Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!convex!eugene!swarren
From: swarren@eugene.uucp (Steve Warren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Good cheap games
Message-ID: <1614@convex.UUCP>
Date: 28 Aug 89 19:01:15 GMT
References: <30794@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <725@dsacg2.UUCP>
Sender: news@convex.UUCP
Reply-To: swarren@eugene.UUCP (Steve Warren)
Distribution: na
Organization: Convex Computer Corporation, Richardson, Tx.
Lines: 38

In article <725@dsacg2.UUCP> nor1675@dsacg2.UUCP (Michael Figg) writes:
>I don't play many games but for the price (approx. $16.00) 'Emerald Mine'
>is a good buy. The graphics and sound aren't fantastic but it is 
>challenging at many levels (100 of them) and takes some strategy at times.
>I think there is a new version II out that is more like $35.00 and offers
>200 levels plus an editor to create you own levels. Haven't seen this one 
>though.

I went out & picked up Emerald Mine II Saturday, and I have a couple of
things about it I don't appreciate.  The combination of disk-based copy-
protection and a master disk that writes to itself is a recipe for
disaster.  It also disables dos and then doesn't provide any system
requestors, so "bad things" can happen, for example, my 1000 has only
the internal drive.  The game uses 2 disks at a time, so I have to do some
extensive (~5 min) disk churning while the master disk reconfigures
itself to use one drive for both disks (since the system isn't there to
handle this situation).  When you start the game it does a warm boot
under program control.  Obviously there is a virus-like piece of code
in there that survives the reboot and supervises the loading of the game
instead of workbench (the game disk is also a workbench disk).

For a one-drive system like mine there is a certain point where you
must swap disks.  That point is not documented and there is no requestor
or prompt of any kind.  If you fail to swap disks the system does not
crash.  It brings up the same menu it does when everything is working.
But when you go into the menu, the next screen that comes up is strangely
scrambled, like tiling gone amok.  I wasted an entire evening trying to
figure out what was wrong.

If you have one drive, the place to swap disks is after the title screen
(with the graphic of the emerald miner) goes away and a blank red screen
comes up.  Disk activity stops.  Swap disks and hit the fire button.
I only just found this out, and in the slight time I had left I couldn't
get through screen zero.  So no review of the game itself.

--Steve
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