[comp.sys.atari.st] How DO they do it?

ps2i+@andrew.cmu.edu (Paul Leonard Sonier) (01/13/88)

	I just recently got a copy of the new game from FTL (the makers of Sundog) 
for the Atari ST.  It is called Dungeon Master, and is truly amazing.  It's a 
Wizardry type of game, where you enter a dungeon with your band of feckless 
heroes and attempt to get to the bottom and back up again with a treasure of 
some sort.  The view is from the first person perspective.  The graphics on 
screen are truly amazing.  They are astoundingly beautiful.  There are objects 
that you must search for on some of the walls, and find, and use yourself if 
you want to get very far in the game.  Gameplay is quite good, as well.
	But I didn't get on the net here to give all you illustrious people a review 
of a game.  What really amazed me about it was that in the newsletter that 
came with the game, FTL themselves say that there is more than one Megabyte of 
graphics in the game.  I can deal with that.  The amazing thing is that they 
fit all of this on one single-sided ST disk.  And they also managed to get the 
program on there, too.  This has got to be one of the most impressive feats of 
compression I've ever heard of.  If anyone has any idea as to how they did 
this, I'd really like to hear it.  It sorta makes you wonder just what they 
could fit on two double-sided disks.
	In any event, if you have a chance to play-test this game, go for it.  It's 
truly an amazing feat of programming.  Oh, and does anyone know what System 
Error 60 in the game means?


	Paul Sonier