Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!nuchat!seven
From: seven@nuchat.UUCP (David Paulsen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: Request for game reviews/comments
Message-ID: <495@nuchat.UUCP>
Date: 28 Dec 87 07:54:43 GMT
References: <1001@edge.UUCP> <475@nuchat.UUCP> <1007@edge.UUCP> <295@uwslh.UUCP>
Organization: The Department of Redundancy Department
Lines: 71
Summary: More comments on the review of the Gunship review

In article <295@uwslh.UUCP>, lishka@uwslh.UUCP (Christopher Lishka) writes:
> In article <1007@edge.UUCP> doug@edge.UUCP (Doug Pardee) writes:
> 
>>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.

I'd second this, since my manual looks pretty good even after a year of frenzied
use and uncounted missions.  My cover looks positively glossy.
  
>>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.

I've only run out of fuel a few times, and always it's after I've taken a few
hits in the fuel tanks and am struggling to get home.  I've even managed to
autorotate in safely a couple of times.  Typically, if I get hit AT ALL, I
try to turn back, unless there's a REAL juicy target just asking to be nuked.
I'd rather not risk crashing my multi-megabuck bird by running out of gas. :-) 
I agree that the book should give some indication of fuel usage; I finally
learned what "felt" right after awhile, assuming the guages are working...

   [...]
>>>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.

Hmmmm... "Blinding"?  Did I say "blindingly fast"?  I did, didn't I?  Well...
Granted, it's probably nothing fancier than the routines employed by other
quickloaders, but what prompted my comment was the speed with which _Gunship_
tosses huge chunks of memory around... each one of those hi-res screens is at
least 6K --some are the full screen, 8K-- and they all load in a coupla seconds.
Press left-shift during play and the game pauses for maybe four seconds while
it gets the Damage Display, a full 8K screenful.  Considering the game covers
both sides of a diskette, and you're not left waiting 10 minutes for the game
to load (assuming your drive's aligned) that's pretty impressive.  I've got a 
copy of _MULE_ I bought about the same time as _Gunship_ that takes over six
minutes to load the friggin title screen!  Gak.
     
Also, you might have a weak disk, Doug.  I've used my single _Gunship_
disk on three different 1541-oids in the past year, all in various states of
alignment, with no problems.  It could also be that MicroProse is cheaping out
on the quality of their disks as well as their manuals... perhaps the bits 
aren't sticking to your diskette like they should.

-- 
David Paulsen - CHARTER MEMBER, WILLIAM WINDOM FAN CLUB    ..uunet!nuchat!seven
   
"It had a maw that could swallow a DOZEN starships!"
      --Commodore Matt Decker, chewing on the scenery again