Ambrosia Garden Archive
    • How to play "Escape Velocity" on a Computer on eHow


      Escape Velocity works on Windows?

      Has anybody on this forum seen this thread? Funny How-To Guide http://www.ambrosias...owtopic=132405. Well, you can click on the guide from that thread. Anybody that has played Nova can see how bad the guide is. How many problems it has or perhaps it can be said how wrong it is?

      I found a another guide on eHow while reading it about Escape Velocity. It can't be a another game with the same name, because as far I know, no other game with this name exists.

      Here: http://www.ehow.com/...y-computer.html

      It comes with missing instructions, and wrong instructions for firing your secondary and primary weapons. It also calls a ship aircraft.

      Think carefully about what the guide says and actually play EV enough to see if the instructions are correct, and you can see a LOT of problems. Either wrong or missing instructions.

      First paragraph says: "Escape Velocity" is a game designed for the Windows operating system

      Except everyone here knows EV only is for Mac.

      Step 1: The instructions seem to be correct. However, the guy calls your ship aircraft. So he uses the term aircraft instead of ship. If anybody on these boards finds the instructions in step 1 to be not correct, tell me. I did however try pressing the arrow keys in EV Nova.

      Step 2: The "Enter" key fires whatever weapon is currently labeled as your primary, the guide says. Except that pressing Enter does nothing. The Enter key seems to do things like leaving a planet and making you stop hailing a ship. The "Spacebar" key fires your secondary weapon, says the guide. Well, except the space bar actually fires your primary weapon.

      Step 3 in the guide says: Pull up your map of the galaxy using the "M" keyboard key. Your current location will be marked with a small yellow icon on the map(...) Except that the ball symbol (or is a dot?) is blue in color. It continues: Pressing "M" again hides the map. As you approach a planet, press "L" to radio ahead and request permission to land.

      That M hides the map is correct. I only press Done instead. Well, except by pressing M after opening the map accomplishes nothing. To do something with the map you have to click the system next to where you are now, or Shift- click a hyperspace route to more than one system away. Why does the guide not tell these things? You have to jump to pretty much do anything in the game.

      The guide did not tell that you have to press L again (you have to press L twice). Plus, you have to: a) be close enough to be able to land (otherwise the game will say you are too far away on the second L press). b ) be slow enough to land, or the game will say you are too fast to land on the planet.

      Step four says:

      Press the "J" button to activate the hyperspace features of your aircraft. This allows you to travel quickly between two points within the game.

      Except that the guide does not tell what you have to do first - select where you want to go on the map. Pressing J will do nothing if you just press it without first having selected where you want to go.

      The game comes with a manual that tells you everything about the game - everything you need to learn in order to be able to do everything in the game. It comes with pictures. And a story. Even the game itself instructs you better than the guide when you do a new pilot. It will tell you how to do a hyperjump. And how to land.

      Why was this guide written?

      And I didn't even write about things you need to do in the game. You pretty much must learn how to buy ships, because the Shuttle is so weak it easily gets destroyed. It can get destroyed by Pirates when trying to go somewhere (for example, while hyperjumping) and you can't fight with it. Finally, I am not sure it has enough cargo space to do all missions that are part of some kind of storyline. Outfitting is something you need to do too - ships are not powerful enough for all fights with the weapons it comes with. Boarding is something you must do too in some missions, and I don't know of any way to make money faster than boarding Pirates.

      This post has been edited by General Cade Smart : 22 June 2013 - 02:06 PM

    • @general-cade-smart, on 22 June 2013 - 11:31 AM, said in How to play "Escape Velocity" on a Computer on eHow:

      I found a another guide on eHow while reading it about Escape Velocity. It can't be a another game with the same name, because as far I know, no other game with this name exists.

      I believe there was a Windows game called Escape Velocity around the same time, but from the details it’s clearly our EV that’s being described, albeit in a garbled fashion. Things like ‘aircraft’, ‘computer key’, and ‘keyboard key’ make me wonder whether the text might have been written in another language and then badly translated, though the problems run deeper than that.

    • @david-arthur, on 22 June 2013 - 02:16 PM, said in How to play "Escape Velocity" on a Computer on eHow:

      I believe there was a Windows game called Escape Velocity around the same time, but from the details it’s clearly our EV that’s being described, albeit in a garbled fashion. Things like ‘aircraft’, ‘computer key’, and ‘keyboard key’ make me wonder whether the text might have been written in another language and then badly translated, though the problems run deeper than that.

      There was a Windows game called Escape Velocity? Can you give me a link to that programs web site (does that web site exist anymore?) or tell me where I can elsewhere find more information about it? Though, our game has had a website which I think was called escape-velocity.com, and then that website does no longer exist. The only Escape Velocity page is here on the Ambrosia website. It's our game? Okay, what do you mean from the details? Do you mean the terms it uses and the keys the text mentions? I don't know about garbled though - I could understand it, it was just missing a lot of instructions (and that was when it did mention any instructions). Perhaps you mean that it does not use actual EV terms, which would make it a good text on the game? And perhaps also how it was written (I don't think a good text on our game would say radio ahead)?.

      What do you mean problems run deeper than that? What are the deeper problems? I could not find any other problems than those I already found. I only noticed keyboard key when you mentioned it. Also computer key only now when I searched the page for it.

      I also have one more thing to say about the guide: Why does it give only some instructions for the parts it mentions? Why is it missing instructions, could also be said? How did the guide writer choose what instructions he will give? To be able to select to which system -or which systems- you want go to on the map is more important than knowing that J makes you hyperjump. Well, knowing both is important, just trying to tell it's important to know how to select a system to jump too.

    • @general-cade-smart, on 23 June 2013 - 02:11 PM, said in How to play "Escape Velocity" on a Computer on eHow:

      There was a Windows game called Escape Velocity? Can you give me a link to that programs web site (does that web site exist anymore?) or tell me where I can elsewhere find more information about it?

      No, I never played it, but I recall hearing of its existence. I don’t believe it had anything else in common with the game that we know. But the page you found is clearly a bad guide to Ambrosia’s game rather than a guide to something else.

    • I don't know how reliable eHow usually is, but with that (and the equally laughable Nova how-to) I tempted to speculate they're simply link bait for advertising revenue.

      If they get clicks from Google, nobody running the site will care if they're wrong.

    • @mad-dan-eccles, on 25 June 2013 - 07:29 AM, said in How to play "Escape Velocity" on a Computer on eHow:

      I don't know how reliable eHow usually is, but with that (and the equally laughable Nova how-to) I tempted to speculate they're simply link bait for advertising revenue.

      If they get clicks from Google, nobody running the site will care if they're wrong.

      I know of one website that could be used to know how reliable eHow is... Web of Trust. Located at mywot.com, they have a forum where I could show both the Escape Velocity guide and the Nova one. And then ask how truthful the people of that forum think eHow is.

      Here is my explanation of what Web of Trust is: Web of Trust is a website where users can give their opinion of websites. This is called rating. Web site ratings- when you look at them- can tell you just about anything that can be wrong with a website- including if it is offensive or something else bad like a website for a cult. Or if the website spams, is a scam, has phishing, contains malware...

      Edit: There has been no rules for links. Can I put any links I like in a post? They would have just given a official explanation on how Web of Trust works and why the ratings are reliable.

      This post has been edited by General Cade Smart : 30 June 2013 - 05:56 PM