Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!aplcen!boingo.med.jhu.edu!welch.jhu.edu!mjr
From: mjr@welch.jhu.edu (Marcus J. Ranum)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Omega tank exchange anyone ??
Message-ID: <1989Oct27.023305.791@welch.jhu.edu>
Date: 27 Oct 89 02:33:05 GMT
References: <1989Oct25.063255.21509@welch.jhu.edu> <1611@netxcom.DHL.COM>
Reply-To: mjr@welchlab.welch.jhu.edu (Marcus J. Ranum)
Organization: Welch Medical Library, Baltimore
Lines: 42

In article <1611@netxcom.DHL.COM> ewiles@netxdev.UUCP (Edwin Wiles) writes:
> [...]
>If no news group seems apropriate, then how about a mailing list?  I'd suggest
>Compu$erve, an expense that I already incur; but others don't, so the above
>'cost' and 'access' arguments apply to CI$ too.

	Ok, I'll byte the bullet. I'll maintain the mailing list, for all
and sundry. Send mail to Omega-Request@welch.jhu.edu to be added to the
list, and if there is enough interest (I haven't gotten more than 3 replies
yet) I'll set it up and send out an "intro" posting. Unfortunately, the
tank descriptions are not stored in ASCII (boo!) so some protocol for
transferring will be necessary. Each individual tank file is about 4K,
so uuencoding them and transferring them by mail seems adequate. At that
size there is no need to zoo them. The tank data appears to be stored
in both a compiled and uncompiled form, I will experiment to see if
we could get away with just transferring the compiled form, so the
actual logic of the tanks would be secret.

>Before I purchase the game though, I need to understand more about it's
>protection mechanism (if any).  I will not tolerate a 'key disk' protected
>program for two reasons:  a) I've a hard drive, and b) I will not be held

	Yeah, it's weird. I copied the whole thing over to Mr. Hard Drive
and it came right up and ran right away. So, I don't see any sign of copy
protection.

	The game is pretty good. There are provisions for team play, several
levels of play, etc. If there is enough interest, a round-robin style
tournament could be run. There is a BBS set up by the company (Origin)
that has a tourney running, too.

	Basically, the game is C-robots like, with some frills and a few
bells and whistles. Graphics are not as great as they should be, but the
idea is pretty good. I haven't gotten past level 4 myself - I am starting
to wonder if the computer's game is rigged :-)

	--mjr();
-- 
	He was in his room half awake, half asleep. The walls of the room
seemed to alter angles, elongating and shrinking alternately, then twisting
around completely so that he was in the opposite side of the room.
	"A trick of the light and too much caffeine," he thought.    -Bauhaus