wwg2101@venus.tamu.edu (GILPIN, WESLEY WILSON) (10/22/90)
Okay, first to the anyone who has problems with running games: GET INIT PICKER, AASK OR INIT/CDEV!!!! Use these programs to turn off ALL of your inits before trying to run a game. Games are notorious for init conflicts. After Dark causes lots of problems, as do most screen savers. In the case of mission starlight, make sure that you have Mission Init in your system folder and that it executes when you start your mac, as well as disabling all other inits. This reserves the second graphics page for Mission Starlights animation. TURN MULTIFINDER OFF! Second:Somebody tell me about this wonderful secret room in Uninvited. I also could use a spoiler for Uninvited. Which candle am I supposed to place in front of the tombstone in the maze? As someone mentioned before, Penguin's wares were of inferior quality, Transylvania being the only halfway decent one. Beagle Brothers, however has always produced inexpensive, high-quality software and has never used copy protection and, last I heard, was successful. Games nowadays are tagged for 50 to 60 dollars. Many times these games(adventures in particular) provide us with a week or a month of use and then are useless since we've solved it. I fail to see how companies can expect teens to shell out $50 per game, for games may only be fun for a month. Here's a list of what I see wrong and what I feel can be done about it: 1) Prices TOO HIGH! Eliminate the copy protection and reduce the price of the ware. By maintaining prices that only let people with tons of money to spare purchase the programand leaving the user with limited funds(most everyone) in the cold, companies are begging to have their wares pirated. Make them more affordable to more people and more copies will be sold. Remember your high school economics class? Maybe we ought to make the company executives take those classes again. 2) Poor games. The cheaper games tend to also be the poorer quality games. This does make sense, but look at Tetris. $20, Excellent game, LONG staying power and NO copy protection. This thing is selling like wildfire, people! Same for Welltris(although it does have documentation copy protection) Look at Solarian II!!! One of the best mac games ever and a measley $20 shareware! Developers should take Solarian as an example to follow. 3) HORRIBLE marketing! It is commonly known that most mac games can be gotten through pirates weeks, sometimes MONTHS before we see them in the stores! Not betas, friends, but release versions. Software companies need to get their product to market, THEN publicise it and must KEEP THE PRODUCT FROM THE PUBLIC UNTIL THE PRODUCT IS RELEASED. This means that beta testers don't get their free copies until the program is available to everyone else. If people are raving about a new program weeks before it's even AVAILABLE in the stores or mailorder houses, but the pirates have it, of COURSE sales are going to be low when the product is released, since everyone got it from the pirates 3 weeks before! One trend that I have noticed that is good is better packaging. Docs that are useful in the game, gimmicks such as maps, coins, etc...(I speak of the high-dollar adventure games like ultima that should cost HALF as much), thus making it much more useful to buy the game then to pirate it. Games such as Ultima and Citadel are unplayable witout docs due to the heavy reliance on spell lists, components and descriptions. I've got a lot more I'd like to say, but i've already taken more space than I'd orignally intended and I commend you for reading this far. I know there are developers that read this group. Take heed to my suggestions. You are the cause of piracy and also the cure if you want to be. *note* I do not condone nor practice piracy.(therefore my software library is extremely small)I just am stating my views on its causes and possible solutions so that more and better mac games will be written. WWG2101@TAMVENUS