u563694848ea@deneb.ucdavis.edu (0040;0000009611;0;250;141;) (07/05/89)
Ever notice that a vast majority of European games on the Amiga have great graphics, great sound, and very little playability? Anyone ever heard of Ball Raider? I had a chance to borrow my friend's copy once, and it was pathetic. Ball Raider is an arkanoid type game, with great graphics drawn in the background screens for each level, great sound, but here's the catch. It uses the joystick to control the bar, with NO MOUSE OPTION! I'm not kidding. Those of you who've played arkanoid know that instaneous response for moving your ship is essential to game play. A digital joystick moves the ship at a constant velocity. As a result, the game is impossible. There are a countless number of European games that I can only guess that there is a surplus of musicians and artists in Europe, just as we have too many lawyers here. Perhaps we can arrange a trade? I recently had the chance to visit Psygnosis in Europe, and I was appalled at what I found there. Most people in Europe don't know about the existence of the A2500, Psygnosis especially. You'd think that developers would have some kind of souped up Amiga to do the programming, but not at Psygnosis. I met some of the people working there. about 75% of the people there are either artists or musicians. The rest of them are in charge of marketing. There was only one programmer there. He was programming on a <GASP!> commodore 64 with a 68000 board plugged in!! He had this maniacal grin on his face, and he was bragging about his state of the art C64/Amiga cross development system complete with a cassette player (for mass storage), and a commodore 1702 (for crisp 40 column text). I also noticed that both of his feet were chained to the ground, and there was an endless supply of twinkie wrappers all over his work area. "Well," I said to him, "This explains why Psygnosis Games are the way they are. They have you do all the programming for all the games. Do you ever get any sleep?" "Nope. The twinkies keep me going. I'm not the only programmer though. We have guys that do some finishing touches. There's Hans, who rewrites a special dos for each game, Heinrich provides some of our special effects, such as making the power light blink, and Adolf adds the finishing touches by making sure the game only runs on kickstart 1.1 and will automatically crash if run with an a2500 or any memory expansion board." "What language do you program these games in?" I inquired. "I program everything in 68000, but I have written a special set of macros that makes it look like it was written in 6502!" "What did you do before you got a job here at Psygnosis?" "I used to write programs for toasters."
rouaix@inria.inria.fr (Francois Rouaix) (07/05/89)
In article <4824@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> u563694848ea@deneb.ucdavis.edu (Frank Kuan) writes: > >Ever notice that a vast majority of European games on the Amiga have >great graphics, great sound, and very little playability? > [stuff deleted about programming manners and not knowing about 2500] I don't want to start again a old polemic here... BUT: Ok, some European companies have bad manners of programming. I agree with that. Now, we (in Europe) often buy US products which expect you to have an NTSC Amiga, with an usa keyboard ? Psygnosis may have never heard of A2500 (released a few monthes ago), but many US companies surely have never heard of PAL and foreign keymaps, two features that are 3 years old ! There are good and bad products, period. Some of them come from Europe, some of them from US. --Francois -- *- Francois Rouaix // We are all prisoners here, * *- rouaix@inria.inria.fr \X/ of our own device * *- SYSOP of Sgt. Flam's Lonely Amigas Club. (33) (1) 39-55-84-59 (Videotext) * Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are my own, not those of my employer.