Maelstrom (computer game)
| Maelstrom | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Studio | Andrew Welch |
| Senior Developer | Ian Gilman |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
November 1992 |
| platform | Mac OS , Linux |
| genre | Shoot 'em up |
| control | keyboard |
| language | English |
Maelstrom (English for strong vortices, see German: Malstrom , or a very confused or excited state of mind, emotional life, affairs etc.) is a now free computer game for Mac OS based on the classic Asteroids . It was programmed by Andrew Welch, founder of the software company Ambrosia Software . Mark W. Lewis did the cover art, while Ian Gilman did the rest of the graphics and animation. It is developed with THINK C 5.04 and comprises 18,000 lines of code in C with 9,000 lines of assembly language embedded that implement the main part of the game.
Game content
Maelstrom is an advanced clone of the Asteroids slot machine game . The player controls a small spaceship, which he can turn in the two dimensions of the screen and accelerate forwards. To slow down, the ship must first be turned; Unlike the original, there is no flow resistance. When you leave the screen, the ship reappears on the opposite side (cyclical boundary conditions). Asteroids, UFOs, powerups or other objects move randomly on the playing area, which are subject to the same laws as the ship and can be partially collected, but mostly have to be shot down. The successful clearing of all asteroids each completed a so-called attack wave ( Wave ). The aim of the game is always to achieve the highest possible score.
history
After four months of intensive development work, it was published in November 1992 before Ambrosia Software was founded, after which bug fixes and other improvements were made for three years. It was released as unrestricted shareware for the then current Macintosh IIsi . The game quickly became famous in the Mac scene and won a number of awards. With its success it led to the establishment of Ambrosia Software and established its glorious history. Maelstrom currently made full use of the multimedia capabilities of the Mac platform and paved the way for further developments of the platform in the field of entertainment software. The game was ported to Linux by Sam Lantinga in 1995 and expanded to include functions such as a networked multiplayer mode. The rights to the source text were handed over to Sam and this version (“Maelstrom 3.0”) was released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL), whereby the rights to the game content were reserved and these may only be used privately. In 2001 a native Mac OS X version was created from it; also ports for Windows, Linux and BeOS .
In 2010 the original game content was also placed under a free license - the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license . The entire game is now available as free software.
Web links
swell
- ↑ Winner of the Shareware Industry Awards ( Memento from July 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Maelstrom article by The Mac Observer
- ↑ http://hg.libsdl.org/Maelstrom/rev/0e3d2ddd9add