chrisr@nro.cs.athabascau.ca (Chris Ringe) (11/17/90)
Well, after rushing down to my local software dealer, I picked up
AWESOME. After reading all the hype in the U.K. Rags about it, I
couldn't wait to get home and boot it up.
As most people know, Psygnosis loves intricate protection schemes. As
some might also recall the problem with Emerald Mines, being that it
would boot some times, or not at all.
Well, guess what? The same problem lies with AWESOME! Now, I can
understand the points of the companies to protect things, but they do get
carried awa{.
Anyways, i am waiting to get another set of disks, but this really PI**ES
me off. Why do you have to have a "Better than factory specs." drive?
I still think that WORD protection is the best. At least then, companies
can make wares HD compatible. Imagine Shadow of the Beast II on the ol'
Hard Drive?
Otherwise, the game itself is great. The intro is, as always, up to
Psygnosiss' quality. Certainly enough to Drool over.
The game comes on 3 disks, and with all the excitement, there is reason
for that.
You are Commander of the ship ElPIDAE. Your job is to cruise through 8
planets reaping supplies, and such. Each planet consists of multiple
levels.
The first stage, you encounter MANY ships which you must distroy. This
stage has you viewing from above your ship.
The second stage, you fly through a asteroid belt, shooting these
boulders down to size "Asteroids" style.
The third stage, the head capsule of your ship separates, and begins a
session of "SPACE HARRIER" type enemy crushing.
...disk dies...
The fourth stage allows you to land on a space station, and do various
things. I can't expand on this, because of the fact that the protection
doesn't allow it.
The game itself looks very promising, but I am forced to veiw the intro
and play the first 3 stages.
If anyone has any info as to defeat this major annoyence, please let me
know. I am going to attemp HARDWARE copying it. I theorise that it
might make the protection a bit more 'Lax.
I will post If I find away around it.
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| /// Chris Ringe | For the CREATIVE MIND! | or: /// |
| /// St. Albert, | The Power of the AMIGA | /// |
| \\\/// Alberta. | | VE6MCP (ham)\\\/// |
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END OF LINE.xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (11/25/90)
I think it's pretty silly to be slamming _Mike Farren's_ opinions on
hard drive mountable/multitasking games; I reach over and pull out my
box for Crystal Quest, which does both very nicely, and there on the
back of the box it says "Amiga Version by Mike Farren". I think we
can safely say that Mike's opinions on such subjects should be given
more than a little extra weight.
As to the question of whether it is useful for games to multi-task: of
course it is. I started a little script to merge and sort my new email
into my existing archives. The lharc's for 1762 correspondent files
comprising about 11 megs of email have been running for over two hours
now, on the fastest disk/controller combo around (the bottleneck is
the 68000), it has just reached the "m"s, and I'd _love_ to be playing
Turrican or Globulous while this is going on; I'm a bit burned out on
nethack (played about 60 hours of it so far this week), and reading news
is pretty boring just now. Guess what? Turrican and Globulous don't
install on my HD, and they don't multitask! Bummer!
If they did, I could have detached the script and diverted the output,
and left the archiving going in background while I blasted some nasties.
As to installing games on hard disk: of course I want to! I've pretty
much abandoned rummaging around for disks and docs and boxes (they're in
three different rooms) and just taken to playing the games I got mounted
in my "PLAY:" partition. It turns out for lots of games, a good sized
chunk of workbench was on the game disk, so I could keep my normal
assigns, pitch the redundant game disk copies of work bench files, and
install games with only the game data and executable, saving lots of HD
space. The games that don't mount on the HD don't get played any
more ... guess how much more money I'll be wasting on non-HD installable
games? So I'm a lazy sod -- I also represent a good fraction of the game
market -- folks to whom games are a pastime, not a passion.
/// It's Amiga
/// for me: why
Kent, the man from xanth. \\\/// settle for
<xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us> \XX/ anything less?
--
Convener, ongoing comp.sys.amiga grand reorganization.DEB110@psuvm.psu.edu (Doug Bischoff) (11/26/90)
Perhaps we should consider that the games are not actually WRITTEN by
Psygnosis, but rather by Reflections?
I think it's Psygnosis paranoid copy protections schemes that are
the cause of the problems you are arguing about? Any ideas?
/---------------------------------------------------------------------\
| -Doug Bischoff- | *** *** ====--\ | "It's so neat to |
| -DEB110 @ PSUVM- | * *** * ==|<>\___ | see an AMIGA say |
| -The Black Ring- | *** *** |______\ | "Welcome to |
| --- "Wheels" --- | *** O O | Macintosh"" |
| Corwyn Blakwolfe | T.R.I. ------------- | ---- AMIGA ---- |
\---------------------------------------------------------------------/mapjilg@gdr.bath.ac.uk (J I L Gold) (11/29/90)
Perhaps this thread should be in c.s.a.games, but here's my few pence/cents (?) worth anyway. I was really impressed with Awesome when I first got it - the graphics and sound and the intro animaion were just mind-blowing, and it all ran together smoothly. Then I went to my friends' machine (identical set-up, A500+internal half meg+external floppy (different to mine,though) +A590+internal expansion) and the game complained "can't find disk 2" at the point just before the asteroid belt. Afet much persuasion and disk-swopping, the game carries on but with mucho display-trashimg and flicker, and eventually crashes at the point where the lander separates. We presume the nasty disk-gronking has put the drive heads out of alignment by just enough to be unable to read the custom disk format, as even when we put disk 2 in, it still complains it can't find it :-( However, the game still ran fine on my machine...till a couple of days ago, when it couldn't find disk 3 in my external, even though it was in! Again, the copy-protected disk has probably pushed my disk drive past the point of being able to read it. This is UTTERLY UNACCEPTABLE. I've paid 35 pounds for this game, and I can't afford to go get my heads re-aligned every month just because they can't come up with some suitable copy-protection. Further, there are bugs in the game (eg when you re-start a game from a stored position, the navcom display is trashed) and the lack of a real game-save feature is another BIG minus - it could take AGES to finish this game in one sitting. Yes, these guys can program. Yes, these guys can draw great graphics. Yes, these guys can write great music. But they simply haven't a clue how to make a program usable, enjoyable, or anything more than a big souped-up demo to show your friends how to finish when the cheat mode pops its head up. -- # J.Gold | mapjilg@uk.ac.bath.gdr # # University of Bath , UK | jilg@uk.ac.bath.maths # # The more improbable an event is, the more likely it is to happen :-) #