Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!well!farren
From: farren@well.UUCP (Mike Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: StarFlight and Quarterstaff for Amiga???
Message-ID: <12516@well.UUCP>
Date: 2 Jul 89 17:16:19 GMT
References: <8906221210.AA02877@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <5831@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Reply-To: farren@well.UUCP (Mike Farren)
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 32

(Gary Heffelfinger) writes:
>>     I heard that new Starflight game come from Electronic Arts for IBM
>> only but I do not like that IBM-only games. I wish that Electronic
>> Arts shall port it to other personal computers for Amiga, etc..
>> But, it never come for other personal computers in many years. Why???
>> When it will release to Amiga version? I shall complaint that.
>
>I wrote to EA a year or 2 ago asking the very same question, and got a
>polite letter back from them saying that they had no plans at this time
>to do an Amiga port.  Apparently that has changed.

I offered to do the Amiga port for EA a couple of years ago.  StarFlight
was written in Forth, and EA's position at that time was that there was
no way that the conversion could be done in any economically feasible
way.  Converting Forth programs (from my own experience doing it) is
one bitch of a job, since Forth so strongly encourages every malign
hacker instinct, and Forth programs are more often than not impenatrable
masses of spaghetti code.  EA felt that they couldn't afford to pay
anyone enough to be able to get the project done and still make money
on it.

By the way - did you notice that one of the original demo pictures in
DPaint is an illo for StarFlight?

>I seems that they're planning to release an Amiga port and a C64
>port this year.  We'll see.

They have said this consistently from day one.  Talk to the technical
folks instead of the marketing folks before you hold your breath.

-- 
Mike Farren 				     farren@well.sf.ca.usa