Brian Rumsey - Nov. 15, 2000
Last time I wrote, I was looking at
the situation regarding the future development of games for older
Macs. While the outlook may not be so great overall, I'd like to
take this column 
to point out an upcoming game
which will support nearly any 68020 or greater Mac. This game is
New
Centurions from Fantasoft, best known for their
RPG, Realmz.
There are still more than a couple people developing games for
68K, so what makes this game worthy of a column?
Fantasoft has recently released a test version of New
Centurions, which, although hardly complete, allows users to see
what the game will be like. They are asking people to try it and
then contact Fantasoft with ideas of how the game could be changed
or improved. This is a great opportunity for 68K gamers, as well as
all interested Mac gamers. Most games have a fairly closed
developing and testing process, but Fantasoft has opened up the
arena to anyone who is interested. Hopefully a good response will
encourage them to continue this in the future, as well as make New
Centurions a better game.
At this point, maybe I should give a bit of a description of New
Centurions. The basic concepts are quite similar to Realmz, and it
seems to have been developed using the same engine. For those not
familiar with Realmz, it is a role-playing game in which you create
a party of adventurers who go out and search the world for fun,
similar to most role-playing games. The greatest difference is the
setting: New Centurions is set in a futuristic science fiction
world, so weapons, monsters, and such are bound to be quite
different from Realmz. According to the New Centurions page, New
Centurions will also have other differences, although these are
currently not specified.
I'm not going to waste too much time in a description of New
Centurions, especially since it is not finalized. Instead, I'd
encourage you to try the test version and take part in the
development process if you have any good ideas of how the game
might be made better.
GraphicConverter
While I'm on the topic of software for older Macs, I'm going to
put in a plug for a non-game which is incredibly useful and has
been called the poor man's Photoshop. In fact, some still swear by
it when given the choice of Photoshop. The program is
GraphicConverter from Lemkesoft. Version 4.0 has just been
released, still supporting 68K, but there is speculation that
future versions may drop 68K support. If you haven't heard of it
but you do any kind of graphical work, I'd highly recommend that
you check it out, and if you do use it but have not registered,
maybe you should think about registering. Such a high quality
product is certainly worth the $35 which is asked for it.
[We use Photoshop and GraphicConverter constantly at Low End
Mac. Graphics are usually created, edited, and saved as GIFs in
Photoshop. But when we want a JPEG, such as the New Centurions logo
above, we use GraphicConverter. The JPEG export lets you control
the level of compression, see it in a preview window, and know how
large a file you'll end up with. Very nice. dk]
Well, that about does it for this time. Maybe I'll do another
column on New Centurions once it's been released, but for now, it
is back to the old standbys.
