PC Gamer Review of Universal Combat: A World Apart

On Sat, 05 Nov 2005 21:19:50 GMT, Shingen
<shingen.TakeThisOut@aolsuks.sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>..and "no one" in your assumption would be? I fear your mind is
>entirely closed to be of any use. I mean, we ARE talking and PC games
>here! Sure, Elite was the first of it's kind, as was Frontier/FFE, but
>also so was BC3K!
>
>If I remember correctly, Frontier was horribly flawed out of the box,
>as was FFE. Frontier was at least playable. FFE wasn't playable for
>several patches.
>
>BC3K was horribly flawed..and STILL, even after the last 2.09 patch,
>not very playable. BUT, Derek AT LEAST kept to the vision, and now, BC
>is VERY playable. YOU may not play it, but it doesn't change price of
>tea in China.

Derek, that you ?

On Tue, 8 Nov 2005 19:08:31 +0000 (UTC), Graham Thurlwell
<nospam.TakeThisOut@jades.org> wrote:

>You're going senile. The full-retail Amiga version of FE2 (the one
>DB did) was rock-solid out of the box, with the exception of Beta
>Lyrae (which you couldn't reach in normal gameplay anyway), scanning
>your own arrival cloud and a bizarre arrival cloud bug I once
>encountered.
>
>The PC conversion was undertaken by Chris Sawyer, of Transport Tycoon
>and Rollercoaster Tycoon fame.

I have the boxed PC version of both games, and I remember that the
first rule of Frontier was to SAVE OFTEN! Why? Because the games would
lockup and CTD unexpectedly. Certainly not as frequent as BC3K did,
but stil,l it did happen alot. Frontier was alot better then FFE
though.
>
>Elite Trivia: in some versions of FE2 and/or FFE, an advert for "Chris
>Sawyer's New Transport Game" can appear at starports. The game in
>question is

Yeah.. I remember seeing those advert banners on the inside of
stations and ports. I think I bought that game as well.
>

><snip>
>
>> David left Elite with FFE. John Jordan MADE the game playable!
>
>While I obviously commend JJ's efforts with JJFFE, FFE v1.06 was, IME,
>very stable on its target platform (DOS). Difficulties people encounter
>getting the official version working on XP are more to do with
>Microsoft than DB.

I think 1.06 still would crash because your relative position to
certain stellar bodies wouldn't always update correctly. It happened
alot especially in binary systems, or systems with very large gas
giants. Also alot of the Thargoid missions could suddenly leave you
staring at your desktop/DOS prompt, going: "WTF?! ARRRGH!!!"
>
>Funny thing is, I never did manage to get X-Wing working on Win95 OSR2.
>It remains the only space sim I've not even been able to start playing.

Actually, I never really got into any of the Xwing games. I bought
X-wing Alliance, but never made it past the first couple of missions.
Those games were too much on rails, and they just bored me to tears.