Occassional thoughts about orienteering
|
|
| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
|
|
Tuesday, September 10, 2002 5 thoughts about Catching FeaturesI've been playing around with Catching Features -- a new O' video game -- for a few days. If you've got the correct hardware and an internet connection that will let you download the large program (I think it is 17 mb), give it a try. Here are five thoughts:Best O' game I've seen I've seen a number of computer O' games, and Catching Features is the best. No doubt. When you begin the game, you pick a character. The image on the screen is a picture of the forest with you -- your character -- standing in front of you. The arrow keys make you move and turn. Press the space bar and you see the map. If you're running when you press the space bar, the map moves up and down (like reading an O' map on the run). Punch the space bar hard, and you get an image of the map that you can orient. As you run though the forest, you see what you'd expect to see on the map. You see trees, contour features, trails, marshes, lake, boulders, etc. You even see other orienteers (they always seem to be going a lot faster than I am!). Given that you're sitting at a computer screen punching keys on a keyboard, it is remarkably realistic. Cool graphics The graphics are quite cool. Take a look at the "gallery" section on the CF home page to get an idea of the graphics. The characters and terrain are three-dimensional. Boulders and cliffs look like boulders and cliffs. The graphics aren't quite up to the latest PlayStation games (if you watch sports on TV, you've seen a lot of adds for the latest PlayStation and X-box games), but they aren't far behind. Cool sound effects As you run, you hear your footsteps. When you go downhill, your speed picks up and so does the sound of your footsteps. When you go into a marsh, you hear splashes. When you run into a tree, you fall down and make a grunt. When you're near a control you might hear the beep of another competitor punching in. It is fun to see real people in the game The default character in the test version is Kenny Walker. You can chose other real orienteers, Suzanne Armstrong, for example. Maybe Biggins, the programmer, will add some new characters. It'd be fun to have an Orienteer Kansas runners and some more celebrity orienteers (Peter Gagarin, Mikell Platt, Sharon Crawford, Peggy, etc.). Hand-eye coordination There is a special hand-eye coordination to playing video games. I crew up with Pong. Pong is easy. You have one control and the game is entirely two dimensional. I don't have any trouble with the hand-eye coordination with Pong. But, Catching Features is a two-dimensional screen that simulates three dimensions. It is a bit of a challenge for me. I spend a fair amount of time crashing into trees. I suspect that people who grew up playing video games more advanced than Pong wouldn't have any trouble. And Finally, one though from Mary... Mary isn't the sort of person who spends a lot of time playing video games. But, when I came downstairs yesterday, she was sitting at the computer, racing (as Suzanne Armstrong) around the Cambridge Cup. I asked Mary what she thought about Catching Features -- "I like it." posted by Michael | 7:59 PM 
Comments:
Post a Comment
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||||
|
|||||
