Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!midway!clout!chinet!miroc!caw From: caw@miroc.Chi.IL.US (Christopher A. Wichura) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games Subject: Eye of the Beholder Message-ID: Date: 26 May 91 07:31:13 GMT Lines: 45 After reading all the good comments about Eye of the Beholder for the Amiga, I figured I'd try it out myself. When I saw that it was Westwood Associates that did the programming, I was somewhat relieved, as they have done some other quality work on the Amiga (such as the Chessmaster 2100 port). Implementation impressions are quite favorable. The graphics are really quite good, and the sound isn't too shabby either. The game runs fine on my A3000 with 10 megs of RAM (someone on the net said that they had to use NoFastMem, I did not have to do this, although I am a developer so it may be related to the version of kickstart I have). I do agree with the comment made earlier that using Extra Halfbrite Mode could have added a little more touch to the graphics. My only real gripes about the implementation is: they busy wait on the keyboard and, secondly, they CloseWorkbench() without checking to see if they really need the little bit of memory they gey back from that. So while one can multitask, and Amiga-N/M seem to work fine, you have no Workbench screen. Obviously, in my case, there is no need to close down Workbench... Aaarrrgghhh! As a game, I have not spent a huge amount of time on it yet. But the controls are very simple, and easily mastered in a few minutes. Running through the first level of the game is quite easy. I've only just started playing the second level, where one actually starts to stumble onto traps. Many have said that the game is pretty easy on the whole. Looking at it quickly, I do get this impression. But it also looks like it will be a lot of fun to go though. Overall, I'm really pretty pleased with this game. SSI has, in my opinion, not done the greatest Amiga ports in the past. Even recent games like Buck Rogers I turned down because it was obvious that certain areas were using software based timing. If SSI keeps up with the current trend, they could have some pretty good Amiga software. Fix the quirks I mentioned about (and nuke the blasted SAS/C stdio window...) and they'll be doing great. I guess the one other thing I observed that I found a little irksome (though it is so minor I really ought not to even mention it) is that they used two seperate amiga fonts, eobf6 and eobf8. Why they didn't just combine the two into a single font with 6 and 8 point sizes is beyond me. BTW, the HD Install program actually did things in a fairly intelligent manner. Too many games I've seen have simply done a copy df0:* all to games:, which would boat along many files not needed (such as Disk.info). Christopher A. Wichura Multitasking. Just DO it. caw@miroc.chi.il.us (my amiga) ...the Amiga way... u12401@uicvm.uic.edu (school account)