINT
to draw some pictures and load them in Vizawrite. When I'm downloading
a program with my modem I want to startup 3 CLI's and CLImate and fool around
on my hardisk. For serious applications it's VERY important that the
program uses the OS the way it should. If a program like Videoscape 3D
would shut down the Workbench without being able to get it back I wouldn't
use the program anymore just because of that.
(now comes..)
But when I'm playing STUNT CAR RACING I bloody don't care if the system
can still multitask or not !!!! Come on, games are entertainment. I love
games, couldn't live without them. And YES, I did have a C64, so what? Are
we going to piss on the 64 now that the better computers are here ? The
C64 was one hell of a machine for it's time and very capable of doing both
serious applications AND games.
Game programmers can do what they want as long as it results in mega-sound
super fast graphics and die-hard action !!!
In real life I'm a software/hardware man developing PC peripheral's etc.
I bought my Amiga because I love graphics, sound, multitasking and games.
That's only four things of the big list and there still no PC which can
offer me the same thing. (as long as they hold on to their stupid MS-DOS
it'll probably never happen)
Phew, that was it,
Adult comments are welcome but don't nag about what your 486 machine with
windows 3.xx is capable of.
See ya,
Martijn Reinalda.
***********************************************************************
** Keyboard error or no keyboard present. Press any key to continue. **
** IBM. **
***********************************************************************
** E-mail : mar...@DNLUNX.UUCP **
***********************************************************************
Andy Hartman - AmigaMan
interested in this game but don't really want to hear people whine about the
OS being nuked (or not being nuked...).
I would like to keep comments about the game and kill all those about OS
complaints...
Thanks,
AMH
* Andy Hartman | I'd deny half of this crap anyway!| "Somedays, you just
* Indiana University | amha...@silver.ucs.indiana.edu | can't get rid of a
* // Amiga Man | AMHA...@rose.ucs.indiana.edu | bomb!"
* \X/ At Large! | or just "Hey putz!" | - Batman (original)
J|rgen Holmberg
>In article <1990Dec1...@avahi.inria.fr> co...@avahi.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) writes:
>
>Hey, it sounds great, but...
>
>Is it HD installable?
>Does it multitask?
>
>I want to run this sucker during Christmas, but I want to run it from HD.
>
Dream on :-) Maybe there are some enterprising hackers out there who have made
an HD version. ;-)
/Jorgen
--
*******************************************************************************
email dvl...@cs.umu.se - other ways to communicate are a waste of time.
Everything I say is always true, just apply it to the right reality.
"Credo, quia absurdum est."
Larry Phillips
>discomfort. Doing so would be silly in the extreme. It was a nice
>parable and all, but let me point out this simple fact:
>
>At the same time that your friend did not buy onions because of thier
>effect on him, he also did not go around complaining about how much he
>loved onions, but couldn't eat them.
Ahh, but that's just it. He does grumble about it, because he really does like
them.
>Too many people on here who are annoyed by certain aspects of
>Powermonger are spending too much time complaining about it. If you
>don't like the game for that reason, then fine, speak your peace and
>then don't buy it. Please don't drone on and on about it forever
>though.
Are you perhaps mistaking dialog for 'dronng on and on'?
> Some of us would like to know what the game is like. I finally
>broke down and decided not to look for help on here on the matter and
>went to the store and played it. Then I bought it. I have been playing
>most of the time that I haven't been on the net.
>
>Also let me say that Powermonger is software, not onions. Software
>with minor problems that for some folks prove unexcusable. Fine, don't
>buy it. The rest of us, those of us for whom onions have no negative
>effect on, will continue to enjoy it in your absence.
Yes, it's software, and it is indeed as valid for folks to post the negative
comments about it as it is for them to post positive comments about it. As a
case in point, let me mention the post that came through yesterday or today,
asking if Powermonger was HD installable, and if it multitasked. The poster
obviously missed the comments on Powermonger in the greater flurry of dialog
discussing whether the most important thing in a game was game play or other
factors. Since both these viewpoints constitute opinion only, they are valid
postings in their own right.
Kindly do the net the courtesy of allowing the expression of said pinions.
Moriland
>Is it HD installable?
>Does it multitask?
>
>I want to run this sucker during Christmas, but I want to run it from HD.
>
>...{uunet|rutgers|pyramid}cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmswe!hjalmar
Good Lord! We just got down arguing over the merits of whether or not
a game should multitask and is HD installable! A good couple hundred
messages we're devoted to the topic and it was Powermonger's lack of
these features that started the whole flame war to begin with! How you
could possibly have missed the searing messages flying back and forth
is amazing to me! One last time, and listen closely as not to miss it:
NO! Powermonger is NOT HD installable. It is NOT a multitasking game.
It DOES run on an accelerated Amiga! (Tested on an A3000 under 1.3.
Runs AMAZINGLY fast though!)
Now, can we get back to dicussing the finer points of the game instead
of bickering over whether or not it multitasks, etc?
Sheeeesh!
-Moriland
--
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
"As if things weren't bad enough already...."| Founder of: "Evil Young
Moriland
I agree. Your friend should not buy onions if they cause him
discomfort. Doing so would be silly in the extreme. It was a nice
parable and all, but let me point out this simple fact:
At the same time that your friend did not buy onions because of thier
effect on him, he also did not go around complaining about how much he
loved onions, but couldn't eat them.
Too many people on here who are annoyed by certain aspects of
Powermonger are spending too much time complaining about it. If you
don't like the game for that reason, then fine, speak your peace and
then don't buy it. Please don't drone on and on about it forever
though. Some of us would like to know what the game is like. I finally
broke down and decided not to look for help on here on the matter and
went to the store and played it. Then I bought it. I have been playing
most of the time that I haven't been on the net.
Also let me say that Powermonger is software, not onions. Software
with minor problems that for some folks prove unexcusable. Fine, don't
buy it. The rest of us, those of us for whom onions have no negative
effect on, will continue to enjoy it in your absence.
As always....
Marcus Dolengo
>In article <361.27...@vger.nsu.edu>, ma...@vger.nsu.edu writes:
>>In article <94...@mirsa.inria.fr>, bu...@kish.inria.fr (Michel Buffa) writes:
>>>In article <22...@well.sf.ca.us>, far...@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) writes:
>>>> co...@avahi.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) writes:
>>>
>>> [Relatively good comments about OS Resource Usage from Mike..deleted]
>>>
>>> You compare Powermonger and Dpaint. Are you mad ??? I haven't got 5 megs of
>>>memory, and I don't want disk access only because one crazy programmer wrote
>>>his game so that people with a lot of memory won't have any disk access.
>>
>> Here, take this, its a tissue. Wipe the tears from your eyes. Maybe
>> Santa will be good to you this year and get you a memory upgrade.
nice atitude. As if we didnt have enough problems with messy dos users sneering
at us with their 386 machines, now we are inferior because we dont have the $$
<yet> to upgrade, or we choose not to upgrade. great. Just what Amiga needs.
How can you compare Dpaint to powermonger in the 1st place? How can ANYONE?
they serve 2 different applications.
>Good argumentation isn't it ? I haven't got money to spend for this. I just
>want to have fun, and people like you think a game should be written like a
>word processor. I hate computer freaks like you, people who masturbate
>themselves in front of the screen of their sacred machine. Have you got
>commodore shares ?
>
>>> Powermonger is nice in the fact that it didn't make any disk acess once the
>>> games is started. Between a lot of disk access (overlays) and multitasking
>>> (which I really don't care on my "normal" amiga) and people with a lot of
>>
>>You don't care about multitasking? I wonder why you bought a Amiga then.
He doesnt care about multitasking, at least with games. Personally I, right now
do not care about multitasking games. Perhaps when I get more megs and a HD
for my 500P, then I will start caring. Until then....
>> Personally I detest programs that shut down the multitasking system when it
>> is not necessary. There *are* programs (games) that *require* the dumping
>> of the Amiga operating system for speed etc., however most games that I
>> have seen do nothing all that special.
>
>You haven't tried many games apparently. Try X-OUT, R-TYPE, BATTLE SQUADRON,
>SILKWORM, TURRICAN, LOTUS ESPRIT TURBO, and you'll understand quite easily why
>these games don't multitask.
>
>>>memory happy, and no disk acess for everybody (more fun to play a game
>>>without
>>>disk access) and some Mike Farren's unhappy on the net, my choice is
>>>evident.
>>> And don't forget that in the world thare are 5/6 of Amiga 500 with 512k,
>>> single drive.
>>
>> For those people who think I was wrong about the seperating the Amiga line.
>> I offer you this gentleman for your review. He bought his amiga to play
>> games, he doesn't appear to want (need?) AmigaDOS 2.0, as it might require
>> more memory. Lets get Commodore to rename the A500 to Nintendo Plus
>> before it is too late! :-)
at least theres a :-) there
>And so ? Why do you think most people buy an A 500 ? For playing games. In
>europe the A500 is considered as the best micro computer for playing games. If
>I really wanted to work, I wouldn't have a simple Amiga. I'm doing a Phd in
>computer engineering, and spend all the day with my sparc station, compiling C
>programs. Do you really thing that once at home, I'll make programs, type in a
>report using a word processor ?????? NO ! I put a game in, push CTRL-A-A, and
>just have fun. What's wrong with that. We are talking about games, don't
>forget that.
Most people I know are getting the amiga just because of its games, hence they
are getting 500's. Some people are getting 2000's because of games but for some
reason they want a bridge board for messy dos compatibility... etc. etc. ad
nauseum. The 500 is also a cheap computer, for $500-600 you can get a cheap
computer that connects to your tv. For people who want a computer but are on
a budget, the 500 is a great choice, even if all they are doing is WP. Most
college students here at columbia either own those bastardization Smith Corona
WP's or use their Mac +'s or SE's or even PS/2's or other messy dos computers
to write papers and play tetris or Risk. Im sure the typical home user would do
much of the same with a 500 <or a 2000 if they sprung for that much money>
>>>HEY MIKE ! What games did you write so that you can give such "good"
>>>advices ?
>> Whoa! Are you saying that Mike is not entitled to an opinion? From what
>> platform do you spout your stuff from. Too me, you sound like a frustrated
>> ex-Commodore 64 owner.
I'm interested in the games Mike farren wrote myself. Perhaps Mr. Buffa merely
wanted to compare Farrens games to others he has played. However this wasnt
called for.
And whats so bad about being an ex-64 user? i have a 128D <that hasnt been
touched in 3 weeks :-) >
>No. I had an Apple II.
>
>>> Did you write better games than Populous and Powermonger ? Using only the
>>>Rom
>>> code ? Well, why don't you write your own version of Powermonger, with
>>> multitasking capabilities, overlays everywhere, HD installability, full
>>> compatibility with every computer on the earth, better animation, better
>>> graphics... Why aren't you on the cover of a magazine ?
>>
>> Please...
>
>Why please ? Mike farren always says the same thing on the net, when we try to
>talk about games he doesn't say "what a great game, I had hundreds hours of
>fun", he says "the game doesn't multitask, don't buy it". I'm just fed up !!!
>
>
>>>I'm really fed-up with all these people who talk about programming technique
>>> and never wrote a GOOD game. Mike, I tried once one of your game in a shop,
>>> and I'm sorry but it was terrible. The animation was slow, slow... Ans so
>>>long
>>>to load with a single drive... I can not even remeber the name of this game.
>>
>> I think you can get your memory loss problem solved by seeing a doctor.
>> It seems strange that you can remember an author and not a title of a
>> program.
>
>Yes, because the game wasn't noticeable at all and Mike is.
>
>> I am fed up with people who don't want to push the manufactures to do what
>> ought to be done, just because it does not effect them. I am fed up with
>> the memory-whiners. I can't possibly believe that you said you tried one
>> of Mike's games and found it to be lousy. What programs have you ever
>> written for public consumption!?
here's my $.02. Right now, I could care less if a game multitasks. I dont mind
if a game isnt HD installable. If every game were, our HD's would be filled
with games and then we'd all need expensive 500 meg HD's :-). When I do get a
HD then I will care about games being HD installable but ill still boot them
off of floppies if they arent. I'll survive. I have yet to see a game that
multitasks so I cant say "Multitasking games suck/rule" but the games that
I have seen that dont multitask have generally been really good.
>> > Tell us what good games you wrote. We'll make a vote, and if it seems for
>> > everybody that they are good games, then we will listen to you.
>>
>> Rude.. very rude.
Agreed.
>Rude, but normal. If Mike says simple thing like "Wow, in the level five of
>X-out this is the way to beat the big monster:..." I'll listen to him. But
>instead he says "Don't buy this game, the autghors are lazy programmers, it's
>not well written, I know very well the system...."
also agreed, but lets not attack mike farren personally.
>
>>>Bullfrog wrote Populous, wrote Powermonger, Flood. They are all good games.
>>>Do
>>>you think they never thought about writing the game only using the Rom code,
>>>multitask, and so on... They are good programmers, they are not Dumb people.
>>>They certainly tried this before and discovered that making a good scrolling
>>>with the Scrollraster function is impossible, that multitasking games that
>>>use
>>>a lot of computing power are too slow on Amiga without accelerator cards.
>>>You know mike, in 10k, you can put a lot of nice sound effects. I prefer
>>>programmers who give me good sound effects (like in Powermonger) than
>>>programmers who write a bad multitasking OS friendly game with poor sound
>>>effects.
>>
>> Lets name this the "Nintendo mentality". Note this paragraph and allow
>> it to sink in. This type of thinking will be the un-doing of the Amiga.
Nintendo mentality is assuming the 500 is good only for playing games, and that
all games must be Mario-like or shoot em up, etc. instead of some of the games
Ive seen for the Amiga.
>Forget the Amiga. The amiga 500 market is very much the same as the nintendo
>market. The only difference is that the variety of games is much bigger on the
>amiga. As Kent sayd in the very first review of Powermonger, 5/6 of the amiga
>market for games is made of A500 owners with only 512k. Should they be killed,
>or maybe should they all buy a memory expansion for you to be happy ?
>
>>>Tell me ONE good arcade game that multitask on the amiga.
>>
>> Perahps if you define good. I happen to like MindWalker.
>
>One point for you. Tell me another one !
>
>------------------------------------------
>Michel Buffa: Projet Robotvis, INRIA, France
>
> Internet: bu...@sardaigne.inria.fr
>Surface Mail: Michel BUFFA, INRIA - Sophia Antipolis,
> 2004, route des Lucioles, 06565 Valbonne Cedex -- FRANCE
> Voice phone: (33) 93.65.78.39, Fax: (33) 93 65 77 65
>------------------------------------------
Now can we all either take this elsewhere since we've stopped talking about
games or tell me is Powermonger available now? and where? How much? etc.
back to the games.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
o o | This Space For Rent //
<< md...@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu >> | Amerikkka's Most Wanted \X/
/> <\ | I made up my own mind, now I want a Tshirt
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chi Omega Rho Fraternity. Because Co-Ed is better.
Mike Farren
>Hard drive compatibility would have been great, but multitasking makes only
>bad games when animation speed is essential.
I'm getting a bit tired of this, Buffa. What I've said, consistently, is
that the MAJORITY of cases do not require disabling multitasking to get full
speed. There might be some that do - but even those should NOT nuke the OS.
There's NO reason to do so - NONE. Period. Any game which requires a reboot
when it's finished is WRONG. Period.
>You compare Powermonger and Dpaint. Are you mad?i
Well, I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more, but I don't
think that's what you meant. The only reason I compared the two programs
was because DPaint, very sensibly, lets ME make the choice - disk accesses
or less memory usage. I like having choices.
>And don't forget that in the world thare are 5/6 of Amiga 500 with 512k,
>single drive.
Which means that there are 1/6 (or over 300,000 machines) which have more.
Trashing that number of machines is REALLY DUMB!
>HEY MIKE ! What games did you write so that you can give such "good" advices ?
>Did you write better games than Populous and Powermonger ? Using only the Rom
>code ?
You're starting to get VERY obnoxious, here. First - I've NEVER said that
you should use "only the ROM code". Use it when it's appropriate, don't
use it if it's not. Doesn't mean that you can get away with anything you
choose to do, though. Just because Bullfrog (who are Atari ST programmers,
by the way) chooses to treat the Amiga like an Atari doesn't make it right.
>I'm really fed-up with all these people who talk about programming techniques
>and never wrote a GOOD game. Mike, I tried once one of your game in a shop,
>and I'm sorry but it was terrible. The animation was slow, slow... Ans so long
>to load with a single drive... I can not even remeber the name of this game.
I suspect this is a falsehood. I do not have that many games on the market
for the Amiga, and all of them I've done live on one floppy, no more.
>Tell us what good games you wrote. We'll make a vote, and if it seems for
>everybody that they are good games, then we will listen to you.
I think you should listen to me because I make sense.
>Bullfrog wrote Populous, wrote Powermonger, Flood. They are all good games. Do
>you think they never thought about writing the game only using the Rom code,
>multitask, and so on... They are good programmers, they are not Dumb people.
No, they are Atari ST programmers - all of their games were done on the ST,
and ported to the Amiga. They do NOT think about any of those things, because
on the ST, you not only don't have to, you CAN'T.
>I prefer programmers who give me good sound effects (like in Powermonger)
>than programmers who write a bad multitasking OS friendly game with poor
>sound effects.
And I prefer people who do games with good sound effects AND multitasking-
friendly games.
>And don't forget, I want to know the games you wrote.
I'm going to do that - but not because I have anything to prove to you.
Let's start in 1973, when I first got involved in the video game industry.
I worked for RAMTEK and ICI, designing video arcade games. Were you even
born yet, Buffa?
When the video game industry went bust, around 1974, I went on to other
areas of the computer industry, including work on some nice computer
graphics hardware. I returned to games in 1978, when I began doing freelance
work for Automated Simulations, the company which later became Epyx.
For two years, I did ALL of their Apple ][ games - one of which, TEMPLE
OF APSHAI, stayed in the top ten list for a long, long time. Another
of the games I did, CRUSH, CRUMBLE, AND CHOMP, was Jerry Pournelle's
fave game for at least a year. (I know, that's faint praise, but what the
hell...). In all, I did about twenty games for AS (and Epyx, later).
I did some Atari 800 games, as well, with my favorite being GATEWAY TO APSHAI.
To the point here, GATEWAY was a dungeon exploration type game, with full
scrolling (60Hz!), 128 different levels, and over 80 different monsters
(each with their own distinctive behavior), armor, weapons, spells, etc.,
and which ran on a 16K Atari system. (Read that again - 16K. I don't even
want to HEAR any complaints about lack of memory :-).
After that, I did a couple of more games, but left the games industry to
do freelance work (not games, mostly). I've done five Amiga games, two of
which I am not allowed to discuss due to contract problems. The three
which I've done which I can discuss are:
QUINK - done for CBS Software, an educational game which, frankly, wasn't
too hot, both because it's old (the Amiga manuals did not yet exist),
and because it isn't very good - the requirement was to make it look
just like the IBM version (yuch).
CRYSTAL QUEST - a port of the Mac game. Fully animated (60Hz, eh?), with
up to 100 objects on-screen simultaneously. You don't get bad speed
degradation until more than 40 of 'em are running around. Compare this
with the Mac II version, which degrades around the same time, but has
a 68020 in it... This game also is hard disk mountable, fully
multitasking-friendly, and runs just fine on a 3000 system.
STORM ACROSS EUROPE - a port of the SSI strategy game, from the C64.
Again, fully multitasking (you can even iconify the damn thing and
get back all of your CHIP RAM), hard-drive installable, and, yes, it
uses the ROM code exclusively - but then, it's a strategy game which
doesn't need to have super speed.
--
Mike Farren far...@well.sf.ca.us
Mike Farren
>for the majority of the people the extra time making it compatible with
>AmigaDOS is not worth it.
The point is that it doesn't take much extra time, if you think about it.
It isn't very difficult to do at all - certainly less difficult than writing
all of your own routines to replace all of the AmigaDOS routines that you
use.
>Think of the small percentage of users with the resources avaiilable to do
>what you want games to do, and see if you feel the extra effort is justified.
Yes, it is. If, as Buffa suggests, 5/6 of all Amigas don't have the extras,
that means that 1/6 of them DO. That's 300,000 machines - a big market.
Besides, if you're going to take that tack, then the only machine anyone
should ever develop for is the original 1000, with 256K. After all, not
EVERYONE has those "extras"...
--
Mike Farren far...@well.sf.ca.us
Mike Farren
>Try X-OUT, R-TYPE, BATTLE SQUADRON, SILKWORM, TURRICAN, LOTUS ESPRIT TURBO,
>and you'll understand quite easily why these games don't multitask.
I've tried TURRICAN and LOTUS, and don't understand why they don't at all.
Perhaps it's time for a challenge round here: Buffa, explain to us all,
in correct technical terms, just why it is impossible for these games to
multitask (or at least, to leave the system intact while they run). I'd
really be interested to know, but, frankly, don't think you have the
technical expertise to even begin to make such a statement. Better yet,
grab a plane flight to the Bay Area when I talk about how to do all of this
at a BADGE meeting (coming soon, don't know exactly which one yet), and
I guarantee you'll get a chance to rebut my assertions. I'll even
provide a free meal or two if you do.
>Easy to write Powermonger ? Come on...
Not easy, but not Amiga either. Remember, Bullfrog is an Atari ST house.
>Why please ? Mike farren always says the same thing on the net, when we try to
>talk about games he doesn't say "what a great game, I had hundreds hours of
>fun", he says "the game doesn't multitask, don't buy it". I'm just fed up !!!
Bullshit. I've had a lot of good things to say about a lot of games. You
seem to be pretty selective in your reading, though.
--
Mike Farren far...@well.sf.ca.us
Mike Farren
>I hate endless disk access; I hate ANY disk access!
>I'm sure lots of people feel the same way. The most playable games usually have
>little or no disk access.
You weren't listening carefully. I don't like disk accesses in the middle of
a game, either, but if they're carefully designed so that they only occur
during otherwise "normal" breaks in the game, then it doesn't make that much
of a difference - the additional annoyance factor is minimal. Certainly,
disk accesses right in the middle of play are a pain, and shouldn't be there.
But disk accesses to load in the next level, or to load in the "control panel"
overlay, or the like, just don't make that much difference.
In the name of honesty, I must admit that Storm Across Europe has too many
disk accesses. In order to get it to fit into 512K, I had to do some strange
tweaking, including running it with overlays. The only time it's a real pain
is on a single-floppy system, but even there the disk accesses are at "normal"
points within the game, so it doesn't annoy nearly as much as it might. Still,
I offer no excuses - I done it wrong, and the only excuse I can offer is the
time constraints I was working under.
--
Mike Farren far...@well.sf.ca.us
Sleeping Beagle
> In real life I'm a software/hardware man developing PC peripheral's etc.
> I bought my Amiga because I love graphics, sound, multitasking and games.
> That's only four things of the big list and there still no PC which can
> offer me the same thing. (as long as they hold on to their stupid MS-DOS
> it'll probably never happen)
>
> Phew, that was it,
> Adult comments are welcome but don't nag about what your 486 machine with
> windows 3.xx is capable of.
>
Why not? I'll tell you about my 286 running Windows 3.xx...
Basically, it's a complete dog! I hate it. It's revolting. :-)
Seriously, I agree with what you have to say about multitasking games - I
like the few that do it for playing while doing something else, but for
the real games like Stunt Car Racer, I am quite happy if they take over.
Actually, what I really like is that on the Amiga 3000 (it's only a review
machine damn it!) Stunt Car Racer doesn't multi-task - it just has a faster
frame rate! Yeehar!
P.S. How far have people got in Stunt Car Racer? I am quite proud that I have
managed to get to Division 3 of the Super League...
--
Official Signature for Sleeping Beagle (aka Thomas Farmer)!
Mail : sbe...@kennels.actrix.gen.nz Thomas...@bbs.actrix.gen.nz
Disclaimers are for sick societies with too many lawyers.
Loren Rittle
>dw...@andrew.cmu.edu (Database Work) writes:
>
>>for the majority of the people the extra time making it compatible with
>>AmigaDOS is not worth it.
>
>The point is that it doesn't take much extra time, if you think about it.
>It isn't very difficult to do at all - certainly less difficult than writing
>all of your own routines to replace all of the AmigaDOS routines that you
>use.
Hey Mike,
I not only completely agree with you, I also think that you have
been too easy on some of these guys. It is far easier to use the
standard AmigaOS routines to read disks, harddrives, <insert your
favorite logical device here! (some of you kids out there, do you even
know what a logical device is? haha)>. I currently believe that most
of these OS breakers, write there own complex routines to do disk
reads and writes for one reason and *one* reason alone: To
hopefully `protect' and `hide' their game code from others view
(ya, it almost works, ha). Then these people have the gall to tell
me, an Amiga programmer, that it's easier to write your routines than
to learn how the AmigaOS does things. Total Bull Shit!
I will never buy another game from the company that makes Full Metal
Planet, as I had a talk with one of their company reps at a
convention. He tried to convince me why their games only
run from floppy, use a non-standard formats, etc. He didn't have clue,
and he tried to explain why it is easier to code around AmigaOS.
I laughed, stated I would not buy another game from them until
it was HD installable (as *their* IBM versions do for Christ's Sake!) and
clamly walked away.
Loren J. Rittle
--
``In short, this is the absolute coolest computer device ever invented!''
-Tom Denbo speaking about The VideoToaster by NewTek
``Think about NewTek's VideoToaster! Now think about the Amiga!''
Loren J. Rittle lrg...@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
Michel Buffa
> >Try X-OUT, R-TYPE, BATTLE SQUADRON, SILKWORM, TURRICAN, LOTUS ESPRIT TURBO,
> >and you'll understand quite easily why these games don't multitask.
>
> I've tried TURRICAN and LOTUS, and don't understand why they don't at all.
> Perhaps it's time for a challenge round here: Buffa, explain to us all,
> in correct technical terms, just why it is impossible for these games to
> multitask (or at least, to leave the system intact while they run). I'd
> really be interested to know, but, frankly, don't think you have the
> technical expertise to even begin to make such a statement. Better yet,
> grab a plane flight to the Bay Area when I talk about how to do all of this
> at a BADGE meeting (coming soon, don't know exactly which one yet), and
> I guarantee you'll get a chance to rebut my assertions. I'll even
> provide a free meal or two if you do.
Ok, I'm not a professional programmer, but wrote some little demos, studied
the code of Menace when it was published, read programmer's interviews, and
what I can say is that most of the arcade games I love have 60Hz animation.
It's often written in the advertising pages, so it exists !!!!!!! Why 60 Hz ?
because the main loop is executed at each VBL interrupt, while the video beam
comes from the bottom of the screen to the top in order to draw a new screen.
The main adventage is that the joystick will be read each 1/60 seconds, the
screen will be redrawn at a given and regular period -> instantaneous
reactions all the time, not depending on the number of objects on screen, on
the other tasks running in the background. Of course, the game should be
designed so that all the animation can be done in 1/60 second (or in 1/30 if
it is done one time out of two). I wrote some demos (like the demos done by
the european crackers, but I'm not one of them), and this technique works very
well. And my demos, didn't nuke the system, restored all the memory... In some
games, like in menace, only the scrolling the joystick reading was done in the
VBL interrupt, the Bobs animnation was done in a background loop, but the
programmer Dave Jones explained that it was only an error because he didn't
mastered the amiga very well at this time. The bitmap brothers who did ST
ports until now (And their ST ports were excellent games: XENON 1 and 2,
SPEEDBALL), promised a 60 HZ animation for SPEEDBALL 2, their first game with
a pecific amiga version.
Michel Buffa
> DXB...@psuvm.psu.edu writes:
>
> >I hate endless disk access; I hate ANY disk access!
> >I'm sure lots of people feel the same way. The most playable games usually have
> >little or no disk access.
I agree totally. Saint dragon has no game break as it loads continuously while
the game is running. Programmers of the sales curves designed a dynamic loader
so that the game never stops. Silkworm IV will use that dynamic loading
system, and it will certainly be a great game. Of course it won't multitask,
but who cares ?
> You weren't listening carefully. I don't like disk accesses in the middle of
> a game, either, but if they're carefully designed so that they only occur
> during otherwise "normal" breaks in the game, then it doesn't make that much
> of a difference - the additional annoyance factor is minimal. Certainly,
> disk accesses right in the middle of play are a pain, and shouldn't be there.
> But disk accesses to load in the next level, or to load in the "control panel"
> overlay, or the like, just don't make that much difference.
Yes, it does. I prefer no disk access than just a little.
>
> In the name of honesty, I must admit that Storm Across Europe has too many
> disk accesses. In order to get it to fit into 512K, I had to do some strange
> tweaking, including running it with overlays. The only time it's a real pain
> is on a single-floppy system, but even there the disk accesses are at "normal"
> points within the game, so it doesn't annoy nearly as much as it might. Still,
> I offer no excuses - I done it wrong, and the only excuse I can offer is the
> time constraints I was working under.
I excuse you as I didn't buy your game, but think a little about the poor guy
with a single A500 with one drive !!!!! He'd certainly kill you for such
painful disk access.
> --
> Mike Farren far...@well.sf.ca.us
--
Pete Ashdown
>In article <22...@well.sf.ca.us>, far...@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) writes:
>> DXB...@psuvm.psu.edu writes:
>>
>> >I hate endless disk access; I hate ANY disk access!
>> >I'm sure lots of people feel the same way. The most playable games usually have
>> >little or no disk access.
>I agree totally. Saint dragon has no game break as it loads continuously while
>the game is running. Programmers of the sales curves designed a dynamic loader
>so that the game never stops. Silkworm IV will use that dynamic loading
>system, and it will certainly be a great game. Of course it won't multitask,
>but who cares ?
The Salescurve loader on their Ninja game (the name escapes me) SUCKS ROCKS.
The gameplay starts to seriously lag when that loader kicks in and grinds the
drive. WHY did they design their own background loader when the OS already
provides for it? Its EASY to use, and surprisingly enough, uses the EXEC's
multitasking capability to do it smoothly. Salescurve reinvented the wheel,
but unfortunately, they made it square.
Dan Barrett
>> >I hate endless disk access; I hate ANY disk access!
In article <94...@mirsa.inria.fr> bu...@mirsa.inria.fr writes:
>I agree totally.
Disk access would not even be an issue for many people if the game
were installable on hard drives.
Dan
sy...@insider.zer.sub.org
> Well, another dubious point is that you have to send a pigeon to tell
> a captain to kill a sheep... I thought that the captain has some
> initiative after all.
Hey, come on, when you beat that captain, you probably blew out all of his
brain... so how can you expect anything like that from him ?
> BTW, did someone find out the criterions for joining new captains ? It
> happened to me only once or twice, and I didn't understand why.
Just get enough people, set your people to passive, and attack the town.
Then the captain will probably come out and will try tobeat you. If he
doesn't succeed, and you don't kill him, he will then become a member of
your team... (I had three captains to join me on one level... looked really
nice...)
---
SysOp @ INSIDER -- TT - Atari's answer to the ZX81 !
David Tiberio
Isn't it possible to use the OS with patches instead of killing it? Isn't
it possible to make libraries that can be used instead of the OS?
In other words, is it possible to make those incredible games without
using all of their 'cheat' methods?
:)
SysOp
> In article <22...@well.sf.ca.us>, far...@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) writes:
> > So what? There's also no multitasking, and no hard drive.
>
> Let me try another explanation for nuking the OS. I am new to the amiga world,
> but multitasking on the amiga with many processes accessing the drives seems
> to me an error-prone situation... By doing this I often get corrupted I/O
> which I dont get by doing things sequentially. (*)
>
> No, I'm not saying that AmigaDos is at fault, it may be one of the 10 resident
> drivers/utilities I use which is at fault, but this stresses my point: If you
Why don't you try to figure out which nifty-keen program is corrupting your
system? If I try something out and it guru's my machine, I stop using it and
try to find something else.
AmigaDOS is designed to multitask. It almost sounds like you're trying to
find reasons to not multitask. Let's assume for the moment that the programs
that *I* am running seem to be reliable. (Trust me. :-) Now, let me
multitask!
> want PowerMonger to multitask, it is because you are a power user, and thus
Power user? All I want to do is play a game while my modem auto-dials some
local BBS's. Sounds like something even a "normal" user might like to try.
How about formatting disks? That takes more than a minute. If you had
a stack of blank floppies, you could format, and pause the game occasionally
and check on their progress. Power user? If you save time, well, I guess
you could say that that is power. :-) I might not need to multitask all
of the time. It's nice to just "do" it, almost without thinking. (Contrast
this with working on a clone..... well, "shelling out" is usually good enough
for me, but that's another story....)
> are using tons of little taks whose interaction may lead to problems, making
> you say "PM doesn't works", but the problem may be in your super-hyper-duper
> screen saver...
It is true that it'll be harder to find problems, but it is possible that some
things can been seen in beta-testing. For instance, in the erratta sheet in
Harpoon, they mention a screen that doesn't work with Dmouse (I think it was).
I had problems with it in using my mouse program as well (clockdj). I'm not
sure where the problem really lies, but it is easy to work around that
problem. (It seems to be the "click to front" feature confuses that window
in the game, but I can't say for sure.)
Anyway, more to the point, if you have no problem, then you won't have to
worry about it. If you do have a problem, boot off of the game's floppy,
which won't have your drivers or programs. Right? Then the problem can
be isolated to either your system or theirs.
>
> So they perhaps want to avoid having bad reputation because of other people's
> fault... Or they have discovered a bug in the OS preventing safe multitasking
> for their purposes.
You really WANT this not to work, don't you? ;-) :-)
I can see a couple of valid excuses, such as needing every scrap of CPU
time (but then the program can simply "pause" multitasking, and when the
game is "paused", it can reenable multitasking). Or, as someone else has
mentioned, you could have need for every bit of space for 512K. I don't
blame anyone for not wanting to support 2 versions, but I would suggest
writing programs in a modular way such that it would be easier to link 2
programs. In many cases, I agree with those that have said that overlays
could be used in areas which force things to pause anyway, such as to gather
input inbetween plays. Some great arcade-type games already spend a great
deal of time between levels accessing the disk drive (I assume to read in
graphics and sound). I know, I know, you need your custom dos format to
read those levels in faster.... ;-)
>
> (*) As an example: Seems to me that using two concurrent processes to read
> MSDOS disks via MSH yields you corrupted buffer I/Os, but I'm not sure
Well, for the sake of argument, let's say that this is true -- what does this
have to do with my purpose in multitasking, such as in my example of running
a terminal program in the background? Two programs can access DF0: at the
same time, even (although you'll probably want to use a different disk for
each purpose anyway).
>
> --
> Colas Nahaboo, Bull Research France -- Koala Project -- GWM X11 Window Manager
> Internet: co...@mirsa.inria.fr, Phone: (33) 93.65.77.70, Fax: (33) 93 65 77 66
> INRIA Sophia, 2004, rte des Lucioles, B.P.109 - 06561 Valbonne Cedex, FRANCE
--
Gary Wolfe, SYSOP of the Temporal Vortex BBS // Amiga!
..uflorida!unf7!tlvx!sysop, ..unf7!tlvx!sy...@bikini.cis.ufl.edu \X/ Yeah!
Mike Farren
>I excuse you as I didn't buy your game, but think a little about the poor guy
>with a single A500 with one drive !!!!! He'd certainly kill you for such
>painful disk access.
Well, Buffa does it again... For your information, I've gotten several
responses from A500 users, and, in fact, the game was tested nearly exclusively
on A500s with only one drive. Guess what? No complaints about disk
accesses at all. You lose.
--
Mike Farren far...@well.sf.ca.us
Mike Farren
This is the last time I'm going to respond to Michel Buffa here. I've gotten
very tired of beating a horse which he's trying so hard to kill. Plus, the
more I've heard of his arguments, the less I feel like answering them, as
it becomes clearer and clearer that he just does NOT know what he's talking
about, and has little interest in learning. Thanks for the kind e-mail,
the rest of you guys, and Merry Christmas - I hope you all find nice,
multitasking-friendly, HD-installable, and 68030 compatible games under
the tree!
bu...@kish.inria.fr (Michel Buffa) writes:
>most of the arcade games I love have 60Hz animation.
>It's often written in the advertising pages, so it exists !
I guess in France the gullibility quotient is considerably higher than it
is here. Either that, or smiley's don't exist there :-)
>Why 60 Hz ?
>because the main loop is executed at each VBL interrupt, while the video beam
>comes from the bottom of the screen to the top in order to draw a new screen.
>The main adventage is that the joystick will be read each 1/60 seconds, the
>screen will be redrawn at a given and regular period -> instantaneous
>reactions all the time, not depending on the number of objects on screen, on
>the other tasks running in the background.
This is basic games programming, nothing special. And you conveniently
ignore some basic fallacies in your statement. First, the "not depending
on the number" is flatly wrong. This is the case ONLY until you have piled
too many tasks into the VBL interrupt code, at which point your response will
go through the floor. You do acknowledge this later, but do not say
anything about the consequence: most of the animation is "60Hz" in spirit
only. Most animated objects don't move EVERY 60th of a second. In fact,
it would be stupid to do so, as 30 frames per second produce the illusion
of continuous motion very well - you don't need the overhead of 60-per-second
updates, and few programmers with any sense will use that overhead. The
only time you do need that kind of resolution is when you're trying to do
fine tracking of fast-moving things like shots, and those, if you notice,
are almost always very limited.
And, more to the point, none of this is any reason not to be multitasking-
friendly. I notice that you have nothing to say at all about why this, or
any other consideration, demands the usurpation of the Amiga's normal
operations.
The hell with it - I'm very, very tired of trying to justify what I see
as simple good programming practices to someone who evidently believes
that the Data Becker books should reside right next to Knuth on any
programmer's shelves. As for myself, I will continue to look for more
Amiga programming opportunities, and I guarantee that, unless the person
who's hiring me says "Do it my way or walk" AND I'm broke, any games I
do will be as Amiga-friendly as I can make 'em - and I can make 'em good.
--
Mike Farren far...@well.sf.ca.us
Loren Rittle
>The hell with it - I'm very, very tired of trying to justify what I see
>as simple good programming practices to someone who evidently believes
>that the Data Becker books should reside right next to Knuth on any
>programmer's shelves.
Mike,
Haha, you must be joking! Do you really think this guy even knows
who Knuth is? :-) Yow, I think I'll go use AmigaTeX for a while. :-)
Have a great Holiday Season all. Peace to even the people who `like'
games that are hostile to the friendly Amiga system software. :-)
JCRU...@mtus5.bitnet
My roomate's hard drive (a Quantum) is very quiet. You rarelly know
when it's running.
- Joshua
Bryce Nesbitt
>First the bad news: the game is not hard drive installable, and won't
>multitask. Paraphrasing:
>
> ...To put a game like this in that box, you haven't got any choice;
> you have to nuke the operating system and take over the machine.
> Make it HD installable or multitasking, and it won't run in 512K....
>
>Sigh. You can't argue very hard with that logic. They have to pay the
>bills.
Sure you can argue with that. Simply require that the hard disk owner
has more memory. The game either takes over and runs in 512K, or loads
all of itself from the hard disk, then takes over.
What is harder to figure out is why PowerMonger won't work under 2.0.
--
|\_/| . "ACK!, NAK!, EOT!, SOH!" "Lawyers: America's untapped export market."
{X o} . Bryce Nesbitt, Operating Systems Group, Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
(") BIX: bnesbitt
U USENET: br...@commodore.COM -or- uunet!cbmvax!bryce
Adam Hill
C'mon.. PM does not have "really fast" graphics or 55KHz "real sound" so
why (Other than CP reasons) does it take over my Amiga?? Perhaps SOTB(I and II)
need to do Copper tricks to look INCREDIBLE, but PM does, at most, Zoom IN/OUT
and rotate the map. Not particularly fast.
If the reason is the game logic I MIGHT forgive them (I have seen control
logic for Operation Com Bat and "The New And Improved Tele-Epic" -- Large and
memory intensive.. Yuck!) but, for that memory reason Tele-Epic II will be
a 1M game. The market should be able to support that MINIMAL requirement with
a 512K Expansion in the 50-70.00 range. (At least Merit hopes it will :-) )
--
adam hill
hi...@evax.arl.utexas.edu Make Up Your Own Mind.. AMIGA!
Amiga... Multimedia NOW
Most Common Phrase at DevCon '90 - "Shhhhhhh.."
Chuck McManis
this ones for you...
There seems to be the misunderstanding that if a game is OS friendly then
I'll be running Dpaint at the same time I'm running Killer Tomatoes and the
guy who wrote Killer Tomatoes will get blamed for lousy performance. This
is bullshit and you should know it right now.
The Amiga has many unique features that are not available on any other PC
and multitasking is one of them. However, the Amiga gives the programmer
the option to correctly shut down ANY of those options that they don't
want. Now it isn't as easy as it is on the Commodore-64 but hey thats life.
In particular, multitasking on the Amiga is PRIORITY based. That means that
_only_ the tasks with the highest priority run. So if Killer Tomatoes runs
and gives itself a priority of 127 it is the _only_ thing that runs, nobody
else gets a single cycle.
"But wait Chuck, every 60th of a second the scheduler runs to figure out
what task to run next." Correct, but two things make this irrelevent
a) A single high priority task can take a quantum interrupt and
be running again in about 30 instructions, and
b) Display graphics ought to be based on interrupts anyway and
they don't have to go through the scheduler.
Mssr. Buffa posed the challenge to name one decent game that allowed
multitasking. No doubt he feels that the lack of evidence is a form
of evidence. I believe it is only the absence of committment on the
various games developers. The Lucas Film people are making great strides
toward killer games and haven't shut down the OS yet.
I understand the motivation for getting the OS out of one's collective
face and getting down to the metal. Unfortunately a lot of people use
their A500es as disk loading Nintendo machines and this doesn't penalize
people for their poorly thought out strategies. The only incentive I
can offer is that eventually, maybe not today and maybe not tommorrow,
but eventually, the difference between the games that sell on the Amiga
and the ones that don't is going to be the attitude of programmers who
write them. In particular the attitude toward using what is in ROM
versus rewriting it yourself. Couldn't you use an extra 512K for game
data for "free" ? Dumping your own functions and using the real ones
will give you this.
--
--Chuck McManis Sun Microsystems
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: <none> Internet: cmcm...@Eng.Sun.COM
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
"I tell you this parrot is bleeding deceased!"
Kent Paul Dolan
> C'mon.. PM does not have "really fast" graphics or 55KHz "real sound" so
>why (Other than CP reasons) does it take over my Amiga?? Perhaps SOTB(I and II)
>need to do Copper tricks to look INCREDIBLE, but PM does, at most, Zoom IN/OUT
>and rotate the map. Not particularly fast.
Uh, nope. Take a look again at one of the snow or rainstorms and figure out
how many graphic objects you see in motion. Or, count the characters moving
in a single scene, and notice there are too many for them to be sprites, so the
blitter is being continually reprogrammed to restore the background and redraw
the figures.
PowerMonger is doing a _lot_ of graphics stuff. Granted the 3D rotate is a
little sedate, but that's a very cpu intensive operation; I'd bet the cpu is
going full bore there. In comparision, a car chase game with just two moving
objects, the background scrolling, and the fixed objects being dummy 3D
transformed is a simpler task. Even SOTB I's seven layer deep moving cloud
scene is relatively simple to draw, compared to Powermonger's much busier
scenes.
In my best estimation.
Kent, the man from xanth.
<xant...@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xant...@well.sf.ca.us>
Moriland
A3000 with the 68030 it's nice and smooth! That and the game plays
AMAZINGLY fast on the A3000. I think that in it's own right shows that
it is a very graphic intensive game...
-Moriland
--
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
"All usual disclaimers apply..." | Founder Of: Evil Young
// | Mutants For A Better Tommorow.
\X/ "Only Amiga Makes It Possible." | hast...@vela.acs.oakland.edu
Andrew Clayton
> In response to the comment that the rotating is slow. True, but on an
> A3000 with the 68030 it's nice and smooth! That and the game plays
> AMAZINGLY fast on the A3000. I think that in it's own right shows that
> it is a very graphic intensive game...
Has anyone yet come up with a program that will enable the CACHE
and BURST mode on 68030 boards, that SURVIVES a reset? That would
be keen.
> -Moriland
Dac
--
_l _ _ // Andrew Clayton. Canberra, Australia. I Post .
(_](_l(_ \X/ ccadfa.cc.adfa.oz.au!prolix!dac . . I am.
-------- I cannot send or recieve mail to or from sites outside of Australia.
Mike Farren
>how many graphic objects you see in motion. Or, count the characters moving
>in a single scene, and notice there are too many for them to be sprites, so the
>blitter is being continually reprogrammed to restore the background and redraw
>the figures.
Betcha big bucks they don't use the blitter at all. Remember - Bullfrog is
an Atari ST house, and you don't use the blitter on an ST (not if you're
interested in compatibility, that is).
--
Mike Farren far...@well.sf.ca.us
Moriland
^>xant...@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
^>>Uh, nope. Take a look again at one of the snow or rainstorms and figure out
^>>how many graphic objects you see in motion. Or, count the characters moving
^>>in a single scene, and notice there are too many for them to be sprites, so the
^>>blitter is being continually reprogrammed to restore the background and redraw
^>>the figures.
^>
^>Betcha big bucks they don't use the blitter at all. Remember - Bullfrog is
^>an Atari ST house, and you don't use the blitter on an ST (not if you're
^>interested in compatibility, that is).
I'm willing to bet that they did. Take a look at any old Psygnosis
game or ANY Seira-Online game and you can see what happens to
animation when you don't use the blitter. I think they used it.
SysOp
...
>
> I'm willing to bet that they did. Take a look at any old Psygnosis
> game or ANY Seira-Online game and you can see what happens to
> animation when you don't use the blitter. I think they used it.
>
For fast graphics, how about Starglider II? That had an Atari ST version.
(No blitter, and I was told that it was as fast as the Amiga version, but
I really don't know.)
Strange thing, PM wouldn't run on a friend's new A500 with 1 meg of RAM. (He
also may have had a new Agnus; I forgot to run a check on his system to
find out.) After using "nofast" (the nice utility which reboots the machine
with 512K showing in the system), it ran fine. Note that if I didn't
happen to have "nofast", we simply wouldn't have been able to run it, since
PM has a custom boot-block and takes over the machine; Nofastmem comes with
the OS, but of course that won't work. Aggravating! (Especially since the
first time I visited I didn't have "nofast" with me. Grr!)
Now some game notes: ** Spoilers! **
I agree with the others that you should attack passively when possible, so
as to take over men. Some levels, the computer is rather calm, and you can
just take maybe 1/2 of the men in each town as troops, leaving the rest there
to take care of things because you will probably come back for food, for
instance. On other levels, the blue computer player moves very quickly,
and overtakes the towns that you've taken over. I noticed that the computer
tended to do the same thing every game (but in the same land), so I changed
my strategy and burned my bridges behind me, so to speak. In that case, I
took all of the men and food, and left nothing for the blue player; when the
blue army entered the towns, they had little to claim. It still can be a hard
fight after all that.
About making ideas, it seems that well-fed troops do this better. When food is
short, you have to work at everything. Your army tends to disband as you lose
your food! In one land that was short of food, I went so far as to go to
passive mode, then "attack" a sheep that was inside of a LARGE settlement.
Since the sheep was on the grass, it didn't cause my army to attack the town.
(Yes, I just blatantly stole their sheep! I dunno why I didn't think of
that earlier.) Anyway, it wasn't all that much, but when food is scarce,
that might help you get past a level.
I've not gotten the hang of trading or making allies. Luckily, I've been
able to get through things fine so far without either option. Maybe in later
lands I'll need to resort to these strategies. Anyone get far into the map?
I've gotten most of the levels for 5 across and 3 down, or so, and a couple
beyond that. Am I doing well? :-)
Very addictive game. I had to tell myself that I can't play it at night,
because I tend to lose sleep. :-)
--
Gary Wolfe, SYSOP of the Temporal Vortex BBS // Amiga!
..uflorida!unf7!tlvx!sysop, unf7!tlvx!sy...@bikini.cis.ufl.edu \X/ Yeah!
Tim Madden
>...
>For fast graphics, how about Starglider II? That had an Atari ST version.
>(No blitter, and I was told that it was as fast as the Amiga version, but
>I really don't know.)
I do. I put Starglider II on a 1040 ST and an Amiga 1000 sitting side by
side. The ST graphics looked sharper, but the Amiga graphics were
faster. I am not really sure they are even using blitter code in this
game.
>--
>Gary Wolfe, SYSOP of the Temporal Vortex BBS // Amiga!
>..uflorida!unf7!tlvx!sysop, unf7!tlvx!sy...@bikini.cis.ufl.edu \X/ Yeah!
Tim Madden
t...@medicod.UUCP
no .sig yet!!!
Leigh Warren
If food runs low & you have no food in your towns, disband your troops, find a
boat if necessary and roam the landscape with just your captain killing sheep.
Then you can go back to your troops (they didn't consume any food while
you were wandering around) and recruit them all again from your base
tower. Be careful of killing sheep in towns and sometimes the captain attacks
in his own if the town is aggressive, sometimes. Watch out for armies
attacking your home tower. If they have taken over your tower while you were
away, your troops (one by one) will be killed as they arrive home!
If you see a captain on his own wandering around near you, attack him
aggressively otherwise he stays alive and wanders around very ill. Once he is
dead take all of his food and equiptment, I once found over 2000 food.
Live long and prosper,
Leigh...
cs170...@vger.nsu.edu
>
> I remember reading a while back that to finish the game, you use the Fire
> Staff to build a "flux cage." I was under the impression that the Staff
> had a function called "flux." How do you get the staff to do this? Or
> what else do I need to do the flux bit?
>
> Lastly, someone mentioned a list of spells. Does anyone have that laying
> around? I actually have most of the spells I need, but I'd like to see
> all the ones that people have found.
Do you have the power gem for the Firestaff? It won't flux without it.
(Speaking of which, did anyone ever use the Firestaff to 'transmute" ?
Supposedly there is such a feature, but I never saw it.)
I have a list of the spells around here somewhere, and will be glad to type
it in for you, when I can find it. IF no one else sends it to you, let me
know. I gotta go earn the daily bread here soon, so I can't search right now.
Jean
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| werjun@large | The probability of someone's watching |
+ cs170...@vger.nsu.edu + you is directly proportional to the +
| | stupidty of your actions. |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
66167000
Somewhere (the 12th level?) in Dungeon Master, you have to fight these
water elementals, or puddles, or whatever they are. How do you kill them?
The only thing I can seem to do is brandish the Staff of Claws and make
them back off. Is there any way to kill these guys?
I remember reading a while back that to finish the game, you use the Fire
Staff to build a "flux cage." I was under the impression that the Staff
had a function called "flux." How do you get the staff to do this? Or
what else do I need to do the flux bit?
Lastly, someone mentioned a list of spells. Does anyone have that laying
around? I actually have most of the spells I need, but I'd like to see
all the ones that people have found.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| se...@ucscb.ucsc.edu | "Here's a stinking sig for you!" |
| Saint Echo | "When the going gets wierd, the wierd turn pro." |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Tallant
>In article <11...@darkstar.ucsc.edu>, se...@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (66167000) writes:
>>
>I have a list of the spells around here somewhere, and will be glad to type
>it in for you, when I can find it.
>
>Jean
Could you please post this list of spells or Email me a copy also?
Thanks
--
Jim Tallant | "Many of life's failures are
m...@voodoo.boeing.com | men who did not realize how
uunet!bcstec!voodoo!mjt | close they were to success
| when they gave up"
Henrik Clausen
>
> Somewhere (the 12th level?) in Dungeon Master, you have to fight these
> water elementals. Is there any way to kill these guys?
They're non-material beings, use the spell for these, or use a Vorpal
Blade. No real problem, though. If you have a drain, you can make them
splash down that way - real fun!
I was lucky enough to pick a route where I only met a single of these,
so I just went past them. Horn of Fear is said to be effective for scaring
them off.
> I remember reading a while back that to finish the game, you use the Fire
> Staff to build a "flux cage." I was under the impression that the Staff
> had a function called "flux." How do you get the staff to do this? Or
> what else do I need to do the flux bit?
You'll know... When you find it, you'll know, don't worry.
-Henrik
______________________________________________________________________________
| Henrik Clausen, Graffiti Data | If the Doors of Perception where cleansed, |
| ...{pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax! | Man would see Reality as it is - Infinite. |
\______cbmehq!adspdk!hclausen___|_________________________________W. Blake___/
cs170...@vger.nsu.edu
> In article <480.27...@vger.nsu.edu> cs170...@vger.nsu.edu writes:
>>In article <11...@darkstar.ucsc.edu>, se...@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (66167000) writes:
>>>
> [Firestaff stuff deleted]
>
>>I have a list of the spells around here somewhere, and will be glad to type
>>it in for you, when I can find it.
>>
>>Jean
>
> Could you please post this list of spells or Email me a copy also?
>
> Thanks
I'[ll be glad to. I'm still new at this net stuff, so mail doesn't
always behave as it should for me :-( so I will probably post it.
It'll be this weekend, however, before I can get to it.
Maybe someone else will beat me to it. If not, look for it Saturday.