USA Games News 1/3/2007
Introduction Greetings gamers, It is now a new year, and we at USA Games would like to wish you a happy new year. For USA Games 2007 is probably going to be our best year ever. We have allot in the works with some upcoming releases schedule for spring and summer. With STFC 1.0 released that has opened a Window of time to work on other projects such as Montezuma's Revenge and Raceway which we didn't have time to get to during 2006. As many of you may have noticed the USA Games web site http://www.usagames.us is undergoing a much needed upgrade and rewrite. It isn't fully completed, but the new site is functional, and more or less complete for the moment. All we are really missing at this point is the background graphics and other visual artwork that makes a web site attractive to our sighted viewers. Since this news letter concerns our recent updates for our games we will get right to the good news. Montezuma's revenge We are excited to report Montezuma's Revenge Alpha 2 is well underway. Since December 2006 we have been revising the underlying game core rewriting many of the movement commands, updating the collision routines, and various core components of the game engine. One of the new core components that has recently been added to Montezuma's Revenge is an all new USAGames.dll. This shared library contains many core engine components for USA Games products such as controlling the processing of sound, speaking numbers, physics mottling, and much more. The USAGames.dll has been recently upgraded and debugged, and with the bug fixes in the USA Games engine library Montezuma's Revenge no longer has a problem speaking scores over 100000 points as was the case in version Alpha 1. Another major change in Montezuma's Revenge is we have restored all the temples to their original size and dimensions. Most of the new temples are approximately 75 by 36 units rather than the 100 by 100 units. This is in keeping with the size and shape of the temples found in the Alchemy Game Studios 2005 demo release. As mentioned earlier we have in large part rewritten the collision routines which should correct many of the bugs reported with players walking through monsters, jumping through doors, climbing through the ceiling, and other collision related bugs. We are still testing the new collision routines, but we believe in large part these bugs have been finally corrected. When we put Alpha 1 out for testing many gamers reported issues with hearing sounds through walls, doors, and ceiling. We have completely rewritten the audio processing code to start and stop effects based on where the player is in the temple. If the player were to step in to a room with a lava pit the sound of the pits would start bubbling. as the player approached the lava pits the sound of the bubbling would get louder. As the player moved further away from the pits the sound of the bubbling lava would drop off. Once the player left the room with the lava pits the bubbling should stop and new sound should begin playing. As of the time of this writing we have decided to adopt the Real Speak voice Karen produced by Scansoft as the voice of the Montezuma's Revenge navigator, and as the voice of the game menus. We believe this is of a high enough quality voice that it will really ad to the game, and make it that little bit better than it was. Finally, we have also began working on a save game feature for Montezuma's Revenge. To make it fair you will only be able to save a level once it is completed. When you start Montezuma's Revenge and run the load save game feature it will start at the beginning of the currently uncompleted level. To explain this further if you play level 1 and complete it you will be allowed to save your position at the start of level 2. If you then exit the game when you select the load game feature from the Montezuma's Revenge main menu you will start at level 2. You will not be able to save your position again until you complete level 2. As of version Alpha 2 you will be able to keep track of all your high scores for easy, medium, hard, and insane difficulty levels of play. Simply, select high scores from the Montezuma's Revenge main menu, and select the level of difficulty to find out your highest score for that level. For more information about Montezuma's Revenge visit the Montezuma's Revenge home page at http://www.usagames.us.html USA Raceway We at USA Games have some very good news for all of the USA Raceway fans out there. As of January 2007 USA Raceway has finally entered in to full production. Little is known about any possible target test releases at this date, but it has began it's official production cycle. We would like to especially thank one of the former beta testers for ESP who so kindly provided the missing sound effects for USA Raceway, (formally ESP Raceway.) With these sound effects USA Games is prepared to work on USA Raceway, and at last putting this production into something more than words and announcements, but making USA Raceway in to a reality. So what is all the hype about USA Raceway? USA Raceway is going to be one of the most advanced, most realistic, racing game for the blind and low vision accessible gamers. With realistic racing effects, built in realistic physics, you will be able to drive a stock car racer at speeds of 250 MPH in a 26 game season against the best of the best A.I. racers. You will be able to run pre-game race qualifiers to win position. If that is not enough if you win the season you can unlock special trophies, and select new sponsorship for your racer. In addition, to all the features mentioned USA Raceway will allow you to drive in a variety of weather conditions, rainy, sunny, snowy, icy, etc... With such weather conditions some tracks may be more difficult for example if the weather gets rainy the track will become slick, and you will be more likely to slip, slide, and spin out on the track. There will be other hazards including recked cars, and oil slicks which may cause you to crash if you are unable to avoid them. You must watch out for blown tires as this will make it hard to steer, and your racer may spin out of control and hit the wall. With all these challenges Raceway is going to be a tough game to beat. For more information about USA Raceway visit the Raceway home page at http://www.usagames.us/raceway.html _______________________________________________ Gamers mailing list .. 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