Amiga Format 34/af034b.adf/Revenge.Readme

Text File | 1992-03-12 | 32.2 KB | 733 lines

*** This program is Shareware. Fee is five pounds. Details of
    registration benefits follow. Please send registration fees to:

    LLAMASOFT, 49 Mount Pleasant, Tadley, Hants RG26 6BN.



Greetings, chipheads!

Welcome to the latest Llamasoft shareware release: Revenge of
the Mutant Camels.  I hope you enjoy it as much as Llamatron.
It's a different kind of game but I hope you'll like it just
as much.

Good news for Amiga owners: your version of Revenge is bigger
and more choclatey than the ST versions! When I did Llamatron,
the Amiga version came out slower and not quite as polished
as the ST version.  Amiga Revenge is much better than its ST
counterpart, partly because the speed gain from using the Blitter
is much greater where large objects are being moved, and partly
because, as I promised in the readme on Llamatron, I took extra
time out to use the Amiga hardware.  For the techie freaks
amongst you, the main things I did were as follows:

Firstly, both the main character sprites were implemented using
the Amiga's hardware sprites, which has the double benefit
of ensuring that your camel and goat always move at 50Hz and
also taking a big load off the CPU at draw time. Next, the logical
screen has been made wider than the visible screen, obviating
the need for horizontal clipping of sprites - more CPU time
saved.  Collision-detection has been improved which helps
overall playability, as does the improved frame update rate
you get as a result of all that CPU time saved.  For the same
reason you get better firepower - extra bullets onscreen. You
also get pretty raster horizons and a scroller with bigger
and more detailed objects.  512K Ami owners don't lose out
on any smoothness or graphic details on their version - the
only difference between the 512K and 1M versions is in the
quality and number of sound samples.

So all you Amites can look down and sneer at those poor ST
owners and know that your camels are better than their
camels.  But don't get too cocky - you might meet a TT owner.
Their version is awesome.


Next some information about the release.  We're trying some
fine tuning of the Shareware procedure, and I'd like to tell
you how it works this time, and exactly why.

Amiga Revenge exists in 4 versions. One of the pleasures of shareware
is that as you're not releasing a single disk in large quantities,
you can do lots of different versions of your game.  Revenge
comes in the 512K, 1Meg, 512K/NTSC and 1Meg/NTSC flavours. We
ask that libraries, networks and whoever distribute only the
512K version.  That way, we can offer (as an incentive to register)
special versions for specific machines.  You see, we can't always
provide two different games for the registration fee - I'm the
only programmer and I'm already working flat out - but we like to
offer some benefit to those who register.  So, if the 512K version
is widely distributed, people will be inclined to register to
get a version for their machine.  We're not going to any lengths to
enforce this; in the shareware tradition we'll leave that up to
the honesty of libraries and networks.  We thank you for your
co-operation.

The deal this time is as follows:  If you register Revenge you
can ask for any of the following titles:

 Revenge (512 version)
 Revenge (1Meg version)
 Revenge (512/NTSC version)
 Revenge (1Meg/NTSC version)
 Llamatron
 Gridrunner

or, you can get a special deal and have the Amiga version of
Trip-A-Tron for ten pounds (five pounds off the usual price).

Please state clearly that you want an Amiga version.  We will also
provide you with one of our classic Llamasoft posters from the
pre-Software Empire days, featuring artwork by Steinar Lund,
an awesome dude with an airbrush who vanished out of our price
range awhile back.

You can register via conventional means or by credit card (Visa,
Master Card/Access) which is handy for those registering from
overseas.  We can be reached by phone on (UK) 0734-81-4478, our
address is 49, Mount Pleasant, Tadley, Hants RG26 6BN (UK).

Please help us by spreading the 512K version along with this
README file, and forbear from distributing the other versions.


Now.

I'm going to include a bit from the Llamatron doc file here.
It's the bit where the whole Shareware idea is explained. A lot
of you will have read it before and you can skip on to the
Revenge-specific bit after.  Those who haven't, take the time
to read the explanation. You may think that we're crazy to give
away complete games for no money.  Read the explanation and find
out exactly why we've adopted the Shareware procedure.


SHAREWARE:  WHAT, HOW, WHY....

All commercial games are designed for a theoretical entity known as Darren.
Darren is a spotty 14-year-old male who doesn't get on that well with
people, so he spends all his time in his bedroom playing games on his
computer. Darren is easily impressed by graphics and music, and he
doesn't really want to learn anything really tricky - as long as it
has Ninja Hampsters in and works with a Kempston, that's OK. Somehow
he can persuade his Dad to fork out 25 quid once every few weeks for
the latest version of R-Type with different graphics on his Amiga,
don't ask me how. Either that or he waits and hits up his mate Wayne for
a pirate version in a couple of weeks' time.

Consequently, it has become much harder for programmers to retain
their creative integrity and earn a living too.  It is virtually impossible
for a small independant developer to get games out to the people
without first hooking in to one of the larger companies for distribution
and advertising, and those larger companies tend to want stuff that's
very normal, spaceship-and-alien stuff, no llamas please and not too
weird.

However, with popular disk-based machines, the idea of Public Domain
programs has really come into its own. PD libraries give access to
a large amount of free software.  PD is usually sub-commercial stuff,
often good utilities but without the 'polish' of commercial
versions.

It would be nice to use the existing PD libraries to distribute software
to anyone who is interested, and make a bit of money too - and that
is where Shareware comes in.

The principle of Shareware is simple. The game is distributed by the
PD libraries, by uploading onto BBSes and giving copies away. Users can
get a complete version of the game just for the price of the media,
and then take it home and play it. If the user likes the game, he
sends the author a Shareware fee.  Usually, the author will send
back a few goodies (as an incentive to register) and, if enough people
send in the dosh to make it worthwhile, he may do more Shareware stuff.

Naturally you don't have to pay anything if you don't like the game.
Of course a lot of people might like the game and decide not to pay,
but if too many people do that then nobody will ever bother doing any
decent Shareware at all, and it's back to Darren's 25 quid games.
So, it's down to the users - if they're honest, then programmers will
be more inclined to work hard on Shareware releases.

The idea of Shareware is very idealistic, perhaps impracticably so,
but the advantages over the conventional videogame market are so
enormous that I thought it had to be tried, at least once.  The response
from this experiment will determine whether or not Llamasoft release
any more shareware.

Advantages of Shareware:

1- It is a totally honest way of selling. All users can try the game
and only those who get hooked are morally obliged to pay the fee.
Nobody is disappointed or feels ripped-off.

2- There are no constraints on creativity. No-one says 'we cannot
publish this because it ain't mainstream'. Programmers do what the
hell they like and the users vote with their Shareware fees.

3- Anyone can play. The mechanism of distribution is already in
place in the form of PD libraries. All the originator has to provide
is a disk to each of the PD libraries with game and documentation.
So if you have good stuff it doesn't matter if you aren't signed to
a major label - if it's good, it'll get passed around the PD scene;
if it's bad nobody will bother with it.  The author could be working
for a company or coding in his bedroom; the potential for distribution
is the same. Forget spending thousands on adverts trying to convince
people to spend lots of money on a game they haven't even played
yet...

4- The concept of piracy becomes null. All that business of hacking
and cracking doesn't apply to software which is both free and
unprotected.  Shareware authors WANT their software to be spread
and copied. If it gets onto a BB in America and spreads all over
the US, well and groovy! Good Shareware exports itself!

5- Prices can be way low. Since the authors have no overheads in
terms of production and advertising, they don't need to ask as
much in payment.  And the users pay the programmers directly -
nobody else takes a cut. 100% of five pounds is better than 5% of
twenty pounds.


The advantages of Shareware as a democratic, honest way of
publishing software are pretty obvious, but it does have to go
both ways. If a programmer puts a lot of time and effort into his
code and releases it as Shareware, he's trusting you, the users, to
be honest and pay him if you like his program.  If you all just
skive off and take the stuff for free, he won't bother to do any
more stuff.  If you support the author, he'll be inclined to do
much better next time - and you'll be the ones to benefit!





REVENGE!

OK, enough serious stuff.  Now I'm gonna tell you all about the
game, all the different versions, and then just get mellow and
chat about all the stuff that's happening with this ol' beast.

First, here are the incarnations of Revenge with detailed
descriptions.

REVENGE (512K):  This is the basic release version. It
provides a complete game of Revenge, 42 levels of weirdness.

REVENGE (1Meg): Better sound effects; more samples and lots
of weird beastie noises.

REVENGE (NTSC versions):  These are as above, but use the smaller
200-line display, so that users on the other side of a very
large stretch of ocean indeed don't lose the bottom 56 lines of
their display and become able to see only the camel's head and
the tip of its hump.  In all other respects the versions are the
same as their PAL equivalents.


ABOUT THE GAME:

Revenge isn't quite as flat-out manic as Llamatron. You may or
may not be relieved to hear that.  Revenge has the same gameplay
modes as Llamatron: Solo, Droid (called CPU ASSIST in Revenge)
and Two-Player.

The gameplay is as follows:  You are a rather threadbare-looking
camel.  If you are playing CPU Assist or Two-Player, you are
accompanied by a large shaggy goatcreature called an Ancipital,
which stalked C64 screens long before Psygnosis ever did Shadow
of the Beast.  You are the Good Guys.  Your mission is simple:
stay alive through 42 zones of 7km each.  These zones are populated
by rampant telephone kiosks, skiing kangaroos, butch Greenham
Common Peace Women, manic Minters, flying sheep and all the
usual nonsense.  These are the Bad Guys.  They try to kill you
off and you, naturally and in keeping with the traditionally
calm, rational and thoughtful nature of videogames, get to waste
them with lots of spectacularly destructive weaponry.

SPECIFIC DETAILS:

To run Revenge, type REVENGE at the CLI prompt and press return.
The game will load and display the title screen appropriate to the
version, along with some information about registering to prod
the consciences of anyone who keeps playing the game and hasn't
paid yet.  Pressing FIRE gets past this screen and you'll find
the game in auto-demo.

(512K, twin drive users:  You may get a load failure if you try
and run Revenge with the second drive attached [the OS takes more
memory for the second drive, which can knacker the loader].  This
doesn't happen on my Ami but it does on me dad's, so if you get
hassle unplug that second drive, reboot and load)

You might like to eyeball the demo a while; it will demonstrate
the first twenty levels, but to see the rest you have to play!
You can interrupt the demo at any time by pressing the fire
button of the joystick you no doubt have already connected to
your other (non-mouse) port (provided you didn't break it playing
Llamatron).

Pressing FIRE to interrupt the demo brings up a menu screen.
Menu screens are all the same in operation, there are always
three options.  You select which option you want with the stick
and bop the FIRE button on your selection.

The first three options are:

MORE OPTIONS (leads you to the system options menu)
PLAY REVENGE (leads you to Game Start)
RESUME ATTRACT MODE (resumes the demo)

The default is Play Revenge.  Pressing this yields the Game Start
menu:

RESTART: Allows you to start the game at a Restart Point
PLAY: Start game
QUIT: Not play after all

Selecting Restart brings up a text-entry screen where you must
enter a valid Restart Code (more on these later).  Selecting
PLAY brings up a final menu from which you select Solo, CPU Assisi
or Team play to begin the game.

Under the More Options menu are selections allowing you to change
the sound FX phasing, set the intensity of stroboscopic effects in the
game, and view the high score table.


We recommend that you play your first few games with CPU Assist
controlling the goat.  As you get more skilful, I recommend Solo.

CONTROLS:

Your camel is controlled with a joystick thusly: Left and Right
do pretty much what you'd expect, Up causes the camel to leap into
the air and Down causes the beast to lie down on the ground. Being
a camel, the animal spits continuously, and being a Mutant Camel,
what it spits is a variety of lethal bullets.  The camel fires in
the direction the joystick is pointing.  If you hold down the
FIRE button, the camel will not jump or sit down, enabling you to
aim shots directly overhead whilst remaining on the ground.

If you are playing with the CPU Assist goat, you can use it in
conjunction with your camel. Normally the goat runs around aiming
and firing at enemies independantly.  If you get alongside the
goat (or ahead of it; it will run to you) and sit down, the goat
will mount your hump.  Once there you can carry it around and it
acts as a 'smart' gun turret, aiming at enemy targets, and as a
shield, protecting your hump from being hit.  The goat will stay
on your hump until you die or until you sit down again, which causes
the creature to leap off.  (It is possible for the camel to pick up
Player Two on the team game, but Player Two can leap off).

At the beginning of each wave there is a period of time during which the
goat will come to your side, enabling you to get the beast securely
mounted before the level begins.

Each level takes place over a set distance. That distance is
denoted onscreen by a Start Post, six 'Kilometre Posts' and
an End Post which scroll by on the ground.  The attack begins only
once the camel passes the Start Post, and ceases immediately
it passes the End Post.  Between levels you receive a Shield
Bonus for remaining shield left, and an Energy Boost which
increases your shield strength, but never by as much as you'd like.
The Shield Energy indicator is the camel's face on the right-hand
side of the status bar.  As your shields get damaged a big red 'X'
gets drawn through the face.  When the 'X' is complete it's
MacMutant Camelburgers all round at Cairo Macdonald's.

Every five levels, you get to a Restart Oasis, where you get to
see a silly animation of the camel getting refuelled, and you
are given a Restart Code.  Make a note of the Code, as you can use
it to restart a game from that point whenever you play Revenge.
Use the 'From a Restart Point' option on the game start menu.

[UPDATE: One criticism we've had from ST users is that in the font
used D's and O's look too similar, and that the restart code disappears
from the screen too quickly.  Yakly advice: keep a biro by the
machine, remember that if you don;t press FIRE during the oasis
scene you've got about fifteen seconds, and D's are bevelled at
the top whereas O's are square]

Now, on to the goodies: Powerups and Weapons.  As you play the
game, you'll notice that some of the enemies, when shot in a
particular way, will yield clouds of tiny bonuses which float
up the screen.  This is an excellent thing, because you score
the bonuses AND you get an increased chance of getting a powerup.
Powerup icons are square and drift down from the top of the
screen.  You claim a powerup by touching it with your beast.

The powerups are as follows:

'P' - Power-up current weapon by one level.  (Weapons have four
levels each of powerup - current level shown next to shield
gauge - power runs down with time).

APPLE: Add small amount to shield (12 apples=full shield)

WEAPONS: Four powerups, each with a small blue icon inside
representing the weapon type.  When power runs out, weapon
reverts to the default small blue bullets.

NIKE TRAINER: Doubles the scroll speed and therefore halves
the time taken to reach the end of a level.  Useful on tricky
levels.

CAMEL: Gives an extra life.

SMART BOMB: Kills or damages everything on screen.

HALO: Makes you invincible for about 20 seconds.

CUP OF TEA: Like a smart bomb, only more so.

'W': Warp directly to next restart point.


The goat can also collect all these powerups; so you can both have
different weapons going at the same time, which can be most
useful!


That's the good news.  The bad news is this: every time you or the
goat get hit, there is a chance of an Anti-Powerup being released.
They look like your usual powerups (coz they're handled by the
same routine) BUT they always have some RED in the border of
the icons.  Do not collect these icons. They do you bad.

POWER DOWN (looks like a backwards 'P'): Power down current
weapon by one level.

CIGARETTE: Makes your animal have a ciggie. Control becomes slow,
erratic and jerky until the ciggie is smoked.

CONFUZER: (two arrows <- -> with a warning triangle underneath)
Nasty one this. In solo and CPU assist, it causes the left/right
joystick commands to become inverted for about ten seconds. In
two player mode, the players find themselves controlling each
other's beasts!  Confuzed beasties have a green question mark
over their heads until it wears off.

SKULL: No mistaking this icon; it's red and baleful.  Instant
dead camel unless you've got a halo.  CPU-Goat can eat this with
impunity, but Player 2 in Team Mode is mortal.



KEYBOARD CONTROLS: During a level you can press 'x' to quit back
to the menu at any time; 'p' pauses the game and 'o' resumes play.

Should you complete all 42 levels, you will get to the Red-Hot
Zone where it all happens again but harder.  If you get through
THAT you get to the White-Hot Zone, and Ghodhelpyou if you get
there!



Okay, I've told you what everything does in the game. Now some
hints on how to play.


HOW NOT TO GET THE HUMP PLAYING REVENGE OF THE MUTANT CAMELS:

1: MILK THE BONUSES.  You can play Revenge just to survive
but you won't get a huge amount of points or powerups that
way.  The game is set up to reward the skilful player with
riches and bonuses once that player knows what to shoot and
when.  For example, on level 1 you can just shoot the birds
once and they fall down dead.  But if you keep shooting them
as they fall, they yield lots of bonuses.  So you get your
beastie on your hump, go directly underneath and fire straight
up at them, keeping firing as they fall down onto you, and you'll
get loads of points and loads of powerups.

2: LOOK FOR SWEET SPOTS.  Some levels have a particular place
a prudent camel can stand and not get hit (much).  Maybe you
have to send the goatie on ahead of you. Maybe it's better on
your hump. Study each wave and formulate a strategy.

3: HAVE A CIGGIE!  Because of the way ciggies slow down your
camel, if you get one just as you start to jump you will stay
in the air a lot longer than you usually would.  This can be a
Good Thing if there's a lot of nasty stuff at ground level.

4: ADVANTAGES OF DIFFERENT WEAPONS.

ROUND BLUE BULLETS (default): Good all-round weapon; can be
aimed in any direction.

LASER: Can only be aimed left and right, but inflict more
damage than RBBs, especially when powered-up.  Excellent for
some enemies, but a bitch to be stuck with when you really
need to be able to fire up.

COMB BULLETS: Can be aimed in any direction except straight
up or straight down.  Feeble in their lowest-power state, but
with successive powerups they expand into lovely screen-filling
swathes.

OVAL SINEWAVE BULLETS: Can be aimed any direction except straight
left and right.  Very slow on low power, these bullets are still
devastating because they are not stopped by the enemies.  They do
a huge amount of damage and release a lot of powerups.  Get them
powered-up for best ease of use, and despite their strength they're
not appropriate to every situation.

5: CHOOSE YOUR GRAVESITE.  If you know you're gonna die and you're
on a heinous wave, make sure you die as close to the right-hand
side of the screen as possible.  Your new camel won't be released
into the fray until your tombstone has exited on the left, and
by the time it does appear you'll be that much closer to the end
of the wave.

6: SNIPPETS.  You can herd kiosks but eventually you have to jump
them. Exploding sheep are best viewed from high above. Coke cans
and Atari logos are absolutely lethal.  10p bits do more damage
than falling receivers. Chips only disgorge bitstreams if you
hassle them.  Beware the pink laserbase in Space Invaders. When
the vicar invites you to tea, herd the mugs vertically.




REVENGE: HISTORICAL NOTES.

The original Revenge was written in autumn 1983 on the C-64, just
before I had my first ever skiing holiday. It was part of a
sequence of games comprising Attack of the Mutant Camels (implemented
on the C64 and 8-bit Atari), Revenge (C-64) and Return of the
Mutant Camels (C-64).  This latter game was Yak's last C64 game,
and some of you may have been unfortunate enough to encounter
Mastertronic's Amiga and ST versions of that last game released as
Revenge II.  Those versions were a travesty of the original
Commodore game. Mastertronic used five programmers and took as
many months to produce an absolute dog of a conversion. They'd
changed a lot of the levels and relentlessly eradicated every
ounce of playability Yak built into the Commodore original. If
you ever see the Mastertronic version anywhere, don't buy it
because it is dreadful.  They never even showed me a copy before
they released it - I had to buy it from a shop in Basingstoke -
and it's awful.  There is only one true 16-bit Revenge, and this
is it.

The names of the 42 levels, and the overall themes, are the same
as those in the original Commodore game.  Those of you who played
the old game will be better prepared to handle the enemies as they
behave in a manner similar to their Commodore counterparts (sometimes).
Of course the original game had no goat, no powerups, no restart
points, no team mode and only one bullet on the screen at once, so
don't expect it to be exactly the same as you remember!




WHAT'S HAPPENIN'...

It's definitely long afghan weather down here in the nether
regions of Wales; damp sheep and mud everywhere. Good time of
year for sitting around all day in front of the assembler with
some loud music on and getting down to it.  I've been working
on two things at once just recently, which is bearable but a
bit frustrating sometimes.  I work maybe a week on each project
and then change over, which is OK but what happens is that just
as you get well into flow on one thing, you have to stop and change
over to the other.  It's a bit like having to stop in the middle of
having a pee. Takes you a day or two to get momentum back when you
change over.

The two things have been: this game and the fifth-generation
lightsynth system I'm working on. Not prepared to release a lot of
details just yet, suffice to say we're already a million miles
beyond Trip-A-Tron and no sign of slowing down yet.  Back to some
seriously obsessive coding and a head full of lightsynth all day...
...well, who needs a social life anyway?


(Addendum - looks like I'm just about to score a nice hefty Amiga
(9Megabytes, 40M hard drive) off a guy who has moved on to bigger
and better things (80486 40MHz type things) - I can live with the
Amiga OS running off a hard drive.  Maybe it won't be such a pain
working on the Amiga this time around!)

[Addendum to addendum: Unfortunately this deal never happened.
Turned out the guy who offered me this deal was full of the
excrement of male bovines and was not exactly being honest
with me.  Visions of the Amiga OS on hard disk, hassle-free
CLI-usage, no disk-swapping, and huge ray-trace anims to use
with our lightsynth sadly fade and die.  Back to th' A500...]


We're still having a good response from the two versions of Llamatron
out there, which by now appears to have gone totally global. We
have had registrations from all over the planet - including our
first from Moscow the other day!  The Amiga version of 'Tron
generated less of a response than the ST version despite an initial
release of more copies.  Draw your own conclusion about the respective
proportion of Darrens in the Amiga/ST user bases...

[Yeah! C'mon you Amiga dudes!!]

We just snuck onto the last coverdisk of NCE before it folded, with
our Shareware release of Colourspace.  This is doing quite nicely,
generating both registrations and orders for Trip-A-Tron from those
who really take to the lightsynth idea.  This is what we had hoped;
the lightsynth has always been hard to describe in adverts, so what
better way to stimulate Trip-awareness than by using 'Space to
advertise the concept?

So what's next?  Well, the lightsynth work has a ways to go yet;
the hardware's being built around me and as more comes online
there's more to do. We got enough together that we've been doing
a few gigs already. I've the Amiga version as mentioned above,
should take me a month at the outside. Then, skiing!!!!!! and just
MAYBE when I get back I'll get my hands on Jaguar, the new Atari
beastie.  I'm looking forward to getting into some serious 50Hz
grooviness on this new machine.  Atari reckon it's piles better
than the Panther, which wasn't exactly bad in the first place.
I don't know any intimate tech details just yet but what I
do know is enough to know that technically at least it'll nuke
Famicom.  As I've said before they need the software to match.
Good software sells systems.  A couple of weekends ago I had five
guys staying here the weekend. We all played a lot of F-Zero (the
awesome driving game on the Famicom) and two of those guys went away
intending to order their own Famicom systems ASAP just so they could
play F-Zero. Atari get five, 10 games like that on the Jag and they
could have Nintendo.  Here's hoping...

A warning: next time anyone sees me you're gonna see a bit of the
Yakly anatomy never before exposed in public. You have been
warned.

As for my next Shareware piece, I haven't decided.  I've had
requests for updated versions of everything from Hover Bovver to
Iridis Alpha, and it would fur sure be fun to resurrect and
bring to the future one of those old games, but part of me is
also thinking of maybe some new original work.  I'll think about it.
I have a few ideas which have even got as far as a little bit of
code, so wait and see!

[I'm still thinking about it. I'm inclining towards something
so totally and utterly thrash fast that it'll make Llamatron
look geriatric. Adrenaline junkies stand by...  Use the rush!!]


You know, sometimes I wonder whether I ought to stop all this
for a few months and have a go at being human?  Then again,
the habits of ten years die hard, the relentless advance of
technology constantly brings new challenges and possibilities,
and Yak can communicate with infinitely more people in infinitely
more places via this medium, in which I'm quite good, rather
than via conventional social means, where one has to operate
sequentially, and what the hell someone gotta code the transputers.
Used to worry about that stuff a lot more when it looked like
the lightsynth was on indefinite hold and trying to get a game
into the commercial system was like trying to poke butter up a
porcupine's ..er.. ..nostril with a red-hot pin regardless of
how good the games actually might be.  Now the lightsynth is back
an' better than ever and I can actually get stuff out there thanks
to Shareware; there aren't enough hours in the day for coding
and I'm back in there full force.  I don't even stop to watch
Neighbours any more. 5am is not uncommon.  Yak's happy.

[Hell, I've been without any TV at all for the last few weeks,
aerial's knacked, and I haven't really missed it.  Done a pile
of work these last few days.  Get it fixed one of these days
I suppose, but you be surprised how you don't miss it.

I'm pleased right now 'coz on 31 Jan I'm outta here, I'm off
to the mountains for a few weeks to do the downhill-sliding
thing.  Excellent.  Big rush all day doing what must surely
be one of the most excellent physical activities ever devised,
then booze it up in the Vieux Tyrol at night, then get up
an' do it all again!  Can't wait, me....]

Well, that's about it for this ASCII file.  Big thanxx to everyone
who supported us with Llamatron and Colourspace.  Let's hope we
can do it again this time, only more so. We'll be letting you know
how it goes, and as usual comments and feedback on the game are
always welcome (and get heard too - you'll notice no text
hanging around onscreen and the ability to set strobe intensity
in Revenge).


See'ya next time...

-- Y a K  20/11/91


ps You can't sit down right next to the left edge of the screen.
If you try it you'll make the camel twitch in a convulsive manner which
had at least one game tester helpless with laughter.



YAK GREETS:

(I put these at the end. I wouldn't dream of making you read them
if they bore you. No demo-writer, me).

YAK sez HI to: Wulf (one workstation per student! and those Cerebus
books were AMAAAAAAZING!), Marco and the London guys who are trying to
help VL right now; the Landscape Design guys (how's the beastie?
fixed yer other channels yet? and remember that night we watched
Koyyanisqatsi and did the Proto thing hehe...), Keith and Sophie
(get yer little bro and sis on this one Soph); 'Lope (who finally
did communicate) yer married bastard; Anna (different Kronschnabl
(is that right?) this time, same result:addiction), Mr. Todd,
'Rubber Chicken' Capon, M.C.Urtis and Hendy the Mad Mathemagician,
TT (gonna be a tt pretty soon yeah?), TC, Lisa and family (got that
white Porsche yet?), and anyone else who considers it good to be
greeted by a long hairy programming animal with a camel fixation.

Repeat after me: "I CAN MOVE MOVE MOVE ANY MOUNTAIN"



[YAK's sonixx recommendations:

-- Shamen (En:Tact in particular, but check out some of their
earlier stuff which may surprise you if you like early Floyd!)
-- Bassomatic 'Set The Controls'
-- Primal Scream 'Screamadelica'
-- Inspirals 'The Beast Inside'
-- Jesus Jones 'Doubt'
-- The KLF 'The White Room'
-- The Orb 'Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld'
-- Faith No More 'The Real Thing'
-- that Jane's Addiction one with 'Been Caught Stealing' on it


Kickass console recommendations:

F-Zero (S-Famicom)  TOP driving game

Super Mario Land (Mario 4) Definitive platform game, not as pretty
as Sonic on the Sega but lots harder and more levels so you ain't
gonna complete it in two days.  Plus you get to ride a cute
dinosaur-beastie called Yoshi which can be persuaded to excrete
special mushrooms. Oh yeah, it's on S-Famicom.

Thunder Force III (Megadrive): horizontal scrollie blast like
you seen 1000 times before, but it's pretty good and has some
absolutely crazy psychedelic graphics (check out the Fire
Planet).

S.T.U.N Runner (Lynx): Ultra fast 3D driving game where you
shoot down tubes, like a hi-tech bobsleigh. The Lynx version
is amazing and beats piss out of those awful ST and Amiga
versions which updated the screen at one frame per Sunday.

Well, must go - I got disks to make. Amigoids - enjoy your
Revenge...


-- YaK  10/1/92

]