Re: Subspace

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <5ffel2$5l5@apocalypse.dmi.stevens-tech.edu>,
Karl Horster <khorster@attila.stevens-tech.edu> wrote:
>	Has anyone seen the game Subspace that's on the Windoze machines?

    Sheesh. Unix's 'Xpilot' is almost exactly the same game, and has
been around for years.... Looks like someone managed to graduate from
a university with a bunch of unix boxes and port that to the PC. :)

>It's a fairly simple network shoot 'em up that I think the //gs might be
>able to do....you connect to a server and run a front end
>software...actually it does it all for you...but I was wondering if anyone
>has seen it or has any comments....

   Seen it, entertained the possibility of doing that, mostly wrote it
off, personally. The main problem that networked GS games would face
are:

(1) Most to all of the real good high-speed screen drawing codes
are interrupt and Appletalk unfriendly

(2) Very few GSs are actually on widescale networks where other gamers
exist [the odd small home/office net doesn't really count]

(3) Most IBM PC games like to use IPX instead of TCP/IP to talk. Only
the as yet unreleased GS/TCP will implement TCP/IP, have not heard
about any IPX implementations. Given that I don't bother with Macs, I
couldn't tell if there are any Mac Appletalk'd games able to and worth
doing on the GS (Marathon and the like addicts should go help
Logicware finish Wolf3D first before even trying something harder).

(4) Did I mention that there are very few networked GSs with enough
players available to make large-scale games like Xpilot/subspace/etc
actually playable? [Most of the fun in those is from beating up on
other humans, not AI bots]

   Someone else wants to prove me wrong, go for it and implement a
clone. I'd still recommend single machine, single human capabilities
if you want many to play it.

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
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