VecFever documentation
Word War vi
Homebrew, 2007
Stephen Cameron’s game for the X-Window system works really well on the Vectrex which I hoped for when I saw that it also exists as a version for ‘OpenLASE’ – there outputting via driving a color laser. This turned out not straightforward at all, though, for several reasons: the OpenLASE version simply cuts off the vectors per frame at a hard threshold count and tries to turn down the visual effects enough to mostly stay within that limit – not dynamically but turning them down in the source code. The memory requirements are way too high since it just allocates thousands of objects, in the source I see an offhand comment of around 4000 frequently. It uses a color table setup unsuitable for the brightness effects possible and necessary for a grayscale output but most importantly: has no concept of a ‘beam’ which especially should move around the least amount possible, since this takes time. None of the audio could be used, of course, either.
On the plus side the source code in principle was using a straightforward, object oriented and easy to understand game engine. The game engine idea is quite simple: drop objects into the game world plus the player and just let the objects run until either the player dies or he interacts with the ‘exit’.
So this was mostly about getting the memory requirements down, then the object count, then the graphics stability and speed up by minimal zrefs and beam movement minimization overall. And in the end dynamic handling of the particle effects depending on what is going on per frame. Create sounds for everything, go over the drawing calls to define clipped and unclipped lines and hand-clip vectors depending on the orientation. Abstract all texts, add automatically centering output and accented characters for German and French. You get the idea: a lot of small and some large things but nothing really problematic, just work.
So, what is the game about ? The back story is about something deeply nerdy – a throwback to the arguments between users of two different unix editors: vi and emacs. Vi being a bare-bones editor, slim and fast, and emacs an extremely powerful one, so a bloated thing and much harder to learn to use. You are a vi aficionado and on a crusade in user memory to rid it of emacs, which here means mostly ‘friends’ of emacs and some of its sub-processes, which take the form of slow, huge Zeppelins which spew garbage into the user memory (lisp code, btw.). However, killing a Zeppelin actually nets you a negative score, apparently a comment on how silly these ‘editor wars’ were. But shooting all in a level net you a 20k bonus, so not consistent and leaves me puzzled, to be honest.
Better to just ignore this all: this is about rescuing four humanoids sprinkled around the level, pick them up and bring them to the end of the level. There are a few enemies searching for these humanoids to pick them up and bring them to the left of the level, where you always start, to drop them into a volcano there. If you get hit your energy level will drop but you can refuel using fuel containers – you have to be near to them to do so and not just shoot them as in Scramble, they also restock over time.
The thing that worked the least initially was the audio part – the original also just mixes an enormous amount of sound effects plus music together, similar strategy to the particle effects: to dazzle with large amounts. And most of the sound effects end up using the noise channel – mostly explosions, thrust and shots after all – so it sounds ‘scratchy’ if tried on the Vectrex. For the very first time I actually did something new since just prioritizing audio effects sounded too austere and the ship’s thrust as background does not work. Instead, I decided to use music throughout – and the music plays all the time, the more elaborate the less other sounds have to be played but the main tune always going on. Or in technical terms: I am mixing two, separate 8910 chips’ channels together by selecting the most important channels of the two chips, which I hoped might work under certain boundary conditions (noise frequency changes or amplitude modulations need to be avoided, for example, and certain virtual channels need to stay in physical channels sometimes or a resumed frequency after a zero volume for a few frames will sound wrong etc.).
The result is quite a bit better than I hoped for, to be honest, it works surprisingly well. The music can still be disabled via an option: might be a good idea if you play your own music via another source for example. Also might help just so that some level tunes do not rattle around your brain afterwards for a while, or at least the most catchy parts.
Input
- Button 1: Gravitational Bomb
- Button 2: Chaff (led turns red if a missile is locked on and the radar active)
- Button 3: Bomb
- Button 4: Laser
Options
- Difficulty: Easy / Medium / Normal / Hard / Insane
- Blimp Scroller: Yes / No (Emacs Propangada text on the Zeppellin)
- Buildings: Yes / No
- Music: Yes / No
- Radar: Yes / No
- Reset Hiscores
- Game Info: ” Word War vi – 2007, Stephen Cameron, original developed for Unix/X Windows. Great game for the Vectrex: it uses just a few buttons and a digital joystick, the amount going on per frame is usually within the limit of what a Vectrex can display plus it is really fun to play. Even though the ship visuals and the idea to rescue ‘humanoids’ are a clear nod towards Willam’s Defender, the fuel depots and having bombs to explode things on the surface to games like Scramble this game is not a simple melange of older games: to me it is clearly arcade-inspired but also vintage computer game inspired: for example the idea to generate everything, the entire level, using a random no. generator seed and a specified amount of objects per level to spawn was used a lot early on to generate a larger world from minute input data, the Elite universe or Boulder Dash are two of the better known examples here. This open-world decision for the level without a hard time limit to me is the clearest sign that this is a computer game and not an arcade game. There is a reason why Scramble always moves you forward or in Defender the ‘Baiter’ appears to harrass you to end a level as fast as possible. In WWVI you have time and can in principle leisurely or ever so cautiously, depending on the difficulty setting, get through all levels, something an arcade game would not want to let you do, ever. Time is even less pressing than in Choplifter – a very similar and well known computer game of the early 1980s – which it does resemble in my mind gameplay-wise quite a bit (wwvi is more sophisticated, though). In some ways this entire game judging from the source code was also technically driven – a ‘I wonder what I can do’ kind of quest which especially shows when it comes to objects which do not further the game at all: the randomized building construction code, propaganda text on the emacs blimps, their memory leaks, bridges in the original game (deactivated here due to perf. reasons but also since they are utterly unnecessary) and the list goes on. So adding dazzling objects for the level which you do not or sometimes cannot even interact with. Similar to the particle or sound effects – the idea here is always to go for large numbers to dazzle. Obviously for the Vectrex this had to be dialed down but a lot less than you might think: the object count is the same and the particle effects all look very nice, they are just not exuberantly, ridiculously massive as they can be on a computer, thousands of pixels for explosions can move around there at times. To me personally this adds nothing to the game, I actually prefer the Vectrex version here. Esp. the ‘no radar’ variant where you have to listen for the pleas of the humanoids and have the entire screen for the game I really like, this not knowing where the humanoids are and searching for them adds something to the game for me, but since this was not part of the original game the radar is the default setting. “
Localization
//NAME="WWVI"
//
GERMAN[] = {
{ 0, 0, 0},
{,,"Spielende"},
{,,"Netter Bandenschuss!"},
{,,"NEUER HIGH"},
{,,"SCORE !!!"},
{,,"Neuer Highscore!"},
{,,"Enter your initials:"},
{,,"Fertig"},
{,,"verbleibende Zeit: %d"},
{,,"Beenden?"}, // 10
{,," Ja"},
{,," Nein"},
{,,"Kernelraum"},
{,,0},
{,,"Zu Beginn gab es Ed."},
{,,"Ed ist der Standardtexteditor."},
{,,"Dann ward vi geboren, und es war gut."},
{,,"Dann kam Emacs, und Disharmonie."},
{,,"Ihre Mission ist es den Computer"},
{,,"von Emacs zu befreien."}, // 20
{,,"Das wird keine einfache Mission,"},
{,,"denn es gibt viele Emacsfreundliche"},
{,,"Prozesse."},
{,,0},
{,,"Waffen"},
{,,"1: Grav.bombe"},
{,,"2: Düppel"},
{,,"3: Bombe"},
{,,"4: Laser"},
{,,"1: Geschenk"},
{,,0}, // 30
{,,"Bereit zu sterben?"},
{,,"Los Santa, los!"},
{,,"zwei Leben"},
{,,"Letztes Leben"},
{,,0},
{,,"Radarinterferenz!"},
{,,"Korrosive Umgebung!"},
{,,"Gegend muss sofort verlassen werden!"},
{,,"Nett gefangen! +1000!"},
{,,"Juhuu!"}, // 40
{,,"Hilfe!"},
{,,"Alle Geschenke verteilt!"},
{,,"Willkommen, Noob!"},
{,,"Raketenallee"},
{,,0},
{,,"Ode an VIktoria"},
{,,"Debuggingwahn"},
{,,"Voll VerEMACSed"},
{,,"Rache des RMS"},
{,,"Node befreit! Gesamtbonuspunkte: %6d"}, // 50
{,,"Gesamtpunktzahl: %6d"},
{,,"vi .swp Dateien gerettet: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Emacsprozesse: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"gdb Prozesse: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Octoviren: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Raketen: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Lenkraketen: %2d %5d"},
{,,"Lasertürme: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Luftabwehrstationen: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Spielzeit des Levels: %02d:%02d %5d"}, // 60
{,,"Wo ist Ihr"},
{,,"Editor jetzt?"},
{,,"Radar: Ja"},
{,,"Radar: Nein"},
{,,"Zeppelintext: Ja"},
{,,"Zeppelintext: Nein"},
{,,"Weihnachtsmodus: Ja"},
{,,"Weihnachtsmodus: Nein"},
{,,"Gebäude: Ja"},
{,,"Gebäude: Nein"},
{,,"Musik: Ja"},
{,,"Musik: Nein"},
{,," Word War vi - 2007, Stephen Cameron, das Original wurde entwickelt für Unix/X Windows. Hervorragendes Spiel auf der Vectrex: es braucht nur ein paar Knöpfe plus digitalen Joystick, die Anzahl Dinge auf dem Schirm sind nicht wenig aber überwiegend problemlos darzustellen und es macht richtig Spass zu spielen. Obwohl die Grafik und die Idee 'Humanoide' zu retten eine Homage an William's Defender sind, ebenso wie die Treibstoffdepots und mit Bomben Sachen auf dem Boden zu treffen an Spiele wie Scramble erinnert ist dieses Spiel keine einfache Melange aus diesen älteren Spielen: für mich ist es sicherlich Arcadeinspiriert aber genauso von Computerspielen der goldenen Zeit: zum Beispiel die Idee, dass alle Level durch einen Initialisierungswert für einen Zufallszahlengenerator definiert werden plus zusätzlich der Definition einer Anzahl Objekte, die erzeugt werden wollen, wurde damals häufig benutzt, um mit wenig Daten grosse Datensätze/Welten/Level zu erschaffen. Das Eliteuniversum oder Boulder Dash sind z.B. bekannte Vertreter hiervon. Diese offene Levelwelt ohne harte Zeitgrenze ist für mich das deutlichste Zeichen, dass dies ein Computer- und kein Arcadespiel ist. Es gibt einen guten Grund, warum man in Scramble immer sich vorwärtsbewegt oder in Defender nach einer Weile immer 'Baiter' kommen, um den Level so schnell wie möglich zu beenden. In WWVI hat man alle Zeit der Welt - im Prinzip kann man gemächlich durchfliegen oder sehr vorsichtig sich vorwagen und dann immer wieder zurück auftanken, je nach Schwierigkeitseinstellung, und man kommt so durch alle Level. Etwas das ein Arcadespiel nicht zulassen würde: Zeit ist hier Geld. Die Zeit ist sogar noch weniger ein Problem wie in sehr ähnlichen Computerspielen aus der damaligen Zeit wie Choplifter und für mich ist WWVI am ehesten mit Choplifter als mit Defender oder Scramble zu vergleichen. Aus einem anderen Gesichtspunkt her - vom Sourcecode und wo Zeit investiert wurde - ist dies ein 'mal sehen was ich damit anstellen kann' Projekt gewesen: dies zeigt sich besonders bei Objekten, die für das Spiel unwichtig sind und man mit einigen nichteinmal interagieren kann: die zufällige Gebäudekonstruktion, der Propagandatext auf den Emacszepellinen, deren Speicherproblem (die Zeichen, die hinten rauskommen), Brücken im originalen Spiel (deaktiviert aus Perf.gründen aber besonders, da sie komplett sinnfrei sind) und die Liste geht weiter... Also viele hübsche Objekte für die Level um sie aufzuhübschen, aber es bereichert das Spiel selbst ausser mehr Grafik nicht wirklich. Ebenso die Partikel- und Toneffekte - die Idee ist immer sehr viele zusammenzuzeigen bzw- zu mischen und auszugeben, umso mehr umso besser. Natürlich musste dies für die Vectrex heruntergedreht werden aber weit weniger wie man denken würde: die Anzahl Spielobjekte ist identisch und nur die Partikeleffekte wurden verkleinert, im original können häufig tausende Pixelobjekte von Explosionen auf dem Schirm landen. Für mich selbst geben diese Pixelorgien auf dem Computer keinen Mehrwert für das Spiel - ich mag sogar am liebsten die einfachste Variante: ohne Radar, wo man nach den Humanoiden suchen muss; man hört sie rufen bzw. sieht die Sucher der vorbeifliegenden 'Cron'gegner, die sie evtl. zu dem Vulkan tragen. Das verändert das Spiel etwas, da man nicht weiss wo sie sind. Allerdings ist dies eine meiner Änderungen am Spiel und nicht im Originalspiel, weswegen es per default deaktiviert ist. "}
};
FRENCH[] = {
{,,0},
{,,"Fin de Partie"},
{,,"Joli Tir!"},
{,,"NOUVEAU"},
{,,"SUPER SCORE !!!"},
{,,"Nouveau Score Elevé!"},
{,,"Entrez vos Initiales:"},
{,,"Ok"},
{,,"Temps Restant: %d"},
{,,"Quitter?"}, // 10
{,," OUI"},
{,," NON"},
{,,"Noyau du Système"},
{,,"Adaptation Vectrex"},
{,,"A l'Origine, il y avait Ed."},
{,,"Ed était l'Editeur de Texte Standard."},
{,,"Ensuite vi Apparut. Ce fut Impeccable."},
{,,"Puis il y eut Emacs: une Dissonance..."},
{,,"Votre Mission: Parcourir la Mémoire Centrale"},
{,,"de l'Ordinateur pour Eliminer Emacs"}, // 20
{,,"Cette Mission sera Difficile"},
{,,"car de Nombreux Processus"},
{,,"Dépendent d'Emacs"},
{,,"Classement - Scores"},
{,,"Commandes:"},
{,,"1: Bombe Gravitationnelle"},
{,,"2: Mitraille"},
{,,"3: Bombe"},
{,,"4: Laser"},
{,,"1: Cadeau"},
{,,"Niveau %d..."}, // 30
{,,"La Mort Vous Attend!"},
{,,"Allez, Père Noël!"},
{,,"Plus Que Deux Vies"},
{,,"Dernière Vie"},
{,," RADAR - Sirius Cybernetics Corp."},
{,,"Radar Brouillé !"},
{,,"Atmosphère Toxique Détectée !"},
{,,"Evacuez d'Urgence la Zone !"},
{,,"Belle Accroche! +1000!"},
{,,"HHouaaaa!!"}, // 40
{,,"A l'Aide!"},
{,,"Tous les Cadeaux: Distribués!"},
{,,"C'est Parti!"},
{,,"Zone des Fusées"},
{,,0},
{,,"Ode à la VIctoire"},
{,,"L'Enfer du Débogage"},
{,,"Suppression d'EMACS"},
{,,"La Vengeance de RMS"},
{,,"Unité Nettoyée! Total Points Bonus: %6d"}, // 50
{,,"Score Total: %6d"},
{,,"Fichiers vi .swp sauvés: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Process. Emacs interrompus:%2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Processus gdb interrompus: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Octo-Virus détruits: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Fusées détruites: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Missiles détruits: %2d %5d"},
{,,"Tourrelles Laser détruites:%2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Batteries Antiaeriennes HS:%2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Temps écoulé: %02d:%02d %5d"}, // 60
{,,"Où est votre Editeur"},
{,,"Maintenant ?"},
{,,"Radar: Oui"},
{,,"Radar: Non"},
{,,"Texte du Dirigeable: Oui"},
{,,"Texte du Dirigeable: Non"},
{,,"Mode 'Fête de Noël': Oui"},
{,,"Mode 'Fête de Noël': Non"},
{,,"Bâtiments: Oui"},
{,,"Bâtiments: Non"},
{,,"Musique: Oui"},
{,,"Musique: Non"},
{,," Word War vi - 2007, de Stephen Cameron, développé à l'origine pour Unix/X Window. Un Grand Jeu pour le Vectrex: avec quelques boutons, un joystick numérique et en restant dans la limite de ce qu'un Vectrex peut afficher, on obtient un jeu vraiment amusant. Même si les visuels du vaisseau et l'idée de sauver des 'humanoïdes' constituent un clin d'oeil évident au jeu 'Defender' de Williams, et bien que les dépôts de carburant ou les bombardements au sol font immanquablement penser à 'Scramble', ce jeu n'est pas un simple mélange de jeux plus anciens: pour moi, il est clairement inspiré du monde de l'arcade mais aussi des jeux d'ordinateur de l'âge d'or: ici le fait de tout générer (le niveau entier) à partir d'une valeur de départ associée à une randomisation et de définir un certain nombre d'objets pour chaque niveau, rappelle une pratique très courante à l'époque. Elle permettait de créer un monde toujours plus vaste à partir d’une entrée de données pourtant très limitée: 'Elite Universe' ou 'Boulder Dash' en sont deux parfaits exemples. Le paramètre 'Temps', non limité, est pour moi le signe le plus évident qu'il s'agit avant tout d'un jeu d'ordinateur et non d'un jeu d'arcade. Par exemple dans 'Scramble' vous êtes forcé d'avancer; dans 'Defender' le 'Baiter' semble vous harceler pour terminer le niveau le plus rapidement possible. En revanche dans WWVI vous avez tout votre temps, et pouvez, à votre convenance, traverser chaque niveau tranquillement, voire prudemment en fonction du degré de difficulté. Ceci n'est tout simplement jamais possible dans un jeu d'arcade. Le temps est encore moins pressant que dans 'Choplifter' (un jeu sur ordinateur très similaire et bien connu du début des années 1980) auquel je trouve qu’il ressemble un peu dans la façon d’y jouer (WWVI est cependant plus sophistiqué). D'un autre point de vue, plus technique cette fois, au regard du code source et en investissant le temps nécessaire, j’ai voulu savoir \"ce qu'il était opportun de faire avec\": cela concerne en particulier les objets qui ne sont pas importants pour le jeu et avec lesquels on ne peut pas interagir; on peut citer la construction aléatoire de bâtiments, le texte de propagande sur les ballons dirigeables 'Emacs', leur 'fuite' de mémoire, les ponts du jeu original (ici désactivés pour des raisons de performance mais surtout parce qu'ils sont complètement inutiles). Et la liste est encore longue... Donc en définitive une abondance de jolis objets qui embellissent certes les niveaux, mais qui n'enrichissent pas vraiment le jeu lui-même hormis sur le plan des graphismes. Il en va de même pour les effets de particules et les effets sonores, l'idée maîtresse étant de de toujours surenchérir: plus il y en a, mieux c'est. Bien évidemment, cette opulence a dû être réduite pour le Vectrex, mais beaucoup moins qu'on ne peut le penser : le nombre d'objets dans l’adaptation est identique; seuls les effets exubérants et démesurés propres aux particules ont été réduits (il faut s'imaginer que dans le jeu original, des milliers de pixels provenant d'explosions peuvent être projetés sur l'écran). Pour ma part, je considère que cette profusion de pixels telle qu'on peut la voir sur ordinateur n'apporte aucune valeur ajoutée au jeu. En vérité, je préfère la version la plus simple tournant sur Vectrex: il s'agit de celle sans radar, où on profite de l’écran tout entier pour jouer et où l'on doit se mettre à la recherche des humanoïdes sans aucun repère: on peut les entendre appeler et les voir être transportés vers le volcan. Cette quête dans ces conditions apporte un plus au jeu, car on ne sait jamais où ils sont. Cependant, il s'agit là d'une des modifications que j'ai apportée, et non d’une des caractéristiques du jeu original. C'est pourquoi elle est désactivée par défaut. "}
};
ENGLISH[] = {
{,,"Word War vi"},
{,,"Game Over"},
{,,"Nice Bank Shot!"},
{,,"NEW HIGH"},
{,,"SCORE!!!"},
{,,"New High Score!"},
{,,"Enter your initials:"},
{,,"Done"},
{,,"Time remaining: %d"},
{,,"Quit?"}, // 10
{,,"Quit Now"},
{,,"Don't Quit"},
{,,"Kernel Space"},
{,,"Vectrex Port"},
{,,"In the beginning, there was ed."},
{,,"Ed is the standard text editor."},
{,,"Then there was vi, and it was good."},
{,,"Then came emacs, and disharmony."},
{,,"Your mission is to traverse core"},
{,,"memory and rid the host of emacs."}, // 20
{,,"It will not be an easy mission,"},
{,,"as there are many emacs friendly"},
{,,"processes."},
{,,"High Scores"},
{,,"Controls"},
{,,"1: gravity bomb"},
{,,"2: chaff"},
{,,"3: bomb"},
{,,"4: laser"},
{,,"1: present"},
{,,"Level %d..."}, // 30
{,,"Prepare to die!"},
{,,"Go Santa, Go!"},
{,,"Two Lives Left"},
{,,"Last Life"},
{,," Sirius Cybernetics Corp. RADAR"},
{,,"Radar jammed!"},
{,,"Corrosive atmosphere detected!"},
{,,"Vacate the area immediately!"},
{,,"Nice Catch! +1000!"},
{,,"Woohoo!"}, // 40
{,,"Help!"},
{,,"All Houses visited!"},
{,,"Welcome, Noob!"},
{,,"Rocket Alley"},
{,,"Vi! Vi! Vi!"},
{,,"Joy of VIctory"},
{,,"Debugging Hell"},
{,,"EMACSed Out"},
{,,"Revenge of RMS"},
{,,"Node cleared! Total bonus points: %6d"}, // 50
{,,"Total score: %6d"},
{,,"vi .swp files rescued: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Emacs processes killed: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"gdb processes killed: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Octo-viruses killed: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Rockets killed: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Missiles killed: %2d %5d"},
{,,"Laser turrets killed: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"SAM stations destroyed: %2d/%2d %5d"},
{,,"Elapsed time %02d:%02d %5d"}, // 60
{,,"Where is your"},
{,,"editor now???"},
{,,"Radar: Yes"},
{,,"Radar: No"},
{,,"Blimp Scroller: Yes"},
{,,"Blimp Scroller: No"},
{,,"Xmas Mode: Yes"},
{,,"Xmas Mode: No"},
{,,"Buildings: Yes"},
{,,"Buildings: No"},
{,,"Music: Yes"},
{,,"Music: No"},
{,," Word War vi - 2007, Stephen Cameron, original developed for Unix/X Windows. Great game for the Vectrex: it uses just a few buttons and a digital joystick, the amount going on per frame is usually within the limit of what a Vectrex can display plus it is really fun to play. Even though the ship visuals and the idea to rescue 'humanoids' are a clear nod towards Willam's Defender, the fuel depots and having bombs to explode things on the surface to games like Scramble this game is not a simple melange of older games: to me it is clearly arcade-inspired but also vintage computer game inspired: for example the idea to generate everything, the entire level, using a random no. generator seed and a specified amount of objects per level to spawn was used a lot early on to generate a larger world from minute input data, the Elite universe or Boulder Dash are two of the better known examples here. This open-world decision for the level without a hard time limit to me is the clearest sign that this is a computer game and not an arcade game. There is a reason why Scramble always moves you forward or in Defender the 'Baiter' appears to harrass you to end a level as fast as possible. In WWVI you have time and can in principle leisurely or ever so cautiously, depending on the difficulty setting, get through all levels, something an arcade game would not want to let you do, ever. Time is even less pressing than in Choplifter - a very similar and well known computer game of the early 1980s - which it does resemble in my mind gameplay-wise quite a bit (wwvi is more sophisticated, though). In some ways this entire game judging from the source code was also technically driven - a 'I wonder what I can do' kind of quest which especially shows when it comes to objects which do not further the game at all: the randomized building construction code, propaganda text on the emacs blimps, their memory leaks, bridges in the original game (deactivated here due to perf. reasons but also since they are utterly unnecessary) and the list goes on. So adding dazzling objects for the level which you do not or sometimes cannot even interact with. Similar to the particle or sound effects - the idea here is always to go for large numbers to dazzle. Obviously for the Vectrex this had to be dialed down but a lot less than you might think: the object count is the same and the particle effects all look very nice, they are just not exuberantly, ridiculously massive as they can be on a computer, thousands of pixels for explosions can move around there at times. To me personally this adds nothing to the game, I actually prefer the Vectrex version here. Esp. the 'no radar' variant where you have to listen for the pleas of the humanoids and have the entire screen for the game I really like, this not knowing where the humanoids are and searching for them adds something to the game for me, but since this was not part of the original game the radar is the default setting. "}
};