Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!uwvax!uwslh!lishka
From: lishka@uwslh.UUCP (Christopher Lishka)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: Request for game reviews/comments
Message-ID: <295@uwslh.UUCP>
Date: 23 Dec 87 15:04:25 GMT
References: <1001@edge.UUCP> <475@nuchat.UUCP> <1007@edge.UUCP>
Reply-To: lishka@uwslh.UUCP (Christopher Lishka)
Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison, State Hygiene Lab
Lines: 209

[Hi Doug!]

	I posted one of the reviews of Gunship, at Doug's request.  I
would like to make just a few corrections to some of the complaints he
has about the game.

In article <1007@edge.UUCP> doug@edge.UUCP (Doug Pardee) writes:
>The graphics aren't nearly as slow as Flight Simulator II, but on the other
>hand they're not "so quick you don't notice them updating".  I would say
>that they're right on the edge of the "acceptable" range for a game which
>requires this much hand/eye coordination.

	This is annoying, especially considering that games such as
Elite can get blindingly fast graphics out of the aging c64.  Also, I
stated previously that the graphics were licensed from Sublogic.  Doug
(in a private note) said that he thought they were done by Sid Meier.
Well, after rereading the "Notes" section in the back of the manual, I
realize that the graphics were done by Andy Hollis.  This egg on my
face is embarassing!

>There are a couple of quirks of the simulation that I can't believe that the
>real chopper pilots put up with.  One is that every time the automatic
>targetting system loses track of a target, it shuts down.  You have to turn
>it back on again when that target (or another one) is trackable.

	This is particularily annoying and is made worse by the
fact that the TADS always homes in on the closest target.  One would
think that a TADS display would be able to track something even a bit
after it went off screen, but no such luck here.

>Ah, the manual.  How do I put this...  the usual documentation that one gets
>with a game program is so awful that Gunship's manual looks like paradise.
>But it still isn't perfect.
>
>First off, the cover smears.  Practice safe reading; wear a condom on each
>finger :-)   Okay, no big deal, but my manual looked positively yucky before
>I'd even loaded the program for the first time.

	Wow, my cover hasn't smeared!  Maybe they changed inks
recently.  I use my manual fairly often for the
look-it-up-in-the-manual copy protection schemes, and haven't had
*any* trouble with this.  Looks like Microprose might have moved to
cheaper printing.

>In a less frivolous vein, the manual has a big weak spot: data you need for
>flight planning.  If your mission occurs during a heat wave, you can't just
>load the chopper up with everything in sight; you've got to be selective if
>you want to get off the ground.  But the manual doesn't tell you how much
>the various items weigh.  You have to experiment, and just to make things
>more difficult you aren't allowed to overload even momentarily during the
>ordnance selection phase.  So you have to play around offloading stuff, and
>then adding stuff back on, and repeat until you've got a usable balance.  It
>doesn't help that offloading and reloading fuel or cannon rounds is a slow
>process.  It didn't take me long to decide to make up my own chart showing
>how much each item weighs.

	Well, this is partially offset by the computer choosing a good
weapons assortment for each mission, which you may change if you want.
I have fooled around with different types of weapons, but I have found
that what the program chooses always seems to be a fine assortment of
weapons, and I have taken to using its arrangements these days.  Also,
the amount and types of weapons varies with where you are flying and
who your enemy is.

>Another flight-planning shortcoming: nowhere does the manual say how fast the
>chopper burns fuel.  That turns out to be important; it's somewhere between
>20-25 gallons per minute, and since your tanks hold only 376 gallons your
>flights are limited to about 15 minutes each.  Another reason it's important
>is that I've found the fuel gauges to be easily damaged in combat, and I want
>to be able to continue fighting until my watch says the fuel is running low.

	You must fly *really* fast, Doug!  I usually don't go all that
fast, preferring to mosey around and pick off the enemies at a relaxed
pace, and have found that I can fly sometimes for over 30 minutes
real-time without any trouble.  In fact, even when my fuel tanks get
hit, I am usually out for over 15 minutes.

	I would suspect that fuel consumption varies greatly with
travelling speed and the *weight* of the helicopter.  Since you like
to carry many weapons, Doug, I wonder if it isn;t causing more fuel to
be consumed.  As I stated above, I nearly always use the computers
choice for weapons, and I have had few problems with excessive fuel
burn up.

>A really big problem: the description of the map isn't anything like what
>you see on the screen.  Apparently the description is for one of the other
>computers (the manual is a one-size-fits-all for C-64, Apple, Atari ST,
>Amiga, and PC).  This makes things rough in the beginning; the book says
>your gunnery range targets are an enemy base, enemy depot, and enemy HQ.
>Good luck finding them on the map.  I finally figured out the enemy HQ;
>the symbol matched but the color was wrong.  With a lot of experience I
>can now recognize most of the map symbols, including all of the important
>ones.  (It doesn't help that I'm using a TV, not a monitor, so I get some
>color smearing in critical places).
>
>Another shortcoming becomes apparent once you've gotten out of training and
>gone to a war zone.  Many of the mission descriptions leave you scratching
>your head, and the manual doesn't mention them at all.  Sure, anyone can
>figure out "Destroy enemy depot at map coordinates 8,3."  But what do you
>do with "Clear LZ at 5,2" or "Support friendly base at 4,7"?  You go out,
>you destroy everything in sight, and still don't get a Mission Completed
>message.  You refuel, make another trip out to the area, spend 15 minutes
>flying around finding nothing to blast, and *still* no Mission Completed.
>Frustrating.
>
>It turns out that in the SouthEast Asia war zone -- the usual choice for a
>first tour -- enemy targets are often difficult to find (that *is* mentioned
>in the manual).  After you've *found* and destroyed everything in the area
>(*and* for some distance around), then you'll get your Mission Completed
>message.  It would have helped a lot to be told that I was on the right
>track, to just hang in there and keep looking, maybe over a wider area.
>
>The bottom line of this is that the beginner is left wondering where he's
>supposed to go, how far away it is, what he's supposed to do when he gets
>there, how much time he's got to do it in, and how much of which weapons
>he can take.  Once you've got some experience, it's no problem (but then,
>manuals are *supposed* to be mainly for the beginners, no?)

	Well, there is one *REALLY* important fact that the manual
left out that is inexcusable, has caused me a *lot* of headaches
during my first missions, and that would probably solve all of Doug's
gripes above.  NEW PILOTS TAKE NOTE OF THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION, FOR
IT IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE MANUALS!

	When you receive a mission, it gives you both coordinates and
a type of mission, such as "support friendly troops" or "hunt and
destroy tanks" or whatever.  The manual tells you that much.  What the
manual does NOT tell you is that the targets that you are required to
hit to complete a mission appear on the map *IN*A*PURPLE*COLOR*!  Why
they chose purple is beyond me, because it rather hard to see, and
near impossible to make out what type of enemy it is.  However, these
purple targets are all that need be destroyed to successfully complete
a mission.  Any more units destroyed are just brownie points.  So,
when you receive a mission, all you need do is remember the
coordinates, remember what *type* of mission it is, and check the map
to see how difficult it might be (i.e. if you will be able to fly into
and out of the war zone with enough fuel, and if you think you stand a
chance at making it back alive).  The only reason to note the mission
type is to know what kind of enemy you are up against.  You do not
want to go in thinking you are going after troops, only to find out
that the little purple blotches on the map are tanks because you
mentally switched the two missions around in your head.

	So please remember: enemies that appear in PURPLE on the map
are the ones which you are required to destroy.  Enemies which appear
in RED are extra ones that you can hit if you want.  Enemies that
appear in WHITE are your own forces, so don't shoot them, 'cause they
are not enemies!  Go after PURPLE eneimes for certain, RED enemies if
you feel dangerous, and do not touch the WHITE enemies.

>Oh, remember I was complaining about having to guesstimate the distance to
>your destination by eyeballing the map?  Well, the manual doesn't tell you
>what the scale on the map is.  You get to figure that out for yourself too.

	Very true.  This is a blinding error and should have been corrected.

>>There's a blindingly fast quick-loader employed to boot _Gunship_, and I'm
>>happy to report that it seems to work equally well on 1541 clones.
>
>I wouldn't call it "blindingly fast"; it looks like a garden variety double-
>speed quick-loader to me.  Unfortunately, the quick-loader apparently has a
>very simplistic error-recovery algorithm: retry until it works or until Hell
>freezes over, whichever comes first.  And it's apparently based on some kind
>of checksum in the data; it reads in a bunch of stuff and then rereads the
>whole file if it failed.  After I'd watched it load and load and load and
>load for almost 10 minutes, I finally caught on that something was wrong.

	I would not call it blindingly fast either.  It isn't bad, but
my fastload cartridge is better ;-)  However, I have not had any
problems loading the game, although I have a permanent 1541
modification to fix bad tracking problems.

>Oh, and speaking of the copy protection.  Chris Lishka noted that you can
>get a backup diskette from MicroProse for $10.  Unfortunately, the order
>form is part of the registration card.  I don't know if you can actually
>go back and order one later if your disk dies.  Sounds to me like they're
>"selling insurance".

	What I would like to know is whether or not there is a copier
out there that will copy this game.  Since this game is basically
useless without the manual (two types of look-it-up-in-the-manual
protection, and the fact that this game is really hard to play without
reading the instructions), I have no qualms about backing this one up.
Especially considering that the game writes to the disk after each
mission, and also considering the track record with trashed disks in
Microprose's game "Silent Service."  Disk based protection to me is
just to dangerous and annoying.

>All of the above notwithstanding, it's still a *great* game and I would
>definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested.
>-- 
>Doug Pardee -- Edge Computer Corp., Scottsdale, AZ -- uunet!ism780c!edge!doug,
>{ames,hplabs,sun,amdahl,ihnp4,allegra}!oliveb!edge!doug,    mot!edge!doug

	A great game it definitely is.  It looks like quite a bit of
work went into writing this software.  In fact, the manual states that
"Gunship was an enormously long and complex project that took triple
the estimated time and quadruple the original number of people."
However, it really shows.  This is the kind of software that wasn't
just hacked together in one night by a high-school student.  Instead
it is a game that really drives the c64 to its performance peak, in
the same ways that Elite does.  Bravo to Microprose for developing
such an intersting simulation.

						-Chris
-- 
Chris Lishka                    /lishka@uwslh.uucp
Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene <-lishka%uwslh.uucp@rsch.wisc.edu
"What, me, serious? Get real!"  \{seismo, harvard,topaz,...}!uwvax!uwslh!lishka