The Sentinel (videojuego)
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| The Sentinel | |
|---|---|
| Desarrollador | Geoff Crammond |
| Distribuidor | Firebird |
| Lanzamiento | 1986 |
| Género | Puzzle, Estrategia |
| Modos de juego | 1 Jugador |
| Clasificación | ESRB: E |
| Plataforma | Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Atari ST PC |
| Formato | Casete,Disco flexible |
- Este articulo trata sobre el juego de ordenador de 1986, creado por Geoff Crammond y publicado por Firebird en 1986. Es copia del original escrito en ingles en la wikipedia.
The Sentinel videojuego creado por Geoff Crammond, publicado porFirebird en 1986 para Commodore 64 y convertido a BBC Micro (por el propio Crammond), Amstrad CPC (con un cross-compiler escrito por Crammond), ZX Spectrum (por Mike Follin), Atari ST, Amiga (en ambos casos por Steve Bak) y a PC (por Mark Roll). Fue uno de los primeros juegos, sino el primero, que tenia graficos 3D solidos. Funcionaba aceptablemente bien en ordenadores de 16-bits, era bastante lento en las máquinas de 8-bits, sobre todo en el C64 que llegaba a tardar 3 segundos en ser re dibujada la siguiente vista. Aun con estos inconvenientes, tuvo muchos aficionados durante años, algunos de los cuales llegaron a modificar sus ordenadores para poder jugar mejor (por ejemplo llegaron a cambiar la CPUde un C64 usando un CMD SuperCPU en un Commdore 64 con un procesador de 1-MHz 6502 para incrementar la velocidad de reloj de la CPU a 20 MHz).
Es un juego con vista en primera persona y unos diez mil (10.000) niveles. Debido a su conseguido efecto 3D, ser en primerra persona y representar en cierta forma un mundo virtual, se le llamo el primer juego de realidad virtual.
Graficamente la mejor version es la de PC con graficos VGA y un mayor brillo; esta versión tenia un audio muy pobre ya que usaba el altavoz del PC, la version que tenia un mejor audio era la de Amiga con una banda sonora compuesta por David Whittaker.
En 1995 como inocentada aparecia una secuela que no llego a existir llamada Monolith aparecio en la revista italiana de videojuegos The Games Machine. En 1998, una secuela real llamada Sentinel Returns fue lanzada para PC y PlayStation; una copia freeware y no oficial de The Sentinel llamada Sentry fue realizada para PC ese mismo año. En 2006, se lanzarón dos copias más que tampoco eran oficales (Zenith y Sentinel).
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[editar] Argumento
En The Sentinel, el jugador es un Synthoid, un robot telepático, ver telepatía, que tiene que tomar el control de una serie de mundos divididos en cuadricula, estos mundo tiene una gran variedad de colinas y valles, partiendo de la parte mas baja del nivel de debe subir hasta la plataforma mas alta sobre la cual el centinela "The Sentinel" vigila que todo permanezca en su sitio.
Un Synthoid no se puede mover de la forma habitual por el mundo, ya que solo puede absorber energía de los objetos del mundo y crear objetos, para poder moverse tiene que crear copias de si mismo en el lugar donde quiere ir y teletransportar su mente a ese nuevo cuerpo. Pero no es tan simple ya que la energía es limitad y el centinela The sentinel vigila que todo este en su sitio y sino lo esta lo absorbe.
Las acciones que se pueden realizar son:
- Look around by moving the pointer on the screen (press S=Left, D=Right, L=Up, <=Down)
- Toggle cursor on|off. You turn faster with it off (press SPACE)
- Absorb an object to gain its energy (point a square where an object is present and press A)
- Create trees in empty squares (point the desired square and press T)
- Create one or more boulders in empty squares (point the desired square and press B)
- Absorb one or more boulders (point the boulder on the bottom of the stack and press A)
- Create a new Synthoid shell in an empty square or on a boulder (point the desired place and press R)
- Transfer consciousness to another Synthoid (point the Synthoid and press Q)
- Hyperspace to a random part of the level at the expense of 3 units of energy (press H) (note that the player may not hyperspace to a higher square; only one of equal or lower height). Also used to hyperspace to the next level when the player has reached the Sentinel's platform.
- Rotate 180 degrees (press U)
Controlling Synthoids that are standing at a higher level is fundamental to the game, because only the objects which occupy a visible square can be interacted with (the player may absorb or create objects on a boulder if the sides can be seen). While doing so, the player must watch for the rotation of the Sentinel and be careful not to stand in an area which the Sentinel can see, or else it will start absorbing energy from the Synthoid, and when the energy is gone, the game is over.
Height is gained by placing a boulder on any visible square, and putting a Synthoid on the boulder. The player may then transfer consciousness to the new Synthoid, and absorb the old one. Stacks of boulders of any height may be created, if the player has enough energy. In order to absorb the Sentinel, the player must create a stack of boulders of sufficient height that the Synthoid on top can look down on the Sentinel's platform. When the Sentinel has been absorbed, the player may no longer absorb any energy from the landscape, although objects may be created as normal.
In later levels, the Sentinel is assisted by a number of Sentries. They behave exactly like the Sentinel, but absorbing them is not necessary to complete the level. Unlike the Sentinel, the Sentries do not stand on a platform but on ordinary squares. Attention must also be paid to nearby trees: if the Sentinel or Sentry cannot see the square the Synthoid is standing on, but its head is visible and there are trees in the vicinity, it may transform one of them into a Meanie, which will force the Synthoid to hyperspace and lose 3 units of energy. If the Meanie itself cannot see the player's square after a full rotation, it will turn back into a tree and the Sentinel or Sentry will resume rotation.
The rotation of the Sentinel and the Sentries is slow and predictable. However, if there are many Sentries, there will be few safe locations anywhere on the landscape. If either the Sentinel or the Sentries come across a source of energy (boulders or a synthoid), their rotation stops while they absorb the energy, one unit at a time. Meanwhile, to keep the total energy of the landscape constant, a tree is created randomly on the landscape for each absorbed unit of energy.
List of objects that can exist in the Sentinel world:
- Tree (1 unit of energy)
- Meanie (1 unit of energy)
- Boulder (2 units of energy)
- Synthoid (3 units of energy)
- Sentry (3 units of energy)
- Sentinel (4 units of energy)
A level is won by absorbing the Sentinel off its platform, creating a new Synthoid in the place of the Sentinel, transferring the consciousness to it and hyperspacing to a new level. When entering a new level, its number and an 8-digit code are displayed on the screen: these should be noted by the player, as entering them correctly is the only way to access that level again.
The number of levels that are skipped between two that are played depends from the amount of energy the player has accumulated when he jumps into hyperspace: the more energy he has, the more levels he will skip. Sometimes (depending on the individual skill of the player) it is necessary to replay a level in order to win it with less energy than the last time, because the difficulty of the levels is not incremental and one of them may be just too hard to complete.
[editar] Limitations of the game engine
The game engine ingeniously gives the player the illusion of playing in a completely solid 3D environment, even on very basic platforms. This is achieved by having the player character immobile in one place. The player may look around in all directions and see a scrolling rendered view from the current location. As the player transfers consciousness to another Synthoid, the game pauses momentarily as the CPU renders another complete view from the player's next location. This then becomes the view the player sees. Objects such as boulders, trees, Synthoids and even the Sentinel are then rendered on top of this background. This means that the player may "move" freely around the landscape, but the landscape need not be rendered in realtime.
It is clear that the memory limitations of the 8-bit microcomputers would preclude 10,000 landscapes being stored individually in the computer's memory. Instead, a procedural generation algorithm is used which generates each landscape from a small data packet, which may even be the landscape's 4-digit number.
[editar] Critical reaction
The C64 version received a Gold Medal award by Zzap64 magazine,[1] describing it as an exceptional piece of software in a class of its own.
The ZX Spectrum version received a CRASH Smash award,[2] the magazine praising its originality, atmosphere and tension. It was also placed at number 7 in the Your Sinclair official top 100.
[editar] References
- ↑ The Sentinel review by Zzap!
- ↑ The Sentinel review by CRASH
[editar] Enlaces externos
- Plantilla:Moby game
- Plantilla:WoS game
- A partial list of level codes, 4.23 % of 10 000
[editar] Remakes
- Monolith faux preview in Italian
- Sentry (freeware)
- Zenith (freeware)
- Sentinel (freeware)
- Sentinel Redux, faithful Flash version (work in progress)
