From: bscott@nyx.cs.du.edu (Ben Scott)
Subject: C-64 games (was Re: Classic Atari 8-bit programs)
Summary:  EA, Epyx, the greats
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Distribution: na
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 92 07:38:18 GMT

In article <1g5mncINNmt3@terminator.rs.itd.umich.edu> liamr@bradley.edu (Liam Hoekenga) writes:
>Synapse made some of the coolest atari 800 games.. Like Blue Max and 
>Necromancer. Expy was cool too. Kronos Rift, the Eidolon, and BALLBLAZER!

Koronis Rift!!!  I've been trying to remember the name of that one since
this group showed up.  GEEZ, what a cool game.  You drove around this
ancient planet searching wrecks for nifty gadgets, so you could outfit your
ship to drive around the planet some more, to get better gadgets, to go up
against tougher sentinels, to get more gadgets...

It was really cool how you actually had to worry about power management.
You could, say, turn off your shields to get enough power to go up a hill.
And shields (and lasers) would be more or less effective against different
colors of sentinel UFOs; you'd get a multicolor bar chart for your shield
levels, with the peak centered around one color... 

Actually, I've wanted a game which goes even further in that direction for
so long, I finally designed one.  Spent about a week once (in between
college and the Real World) working out parameters and features for a new
kind of flightsim/battle game.  I think I still have the sample screens I
drew for it.  It was designed for two players, though you could play it with
one if you were crazy enough.  The idea was to have one pilot, and give the
other player a fulltime interesting job just handling the various systems of
the ship - shields, several power sources (each with pros and cons; fuel,
batteries, solar, etc), weapons, radar, damage control, life support, and so
on and on.  Everything you did had a reaction - there is, for example, no
maximum speed - but the faster you go, the more energy you must divert from
shields and life support, the sicker you get (from the radioactive
environment), and the more the airframe is stressed by even small maneuvers.
Alternatively, during an attack you could crank up your shields and sit
tight, hovering, and hope their weapons run out before your batteries do.
Damage is handled in very complex ways.  The ship's flight dynamics are
loosely based on the Icarus from Starglider II (a modern-day classic), but
as I said, things are a lot more flexible.  There is even the equivalent of
wire-guided missiles - to give the copilot some action (the pilot uses the
joystick and numeric keypad; the copilot uses the mouse and keyboard).  And
you could set how the computer allocated power when the overall supply was
insufficient to the requests.  Actually, now that I've played Armour-Geddon,
I could add more stuff, like an R&D department back at the base... 

But enough about all that... I'll never have the time or ability to write
it.  Maybe someday, someone will come out with a flight-sim-builder like
they have application builders today.  A generalized 3-D perspective
rendering engine and some configuration utilities would blow Shoot'em'up
Construction Kit out of the water... 

Sorry.  This is a.g.v.classic, not a.g.v.what.i.want.to.see...

.                            <<<<Infinite K>>>>

(Was Necromancer the one with the trees?  You had to protect this central
wizard by planting trees, which you had to protect until they got big enough
to take care of themselves, or something; memory is dim here.)
--
|Ben Scott, professional goof-off and consultant at The Raster Image, Denver|
|Internet bscott@nyx.cs.du.edu, or call the Arvada 68K BBS at (303)424-6208.| 
|"Don't tug on that - you never know what ][The Raster Image IS responsible |
|it might be attached to." Buckaroo Banzai][for everything I say! | *Amiga* |
Newsgroups: alt.games.video.classic