long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com (Rich Long) (12/27/90)
Having recently acquired a color Mac, I'm interested in color games!
I like arcade-type shoot-'em-ups, driving games, and hand/eye games like
Tetris. What are some of your favorites?
In addition, what support is there for sticks-of-joy on the Mac? Most Amiga
games use them, and joysticks do seem superior to the mouse. Are they
transparent, in that the signals are seen by the game as mouse moves? For
example, would one work with Solarian? Assuming it would work, does anyone
have a joystick to recommend?
Thanks!
Richard C. Long * long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com
* ...!decwrl!mcntsh.enet.dec.com!long
* long%mcntsh.dec@decwrl.enet.dec.com sharp@fsd.cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Maurice Sharp) (12/29/90)
I have no games to recommend. I do have a joystick preference. Having used both the Kraft QuickStick and the Advanced Gravis joystick, I recommend the Advanced Gravis. There is no comparison, the Gravis is far superior. It has a better feel, better options, better made, just plain better. maurice -- Maurice Sharp MSc. Student (403) 220 7690 University of Calgary Computer Science Department 2500 University Drive N.W. sharp@cpsc.UCalgary.CA Calgary, Alberta, T2N 1N4 GEnie M.SHARP5
rich@sdchemf (Richard Kanner) (12/29/90)
In article <18480@shlump.nac.dec.com> long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com (Rich Long) writes: > > Having recently acquired a color Mac, I'm interested in color games! > > I like arcade-type shoot-'em-ups, driving games, and hand/eye games like > Tetris. What are some of your favorites? > > In addition, what support is there for sticks-of-joy on the Mac? Most Amiga > games use them, and joysticks do seem superior to the mouse. Are they > transparent, in that the signals are seen by the game as mouse moves? For > example, would one work with Solarian? Assuming it would work, does anyone > have a joystick to recommend? > I recently purchased Sky Shad, a good fast action shoot-'em-up game which will run in color and with multiple monitors under multifinder. Mac abuser (User) gave it 5 mice. I would tend to agree. On a joy stick I have a kraft KM30 adb joystick. I was rather dissapointed with the performance of the thing. With the mouse and joystick both hooked up to the adb bus I had very jerky motions with the mouse, and menu selections were rather difficult. I also found using the joystick as a mouse was also too dificult for genereal moving around the screen as the behavior of the thing was too erratic to control. I have used the stick with some games and found again control difficult with the exception of falcon. But then again I am not very good a flying that jet. In general I would not recomend shelling out the $50 bucks for the thing, thank god I didn't. R. Kanner UCSD Chem
ccastcr@prism.gatech.EDU (Russo, Chris A.) (01/09/91)
rich@sdchemf (Richard Kanner) writes: >I recently purchased Sky Shad, a good fast action shoot-'em-up game >which will run in color and with multiple monitors under multifinder. >Mac abuser (User) gave it 5 mice. I would tend to agree. I would have to disagree. I played this game for more than several hours. Although it has some advances for a mac arcade-style game, it still isn't up to current levels of expectation. The graphics are flickery, the scrolling playing field is small and _very_ repetitive. The game itself gives you so many goodies that sometimes for minutes, you are completely invincible with huge amounts of firepower. So, to compensate for your strength, the game gets ridiculously fast. When you lose your invincibility, you're pretty much dead meat. Also, once you get all of this firepower, Sky Shadow game commits a serious sin. It doesn't erase some of the bullets you fire, so you see little white spots all over the screen. My advice to you is to stick to the brain games on the Mac. These tend to be more contemporary in their quality. -- Russo, Chris A. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!ccastcr Internet: ccastcr@prism.gatech.edu
mlab2@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (01/10/91)
> I would have to disagree. I played this game for more than several > hours. > Although it has some advances for a mac arcade-style game, it still > isn't up to current levels of expectation. The graphics are flickery, I would must differ on this. Although it ain't Amiga, I think Sky Shadow sets a new benchmark in Mac arcade games. Having programmed the Mac, Sky Shadow DOES exceed my levels of expectation. I'm very impressed - amazed even. I don't doubt that someone will come along to top it, but it stands as the arcade-game-to-be-reckoned with on the Mac. > the scrolling playing field is small and _very_ repetitive. The game Sure. Again, we're not on an Amiga or a Nintendo for that matter. One color screen (in 16 color mode) is going to run you around 30-40K of disk space. This will limit you to 20 or so screens per disk. He has three 'levels' with perhaps 4 or 5 screens per level. Add to that 500K of digitized sound. I think besides the obvious reason of game speed, the number of screens was a question of economy. We don't all have hard drives or 1.4 M floppy drives. > itself gives you so many goodies that sometimes for minutes, you are > completely invincible with huge amounts of firepower. So, to compensate > for your strength, the game gets ridiculously fast. When you lose your > invincibility, you're pretty much dead meat. Also, once you get all of > this firepower, Sky Shadow game commits a serious sin. It doesn't erase some > of the bullets you fire, so you see little white spots all over the screen. On this part, I agree wholly with you. There does seem to be a skewed sort of game-balance. I still enjoy the game however - it just pits you in a one-slip-up-and-your-dead scenario. This is frustrating often. > My advice to you is to stick to the brain games on the Mac. These > tend to be more contemporary in their quality. Certainly. But, card games and Othello are easy to program. Without speed overhead, pages and pages of graphics, I should expect many more games like 'Seahaven Towers'. If speed is no longer a factor, sure lets go 256 color mode. > > Russo, Chris A. john calhoun
ccastcr@prism.gatech.EDU (Russo, Chris A.) (01/11/91)
mlab2@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes: >> Although it has some advances for a mac arcade-style game, it still >> isn't up to current levels of expectation. The graphics are flickery, >I would must differ on this. Although it ain't Amiga, I think Sky Shadow sets >a new benchmark in Mac arcade games. Having programmed the Mac, Sky Shadow >DOES exceed my levels of expectation. I'm very impressed - amazed even. I >don't doubt that someone will come along to top it, but it stands as the >arcade-game-to-be-reckoned with on the Mac. I'm sorry, I guess I wasn't very clear. The person to whom I responded _did_ mention the Amiga. By levels of expectation, I meant the entire market, not just the Mac's. I program the Mac as well, and I do agree that Sky Shadow does do a very good job with the Mac. But, if we get all excited about a game like Sky Shad, it's kind of like when the IBM'ers were running around saying, "Look, we have menus and we can cut and paste!" To which the Mac community responded BFD. >> My advice to you is to stick to the brain games on the Mac. These >> tend to be more contemporary in their quality. >Certainly. But, card games and Othello are easy to program. Without speed >overhead, pages and pages of graphics, I should expect many more games like >'Seahaven Towers'. If speed is no longer a factor, sure lets go 256 color >mode. Well, I wasn't referring to just card games. Some titles that I can think of off the top of my head, that fall into my Brain Game category: Infocom in general, but I specifically enjoyed Zork Zero.(Beyond Zork? One or the other. One of the two has fairly interesting graphics.) Strategic Conquest Sim City Sim Earth Computer Ambush Tetris Pipe Dream >john calhoun -- Russo, Chris A. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!ccastcr Internet: ccastcr@prism.gatech.edu
farren@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) (01/13/91)
ccastcr@prism.gatech.EDU (Russo, Chris A.) writes: [speaking of the Amiga] > Yeah, you'd think that blitter control would be fairly invisible and built >into their sprite control routines. I'd guess that they have some type >of toolbox similar to ours, plus all of that sprite stuff. Like many systems, the Amiga has many levels of possible access, from ROM code which will do all the blitter stuff for you, to library calls which allow you to more directly control the blitter itself, to getting down and banging on the blitter's register bits by hand. Which technique you use depends on what you're trying to do, and the speed you want to do it at. -- Mike Farren farren@well.sf.ca.us
gdb43989@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Gregory David Brown) (01/17/91)
ccastcr@prism.gatech.EDU (Russo, Chris A.) writes: >rich@sdchemf (Richard Kanner) writes: >>I recently purchased Sky Shad, a good fast action shoot-'em-up game >completely invincible with huge amounts of firepower. So, to compensate >for your strength, the game gets ridiculously fast. When you lose your >invincibility, you're pretty much dead meat. Also, once you get all of >this firepower, Sky Shadow game commits a serious sin. It doesn't erase som Curious, do you have an 8.24 GC card installed in your machine? I know I the acceleration init is responsible for it. Also, as a new user to the group, I missed the hints for solarian, especially for the second bonus stage. As for high scores, Level 9, 487,320. Of course I have gotten to higher levels (13) it was are not planning on winning the game, whenever given a bonus round, take the bonus score prize.