Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!dimacs.rutgers.edu!bcm!rice!letaba.rice.edu!tjonker
From: tjonker@letaba.rice.edu (Todd V Jonker)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
Subject: Re: Programmer seeking game ideas
Message-ID: <1990Nov6.015627.15677@rice.edu>
Date: 6 Nov 90 01:56:27 GMT
References: <10959.272d8b3f@amherst.bitnet>
Sender: news@rice.edu (News)
Reply-To: tjonker@letaba.rice.edu (Todd V Jonker)
Organization: Rice University
Lines: 40

Long ago, there was a fabulous game on the Apple II called
_Ceiling_Zero_.  It was basically a shoot-em-up game with some novel
twists.  The players moved his gun across the bottom of the screen with
a paddle and shot at the little alien ships above.   At the top of the
screen was a big "mother ship" which roamed back and forth across the
top, launching smaller daughter ships which you attempted to shoot. 
Just underneath the mother ship were a pair of devices, one at each
side, which formed a glittery beam or laser horizontally between them. 
This was the ceiling, and the game started at Ceiling 15 or so, meaning
all the way up.  Now here's the fun part:  the mother ship (which could
not be destroyed) launched the little ships at an angle, and they passed
down through the ceiling and began _bouncing_around_  off the floor, the
walls, and the bottom of the ceiling.  Not random bouncing, but more
like a racquetball in zero-G. If one of these critters hit your gun, it
blew up, the ships continued to get launched and bounce, and soon you
would get another gun to continue.  Now the little ships came in three
flavors, each of which move at different speeds: slow, medium and fast. 
And after each wave of about 10-20 ships, the mother would stop
launching and wait while you attempted to blast the remaining ships.  If
you succeeded, the Ceiling would descend, and another faster wave would
begin.  The wonderful part was that the bounce-around area kept
shrinking as you got to be a better and better shot, keeping the game
remarkably challenging.  The best I ever did was up to Ceiling Five, so
I am not sure what happened at ceiling Zero.

At any rate, this is still one of my favorite games, and I would love to
see a Macintosh implementation.  It should be relatively simple; I have
seen a version implemented (also on the Apple II) in a few pages of
assembly code.)

Well, Michael, this seems to fit quite a few of your criteria.  What do
you think?

/====================\============================\
||  Todd V. Jonker    \  tjonker@titan.rice.edu  ||
|| Rice  University   /\   "DAMN good coffee...  ||
|| Computer Science  /  \       ...and HOT"      ||
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