Index


RISC World

Games World

Paul Brett with the latest gaming news.

There has been so much activity on the RISC OS gaming front in the last couple of months that I don't think it can all be covered in one article. However I shall do my best. Let me start with a continuing theme:

More Magnetic Scrolls

Once again I am including two more games for use with the Magnetic Scrolls interpreter. If you have been hard at work then you may well have completed both Fish and Corruption. If this is indeed the case then you can now get your teeth into Wonderland and Guild of Thieves, both of which can be found in the software.games directory on this very issue. These two conclude the set of Magnetic Scrolls adventures, so you will now have the full set. Many hundreds of hours of gaming now await you.

Now lets move on to some new games.

ACED - Jason Tribbeck

ACED is a shoot 'em up game in glorious 3D, it's a somewhat similar to Elite, but without the trading elements. You're in control of a spaceship, out to clear space of alien invaders. Your spaceship is equipped with a front pulse cannon, shields, energy stores and left and right escape pods.

Changing speed, rotation and firing all diminish your energy stores, as does incoming enemy fire and collisions with enemy ships. When you are low on energy, you will be told that your energy is low - if it's very low, then a warning can be heard. If you are really very low, then the audio warning gets more frantic. If you run out of energy, your spaceship will be destroyed.

If you have survived the escape and destroyed enough enemies to satisfy your commanders, then you can continue with a new ship on a harder level.

Controls

  • Z or W - Left
  • X - Right
  • H - Fire
  • J - Thrust
  • K - Brake
  • F - Eject escape pod left
  • G - Eject escape pod right
  • F5 - Music volume down
  • F6 - Music volume up
  • F7 - Sound effects volume down
  • F8 - Sound effects volume up
  • End - Freeze
  • Delete - Unfreeze

ACED is currently in BETA form and is a work in progress. It is 32bit clean and should run on both the A9 and the Iyonix, as well as on older 26bit machines.

Bouncers - Stuart Tyrrell

Bouncers is a great little game. It was originally published in Micro User, and was written and is offered for free distribution by the author with the kind permission of Qercus Magazine (who hold copyright of Micro User articles). The game is very simple, guide the ball around the screens. You only have control over the ball's spin and its bounce, so you can only control the ball when it hits the ground, not when it's in the air, so be careful!

Controls

Z - Spin left

  • Z - Spin right
  • Return - Jump

    I've just spent 20 minutes playing this when I should have been writing, which I think says a lot. This may be old, indeed very old, but it is a "goody".

    Islands - Chris Wraight

    Islands is a game of strategy and global domination for Acorn-compatible computers based on the popular board game Risk. Play takes place between up to six players, any number of which can be controlled by the computer. A variety of different maps can be used, and a level designer exists to define new ones (not uploaded yet - coming soon). Sound effects, computer strength levels and bonus cards are optionally implemented. The application takes up around 900K of space, and runs on RISC OS 3.1 or later. A 256-colour or better display is recommended.

    Islands is Freeware. If you find it useful, please get in touch with the authors to show your appreciation. They cannot guarantee to be able to respond to all support inquiries, but if you report bugs or suggest features they will try their best to address them. Note that you will need a copy of PlayIt installed before Islands will run.

    Hex-a-Hop - Herbert Krammer

    Finally here is yet another new RISC OS game, Hex-a-hop. This is an SDL game that has been ported, rather well if I may say so, to run on RISC OS. This will run a little slow on RiscPC class computers, but is fine on the A9Home and the Iyonix (and VirtualRPC - Ed). The object of the game is to destroy all the green tiles. As the game progresses different types of tiles start to appear which make things more difficult. Instructions are shown on screen before the game starts. Good luck!

    There will be more from me in the next issue.

    Paul Brett

    Index