75ZT Community

... a young visitor chez nous put a game on my PC called "Dead Space" with the suggestion that I should try it.

Well, I had forgotten about it until this morning when I fired it up. The first thing I realized was that I was getting visibly older whilst the preamble video, which couldn't be bypassed, continued interminably.

Eventually the game started... or at least that is my assumption, because there was no indication that it had actually begun and there were no hints or instructions along the lines of how to move the character etc. I assume I'm not 'l33t' enough to be able to grasp the basic concepts

After some 10 minutes of watching a poorly drawn character bobbing up and down, I deleted the game from my PC, none the wiser but considerably older

Along the same lines....when I started out on computers way back in 1992 or thereabouts I bought 'Doom'...absolutely brilliant granted but one did age considerably loading the 10 mb ferkin game from floppy disks and then through the interminable 'processing' (I use the term loosely) by a 386 processor to then, finally, being able to play the game...once it had loaded from the hard drive...

Years later now...I buy Quake 3 on DVD....and seem to wait for an equally interminable amount of time to load the game onto the hard drive, wait for the mega-behemouth quaddo fudge maker processor to 'process' it all to then finally be able to load the 10 terabyte monstrosity from the hard drive....

So I ask this. We have x amount more processing power, x amount more memory, x amount faster hard drives...and yet....nothing is any 'faster' in reality than it was 20 years ago.. Progress? My articles!

I have a lil "Dogfight" game that used to play on my PC. Then I went over to a duel fingy m/board 4 gig of ram a new graphics card and wallah == it wont play at all!!!

I only play Backgammon. Tend to beat the computer in professional mode about 75% of the time. It uses AI so learns your game as well, hateful thing.

Don't 'do' games - real life is frustrating enough as it is . . .

I can remember loading very basic games on a BBC B Computer also it took hours to write a simple screen saver.

Where do you people find time for playing computer games?

Some it seems on line at work!

Good evening John...........computer games at work eh....you have spilt the beans now
Mind you,with our new " Partner",I imagine sombreros will be part of our "uniform" now,can't wait for Siesta Time
Right,off to slumber now....outside on engine runs at 05.45 to-day
TTFN.P.

Waiting for things to load?

When I started, you loaded it yourself, typing it in from a listing in a magazine.

Then you typed RUN, and hoped for a game. Usually got SYNTAX ERROR READY instead due to a typo.

Then, if you could afford the tape machine, you could save it on a cassette!

Duncan wrote:Waiting for things to load?

When I started, you loaded it yourself, typing it in from a listing in a magazine.

Then you typed RUN, and hoped for a game. Usually got SYNTAX ERROR READY instead due to a typo.

Then, if you could afford the tape machine, you could save it on a cassette!

he he.

I was lucky enough (in a wierd way) to be young enough to appreciate the early home computers, ie Spectrum, Amstrad, Commodore (no not lionel richies mates)

I also remember typing out many, many games from Crash and Your Sinclair Magazines only to get teh same message

So I ask this. We have x amount more processing power, x amount more memory, x amount faster hard drives...and yet....nothing is any 'faster' in reality than it was 20 years ago..

I would assume, though not a techy too much, that as Technology increased, so did the amount of "Writing" involved, hence the equivalent length of times to install games etc Gamewise, back in the old days was simple graphics, Matchstick men etc while teh sound was very basic. Nowadays you have virtually realistic graphics and practically an orchestra playing the game soundtrack