On Sunday, December 17th, 1995 - Terry Russell wrote:
 
TR> Rodney the answer to your question is MONEY. developing a game on any 
TR> system is work. The games your talking about take time to code, 
TR> debug, playtest, and finally to package, advertise, and market. Ok 
 
Yes, but there were a few games written that did have multiple scenarios 
and lots of stuff on disk, and they were commercially successful
probably because they did have more to them.  The question is why
weren't there more of them.  
 
TR> let take Rescue on Fractilus. Lets say that the whole game was but 
TR> one modual. This game sold for 39.95 as it was. Now lets at your 
TR> underwater modual which would basicly a second game within a game. 
 
As I said, that scene could have been added by simply making a few
slight adaptations:
1) change yellow sky color to blue.
2) flatten mountains a bit and change their color to deep violet.
3) Make an under-sea rescue animation with a "diver" insted of a runner
(same uniform actually, just change the color, have him float instead of 
run, have "bubbles" going up.)
4) Change the jet noise to water sounds, like those in the "fish bowl
diving" scene in Alley Cat.
5) have an alternate "splash down" launch sequence.
6) have torpedoes come at you instead of lasers and smart bombs.
 
Okay, none of these are really major code changs.  With the type of high 
talent programmers doing the work, it would have amounted to maybe a
couple of hours, maybe three.  With a team of three prorammers, each
working 3 extra hours, at $50 an hour, that would still only come to
$450 dollars.  That's chump change for Lucasfilm Games.
 
In my opinion, the lack of additional depth or variety in the game is
due to a rush to market it.  They obviously didn't spend a lot of time
or money in playtesting Rescue On Fractalus.  The game just gets super
difficult as you increase in levels until the computer's firepower
resources overwhelm you.  Same design paradigm as Asteroids, Defender,
and the like.  Contrast that design with games like Seven Cities of
Gold, or Koronis Rift - games where you travel around and find new
things.  Rescue On Fractalus lacks the feeling of exploring and finding
something new.  If they had spent some real time playtesting it, they
would have discovered that it is fun only for a few hours after which it 
becomes tedious.
 
By the time it was released, there was ample evidence that shoot-em-ups
needed more depth and variety in them to keep them interesting.  Or, if
you just compare it to other Lucasfilm games, such as The Eidolon, you
discover that Rescue On Fractalus falls into the same "rush job"
syndrome as earlier games.  Like many games of that genre, it could have 
been so much more.
 
Like I said, I have games written as far back as 1981 that continue to
hold my attention longer, because there's so much more hidden in the
game that you have to discover.  See, I'm not anti-shooting.  I like
shoot-em-ups, but I prefer they be done well - they have to have a sense 
of adventure or discovery also.  Take the graphically crude Gyruss, for
example.  The goal of reaching EARTH kept me involved in that game for a 
long time.  A lot of games don't even have that.
 
TR> to sell it for? Well people are not going to pay 120.00 for it and 
TR> the programer is not going to spend time on the game for less that 
TR> triple what he got for just the first modual so where are we? Answer 
TR> right where we were, spending the least amount of time to complete a 
TR> game that  will sell for 39.00.....
 
Well, it seems to me that every game on the market sells for somewhere
between $29.95 and $49.95, no matter how much it supposedly cost to
produce it.  Take modern CD-ROM games with a 1 million dollar production 
budget, like King's Quest.
 
Games on the Atari that had two disk sides full of graphics and
somewhat different scenarios, like CONAN, for example, didn't really
retail at a higher price than other games that took up 1/6th of one
side.  It certainly didn't retail for $120.
 
--- RiBBS v2.10        

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