Conference hydra::amiga_v1

1744.0. "the competition is catching up" by BAGELS::BRANNON (Dave Brannon) Wed Oct 05 1988 00:46

    Found these notes in the ibmpc conf, looks like the game market
    over there finally discovered great graphics & music.  Know of any
    Amiga games with 40 minutes of soundtrack?
    (stereo was one of the major reasons I bought an Amiga)
    
    -Dave
    
                    <<< NAC::WORK$01:[NOTES$LIBRARY]IBMPC.NOTE;1 >>>
                                  -< IBM PCs >-
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Note 2101.12              New SIERRA games information                  12 of 20
MEMV02::RICHMOND                                     21 lines   2-OCT-1988 11:34
                         -< Just got King's Quest IV! >-
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    I just purchased King's Quest IV from Electronics Boutique in Nashua,
    NH (Pheasant Lane Mall).  It should be in more stores in another
    week or so.  I haven't had a chance to play it yet-I don't have
    a computer that can run it so I have to go into Boston to play it
    on my friends PS/2.  Here's what I can tell you about it so far:
    
    Price: $42.50 at Electronics Boutique (list is 49.95)
    
    Comes with both 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 disks: (9) 5 1/4 or (4) 3 1/2. 
    It takes up 3.5 MB of space on your hard disk.  Supports everything
    from CGA through VGA, as well as several music cards (it contains
    40 minutes of soundtrack written by William Goldstein).  It also
    supports a mouse and joystick, and has pull down menus which you
    can access with a mouse, joystick or keyboard.
    
    My friends only have a monochrome monitor, so I'm curious to see
    what someone with color VGA thinks of the graphics.  I'll post more
    info after I've had a chance to play.
    
    Andrew Richmond
                   

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SYSENG::BITTLE                                       26 lines   3-OCT-1988 21:38
                      -< KQ4 + MUSIC CARD = AWESOME !!! >-
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    Last weekend at the new Software,Etc. store on the second floor
    at Burlington mall, I saw KQ4 running as a demo on a PS/2 model
    30.  Being totally unfamiliar with Sierra games I picked up the
    game box to read more about the game.  I practically did a cartwheel
    in the store when I read that the game supported the IBM PC music
    card!!!  I have 2 IBM PC music cards and 1 Roland MPU-401.  
    
    THE MUSIC IN THIS GAME IS INCREDIBLE !!!
    
    I immediately bought the game (ouch - $49.95), went downstairs to
    Radio Shack and bought a cheap amplifier and tiny speakers (to reroute
    the sound from my Roland piano to the speakers), and rushed home.
    Within 30 minutes I was listening to William Goldsteins beautifully
    orchestrated music while watching the animated tale of poor King
    Graham and Rosella.  It truly adds another dimension to the game.
    
    The graphics were the best I've seen for a game.  They seem to take
    advantage of EGA+.  My display consists of a NANOA 8060s FlexScan
    with a Genoa Super Hi Res+.  
    
    It would seem that this programs performance could be most improved
    with a disk-caching program - the longest waits are between screens.
    Rosella could walk a little faster, too.  
    
    Overall, however, I am thrilled with this game.  
    							nancy b.

    
    Hmmm, those notes seem to imply that the PS/2 doesn't come with
    any decent kind of built on sound, since the game requires a 'sound
    card'.
    
    Wann bet that a sound card costs almost as much as an A500?
    
    Ed

    3.5mb on my hard disk?I have a 2000 with 2 floppies,and the standard
    1meg of memory.I tend to feel that the overhead for this game can
    hardly be justified,unless of course you already own a PS/2 with
    music card(probably has the megs of ram needed for this kind of
    sound application),and a color monitor.If it comes to the amiga
    in a scaled down version it may be interesting.It sounds like the
    music plays great.Does anyone know how the game plays?The fact that
    someone will target a game to a market that at this time ,must not
    be very large shows the drawing power "IBM" has.I always felt that
    the market for games on systems of this type would have been limited
    I guess you learn a little every day.
    							bill

    
    Actually, I just remembered that I've seen several games for the
    Atari ST that would play a sound track through it's built-in MIDI
    port.
    
    I also just remembered that I saw Flight Simulator II running on
    a PS/2 model 25.  The screen looked just like the Amiga version,
    but the screen update rate was pathetic compared to Amy.  Of course,
    that was a mere 8087 machine.  I imagine that it must speed up a
    tad on a 25 MHz '386 model.
    
    Ed.
    
    

    re: sound card
    
    but remember the volume pricing in the ibmpc world.  Those cards
    will get cheaper if there is enough demand.  Games like that could
    create that demand.
    
    re: 3.5Mb on harddisk
    
    Actually, Amiga games are almost there.  Dragon's Lair should take
    up more than that if it can be installed on a harddisk.  I wonder
    how much of the 3.5Mb is padding (40 minutes of music takes up
    a bit of space)
    
    -dave

    Oddly enough, I have written a 40minute piece of music on the amiga.
    It took 150000 bytes, I think.  that's because the score was encoded
    by key number; it wasn't the digital sound samples.  The Amiga sound
    device accepts waveform, pitch, duration, thereby making it unecessary
    to store long digitally encoded sound records, unless you want to.
    This is quite an advantage if the other vendors don't have a
    musically-oriented sound device.
    I may buy C someday to do granular synthesis in 16 bits with 512-byte
    sound records.
    Tom

Re: .2

>The fact that someone will target a game to a market that at this time,
>must not be very large shows the drawing power "IBM" has.  I always felt
>that the market for games on systems of this type would have been limited.

You note brings up a couple of interesting points:

First of all, there has been a lot of press about the dismal marketing
failure of the PS/2 line.  The press is right about the failure because
IBM does sell in the clone market.  So their one or two million PS/2
systems sold in a year looks pretty bad.

Of course, there is less than two million Macintoshes total in the
world (after 5 years of sales).

And there is only about three-quarters of a million Amigas in the world
after 3 years of sales.  But then 80% of all Amigas sold have been sold
since the Amiga 500 and 2000 were introduced last year.

Some one once told me (I haven't seen the number in print) that there
are over 40 million clones in the world.

By the way, the largest selling software category for all types of
personal computers (from '386 clones to Commodore-64s) is games.
The personal computer market will support full time games programmers
before it supports full time application programmers.