Comments on: Astraware Announces Five New Games

At PalmSource we were demoing the latest additions to the game which use the much-enhanced sound capabilities of the new Sony T615 and T415 machines! We had quite some crowds when we were showing that ;)

The next release will feature those as an option too - and yes, we're working on extra levels too :)

Regards,
Howard. (howard@astraware.com)

as for innovation? paying-for-bills normally kills that. astraware started off great, astroids, zap2k... great titles for the platform, and, at the time, it was a major hobby, and they loved it. their latest titles are not as technically satisfying, but heck - they have to make money. they employ people..

ardiri.com is a hobby for a group of developers sprawled over the earth (sweden, netherlands, usa) and, we dont care so much about $$$$ - for us, its pushing the envelope of the platform that extra step further. writing programs like liberty, lemmings, deity3D has been great.. however, it is not right to compare ardiri.com against astraware - we have different views on what we do...

but, the CEO's statement is normal. not exactly true, however, astraware have been noted in the past for exceptional titles.. but, that doesn't make them the best, being the best is viewed differently depending on who's eyes you are looking at.. its hard to make statements like that without having someone flame you.

i personally congratulate astraware for the new titles - they'll sell well :) bit pricy tho (but, heck, gotta make a living) :P

// az
aaron@ardiri.com
http://www.ardiri.com/

If you're listening Astraware - PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE can you produce more games like Zap!2000.

If marketing hype helps sell games, which puts bread on the table of the astraware team - or any other software developer - then so be it. Its much better than producing something which can be used to pirate software, thus taking away sales and increasing the need for hype.

To sum up

Astraware have produced some new games - excellent!

None live up to Zap!2000/2016 - bogus.

If they don't have time to produce a follow up - can we have some more levels?

When did the game and watch games push the machine or OS? Or was that before you had your wrists slapped from the License holders?

all of us start somewhere, keep in mind astraware also have a game and watch game (Fire!) and, they were too hit with the slapping of wrists from License holders (hence removal of astroids). that is an experience both of us have experienced.

Astraware don't do badly for getting the licenses and producing good games - their Midway stuff I quite liked (why isn't it on the wed site?)

i liked their implementation of Joust until you started flying through walls (bad collision detection). astraware did these titles for pocket express, and, midway were real tight asses about when they wanted it done and picky about every little detail. astraware had to roll out five games in under three months - it takes a lot longer to write a good arcade game port if you want to do it correctly. it is not their fault the games are not 100% up to par - sure, they could be done better.. everything can be done better with more time.

Ardiri: If you produced have as much as you should talked, maybe you'd be as sucessful as Astraware.

let me spell it out to you - this our my *hobby*. i have a full time job doing other things and writing games on the palm is purely something all of us at ardiri.com do in our spare time. selling shareware surely doesn't make your rich - and, if we did focus on it full time we'd have to do exactly what astraware does. i think i'd like to spend my time doing fun stuff - not jumping through hoops for clients.

What give Ardiri the right to comment? I say that they lost that right the minute they stabbed the rest of the Palm developers in the back by producing hackme.

i have just as much right to comment than you do. i am a Palm user myself - and, this is an open discussion website relating to Palm software and hardware. i wasn't negative towards astraware - these games will sell well (re-read my original post). there always has to be boneheads like yourself who have nothing better to do than start irrelevant discussions on these boards and act like total idiots who are afraid to even put their name behind their posts.

as for stabbing developers in the back - this always amuses me, you just always seem to forget what else i do for the developer community (palm-dev-forum, PilRC, sample code etc).. your just peeing in the wind. if you are ignorant, thats your problem - but, maybe you should keep your stupidity to yourself.

// az
aaron@ardiri.com
http://www.ardiri.com/

Acting like a jerk doesn't strengthen your arguements. It just makes people think you're a jerk.

Nope, that's you being a jerk.

had dinner one night with the guys from Astraware while at PalmSource. They are thrilled with the possibilities inherent in the switch to ARM-based processors and are looking forward to creating some games that make use of all the new processor power.

with all due respect Ed, why should we wait until bigger faster processors come out before we write better games? careful design and great optimization means you can do the impossible (well, what people believe is impossible) on hardware it wasn't designed for. the challenge is what makes us write games on the palm, not the processing power. you can do a lot with the Palm as it is right now - just imagine what we pull out at ardiri.com on the new ARM machines *g*

// az
aaron@ardiri.com
http://www.ardiri.com/

Your TakTik is still the best looking and fun game I've played ever!

I'm sure we'll see a brand spanking new ARM-version of Bejeweled for only $19.95 with new brighter colors and more speed.

Howard, I'm a would-be serious Palm coder. Could you tell me what parts of your games are written in 68000 assembly so that I can model my programming efforts from your example? Who in your group does the assembly programming so that I may praise him. I'm currently trying to code a Tetris-like game. Do you think this type of game would have a sellable market? What kind of price do you think someone could charge for this? $19.95? $29.95? Thanks in advanced for your help.