HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: vlaurent@cactus.org (Vince Laurent)
Subject: Game Balance Results
Organization: Capital Area Central Texas UNIX Society, Austin, Tx
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 16:42:46 GMT

After reading through about 10K lines on the subject of game balance, I
hx{Yh,+ conclusion:
 
        'Game Balance depends upon the game'
 
To claify, I'll post some of the responses (and try to post the authors
name if I still have it).
 
* Rank the players against others of the same approximate strength (1).
* Have more disasters and challenges for the higher ranking players (1).
* Have an infinite map (2).
* Have a variety of roles for the player to choose from which have their
  own victory conditions (2)
* Give newcomers an advantage (3)
* Allow the option of an alliance to win (3)
* Have more than one victory condition (4) (7) (8)
* Hinder the more powerful players by imposing a point/piece or tax on
  each of the 'units' (5) (6)
* Tax the players and spread the wealth around inversely to the strength
  of the players (6)
* Make it harder to run a bigger empire (6)
* Let new players be parts of the old players empires (eg the result of 
  a civil war) (Njha* Have multiple victory conditions BUT don't let the other players know
  what they might be (10) (4)
* Have raiders attack the rich characters (0)
* Use life expentancy (5)
* Have more disasters and misfortunes for a more spread out empire (11)
* Use a 'pie method' of playing - one player gets to choose something 
  first but the other player gets to do something else first (12)
* Create a large enough playing field so that new players can choose to
  start farther away from already established players (2)
* Make alliances effective but still only allow ONE person to win (0)
* Incorporate a communication lag for larger empires (0)
* Use a hidden board and a game master (5)
 
(0) unknown - lost message header         (1) Nat Brooke
(2) Russell Wallace                       (3) martin        
(4) Graham Mathews                        (5) Jonathan
(6) Amit J. Patel                         (7) Paul Fly
(8) Frank Miskevich              PPPPPP  P9) Maa9:Y
*Oewinkel
(10) Serge Gilette                        (11) Christopher Jam
(12) Brad Johnson
 
Each of these points are valid in the context of certian games.  They
have helped me to become more aware of winning conditions.  Out of the
list above, I think I am going to use:
 
1. Multiple victory conditions
2. Make alliances effective but still only allow ONE person to win.
3. Allow 'new' players to pick thier starting spot.
4. Make it harder and more costly to run a larger empire.
 
Of course, these will work for a few ideas I have...others they won't.
 
Thanks for all the feedback!


-- 
Vince Laurent 
Internet  vlaurent@cactus.org
Connect America BBS 1:382/10
From: mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at (Markus Stumptner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
Subject: Re:  TP or C ?
Date: 24 Jul 92 15:31:23 GMT
Organization: DB and ES Subdivision, TU Vienna

From article <1992Jul24.144708.3784@inmos.co.uk>, by bruce@cheetah.inmos.co.uk (Bruce Stenning):
> Can you imagine writing something like UNIX in Pascal?  It would be an
> absolute nightmare.

Classic myopia.  Actually, CDC wrote the last generations of their
mainframe operating systems in a Pascal-based language (recorded
somewhere in the 1984? SIGPLAN notices) with favorable results.  (NOT
Standard Pascal, of course.)  A larger part of the Macintosh OS is
written in Pascal, as far as I know.  Also take a look at the
workstation operating systems developed by Wirth's group over the
years - fast, lightweight, fairly powerful, and usually with languages
quite similar to Pascal, certainly not beyond Turbo Pascal in
expressiveness, and all quite far removed from C.

No, I wouldn't recommend doing it to anyone who doesn't want to.  But
obviously it's more of a looking-over-the-fence problem than a real
one.
-- 
Markus Stumptner                                mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at
University of Technology Vienna                 vexpert!mst@relay.eu.net
Paniglg. 16, A-1040 Vienna, Austria             ...mcsun!vexpert!mst
From: galt%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Greg Alt)
Subject: Re: TP or C ? (was: Languages to program in and ports and blah and etc...)
Date: 21 Jul 92 02:53:01 MDT
Followup-To: rec.games.programmer
Reply-To: galt%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu
Organization: University of Utah, CS Dept., Salt Lake City

In article <1992Jul20.203317.10143@esds.mdc.com>, bonney@esds.mdc.com (Greg Bonney) writes:
>I still like Pascal.  Everybody says, "it was originally intended only to teach
>people how to program".  And I say, "so what?"  C apparently wasn't "good
>enough" in it's original incarnation either.  Otherwise, why did they have to
>come up with ANSII C and C++?  And C does sacrifice readability in favor of
>flexibility.  The C "for" statement is especially weird; it's completely
>different from "for" statements I've seen in any other language.

The for statement may seem weird at first, but you can do neat things like this:

for(t=root;t!=NULL;t=t->next) puts(t->str);


to cycle through a linked list of strings, printing each as it goes.

Pascal would be something like:
 
t:=root;
repeat
  begin
    write(t^.str);
    t:=t^.next;
  end
until t=Nil


Sure the C is uglier looking, but an experienced C programmer would easily be 
able to tell what it does.  And once you know how for works, you don't have
to worry about using a "for", a "while", or a "repeat...until".  You can just
use the for statement.

Also, in C, I wanted to check a couple of bits at memory location 0400:0017.
All I did was:
 
if(*((char *)0x04000017)&3) ...

How would you do that in pascal? 
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
From: sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey)
Subject: Re: Bitmap 3-d graphics systems
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 04:25:56 GMT
Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences

I wonder if it would be possible to use the graphic system in WC or
say, Falcon. If the entry points of the appropriate routines could be
weeded out and documented, one could use them for one's own project.
I.e. to run the freeware space blasters, one must have Falcon on the
hard drive, from which the appropriate code is extracted at run time.
Perfectly legal. I'd like it for prototyping at least.

Sean

-- 
                  |``Wind, waves, etc. are breakdowns in the face of the
Sean Casey        | commitment to getting from here to there. But they are the
sean@s.ms.uky.edu | conditions for sailing -- not something to be gotten rid
U of KY, Lexington| of, but something to be danced with.''
From: cedman@714-725-3165.nts.uci.edu (Carl Edman)
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
Subject: Re: Collision detection PLEASE, all geniuses respond!
Date: 29 Jul 92 18:45:34 GMT
Reply-To: cedman@golem.ps.uci.edu (Carl Edman)

Garr Godfrey writes
   REMEMBER! Since your object only move a few pixels at a time, the overlap 
   region will only increase by a tiny amount every time.  Thus, you
   can greatly optimize by only checking the border of the overlap region
   with the number of pixels that you have moved.

Not a good idea. As the relative position of the two objects has changed there  
may very well be a new collision in the old overlap area.

	Carl Edman
From: sl8nl@cc.usu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
Subject: Re: TP game library
Date: 21 Jul 92 19:08:36 MDT
Organization: Utah State University

In article <1992Jul21.131416.1@acad2.alaska.edu>, psalp@acad2.alaska.edu writes:
> 
> 	There's a lot of talk of game librarys on this group. Anybody mind if I
> post one I and a friend are writing to create nintendo type gamefiles? 
> 
> 	P.S. By the way, try PC intern. It's a great source for info on
> scrolling and sprites. 
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> 	I believe five impossible things before breakfast...
> 	Six is one too many...
> 		Albert L. Perrien II 
> 			psalp@acad2.alaska.edu

So where does one get PC intern ???
Xref: sparky rec.games.programmer:3012 alt.msdos.programmer:2078 comp.os.msdos.programmer:8105
From: sl8nl@cc.usu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer,alt.msdos.programmer,comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Mode Y"{
Date: 26 Jul 92 23:14:31 MDT
Organization: Utah State University

In article <Bs14M7.DKE@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu>, njoddson@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu (Nick Oddson) writes:
> How do you setup Mode Y...  I've got code (and understand) how to initialize
> Mode X, but I have several routines which I can only implement in Mode Y...
> so, could someone send me code or tell me the modifications which I have to
> make so initialize mode Y (I suppose I could figure it out myself, but I'm 
> lazy)...
> 
> Thanks in advance,
>                     Nick
> 
> --
> "This sentence no verb" -- Jargon File 2.90, July/92
> 

What is Mode Y exactly?  Is it the 320x200x256x4 mode?

Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
From: msmith%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Matthew Smith)
Subject: Re: Game libraries...
Date: 31 Jul 92 08:25:34 MDT
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept

In article <1992Jul27.141122.11139@wam.umd.edu> dmb@wam.umd.edu (David M. Baggett) writes:
>In article <76626@ut-emx.uucp> baylor@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Baylor) writes:
>
>>	The graphics books out there don't really cover anything to useful
>>to games programming (except maybe the never-can-find abrash book).
>
>
>(BTW, does *anyone* have a copy of Abrash?  Where can you get it?  I've
>tried every big bookstore I know and no one's ever heard of it.)
>
>
>Dave Baggett
>dmb@wam.umd.edu

The closest I have come is at B. Dalton, where they looked his name up, found
the titles of his two books, then boldy pronounced "They're no longer in 
print." ie:  the publisher stopped publishing them.  

I'm planning on getting Abrash's address out of DDJ and writing him a letter
to see if he has any stashed in his back room he'd mind sharing with me.

 
Matt Smith
msmith@peruvian.utah.edu
Student - University of Utah Department of Computer Science
From: bruce@lion.inmos.co.uk (Bruce Stenning)
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
Subject: Re:  TP or C ?
Date: 29 Jul 92 15:03:13 GMT
Organization: INMOS Limited, Bristol, UK

In article <Bs23z9.LK1@apollo.hp.com>, johnf@apollo.hp.com (John Francis) writes:
|> I don't have to imagine it - I've seen it.  In fact I wrote some of it.
|> Domain/OS (the operating system for Apollo workstations) is written in Pascal.
|> It's no more or less of a nightmare than real UN*X(tm).

What happens when you want to port it to another machine?  O.K. maybe
no one will.

|> Now can we please all stop the "my language is better than your language"
|> wars?  Without knowing all the constraints, it is impossible to make any
|> meaningful comparisons.  for example:

I wasn't trying to say that "C is better than Pascal", I was redressing
the balance.  You seemed to be putting down C, so I felt that it was time
to step in and air my own views.  I agree that both languages have their
good points and bad points, but when it comes to the crunch, C is definitely
more portable, and arguably more efficient.

|> If portability is the major concern, then obvously you should choose C.
|> If the code is only going to run on your computer, use whatever you like.
|> TP has a (much) faster compile-load-run cyle, so using that instead of
|> a C compiler can be a big win, especially on a slower machine like a 286.

True, but a good programmer shouldn't spend his or her time compiling
and recompiling.  If you spend time trying to figure out where something
went wrong, you'll spend less and less time compiling, testing, compiling,
testing.  This should never be used as a reason for choosing a particular
language over another.

|> As for the two languages:  any half-way competent programmer can work
|> equally well in either language.  Obviously each language has its own
|> set of features you will miss when programming in the other: in my case
|> I like Pascal variant records, and C conditional expressions.

True, it very much depends on preference.  I used to program in Pascal,
until I discovered C.  I don't think I want to go back now.

|> -- 
|> John Francis                                johnf@apollo.hp.com
|> The world can be divided into two classes :-
|>  those who divide people into two classes, and those who don't.

-- 
+-------------------+-------------------------\\__--.------------------------+
| Bruce Stenning    |                      |\/   o\ . ARGGH.... Stop eating  |
+-------------------+                      |   "" <.                         |
| bruce@inmos.co.uk |                      |/\  __/       my .sig file...    |
+-------------------+-------------------------//-----------------------------+
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
Subject: Development Opportunity!
From: ebhanson@StarConn.com (E. B. Hanson)
Date: 30 Jul 92 07:32:54 GMT
Organization: Starnet-Public Access UNIX--Los Altos, CA  415-949-3133

This posting is to introduce you to Felis Software. Felis Software
publishes a quarterly catalog of software applications, utilities, and
templates for Mac and PC-compatible computer users. Felis handles the
marketing, product ordering, duplication, and shipping. In addition,
Felis provides technical support for these products. They are currently
looking to expand their catalog.

The programs included in the Felis catalog are carefully selected from
submissions received from developers like yourself. The developer
receives a substantial royalty for every unit Felis sells.

If you are interested in submitting a product for publication or want
more information about this opportunity, reply to this posting. I have a
developer's kit I would be happy to forward to you. If you'd rather
contact me by surface mail, that can be done also.

Eric Hanson
191 Harder Road, #122
Hayward, CA 94544
(510) 582-4300


Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer,comp.apps.spreadsheets,comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.misc,comp.os.msdos.programmer,comp.os.os2.programmer,comp.windows.ms.programmer,comp.games.programmer
Subject: Development Opportunity!

This posting is to introduce you to Felis Software. Felis Software
publishes a quarterly catalog of software applications, utilities, and
templates for Mac and PC-compatible computer users. Felis handles the
marketing, product ordering, duplication, and shipping. In addition,
Felis provides technical support for these products. They are currently
looking to expand their catalog.

The programs included in the Felis catalog are carefully selected from
submissions received from developers like yourself. The developer
receives a substantial royalty for every unit Felis sells.

If you are interested in submitting a product for publication or want
more information about this opportunity, reply to this posting. I have a
developer's kit I would be happy to forward to you. If you'd rather
contact me by surface mail, that can be done also.

Eric Hanson
191 Harder Road, #122
Hayward, CA 94544
(510) 582-4300
From: mykes@amiga0.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz)
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
Subject: Re: Game Library? Fact or Fiction.
Distribution: world
X-NewsSoftware: GRn 1.16e (7/4/92) by Mike Schwartz & Michael B. Smith
Date: 21 Jul 92 20:46:49 PST
Organization: Amiga makes it possible

In article <711722115.16455@zooid.guild.org> ron@zooid.guild.org (Secret Mud) writes:
> From: mykes@amiga0.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz)
> >
> >You also hit on an interesting point, which I've already addressed...
> >Today, we have seen 5+ years of run-punch-kick-beatupwomenwithchains
> >video games coming from the coin-op industry - the traditional leaders
> >of the gaming industry (IMO).  Those guys get the best hardware (custom,
> >just to make the game exactly as they want) and have great artists
> >and other resources.  Back in the old days, you'd get a Centipede,
> >a Q-Bert, an Asteroids, a Defender, a Robotron, a Qix, a Tempest, a
> >pacman...  Games that are all very distinct, creative, have soul,
> >and were highly entertaining.  Marketroids will tell you today,
> >though, that those kinds of games (abstract, new edge) are not
> >what sells anymore.  Just games like Double Dragon or Sports
> >games...
> >
> >Author of Amiga GRn, MailMinder, Budokan, Beyond Dark Castle, Dark Castle,
> >and Genesis Dick Tracy and Marble Madness.
> >Mike Schwartz  (ames!zorch!amiga0!mykes or mykes@amiga0.sf-bay.org)
> >1124 Fremont Ave.
> >Los Altos, CA 94024
> >
>
> Possibly it might have something to do with the lack of any North American
> designers of coin-op games.  (There must be one or two left, but I can't think
> of them at the moment.)  Just Far East knockoff shops.

Atari Coin-op is going strong (CyberBall and Hard Drivin' are two of their
recent hits).  So is Williams/Bally (Narc, Smash TV, etc.).  Both are
American companies.

--
Amiga programmer of: GRn, MailMinder, Budokan, Beyond Dark Castle, Dark Castle
Sega Genesis programmer of: Dick Tracy and Marble Madness.
Mike Schwartz  (ames!zorch!amiga0!mykes or mykes@amiga0.sf-bay.org)
1124 Fremont Ave.
Los Altos, CA 94024

Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
From: tmkk@uiuc.edu (Khan)
Subject: Re: Here's a source for "Zen. . . "
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 12:28:00 GMT


In article <36587@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> gmt@reef.cis.ufl.edu (GMM) writes:
>Someone had expressed an interest in getting Abrash's Assembly book.  The
>easiest way to get it to pick up an issue of "PC Techniques" magazine
>and order it through them.  I think they do their own publishing and have
>Abrash on staff etc. . .    Anyway, they definitely will send you the
>book.

They will send you Abrash's "Zen of Assembly Language" which, according to the
publisher (Scott, Foresman & Co.) has been out of print since January of
this year???

Please email me the phone number on this PC Techniques ad - I'll order a
copy right now!! If they really do have this book, they must have a few
leftover copies. Or perhaps you're just looking at an old advertisement?

Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
From: sean%fuggles.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Sean Igo)
Subject: Re: Pascal and C
Date: 23 Jul 92 13:36:33 MDT
Summary: what a silly thread - even the serious entries are silly
Keywords: why bother arguing?
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept

In article <1992Jul22.150304.2040@hellgate.utah.edu> galt%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Greg Alt) writes:
>>In article <1992Jul20.203317.10143@esds.mdc.com>, you write...
>>Just like Pascal++ will be if it's ever written.
>
>Shouldn't it be:
> 
>Pascal:=Pascal+1;
>
>:-)
>-
>sig?
>-
And you've heard about the new object-oriented COBOL, too, right?

ADD 1 TO COBOL GIVING COBOL

--
SamHonk Xenubis
joke courtesy of Dr. Joseph Zachary and whoever he heard it from
From: ptran@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Phat H Tran)
Subject: VESA information
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 09:45:55 GMT

I was wondering where I can get details on the VESA SVGA standard,
preferably in electronic form.  I am also looking for technical
information on the Tseng ET4000 chip.  Thanks.

Phat.
From: sl8nl@cc.usu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
Subject: Re: Dave 'n' Josh
Date: 31 Jul 92 13:39:07 MDT
Organization: Utah State University

> I don't know if Josh mentioned this on his explanation of real-time
> perspective mapping [scaling/rotation] but the way to get speed is
> to store the image to be scaled in a format where each pixel
> is a byte.  An 80x80 pixel bitmap is simply a 6400 byte 2 dimensional

I forgot to say that, but that is how the routine expects it.

> array.  As your scanning algorithm scans the array and stores each pixel
> it is stored as another table where you then convert back to interleaved
> for screen memory.  I hear that PC VGA stores each pixel as a byte,

Yeah, it does.  At least in the 256 color modes.

> anyway, so this might be necessary only on Atari ST or Amiga [advantages
> outweigh for the latter two].

True, this must be done as a linear byte-by-byte organization technique,
but a friend told me it was possible to have an image like that on the
Amiga.  I can't speak of the ST, though.

> I think I posted about texture mapping about a year ago in alt.sys.amiga.demos
> or comp.sys.amiga.programmer.


Same type of system?

Josh


Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
From: iuzzolin@carina.unm.edu (Harold Iuzzolino)
Subject: Re: TP or C ? (was: Languages to program in and ports and blah and etc...)
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 92 17:19:59 GMT
Organization: Ashgon Inc.

[Lots deleted]
>
>>I still like Pascal.  Everybody says, "it was originally intended only to teach
>>people how to program".  And I say, "so what?"  C apparently wasn't "good
>>enough" in it's original incarnation either.  Otherwise, why did they have to
>>come up with ANSII C and C++?  And C does sacrifice readability in favor of
>>flexibility.  The C "for" statement is especially weird; it's completely
>>different from "for" statements I've seen in any other language.
>
>pity about the pascal code generation ( pascal is EASIER to optimize than
>C, but no one (at least main-line compilers) seems to do it!!).compare
>output of your favorite pascal compiler with the same ( functionally ) code
>from MSC 6.0 (7.0??) or even watcom 9.0 ( with '486 code optimization ) and
>you will see what I mean..
>
[Mac pascal nuked]
>
>also.. I just love the ability to use the_variable<<=3; instead of ( I think )
>the_variable:=shl(the_variable,3);, which would not even be portable!!

the_variable:=(the_variable shl 3)

this is portable (at least to the amiga).  I have done it, I have proof,
I have programs that don't crash.  I have also seen Stony Brook's Pascal
(I own in it fact).  It is pretty good (optimization blows me away), but
I still like Turbo Pascal 6.0 better.  As I already optimize my code,
I don't need any compiler to do so.  (So I don't get flamed): This does
not mean that everyone can optimize their code.  Yes it is nice to
have a copmiler to do so.  Yes C does nicely.  However, if you guys
are going to go with optimization and libraries...how about Fortran (Puketran
to us)?  That is optimized, portable, and has millions of libraries.
(Ok, maybe not millions...but a lot).  Turbo Pascal is still the best 
language (I consider it to be a different language to normal Pascal) I
have ever used.  The only problem with it is the compiler limitations.
(i.e. that arrays have to be constant).  As far as I can tell, this
is the only thing that separates C from Pascal.  On a final note,
Pascal does have easier string handling and an ability to handle boolean
functions.

This is one nice thing about TP:

function BoolTest(x,y:byte): boolean;
begin
 ...
end;

begin
 if BoolTest(10,40) then InsertAnotherSpiffyProcedureNameHereIfYouWant;
end.
 

--Enh, so I forgot my sig...sue me.
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
From: msmith%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Matthew Smith)
Subject: Re: Using Images in Games
Date: 31 Jul 92 08:52:51 MDT
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Distribution: all

In article <1992Jul29.141817.2441@ultb.isc.rit.edu> dxc0904@ultb.isc.rit.edu (D.X. Chin ) writes:
>Hello All:
>	I have a problem or just a question, How would I go about using
>GIF images in my programs, I don't mean 16 color images, I mean 256
>color images, I really only need 320x200. But I'm not sure how to
>manipulate them. 
>	I've tried using the Genus PCX libraries, but I can't get their
>BGI to work with Borlands. Because Borlands I think only uses 16 color
>VGA. I tried using a 256 color VGA BGI driver I found, but they didn't
>work with each other either. 
>	What I'm trying to do is use a drawn image for a background in a
>game i'm working on. Any help would be great... 
>
>thanx in advance...
>-
>- Dower
>- dxc0904@ultb.rit.edu

What I did was write my own code to read in PCX files.  Then I can do whatever
I want with them.  Most paint programs store .PCX or .TIFF files.


Matt Smith
msmith@peruvian.utah.edu
Student - University of Utah Department of Computer Science
Xref: sparky rec.games.programmer:3036 comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer:289