«

[Romano]

Feel free to comment and discuss this game here. Also, if you have any useful tips or tricks don't hesitate to share them with the others! Thanks!

Review and Download (if available)

[velik_m]

Contraption Zack! Contraption Zack is a puzzle game, using the same 3D isometric view that was made popular (was it really ever popular) by games like Populous and Treasure Trap.[/b]

3D isometric view was "popular" way before Populus or Treasure Trap. I think the reviewers should do some research before writing stuff like that. The games did exist before 1990.

Has anybody mastered the full controls of the game yet?

I know that one has to control zack with the number-block, but how does one save or restart the game?

[Cloudy]

I remember playing a demo of this game... so long ago. I will download this later!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Guest @ Aug 20 2006, 12:53 PM) [snapback]249741[/snapback]</div>

Has anybody mastered the full controls of the game yet?

I know that one has to control zack with the number-block, but how does one save or restart the game?
[/b]

Press exit to bring up the menu, that has the saves and restart area function (you will need it) Also if your on a laptop and dont have a number pad, you will need a joystick to play the game as its the only way to make zack walk properly (Seeming the game is on a diagonal view and the arrowkeys make him walk in diagonal so you can jump on switches ect) The calibratre joystick is also in the same menu

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(velik_m @ Aug 20 2006, 06:15 AM) [snapback]249708[/snapback]</div>

3D isometric view was "popular" way before Populus or Treasure Trap. I think the reviewers should do some research before writing stuff like that. The games did exist before 1990.
[/b]

The reviewer used the words

... games LIKE Populous and Treasure Trap...

, so this list of games must be understood as examples and cannot be seen as concluding! Of course, there are other games (older and newer ones, well known and almost forgotten) using the same or a similar diagonal isometric view (e.g. Civilization, The Great Escape, Marble Madness, ...). The reviewer neither claimed this game

Contraption Zack

to be one of or even the first one using diagonal isometric view nor to appear before any of the other mentioned examples. There is no use in discussing which game was more popular than others, because first the word

popular[/b]

has to be defined: schould it relate to the number of sales, the number of press releases, market durabilitiy, market spread, general public awareness or any combination of these properties. By the way, the visitors of this website are definitely not

demoscopical representative[/b]

, so simply calling a poll in order to research, which game is more popular than others, would be a bad idea.

Perhaps anybody is likely to write an article about

different solutions for graphical projections of three dimensional structures by two dimensional electronic means of display[/b]

, who knows this might interest some people, or the autor might achieve any degree. But this is no reason for accusations without substance against the rewievers, which in general do a great job.

[velik_m]

made is the key word, not like. What evidence or knowledge does the reviewer have that Populus had any influence on popularity of this view? It's like saying first person view was made popular by games like Halo and Halflife.

Sorry, I was not as clear as I thought I was being. I was not knocking isometric view games as I love many of them... such as Ultima 7 and Diablo 1 and 2, Age of Empires, blah, blah. I was referring to the very specific Populous, Treasure Trap, Contraption Zack style of big 3D block type games with controls schemes that basically prevent you from using the normal up, down, left and right arrorws to move.

I just try to give folks the general idea on a game, and have a little fun while doing it.

Hey man pretty fast reply...

Sorry I forgot one or two slashes, so the whole text- format went wrong...

Dammit... I know I should have used that preview swich...

For your convenience here is the easier to read version:

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(velik_m @ Aug 20 2006, 06:15 AM) [snapback]249708[/snapback]</div>

3D isometric view was "popular" way before Populus or Treasure Trap. I think the reviewers should do some research before writing stuff like that. The games did exist before 1990.
[/b]

The reviewer used the words

... games LIKE Populous and Treasure Trap...[/b]

, so this list of games must be understood as examples and cannot be seen as concludent! Of course, there are other games (older and newer ones, well known and almost forgotten) using the same or a similar diagonal isometric view (e.g. Civilization, The Great Escape, Marble Madness, ...). The reviewer neither claimed this game "Contraption Zack" to be one of or even the first one using diagonal isometric view nor to appear before any of the other mentioned examples. There is no use in discussing which game was more popular than others, because first the word "popular" has to be defined: schould it relate to the number of sales, the number of press releases, market durabilitiy, market spread, general public awareness or any combination of these properties? By the way, the visitors of this website are definitely not demoscopical representative, so simply calling a poll in order to research, which game is more popular than others, would be a bad idea.

Perhaps anybody is likely to write an article about different solutions for graphical projections of three dimensional structures by two dimensional electronic means of display, who knows this might interest some people, or the autor might achieve any degree. But this is no reason for accusations without substance against the rewievers, which in general do a great job.

But now for something completely different...

made is the key word, not like. What evidence or knowledge does the reviewer have that Populus had any influence on popularity of this view? It's like saying first person view was made popular by games like Halo and Halflife.[/b]

In fact that exactly is the case!

1. The evidence for the influence on popularity of a certain projection method any game could had, stands and falls (as we say in our country) with the definition of the word popularity. If you ask anyone on the street for a computergame, using first person view most of them will answer: Halo and Halflife (or Doom, CS, whatsoever...). If you ask for the earliest game using first person view many people will shrug, maybe some elder person will answer: Descent or even Elite. Those games were popular during a certain period, but are almost forgotten now in public. This leads to the problem how to define the word "popular" (not to forget that popular among gamers does not nescessarily mean popular among devellopers) and the two facts that popularity (however it could be measured) can never be considdered as zero or independent from time and that the abandonia- gamers are definitely not a demoscopical representative group (see above). Concluding: Halo and Halflife made the first person view popular, even more popular than it has allready been before. A similar statement could be given for the diagonal isometric view.
2. The adjektiv like is a bidirectional operator! That means any term, made by using this operator is true in both directions: if a is like b, than b will be like a!
So Halo and Halflife are games like Descent or Elite and vice versa, if you only considder the first person view. So it has not to be nescessarily the game Populos itself, which made the diagonal isometric view popular, but obviously this game was the first one rushed throug the mind of the reviewer (by the way throug mine, too), so its popularity appears to be significantly higher than zero.
3. Another example: If you think of popular classic composers you would surely remember the names "Beethoven" and maybe "Mozart" but did you ever hear about (or listened to) Händel, Grieg, Mahler, Gluck, Schütz, Telemann, Vivaldi, Orff, Bach (J. S.), Bach (F.), Bach (J. C.), Hayden, Mozart (J. N.), Bruckner, Brahms, Wagner, Chopin, Dvorak, Mendelssohn,... The lifeperiods of those composers streched over more than three centuries. The oevre of J. S. Bach is larger than the oevres of Beethoven, Mozart and Hayden together, but he has been almost forgotten a few years after his death. All those composers wrote music in an own unique style, but it is possible to state that the music from Beethoven is like music from Bach (and vice versa), as long as you only considder the fact that both are classic composers.
4. Very often truth depends on the personal standpoint (see the dialoge between Luke Skywalker and the late Obi Wan Kenobi in Episode 6...). If I want to catch a lion, I could put a cage in the jungle, step inside, close the cagedoor and define: "Here is the outside!".
5. If anybody wants to categorize all games into their display projection method or their game concept, in addition to genre and publisher, he should go ahead. Volounteers are always welcome... The reviewer of this game does not claim to be an expert on this subject (even though he might be).
6. The more substancial critic on this game review would be the lack of a manual and a clear explanation of the game controls. All in all it's a brief review of a brief game...

[velik_m]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Strachwitz @ Aug 21 2006, 10:46 PM) [snapback]250085[/snapback]</div>

a long argument about something pointless[/b]

all i'm saying don't make claims in review, which you can not prove/confirm or worse claims that are wrong. If the reviewer wanted to say the view is similar to the one in Populus, he should just write that.

And when i think of isometric view i'll think of Head over Heals and thousand other games before i'll think of Populus.

Anyway enough about this, this is a discussion about game.