Xref: utzoo rec.games.video:3609 comp.sys.amiga:40900
Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!sun-barr!newstop!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: rec.games.video,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: New videogame offering 'Beast'
Summary: Pretty whizzy graphics
Message-ID: <125648@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 2 Oct 89 20:53:54 GMT
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 86

So I went out looking for a new videogame experience and came up with
a new Psygnosis game called "Beast". A couple of things struck me about
the game. First, it is indistinguishable from an arcade game in my opinion,
and two it actually has the nerve to use some of the custom hardware the
Amiga provides for games. That said, on with some of the basics.

Common Formats (representative game): TopView (Xevious), SideView (Menace), 
	TopView-3D (Zaxxon), SideView-3D (Renegade), 3D-TopView (I Robot), 
	3D-Internal (Hard Drivin), BackView (Sega Turbo), 
	FixedView (Centipede).

Game Format : Sideview, Hack-n-Slash type game. The player is an artificially
	created beast with augmented speed, strength, ugliness etc. 
	
Concept : Like a lot of games that are 'tendoesq this is a game whereby
	the main character has to explore around and come up with things 
	to advance in the game. Unlike something like DungeonMaster it is
	set in a arcade type environment (lots of things to run and punch
	and kick at.) 

Features : Really nice graphics (what else would you expect from Psygnosis)
	and ok sound. The game play is acceptable, but sometimes a bit to
	arbitrary in how quickly it kills you off. 

NonFeatures : Little or no, "skip-past-this-boring-shit" features. When you
	die you get a full 10 - 20sec shot of a graphic with some 'emotive'
	music playing in the background. No amount of clicking, firing, or
	keypresses will move you on to the startup screen again. 

All in all I would reccomend this game, it is fun to play. And it comes with
a free T-Shirt (size large) so there.

Technical stuff now, if you just wanted the review skip to the next message :

Technical flaming below ...

The manual includes a section from the programmers, I can't quite figure
out what purpose it serves. There are three possibilities :
	1) The programmers wished to brag about what they had accomplished.
	2) Psygnosis wanted to get an antipiracy message out.
	3) It has some useful information in it somewhere.

This section bothered me on several counts, not the least of which was the
programmers threatening to work exclusively on game cartridges if the
piracy problem didn't let up. That's great and it gives the forces of 
truth and justice another opportunity to point out to pirates that sort
of damage they really do, even though they believe in their own mind that
they don't cause any harm. But what it fails to note is that if they spent
9 months working on all of these custom scrolling routines and such like
that made the gameplay so smooth, then how come they are going to trash
all of that work to go work on Nintendo cartridges?! I believe the answer
lies somewhere in the part of this section that reads [paraphrased]
"... we started college but couldn't cut it so we dropped out to write
games full time ..." It occured to me that these guys may have written
a bunch of whiz bang scrolling routines that are *hard coded* into the
stupid game. And that suggests that maybe they should have stayed in 
college a couple of more years. Why not build a scrolling "system" 
whether it is a compiled system or a runtime system that can be used
for *any* game. Then of your 9 months, some large fraction of them would
be reusable into any game you built? [Since I'll be in London later this
month I'll see if I can look these guys up and ask them.]

The last thing that truly bothered me about this manual was the stuff about
how there was 3.5 megabytes of data (and only 2 880K disks) and how these
guys were such hot shots, and they left the other 2Meg on my A1000 untouched
when they ran so they always had to re-read all their data when restarting
the game! What is so damn difficult in looking at the exec lists for memory
before you blow it away to see if there is anywhere to store this data of
yours? Anyway, if you are reading this and you are thinking about programming
a game, think about this :

Piracy is currently a fact of life. Decide ahead of time if you can make 
money with only 2% of the market and then get to work. Secondly, the more
code you can reuse in games the more valuable the time is spent in developing
it. If you spend 6 months (~$30,000 in "programmer time") in writing a 
damn good set of routines, and you use them in 5 games, you only have to
make back $6,000+ on each game to recoup your costs. Secondly, don't 
worry about stomping the OS out of existence when you run, but before you
start you should ask it for as much information as possible so that you ca
can make good use of the available resources.


--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
"If I were driving a Macintosh, I'd have to stop before I could turn the wheel."