Rama - part 1 Review ------ Overall Impressions I've been a fan of Arthur C. Clarke ever since I talked my parents into taking me downtown Chicago to see the first run of 2001 at the Cinerama Dome in 1968. After that, it was easy to find and enjoy his other, earlier works; for example, the original 1948 short story "Sentinel" (on which 2001 was based) and the superb 1953 novel Childhood's End (which was never made into a movie, unfortunately). Later, Clarke's first book of the Rama series, Rendezvous with Rama (1973), opened up a brand new environment for speculation. The concepts introduced in the first book were continued in the sequel Rama II, mostly written by Gentry Lee from an outline by Clarke. This second book of the series is the principal basis for the Rama computer game. The characters and their personalities have been moved over from the book fairly intact, but a few minor adjustments have been made. From what I remember from the books, the Rama game seems to be loyal to the basic storyline and ideas introduced in the series, particularly in the depiction of the alien lifeforms living inside the Rama spacecraft, and the general geography of the place. Playing the game has renewed my interest in the whole Rama environment, and I'm looking forward to re- reading at least the first two books of the series. Without the extensive backstory offered by the book series and by the characters in the game itself, Rama would still be a challenging and enjoyable entertainment. So it's not necessary to be a Clarke fan, or even to have read any of the Rama books, in order to enjoy the game. The level of detail and richness in the texture-mapped graphics, as well as the first-person viewpoint, makes it easy to become immersed in the game's premise that you're part of an astronaut team exploring the giant Rama spacecraft. The acting in the video sequences, uniformly excellent throughout the game, really contributes to this experience. Should Rama be subtitled The Numbers Game? Well, one thing is for sure - you're not going to finish the game without getting (or using) at least a rudimentary knowledge of octal and hexadecimal arithmetic, sequences of prime numbers, and pattern recognition. Given the backgrounds of Clarke and Lee, this mathematical overtone should come as no surprise. It really adds another dimension to the game (no pun intended). Like a number of other first-person adventure games, Rama uses a framed viewport to show the action, with the remaining areas of the screen used for inventory display, a few control functions, and decoration. While this type of interface is not as visually impressive as a full-screen display, it didn't seem to detract much from involvement in the game. However, the game could have benefited from optional keyboard- based navigation controls, such as was used in the excellent Timelapse interface. The game plays on two CD-ROM's, with a third reserved for some amusing video interviews with Clarke and Lee, as well as additional story information presented in the form of astronaut interviews by the journalist characters in Rama. The game may be started from either CD-ROM, and prompts for replacing CD-ROM's without automatically ejecting them. Rama has excellent stereo sound effects. In several areas, such as the London sewage pit, the background sounds are particularly effective in adding depth. Music is above average, but rather repetitive due to fairly-short sequences. In some areas, such as the biot demo room in London, the music seemed faintly reminiscent of what was used in Sierra's Shivers game. The endgame sequence is adequate, but perhaps a bit anticlimactic considering the breadth of the game and its fairly-difficult puzzles. I was a little disappointed not to meet any real live Ramans, but that remains consistent with the storyline in the Rama books. All the door entrance puzzles in the game are on the right -- are most Ramans dextral too? Technical Issues ---------------- Information in this section is based on playing the game under DOS Version 5.0. Note that running the game under Windows 3.1 requires at least a Pentium 75 processor. A number of situations occurred which caused the game to crash. Some of these may have resulted from playing the game on a "minimum platform". On occasion, the game would hang right before an animation sequence. Other extraneous crashes were experienced, including one producing the message "Text box too small for first character Script # 64915 ($ff22f86c+)". Animations sometimes left colored pixels behind. Sound problems were frequently encountered. Dropouts occurred often when interacting with the game (moving the mouse). The sound would sometimes simply halt after a few minutes of game inactivity; the game had to be saved and restored in order to get the sound to return, and sometimes even that didn't work. These problems, as well as bad lip sync seen in most video sequences, may be due to insufficent CPU resources on the gaming platform. The game would predictably hang and/or cause extraneous printing whenever numeric digits, parentheses or more than 19 characters were used in the savegame name. The time required to bring up the list of saved games got longer and longer as the directory filled up (to a maximum of 99 games). Consequently, it is more efficient to keep groups of games in separate directories. There is no obvious way to exit the game from the main menu. The game would have been better if there was a way to "de- clutter" the inventory, such as having it automatically disappear the last time it's needed (as is done in other games). Walkthrough Abbreviations ------------------------- F: Forward (Fn for n repetitions) L: Left R: Right B: Back out U: Up D: Down Most animations can be skipped by pressing Esc Walkthrough Introduction ------------------------ A significant characteristic of Rama is its randomization of play components, affecting inventory item locations, the timing of animation sequences, a few puzzles, and certain destination locations in the central plains. For example, many inventory items have no fixed location where they may be found - if you need something you haven't found yet, you're just going to have to search carefully for it (fortunately, items do not seem to migrate within a particular game). As a result, it's not possible to give an exact step- by-step procedure for progressing through the game - your mileage may vary. If you can't find an item that you need for a puzzle, continue on with the game and it may become available later. The game designers' purpose in creating these randomizations is not clear - they change only the details of the game, not the basic concepts or gameplay strategy, and add little to game replayability. As a basic strategy, pay particular attention to the ground, as artifacts may often be found there. A painstaking, but effective approach to moving through the environment is to turn completely around at each node position and check each view carefully. Much of the inventory turns out to be "red herrings" - unneeded in your actual gameplay sequence, but perhaps confusing your choices at various points and making gameplay a bit more complex. To prepare for several tasks in Bangkok and other locations, brush up on your base-8 and base-16 arithmetic skills. Project Newton Crew: ------------------- ID Character Game Role 002 Yourself Adventurer 004 Shigeru Takagishi Scientist 005 David Brown Mission Commander 006 Francesca Sabatini Video Journalist 007 Otto Heilmann Chief Security Officer 008 Michael O'Toole Codemaster 009 Richard Wakefield Chief Engineer 010 Reggie Wilson Print Journalist 011 Irina Turgenyev Career Cosmonaut 012 Nicole des Jardins Medical Officer Hiro Yamanaka IBI Agent Janos Tabori IBI Agent Valeriy Borzov Your predecessor, now deceased All characters are from the Clarke/Lee book Rama II After the game introduction and animation of Nicole, move F L F2 to the computer console. Click on it, then on the MAIL command to bring up your vidmail. Each message adds a bit to the backstory of the game and introduces you to the basic personalities of the other astronauts. In particular, note Wakefield's Falstaff creation (you'll see more of it later) and O'Toole's favorite primes sequence 41,43,47,53,...,1601 or x^2 - x + 41, for 1 <= x <= 40 The cable car code is derived from the first two elements of this sequence: 4143. Move L and watch the animation of an avian flying by. Move F4 L F and descend the ladder. Move R F and click on the nuclear device. Pick up the locker #6 key next to the INACTIVE light. Go back up the ladder and move F R F R to the lockers. Open Locker #2 with the key in your inventory and pick up the ISA multi-tool and your wristcomp. The wristcomp has a map feature that will often come in handy during gameplay. Open the unlocked Locker #9 and pick up your trusty sidekick, Puck. If you get a vidmail message from Sabatini requesting her cigarette lighter, you can ignore it. Open Locker #6 with the key in your inventory and pick up two pattern artifacts, a blank key, three symbol plaques and a datacube. Combine the datacube with your wristcomp to read a message from Sabatini to Brown. Use the blank key to open Locker #7 and pick up an optical lens and a datacube containing an encoded message from Heilmann to his underlings. If you spend a lot of time at the hub camp, you'll eventually get a friendly reminder from Nicole to come on down. From the lockers, move L F2 R F L and get in the cable car. Enter the code from O'Toole's vidmail message and press the red button. Enjoy the ride down to the base camp, with a rare third-person POV. To be continued next issue - o -