The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Games: Strategies and manipulation Major Keary

There is now a steady flow of literature, much of it devoted to techniques for beating the programmers. There are single-game titles as well as compendia, such as Solutions and Cheats to the Hottest PC Games. It is an inexpensive - by computer book standards - collection of hints and strategies covering some 146 games. There are detailed commentaries about 25 games ranging from Alone in the Dark II through King's Quest IV to Under a Killing Moon. For the rest there are brief cheats that, for example, enable players to get past various levels. Some games have an inbuilt cheat mode, possibly left over from the need to have some kind of trapdoor at the time of writing the code. For example, in Math Rescue by pressing the letters P, A, and M simultaneously the game should freeze; press a number and it jumps to that level. A companion disk contains Universal Hint System (UHS) files for 38 Windows-based games.

An example of single-game strategies is System Shock - Strategies & Secrets. System Shock is a true 3D game; a player can fly up or down as well as turning sideways. The book covers game strategies and describes the various fantastic creatures that inhabit the game's many levels. A feature is the testing of a player's ability to solve puzzles, and for those who get stuck the book has a good description of the techniques required. Detailed plans of many of the game's locations are provided with explanations of what to expect and how to negotiate the dangers. Users will find the information about installation strategies very helpful; sample AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files are provided with advice about memory management. For those who use OS/2 there is information about optimum settings and there is even an interview with the game's authors.

Game programs are particularly well suited to seducing players into acquiring and developing skills in numeracy, literacy, and reasoning. For some reason little exposure has been given to Microsoft's Space Simulator, but it is an excellent example of a game that uses complex mathematics. The author of Space Simulator - Strategies and Secrets comments, "... (it) is the most advanced and complex program ever created for the PC ... (and) ... combines the awesome photorealistic graphics engine of Flight Simulator 5.0 with a newly created orbital dynamics simulation ... that ... can recreate the motion of spacecraft in outer space". This book is not about cheats or tips on how to win; it is a description of how the game works and of the scientific basis for computing orbits, the force required to break free from gravitational pull, and just about every other aspect of real-world space flight. Want to know about force, acceleration, inertia, mass, and weight? Why spacecraft don't travel in straight lines? Keplerian orbital elements? It's all here, with equations and excellent graphics. Even if you don't play the game, but are curious about the science of space flight, this book is well looking at.

Some games can be enhanced by the user; an example is Doom, which has a surprisingly high degree of flexibility. Special tools are required and they come on a CD-ROM - with all sorts of other useful utilities and game-level files - bundled with Tricks of the DOOM Programming Gurus. For those who want to engage in roll-your-own monsters, and even scenarios, the expense may well be worth while. It is very comprehensive and provides an insight to how such games are structured. Serious doomsters should look at it.

A game as popular as Doom is bound to have a following on the Internet. The best launching pad for Web browsers is http://doomsgate.cs.buffalo.edu./index-html.html from where aficionados can find several sites. Games on the Internet lists thirteen Web sites with brief descriptions of what each contains.

This pocket book is an excellent guide to Web and ftp sites where game software and discussion can be found. Want to check for reviews of games? Try http://wcl-rs.bham.ac.uk:80/GamesDomain/gdreview/, a developing site that publishes news and reviews of free and shareware games. Want to sell your own creation? Try comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.marketplace. Locally there is http://www.next.com.au:80/games/ which mirrors the Doom Archive and has, according to the author, a useful Hintz and Tipz archive. The book provides a no-nonsense listing and identifies sites that are not of much value. For example, given the success of MS Flight Simulator one might think that ftp.microsoft.com would hold some interesting games files; in fact it is not games oriented and has just one file (about Space Simulator) of games relevance.

Details of the books mentioned are:

Reprinted from the October 1995 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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