Organization: Penn State University
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 13:06:14 EST
From: <SML108@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.games.lynx,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Jaguar, Falcon, Atari generally
Distribution: world

Those of us that are Atari ST, Lynx, Falcon or potential Jaguar fans
would be well advised to read the most recent issue of ST Report...

Double Click Software, a small company which has made some utterly
fantastic software for the ST, spent $3000 of its own money to go
visit Atari Headquarters to show off their product _Game Designer's
Workbench_,  here are some highlights but I do not do this terrifying
article justice merely by describing it, read it for yourself, I beseech
you as I think I have finally been convinced to abandon atari by it...

1) DC software asked atari if they had a removable hard drive so they
   could just bring a cartridge from their hard rive and load it there.
   Atari sad "Suuuuuuurrrrre", so they that's what they did.  When they
   arrived they were first told that they didn't have any such drive but
   then they cobbed one together after an hour or so.  After fiddling
   with the drive for an hour and failing to load the software the
   Atari Engineers proclaimed that "the cartridge was formatted with
   s___tty 3rd party software."  As it turned out, it had worked just
   fine but that it had an empty C partition and all of the software
   was on the D partition.  By the way, the s___tty 3rd party software
   was from ICD, a really good company...

2) Leonard Tramiel and his idiot engineer friends constantly heckled
   these developers during their visit with such lines as "What would
   be your reaction if we sued you for copyright infringement for
   HacMan II?"  And remember, this is the guy who's now in charge of
   the Jaguar...  Way to go Lenny Boy!  Bring atari back to the top
   of the fortune 500 by suing all of its former developers!  Genius!
   Master Stroke!

3) Upon showing the lynx developers the Game Designer's Workbench,
   they heckled it and said that it stunk because it didn't contain features
   for automatic sprite scaling and rotation.  The DC people attempted to
   explain that the reason the lynx had that feature was because it was in
   the lynx hardware not the software and that additionally they had written
   such routines for GDW and could easily incorporate them, but this just
   got them a chorus of boos... So now we know why most recent lynx games
   are lame...  Additionally, Atari has been trying to get the lynx developers
   to move to the TT, but they refuse to do so because that would mean they
   would lose access to their favorite text editor making them incapable of
   of programming.  Oh the PAIN!  Oh the PAIN!

3) The one shining star in this visit was Bill Rehbok.  He gave DC software
   a Falcon for their troubles and apparently he along with the TT programmers
   were the only people who were polite to these people.

Well, those are some highlights.  READ THIS ARTICLE!  There's a lot more
idiocy from the Katzenjammer kids I haven't mentioned...  I have an ST, a lynx,
and an atari 800.  I was planning on buying a Falcon and I may still do so.
After reading this article, I was ready to buy a new Amiga instead.  However,
all it took was an hour of articles on comp.sys.amiga.advocacy to make me
realize that they have similar problems as big as Atari's.  So now I'm in
coast mode ready to abandon them if only some third party would come
out with a computer with the best features of the Falcon (DSP), and the Amiga
(Graphics), and a 32 MHz 68030...   I hear Electronic Arts is working on
something interesting along these lines...

Scott
"What would be your reaction if we sued you for copyright infringement for
 HacMan II?"