Avarice Preview

 Published:	Stardock Systems, Inc. Developed by: 	Continuous Software Systems List price:	$34.95 ($29.95 introductory price) Platforms:	OS/2 Warp Minimum Hardware: 486DX, 8 megs of ram, SVGA graphics, 2speed CD ROM Typical System:	Pentium, 16 megs of ram, Quad CD ROM, 1024x768 with 65k colors Contact:	Brad Wardell, 313/453-0328 Release:	December 1995 

Brief Description
Avarice Preview is the first product to come out of the development venture between Stardock Systems, and Continuous Software Systems (CSS). Avarice Preview places you in a virtual world where you have seemingly arrived at your Uncle's mansion. When you arrive, there is no one there. You alone must solve the secrets of your Uncle's mansion by finding clues, piecing together puzzles and exploring his vast mansion.

In Depth
The plot is as follows; your uncle has invited you to come take advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime. All you have to do is meet him at his island. When you arrive, his island is rather dark and depressing and no one is there to greet you. As you walk, you find a hat with blood on it and no one is there at all. What's happened? Where is everyone? As you explore this beautifully 24bit color world you will experience an original musical sound track, interact with hundreds of objects. Eventually, you will begin to piece together the mysteries of your uncle's mansion which will take you to getting a good idea of what is in store in the sequel to Avarice Preview -- Avarice: The Complete Saga.

Editorial by Brad Wardell, President of Stardock Systems, Inc.
About ten years ago, adventure games such as Infocom's Planetfall and Zork allowed us to enter a virtual world. Admittedly, in those days, you could only interact with the game through a text interface. You would type "Pick up the orange" and it would get an orange that was in a room. You could, to a limited degree, interact with that world. I remember playing Planetfall for weeks and imagining what the world looked like and feeling like I was really there.

As time went on, game companies abandoned the text adventure as graphical games became the vogue. But something got lost -- the feeling that you were there. That you could taste, touch, and really manipulate objects in that world. To me, virtual reality meant I was in a "virtual" world where I could do things as if I was there. While this concept may seem like common sense, the label "virtual reality" seems to be spread pretty easily. In an age where games have increasingly become a bunch of nice artwork and videos being thrown onto the screen with little interaction with the world, it might seem that game companies have forgotten about true adventure.

However, with the introduction of Avarice, a return to true virtual reality exists. Early beta testers of Avarice have labled it "A Myst Killer". But Avarice's scope goes well beyond Myst. In Avarice, you are in a real 3D world. You can pick up objects, manipulate objects in ways the authors may not have considered, and truly interact with the world. Avarice and Myst have very little in common as they go different routes to make you feel like you are there. Myst uses excellent sound and graphics to bring you to its world along with a fantastic story, Avarice brings you there by allowing you to truly interact with the world. Slice up the apple, torch the fork. Crumple the paper and then torch the paper, etc.

For example, in Avarice you could pick up an orange, peel the orange, break the orange into pieces, step on the pieces and squeeze other pieces into orange juice or whatever. The beauty of this is that Avarice is a 100% visual game. You actually see the orange (in true 24bit photographic color detail). You actually see the crushed orange or the pieces of it. You can put those pieces on a table and see the pieces in their actual size on the table and its size will depend on how far away you are from the table.

Of course, Avarice takes place in a fully rendered 24bit color world so that its graphics are stunning. It offers a full digitized musical score with mood changes depending on the situation you are in.

The trick to this is partly the improvement in computer gaming technology and partly because of the availability of advanced operating systems such as OS/2 Warp which allows us to create a dynamic virtual world and still have good performance.

-Brad Wardell

The Future
Avarice Preview can be looked at in two different ways. The preview is a full blown game in itself that has been fully tested on a wide variety of hardware platforms and can be played from beginning to end. It can also be looked at as beta (though beta isn't quite the right term since the Avarice Preview is in itself not a "beta level" product) #4 of Avarice: The Complete Saga which arrives in the first half of 1996. The complete saga brings a much much larger world to explore, NPCs (non-player characters) to interact with, dozens of new puzzles, thousands of new objects to interact with and more. The Complete Saga, of course, will be priced significantly higher than the Preview ($69.95) since it's by far more advanced but it will indeed be a very different game (different puzzles, different endings, etc.). The plot of the complete saga is different than the Preview so that experienced Preview players can enjoy a whole new game.

Stardock Systems, Inc. 313/453-0328 313/453-1480 fax 7977b Ronda Drive Canton MI 48187

Order
Thanks to your support Stardock Systems is the leading OS/2 ISV in both the consumer and corporate market. Users have asked us to list our complete product line so that users can order it directly quickly and easily. You can fill this out and fax it to us or email it to us if you wish and we ship same day.

All our Corporate offerings are now available at your local Micro Center and OS/2 Essentials is at CompUSA. You can also obtain our software from OS/2 oriented resellers.

Choose Which Products you Want  Consumer: [ ] Galactic Civilizations 2. $59.95 [ ] Star Emperor Advanced. $49.95 [ ] Avarice Preview           $29.95

Corporate: [ ] Object Desktop            $89.95 [ ] OS/2 Essentials           $39.95

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Address: Stardock Systems, Inc. 7977B Ronda Drive Canton MI 48187 