CompuServe Messages

Marcus, I worked in the Video Game industry for quite some time, and wrote a LOT of code, designed quite a few machines as well. We all gavce a lot of thought to those issues… I even wrote a game called "RockBall" which was sort of a bizzare Asteroids type of game where we kept all conflict with intelligent opponents out. The game had a black hole, which you could orbit (or fall in to, at which time it would dump you unceremoniously somewhere else on the screen with a random velocity); it had asteroids which broke up a'la asteroids original premise; and it had some awesome firepower allowing you to really clean up in a crowded field. It was color, the game board used raster/vector color hardware (8 colors) and so on. It was you against the rocks, with the added problems of maintaining a stable orbit. It even had a "true" inertial mode, where rotational velocity thrusters had to be damped by application of the opposite thruster to keep you pointed right… mostly they kept that switch off. :^) It really was a fun game – I still have one, in fact. With no aliens, bad guys, or anything else, it was reduced to you and "nature", which, while not non-violent in the technical sense, vents aggression on inanimate objects, a far better thing to do, IMHO. Think I'll go beat my heavy bag up, and then pummel the maki awa. :^) Ben Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S