Skifree

SkiFree is a computer game from 1991. Objective of the game is to go on a seemingly endless slope with skis down and avoid obstacles. Graphics and controls are on a simple level. It was written by Chris Pirih, who worked at that time at Microsoft as a programmer. Currently, it is released as freeware, but the rights are currently at Microsoft.

Gameplay

The player can choose from four modes:

• Freestyle - course ( as many style points ) Collect
• Slalom Course ( race time)
• Tree Slalom ( race time around trees )
• To enter a course ( free ride )

The game can be controlled in three ways:

• With the mouse
• Using the control buttons
• Using the numeric keypad

When the player reaches the goal, the game is not finished yet. He can continue until he is pursued after 2000 meters of a snow man. When the snow man gets skiers, this is immediately eaten by him. After a further 2000 meters, the starting position is reached again.

History

Pirih developed SkiFree to familiarize yourself with C trusts, and to provide a graphical version of the old VAX / VMS ski game for VT100 terminals. The game was discovered when the responsible Program Chief of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack Pirih to saw while playing. The game was then added in the next Entertainment Pack (Version 3) (later also in the Best of Windows Entertainment Pack ).

It is available as a ported version for the Macintosh.

In 1993, Pirih working on a second part, which he abandoned in favor of other projects, he also has lost the source code. On April 4, 2005, he announced the rediscovery of the code and developed a 32- bit version of SkiFree, which can be freely downloaded.

System

SkiFree also runs on a 286 PC with CGA graphics card, but it was aimed at the faster 386 with VGA graphics card. The operating system requires at least Windows 3.0.

Since the original SkiFree is a 16- bit program that occur on 32- bit systems often compatibility issues. Therefore, it was published a 32 -bit version ( version 1.03 ) of SkiFree in April 2005. Currently there are Version 1.04 ( 2 October 2005). This version is considerably resource-efficient and run on 64 -bit CPUs.

Reactions

GnuSki is a text-based SkiFree clone, which is under GPL and has been developed in C ( Cygwin ). It is currently in version 0.50b ( March 3, 2002) before, and it still lacks some features (Monster, timer, options). There is a version for the PSP and one for the calculator TI -92.