Crawl (computer game)

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Crawl
Creep-logo.svg
Studio GermanyGermany Massive development
Publisher GermanyGermany Blue Byte Software GmbH
Erstveröffent-
lichung
GermanyGermanyNovember 1996 April 4, 1997
North AmericaNorth America
platform MS-DOS , Windows
genre Submarine simulation
Subject Science fiction , submarines
Game mode Single player
control Keyboard , mouse , joystick
system advantages
preconditions
IBM PC and 100% compatible, 80486 DX4 / 100 MHz, PCI bus,

16 Bit HiColor SVGA graphics card, screen resolution 640 × 480 pixels, VESA driver, 8 MB RAM, 35 MB free hard disk space,

MS-DOS 5.0 or Windows 95 , 2 × CD-ROM drive, mouse
medium 1 CD-ROM
language German English French
Current version 1,120
Age rating
USK approved from 16

Creep speed is a three-dimensional real-time - submarine simulation , the 1996 Blue Byte as a PC - computer game was released. In the game, the player immerses himself in the futuristic underwater world of the 27th century. The game was developed by the Mannheim- based developer studio Massive Development . In the English-speaking world it was published under the name "Archimedean Dynasty".

Backstory

Creeping takes place in a hypothetical future in which dwindling resources, nuclear wars and a destroyed ecosystem are forcing mankind to flee into the oceans. The oceans are covered by a 40-meter-thick layer of dead organic material, but people manage to survive near geothermal springs in submarine cities. The plot of Creeping takes place in the 27th century, in which humanity is divided into four political power blocs, the democratic Atlantic Federation , the oligarchy of the Arab Clans Union , the monarchist Russian-Japanese shogunate and the anarchists of the tornado zone. A single company has the monopoly on most of the underwater key technologies, EnTrOx , which stands for "Energy-Transportation-Oxygen".

Game mechanics

The player finds himself in the role of the burnt mercenary Emerald "Dead-Eye" Flint in a station on the seabed. In addition to missions that advance the story of the game, you can also accept side jobs to get to know Aqua and earn additional credits for better equipment.

The player navigates the submarine by joystick through narrow canyons, currents and enemy fire. The missions develop their tension through search missions and selective enemy contacts, some of which expand into massive underwater battles. The player's boat can be expanded with additional equipment. The plot spans more than 60 missions in the underwater world of Aqua.

Technical information

Since the game was originally developed for MS-DOS , there are some problems using the game on newer operating systems. One problem is the lack of VESA support, which can be circumvented using additional drivers such as NOLFB.COM , which trick the operating system into thinking something else. Transparency effects were made possible via a patch for 3dfx - Voodoo graphics cards, but since there is no longer any hardware or software support for the Glide library with the end of 3Dfx , the use of a Glide Wrapper is necessary nowadays . The most compatible solution for operating crawl speed on new hardware such as the operating system is to use a DOS emulator such as DOSBox , which officially supports crawl speed.

Republication

On July 29th, 2015, after years of unavailability , Creep was republished on GOG.com in digital distribution .

reception

In the year of the German publication, creeping was mostly good to very good reviews in the trade press.

A GameSpot .com review from 1997 praised the open game play, but also noted that, combined with the many tactical options, this can quickly become confusing for the player. In a PC games review, Creep Drive received a fun value of 87%.

successor

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c crawl speed. BlueByte.de, July 12, 1997, archived from the original on October 22, 1997 ; Retrieved February 11, 2011 .
  2. ↑ Creep speed operating instructions. (pdf) Blue Byte Software GmbH, 2000, pp. 14-15 , archived from the original on March 17, 2012 ; Retrieved November 17, 2010 .
  3. Ken Silverman: Ken Silverman's Build Engine Page: VESA 2.0 patch for Windows NT / 2000 / XP (09/21/2002). ADVSys, September 21, 2002, accessed January 20, 2011 .
  4. Ghilt: DOSBox, Version 0.70 support Archimedean Dynasty. dosbox.com, 2009, accessed January 20, 2011 .
  5. Exclusive to GOG: As of today, new Ubisoft classics are available on Winfuture.com (John Woll, July 29, 2015)
  6. Creeping - press reports Germany. massive.de, February 21, 2001, archived from the original on February 21, 2001 ; Retrieved January 14, 2011 .
  7. Peter Steinlechner: Creeping - In the intoxication of the deep. In: Power Play 12/96. www.kultboy.com, pp. 76-78 , accessed on May 30, 2012 : " Spielspass 80% - Super "
  8. Chris Hudak: Archimedean Dynasty Review. GameSpot , January 14, 1997, accessed on January 21, 2011 : " Archimedean Dynasty gives computer gaming a good name even when you don't know what the hell is going on. "
  9. Thomas Borovskis: Creeping: The depth. In: PC Games . Computec Media Group , December 1, 1996, pp. 76–79 , accessed on July 14, 2011 : " Spielspass: 87% "