earthrise	12:47 AM 9/16/99
this page contains info about my game, earthrise: why [pourquoi] info [emptiness] download [leech]
why?	12:47 AM 9/16/99
writing a computer game is a pretty significant undertaking. particularly these days; your average development studio consists of a minimum of four or five programmers working on each project. opposed to a team that size for a commercial game is... errr... me. why would i bother even thinking about programming a game in this day and age? well, anybody out there who's heard of Elite will know what I'm talking about. Elite was, and is, simply the coolest game ever. you flew a tiny ship, an infinitesimal dot on an infinitesimal dot, through one of hundreds of solar systems, each with their own (lone) star, and their own (lone) orbiting space station, which together constituted just one galaxy of eight in the entire universe. fitting a universe on this scale, with wireframe 3d graphics, ship-to-ship combat, trading and various ship upgrades, into a 32k Acorn-based machine was an astonishing accomplishment, to say the least, but at the time, being about twelve and a computer novice, i didn't appreciate the coding side of things. all i saw was a great game. of course, later on came frontier [elite ii]. i played frontier about three times as much. it expanded the galaxy for effectively for ever in all directions, included realistic solar systems (including sol, with earth, earth's major cities, orbiting space stations and spaceports in new york, london and sydney among others), allowed you to purchase a range of ships from miniscule jetfighter-runabout-type-jobs to gargantuan-behemoth-leviathan-any-other-archaic-bestiary-word-that-means-large-and-ugly trading galleys. the thing is, i think there's a gap there. there hasn't been an elite game for a long time (frontier first encounters came out in '95), and in the meanwhile a lot's happened to the gaming scene. 3d accelerators, for example. windows. more than 4 mb of memory in the entry level machine. but the only vaguely elit-ist games out there are just that: only vaguely elitist. they include the trading but not the combat. the combat but not the trading. the graphics but not the gameplay. whatever. there've been a few attempts to develop follow-ups online, using a team-development methodology, which haven't gotten anywhere as far as i can tell. so there you have it. it's quite astonishing considering the fact that i'm not normally a 'get off my ass and do it myself' personality type, but essentially, i'm writing this game because it's the game i want to play. so there.
info	1:02 AM 9/16/99
earthrise features 3d-accelerated graphics on directx [= works on essentially any 3d accelerator card]. (done) 3d-sound on directx [= when a ship flies past at high speed, it sounds like a train going past w/ doppler effect and all. ships firing behind you somehow [i don't understand the details [isn't modern technology wonderful] but they use low-pass filters to simulate sound being transmitted through your skull and brain which are between you and the sound] actually sound as if they're behind you. (done) trading (done) ship to ship combat using unguided and guided missiles (done) artificially intelligent agents to populate the universe, which act according to their own economic interest [capitalist swine] to form a fluid economy, thus providing an interesting society through which the player can move and attempt to make a buck from. (working on now) no multiplayer plans.
download	1:11 AM 9/16/99
i've decided to put earthrise up for download. it's very primitive right now, but you can fly around and fight, and like i've always said, "as long as you can fly around and fight, that's what matters". download it - 1150 kb. read the readme when it arrives at your end. things are dangerous and incomplete. it's designed not to trash your hard drive, but there's a chance it might; i disclaim all responsibility for any damage caused by this game, including (but not limited to) damage to your computer equipment and aesthetic sensibilities.
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