Conference hydra::amiga_v1

3586.0. "Review of Federation" by SHARE::DOYLE () Thu Mar 15 1990 12:20

    
	Federation for the Amiga................

	I picked this game up at Electronic Boutique ( which by the way are
	marking down thier Ami Software (what there is of it) to quite a 
	respectable level ).

	Anyway, I haven't had a chance to really play it yet, but I did fool
	around with it, and I have been reading the docs, so I can give
	you all the storyline, and first impressions.

	Elite 2, If these guys don't get sued by whoever owns Firebird now, I'll
	be suprised.

	See if this sounds familiar...

	You are the son of a trader who was killed when the spacestation, that
	was sabotaged by Pirates.
	He left you his old "Hartley Mark I" traders ship, with the bare minimal
	essentials (lowest grade lasers, weak shields, and 2 missiles) it comes
	with an escape pod and a 100ton cargo space.
	:')
	Now the reason I called it an Elite "2".
	Not only do you fly to space stations gathering raw materials, but you
	can land on the planets besides.
	Also you can communicate with the other ships that you meet in space,
	trade cargo, and haggle over deals.
	Next in Federation there is no set goal, you can either trade, take on
	side missions assigned through GALNET (The Galactic online service), or
	both...
	By completeing missions, you get payed and eventualy promoted.
	By trading you just earn money.
	Either way you'll use that money to better equip your ship.
	You're ship can be modified in the following area's.
	Weapons-Shields-Engines. You may also purchase extra RepairDrones for
	Fixes on the fly...
	
	The graphics I've seen, convince me this was ported from an Atari 
	version, and the ships you come across are rendered lores,simple
	polygonal 3-D.
	  That and the fact that the manual covers the Atari & Amiga Versions.
	  The manual that comes with it is fairly small (16 pages), and 
	provides a brief history of the Federation as well as your background.
	You also get a small poster that contains listings of the ships you
	encounter along with slight specs, and pictures...
	  You get a really cool Federation Buton too, I'm wearing mine right
	now! ;')
	  From what I've seen, the games graphics are dissapointing, not that
	they're bad, it's just that there not as good as they could be...
	  The game itself, looks like it could be pretty good.
	  After all, I had Elite on my 64, and loved it. This has alot of
	options that I wished were in Elite.
	  Oh, I almost forgot, this is a single disk game, requires 512k or
	more and workbench 1.2 or higher. It saves the game on a seperate disk.
	One save per disk (BOO! Hiss!) and is copyprotected in a foriegn format.
	No installee on hard-driveee.

	  Anyway, I'll give it a test drive tonight and find out how this plays.
			
								Ed
    

     Well I played this game last night and discovered some flaws in my 
    documentation. All the function keys, across the top are scrambled.
    	Examples:
    		 Activate Ship Computer <F6> is actually <F8>.
      		 Activate Damage Control<F8> is actually <F7>.
        and so on...
        The other keys on the main keyboard are correctly labeled.
     Also, another nit is that the manual says, to use a seperate blank
    disk to save your game, and that you can only save 1 game per disk.
    When saving or restoring a saved game press "S" or "L" (saved when docked,
    restore at any time except when accessing the ships computer.)
    This works... however there is  a menu selection presented when accessing
    the ships computer that states the following...
    	Edit <file>
    	Cat  <catalog disk>
    	Save <file>
    	Load <file>
    	Init <initialize disk>
        Run <file>
    All these functions access the disk and preform read and writes to it...
    	Edit <file> this brings up some kind of file editor, it's not explained
    	            in the manual, and I have no idea what it's for.
    	Inititialize this formats a disk to 155 tracks (??), non standard to
            	     say the least.
    	Save        this saves a file to disk, but it also will guru the
                    machine if I used more than one numeric # in the
                    filename.
    	Load	  this loads the file.
        RUN       this runs (the file?) but gives me syntax error on line 1.
        Cat       this will give you a directory of the files on the disk you
    		  saved.
    	Empty buffer this empties the program that you edited? run? load? it has
    		     the same effect as new.
               
    There is no mention in the docs of the purpose of this menu, and that really aggravatesy
    aggravates me.
    	The only thing I can think of, is that somewhere along the game, I'll
      be able to run programs on the ships computer.
    	The game play is alot like Elite, the ship handles identicaly (except
    you can overcompensate on turns) and the radar screen used is pretty much
     the same.
    	Another flaw... This program does strange things to the operating system
    , it shuts down the power light, and my second drive (Can only use one drive
    ). Also the format of the game itself has shades of Satrglider (gronks the
    drive unmercifully).
    	I could like this game, but the carelessness in documentation, and lack
    of thoughtfulness in the version presented for the Amiga, wrecks it for
    me. 
                                                             ED