november 2000

18/11/00

Matthew Atkinson, author of classic BBC game Repton 3, has decided to release for free a previously unreleased Pinball game, Silverball 2. Intended as a sequel to the budget-priced game Silverball but never before released, the game comes complete with four different tables and a graphical table designer. Download it now, only from Acorn Gaming! The download archive also includes a complex fireworks simulator written by Matthew and again not previously released. Artex Software have confirmed that work is continuing on top-down strategy game TEK, despite the amount of work they are putting into the forthcoming Iron Dignity (see story for 9/11/00)

 

9/11/00

Work continues on Visions of the Impossible's forthcoming top-down racer, Eat My Dust - take a look at the latest development pictures Artex Software have uploaded a new video demo of Iron Dignity, the 3D strategy game that started development on the Acorn. Unfortunately it's 74MB in size and can only be viewed on a PC - but then it's a demo of the current PC version anyway. It uses a high-polygon landscape but most of the stuff plotted on top seems to have a low polygon count and the engine looks quite unsubtle in some respects, with (for example) the water reflecting like a perfect mirror and the trees plotted as sprites which aren't affected by the lighting applied to the other parts of the landscape. On the other hand it looks atmospheric and there are plenty of nice touches. The key question, though, is to ask if the game's any good, but I guess we'll just have to wait to find out about that. The real-time rendered Acorn demo was more impressive in some respects, so it's quite possible that a StrongARM could have a reasonable attempt at handling the game as it appears in the video, especially with the level of distance fogging used. Powered-up Asteroids game Spheres of Chaos has been upgraded again - now the screen will scroll whilst you stay in the middle (although this seems to have a very strange effect on the background!). You're now forced to pay for it if you want to play more than the first several levels, however.

 

october 2000 news

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