Manoeuvre
78%
Entertainment
Freeware, all Ataris, 1Mb memory minimum
Network version requires STiK, STinG or recent copy of GlueSTiK
Author: Mario Becroft
Email: mb@tos.pl.net
URL: www: http://www.pl.net/~mario/
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Good moves all of a sudden don't seem so good when you realise the
turn order!
Manoeuvre breaks new ground for the Atari platform - it's the
first game which can be played over a network - which includes the
Internet.
Manoeuvre is a GEM game, which works on almost any Atari
system, including emulators.The gameplay is pure strategy and involves two players battling it
out on an eight by eight grid. Each player has three pieces, a
heart, a circle and a spade, are each piece is programmed up to
five moves ahead before each turn commences. A move can consist of
moving a piece or firing at the opponent's pieces. The spade is
the most important piece, lose it and you've lost. Each piece has
its own armour strength, missile range and missile strength which
biases some pieces towards attack and others towards defence.After each piece has been programmed the moves are played out on
the board, piece by piece. The two circles are moved first (red
first if the red player started the programming round, green first
otherwise), followed by the two spades and finally the two hearts.
Knowing the order the moves are played, and more importantly
knowing which order you'll be playing in the next round, is a
crucial factor when planning strategy.Setting up the game across a network is fairly straightforward but
requires planning and co-operation. For a connection to be
established, one player has to make a connection while the other
player needs to set their machine to listen for the incoming
connection. The player making the connection has to specify the IP
address or hostname of the other players machine which is tricky
because most IP providers dynamically allocate IP different IP
addresses each time you log on! One way round this is to chat
first via IRC first to find someone to play against then check
their address.Once a network game is underway the game proceeds exactly the same
as a local session with one exception - there's a messaging system
running across the bottom of the window which you can use to taunt
the other player - even if they're the other side of the globe.The author, Mario Becroft, says the main purpose of this game was
to test the feasibility of networking machines games to play games
which partly explains why there's no option to play against the
computer.Mario is currently considering ideas for other network games and
although a networked version of Quake isn't on the cards I'm
awaiting future development with interest.
Neil Jones-Rodway
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