ma155abl@sdcc7.UUCP (Nick Flor) (11/18/84)
Comics have been out long before the home-computer or mainframes
have, and yet there are no decent superhero computer games out on the market.
Scott Adams had some games out, but they were all adventure and consequently
lacked the thrill element in them.
My proposal is this:
If everyone in net.comics land sends me mail describing what they would like
in a super-hero computer game, I WILL (emphasize the will) program the game.
Some questions I have are:
1)What computer would best be suited for this?
(I suggest a powerful-micro with advanced graphics capabilities,
yet priced fair for us net people)
2)What kind of game should it be?
--adventure,arcade-adventure, etc. etc. etc.
(I prefer an arcade-adventure with pretty damn near infinite
scenarios)
3)How many people are even mildy interested?
Thanks,
Nick Flor
..sdcsvax!sdcc7!ma155abl
..sdcsvax!sdcc3!hp-sdd!nickbroehl@wateng.UUCP (Bernie Roehl) (11/19/84)
I would *strongly* suggest the following:
1. Design it as an Adventure-style game, with and (optional)
arcade-style "front end".
2. Design it to have a separate database (i.e. separate from
the code itself) to allow creation of characters, new
scenarios, etc. without re-coding.
3. Code it in C.
The reason for (1) is portability; if the program knows too much about the
machine it's running on, and *will not run* on anything else. In fact,
it is best to allow it to run on a "dumb" text-only terminal and at the
same time have a snazzy graphics package that will take full advantage of
any display hardware the user happens to have attached.
The reasons for (2) should be obvious. The reason for (3) is again porta-
bility; almost every machine you're thinking of has a C compiler for it,
and it's possible (with some care) to write efficient portable code.
As for a choice of machine... that's hard to say. If you follow (1), (2)
and (3) above, it doesn't really matter much, since you can port it to what-
ever happens to be the latest, spiffiest graphics machine around. If you're
planning to market it (or even if you're not), I would suggest the IBM PC
since it has by far the largest market. A lot of people will say the Macintosh,
but it's probably more money than you want to spend and doens't have color.
It also doesn't (and unfortunately probably never will) have as large a market
as the PC and compatables.
One further suggestion: allow easy creation of scenarios, possibly with some
separate utility. Thus you could have users writing scenarios for each other,
or even have scenario come out monthly (perhaps with elements from each month's
issues of appropriate mags). Something similar is being attempted by Scott
Addams (sp?), of Adventure fame, using Marvel's Questprobe mini-series.
In any case, best of luck....
--
-Bernie Roehl (University of Waterloo)
...decvax!watmath!wateng!broehl
73:78:79:14:y:y:4.2BSD:microcomputer,software,theatre,comedy,improvisation