SunDog: nostalgia vs. reality

["Bruce F. Webster" <bwebster@bfwa.com>]

I've been enjoying all the nice things people have been saying about
SunDog, and so, prompted by one respondent's message, I tracked down an
Apple II emulator and disk images for SunDog, set 'em up, and booted the
game.

Yech. 

OK, so I'm being a bit harsh, and it was SunDog 1.1 (SunDog 2.0 had some
much needed UI improvements and added hotels, teleports, and public
transportation). And if I were to compare it to other 1984-vintage Apple
II games, I'm sure I'd be more impressed. And it was fun rediscovering
features that I had forgotten. But there's nothing quite like a bracing
dose of reality to dispell the glow of nostalgia. 

So, based on my hour or so of playing around, what worked well, and what
didn't?

WORKED WELL
-- the easy, consistent transition from different layers; the one
transition that did irritate me (having the pod interior window pop up
when re-entering the pod from the street) was fixed in SunDog 2.0

-- driving cross country still worked quite well, given all its
limitations

-- the various interactions in bars and shops, still sufficient to add
some variety and minor amusement

-- the variety among planets of wealth/tech/law levels

-- the "fix up the spaceship and keep it working" activity

-- most of all, the fact that time kept on passing, that you could
initiate actions (charing engines, moving in-systems, etc.) and then go
do other tasks, that you could run around the ship, even making repairs,
while it was under attack

DIDN'T WORK WELL

-- tactical combat was a pain in the butt; I know there were some
improvements in SunDog 2.0 (such as better menu navigation and quicker
shield shutoff)

-- ground combat (vs. muggers) was even worse, but I was never happy
with this, anyway

-- not enough information retained; this was due to lack of space, but I
remember Jerry Pournelle (who was and is a SunDog fan) complaining that
the player should have computer capacity at least as sophisticated as
that of the computer being played upon--e.g., keeping track of the
original price paid for a load of cargo or a given component or
maintaining snapshots of price quotes for each system/city you visit

-- the "moving towards the crosshairs" system worked well in some places
and was annoying in others

-- insufficient variety in shops and other places you could walk into
(again, addressed both in SunDog 2.0 and in the ST version)

Of course, we won't talk about graphics and stuff like that, given the
limitations of the time (SunDog 1.0/1.1 was originally designed to run
in 48KB of RAM; we switched to 64KB just a month or so before shipping
1.0, and 1.1. [bug fixes] shipped three weeks after 1.0). 

I'm making my own list of things I would do differently (besides the
obvious), but I'm interested in what others think. As many of you know,
you can get Apple II emulators numerous places on the web, including:

http://geta.life.uiuc.edu/~badger/apple2.html

As for the disk images, ftp.asimov.net has them at:

ftp://ftp.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/adventure/SunDog*.gz

Thanks.  ..bruce..

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bruce f. webster | bwebster@bfwa.com |
Bruce F. Webster and Associates, Inc.|
    http://www.bfwa.com/~bwebster    |
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