POLYGON WAR
What it is.
A 3D computer game based on a game called ENCOUNTER by Synapse Software that came out in 1983 for the Atari 8 bit home computers. It was one of my favorite games for the Atari computers. I liked the game so much that I decided to recreate it for todays computers and to share it with everyone. Click on the file link below to download. You need WINZIP to extract the files.
(FreeWare) Updated 6/3/2003. Source code included.
Version 1.5: Improved collision detection. Pace of game is now based on time rather than the frame rate. Can fight up to ten enemyships at the same time (if you're crazy enough to try).
Screenshot of ENCOUNTER Screenshot of POLYGON WAR
System requirements for POLYGON WAR
Intel, AMD, or compatible CPU
128 Mbytes RAM
Windows 98, NT, 2000, ME, XP
Video card that supports 16 bit color (thousands of colors).
Recommended system
1.0 Ghz CPU or better.
Video card that supports hardware acceleration.
Technical Issues, compatiblility.
Main issue is the sound. This game was programmed in PowerBasic on a system with a built in AC97 sound system using the Windows MultiMedia API. While this combination works good, unfortunately, the sound doesn't work well on computers with sound cards or at least on the computers I tried so far. The reason could be that the Windows Multimedia API wasn't meant for heavy duty sound applications which is typical in games. DirectX would solve this problem but unfortunately there's no DirectX interface for PowerBasic at this time.
Another issue is Windows XP compatiblility. I've tried this game on only two computer systems with windows XP. It worked on one but not the other. My only guess is that this game doesn't work on earlier versions of windows XP.
Performance
This game can be played in many different full screen resolutions from 320x200 to 1024x768, or in windowed mode, the game window can be resized to adjust for performance improvement. Plus, there are many settings in the game that will affect performance. This game uses the windows GDI and bitmaps for drawing all the graphics; while not as fast as OpenGL or DirectX, performance is surprizingly decent. Another big factor in performance is the video card. Hardware acceleration is used, if available, to transfer each frame the GDI has drawn to video memory many times per second.
Summing up, this game will perform OK on slower computers, such as on a 200Mhz CPU, as long as it has a video card that supports hardware acceleration.
Links to my website
Links to my favorite web sites
About me
MORE SCREENSHOTS
Click on the links below to see more screenshots of POLYGON WAR.
You are visitor 
