Slashdot Mirror

This new audio app's more novel use is to do real-time sound processing for audio (like making your Mac sound like it's in a cathedral.) Kind of like those high end surround sound systems for home entertainment centers.

... go have a look at Ambrosia Software.

The third in one of the best series of games is actually going to be ported to the PC. Finally game makers are realising that there's money to be made on the Dark Side too ... ;)

Of course, since I want to be in on the beta, I'm not deep-linking to the info :)

I bought a Power Macintosh 8600/250 in 1997...

...AND IT WOULDN'T EVEN BOOT INTO System 4!!!!!!

WTF. How is anyone supposed to get anything done? I can't even play StuntCopter or Cairo Shootout in the right resolution/screen depth! MacPaint becomes garbled and unstable under the "Finder", really just the damn MultiFinder in disguise! What a marketing ploy! Thanks ALOT, Apple!!!!!

</FUNNY>
<INSIGHTFUL LIKELY="maybe">

Seriously, if tons of people are worried about paying thousands to replace old shareware programs on the Mac with new commercial software, why not just write to your favorate Mac OS X shareware developer and request they create a replacement product? Be sure to elaborate on exactly what it would replace, and why such a thing would be popular with whoever needs that particular product. Panic and Ambrosia are probably two good places to start, and I'm sure there are hundreds more.

Trust me, the Mac shareware scene WANTS your feedback.

</INSIGHTFUL>

Me too. Esp. if running OS X w/256MB (or less), you need the WindowServer compression hack or else all your available RAM goes to window buffers, which inevitably causes swapping.

There are some products that are available for Windows such as Pillars of Garendall, and others like Escape Velocity Nova are being ported by 3rd party companies (in this case Contraband Entertainment).

The unique thing about Ambrosia is that they've managed to survive for so long despite being a Mac-only shareware company. The quality of their games is better the a lot of standard offerings out there, and the openness of their architeture encourages fan-created mods and add-on scenarios. I just wish there were more companies like them out there.

There are some products that are available for Windows such as Pillars of Garendall, and others like Escape Velocity Nova are being ported by 3rd party companies (in this case Contraband Entertainment).

The unique thing about Ambrosia is that they've managed to survive for so long despite being a Mac-only shareware company. The quality of their games is better the a lot of standard offerings out there, and the openness of their architeture encourages fan-created mods and add-on scenarios. I just wish there were more companies like them out there.

Not that ID is alone, but please, just how many versions of Wolfenstein 3D do we need? Let's see, offhand, I've played that, Quake 1 and 2, Marathon 1, 2 & 3, and various other modest variations on the same old theme. Networked. Non-networked (when available.)

The only unique game out there right now is Ambrosia's Pop-Pop (in Vs. mode anyway), which isn't to say that it doesn't borrow from the past (indeed from Arcanoid, Bust-A-Move, ShufflePuck and even Street Fighter), but it does so in a unique way and doesn't duplicate the same crap that has already been beaten to death ten times over by everyone else and their sister. That and it's damn fun and you can play a match in 10 minutes or less (or more, whatever you want).

I can't say much about FreeCiv, since I have yet to get it to successfully install, but yes, the board game Civilization takes about 12-16 hours to play if you've got decent opponents. I've seen it played and won in about 75 minutes (with 5 players) by a very aggressive opponent. Yes, I was the first to go :(

As for other free games for XWindows, there's also xscorch, based on the old C64 (and other platforms) scorched earth game. I personally liked the original much better than the X version, though.

Sourceforge has a few mac ported games, as well, but most need quite a bit more work before they're as fun as they should be. Most also require a bunch of free libs, and don't yet have binary dists, as well, so if you're not savvy around a compiler, don't bother.

There are also quite a few emulators other than MAME if you like older games. Emulation.net lists many of them (search for platforms at the bottom by clicking on the OS-X like file system). I'm particularly partial to Apple ][, but that's the system I had when I was 10-16 years old. Emulation.net also tells you where to get roms for some systems (like the Apple ][), so it's handy, as well. No arcade sites anymore, though, since they kept getting shut down.

Also, Ambrosia Software's older shareware games are nagware, but entirely playable. I think there newer games are demo, then they'll send you a CD, but you can play quite a bit before paying. I was hooked on Escape Velocity several years ago (and bought the game), and now there's a sequel, Nova. It's probably worth the download.

I love Apeiron as well...

Its millipede :)

but really fast, and really cool ;)

great for a quick bash :)

Go get some Ambrosia Software! It's all shareware, though most can be pirated straight up with Surfers' Serials or the like (I didn't tell you that!). Many of the games are based on arcade games (Swoop=Galaxian, Apeiron=Centipede, Maelstrom=Asteroids, etc), although some of them, such as Harry the Handsome Executive or the Escape Velocity/EV Override/EV Nova trilogy, are not at all like arcade ports.

Go get some Ambrosia Software! It's all shareware, though most can be pirated straight up with Surfers' Serials or the like (I didn't tell you that!). Many of the games are based on arcade games (Swoop=Galaxian, Apeiron=Centipede, Maelstrom=Asteroids, etc), although some of them, such as Harry the Handsome Executive or the Escape Velocity/EV Override/EV Nova trilogy, are not at all like arcade ports.

Go get some Ambrosia Software! It's all shareware, though most can be pirated straight up with Surfers' Serials or the like (I didn't tell you that!). Many of the games are based on arcade games (Swoop=Galaxian, Apeiron=Centipede, Maelstrom=Asteroids, etc), although some of them, such as Harry the Handsome Executive or the Escape Velocity/EV Override/EV Nova trilogy, are not at all like arcade ports.

Go get some Ambrosia Software! It's all shareware, though most can be pirated straight up with Surfers' Serials or the like (I didn't tell you that!). Many of the games are based on arcade games (Swoop=Galaxian, Apeiron=Centipede, Maelstrom=Asteroids, etc), although some of them, such as Harry the Handsome Executive or the Escape Velocity/EV Override/EV Nova trilogy, are not at all like arcade ports.

Go get some Ambrosia Software! It's all shareware, though most can be pirated straight up with Surfers' Serials or the like (I didn't tell you that!). Many of the games are based on arcade games (Swoop=Galaxian, Apeiron=Centipede, Maelstrom=Asteroids, etc), although some of them, such as Harry the Handsome Executive or the Escape Velocity/EV Override/EV Nova trilogy, are not at all like arcade ports.

Go get some Ambrosia Software! It's all shareware, though most can be pirated straight up with Surfers' Serials or the like (I didn't tell you that!). Many of the games are based on arcade games (Swoop=Galaxian, Apeiron=Centipede, Maelstrom=Asteroids, etc), although some of them, such as Harry the Handsome Executive or the Escape Velocity/EV Override/EV Nova trilogy, are not at all like arcade ports.

Go get some Ambrosia Software! It's all shareware, though most can be pirated straight up with Surfers' Serials or the like (I didn't tell you that!). Many of the games are based on arcade games (Swoop=Galaxian, Apeiron=Centipede, Maelstrom=Asteroids, etc), although some of them, such as Harry the Handsome Executive or the Escape Velocity/EV Override/EV Nova trilogy, are not at all like arcade ports.

Go get some Ambrosia Software! It's all shareware, though most can be pirated straight up with Surfers' Serials or the like (I didn't tell you that!). Many of the games are based on arcade games (Swoop=Galaxian, Apeiron=Centipede, Maelstrom=Asteroids, etc), although some of them, such as Harry the Handsome Executive or the Escape Velocity/EV Override/EV Nova trilogy, are not at all like arcade ports.

All of their games are excellent.

I would especially highly recommend the Escape Velocity series, Chiral, and Barrack. They have enough games, of enough different styles, that you can just download all of them (they are all shareware) and try each one in turn until you find one you like.

Escape Velocity. The original runs perfectly on a 3400, as does EV: Override. EV:Nova, the lattest version, is supposedly great. Really, no shareware game compares to these three gems from Ambrosia. They have a 30 day trial period with a popup at startup being the only real annoyance.

Also, as a matter of curiosity, amid the false hits, I occasionally get good tidbits on Google (search for "Build your own" and "game").

I did my part by posting the links. Now, why won't they get looked at seriously? Because they, like, use those grody 2D graphics, or worse yet, text! What are they, 1D? Everything these days is 3D or better!

I think it's a matter of three different problems: 1) technical sophistication, 2) thematic sophistication, 3) and a need for immediate gratification, and I think the Cold Stone above highlights all three.

1) Technical Sophisticaion involves the game's engine. How sophisticated by today's standards is it? 2D graphics won't get taken seriously. People spend thousands cobbling together the latest and utmost hardware, they want something that'll *use* that hardware. Construction set games like the Cold Stone above will take up a shamefully small resource footprint on the machine of your choice.

Another factor under this banner is the complexity of construction: "Welcome to the Turing Tarpits, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy." How much work would it take to build a game with a full degree of technical sophistication? By the time you did that, you might as well be programming in C++ and OpenGL, and prepping the blasted thing to market.

To make a long point short (too late!), any toolkit which makes game which meet peoples' technical expectations will be too complicated and hard to use for casual use -- nobody will want to play with them.

2) Thematic Sophistication is a matter of story within a game. Some times this isn't necessary; a pinball machine isn't going to have much of a story line behind it (unless it was made after 1988), and first person shooters don't necessarily need a lot of plot.

But adventure games do, and to expect the average person to sit down with something like ColdStone and put together a compelling adventure is akin to having the average person sit down with a word processor and put together a compelling novel.

Most people realize that they lack the talent for something like this, and so they don't. Maybe to experiment with, which makes the construction sets little more than a toy in that regard.

3) Immediate Gratification means you want to be satisfied *now now now now now!* And you're not going to get that kind of gratification if you have to sit down with the toolkit and read the f'ing manual to learn how it works. Then there's the time spent assembling graphics, selecting (or recording?) sounds, and making the package coherent. No, people plunk down $30-$50 for something, and they want to be amused by it right away.

The same was true way back when, too, but at least the toolkits were simplistic enough then that you could have fun experimenting. I remember not having to read a manual on Pinball Construction Set (a copy of which I still have somewhere at home for the Apple II). I bet Cold Stone has a lot of manuals with it.

Commentary welcome. I would especially like to be proved wrong here...

Coldstone is a new and cool game construction kit. I haven't used it, but it looks promising.

Coldstone
is a product put out by ambrosia software (it runs on both Windows and OS X) that can be used to create your own standablone games on either platform.

it comes with a ton of artwork on Cd, plus you can easily import your own. I've played with it a bit, and so far have been very impressed.
Interestingly, Pillars of Garendall was created entirely using coldstone.
This sort of thign is great, it provides an easy way to build a standalone game, without coding. Of course, you won't be building the next Unreal Tournament with it, but it does what it does nicely.

Coldstone
is a product put out by ambrosia software (it runs on both Windows and OS X) that can be used to create your own standablone games on either platform.

it comes with a ton of artwork on Cd, plus you can easily import your own. I've played with it a bit, and so far have been very impressed.
Interestingly, Pillars of Garendall was created entirely using coldstone.
This sort of thign is great, it provides an easy way to build a standalone game, without coding. Of course, you won't be building the next Unreal Tournament with it, but it does what it does nicely.

The Carbon API is present in some form on MacOS 9.x and OS X. Only OS X has the full implementation so a pure Carbon app may not run on MacOS 9.x but if it does run on MacOS 9.x it will run natively on OS X too. Think of Win32 - you need an NT based OS to use all the API - try calling NT specific stuff on a Win9X platform and it will fail. An example of something in Office.X that won't work in MacOS 9.x is the pretty translucent graphs in Excel - these use Quartz and Quartz certainly isn't in MacOS 9.x.

Another misconception that needs clearing up is that Carbon and Cocoa are just APIs. One is not inherently superior to the other and both are sitting on top of BSD and Mach anyway. If you have a large C++ codebase you are not about to re-write it all in Objective-C and even if you did you are not going to get the miraculous speed-ups and free beer that some people expect. If you want an informed opinion on the Cocoa vs Carbon debate please take a read of the president of Ambrosia Software's admittedly dated but still correct open letter.

The Carbon API is present in some form on MacOS 9.x and OS X. Only OS X has the full implementation so a pure Carbon app may not run on MacOS 9.x but if it does run on MacOS 9.x it will run natively on OS X too. Think of Win32 - you need an NT based OS to use all the API - try calling NT specific stuff on a Win9X platform and it will fail. An example of something in Office.X that won't work in MacOS 9.x is the pretty translucent graphs in Excel - these use Quartz and Quartz certainly isn't in MacOS 9.x.

Another misconception that needs clearing up is that Carbon and Cocoa are just APIs. One is not inherently superior to the other and both are sitting on top of BSD and Mach anyway. If you have a large C++ codebase you are not about to re-write it all in Objective-C and even if you did you are not going to get the miraculous speed-ups and free beer that some people expect. If you want an informed opinion on the Cocoa vs Carbon debate please take a read of the president of Ambrosia Software's admittedly dated but still correct open letter.

Actually SnapsPro can take DVD screen shots if you have a nVidia GPU.

Also, in Jaguar, you can take screen shots of DVD's using grab.

Snapz Pro can only grab shots from DVD if you're using an Nvidia card.

One of the coolest games out for the mac is EV Nova. It's a simple 2D game that features very rich game play. It's rare these days. Sad.

With 320MB on the iBook, you're probably going to need the window buffer compression trick. With that amount of RAM, and stock config (no window buffer compression), you're system will be paging out with just one or two apps running. The trick about will free 80-100MB of RAM, and it will help.

Cruel? Yes. True? Hardly. I claim Shenanigans on you, sir!

Compared to the PC, it's a higher ratio? Really?
Have you seen the volume of crappy PC games to
crappy Mac ones? Ratios work both ways.

I'll take a Marathon or an EV
over Mortyr pretty much any day
of the week.

That's not to say all PC games are bad, Hell I
just finished Jedi Knight II and it rocked.

This is something that Ambrosia Software figured out a long time ago. They have produced some of the best Mac [the phantom ducks his head to avoid rotton tomatoes] games of all time. Some of the games that they have put out are truely amazing, such as Maelstrom (a really good Asteroids clone), the Escape Velocity Trilogy, and Ferazal's Wand (sp?). However, what has made their games truely wonderful is the ability to midify them. Escape Velocity Override was a great game, but you could only play it through a few times before everything had been done. But, there was the Frozen Heart plug, Femme Fatale, and several other complete replacements that forced me to pay for that little bit of shareware. And Ambrosia has been allowing users to modify their games for a very long time -- it seems to me that Maelstrom was one of the first, in the early 90s.

Let's thing about this for a moment... excluding fps titles... what games actually use 100% of the hardware they are running on?
Certainly not all. Games like Escape Velocy Nova that are Very popular (and only available on the Mac) would work great even with the elegid java performance hit.
Sure, Sun has a lot of work to do before this is a working solution... but you are fooling yourself if you think it can't be done.
--T

Don't forget Maelstrom, which believe it or not is still around and available for Linux.

What happens when Ambrosia goes out of business and the software code expires? Your product that you PAID FOR stops working.

I think either you or I have misinterpreted how Ambrosia's system works.

My reading of Welch's explanation is that if Ambrosia goes out of business, your key file will still work. It's just that if you lose it (e.g. hose your system and don't have a backup), you won't be able to make a new file from your old numeric registration code (assuming Ambrosia is out of business).

So really all you have to fear is: you have a catastophic data loss and Ambrosia goes out of business. Only then do you face the situation of losing the game you paid for. That is bad. But it doesn't sound any worse than old-fashioned commercial software, where if you lose your distribution media and all backups, you're equally screwed.

Really, Ambrosia's products are by and large worth the asking price. As shareware companies go, they're a good example.

Ambrosia has long been a mac only shop

Actually, their Coldstone Game Engine runs on Mac OS and Windows.

If you're talking about adding 256MB to the 128MB, that should improve things a lot, at least with OS X. The system is definitely paging out with 128MB. I suggest 384MB or 512MB, because 256MB is a little slim, even when using the nifty window compression for OS X, IIRC, you get about 50MB free with window compression turned on w/256MB. @512MB, my TiBook hardly ever pages out.

The only rights they would have would be if they were hired beta testers, but even then the only right they really have is to wages. Otherwise as a volunteer, they were not obligated to give their time, therefore you are not obligated to reimburse them. For a look at a Beta Test licence that seems to work, check Ambrosia Software

If you want a perfect example of the difference, just look at Mac gaming. There are many games available for the Mac put out by several great Mac porting companies. But no one develops new games for the Mac.

You expect Slashdot to do an article about an exclusive for Mac game? That'll be the day.

Andrew Welch of Ambrosia Software posted a method that MIGHT work on recovering the files here. Basically sometimes the installer, according to Andrew, just messes with file permissions and visability, not actually deleting them.

I didn't test this because iTunes didn't mess up my 5 partitions, thankfully.

-Henry

Maelstrom is now a GPL released game built on the SDL library. it runs on linux, windows, mac, and be. the original company, ambrosia software made some cool little games.

i played the heck out of maelstrom on the mac when i was in school. good
little sound effects. 'yahoo! all right!'

-sam

You said you don't know a single game that matches up to Elite. I know one that far exceeds it. Escape Velocity is the most versitile game I have seen. You can play it as a sort of RPG, space shooter, or simple trading game. Not only is there the story line of the Rebels vs. Confeds, you can download plugins that others have made. While the orignial game story isn't the ultimate of computer game story telling, many plugins are very detailed and have interesting plots. These plugins can be made to expand EV as it is, or completly change all the missions, ships, outfits, and planets. It is made for the Mac by Ambrosia Software, but can be used in many Mac emulators I have seen.

You said you don't know a single game that matches up to Elite. I know one that far exceeds it. Escape Velocity is the most versitile game I have seen. You can play it as a sort of RPG, space shooter, or simple trading game. Not only is there the story line of the Rebels vs. Confeds, you can download plugins that others have made. While the orignial game story isn't the ultimate of computer game story telling, many plugins are very detailed and have interesting plots. These plugins can be made to expand EV as it is, or completly change all the missions, ships, outfits, and planets. It is made for the Mac by Ambrosia Software, but can be used in many Mac emulators I have seen.

You said you don't know a single game that matches up to Elite. I know one that far exceeds it. Escape Velocity is the most versitile game I have seen. You can play it as a sort of RPG, space shooter, or simple trading game. Not only is there the story line of the Rebels vs. Confeds, you can download plugins that others have made. While the orignial game story isn't the ultimate of computer game story telling, many plugins are very detailed and have interesting plots. These plugins can be made to expand EV as it is, or completly change all the missions, ships, outfits, and planets. It is made for the Mac by Ambrosia Software, but can be used in many Mac emulators I have seen.

• Marathon, Marathon II & Marathon Infinity

  Back when Doom was the big thing, Marathon came out. You actually had to aim up and down. Enemies would float down on you from above and behind. There were real puzzles. And the story! Never have a played a game with as engrossing a story. Marathon II took things up a notch, but wasn't as revolutionary. Marathon Infinity was a whole new story--a troubling and confusing one, at that. And Marathon still lives. There are tons of interesting mods (Tempus Irae, a Rennaissance Italy mod, is one of my favourites), and even an open source (yes, that means Linux!) version. Marathon II had a Windows version; all other commercial version were Mac-only; the open source is Mac, Linux, Windows and BeOS.

• Escape Velocity

  Want an exploration game? Want to be a space trader (remember trading games?)? Want an arcade space combat game? Want to conquer the galaxy? Escape Velocity allowed one to do all that and more. An incredible engine, not in terms of graphics, but in terms of capabilities. Truly outside-the-box thinking, it was one of the real greats. It is Mac-only.

• Angband

  First there was rogue. Then there was Moria. And then there was Angband. Expandable, extensible, just plain fun. It was winnable, too, which I cannot say for NetHack (which is in many ways a superior game, except that I spend all of my time on the first 6 levels) or Omega (I've just not played it enough).

• Descent

  Another one that came out right around Doom. Doom (and Marathon) had a boring map type--walls went straight from floor to ceiling; all floors and ceilings were parallel. The player ran around killing things. Descent changed all that by offering a FPS with true spherical movement: the player flew through tunnels, able to turn in any direction, control pitch, yaw and elevation. The gameplay was incredible. I'm not certain why this genre has not caught on. In many ways, it's similar to a flight simulator, but with an arcade flavour. A ripping good time; I'm playing Descent III on Linux these days. Descent was originally offered for Mac and Windows boxes.

• Contra

  I'm not certain why, but Contra was one of those games I could just play for hours and hours without end. I loved it deeply, and was awful at it. But man was it fun!

Incidentally, when's slashdot going to support <dl>?

Do you want to know why?

Because GPLed games actually have a tiny chance in hell of being ported to the macintosh.

Seriously. I really kind of honestly believe the bit about gpled games will never quite reach the quality level of commercial software, (although i have seen some damn good shareware/freeware games) but i will say this: poorly ported gpled games are much better than *nothing*.. which, as a mac os x user, is exactly what i am getting right now.

Well.. all i have to say is thank god that it's so much easier to write emulators that run on the PPC than it is the x86 :P Lolo, i will always have you..

Umm, but anyway. Yeh. I am pretty sure i will never see a Worms Armaggeddon for mac os x, much less Worms World Party, but although i can't play OpenQuartz either, i at least have the *option* of porting the damn thing myself. Which just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. So.. well.. THANK YOU, TEAM OPENQUARTZ!

P.S. : Sierra : Where the fuck is tribes 2?? You were promising us a simultaneous cross-platform release for awhile there!! What happened?? GRRRR!!

^_^

P.P.S. You think we could go hunt down the original creator of Scorched Earth and convince them to go GPL?

P.P.P.S. Crossfire is damn ugly. Couldn't you at least have the quality of Taskmaker? Sheesh.

...

apple has a protection in place in os 9 that blanks out part of the screen when a screenshot is taken while a dvd movie is playing.

This is not actually true. The DVD software that comes with Mac OS uses a technology called "direct screen blast" (also used in some games) to dramatically accellerate the framerate. All the OS knows is that there is a blank space there. The traditional Command-Shift-3 keystroke goes through the OS, and since there is no data there (to the OS's knowledge) the screenshot turns out black. Same thing, incidentally, if you try to use a projector on certain laptops to project a DVD (using certain software, I don't know the details). It's not the fault of the OS, it's a way of getting you (the user) a better quality picture.

BTW, if you must capture DVDs while they are playing, there is a utiliy called Snapz (for the Mac) by Ambrosia Software can capture even direct screen blast images.

apple has a protection in place in os 9 that blanks out part of the screen when a screenshot is taken while a dvd movie is playing.

This is not actually true. The DVD software that comes with Mac OS uses a technology called "direct screen blast" (also used in some games) to dramatically accellerate the framerate. All the OS knows is that there is a blank space there. The traditional Command-Shift-3 keystroke goes through the OS, and since there is no data there (to the OS's knowledge) the screenshot turns out black. Same thing, incidentally, if you try to use a projector on certain laptops to project a DVD (using certain software, I don't know the details). It's not the fault of the OS, it's a way of getting you (the user) a better quality picture.

BTW, if you must capture DVDs while they are playing, there is a utiliy called Snapz (for the Mac) by Ambrosia Software can capture even direct screen blast images.

Certainly Escape Velocity can be non-zero-sum, although it looks like it varies depending on how you play the game...