THE SPECTRUM GAMES DATABASE

3D ANT ATTACK

PUBLISHER
Quicksilva

AUTHOR
Sandy White

YEAR
1983.

CATEGORY
Arcade

DESCRIPTION
3D Ant Attack is an isometric 3D arcade game with a crap hi-score
table.


CONTROLS:
Keyboard:
Left,Right         - M and SYMBOL SHIFT
Forward            - V
Jump               - C
Fire Grenades      - S, D, F or G (Each key throws grenade
different distance)
Change view        - 0, P, ENTER and SPACE


INSTRUCTIONS
Rescue your partner from a city (Called Antescher, some of
M.C.Escher's work was obviously an inspiration for a few of the
buildings) infested with ants.

Once you have chosen the gender of your character, the adventure
begins.  You have to find and rescue your partner (who is the
opposite gender to your character), located somewhere in the
(almost) deserted city of Antescher - There are lots of giant
ants infesting the city.  To rescue your partner you have to move
near to him/her, this causes them to wake-up (temporary
paralysis, courtesy of the ants), verbally show his/her
gratidude, and then proceed to follow you as you move.  The ants
have other ideas, and will bite you if they come into contact. 
You can withstand 20 bites before succumbing their poison, and
having to start again....  

To aid you, there are a number of grenades on your presence,
which you can use to defend yourself.  Depending on your distance
from the ants, you can throw the grenades varying distances.  If
you are not careful, you can run into grenades if thrown whilst
running, thus rendering you incompatible with life and requiring
a restart. Throwing them near a wall will make them roll up it,
and down on you, with the same result.  If you use up all your
grenades, you can still paralyse the ants by jumping on their
backs (Top tip - you will need to do this to mount the rescue in
later levels, to act as a step..)  There are not any lives, as
such, just a time limit for each level, of which there are 10
levels with your partner being located in gradually more devious
places.


INLAY CARD TEXT
[back cover]
Battle the ants in the walled city of Antescher.
Author: Sandy White.

[inlay card - loading instructions omitted]
QUICKSILVA - SOFTWARE FOR THE SINCLAIR SPECTRUM
ANT ATTACK
Softsolid 3D

The Walled City of Antescher has rested for a thousand, thousand
years in the midst of the Great Desert inhabited by only the
deadly Ants who have made it their home. The sands have piled up
at the walls but for some reason have never encroached upon the
city proper. The City rests dreaming of past glories, solid and
unmoving; the signature of a long dead race. The City washed
clean by the sun's rays. The city lost from the world of men for
days without number.

Then one day, one year, one hour, He arrived and She arrived,
some say that they are descended from a race of wizards, some say
that they are descended from a race hidden in a green valley at
the North Pole. Who can really tell these days, how much do we
really know about the world as it was, or as it is, after so long
in the cold Dark Ages. Only Antescher seems to stand inviolate
after all this time, teeming with secrets, yet silent.

He and She arrived to play their games through the wind-swept
streets, ousting the ants from their exclusive occupation. He and
She are now wreaking havoc through the ants who for their part
kill and kill again without thought or consideration, just
carrying out a biological imperative. He and She run to and fro,
climbing in and out the buildings, the sound of their feet
stretching from block to block. They laugh and cry out in fear
walking with each other just ahead of the Ants and Death.

And above all the drama within it's walls the City of Antescher
watches and watches waiting for the next renaissance and the next
Golden Age. The City seems to have a presence, a huge brooding
entity which hangs over the buildings and which in some
mysterious way controls the destiny of those below...

 Controls:
 Q, P, ENTER, SPACE - 4 view angles
 SYMBOL             - Rotate
 SHIFT                clockwise
 M                  - Rotate anti-
                      clockwise
 V                  - Forewards
 C                  - Jump
 S D F G            - Throw grenade
 Short-long           distances
 1                  - Last resort,
                      returns you to
                      the city gate

To climb onto something, press "move" and "jump" together. Scan
indicates which direction to take to reach the girl or boy.


URL
ftp://ftp.dcc.uchile.cl/pub/OS/sinclair/snapshots/a/antattac.zip

SEQUELS/PREQUELS
A sequel, Zombie Zombie, was released in Christmas 1984; also set
in Antescher, it used the same 'Softsolid 3D' look.

SCORES RECEIVED
This game was not reviewed in Crash, and not rated in YS.

CHEAT
Insert the following line after breaking into the program with
Multiface, or similar:

62 POKE 45164,3:POKE 45165,238   

Then RUN the program again, you should have unlimited time.

GENERAL FACTS
The following 'Anterview' was published in issue 2 of Your
Spectrum (April 1984, p.50):

THE ANTMAN COMETH
Overseeing the ins and outs of our competition this issue, Sandy
White found time to rap about the fame and fortune of being
caught up on the front page of the software scene.

Every now and then, the software market blossoms and an
incredibly different hybrid evolves. Always, just when you think
it's safe to banter about the banality of the current software
selection on the high street shelves, something new comes along
heralded by the fanfare of enthusiastic reviews from all and
undry. Such a program was Quicksilva's Ant Attack. Or perhaps
more in keeping with the recent trend towards the 'software
uperstar', one should say Sandy White's Ant Attack.

When asked about himself, Sandy modestly replied, "I'm hard to
categorise really, but I do have a degree in sculpture." Indeed,
Sandy is the first to admit surprise over the attention thrust
upon him, for this time last year he was an unknown sculptor.
After five years attendance at the Edinburgh College of Art,
Sandy was happiest constructing electronic 'story-telling' gizmos
which his lecturers were quick to tell him were not art!

A little disheartened at his progress in the art world, Sandy
borrowed a friend's Acorn Atom to "fiddle about with a few
graphics routines". After experimenting in Basic and machine
code, he was about to give up... when inspiration struck. Excited
by the computer graphics simulations in Walt Disney's movie Tron,
Sandy set about using the routines he had created to emulate some
of the features included in the big screen on to his monitor.

The knowledge to construct his soft-solid graphics certainly owed
a lot to his college days. "I'd written big programs before, but
Ant Attack was my first game - up until then all the software I'd
written was linked to my work at college."

Not being a follower of arcade fashions, Sandy started to
approach the game proper at a slow pace - having bashed out the
code for the soft-solid graphics routines in an incredible
two-week period, he needed ideas on how to implement the results
of his labours as a popular game. So, after looking at a
selection of 3D games already on the market, "I went to a lot of
people I knew were keen on games software, and asked them about
the ones they enjoyed the most."

It was at this stage that Sandy returned his friend's Atom and
looked to the Spectrum's Z-80 to produce the miracles he had in
mind. "The biggest problem with Ant Attack was making sure it was
fast enough - some of the mathematical algorithms were really
cumbersome. The game had to be fast enough to keep it reasonably
exciting to play, while still maintaining the 3D aspects as well
as could be allowed. Of course it's possible to do the most
incredible 3D simulations on the Spectrum - as long as you're
prepared to wait half an hour between moves!"

Indeed, it was 15 weeks of solid programming before Sandy was
happy with the game. His close friend, Angela Sutherland, did a
lot of the formatting of the structure for the final product; she
was responsible for most of Antescher's design and also the
characters who act out the adventure.

Completing the game was not, as one might suspect, the final
hurdle in the game's development - for if Sandy knew little of
the available games he had to compete with on the software
market, he knew absolutely zilch about the methods by which an
unknown could get software out on to the market. Where should he
start? Difficult question... easy answer (or so he thought!).

"Yes, it's true, I first sent a copy of Ant Attack in action on
video tape to Sinclair Research," laughs Sandy. "And after a
couple of weeks, I gave them a bell as I was really keen to see
the game published by Christmas '83. A secretary there said she
was sorry but they hadn't got a video tape machine - so they sent
it back... unseen!"

Following the brush-off from his self-confessed 'hero', Sandy was
at a loss at what to do with his programming masterpiece.
Psyching himself up, he placed a call to Quicksilva. "I phoned
up Quicksilva," explained Sandy, "but I gathered fairly quickly
that they've obviously got a lot of people phoning up and
proclaiming that they've written the best game ever. The only
thing to do was to go really over the top about the game and hope
that they would listen. I ended up jumping up and down on the
spot while explaining what I had done - and eventually they said
they would have a look at my video tape. I was amazed at how
difficult it was to get through to people - the only thing I can
suggest to new programmers who think they've got something worth
raving over is simply to rave about it yourself... and persist!"

Following Quicksilva's inspection of the video tape, Sandy was
on a plane to Southampton the next day to sign a contract. And
at 23, Sandy is in the enviable position of having his first
foray into commercial games-writing heralded by most reviewers
as the 'program of the year'.

Looking to the future, rest assured you've not heard the last of
Sandy White. When YS spoke to him after the launch of Ant Attack,
he happily chatted about his plans to write "a kind of adventure,
not necessarily involving text - instead of entering a room and
reading about the contents and typing out what you want to do,
how about actually interacting with the room's contents in real
time..." How about that indeed! However, on a recent trip to the
YS offices, Sandy was coy about his plans for the future. Yes,
they did include writing a new game, but no, he would rather not
comment on the structure or design of the program. Could it be
we're in for another classic... watch these pages for future
developments.

The magazine came with an A2 map of Antescher, with the
designers' names for all of the buildings within its walls. The
competition referred to in the introduction was to win over 1,000
pieces of software and just about every peripheral then
available; a phone number to ring with the required answers was
supposed to have been published in the Guardian and the Daily
Telegraph, but it didn't appear in all editions, and there were
complaints about not being able to get through on the phone.


NOTES
The game has a very disappointing front end, when first loaded
looks very naff indeed - Beeps and coloured graphic blocks to
greet you.  First non-sexist game (?) (choose the sex of your
character).  Excellent, and fast 3D effect, called Soft Solid,
which incidentally was developed on an Acorn Atom.























