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Perfecting a Tron Game

Posted by Soulskill on from the right-angles-will-be-your-undoing dept.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a review of an old but entertaining freeware Tron game called Armagetron . The author heaps praise on the game for its "beautiful simplicity" and its exciting multiplayer options. More screenshots and a wiki are available on the game's website. Quoting: "It's all about speed, really. You might think driving in clever geometric patterns would win you the game, but speed is the real the alpha and the omega of Armagetron. See, if you can drive parallel to old enemy trails for long enough to get your speed up to two times, three times or even four times more than your starting speed then you become a hunter of men. It becomes within your power to dart off towards other players, overtake them, and take a couple of quick turns that mean your trail boxes them into a tiny space."

5 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Excellent game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I discovered Armagetron during college. We used to play it over the LAN. Single player was fun, too. I tried it again not too long ago, and they must have revamped the AI because I got _destroyed_.

    The camera options added a lot to the game, too. You had chase, fix, smart, and in-car which is the most exciting and quite usable once you get used to it.

    END OF LINE

    1. Re:Excellent game by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Aside from being very addictive -- and it included splitscreen on a PC, which is occasionally a very good idea -- it was also, for many years, the open source game with which to test your video card.

      More recently, I use Nexuiz, but that's still what I remember it as. If you could run Armagetron fullscreen with decent settings, at least you know your video card is working. If you couldn't, chances are, you'd misconfigured something and thrown yourself into software mode.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    2. Re:Excellent game by peter · · Score: 2, Informative

      glxgears is such a simple scene (no textures, for one thing) that even software rendering is not slow. Way back in the day on a P200MMX, maybe HW 3D was needed for a fast glxgears...

        These days a core2 can run glxgears _really_ fast. e.g. 3GHz Harpertown gets > 500fps, IIRC.

      --
      #define X(x,y) x##y
      Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes , .ca)
  2. Tron!? This aint no dangblammed Tron! by the_skywise · · Score: 4, Informative

    Back in my days we called this game Snafu! We played it on an Intellivision that had a disc for a joystick... except you didn't spin the disc (even though you could)... you pushed on it like a regular joystick.

    And it sucked, but that was the way it was and we liked it that way! (2nded only to the abominable Atari 5200 stick)

    Dagburned Disney steals another idea because they couldn't come up with an original concept and you kiddos call it "Tron" now!

    Now where's my teef...

  3. Re:Tron Arcade Game by slarabee · · Score: 2, Informative

    It has tanks and a most Tron-like vibe to the entire game: Tank Universal. Available through Valve's growing Steam empire for the low low price of $9.99, it has virtual world civilizations, politics, factions, and hot tank-on-tank action. Don't be turned off by the dated animations depicting meatspace or the rather lame first few missions. It gets much better.