Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!oliveb!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: game enhancements -- software writers, please read.
Message-ID: <54681@sun.uucp>
Date: 26 May 88 21:10:52 GMT
References: <1034@astroatc.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 31

In article <1034@astroatc.UUCP> jojo@astroatc.UUCP (Jon Wesener) writes:
>
>	I've recently bought several games that while good, aren't great
>for really stupid reasons.  Mainly the programs have been crippled in
>one form or another to defeat pirating and to be able to run in 512k.

While I agree that games should be able to take advantage of hard disks
and extra RAM, to be economical they must also be able to run in 512K
(which is the default A500 memory size). Especially with the cost of 
memory being what it is, these folks probably won't go to a meg until
later this year. 

>                                   ...For example, while strolling
>through the city in Bard's Tale, every time you enter a building it
>appears to have to load the picture of an empty room.  Considering that
>this is done almost every other move the player ends up doing a lot of
>waiting.  Cacheing isn't hard to implement in a well designed program.

In this particular case there are two options. The best is to use Facc
to cache the scenes. Hit ^D when Bards tale starts, put a workbench disk
with Facc on it in the other drive. Run Facc so that it uses either all
your extra memory above 512K or 880K of it (more than 880K is of course
a waste, and probably more than 512K is a waste). Then look in the 
bard's tale startup-sequence to see what name it uses to start the 
game, and start it up. After a few visits to a room or two you will 
find the game play to be much smoother.


--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.