| Description | Oh oh! This looks ominous - there's that word "Crap" in the title again which usually means it is not going to be crap at all. I mean, look at all those controls! And any game that mimics Castle Master with the fab 3D FreescapeTM move-and-look-in-any-direction effects has just got to be far too good for this competition! Ah well, I suppose I better have a quick play of it before I email the author and tell him to enter it into one of those numerous "good game competitions" instead... Hmmm, hang on a mo, just waiting for the screen to refresh... erm, it's drawing something slowly, line by line... is that a castle? It's tiny! And completely see-through! It's a pathetic wireframe jobby - where's the shading?! And what on earth is that strange red squiggle over there? OK, I'll just investigate further - let's try forward... eh? "Please wait..."??? Why aren't I moving... tchoh, I think I'll go and make a sandwich... (3 minutes later...) Back with my sarnie (munch), and I don't appear to have (chomp) moved at all. OK, I'll try moving left... Gah, I have to wait again?... Hurry up!... Come oooooon!.... I've now finished my sandwich and still it hasn't moved!... MOVE DAMN YOU!... ARGH! This is TOTALLY CRAP, goddamnit!... Um.... Yes, it's true, it is actually really crap!... Wow! I can't understand it - the listing is full of really complex keywords like SGN, COS, SIN and ABS (nobody ever uses stuff like this in the CGC!), it all appears to be so neatly programmed... and yet this game is simply bloody unplayable because the framerate is a consistent 37 frames per hour! Anthony points out that you can set the emulator to run at maximum speed and the game is almost playable, but that's not something you can do on a real Spectrum so don't even think about using that as an excuse! This is just too dire - I'm going to bed... (Next day...) The author has now sent me a new, faster version (totally ignoring my CSSCGC rule #3 - grr!) which runs at a remarkable 74fph (that's twice as fast!). All he's done is alter the calculations between lines 7140-7190 a bit (I've included both versions so you can compare them, if you can be bothered). At least the game is still crap though. You can still walk through the walls so there's no point in worrying about using the door. The treasure is still invisible (all I can see in that castle is a flagpole!). It still takes approximately 52 days to play from start to finish at normal speed (35 of which are spent walking in a straight line towards that red squiggle that you need to collect - can you guess what it is yet?). The graphics are still rubbish - accurately rendered, but still aesthetically displeasing and crap in every way conceivable. So to summarise, this game just goes to show that you can still produce totally crap games even if you clearly have the programming skills to do so much better! Anthony hasn't resorted to naff jokes, STOP commands or spelling mistakes - he has simply come up with a stupid concept that clearly wasn't going to work from the outset (i.e. FreescapeTM in BASIC) and lovingly crafted a completely dismal 3D engine to make his nightmare a reality. He's going to do Doom next apparently! I can't, erm... wait...? (One week later...) Another update, another speed boost - so what the heck, I've chucked it into the zip for those of you that still want to compare them. However, it will be the originally submitted slowest version that will be judged... |
