“Oh, no! It’s not a derivative arcade shooter with power-ups, is it? Will the production of these things never end!?!”
Yes, and I don’t know.
Now for a question and answer session with up-and-coming game writer, Des Courtney!
Q: “Who is responsible for this hack you call a game?”
A: I, Des Courtney, created most of the graphics and wrote all of the game specific code. It’s far from a one-man show, however.
- Ingemar Ragnemalm wrote the way cool and excellent routines that drive the actual animation handling.
- The “gamma” fading between screen changes were provided by Matt Slot and Matthew Xavier Mora.
- The development environment was provided by Symantec Corporation.
The above parties each claim some amount of copyright to parts of the application’s code.
- Oh, and thanks to my beta testers… they got copies of my game, and I haven’t heard a peep from them since. There must not be any bugs. (-;
Q: “What are the settings made at the factory?”
A: What factory? Anyway, the cannons are fired with the keys “z” and “x”, pause is invoked with “e”, and the high score list has only the one name. Sound is turned on when Nexus is first run. “Fast” animation is turned off by default for compatibility reasons. If you want to know how to play the game, read the before mentioned “Mission Briefing” provided with this distribution. The defaults can be restored by trashing the preference file within the System Folder.
Q: “What machines will this game run on?”
A: The question should be “What machines WON’T this game run on?” It would still be grammatically incorrect, but I’m a bad speller, so who am I to judge? Nexus can run in as low as 640K of memory, but with deeper monitor depths than black and white, it may need more. The default setting works with 256 colors.
As far as I know, Nexus will fail run on, or run too slowly on…
- The Original 128k Mac
- The XL
- The 512K
- The Plus
- The SE (should run fine on a SE/30)
- The Classic (run fines on a II, should on a Color)
Nexus WILL run under System Sick, ahem, Six, but it has not been seriously tested.
On Power Macs, Nexus will crash if the monitor is set to thousands of colors or more. It works fine at 256 colors. The 680x0s (including the AVs) don’t seem to have this problem, but the memory partition will need to be raised a meg or two.
If Nexus does run slowly, you can try the following…
- Reduce the monitor depth
- Turn on “Fast” animation
- Install Sound Manager 3.0
- Buy a new Mac (-:
Q: “Just how much strain will keeping a copy of this game put on my pocketbook?”
A: Ah, it always comes down to this, doesn’t it? It depends on who you are…
- If you never, ever, pay for shareware, there’s no sense in me depending on a check that will never come. It’s free.
- If you’ve paid for shareware, Congratulations! You’ve done a GOOD™ thing! As a reward for your fine, upstanding behavior, Nexus is free. If you are gunning for sainthood, you can participate in the following option.
- If you WRITE shareware, Nexus is “Barterware.” If you like Nexus and decide to keep it, please send me a program/utility that would about equal in value to what you think Nexus is worth. No, I’m not expecting some Finder-hastening, file-shrinking, or menu-multiplying type widget unless you feel like being charitable to a Poor, Starving College Student™. If you feel what you write is the Greatest Thing since Sliced Bread and is too valuable in exchange for my Lowly Game, go ahead and send cash or check. (No, I don’t take credit cards, sorry.)
My home address is…
Des Courtney
1411 Park Street
Findlay, Ohio 45840
My e-mail address is…
dcourtn@opie.bgsu.edu
My computer set-up for those who might send me software…
Mac LC I (yes, the first one) 4/40
12" RGB monitor (yes, I know this considered a badge of shame)
System 7.0.1 w/ Sound Manager 3.0 successfully installed
Q: “Hmmm, I wrote a game that is in some ways similar to Nexus. I also see that you are not registered for my game. Pay up!”
A: I don’t have it. Seriously! As you can tell by the above setup, I cannot effectively run most Mac games. Either the game needs a 13" monitor, megs and megs of memory, or runs way too slow. )-: I wrote Nexus to try to soothe the hurt Color Classic, PowerBook, and LC owners who are dying to get some kind of decent action game. I also wrote Nexus to pay back a little to the people of the Internet who provided an almost nurturing home for me.
Q: “Hey, could I make money selling copies of this?”
A: Over my dead body! I’m not going to make money off this; why should you? If you really must distribute this game in a for-profit manner, check with me first. No, discounts for CD-ROMs won’t cut it; I don’t own a CD drive.
Q: “My! Aren’t you kind of bitter?”
A: Sorry, programming computers is getting expensive nowadays. And I have yet to receive any of the scholarships/high-paying jobs that one would expect by being in this field. No, I cannot make “Nexus” shareware yet because I’ve got a shareware tab to clear up before being honorably allowed to charge for my stuff. )-:
