To Infinity and Beyond

               An article on game lastability
                             By
                           Keeks

This is an article inspired by views expressed by readers of
SynTax on the subject of games lastability, especially those views
by James Judge in his review of Diablo.  This article may not
apply to adventures but does apply to types of games, such as
strategy, war games and 'god' games and RPGs.

It's happened to us all. There comes a time in a game's lifespan
(providing that you liked it enough to play it) that no matter
what you do you've been everywhere, seen everything and done it
all. You know all the tricks, all the hidden secrets and there are
no fresh surprises. In fact the games is effectively finished and
is unceremoniously erased from your hard drive forever. All the
disks or CDs that came with it are packed away in their boxes and
shoved into the bottom drawer never to be seen again. What a
waste! Imagine what it would be like if James Judge was after
spending his œ40 or so quid on Diablo to play on a console and
finished in a couple of hours, or any other game for that matter.
It's Game Over for the console users. But, being the clever things
that we are, we own a PC or Amiga or ST, and if you know where to
look you can find add-ons that will extend the life of your
favourite games almost infinitely. Sounds interesting, doesn't it?

Patches are what I'm talking about. Most people think that patches
are just something that software companies release to fix bugs
they miss in their games but they can be much more than that.
Given the fact the home computers are versatile machines and the
fact that most of their owners want to do a little bit more than
just play games, it is inevitable that someone somewhere should
resort to fiddling about with games and make their own variations.
These range from training modes to make things easier or harder,
to new levels and maps, to new graphics, to entire new games built
around the existing one.  But the best bit is because these are
nearly all created by enthusiasts, who want other people to share
their little idea for how it should be done, these patches are
nearly always free! "Where can I get my hands on these little
pieces of gold?" I hear you cry. Well most shareware libraries
stock patches but these are usually out of date or for games long
since departed.  To get the best, you will have to search the
Internet.  At least here someone might give you a hand if you get
into trouble.

I suppose the best place to start looking would be the general
gaming sites. These usually support a wide selection of games to
save you searching high and low and you may also find links to
specialised sites. Not only that but most of these sites carry
more than patches. They also have reviews, previews, hints, tips
and cheats, but best of all they have tons and tons of shareware
games to download. Beware though, these can be several megabytes
and can take a huge amount of time to download (and can end up
costing you a bit). Sometimes you might be better off waiting to
get them on a cover CD. There are hundreds of on-line computer
magazines and fanzines that cater for all users of all machines.
Unfortunately I only know address of mostly PC related ones as I
hadn't time to go looking for others. These sites include the
Games Domain, The Adrenaline Vault, Happy Puppy, Game Pen and Game
Power. (I will include the URLs at the end of the file). But if
that doesn't satisfy you, how about a definitive page of (almost)
every single patch available. Well then head for
http://www.inf.tu- dresden.de/mrs/ibmpc.html where you will find
the most updated list of everything you want. Still not happy or
want something more specific then you might try one of the
Internet search engines like Yahoo or Altavista. If you want a
list of all the links you could ever need then try
http://www.yahoo.com/Recreation/Games/Computer_Games/Titles/.

Still not convinced about the power of patches? Well let me give
an example. Let's take a game, any game will do. How about Quake?
Yep! I'll tell you something about some of the patches for Quake
to make you see how good they can be. (I didn't have to do any
research into this as I have a friend who bugged the living hell
out of me for weeks about all the new things that can be done with
his fave game.) Besides the obvious patches like new levels,
weapons and enemies there are ones which give you new objectives.
Take HeadHunters. This is for multiplayer games where you have to
blow your opponent to bits, grab his head and run back to your
base.  Strange, don't you think? As well as this there are level
editors and monster editors. There is a brilliant map editor call
WorldCraft available from http://www.gamecraft.com. There is also
a good monster editor at
http://www.atone.com/pages/ga-utilities.htm.

But all of the above is pretty standard stuff. This is normal for
any game.  But how about changing the game completely. How about
racing around in a Quake world in a car? Yes, you can with Quake
Rally.  I have seen screenshots of this and it looks like Quake
except instead of holding a gun there is a steering wheel, and
instead of enemies to blast there are cars to race against. What
you do is race against the clock with a selection of cars around
specially designed maps.  Sounds good. But for the real experts
Quake has its own language called QuakeC. I have absolutely no
idea of what its like but it does work. Take a look at Quake Rally
for an example of what can be done with it. I take it knowing the
ins and outs of C would be a good idea before attempting QuakeC.

Well that's almost it but I should warn you that a lot of the
information in this article could be wrong. It was only intended
to show you more can be done with your games. I didn't check any
of the URLs because I have been off-line for the last couple of
months but I hope to go back on-line soon and do a proper article
on the subject. Maybe someone else can enlighten me on the subject
as well.

Now for some URLs:

On-Line Games Magazines:

The Adrenaline Vault -  http://www.avault.com/
The Games Mansion    -  http://www.gamesmansion.co.uk
Happy Puppy          -  http://www.happypuppy.com
Games Domain         -  http://www.gamesdomain/co.uk
PC Empire            -  http://home.sol.no/micro/pcempire
Coming Soon Magazine -  http://www.csoon/com
Gamebriefs           -  http://www.gamebriefs.com
Game Revolution      -  http://www.game-revolution.com
Game Over!           -  http://www.game-over.co.uk
GameSlice Weekly     -  http://www.gameslice.com
Games First          -  http://www.gamesfirst.com
PC Games On-Line     -  http://www.pcgamesmag.com

The Search Engines:

Yahoo!               -  http://www.yahoo.com
Altavista            -  http://www.altavista.digital.com

@~Keeks also sent in a list of software house web sites and those
@~are in another file in this issue ... Sue







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