quote:Originally posted by MrNeutron: We ended up leeting the computer sheet the ship
That sounds like dirty porn for people who get turned on by warp nacelles.
And hang on, I had ROE 2 on the Amiga. Although it crashed a lot. Someone had given it to me though, so I blame them for doing something to the disk.
I disown the Amiga version. We never intended to do it. The publisher forced the issue at the last minute and there was a rush to port it. A standard Amiga didn't have 256 color displays then, so all kinds of stuff had to be compromised, amongst other things.
I remember that ROE and ROE2 went for 2D space representations beause Omnitrend had used true 3D space in Universe, and they had so many tech support calls from people who couldn't understand how to steer in 3D space (their pattern indicated "two dimensional thinking") that a decision was made to keep all the ships on the ecliptic plane.
ROE2 got a lot of good reviews and awards, but no one ever saw it...because Impressions (the publisher) blew the entire ad budget 6 weeks before th games hit the shelf and no one knew it was there. My favorite was this Compute! review review by the then editor of OMNI magazine...
The fun thing about doing those games was doing an LCARS type interface but actually making it functional. I wrote an article about that for Computer Gaming World back in 1991.
-------------------- "Well, I mean, it's generally understood that, of all of the people in the world, Mike Nelson is the best." -- ULTRA MAGNUS, steadfast in curmudgeon
Registered: Feb 2001
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WOW! Mr. Neutron, that's so cool. I'm very curious to try this game out. I'll have to start hunting around and see if I can't pick up a used copy of it somewhere. I found a (very brief) review of the game by Jerry Pournelle(!) from BYTE magazine. Very awesome.
I suspect that you are right about making the computer handle the maneuvering. If you had one person whose only job was maneuvering (without concern for the weapons or interfacing with other ships), then it' might be be allright (though very difficult in 3D), but with one person trying to handle everything they'd be driven mad. Anyway I had no idea and it's very, very cool stuff. If you wouldn't mind, I'd love to pick your brain a bit about this as I'm roughing out the combat system for my show and I want to try to make it as realistic as possible without sacrificing too much drama (or perhaps I have that backwards.)
-------------------- "Nah. The 9th chevron is for changing the ringtone from "grindy-grindy chonk-chonk" to the theme tune to dallas." -Reverend42
Registered: Sep 2000
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You can find a copy of the original Rules of Engagement here and Rules of Engagement 2 here. Hope you enjoy them as I have. A tip: if you have Windows XP, change the games .exe to Win95 compatability with 256 colors, or else the game goes really screwy on you.
-------------------- Bender: Well I don't have anything else planned for today, let's get drunk!
Registered: Mar 1999
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