3D Jack's Game
by Jacques Mallah
Site
Site
The Millenium Edition is quite nice, and it means that there is a lot of potential for QBasic!
| In the year 3000 AD, there is an exact tie in the vote for President of the United Snows of Antarctica. The contest must now be settled in the only logical way (sort of): A fireball fight to the death! You are Sal Snore, Demoncratic Candidate, going up against Forge Flush, the Reaperlikin. |
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| Well, the idea of the game is pretty interesting. It is a one-on-one deathmatch in a 3D arena. 3D has not been Qbasic's strong point, and most things that claim that they are 3D are usually not. Others that are are limited to a demo. There is never a serious attempt at a playable game. This game is something that you can play. You can move in a three dimensional environment, and it runs quickly on my 800Mhz Athon. You shoot what is supposed to be a fireball as your weapon. There are no power ups. These fireballs can be used to melt the ice walls so that you can get to other areas, but otherwise it is used to hit the lone enemy. There is no way to tell how much damage you are giving the enemy though. You just have to survive long enough to win. This version offers the ability to toggle on and off the cheat mode, among other things, so you can go in invincible. Also, if you start to run low on health, you can toggle the cheat mode on and off to replenish it. At first it might seem difficult so that the cheat mode is required, but once you win, you will find it easy enough to defeat the enemy without losing much health at all. The first few times through, I found myself walking around a lot just trying to find the enemy. Then I started to look around at the graphics (see the pics above), and found that what was once some weird picture on the wall with the word "Jack" on it was actually a map! If you stand in front of it, you can see the blue dot, which basically says "You are here" and the red dot, corresponding to where the enemy is. Very useful! I found some things that could be improved. The game starts telling you how to play, along with the story. You just press a button, and you just enter the arena. There is only one arena. More would have made this game more enjoyable. The enemy has simple AI, so he can't move around objects unless you are right around the corner. I think he actually moves away once he starts getting weaker, but he is easy to find. In order to exit the game, you press ESC, and you either concede or are victorious. Once you kill the enemy, you still have to press ESC, instead of having the game tell you that you have won. This can be nice if you just want to walk around and admire the view, but for a game it is not too good. I think some extra weapons would have been good as well. Also, the reload rate of the fireball was not too good in this game, although the range was nice. It took a while between the first and second shot. For a 3D game, it wasn't so bad. I have the above suggestions for it, but it was alright for what it was. |
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| 3D! While you couldn't rotate on all 3 axis, the two you could rotate on were done nicely with about 30-45 frames per second (it said that it was much less on the 200Mhz machine that I also tested it on, but the speed was comparable). There were options to toggle between textures for the walls, as well as the floor and ceiling. With the textures off, the graphics look very plain. Each wall is basically one color. With the textures on, you can see some dynamic effects! See the pics above, and you will get an idea of what the screen looks like. The rainbow of colors smoothly scroll from wall to wall. The colors fade and blend. Even the map is dynamically drawn to update your coordinates as well as the enemy's. The enemy is unfortunately drawn in two dimensions. He is always facing you, and there is no animation, although there is scaling to a degree. He is very simple looking, which doesn't match the rest of the game. Sometimes the dynamic coloring just seemed too much, and it didn't help at all anyway. Killing the enemy leaves the last square he was on in red, signifying that he is dead. Kind of simple. The rest of the arena, however, was amazingly colorful. | |
| You move with the arrow keys, shoot with CTRL, and strafe with ALT. There is no problem with these simple to use controls, and I never experienced a problem with detection of the key presses for them. There is that problem with the toggle options. You need to press D, F, or J to toggle the graphics and cheats, but they don't always work, so you might have to hold the key down or press it over and over. The game ends saying whether or not you gave up, died, or won, but if you are holding a key down, it will not stay on the screen long. This can be annoying, but it doesn't affect gameplay at all. | |
| None. | |
| This game can be challenging at first, but it becomes easier once you get the hang of it. The limitation of only one arena, with only one enemy, kind of limits the challenge as well. Perhaps a difficulty level setting at the beginning, in which the enemy has varying degrees of strength, or maybe more enemies in general, might have increased the challenge as well. I can see a lot of Doom clones using this engine, and providing some different things to do, like switches and such, to get to the next area. As for this game the way it is, the challenge is only there for a bit. It can still be difficult to win unless you are trying a bit. | |
| Initially, I thought this game was really cool. After playing it a few times, I can see that as a game, it is lacking in quite a few areas. Few options, no sound effects, and some more features would have made this a much better and more enjoyable game, although for what it was, it was decent. It made Quake clones seem not so far off... | |
| The design could use some work, the graphics show much potential even though they are amazing as they are, and challenge needs some tweaking. Once you meet the enemy, it becomes a sidestepping contest, seeing who can hit the other one first more times. It is obvious that there is a lot that can be done with this, but for a quick game, this game is a decent one to try. The sourcecode is also available at the site. | |
| .bas source code: 25.1KB download .exe compiled game: 70KB download |