.KEYWORD billiards
.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT SHOOTOUT
.TITLE Palm games for pool sharks
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY Steve Niles has put himself behind the 8-ball to review two fun billiards games for the Palm OS.
.AUTHOR Steve Niles
Living on a coconut plantation in the former British colony of the Solomon Islands, I ended up playing a lot of the English game of snooker at the company’s social club. Snooker is to billiards what cricket is to baseball, in that it’s got a complicated scoring system, a far -to-busy playing field, a bewildering set of rules designed to maximize your ability to foul, and a vocabulary that’s just plain silly. It’s amazing the British manage to look so dignified when they’re constantly hitting googlies and getting snookered. In my few attempts at mastering the game, I excelled only at scoring points for the opposing team.
It comes as no small amount of relief to be back in a country where a standard barroom attraction is the simple, elegant billiards game. As long as you can remember whether you’re stripes or solids and are careful not to scratch or knock the 8-ball in before its time, you’re fine. It also helps to have a fair amount of eye-hand coordination and a basic understanding of the laws of physics, but other than that, billiards is a relatively simple game.
It also makes for a fun Palm OS game, two great examples of which can be found in Enzyme’s PalmPool and Megasoft’s Billiard applications.
.H1 PalmPool
PalmPool is available from Enzyme at http://www.enzyme.org/palmpool/index.html. Of the two billiards games I looked at, this one has the more expansive tabletop, leaving plenty of room for the small balls to bounce around in a highly satisfying manner. However, the small size of the balls makes them difficult to discern, especially on a monochrome screen, as pictured in Figure A.
.FIG A Without benefit of color, the billiard balls can be difficult to distinguish.
A color version of the game is available for you lucky Palm IIIc owners, and the difference between the striped and solid balls is represented by coloring them either red or blue, as shown in Figure B.
.FIG B Palm IIIc owners can enjoy the color version of PalmPool.
Of course, it would still be nice to get a more accurate view of each ball’s color and number, so to do that, you just tap on Zoom and then select the region you’d like to enlarge, as shown in Figure C.
.FIG C Use the Zoom button to get a better look at your balls.
I tended to like PalmPool’s handling over that of Megasoft’s Billiard application. Lining up the pool cue is generally easier. You simply tap on the screen, and the cue stick draws a straight line between the cue ball and the tip of your stylus. You’re then free to move the stylus 360 degrees around the cue ball until you find your target. Once you’ve got the cue stick lined up, you use the power-meter bar above the pool table to select the strength with which you want to strike the cue ball. Then you hit Go. The virtual cue stick draws back and pounces on the cue ball, sending it streaking across the tabletop. If you’re lucky, you’ll send the ball you were aiming for into one of the waiting pockets.
Playing billiards on a Palm device has a major advantage over playing in real life. If you’re not sure that you’ve lined up your shot as perfectly as you hoped, you can hit the Test button, and the projected flight path of your cue ball and target ball will be displayed for you. In some circles, they might call this cheating. Figure D demonstrates an example of the Test function.
.FIG D Find out where your balls are headed before you take your shot.
Figure D shows another of the entertaining features of PalmPool. In the upper left-hand corner you’ll see the cigar chomping character, Steven. Other characters include Anna, and the enigmatically named Man, and Woman. You can choose among them to represent yourself and your human or computer opponent. Throughout the game, your computer opponent will attempt to psych you out with trash talk. Even the genteel looking Anna can rattle off some morale-crushing zingers.
Remember to focus and don’t let them throw you off your game. If you do manage to beat the computer, though, it won’t give you much satisfaction. Both Anna and Steven are incredibly sore losers. They also have an odd tendency to quote from Bruce Campbell’s character in Army of Darkness.
.H1 Billiard
Megasoft’s Billiard can be found at http://www.megasoft2000.com/games/Billiard.html. The game has a slightly different look and feel to it than does PalmPool. The tabletop is smaller, and the balls are represented with much larger graphics, as you can see in Figure E.
.FIG E Billiard has a bigger set of balls.
While it certainly makes the various balls easier to tell apart, they don’t quite bang around the table with the same exuberance as they do in PalmPool. When a cluster forms in one corner, they just kind of shuffle around together like a bunch of shy preteen boys at a school dance. It can be extremely difficult to break up a clump. You just kind of have to chip away at it.
On the other hand, Billiard does offer far more options than PalmPool, one of which allows you to change the size of the billiard balls, making them smaller. You can also change the size of the pockets, the table speed, and the strength of the cushion rebound. Figure F shows the main menu screen, where you can also select the type of game you wish to play: 8-ball, 9-ball, or Pyramid.
.FIG F Billiard allows for a lot of game customization.
Once you begin playing, you can open up the Menu and select Options in order to customize your gaming experience even further. There you can toggle on or off the sound, Step Mode, and Trace. Step Mode interrupts the game after each shot to ask if you’d like to continue or to watch a replay of the last shot, and trace displays the projected trajectory of your cue ball. The Options screen also gives you a choice between green and cyan for the cloth color of the tabletop.
Going back to the tabletop view, on the righthand side there are a number of other controls. The power-meter bar works much the same way as in PalmPool, and the R button begins a replay of the last shot. You can also reverse the view of the tabletop and rotate the cue stick with the circular arrow buttons. The most unique feature, however, is the display in the center of the right-hand control panel. There, you can adjust your aim in order to make dramatic curve shots, as shown in Figure G.
.FIG G Billiard allows you to make curve shots.
.H1 Conclusion
Both these games have pros and cons, making it difficult to choose a clear winner between the two. It doesn’t even help to base a decision on price, as PalmPool will cost you $10.95, and Billiard is only moderately more expensive at $15.00. Billiard is definitely the more feature-rich game, though PalmPool has more personality and a roomier tabletop. If you’re a real pool shark, however, it’d probably be worth your while to get both. You could easily pick up the necessary cash by hustling a few bets at your local pool hall.
Personally, I’m waiting for the snooker simulator. I need to hone my skills, as I’ve got a few old scores to settle.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on PalmPool, visit http://www.enzyme.org/palmpool/index.html.
For more information on Billiard, visit http://www.megasoft2000.com/games/Billiard.html.
For more information on snooker, visit http://www.snookernet.com.
For more information on Bruce Campbell, visit http://www.bruce-campbell.com.
For more information about Palm computers, visit http://www.palm.com.
.H1 Bulk reprints
Bulk reprints of this article (in quantities of 100 or more) are available for a fee from Reprint Services, a ZATZ business partner. Contact them at reprints@zatz.com or by calling 1-800-217-7874.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.ee6ee45
