''Maelstrom'' is a

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

developed by Andrew Welch, released as

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

in November 1992 for

Mac OS Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded "M ...

. The game is an enhanced clone of

Atari, Inc. Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari was a key player in the formation of the video arcade and video game industry. Based primarily around the Sunny ...

's 1979 arcade game with a visual style similar to the

Atari Games Atari Games Corporation, known as Midway Games West Inc. after 1999, was an American producer of Arcade game, arcade Video game, games. It was formed in 1985 when the coin-operated Arcade game, arcade game division of Atari, Inc. was transfered ...

1987 sequel, . was released when there were few action games for the high-resolution color displays of the Macintosh, so it garnered much interest, despite the dated concept, and led to the creation of

Ambrosia Software Ambrosia Software was a predominantly Macintosh software company founded in 1993 and located in Rochester, New York, U.S. Ambrosia Software was best known for its Macintosh remakes of older arcade games, which began with a 1992 version of Atari, ...

. The game was later released as

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

, resulting in ports for other platforms.

Gameplay

is played in a 2D overview in a section of space. The object of the game is to reach the highest score possible by shooting asteroids with a plasma cannon from a spaceship. The ship can move in any direction across the screen and also has a limited amount of shield. The player may also pick up

power-up In video games, a power-up is an object that adds temporary benefits or extra abilities to the player character as a game mechanic. This is in contrast to an item, which may or may not have a permanent benefit that can be used at any time chosen ...

s and encounter unusual objects and enemies throughout the game.

Development

was created using

THINK C Think C (stylized as THINK C; formerly Lightspeed C) is an extension of the C programming language for the classic Mac OS developed by Think Technologies, released first in mid-1986. THINK was founded by Andrew Singer, Frank Sinton & Mel Conway. ...

and uses 18,000 lines of C code with 9,000 lines of inline

assembly language In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence be ...

Reception

In 1993, Maelstrom won "Best New Macintosh Product" in the "

Shareware Industry Award The Shareware Industry Awards were a series of awards issued annually by the Shareware Industry Awards Foundation during the Software Industry Conference. Origin of the Shareware Industry Award The Software Industry Conference website notes: "The S ...

s for Best Game," as well as receiving other awards.

Legacy

Welch gave the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

Sam Lantinga Sam Oscar Lantinga is a computer programmer. He used to be the lead software engineer at Blizzard Entertainment, where he was known to the community as Slouken. He is best known as the creator of the Simple DirectMedia Layer, a very popular open ...

, who created a SDL port and released it in 1995. It included networked multiplayer. In 1999 Ambrosia Software released Latinga's version 3.0 as

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

(GPL). In 2010, Andrew Welch and Ian Gilman released the game's contents under the free

Creative Commons license A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics ...

''Attribution'',Mercurial > Maelstrom / changeset
on libsdl.org "Andrew Welch and Ian Gilman allow the artwork and animations to be used under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license" (15 April 2010) which makes completely

References

External links

Official Page

Maelstrom 3.0
on libsdl.org {{Ambrosia Software 1992 video games Video game clones Ambrosia Software games Open-source video games Multidirectional shooters Linux games Classic Mac OS games Commercial video games with freely available source code Creative Commons-licensed video games Video games developed in the United States