pem@cadnetix.COM (Paul Meyer) (04/09/88)
[]
I now own Universe for the Apple ][, Universe II for the Mac,
and Breach for the Mac.
First, comments on the Universes: both of these games have
good ideas and interesting plots and mechanics--you travel around in
your starship, combining trade, mining, and orbital piracy in some
combination to keep yourself financially solvent while involved in
your real task. In both games the starship simulation is good enough
to hold your interest even without the added quest--especially in U1
where you are trying to pay off the mortgage on your ship.
Now for the bad news: in both cases the implementation has
problems. In Universe 1 I never even SAW the quest because the
game-time counter NEVER INCREMENTED. I wandered around trading and
getting a better and better ship, but I NEVER GOT ANY VIDCOMM MESSAGES
OR ANY OTHER CLUES. My old Apple ][+ died before I got to the stage
of just looking around all the out-of-the-way start systems for the
Booster.
My complaint about U2 is not as basic, but is even more fatal:
from the behavior of the code and the fact that the resource
management mechanism of the Mac is NOT EVEN USED beyond what is
necessary to load executable code segments, it is clear that U2 wasn't
designed to be easily portable, IT WAS DESIGNED TO NOT NEED PORTING AT
ALL. It seems to have been developed in UCSD Pascal for a "generic"
environment, with no effort at all given to making use of different
machines' strengths and avoiding their weaknesses. As a result, it
runs SLOW, SLOW, SLOW on the Mac. Different modes are entered, not by
loading a new segment and continuing, but by chaining to a new
executable, re-initializing the entire OS each time. The menus are
not drawn by loading a resource, but by individually adding each menu
title and item. As a result it takes many seconds to switch from,
say, the main menu to the navigation section.
Thus, even though the plot was thickening and I was really
interested in the quest, I quit playing the game. I really wanted to
go out and capture a Dagger-class marauder, but I couldn't stand the
idea of playing for a half-hour or more just to move from one planet
to the next. I got very tired of not having the keyboard shortcuts
for the menu items the way I wanted them and not being able to change
the resources to fix it. I gave up, not because I didn't like the
game, but because I couldn't get to it through all the poor
implementation.
I recently overcame this bad experience enough to buy
Omnitrend's newest Mac product, Breach. This is a very different
game, a tactical game of science fiction commando action. After ten
or so hours of playing it, I still like it. I was frustrated at the
lack of any keyboard shortcuts, but this was a minor thing because the
main part of the game is so mouse-driven. (The menus are used only
for administrivia like saving and restoring games...of course, I'd
like to be able to type command-O <filename> instead of pulling down a
menu, moving my hand to the keyboard, then typing <filename>.) The
use of the Mac operating system is more sophisticated, but not
perfect. The only remaining artifact of overportability is in the
size of scenarios: there are absolute, and far too small, limits on
the numbers of opponents and objects (which include all your soldiers'
equipment except their guns, as well as all prisoners to be rescued and
all datapacks to be recovered).
The documentation also suffers from overportability in one
annoying respect: like games such as recent Ultimas and the Bard's
Tales, the manual is non-system-specific. Unlike the others I
mention, the machine-specific stuff is NOT included on a separate
reference card--it is simply omitted. This means there are NO SCREEN
PICTURES and NO DIAGRAMS OF WHAT TERRAIN TYPES AND OBJECTS LOOK LIKE.
Playing the third scenario that comes with the game, I found myself
trying to pick up every piece of machinery on the map because I didn't
know what a datapack looked like (though once I'd found one I
understood it immediately--it looked like a disk).
One of the best things about Breach is the Scenario
Builder--after you've played some of their canned scenarios, you can
begin creating and trading your own. This is where the limits on
opponents and objects get irritating. I started a medium-sized
scenario, based on a situation in a popular SF book already treated in
a wargame. I laid out most of the terrain and enemy base, and went
back to put in the guards and base population. Oops, more than 40
enemies already! I hadn't even gotten to where 2/3 of the prisoners
were to be! I laid out the soldier's starting equipment and started
placing some supplies to be raided from the enemy base, and oops, more
than 30 objects at the point where I started to place the first third
of the prisoners! D**n!
Overall recommendations:
Universe: (if it's still available)
game: 7/10; Apple implementation: 7/10
Universe II:
game: 8/10; Mac implementation: 3/10
Breach:
game: 8/10; Mac implementation: 9/10
--
Paul Meyer pem@cadnetix.COM
Cadnetix Corp.
5775 Central Ave. {uunet,boulder}!cadnetix!pem
Boulder, CO 80301 (303)444-8075x244