PC Games Cheat

Among the biggest sellers in online PC games are FPS, or First Person Shooter, games.

Kids love ‘em. So do most Dads.

Many moms think the level of violence is too high and too graphic, so Dad and the kids play them when she is not looking.

FPS games are centered on you, the player, from your point of view. Armed with various handheld weapons, you might be called on to thwart the invasion of Earth by aliens or to stop a Nazi advance in WWII. As a player, you interact directly with the game environment from your own perspective.

FPS games evolved in the late 1990s as PCs became powerful enough to render the 3D graphics in real time. These are way beyond the arcade shooters from Space Invaders on up.

Several sub-genres of FPS have distinguished themselves:

* tactical - most have a military motif

* stealth - avoiding detection by opponents is a major element

* run and gun - among the most popular with multiple enemies and fast-paced action

* real-time strategy (RTS) - able to give commands to other units and control the strategy

* first person adventure (FPA) - free roaming adventure which takes one to the edge, like the controversial series Grand Theft Auto

Most FPS games take graphics to a new level of realism while exaggerating the attributes of the player. You now likely have muscles and strength that make Arnold look like a girlie-man.

Kids and adults alike love the frantic blasting of enemies within the context of heroic storylines.

While FPS games are demanding on your reflexes, they are also demanding on your PC. You will definitely have a need for speed, as well as a good graphics card and a decent set of speakers. The demands of gamers have pushed the PC industry to make better desktop computers for all.

The next big shift - with broadband Internet service now in millions of homes worldwide - will be the delivery of the latest FPS game to your PC via streaming download instead of CD. As more gamers accept online streaming delivery of the game itself, costs should come down over time as the game developers turn to online delivery and bypass the CD/DVD publishers and retailers in the supply chain.

For the game developers, online delivery of FPS games represents an opportunity to open up a new market of gamers who would be willing to try FPS online, but who never visit EB Games, the Electronics Boutique, or other game retailers in the mall.

For those who want to try/demo any number of FPS games, I recommend the Triton player. This streaming download allows you to begin play well before the entire download is completed. You can even demo recent releases like Prey from 3D Realms.

You can register free and download the player at: http://www.playtriton.com

As long as there are heroes and villains, and kids with vivid imaginations, there will be a place for FPS games when the aliens come calling.

Charles Lamm is a RetroGamer trying desperately to catch up with hardcore online PC gamers. He practices with the fast Triton player, available free at: http://www.playtriton.com

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The year was 1987. Japan was trying to cash in on the PC game market. In an attempt to do this, they exported one of their more popular arcade games into PC format. Because of this, the game itself, Sorcerian, plays more like an arcade game than a PC game. This doesn’t make the game itself bad, just very different.

The game itself is very interesting in many respects but because of its flaws, the game can become very dull very fast.

Let’s begin with the more interesting aspects of the game. Sorcerian is a game where you create the characters from scratch. These characters not only have certain powers and abilities, such as fighter, cleric and wizard, among others, but each character can have a different race and profession. The characters actually age, progress in knowledge and levels and eventually die. This makes the game very interesting as you attempt to build your characters as strong as possible.

The game is also very different from many other PC games in that it has multiple scenarios. Each one of these is like a separate game unto itself. Solving one scenario has no effect on any of the others, other than to increase your characters’ levels and skill abilities, along with their age. It appears after completing each scenario your character will age one year.

The scenarios themselves are fairly interesting but there doesn’t seem to be any connection between them. This is one of the game’s flaws. Plus, you can do each scenario as many times as you want. Some of them are so easy to begin with that eventually your characters will become so powerful that nothing can stop them. This is another one of the game’s flaws in that eventually it can become rather dull to play when the challenge is gone.

The look of the game itself is rather odd. The characters are extremely small and don’t look anything like real people. They follow each other in a line in an almost comical fashion. When one character battles, they all battle. There is no way to separate their actions. You can equip them with a variety of weapons, however. You can use spells, some of which are very powerful, especially in the upper levels.

The game comes with a very interesting and beautiful musical score. This is actually one of the high points of the game itself, since the graphics of the game leave a lot to be desired. Of course considering when the game itself was made, they’re not too bad. Just don’t expect too much.

The game is very old, so don’t expect to be able to play it on the newer operating systems. Anything past Windows 98 is probably going to crash and burn. The game comes on floppy disks. Yes, we’re talking very old.

In spite of the flaws, there is a charm to Sorcerian. The characters are so cute when you view them in their inventory screen. There is enough to do besides fighting, such as training, buying items and other odds and ends. If you can get around the challenges becoming too easy as you progress, this is actually a very enjoyable game.

All you have to do is find a computer to play it on.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to PC Games

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In the good old days, back when the Internet had about 10 users and the web was a far off vision, PCs were called Home Computers and anyone could learn to write computer games. Three of us set up in business to write and sell our own games for the ZX Spectrum (Aka Timex/Sinclair) and Commodore 64. We didn’t sell many games but we were saved by getting into the game conversion business. A publisher would release a hit on the Commodore 64 and we’d write the Timex, Amstrad, MSX, CBM 16 etc versions. It took about 3 months for one person to produce a game.

That was 20 years ago and things have changed a lot since then. The games industry is now a massive multi billion dollar business and development teams can number 50 or more. My first game had me as programmer, artist, and beep designer - (well it wasn’t proper sound!). I did everything. Back then games were written in assembler and you had to learn 6502 and Z80. Nowadays with a few exceptions games are written in C and C++. The days of back room programmers aren’t entirely gone- there is also ‘retro remake’ and ‘indie’ scene, e.g. http://retrospec.sgn.net/ but unless you have an exceptionally brilliant idea, you are not likely to get into the mainstream game business as a one man outfit writing Blockbuster PC games.

It’s not all bad news though- if you can program to a very good standard and have learnt some of the techniques- eg 3d maths, artificial intelligence (ai), and can produce demos of your code then you may be able to get a job in the market. There are plenty of books and websites that will guide you through the intricacies of DirectX and before long you’ll be a guru on vertex shaders etc. Sign up on games development sites like http://gamasutra.com/ (it’s free) and look for jobs. You will have to be good to get a job and prepared to work long, in some case very long hours. It is quite a tough business - when a game is under development, you’ll live breathe and eat it for 18 months-two years. And you probably won’t work 9-5 all the time.

There are however other ways to get into the games business and I don’t mean console development. There are other ‘genres’ of games that are much easier to get into.

1. MUD - Multi-user dungeons. These have been around for 30 years and were the precursor to the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games) that now exist. These are still popular and you can find the source code to several of these. I don’t know if any make money- most people are now used to playing them for free. Look here: http://www.ability.org.uk/mud.html

2. Internet/Web based games. There are hundreds of these around. A good starting point is the vast directory at http://www.mpogd.com/ . These range from free to monthly subscriptions. Anyone can set up their own website and games using any web technology- e.g. Perl, PHP, Java.

3. Play By Mail. This has now largely but not entirely moved into the Internet/Web Games area. Flagship magazine is a good source of information - their website is http://flagshipmagazine.com/

4. Flash Games. Flash development is a skill in itself, though programming in ActionScript (which is JavaScript under a different name) is not that hard. There is a definite career path available through programming Flash games and there are plenty of books to teach you to write games in Flash. Flashkit website http://www.flashkit.com/index.shtml is a good starting point online.

5. Mobile Phone and PDA games. This has become a big growth area recently and is likely to continue its growth as phones get more powerful. Its also one of the easiest to get into though not all phones are the same. All you need to know is how to write Java games running on the J2ME (Java 2 Mobile Edition) platform. Unlike the console world, Software Development Kits (SDKS) are available for free from mobile phone manufacturers. E.g. http://www.forum.nokia.com/main.html and the best IDEs for J2ME development (Netbeans and Eclipse) are available free. Expect to see MMORPG (Mobile Multiplayer Online Role Play Games) before too long.

Much of this can be done part time in your evenings/weekends but be careful that you don’t let it take over your life and also that your employer doesn’t have any claim on software that you develop. Some employers have clauses that let them claim anything you develop. There are ways round this, often involving a wife or loved one who can be assigned ownership but take legal advice if in any doubt.

If you are learning to program games, don’t neglect the power of the web. Sourceforge.net is home to thousands of open source projects and many of those are games. Also game source for commercial games Quake I, II and III has been released by ID and can be found here http://www.idsoftware.com/business/techdownloads/

These are GPL’d so you wouldn’t be able to write games based on them and sell them without giving away the source code but you could write Mods. Several game modders have released very popular Mods free and have managed to get into the industry because of their quality. There are many games projects where you can sign up and program- this is an excellent way to learn new skills and make friends.

David Bolton is a software developer with an extensive past programming games. He co-founded Choice Software in Carrickfergus, N. Ireland between 1984 and 1987 and won an award for his original computer wargame Johnny Reb II (published by Lothlorien). He designed and programmed the Postal game Quest, which has also won awards and is still played (postally and online) 15 years after it was first developed. He worked for 12 months as game designer at Microprose (Manchester) in 1992. He is currently designing a large multiplayer role-play game, but it’s not due out until 2006.

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