~15 minute readNew Diversions
The Golden Age of entertainment software is now!
Leisure-time software is reaching new levels of sophistication as designers push machines to new limits—as the games get bigger, better, and brighter. Here are five new diversions coming soon to a computer screen near you.
Computer Comics
America loves comic books. More than 20 million of them are sold each month. Now this colorful world of superheroes and dastardly fiends is coming to life on personal computers, enhanced with sound and dramatic cinematic effects such as zooms, pans, and dissolves.
Infocomics are comic books that you read on your computer. They are not games. There are no complicated puzzles to unravel, no treasures to locate, no arcade aliens to blast in the name of interstellar peace. Instead, you get an intricate web of intertwining plots and story lines.
The idea came to Tom Snyder, chief executive officer of Tom Snyder Productions, as he looked at some of the best adventure games, graphic adventures, and role-playing games. Snyder felt that they all suffered from artificial plots. "There's no sex. love, greed, sadness, jealousy, and passion — all the stuff that Shakespeare wrote about and all the stuff that Hill Street Blues was about," he points out.
Snyder wanted a graphic product that had a story line rich in human experience, one that relied less on magic spells, monsters, and hardware to sustain interest.
He wanted interactivity, but he didn't want the player to change the plot. Instead. Snyder experimented with letting the user change the story's point of view. His original model was a Raymond Chandler-style detective story', set in a seedy office in the 1930s. The radiator hisses; there is steam on the windows. We see the story from the detective's point of view. A beautiful but obviously distraught women enters. As she explains her problem, the detective tries to impress her with his revolver. He thinks he's playing it cool.
Switch to the woman's point of view, though, and you see that she's not at all impressed by the gun. She thinks the guy is a chump. When she leaves, you can go with her and meet her family. If you hop to her husband's perspective, you find out he's really in cahoots with the detective.
"You are not changing the story," Snyder says. "You're just seeing it from even' character's point of view. A well-written story in this style doesn't make sense until you've seen it from most people's points of view."
For scripts. Snyder approached Infocom, the Activision-owned software firm noted for interactive text adventures. Snyder's concept makes extensive use of graphics, an approach Infocom had previously avoided. Snyder's team developed a technology that allows artists to create 2.000 to 3.000 expressive drawings using minimal storage techniques. As a result, it takes four to five hours to read a single Infocomic disk.
Infocom's first venture into outside publishing may appear to be a radical departure from its text-only products, but company president Joel Berez sees it as an extension of what Infocom does best.
"We really see ourselves as being in the storytelling business," he says. "What we've done in the case of Infocomics is take the technology that was developed by Tom Snyder and marry it with the story writers that we have here."
Infocom's research indicated that people's initial reaction to the graphic product reminded them of comic books. Researchers also discovered that computer ownership among comic book readers is three times the national average.
The premier Infocomics titles, now on the market for most personal computers, include Lane Mastodon vs. the Bhibbermen, a comic spoof of 1930s pulp fiction, written by Steve Meretzky; Gamma Force in a Pit of a Thousand Screams, Amy Briggs' action-packed superhero tale featuring a trio of brave aliens; and Zorkquest: Assault on Egreth Castle, by Elizabeth Langosy, a fantasy adventure about a caravan of travelers manipulated by an evil magician.
The initial titles are aimed at the comic book set, but plans are underway for an adult psychological thriller which requires several points of view to determine who is crazy and who is not. An Infocomic for young children will feature a farmer, a wolf, and a fox.
Snyder says he hopes to sell the product to people who do not usually buy computer software. In his view, there are millions of people out there (including his mother) who really don't enjoy playing computer games. To lure new buyers, each Infocomics title car ries a suggested retail price of $12, which may be discounted as low as $9.
As the technology grows, Snyder and Berez expect Infocomics to expand and add additional features. "The next thing we plan to do is add voice and more storage," Snyder says. "Right now it is compressed within an inch of its life. If you have 2000 pictures on an Apple disk, you've got to be doing some magic."
Phone Games
Reach out and play someone.
Instead of playing solitaire games with the computer, or even playing against the computer, gamesters are increasingly able to play sophisticated games by modem. Using telecommunications, you can connect two computers and play computer chess, backgammon, or checkers with a human opponent. If you're looking for more militant action, you can climb aboard a helicopter simulator and try to blast a friend to smithereens.
Sierra On-Line's 3D Helicopter Simulator is a good example. "It's an amazing feeling the first time you try it," says Ken Williams, cofounder and president of Sierra. "You can actually hover over another craft and look straight down at it. It's got real rotating blades."
Other sophisticated flight simulators turn your computer into a Cessna or an F-16 jet fighter. Sierra's aeronautical entry is based on McDonnell Douglas's Apache helicopter. An important feature of 3D Helicopter lets you fly against a human opponent who doesn't have to be seated at your computer. He or she can be at another computer connected by a modem and a telephone line.
"It's a different feeling playing against another human being," Williams says. "You can tell the difference in a dogfight when you're playing a computer; the computers aren't intelligent enough. You can't talk back and forth, and the computer won't hide. You can fly behind a building and, hopefully, your opponent won't see you."
Competition is not the only thrill in two-pilot flying. You can also go sightseeing. "Getting him right along side of you and doing precision flying is just a blast," Williams says. "It's pretty exciting flying under bridges and trying to land two helicopters on top of a small building."
Sierra has plans to add extensions to the product, letting more than two helicopters be online at once. Williams has already contacted one of the major time-sharing services to make it available, with plans in the works for as many as 20 people flying at one time.
True Stories
Simulations give everyone the chance to see what it feels like to pilot anything from a Sopwith Camel to an Apollo moon rocket, or drive a railroad locomotive or a 200-mph dragster.
Most simulations have an arcade quality, and use speed, action, and thrills to attract players. Lately, another type of simulation is appearing. It's more a thinking man's simulation, one that combines education and entertainment. Mark Goldstein calls it edu-tainment software.
Goldstein is president of Reality Technologies. His software gives IBM and Macintosh users the opportunity to run some of America's top corporations via simulations.
Computer simulations are a core component of many business schools. Students run a fictitious company, making such decisions as how much to charge for a product, how much to set aside for research and development, and how much to spend on advertising.
"Frankly, it was the only course we enjoyed," Goldstein says, recalling his days at Wharton Business School. He thought this type of computer simulation should be put to more uses outside the classroom.
After graduation and a stint with Apple Computers, Goldstein and a fellow Wharton graduate decided to develop their own PC-based business simulations. "We came out with products that gave executives and would-be executives the thrills and agonies of running a business." he says.
Their first product was Venture Magazine's Business Simulator. The program was basically a PC version of the business school program that ran on a DEC 10. "This time it was more fun," Goldstein says. "We took advantage of the PC and the ability to use it as an individual, one-on-one training tool."
Several Fortune 500 companies recognized the program's value as a training aid and asked for customized versions for their own operations. As a result, Reality Technologies produced training simulations for such firms as IBM, AT&T, DEC, CitiCorp. and General Foods.
From its experience in producing customized business simulations, Reality Technologies teamed up with McGraw-Hill and introduced Business Week's Business Advantage. The new package is a series of programs based on feature articles from Business Week magazine.
"We put real data downloaded from databases into a model, and create company- and industry-specific case studies," Goldstein says. "Instead of running a mythical company as in our first simulation, in Business Advantage you could call the shots at Chrysler."
The simulation puts you in the role of Lee Iacocca, the chairman of Chrysler. You're faced with a realistic business scenario. General Motors and Ford have just revamped their product lines. Asian cars are flooding the market, and the Japanese are targeting the midrange and luxury-car markets, where U.S. firms are traditionally strongest. Despite flat demand and a sluggish economy, your job is to build Chrysler's strength.
Users manage the company over a five-year period. The computer makes all competitor decisions. At the end of each simulated year, the financial status and competitive position of each company arc presented.
In this type of simulation the computer's microprocessor does not have to compute changing scenery, aerial maneuvers, or artillery trajectories. In stead, BWBA uses a number-crunching routine on a 400-rule expert system and the equivalent of 400 pages of spread-sheet equations to process each management decision. The simulation considers a broad range of external elements that can affect a company's bottom line, such as actions by competitors, interest rates, and consumer spending.
"These invaluable lessons about effective management in highly competitive business situations can be immediately applied to anyone's business," Goldstein says. "We're bridging the education simulation genre and creating valid tools and models. This environment can very effectively teach people what their business problem is and how they might address it."
As far as creating more realistic models and simulations is concerned. Goldstein says he has primarily been restricted by hardware, but that problem is being resolved. "If you look to a 286-plus [microprocessor] environment, it's pretty limitless." he says. "We're doing some simulations on DEC and Sun workstations. It looks like you're dealing with real people (in the simulations) who even have expressions on their faces. It's a whole new dimension."
Interactive Stooges
Robert Jacob wanted to come up with something different in entertainment software. He set out to develop a product that looked as much like a movie as possible.
"We wanted to do games that had tremendous graphics, state-of-the-art sound, easy user interfaces, nonlinear story line for replayability, and enough eye/hand coordination to keep your pulse rate up a little, but not so much as to drive you crazy." Jacob says.
That didn't seem to be too tall a request for his creative team at Cinemaware. They came up with the concept of interactive cinema. It's not an adventure game, it's not an arcade game, and it's not a role-playing game, but it has elements of all three combined with animation. Jacob says.
Titles released this spring include Rocket Ranger and The Three Stooges.
In Rocket Ranger, you are a young American scientist at your desk in 1940. when a rocket suit and ray gun suddenly materialize. A note explains that these items were sent by a group of scientists in the twenty-first century. They want you to change the course of history because in their world, the Nazis won World War II.
It seems the Nazis have set up a base on the moon and are mining a secret mineral. To make matters worse, the fiends are kidnapping American women — including your girlfriend — and turning them into zombies to work in the mines. "As part of the game you have to build a rocket ship and go up and save her." Jacob says. "There are a lot of campy elements in it that make it fun."
In The Three Stooges, the zany trio comes to the aid of a widow and her three beautiful daughters, who are facing foreclosure on the orphanage they run. With your help. Curly, Larry, and Moe have 30 days to raise enough money to save the women from the clutches of an evil banker. You guide the Stooges through a series of odd jobs that include prizefighting, pie throwing, and medical misadventures.
"All the arcade elements of the game are taken right from their movies," Jacob says, "as are the 160 uses of digitized sound, which include their voices and other sound effects.
"To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever really done a computer comedy before." Jacob says. "We wanted to do a game that would make you laugh when you sat down and played."
Jacobs feels this technology is just taking off as machines improve and programmers learn to use the machines better. He feels the next step in the evolution of interactive entertainment will include the use of true video images rather than graphics. Cinemaware already has developed a prototype that includes video images of actors.
To take full advantage of these emerging entertainment techniques requires hardware that is not too far advanced from what is available today, but a heavy reliance on digitized images and sound requires a much larger storage capacity.
"A megabyte of RAM should be sufficient to handle most of the requirements in the next few years," Jacob predicts. "It's really a question of disk space and disk access. I feel very strongly that Compact Disc-Interactive (CDI) is going to be the focal point for the entertainment of the 1990s."
The Ultimate Entertainer
Combine the tremendous storage of compact discs with the interactivity of entertainment software and you get Compact Disc-Interactive entertainment. CD-I is an evolution of the compact disc audio standard developed by the Netherlands-based Philips corporation. CD-I is a joint venture of Philips and Sony aimed at standardizing the format and specifications for this emerging technology.
The first CD-I players, which will connect to your stereo and television, will be marketed by such consumer electronic firms as Sony, Panasonic, and Hitachi. The players will contain a powerful microprocessor, play as many as 16 channels of stereo, store as many as 7000 broadcast-quality pictures, support computer animation, offer full-motion video in a portion of the screen, and play conventional audio compact discs.
American Interactive Media (AIM), a subsidiary of Philips and PolyGram records, is a CD-I software publisher that expects to have approximately 50 CD-I titles available when the first players hit the market early next year. Cinemaware has already signed an agreement with AIM to develop Rocket Ranger in CD-I.
Spinnaker Software is another firm working with AIM. Its first venture into the field is a CD-I version of Sargon IV, Spinnaker's popular chess game. By the time this article appears, Sargon IV should be on the market for the Macintosh, says Steve Yelick. Spinnaker's manager of engineering. The 68000 code for the 3-D chessboard will be the CD-I prototype.
"The Macintosh version will have different chess sets as resources," Yelick says, "and we will expand that concept in CD-I all the way to possibly having animated chess pieces, like the original Star Wars movie, with little guys jumping around and chewing on each other." The CD-I version will have many more games and include full audio that will announce your moves.
In a parallel move, Yelick is work ing on a science fiction adventure for an IBM PS/2 computer and CD-I. He expects Star Lords to be out by Christmas.
"In Star Lords, we're trying to exploit everything we know about gaming, interactive fiction, and CD-I technology," Yelick says. "It's a multimode game system that includes strategic star maps and 3-D space views that will permit arcade-style chasing and fighting."
With more than 600 megabytes of storage space, CD-I offers programmers a great opportunity to use memory-hungry' graphics to create a degree of realism not available on today's machines. Star Lords' screens will combine art and digitized images. Yelick says. "We'll build models of space vehicles and photograph them. That's where CD-I's digitized imagery will really shine."
What excites Yelick most about CD-I is not technical. "Its most interesting aspect is standardization. There are going to be multiple vendors with hardware, multiple vendors with software, and cross compatibility. That's what makes CD-I exciting, trying to avoid the lack of standardization that plagues the computer industry. The consumer won't put up with it."
Cinemaware's Bob Jacob is waiting for the day when CD-I interfaces with computers and peripherals. He doesn't expect it to be too long in coming. "Imagine a computer," he says. "with one megabyte of RAM with a 68000 processor. It'll play back CD audio discs. CD-I discs; have ports for joy sticks, keyboards, and floppy disk drives; and sell for under $ 1.000!"
Now that'll be a game machine!
This article appeared in
COMPUTE!
Jun 1988
These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.
