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From: bairds@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Shawn L. Baird)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: Mike Farren Tutorial.
Message-ID: <2105@pdxgate.UUCP>
Date: 28 Mar 91 00:21:33 GMT
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plouff@kali.enet.dec.com (Wes Plouff) writes:

>Boyohboy!  Mike Farren makes some carefully reasoned conjectures and the
>flamefest begins!  He spins out a WHAT IF scenario... what if Lemmings
>were designed to use Amiga standards?  What compromises would be

I think you and Mike Farren are both probably right here. Still, I
wouldn't expect a multi-tasking game from Psygnosis. It just doesn't fit
their style. If the demand for multi-tasking games was high enough, I'm
sure they would do it.

>Sim City is another breakthrough game that is totally Amiga-friendly. 
>Even comes with two diskettes in the box for 512K and larger memory
>machines.  So why not Lemmings?

Personally, SimCity is one of the worst ports to the Amiga ever. The map
scrolling, for example, is the slowest I've ever seen. This game reminds
me of just a straight C port over with the CPU probably doing all of the
graphics work. SimCity multi-tasks quite nicely, but I think the game
could have been improved upon without sacrificing any of the quality or
multi-tasking.

>Oh, add me to the list of Americans who want HD-installable games.

As someone pointed out, it is probably more likely that readers of
comp.sys.amiga.programmers will have HDs to install games on. Personally,
I only really mind if the game is larger than a disk. I think that most
adventure games (like DungeonMaster for example) and some simulation/
logic games (like Lemmings and Sim City) could and perhaps should be
able to run from the hard drive, or at least to be able to save games to
it. Although multi-tasking is a plus, I don't want the quality of a
game sacrificed because of it. I'd rather let it take over the machine.

Inherently, there's also a bit of fun and a feeling of power from kicking
out the OS. Do it yourself, and see if you can do it better! I wouldn't
remove my Amiga's OS permanently, and let me say that the designers of
the OS have done a very good job with 2.0, but working directly with the
hardware is something that everyone should at least try. Performing your
own multi-tasking and writing your own general purpose routines for
blitting, etc. can be quite challenging.

In the end, I wish it were a breeze to just put a button in the game that
has Multi-tasking written on it, and then just be able to push the button
and have the value saved in a set up on my hard drive along with the game
itself, but alas, I also want the full power of the machine for games like
Shadow of the Beast. Could someone please tell me what happened to Shadow
of the Beast II? From what I've seen of it, it seems like the original
programmer of Shadow of the Beast must have moved on to something else.
Shadow of the Beast II looked, well, cheesey. Also, has anyone heard
anything about the release of Armorgeddon? Is it available yet?
Is it good?

>-- 
>Wes Plouff, Digital Equipment Corp, Maynard, Mass.
>plouff@kali.enet.dec.com

>Networking bibliography:  _Islands in the Net_, by Bruce Sterling
>			  _The Matrix_, by John S. Quarterman
---
 Shawn L. Baird, bairds@eecs.ee.pdx.edu, Wraith on DikuMUD
 The above message is not licensed by AT&T, or at least, not yet.