From: "Daniel Evans" <ncsu90@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: In the Beginning....Cruiser:)
Date: 29 Dec 1998 00:00:00 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic


Actually dejanews was just getting started in late '96 and is very
incomplete until early '97.

The summer of '96 showed alot of messages from DS ranting on how great
his game was going to be and that was due anytime.  During this time the
group was mostly positive and eagerly anticipating the release.  Some
comments were made by real programmers, myself included, that DS's
descriptions of the underlying AI technology was alot of unrelated buzzwords
and not possible.  DS did not respond directly except in a few instances
where he said the technology was new and part of his research work.  His
first claim was the game had a true, fully functional neural net built into
it.  His story continued to evolve about the engine, but the group really 
wasn't into the issue and wanted to see the game released.  Also David 
Lister from Impressions was posting at the same time and was taking alot 
of flak for his company's record.
I was among those, who was critical of their releases, however, LOTR 2 came
out and was very good so the group was giving developers the benefit of the
doubt after giving several developers a hard time.

During Sept. and Oct. DS continued to post messages about the game's
imminent release.  Many vaporware threads were going on and he was 
taking a little heat for it along with Bullfrog.  In fact there was 
a thread, which even reviewed the box.

The problems began to occur of course when the game was released.  It
wouldn't install on most machines and wouldn't work on the others.  
Derek went on the attack calling every poster, who couldn't install 
the game an incompetent idiot. Several days later he came up with the 
wrong version was released story and stated he has
the correct version and would post it up as a patch.

The problem was patch after patch came and the game was still broken.  His
claim that the game was complete was obviously not true.  The point was 
made that if the release date for the game was imminent as he claimed 
for months prior to the actual release then how could BC3K be so broken?  
If he had a working copy then where was the patch.  How could his new 
story of Take 2 releasing the beta game be true when he didn't have a 
working copy himself.  How could his claims that the game was
complete be true when he later claimed that in his Sept meeting with 
Take 2 he told them his game was not ready(yet he was in this very 
newsgroup saying time after time that the game would go gold in 2-3 weeks)..  
How could a game that was that close to being done still not be ready with 
a year's worth of patches.  At this point in the saga
the strategic group was almost totally against DS.  It is this basis of
fundamental lying after his ridiculous boasting that made him so many 
hostile enemies.  Many of the sympathetic posters telling the detractors 
to quiet down and forget it are the newbies,
who came on late.  DS owes me $50 for his pathetic game and its worth a 
few minutes here and there for me to remind him of his criminal act.

To sum it up DS brought the whole matter on himself.  He boasted he had the
perfect game and flamed anyone who disagreed.  He released a pathetic game 
and lied about it.  He flamed anyone, who asked a technical question 
about installing the game.  He brought the whole matter upon himself.  
And I didn't even get into the web site games
and how he bacame taco supreme :-)


Daniel

PS
I truely hate to contradict Bill, but please don't refer readers to dejanews
for archives on this newsgroup before '97.  They are very incomplete and 
only have about 30-40% of postings for fall '96.


Matthew D. Jankowski wrote in message <75q0b6$ice$1@news1.tc.umn.edu>...
>Hey all. I am usually uninterested in 'Cruiser' but I have a question to
ask
>those who were around and interested when it was first released.
>
>What was it like in the early days of this games release? Was it like
Falcon
>4.0 or Command and Conquer? Imagine if  Falcon 4.0 had been released in
>simply unusable condition with no 'dynamic' campaign or 3d graphics. ROTFL.

>The angry posts to the flight sim group would have crashed the net:)
>
>Is there a place I can go to or a good poster who can fill me in on the
>details of the five days leading up to 'Cruiser' and the thirty or so days
>of anguished pain afterwords?
>
>Thanks,
>Matt
>
>LOL. Can't wait till school starts up again:)
>
>