Saturday, April 19, 2003
Snood 3.0 beta 3 for MacOS X
For awhile, it seemed as if Snood and Quark XPress were going to battle it out for the dubious distinction of being the last remaining vital Macintosh application without a native MacOS X version. Well the race isn't over yet, but with this month's new beta release, Snood has pulled comfortably ahead of XPress in achieving native OS X compatibility, proving that even a lone college professor who writes games in his spare time can accomplish more than the developers at Quark.
I'm no fan of video games, largely because I'm lousy at them. Any game that features a time limit, or the potential for your character to die instantly, is usually beyond my reach. Even harmless games like Tetris have invariably led to my undoing; by the time I reach the upper levels, the ever-increasing speed of the game has me on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So when I first discovered Snood, I found a game that reminded me of Tetris, but with no time limits, no clock, and no speed increases. In other words, it was just my kind of game. But when the big migration to MacOS X began, Snood didn't come along for the ride. I waited, and waited, until finally I gave up and accepted the fact that Snood would be one of those apps that kept me using the Classic environment much more often than I really wanted to.
A little while back, a ray of hope emitted from Snood land. Creator Dave Dobson released Snood 3.0 beta 1 for MacOS X, which proved that at least he was working on it. Beta 1 was nearly unplayable. It was too slow even for my tastes. Strange errors showed that unlike some other software we know, this one really did deserve the "beta" tag. Still, it meant that Snood for OS X would someday be a reality. When Beta 2 was released, it filled in a big piece of the puzzle. Although not all of Snood's features were yet in place, and some bugs persisted, the speed was there. Occasionally, I would lose the ability to turn my launcher all the way to the right, or lose my game entirely, but that could be forgiven; it was once again Snood time on the Mac platform. But Dave threw in one crippling limitation, which was that you could only play seventy-five games on each difficulty level before you got locked out. It was as if the developer was reminding us, "hey, this isn't finished yet, so don't get too comfy".
This month, Snood 3.0 beta 3 for MacOS X came into existence. After a few days of playing it, I can say this version does indeed seem mostly ready for prime time. The seventy-five game limitation has been nearly doubled, and although there are undoubtedly bugs, none have unveiled themselves to me yet. There are always going to be bugs faults in any ongoing software development project, but at least Dave is allowing us to help him find them, and to feed our Snood addiction in the process.
This leads to the question: what is Snood, anyway? Well, imagine a sort of upside-down Tetris in which instead of blocks falling vertically, you launch animated items (called, fittingly, Snoods) upward at any angle you wish. At the outset, there are several rows of random Snoods attached to the ceiling, and your job is to get rid of them all. You only have a certain amount of headroom, so you must use your Snoods wisely. When you connect three of the same Snood, all three disappear. The law of gravity applies here, so if additional Snoods were only hanging on by one of the three Snoods you just obliterated, they fall away harmlessly. Although there is no time limit, the ceiling does have a nasty way of lowering itself row by row after a certain number of Snoods have been fired. Subtle complexities of the game allow you to delay the fall of the ceiling by eliminating your Snoods in certain ways, and you generally learn these tricks by playing it more and observing the ways in which you lose.
To say that Snood is addictive is to say that Apple is innovative -- neither adjective does its subject justice. The fact that you don't have to play the game with any more speed than you wish to ironically often leads me to play faster, sometimes missing the easiest of shots because I was so overexcited by the fact that such an easy shot had revealed itself to me. Snood even has a menu option called "Just One More Game" that automatically quits Snood when your next game ends, filling you with the hope of freeing you from your addiction long enough to use the restroom, go to the store, or perhaps even go to work, before rushing back to your computer to start up again. The game will ruin your life, and you won't care.
Snood is not a free product, and I would urge you not to treat it like one. Like all shareware, you can download it and play it with most of its features intact without ever sending a dime in the direction of the developer. While tempting, this is not the way to encourage small-time independent developers to take the time to write OS X-native versions of their software. The fifteen dollar price tag is much less than most off-the-shelf video games, few of which provide the kind of nearly-unending enjoyment and frustration that Snood can generate. Several cool features only become available once you pay and register. If you don't want to pay for the beta, then at least consider paying up when the final release sees the light of day. In the mean time, go get that beta. There's even a message board, often frequented by the developer himself, upon which you can post comments about any bugs you find. You'll also find a mighty fine version of Snood for the Palm, as well as a few other platforms that I see no reason to name here.
Snood allows you to choose among several levels of varying difficulty, including a "Puzzle" level for those in need of variation, and there's even a "Child" level for the younger ones. But you'll soon realize that the only way to achieve a higher score in Snood is to play on the "Evil" level, which rarely allows you to win. Well, it rarely allows me to win. As I said, video games just aren't my thing.
Are you a fellow Snood addict? Trying to kick the habit? Ready to start the addiction all over again, now that you can do it natively on MacOS X? Got another game that readers need to know about? Play me.
For awhile, it seemed as if Snood and Quark XPress were going to battle it out for the dubious distinction of being the last remaining vital Macintosh application without a native MacOS X version. Well the race isn't over yet, but with this month's new beta release, Snood has pulled comfortably ahead of XPress in achieving native OS X compatibility, proving that even a lone college professor who writes games in his spare time can accomplish more than the developers at Quark.
I'm no fan of video games, largely because I'm lousy at them. Any game that features a time limit, or the potential for your character to die instantly, is usually beyond my reach. Even harmless games like Tetris have invariably led to my undoing; by the time I reach the upper levels, the ever-increasing speed of the game has me on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So when I first discovered Snood, I found a game that reminded me of Tetris, but with no time limits, no clock, and no speed increases. In other words, it was just my kind of game. But when the big migration to MacOS X began, Snood didn't come along for the ride. I waited, and waited, until finally I gave up and accepted the fact that Snood would be one of those apps that kept me using the Classic environment much more often than I really wanted to.
A little while back, a ray of hope emitted from Snood land. Creator Dave Dobson released Snood 3.0 beta 1 for MacOS X, which proved that at least he was working on it. Beta 1 was nearly unplayable. It was too slow even for my tastes. Strange errors showed that unlike some other software we know, this one really did deserve the "beta" tag. Still, it meant that Snood for OS X would someday be a reality. When Beta 2 was released, it filled in a big piece of the puzzle. Although not all of Snood's features were yet in place, and some bugs persisted, the speed was there. Occasionally, I would lose the ability to turn my launcher all the way to the right, or lose my game entirely, but that could be forgiven; it was once again Snood time on the Mac platform. But Dave threw in one crippling limitation, which was that you could only play seventy-five games on each difficulty level before you got locked out. It was as if the developer was reminding us, "hey, this isn't finished yet, so don't get too comfy".
This month, Snood 3.0 beta 3 for MacOS X came into existence. After a few days of playing it, I can say this version does indeed seem mostly ready for prime time. The seventy-five game limitation has been nearly doubled, and although there are undoubtedly bugs, none have unveiled themselves to me yet. There are always going to be bugs faults in any ongoing software development project, but at least Dave is allowing us to help him find them, and to feed our Snood addiction in the process.
This leads to the question: what is Snood, anyway? Well, imagine a sort of upside-down Tetris in which instead of blocks falling vertically, you launch animated items (called, fittingly, Snoods) upward at any angle you wish. At the outset, there are several rows of random Snoods attached to the ceiling, and your job is to get rid of them all. You only have a certain amount of headroom, so you must use your Snoods wisely. When you connect three of the same Snood, all three disappear. The law of gravity applies here, so if additional Snoods were only hanging on by one of the three Snoods you just obliterated, they fall away harmlessly. Although there is no time limit, the ceiling does have a nasty way of lowering itself row by row after a certain number of Snoods have been fired. Subtle complexities of the game allow you to delay the fall of the ceiling by eliminating your Snoods in certain ways, and you generally learn these tricks by playing it more and observing the ways in which you lose.
To say that Snood is addictive is to say that Apple is innovative -- neither adjective does its subject justice. The fact that you don't have to play the game with any more speed than you wish to ironically often leads me to play faster, sometimes missing the easiest of shots because I was so overexcited by the fact that such an easy shot had revealed itself to me. Snood even has a menu option called "Just One More Game" that automatically quits Snood when your next game ends, filling you with the hope of freeing you from your addiction long enough to use the restroom, go to the store, or perhaps even go to work, before rushing back to your computer to start up again. The game will ruin your life, and you won't care.
Snood is not a free product, and I would urge you not to treat it like one. Like all shareware, you can download it and play it with most of its features intact without ever sending a dime in the direction of the developer. While tempting, this is not the way to encourage small-time independent developers to take the time to write OS X-native versions of their software. The fifteen dollar price tag is much less than most off-the-shelf video games, few of which provide the kind of nearly-unending enjoyment and frustration that Snood can generate. Several cool features only become available once you pay and register. If you don't want to pay for the beta, then at least consider paying up when the final release sees the light of day. In the mean time, go get that beta. There's even a message board, often frequented by the developer himself, upon which you can post comments about any bugs you find. You'll also find a mighty fine version of Snood for the Palm, as well as a few other platforms that I see no reason to name here.
Snood allows you to choose among several levels of varying difficulty, including a "Puzzle" level for those in need of variation, and there's even a "Child" level for the younger ones. But you'll soon realize that the only way to achieve a higher score in Snood is to play on the "Evil" level, which rarely allows you to win. Well, it rarely allows me to win. As I said, video games just aren't my thing.
Are you a fellow Snood addict? Trying to kick the habit? Ready to start the addiction all over again, now that you can do it natively on MacOS X? Got another game that readers need to know about? Play me.
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