RE: Strategy games (was something else and Texture mapping)

[Jan Ekholm <chakie@infa.abo.fi>]

On Mon, 8 Nov 1999, Gareth Noyce wrote:

>> Nice. Far too much emphasis is nowadays put on the sound & 
>> gfx of games,
>> and making the really stupid. I think most strategygames are 
>> still today
>> dumber than those on the old C64. CPU-power has increased 
>> thousandfold,
>> but all it has gone to gfx, very little to the actual 'depth' 
>> of the game.
>
>That's a bit of a generalisation really. There are some fine examples of the
>genre, but in general your point does hold.

Yep, but it's very hard to come with conclusions without more or less
bad generalisation...

<flame snipped>

>I thought this was a given?! Blame the console generation. Although saying
>that I don't mind some jaw dropping GFX to stare at after the pub :)

Ok. I too don't mind som enic gfx, but not at the cost of the
depth and gameplay. Currently gfx seems to be 75%+ of the total
development time/cost in modern games. Sound adds another 20%, leaving
some percent to the plot, AI, depth...

>> I don't really like RTS-games, I prefer turnbased, or maybe something
>> where the action is realtime but the orders are given as 
>> turnbased. Anyone
>> remeber Panzer Strike, Typhoon of Steel, Computer Ambush.
>
>Panzer Strike was cool. Cimputer Ambush is a new one on me. What format was
>that out on?

That's a really ancient one. I think it was first on the Apple II, but
later (1983?) on the C64. I bears some similarities to Laser Squad on the
Amiga. It's tactical with a squad of 8 men, basically realtime, but you
give your men orders for ~30 seconds. After that an actin phase executes
the orders and you review the results and issue new orders. It had several
different weapons, grenades, explosives, advanced line-of-sight (the
battle was in a small town), sneaking, crawling, running, sniping
fire-on-area etc etc. Some nice missions too. I still have the manual for
the game, so it should be fairly easy to copy the 'contents' of the game
in a newer version.

>> For the latest (and greatest), yes. For the old ones, no. The 
>> first ones
>> go back to Amiga (AMOS, Lattice C) and my old 286 (Turbo 
>
>I wouldn't mind having a play with the Amiga version (I still have a 500 &
>1200 up and running @home)
>any chance of getting hold of a copy?

No, it's unfortunately sold long ago, along with all the software.

---------------------+------------------------------------------------------
 Jan 'Chakie' Ekholm |    CS at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
    Linux Inside     | I'm the blue screen of death, no-one hears you scream