The screen turned black and then, after a few seconds delay, a three dimensional chess board in exaggerated perspective filled most of the screen. On the rear side of the board was a set of small, white chess pieces, in their standard positions. Suddenly, pieces started jumping into the air, in long, slow parabolic arcs, growing larger as they got closer. ..
It ran even better on the Mac than the Lisa, since the Mac's faster processor enabled smoother animation.
Steve Jobs didn't play Alice very much, but he was duly impressed by the obvious programming skill it took to create it. "Who is this Capps guy? Why is he working on the Lisa?", he said as soon as he saw the program, mentioning Lisa with a hint of disdain. "We've got to get him onto the Mac team!"
Unfortunately, Apple never put the promised marketing effort into Alice. They were in a quandary because the market didn't understand the graphical user interface as a productivity enhancement yet; graphics meant games, so the Mac had to live down an initial reputation as being unsuitable for business tasks. Apple didn't exactly want to promote a game for the Mac at the time, no matter how sensational, so Alice never quite reached as wide an audience as it deserved.
Alice
Author: Andy Hertzfeld
Date: June 1982
Characters: Steve Capps, Bruce Daniels, Steve Jobs, Joanna Hoffman
Topics: Software Design, Games, Lisa, Marketing
Summary: The Macintosh's first great game
Revision: most recent of 15
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment