[1045] in linux-announce channel archive
Maelstrom 1.4.1 Linux (second release)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lars Wirzenius)
Sat Sep 16 11:06:00 1995
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 1995 00:29:28 +0300
From: Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cc.helsinki.fi>
To: linux-announce@vger.rutgers.edu
From: slouken@spiff.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Sam Oscar Lantinga)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce
Subject: Maelstrom 1.4.1 Linux (second release)
Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
Approved: linux-announce@news.ornl.gov (Lars Wirzenius)
Followup-to: comp.os.linux.misc
Maelstrom v1.4.1 (Linux version 1.1) 9/1/95
It was only for the Mac!
Now it's for Linux too!!
MAELSTROM
You pilot your ship through the dreaded "Maelstrom" asteroid
belt -- the deadliest stretch of space known to mankind. Everywhere
massive asteroids jostle for a chance to crush your ship, and deadly
shinobi fighter patrols persue you across the asteroid belt. As you
penetrate deeper, you find lost cannisters, left by unlucky convoys
and pirate raiders. Old shinobi mines, still active, hunt your ship
as you deftly avoid spinning black holes.
This is a port of the high resolution "asteriods" style arcade
game written by Andrew Welch for the Macintosh. It received high
ratings, and is now freely supported on the Linux platform, courtesy
of Sam Lantinga (slouken@cs.ucdavis.edu).
NEW!
If Maelstrom (tm) works fine for you now, you probably don't
have to upgrade. But, if you had problems with the speed of Maelstrom,
or couldn't run it because your screen was too dark, this release is
for you!
This release (Linux version 1.1) supports gamma correction,
is slightly faster in X11, and supports 16 bit color. It has also
been made slightly more portable. Ports to the SGI, Solaris, and
HPUX are in the works. :-)
Also included in the new release are a collection of sound
files for Maelstrom. They are in a separate package: Maelstrom-L2-sounds.tgz
Here's a blurb from the original press release:
"Maelstrom 1.4 is a marriage of the venerable Asteroids concept
with new digitized sound effects, 3D graphics and high resolution
256 color animation. 'With fantastic art and graphics by Ian
Gilman and Mark Lewis, Maelstrom does for the tired old Asteroids-
style games what the Mazda Miata did for sporty roadsters...'"
You can get this fantastic game via anonymous ftp from:
sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/games/video/Maelstrom-1.4.1_L2.tgz
The recommended system configuration to play this game
well is a 486 DX2/66 with fairly fast video. It runs on slower
configurations, but your mileage will vary. It has been known to
run playably on a 486/33 with 8 MB of RAM and a Mach32 video card.
It was developed on a 486 DX2/66 with Cirrus Logic 5426 VLB video,
and a SoundBlaster sound card under Linux 1.3.x and g++ 2.6.3.
If you are using Linux 1.3.16 through 1.3.19, please
upgrade your kernel. There is a bug which prevents Maelstrom
from working in those versions of the kernel.
Please feel free to send me any questions, comments, or cash. :-)
The FAQ is included in the archive.
Enjoy!
-Sam Lantinga (slouken@cs.ucdavis.edu)
Changelog --------------------------------------------------------
Maelstrom 1.4.1 -- Linux version
Version 1.1.0:
* Second Public Release: 9/1/95
* Made Maelstrom code more portable, using bytecopy macros
and using shared memory XImages instead of BG pixmaps.
* Discovered that shared memory XImages are truly faster
than shared background pixmaps. Default to use XImage.
(Thanks to Peter Mattis <petm@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU>)
* Added -speedtest option to test the speed of Maelstrom
graphics blitting. SVGA is about 30% faster than shared
memory XImages in X11.
* Added -gamma N option, allowing gamma correction levels
from 0 through 8.
* Fixed a sound race condition on slow machines.
* Added 24 bit color support.
Version 1.0.1:
* Added the "NewSounds" directory, filled with sound patches
for Maelstrom collected from the Internet.
* Fixed Maelstrom so it would play the Simpsons sound patch.
* BUG: Bonus stage sound can break up during the screen fade
on slow systems. The fix is to use a larger sound fragment
size, but this negatively impacts synchronization of the
Maelstrom process and the sound server. Not fixed.
* Fixed a coding issue so Maelstrom could be compiled with
g++ 2.7.0
* Defined true and false for compiling with X11R5.
* Added 15/16-bit color support. (Thanks to Peter Mattis)
* Fixed problem with Maelstrom leaving shared memory around.
Version 1.0:
* First Public Release: 8/1/95
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