micone@cogsci.ucsd.EDU (Andy Micone) (05/29/90)
Here's my pet peeve, and I'm sharing it on the net to see if I can get feedback from others who share it. I hate games on the Mac that seem to disregard the user-interface completely. For example, I have ancient art of war, and I recently got synchronicity, and these games seem to be direct ports from the PC versions...no menus, klunky inappropiate use of buttons. Call me silly but I bought a mac for the interface and I don't like dropping cash to fuel some programmer who disregards it. If game programs set a precedent for poor regard for the user, won't the disregard spread? Recently I've seen some new games for the mac floating around: two from origins (the tank programming game and something about a galactic trader) and Balance of Power 1990. How closely do these games follow the interface, are they just ports from the PC version (ergo avoidable). Can we rate them? Using the standard grading scale, here's some of my examples: Ancient art of War: C- Synchronicity: B- Theldrow: A- Life and Death: C+ These are just illustrative. What does everyone else think? -- Andy
chewy@apple.com (Paul Snively) (05/29/90)
In article <145@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> micone@cogsci.ucsd.EDU (Andy Micone) writes: [Lots of stuff about human interface issues deleted] Your best bet for Macintosh games is to get stuff that was originally designed and implemented by Macintosh programmers to run specifically on the Macintosh--and was perhaps then ported to other systems. Pardon my biases, but I think some good examples are: Deja Vu Uninvited Shadowgate Deja Vu II <--- I was the lead programmer on this one, hence the bias. Balance of Power is also quite good--it was a Mac original, too. The Mac version of Wizardry was well done, and Citadel is mildly buggy but has a pretty good interface too. __________________________________________________________________________ Paul Snively Macintosh Developer Technical Support Apple Computer, Inc. chewy@apple.com Just because I work for Apple Computer, Inc. doesn't mean that I believe what they believe, or vice-versa. __________________________________________________________________________
rick@claris.com (Rick Boarman) (05/30/90)
I have to agree with you on your point about people ignoring the Mac
interface when porting games. No longer will I buy any games that don't
have a picture of a Mac screen on the box. One of the worst I have seen
is StarFlight and one of the best is Citadel.
Rick
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