knudsen@ihwpt.UUCP (04/10/87)
Last nite at our local Coco club meeting I saw a demo of Koronis Rift, a graphic realtime adventure game that runs under OS9 Level II on the Coco 3. I won't talk about the game itself except to say that its premise and implementation are very good. What blew me away was the speed of animated color graphics, showing the perspective view out the windshield of your craft as it zoomed low over the planet's surface. Very much like Microsoft Flight Simulator, only much better-- irregularaly shaped mountains and hills painted in with shaded colors. Refresh rate at least 3 frames/sec. This was generated in real time to match your flight path as controlled from the joystick. When I saw it I thought "Impossible! You can't run this fast under OS9, even with the Level II speed poke." This morning, I reconsidered: "You can't run this fast on an 8-bit micro, like a 1.8 MHz 6809!" But of course seeing is believing. This game really shows what the Coco3 can do, and that OS9 needn't hold it back. (I bet the code is all assembler and not using the extensive graphics support built into Level II, which is more oriented to mouse-icon work than full-page painting.) And this is a Radio Shack game. Wait till the heavy game writers get hold of this (plus EA and those other Apple/Atari houses. EA has already ported One on One.) Since this is Level II OS9, you could supposedly hit CLEAR to go to another window and format a disk or something while the game was running..... The Coco 3 is no Amiga, but at its price it doesn't have to be. mike k "Don't tell me -- OS9 Level II is from outer space." "No, it's from Iowa. It just works well in outer space." -- Mike J Knudsen ...ihnp4!ihwpt!knudsen Bell Labs(AT&T) Delphi: RAGTIMER CIS: <memory test failed> " ~E(x):[is_lunch(x) && cost(x)==0] "