Xenia is of course not the first vertically scrolling arcade game on the Mac. I had no idea the others existed or were about to come out when I started coding in late 1995, but during the development phase the following stuff showed up:
Xenos F4
The closest copy of Xevious yet. It is very simple, and the game speed is dependent on the machine speed. With the advent of Xenia, this should be obsolete.
Vitamin
Apparently made by the folks who do the ACS game toolbox. Obscure, root-like creatures and swamps are involved. Feels unresponsive and is overpriced at $25.
Galaxus
Also from Switzerland. Much silly B-grade sci-fi stuff surrounding the actual game. Rather unrefined, this is also overpriced at $15.
Foobar vs. the DEA
The best game in this list. Neat, lovely, and responsive, yet not as perfect as the Ambrosia stuff. While story and animation deviate from the "cosmic" theme, and go into some nice comic style (Legalize It!), gameplay is pure Xevious, including the bombsight. Considering that they send you back a disk with more stuff on it, the $20 asked are okay.
I do have a close look on everything that shows up, but I don't play it beyond checking how it feels. I haven't actually bought even the good stuff among it in the last year, mainly because I would feel the need to waste my time then. Well, I actually bought ONE game in the last year, which was Wipeout for the PlayStation that a bunch of friends brought on on my last birthday. It's way cool and I lost a considerable amount of time to it. At $40, this is one landmark for game pricing (and they (Psygnosis) pay royalties to Sony - read on below)
Why is Xenia (almost) free?
Well there's something like competition. In the area of Macintosh arcade games this is one company: Ambrosia. Andy Welch is doing a damn good job at refining coarse gaming stuff into neat, well balanced packages, and I consider Swoop being the reference for such simple perfection. It is priced at $15, so this marks the upper limit for classic arcade games. Escape Velocity, which already is too difficult for me to understand, comes at $20. While I tried to keep the animated parts up to their standards (and feel I have succeeded for the larger part), all the setup and bells-and-whistels would have needed much more work, which I was not willing to invest. A fair price would have been around $10. If I (development) had billed myself (sales) at my (development) industrial rate for development, I (sales) had to sell a significant four-digit number just to break even. Neither am I schizophrenic nor do I expect this to happen. The logical consequence is to give it away for free.
This has one very special advantage: Everyone can have it on its Mac for any time without feeling guilt. And everytime it runs, it shows my name. Could I have better advertising?
But why are you asked to "register" anyway?
I want to do some market research. Spreading an arcade game for free gives me the rare opportunity of a poll among what is perfectly my target group. I think of doing more Macintosh games, I still have some great ideas for stealing some other great ideas, like a Wipeout variation (a p.c. christmas-compatible all-family solution), or some Space Harrier (also reaches the pre-3 year infants which are yet hooked on Quake). Not this much ripped off would be an accurate simulation of the third reich air home defense (my personal favorite, with the "accurate" being the important word here). I *have* some coarse and very own thoughts, but probably the market research will make the decision. This is why you are asked to name your favorite game, arcade game, and gaming category.
More Macintosh Games?
I and my folks (well, exaggerating... average is a workforce of two, me included) make a real nice living from being troubleshooters, DP consultants, and custom product developers for a multitude of customers in the German industry. They range from the advertising to the medical sector, one-man companies to multinationals. While they are generally very nice people and we love to work with them, the specific tasks and constraints of the jobs we accept do not allow us to unleash our full power in creativity and coding. It may be nice to code a custom Mac-use registering module that interfaces to the central DP of an advertising agency, but the more pleasing thing about such a job definitely is being able to work with their staff ("paid face-time").
If we were able to estimate that we would earn about two thirds (or more) of our current rates from developing one or more Mac games, we would certainly do so. Basic assumptions are somewhat around 3-5 man-years for a top title priced at $40. With the man-year at around $120K (sorry, that's our top quality), we'd need 100K copies sold if we'd do a regular distribution deal. It might work better with ID-style spreading, where teasers are spread over the Internet and CD-distribution is done centrally, where 20K copies would break even. The only semi-reliable figure I have is that Aces Over Europe started out with initially 150K copies. Specialized Market segment, but DOS. Difficult to tell, everything. Any figures on Hornet or Marathon?
Attention other platform users: You too can (possibly) enjoy the game!
DOS
To ensure flawless operation on all machines, Xenia has been tested on a DOS PC! [Huh? WHAT did he say?] Well, on a Pentium 133 running a demo of "The Executor 2" by ARDI. If you don't know this piece of software: It is a "SoftMac" priced at $149. It contains absolutely no code by Apple, and it has a blazingly fast emulation of the 68040 CPU, running at about Quadra speed. Native Mac-on-Intel (!) toolbox code appears to be a magnitude faster than Apple's own. Unfortunately, they are not up to System 7 standards, so many of the current titles will fail somehow, but Xenia does not. I was completely stunned to see Exec survive the launch of my sound drivers, which use a very low level technique (SndPlayDoubleBuffer, if you care).
Because of this, you can use Xenia on a PC, and to honor their brilliant engineering efforts (see the technical paper!), I will not port it. If you just want to have a look, download their demo, which quits after 10 minutes. By the way, Xenia has been written completely platform independent, so I could do a little-endian DirectX port in two weeks if I wanted to. I don't. If I really had the intent to do DOS (remember, friends don't let friends do DOS), I would probably use my experience in coagulation analyzers, study a few fluid dynamics, get data sheets from Stihl, Husqvarna, and McCullough and set up the "most realistic chainsaw simulation ever" where you have to stop Nazi-mutants from doing bondage games with silicone blondes. Guess that's what they need. I heard even the janitors at ID drive Ferraris nowadays.
Be
I have been granted developer status by Be, Inc. just a few days ago. I plan to get used to the Be technology by porting Xenia, so chances are real that it shows up on that platform in the foreseeable future. Be are the future! What remains at Apple is the culture of their users, it certainly is not state-of-the-art technology anymore. I saw an impressing demonstration of the BeOS, and as far as I can judge, THIS is what I would expect. As a small developer, I make a living of handling the latest technology, and so I consider the absence of old and rotten software as an advantage. I do not only give no damn about backward compatibility, but I think here lies a chance for new ideas to return to where we were 1988: AHEAD!
For any comments or suggestions, here's the address once more:
Richard Theil Computertechnik
Masayaplatz 8
63128 Dietzenbach
Germany
You can also eMail me at
Richard.Theil@frankfurt.netsurf.de
Please don't "register" via eMail, send a real postcard!. I don't have the time to do any support or the like, so don't expect an answer. (Unless I can bill you somehow :-).
Okay so much for it. Here's the complete record of individuals and organizations that somehow kept the morale up during the development phase:
Markus Lffler: my one and only, but not so faithful employee (yet still a good coder).
Regina Como, Frank Brinkmann, Dr. Roland Werner & all the folks at Behring FLG, Jrgen Schwarz, Ralf Nikisch, and the folks at Behring SID.
Roland Jacob for having the required Midi information right at hand. Jrg Mller for all the hints and shopping tips on audio technology. Christopher Ferebee for general Macintosh support. Michael Keller for all the developer chit-chat. Larissa Schmidt (http://www.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/~lschmidt): information broker. Marcus Dll for all the inside information (well, at least for reading MacWeek).
Apple Computer: Joseph Maurer (for acknowledging the ROM bug), Guy Kawasaki, for replying in times of need (did you really believe Copland would still ship when you replied?).
Aviation related: Rene Lamotte, Gnter Odebrecht, Walter Eichhorn for showing off MBB's 109 G-6 over Kirchheim/Teck, Kai-Uwe Wahl
Business related: Volker Bartl, Schmidt und Schmidt, Curtis & Marlene Daniell, CD Communications, Simone Swidersky, Messe Frankfurt
Nutrition related: Pizza Petro, Frankfurt & Giancarlo; Pizza Party, Neu Isenburg; Palu Keller, Wiesbaden; Mai Kai, Frankfurt
Motoring related
Ralf Burk, B+B Sportwagen, Weilheim/Teck, for keeping the Silver Machine running.
Lotus Cars, Ltd. (http://www.lotuscars.com), especially Dave Massey for the very kind support (though it was no faulty earth and Knig took three weeks and ripped me off 3K quid as I supposed); Martin Weis; No credits to Christian Hermstedt, maker of the Leonardo ISDN Cards, for uglifying this year's club video with his 911 :-) ... your wife made a good pace on the track, though!
Music related
Hawkwind (http://www.hawkwind.com)
Joan Jett & the Blackhearts (http://www.joanjett.com)
Andrea Bettinger, Columbia; Adi Kiescher: gone but not forgotten; Markus Mller, Rock Hard Magazine; My own band: Frank Eberhardt on drums, Michael Rottke on guitars.
Oh, one last thing. If this file ever makes it to the states: Hello to The Rad and Emo Doode! If it even travels further to sunny California, here's a hi! to some contacts long gone (with the Tavern): Mega Maniac, Gonif, Gunslinger. What are you doing now, guys? M.I.S.? haha! And while we are in CA, let us not forget "Turbo" Kinzel and the keeper of Ulysses & Ulinda Grunt!
