Amiga ACS 1998 #2/amigaacscoverdisc1998-021998.iso/games/shareware/helioforge3d/shipyardculminator1

Text File | 1997-09-02 | 12KB | 283 lines

                   SHIPYARD CULMINATOR
                           by
                    PETE W STORONSKIJ

                      PREMIERE ISSUE

                    ****************

   The Culminator is based at the Shipyard Headquarters,
on The Outer Reaches Of The Ogallala Nebula (TM).

        *** MESSAGE FROM THE GALACTIC SURVEYOR ***

   Greetings, I thought it would be interesting to create a
newsletter with the emphasis on sillyness.  The purpose for
this newsletter is to draw attention away from my other
projects in such a way that you will be completely confused
by the time you finish reading this, and have to start from
the beginning, or something like that :)

   Anyway, I want to show projects in development, do lots
of really great reviews of anything that I think of, and
explore a few uncharted dimensions while I'm at it :)
Most importantly, the Culminator will be as silly as possible.

   Mangled Fenders may also be called "Mango Venders".

   The planned publication pattern will be "sporatic", so
who knows when the next one will come along :)

-=pete=-

          *** IN SEARCH OF: THE PERFECT GAME ***

   The search for The Perfect Game has plagued Humanity
for countless eons.  Throughout history, humans have tried
infinitely many things to try and discover The Perfect Game.

   Back when humans lived in caves, the only objects available
to them were massive boulders balanced precariously on top of
steep cliffs that were carried to them by the previous Ice
Ages.  So they invented the game of pushing the boulders off
of the cliffs to the ground, where the awaiting players had
to catch them.  The winner of this game got a headache,
but it unfortunately set back human development for a few
thousand years.

  Afterwards, humans figured out how to build sturdy huts,
and were able to get away from the dangerous cliffs.  Being
too far away from the cliffs, so they had to make do with
other things, like trees.  They would climb the trees to the
very top, where any gust of wind would snap the top branch,
causing them to fall to the ground, where the awaiting players
had congregated to catch the climber.  Because a human is
softer to catch than an enormous boulder, the humans didn't
need as much padding around their cranial plates.  The extra
room afforded a larger brain, which gave them common sense.

   They soon abandoned the foolish games of their ancestors.
They designed more complicated games based on catching smaller
and less dangerous objects, like porcupines.  Everyone's ability
to catch objects were greatly diminished after an epidemic of
blindness caused by irratic porcupine tosses, causing the
humans to abandon catching games.

   As you can see, the humans' first attempt at The Perfect
Game was less than perfect, but hopefully I will make up
more about this for future issues :)

           *** SHIPYARD CONSTRUCTION BAY ***

                       HELIOFORGE

   My newest game is HELIOFORGE, a state-of-the-art 3D
space blaster. The 3D effect is real, and every object has
it's own set of XYZ coordinates.  Now you can truely weave
your way through asteroid fields and Star Mines, using the
Mouse for exact, fluid control of your craft.

   The game is set in a large star cluster, which has been
invaded by a massive enemy fleet.  You get to pick which
star systems to save first, straight from the 3D spinning
star chart.  If you get too badly beat up by enemy attack
waves, you can choose to enter a friendly system to get
repairs, extra nukes, and a much needed break from the
frantic action.

   Everything has been predrawn, which makes HelioForge
superfast.  All rescaled images have been retouched, to make
sure that there are no artifacts and no large pixels.  There
are extra background graphics that enhance the experience
for accellerated Amigas.

  There are huge, screen filling planets like Saturn, Earth, and
Venus.  These gigantic planets are perfectly drawn, and their
size accentuates their perfectly round edges.  There are twice
as many frames per object, which greatly enhances the smooth
3D effect that is the standard of a Shipyard Creation.

   The game is loaded with special touches.  If you are hit
with saucer fire, a StarMine, or a meteor, the screen will
shake and it will flash as it has never flashed before.  When
the screen flashes, it washes out all of the other colors, and
when the screen cools down, everything is put back perfectly.
When you fire back, particles from the explosions float about.
There are also particles that fly past your ship that show
your velocity.  When there is a supernova, you actually
see it and feel it's effects.

   You get to oblitterate fleets of saucers, asteroid fields,
StarMines, and Ambiance Inhibitors.  If you aren't successful
in your mission to destroy the Ambiance Inhibitor Matrix,
the sun goes supernova, tossing destructive meteor storms
in your face.  Thus ending your perfect record for saving
the day at the last moment.  Since the star cluster has
a great many stars, you can afford to lose a few to the
enemy fleet.  You will win if you can completely destroy the
enemy presence in the star cluster.

   Because you are in a real 3D space, your tactics become
real.  You can pick off the saucers on the fringes of the
enemy fleet, instead of going head on and risking your ship.
You're arsenal is augmented with super bombs that vaporize
just about everything on your view screen.

   The game is very hard, but you choose when to go into
the spaceport for repairs.  This makes sure any player
can last a long time, as long as they can survive a single
attack group.

The whirr of the Amiga's hard drive becomes the hum of
a finely tuned space craft.

***

   There might be a CEPHALOTRON 3, but whether it stays
on just one disk hasn't been decided yet.  Cephalo Tron 2.1
has a statistics screen that shows exactly which player
is the most successful.  This is useful if you want to
balance the players' capabilities to make it a fair battle.

   Of course, the 50 warheads can be stacked 12 high,
making infinite weapon designs, or something like that.

               *** GAME REVIEWS ***

   A great armada of games has recently passed by the
Ogallala Nebula.  The source of this galactic incursion is
from somewhere in the Wysox system, deep within the
Pennsylvania Nebula.  This armada is commanded by the
ingenious Fleet Admiral, Robert W Benjamin.  It is his
mission to save all of the stranded humans, cats,
etc., in the galaxy.

   The Cavern Commander lets you do just this, a nobler
mission hasn't been thought of.  You will navigate down
narrow passageways in deep caverns and avoid very
dangerous probes to reclaim your lost crew (and their lost
cats, etc, and lost fuel tanks).  You will prevail if you
reclaim everything that you lost, but don't try to intersect
the walls or the probes, as they have incompatible power
signatures that will cause your ship to explode.

   In Ski Master, you get to ski down a hill avoiding a
tree or two while you are at it.  A small crowd of
spectators will cheer you over the finish line if you are
successful in your run.  You may also rescue a human or
two, or pick up the flags that mark the locations of
deeply buried avalanche victims (whoops, just kidding).

   Posiden lets you swim around all day, eating the seafood
and avoiding the "Slightly Miffed" jelly creatures.  It's good
to avoid the jelly creature if you want to survive, because
that's the only way that you will get to see Posiden.  Ancient
Mediterranean Gods, like Posiden, have seen lots of Mermaid
movies, so Posiden will be inclined to turn you into a human
on first sight.  Unfortunately, humans are less apt swimmers
than most ocean life, so it may be good to stay in your current
form, to prevent drowning.

   You must play the game to find out if Posiden will be
generous enough to put you on dry land when you are
transformed back into your human form :)

   Also, These games come with real digitized human voices,
which means pitch-perfect phrases spoken by Robert and
anyone else he may have access to :)

   If those three games weren't enough, Robert has created
tons more games.  He has created games with a whiplash
schedule that puts all other time schedules to shame.  He will
probably have more games released than I have by the end of
the year, so watch out for them...

           The games reviewed are as follows:
              Cavern Commander: CavCom.lha
              Ski Master:       Skimstr.lha
              Posiden:          Posiden.lha

   Because of his dedication to creating fleets of games, I
declare that Robert W Benjamin gets the official Shipyard Award
for Outstanding Game Development.

               *** MOVIE REVIEWS ***

                       BORON

   Actually, it's The Fifth Element, which is Boron :).  Anyway,
the spacecraft carrier is one of the most awesome ships ever
created.  As always, the special effects are absolutely
spectacular.  Although Boron is what you think of, the Fifth
Element is actually a "Perfect Woman", who can fire a super
weapon out of her mouth, thus destroying all things evil.

               CARL SAGAN'S "CONTACT"

   OK, so maybe movie reviews should be more timely, but
this is a great movie :) :D  The special effects at the
opening are absolutely spectacular.  The special effects near
the end are even more spectacular, and if you like science
fiction, then this is just the greatest movie.

                   EVENT HORIZON

   This movie has lots of really awesome Sci Fi architecture,
which makes any movie great for me :)  I feel that I am going
to over-use the phrase "absolutely spectacular special effects",
but that alone will sell any movie on me :)

       *** OFFICIAL PLAN TO SAVE THE AMIGA ***

   We must have an official plan to save the Amiga.  Maybe
we could digitize programmers and put them in software.  This
would ensure self-upgrading software that has lots of new
features every time you run it.  With the New Amiga's Patented
OmniTasking System, you can run all of the software that ever
existed simultaneously with the new self-upgrading software.

   If everyone has this new software, everyone would become
a developer.  There would be infinite amounts of new projects
to choose from, thereby increasing the productivity of all
Amigans infinitely.  This will ensure a new Renaissance Era,
or Golden Age Of The Amiga.

   The Amiga would become so advanced that the Amiga could
be as small as a grain of sand, and still have infinite amounts
of memory, graphics, and anything else you can think of.  Since
everyone has this technology, everyone would have lots of really
small Amigas at their command.

   With so many Nano-Amigas, we would develop the technology
to shrink ourselves to the scale of the Nano-Amiga.  We would
then have room for all of our Nano-Software.

  Unfortunately, because you can't shrink something without
expanding something else, we would have to enlarge all of the
Fire Ants to human scale.  This would have the unfortunate
side effect of causing the Fire Ants to eat all of the Non-
Amigans, oops...

            *** SHIPYARD HEADQUARTERS ***

   The Culminator is based at the Shipyard Headquarters,
on The Outer Reaches Of The Ogallala Nebula (TM).

   At the Shipyard, I create video games.  It's really fun
to do.  I try to keep my games as diverse as possible, and
to create works in as many genres as possible.  It is this
dedication to varied genres that so few have even tried to
do, that is the essence of the Shipyard.  This enables you to
find more of what you want in one place.

   My creations are of the highest quality, and with the
extremely low cost that I have pioneered, well worth anyone's
resources.

   Pete W Storonskij
   Thrantoxian Shipyards
   200 A st.
   Lincoln, Ne. 68502
   USA