[494] in comp.os.os2.announce archive
NEW OS/2 GAME: Stardock System's Avarice Preview
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (wardell@ibm.net)
Sat Dec 23 07:27:20 1995
To: os2ann.DISCUSS@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU
Date: Sat, 23 Dec 1995 11:25:50 GMT
From: wardell@ibm.net
Reply-To: wardell@ibm.net
Submitted by: Brad Wardell (wardell@ibm.net)
Source: Brad Wardell (wardell@ibm.net)
Date received: 1995 December 20
Date posted: 1995 December 23
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Avarice Preview Now Available!
Virtual Reality Adventure Game Arrives for the Holidays
For Immediate Release
Thursday, December 21, 1995
Contact: Michael Duffy
Stardock Systems, Inc.
313/453-0328, 313/453-1480fax
Canton MI - Stardock Systems has made Continuous Software Systems Avarice
virtual reality game available to the general public this Christmas season.
Avarice Preview is a virtual reality adventure game in which you must unravel
the mysteries of your missing uncle's mansion.
The player starts out with a letter from your long lost uncle who has invited
you to visit him at his estate for "the opportunity of a lifetime". When you
arrive, no one is there and your first clue that something is amiss is that a
bloody hat is on the dock. Avarice Preview successfully combines the graphics
and interface features of high end VR games such as Myst and Seventh Guest and
combines it with the direct interaction in the world found in the old Infocom
series of games such as Planetfall and Zork. Players will be able to truly
interact in the Avarice world. For example, when a player finds an orange,
they'll find that they can peel the orange, break the orange up, burn the
orange, eat the orange, or perform many other actions on the orange. All these
actions are seen in true 24bit color rendered graphics.
"Truly, the magic of Avarice is the depth of the world. Avarice clearly raises
the bar in the graphics category. Not too many games can boast being played
full screen at 1280x1024x16.8 million colors. It's safe to say that the
graphics are pretty sharp." said Bradley Wardell, President, Stardock Systems,
Inc.
Another feature that separates Avarice from other graphics intensive games is
that it has settings for making the game playable on a wide range of systems.
For example, the game defaults to maximum color maximum resolutions but if
players find that the game is not fast enough for them, they can change the
graphics into one of four graphics modes: High Resolution, Medium Resolution,
Low Resolution, and Gray scale.
"With this flexibility, high end game players are not having to play to the
lowest common demoninator and you can still play it on a 486 by turning the
graphics down to suit your needs. Ironically, even at the low resolution it
still running at higher resolution than virtually ever other game on the
market." said Wardell.
The magic to Avarice Preview lies in the operating system. OS/2 Warp is a
32-bit mulithreaded operating system that allows Avarice to load much of the
graphics in a background thread.
"While the player is examining a picture, he'll notice that the hard drive and
CD ROM are spinning. I imagine this will be quite startling to players
migrating to OS/2 Warp from DOS and Windows who are not familiar with the power
personal computers have had locked inside of them all this time." said Wardell.
Avarice Preview acts as a sort of 'prequel' to the upcoming release of
"Avarice: The Complete Saga" which arrives early next year. Avarice Preview
comes with a coupon for a $30 discount toward the sequel.
Avarice Preview lists for $34.95 and can be found at resellers in the USA such
as Indelible Blue (1-800-776-8284), Kiyo Design, Cosmos/2, and OS+ Resource.
You can also obtain it from Stardock Systems at 313-453-0328. A complete list
of OS/2 software resellers is available on Stardock s world wide web site.
Stardock can be reached at 313/453-0328, FAX 313/453-1480, email
stardock@aol.com, WWW:http://oeonline.com/~stardock.
