- The Colony
Infobox VG
title = The Colony
developer = David Alan Smith
publisher = Mindscape
designer = David Alan Smith
engine = FLY-BY Environment Simulator
released = 1988 - Macintosh, DOS
1990 - Amiga
genre =First-person shooter , Adventure, Puzzle
modes =Single-player
ratings =
platforms =Macintosh ,DOS ,Amiga
media =Floppy disk
requirements = No special requirements
input = mouse and keyboard"The Colony" was a 3D
first-person shooter developed by David Alan Smith in the1980s . Published by Mindscape, it was released forMacintosh andDOS in 1988 and for theAmiga in 1990. The Amiga conversion was done by David W. Easter and featured color graphics, in contrast to the Macintosh and DOS versions, which wereblack-and-white .Previous first-person perspective games of the era used precomputed views, such as "The Sentinel", or fixed-perspective graphics, such as "
Phantom Slayer ". "The Colony" was one of the first games of its kind to let the player move freely through thevirtual world while rendering graphics in real time. It was also the first 3D game to let the player drive a vehicle, and according to its creator, it was also the first one to useray casting to determine visibility.cite web | last = Smith | first = David | date = 2005-02-12 | url = http://croqueteer.blogspot.com/2005/02/my-colony-memoir.html | title = My Colony Memoir | accessdate = 2008-08-17 | work = Croquet] However, "Alternate Reality", released in 1985, had used ray casting earlier on the ."
MacWorld " magazine named it "Best Adventure Game of the Year" in 1988, and in 2000, listed it as one of "The Top Ten Mac Gaming Thingies of the Last 1,000 Years."Development
Instead of a 360-degree circle, The Colony used 256 "pseudo-degrees" which allowed the game engine to rotate the player's perspective using only one byte of data. Bit-map graphics were drawn using
MacPaint , while 2D images such as doors, letters, and the Applelogo were crafted using the game engine.It is interesting to note that at the time of the game's development, the standard method of programming for the Macintosh was to use an
Apple Lisa . Development tools for the Macintosh did not exist when the Macintosh was initially released. David Alan Smith completed the first scenes of "The Colony" with a Ccompiler ported to the Macintosh by Softworks. Those first scenes were developed on a Macintosh with only 128KB of RAM and a single floppy disk drive. Eventually, development tools were made available on the Macintosh, allowing Mr. Smith to complete his work using theMegamax C and Lightspeed C compilers - on a Macintoshupgrade d to 512KB of RAM and a 20MB hard drive.References
External links
* [http://croqueteer.blogspot.com/2005/02/my-colony-memoir.html "The Colony" entry on Croquet, David Alan Smith's blog]
* [http://www.macworld.com/2000/01/bc/gamesgameroom "The Top Ten Mac Gaming Thingies of the Last 1,000 Years"]
*moby game|id=/colony|name="The Colony"
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