USA games news Dec, 24, 2006.
Intro Greetings gamers, Welcome to this special edition of the USA Games news. We at USA Games would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and a happy new year. If you don't celebrate Christmas we will simply wish you a happy holidays. As the year 2006 ends we would like to announce where we are in development of our projects, and let you all know what is in store for 2007. We expect 2007 to be a big year for USA Games with Montezuma's Revenge at the forefront of development, Raceway starting it's real development, and perhaps laying the groundwork for STFC 2.0. Montezuma's Revenge News Many of you are no doubt wondering what is happening with Montezuma's Revenge. The short answer is we have chosen to rewrite allot of the engine for greater stability, better features, and to make it more like James North's original vision for the game. As a result Montezuma's Revenge is going through a long and complicated upgrade cycle. With the end result hopefully more feature filled, stable, and more like what some of you requested. As many of you requested Angela was removed completely from the game and Arizona Smith has made a return to the game. All of his sound effects have been restored, and the storyline, plot, etc will follow the original one from Alchemy. One of the major changes that is taking so long is we needed to remap the temples. In Alpha 1 we created the temples to large, and many of you didn't like that. In this version we are resizing the temples to the original size they were in the Alchemy version. In short most temples are about 75 by 36 units in length. For the most part the levels will be exactly as James North created them, but we have decided to make a couple of miner changes for realism sake. For example in rooms where there were metal ladders we felt it would be better if we used stone steps. So we replaced all the ladders with stone steps. Another important issue we are addressing in this upgrade is the way sounds are loaded and played back. In Alpha 1 all sounds were loaded and started playing. The problem of this was if you walked near a wall you could here the skull, spider, gem, gold, etc even if it was in a different room. Now, sounds are based on your specific location. If you are in room 1 and there is a potion in room 1 it is loaded and played while you are in the room./ If you move in to room 2 the potion effect is stopped, and the gems are loaded and played. This isn't perfect yet, but we are working on it. One feature we have started work on is a high score tracking feature. We haven't yet worked on any sort of on line posting feature, but the game itself will keep track of your high scores for easy, medium, hard, and insane levels. You can access your high scores from the game's main menu. Finally, one other massive area undergoing work is the games environmental effects. We did find the games original ambiance was cool, and it might be placed back in the release. Some effects are going away since we have found better ones while some classic sounds are returning. What exactly it will sound like by Alpha 2 remains to be seen. Raceway News I know it has been ages since we talked about Raceway. In truth not much is going on to report. Although, thanks to one of the beta testers of ESP Raceway I now have the original sound effects which by accident or design Alchemy Game Studios failed to give me. Although, a few effects I think I will not use as I have higher quality ones laying around on my hard drive. With the sound effects in hand, the original source code, and my own ideas for the game I think Raceway should turn out to be a really good racing game. STFC News As most of you are now aware STFC 1.0 was released earlier this month. Do to losing the source code I was not able to fix everything or complete the game the way I had hoped to. Although, all hope is not lost. I have decided to begin work on STFC 2.0 sometime next year once Montezuma's Revenge and Raceway is well on their way.I don't know weather or not the game will be TNG, DS9, etc. However, I do know there will be many things I will do differently. In version 2.0 I fully plan to include a save game feature so games won't get lost as it happened to me a few days ago when my laptop battery suddenly died in the middle of a game. Not only that I have found more and more often the need to save so I can do something else, and come back to the game. Another feature I think esentual in 2.0 is the ability or possibility of your shots or enemy shots missing there target. The chance, no matter how remote, often can change the tide of battle. If you lose all your torpedoes on a failed attempt the enemy might be able to rip you apart. If one enemy hits you, and the second misses you might be able to cut down one or both of the attackers. I am sure many of you can see how this would turn out. Thanks to all of your suggestions the way coordinates are announce will b be changed to give specific coordinates like 50 49 rather than say B3. This I hope will make things easier for everyone to play. One thing I have considered is making STFC 2.0 multiseries. You might be able to run a DS9 version, TNG version, original series version, etc. That would be very interesting, and different. Although, that is only a thought. In the end what STFC 2.0 will be like depends on how development goes, and what we decide to do when we begin the game. _______________________________________________ Gamers mailing list .. [email protected] To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
