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RISC World

Games World

Paul Brett with the latest gaming news.

After the mega games column last issue, with ports of Aleph1 and Rick Dangerous it's all gone a little quiet on the gaming front with only a couple of new releases to tempt the RISC OS gamer, although there has been news of a possible new release, more on this later. In the meantime what new RISC OS games have been released since I wrote the last column?

CrazeeMan

Neil White has been at it again and has released a new desktop version of Crazeeman, a Pacman clone developed using SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) and supplied under the GNU public licence.


CrazeeMan

Unlike the original version in this version you can only see a small part of the maze, and the ghosts re-spawn after having been killed, this makes the game even more of a challenge. Crazeeman is an excellent way to spend a few minutes while you are supposed to be writing article for RISCWorld.

The controls are:

  • E - Up left
  • O - Up right
  • D - down left
  • K - down right
  • Q - Toggle sound on/off
  • Escape - Quit

Horses - Ian Hamilton

This is a horse race desktop game. Start with a pot of money and bet on the horses to see if you can win a mint, or more likely lose your shirt. Before the first race you should setup the number of players. Click with select on the Player '<' or '>' icons,to set the number of players. Each of the player names can be updated to the name of the player required by clicking on the 'Player n' icon and amending the text.


Horses

Each player should select the number of the horse they want to bet on,these are from 1-6 (top to bottom) and are also colour coded. Click on the icon to the right of the cash value which will revolve through the numbers.

Each player should also select whether to do a 10 pound E/W (each-way) or a 2 pound WIN bet by clicking on the icon to the right of the horse selection icon. All players must bet on all races.

When all players have bet,click on the Start race icon. There are six races in a meeting.

NapoleonII - Ian Hamilton

This is a recreation of the original Napoleon game that appeared in Risc User and was written by Alan Stout. This version is 32bit compatible. It's a Patience game based on Napoleon of St. Helena. The object is to build up 8 ascending suit sequences, Ace through King.

Two standard 52 card decks are used in Napoleon. 10 columns of 4 cards are initially dealt to form the tableau. Only the bottom card from each column is available to play. The remaining cards from the two packs are played singly onto a heap, and are either played onto the foundations or built onto the tableau in descending suit sequence. Unplayable cards remain on the waste heap. Available tableau cards may similarly be played one at a time onto the foundations or onto another column of the tableau. When an entire column of the tableau is cleared, the empty space may be filled by any one available card from the heap or the tableau. This card should be chosen carefully as it may raise opportunities for releasing other useful cards.


NapoleonII

Use the mouse to drag and drop the cards to their correct positions. If you click with Adjust on an exposed card, the program will automatically attempt to place it on the correct target foundation. Clicking with Adjust on an exposed Ace will relocate it to the first available empty foundation space.

If the program detects that the game can be completed successfully, it will take over from the player and transfer the cards to the foundations automatically.

It's now possible to select the colours of the playing area. There is also a display grid showing the last move at the bottom right hand corner. The card value is shown to the left. The white stack shows it's current position and the dark stack the previous position. To 'Undo' a move just move the card back to the original position.

Equinox

Jason Tribbeck has been working away on a new RISC OS game called Equinox and on the 13th of November posted to the comp.sys.acorn.games newsgroup asking for a few beta testers....

"Since ArcCommand was pulled a couple of years back, I've been working on and off (mostly off) on a new game - called "Equinox".It's at the stage where I'd like to get some other people to try it and see if they like it or have suggestions for it.

At the moment, it's more of a pre-beta than an actual beta release, but it should be good enough to give you an idea as to what the game's going to be like. There's definitely some loose ends that will need to be ironed out soon.I haven't decided if this is to be a free release, or a cheap commercial release - it depends on if I put some video into the game (i.e. it'll probably be too large for dial up downloads, but probably a lot smaller than most PC games!). It's a possibility that it could be both. Because it could be a commercial release, the beta will only be available to a limited number of people.

If you're interested, then please have a look at http://equinox.tribbeck.com/ for details about the game (screenshots, and stuff like that), to see if you like the idea.I'll be writing more of a manual for the game later today (it's a bit late for that now), and that will contain more information about how the game plays and so forth.

Note that a StrongARM is definitely recommended, but it should run on a slower machine (albeit with frame skipping). I haven't done an Iyonix version yet, but that will come (getting the core done is my main concern atm).Also note that a couple of people may remember that I started this in 1994. This is true. However, it was restarted from scratch in 2002..."

Poping over to the website will reveal all the latest details including a large number of development screenshots and lots more info on the game, which looks very impressive when seen statically, with all the items moving it should be stunning.

That's all there is on the gaming front for this issue, I will report again in January.

Paul Brett

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