OS/2 e-Zine! - Vigilance on Talos V

Vigilance on Talos V - by Dr. Dirk Terrell

If you listen to IBM, OS/2 isn't intended for the "kitchentop" market, i.e., games and other software aimed at home users rather than commercial users. Well, someone forgot to tell the folks at PolyEx Software about that nonsense. They recently released a new OS/2 game, Vigilance on Talos V, built with the new WordUp Graphics Toolkit. Vigilance on Talos V is a fast-action, shoot-em up type of adventure game that comes in both full screen and DIVE versions.

Getting Started

This game is designed for OS/2 Warp 4 or OS/2 Warp 3.0 with FixPak 26 or higher. Hardware requirements are:

An IBM DART Sound System Compatible Sound Card
An IBM DIVE Compatible VGA or higher display (for DIVE version)
An OS/2 VGA Compatible card (For Full Screen version)
2 megs free hard drive space
CD-ROM Drive (Game requires CD-ROM in drive during gameplay)

Installation is very simple. The install program allows you to specify a directory for the files that need to be on your hard disk. (The documentation says that two megabytes of space is necessary, but I only see about half a megabyte being used.) The installation program creates a folder on the Desktop that contains program objects for the full screen and DIVE versions, as well as a small text file with information on installing and playing the game. Once the installation is completed, clicking on one of the program objects will begin your adventure.

The Game

You control a character named Killian Jaraad who is searching for his 5 year old daughter, Colesce, who has been kidnapped by the evil Xenos. The story surrounding the game is as follows (more or less from the game documentation):

3021 AD: Killian Jaraad, a starship technician and single parent, boarded a colonial transport with his 5 year old daughter Colesce. En route to the colony on Sur 4, the colonial transport was attacked by biological ships belonging to the Xenos, a highly organized collection of hostile alien races. Jaraad and Colesce were separated, and Jaraad watched from his escape pod as the Xenos ships fled the wreckage of the colonial transport. Convinced Colesce had died aboard the transport, Jaraad devoted his life to destroying the Xenos once and for all. For three years Jaraad trained as a mercenary and weapons expert, tracking down and destroying Xenos ships and bases.
3024 AD: A mercenary known as E. Red gives Jaraad a crucial piece of information; the Xenos have been collecting human slaves and are holding them on a planet in the Talos V system. With the realization that Colesce could be one of the prisoners, Jaraad heads towards Talos V, prepared to investigate each of the three planetary bases in that system in order to find his daughter. And so it begins...
Your objective:
Find, and destroy the evil Drektor, the leader of the Xenos. He is a tough, and worthy opponent. His brain hides in different forms, so he'll be hard to find, but you'll know him when you see him.

If you are familiar with games like Sonic the Hedgehog, you'll be blasting the bad guys (GIF, 23.7k) in no time with Vigilance. This is a 2-D game (GIF, 24.7k), controlled by either the keyboard or a joystick. As you move through the world (GIF, 24.8k), you encounter friendly aliens who offer advice on where to go and what to do. You can also pick up new weapons and ammunition that you will need to advance past certain obstacles.

Because of the short period between the time the game shipped and the editorial deadline, I haven't progressed very deeply into the game, so I can't tell you about any glorious battles with the evil Drektor, but given the addictiveness of this game, I'm sure it won't be long before such battles take place.

Performance

In full screen mode, the graphics quality is similar to what you see on 16-bit video game machines like the Sega Genesis. Unfortunately, my video driver doesn't support DIVE, so I can't comment on the quality of that version. The sound quality is also very good, mixing music and voice like you would expect from a commercial game.

Finally, the game also multitasks very well. I ran it on the OS/2 Supersite machine while the web server was getting its usual deluge of requests. The game ran very smoothly, and there was no noticeable impact on the web server. (Of course, the machine is a Pentium Pro 200, so it should be up to the task.)

Conclusions

Vigilance on Talos V demonstrates that OS/2 is also up to the task when it comes to fast-action, multimedia applications. Hopefully the availability of tools like the WordUp Graphics Toolkit, will make it easier for other ISVs to create such quality "kitchentop" applications for OS/2. Vigilance on Talos V sells for US$39.95 direct from PolyEx Software, and if you like fast action games, you will not be disappointed.

Vigilance on Talos V
by PolyEx Software
MSRP: US$39.95

Dr. Dirk Terrell is an astronomer at the University of Florida specializing in interacting binary stars. His hobbies include cave diving, martial arts, painting and writing OS/2 software such as HTML Wizard.

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