The Latest & Greatest Top 201 Games/The Latest and Greatest Top 201 Games (Maple Media)(1994).iso/llama/readme.txt

Text File | 1986-08-24 | 24KB | 521 lines

THE CASH-INDUCING STUFF:

This game is Shareware. If you enjoy the game please reward the
programmers by sending us some dosh.  You will be rewarded with
some Llamasoft goodies (including our legendary Rock-Hard Llama
poster) and if you desire, an enhanced version of the game,
featuring support for AdLib and Roland sound cards on all PCs,
and an option for users with 386 or better CPUs to play a faster
version of the game written for their CPU.

The shareware fee is 10 pounds (UK), 20 dollars (US), 30 DM (Germany)
or equivalent.  Preferred payment method is by International Money
Order made payable to Llamasoft, or by credit card: we can accept
payment on Visa/Mastercharge plastic.  Send your number or register
by 'phone.

Send the bunce to: LLAMASOFT, 49 Mount Pleasant, Tadley, Hants RG26 6BN
                                (UK)
or 'phone credit card info to Llamasoft on (UK) 0734-81-4478.

If you require the enhanced version, please specify whether you
want it on 3.5" or 5.25" disk.

As a registered user, you will be entered into our Database of Honest
Dudes and as such will receive information about further Llama-activity
on the PC and an opportunity to get new games before they are widely
released - for example our next release, the classic "Revenge of the
Mutant Camels"...

Please spread this game everywhere. Upload it, copy it, give it
away, only please keep this README file with it and in an easy-to-read
format.  The Yak thanks you for your co-operation.


NOTES ABOUT THE PC IMPLEMENTATION:

PC Llamatron will work in EGA or VGA graphics modes. It may be played
from the keyboard or with joysticks.  It is compatible with any CPU
from the 8086 up, but we recommend at least a 286-12 system.

Some video cards can cause the game to slow down when screen-flashes
or colour-cycling are used.  Try the game in standard mode, and if
you notice conspicuous discontinuities or 'lurching' of the display,
use the Install program to change to the version with flashing
and pulsing disabled, and all will be well.

Llamatron generates sound for users of Roland, AdLib and SoundBlaster
cards (Roland and Adlib on registered versions only).

The SoundBlaster mode is particularly good as you get all the
wicked sampled effects out of the original ST/Ami game (Oh Yeah!!).
If you haven't got any soundcard at all, just put on some good heavy
blasting music or get a friend to make the noises for you.  I'd rather
play in silence than have horrible farty noises coming out of the
squitty little thing which passes for a speaker on most PCs.

You can run PC Llamatron from floppy or use Install to put it
on a hard disk.  To run the game, navigate to the directory where
you installed it and type LLAMA.  You can run INSTALL at any time
from the same directory to change the game options.  From inside
the game, you can exit to DOS by pressing Q on the title page
(the one with all the bouncing beasties).


THE LLAMA STORY...

To use the old commercial line...

Congratulations! You are now the owner of LLAMATRON, a fast-action
arcade-style game guaranteed to have your FIRE button finger dangling
off at the tendons! '90s ultraviolence in its very essence! Hours of
fun for you (and a camel-friend if you like) blowing away horde after
horde of alien fiends in the comfort of your own personal environment!


-- WHY?

You may be wondering why you have the latest Llama release either for
free or the price of a PD disk. Loads of reasons. Loads. Call the
cops.

Allow Yak to explain:

Llamasoft has been around since 1982. This makes us just about the
longest surviving software house ever {okay except Microdeal, hey
you guys, I know, well done, glad you are still around and hey!
don't sue me, I just play this here keyboard} and we have a pretty good
perspective on the industry of video game production and the way it
has evolved.

This is how it was:

In the very early days, there was a very close relationship between
the originators of games and those who played them. You would go
along to (say) the Vic Centre, there would be a bunch of games, you
play them and buy the ones you like. Funky. Bad games didn't sell,
good ones did.

Then, as with anything which becomes popular, the Men In Suits moved in.
They saw some programmers getting rich selling to the people, so they
decided to move in. "Let us help these poor programmers", they sez.
"We can sell these games to the people. Let the programmers get back
to their assemblers and not have to worry about duplicating tapes and
filling their living rooms with huge piles of stock".

And so the Men In Suits came, and placed their full-page airbrushed
artwork adverts in all the mags, and the programmers went back to their
assemblers and for a while they were happy. The Men In Suits were happy
too, because they got to take a cut, and soon some of them were driving
Porsches.

The Men In Suits looked out upon the market, and they were sorely
dismayed at the diversity of the products. "This is not efficient",
they thought. "How can we best use this market? How can it be made
to serve us well?"  And they created film licences and arcade
conversions. They burned the midnight oil, murmuring incantations
over their calculators and their mobile 'phones, and eventually they
came up with the Formulas. "Loads of graphics!", they told the
programmers. "Loads of music! Arnie Schwarzenegger in it! No need to
design a new game - just change the graphics in these few basic designs
and put a picture of Indiana Jones on the box! You'll never have to
think again!"

The programmers went back to their assemblers. The Men In Suits handed
them pieces of paper upon which were written the exact specifications
for the games.  The programmers had to pay their mortgages, so they
coded and were employed. The Men In Suits laughed, and took a bigger
cut, and moulded the market to make themselves an even bigger pile.
Soon, some of them were driving Ferraris and getting pissed at
industry dinners.


This is how it is:

All video games are designed for a theoretical entity known as Darren.
(PC owners - I know this isn't so true for your system, most games
are simulators or deep RPGs - this was written in an Amiga/ST context)
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!


This game is based on an old Williams arcade game by the same dude
who wrote Defender.  The game - Robotron - was a big hit in the early
Eighties, and an official sequel - Smash TV - was an arcade hit last
year.  Llamatron takes the Robotron idea and distorts it in a Yakly
fashion, adding loads of new stuff and plenty of furry beasties in
the Llamasoft style.  We could have flogged it as a pretty good budget
game via conventional means, but Yak decided to try it as shareware
'coz he liked the idea so much. So here it is - so pay up, dude!


Now, how to play Llamatron is what you want to know, so here goes:

HOW TO PLAY LLAMATRON

Boot up the game from wherever you've put it. Make sure that
the disk isn't write protected, as the game will write a
160-byte highscore record to it after your game.  (Note for PC
users:  If you are running off a floppy drive and the disk is
write-protected, when the game goes to write the scores the
machine will appear to 'lock up'.  Don't panic, it hasn't crashed,
all that is happening is that DOS is bitching about the write
protect but you can't see the 'Abort, Retry, Fail' message.  Just
press 'f' on the keyboard and all will be well. Or un-write-protect
the floppy and press 'r' if you want to save the scores).


Control is via keyboard or via one or two joysticks.  With
two sticks, two-player simultaneous play is possible.  Play
from the keyboard by using the cursor keys for movement and
the spacebar in place of the joystick button.  Wherever the following
text refers to the FIRE button or joystick directions, use the
keyboard equivalents.

Once the game has loaded you'll see the intro screen. Press FIRE to
get past it. You might like to read the scroller that follows
for a summary of the gameplay.

At the title screen, moving the joystick up/down selects 1 or
2 player mode, left/right selects between Solo, Player+Droid
and Team mode.  For Team mode, you need another stick
for your partner to control his camel with.

You press FIRE to begin play.

GAME OBJECTIVES

You play the part of a totally hard laser-spitting llama. Your
mission is to collect all the tiny sheep, llamas, camels and
goats you see on each wave.  Standing in your way are great
herds of unintelligent but numerous Grunt enemies, plus a veritable
menagerie of nasty creeps which fire at you, dodge your fire, emit
fire hydrants, try to ram you, murder your llamas and shoot your ass
off with lasers. Kill them deadly.

Not everything can be killed, and some enemies take more than one
shot to destroy.

Your ultimate objective - destroy the Ozric Tentacle of level 99
and get to Herd Heaven on level 100.

[Slight PC Variation: the vanilla '86 version of the game does
not have the Tentacle, just a very hard wave.  The '386 version
has the tentacle in all its Ozric glory].

USING THE JOYSTICK (or keyboard, remember what I said)..

The llama fires continuously. For your first few levels, don't press
the FIRE button at all while you get used to moving the llama around.
Always use the Droid option while you are learning - you can concentrate
on just not running into anything while your Droid goes and gets all
the beasties.

The FIRE button comes into its own in the advanced and utterly necessary
technique of 'locking'.  This enables you to lock the angle of fire,
so you can keep firing at a target whilst running away from it! It is
quite simple - with the fire button NOT pressed, walk in the direction
you want to aim in, then hold down FIRE and walk away - the fire angle
is locked until you release the firebutton.  With practise you will
learn to lock and re-aim very quickly in tight spots.  Remember
that good locking makes for a living llama!

POWERUPS

From time to time, and depending on whether you collect your beasties
up and which targets you kill, you'll see various powerup icons
drift temptingly in your general direction. Get these for groovy
stuff like 3-way shots, Invincibility, extra llamas, Warp five
levels, Smart Bombs (looks like a tomato) and Floyd bonuses. If you
leave the title page alone for a minute, a scroller will occur which
shows you what all these things look like.


BROLLIES (that's Umbrellas, US dudes....)

On some levels you may see a number of brollies floating around on
the screen.  These brollies make it rain from the top and right
side of the screen, the intensity of the precipitation being
determined by the number of umbrellas.  To stop the rain, touch
each brolly with the body of your llama, causing it to open.

PLAY MODES

There are three play modes and an optional extra 2-joystick mode.
The modes are:

1: Standard 1-Player... just you and them.

2: Player Plus Droid... You are joined by a purple blob, which is
invincible, and does much funky stuff, like tootle round getting all
your beasties for you and shoot up the meanies for you.  You are
advised to play your first few games with the Droid helping you.

3: Team Mode... You are joined by a friend, who happens to be a
camel. You work together to get the beasties and trash the opposition.
You share a common score and lives.

Two-joystick mode: If you are lucky enough to have a setup which
allows you to use two joysticks bolted to a table, one in each hand,
you can use this mode, which recreates the firing method of the
Williams arcade machines.  You use the usual stick to move your
llama, and the second stick to aim the shots.  To access this mode
begin a game by pressing FIRE on the second stick instead of your
usual one.

During a game: 'x' to exit back to the title screen, 'p' for pause
on, 'o' for pause off

On title screen: 'q' to quit back to DOS

Game Tips:

- Play your first few games with a droid, and don't worry about using
Lock until you're ready.  Once you master Lock, you'll really start to
go places and kick serious ass.

- Do collect your beasties.  It's good for your score, increases
the chance of Invincibilities, Love Hearts, Warps and 3-Ways, and
gives you a brief period of Hot Bullets, which can be seriously
useful, especially where Screaming Mandies are concerned!

- Get Love Hearts. The beasties love you and run towards you, for
about sixty seconds.

- If the last thing you do on a level is collect the last beastie
or a 3-Way icon, then the first object destroyed on the next wave will
yield another 3-Way. Grab this for immediate kickass blastability!

- Give 'em furry llama fury!



OK, boot up, check it out, and if you agree that it's got more of
a hook than most twenty-quid-graphics-demo type games, and you
want to see some more, send us yer loot.

Aim, lock, and I'll see you in Herd Heaven!


-- Y a K



VARIOUS: (The erratic ramblings of a shaggy boanthrope, 11/8/92)..


Well this is something I never thought I'd see - a PC version of
Llamatron!   It's down to the very excellent PC coding of
Jonathan Howell, who rang us up and offered to do the PC conversion..
how could we refuse?  He's had the unenviable task of battling
through my 68000 source and converting it, and I think you'll
agree that he's done an excellent job.  So don't just make him
proud, make him RICH! - and send your Shareware regs to Llamasoft.

We're really interested to see how our Shareware goes on the PC.
We've done pretty well out of the ST and Amiga markets, and they
are minuscule compared to the PC market, plus they have no real
history of shareware.

At the time of writing this I'm using the beta-test version on
my scummy old 286-12, off the keyboard, with no sound card. My
best score so far is about 658,000 with a droid and 530,000
without one.  The game is playable off the keyboard, but you'll
soon be wanting a joystick to get those tricky diagonals.  If you
have a lot of problems using the keyboard, use the droid to help
you play.

A word of warning to those who sneak a few games in the office:
Llamatron is a hectic and tense shoot-em-up which can often lead
to amazing heights of tension as you spot the crucial Love Heart
or Smart Bomb zooming towards you at the critical point in a really
hard wave.  This tension can be unpleasantly shattered when an enemy
nails your llama mere pixels from the appropriate goodie.  My
experience of Llamatron players is that, at such a time, even the
most mild-mannered of players may sometimes be moved to vent their
frustration with a few choice words.  Periodic apparently psychotic
swearing emerging from behind your screen will soon alert the
boss to the fact that you aren't running a spreadsheet.  Anyone
playing on a laptop system should also heed this warning or risk
being arrested.  Anyone who has one of those funky TFT colour laptops
and uses it to play Llamatron on is obviously far too rich and
should be arrested anyway.



ABOUT LLAMASOFT: or The Ungulate's Progress

Since we envisage this game being distributed to a massive userbase
all over the world, it's likely that a lot of you will not have
heard about Llamasoft or its deeds.  We're quite well known as
the weird outfit in the UK and some parts of Europe, but for those who
are interested and don't know about us, here is some info.

LLAMASOFT consists of three people.  They are:

YAK - Tall thin shaggy boanthropic humanoid with double obsessions
in coding and herbivorous beasties.  Lives alone with one Siamese cat
(called Denis) and two sheep (Molly and Flossie) miles from anywhere
in West Wales.  Can't make up his mind whether Roger Waters or
Eugene Jarvis is God.

YAK'S MUM: - Runs the business and paperwork side of the business,
in fact does all the things that Yak is too lazy to do, including
his washing.

YAK'S DAD: - Chief games tester, and chief dude for Yak to bounce
ideas off.  Co-designer of 'Hover Bovver' on the C64. Ranked #4
in the world playing Andes Attack.

LLAMASOFT has been in existence for 10 years this year (1992).
During that time we've done a lot of games for quite a few
different machines.  They are:

Vic-20: Andes Attack (sold as 'Aggressor' in the US; Traxx;
Gridrunner; Laser Zone; Matrix (sold as 'Attack of the Mutant
Camels' in the US, which is confusing, as AMC is actually a
completely different game on the C64);  Hell Gate,
Metagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time, and Abductor.

VIC-20 RARE COLLECTORS' ITEM: 'Rat Man', withdrawn from sale
after a couple of weeks because... er... it wasn't very good.

C-64: Gridrunner, Matrix, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Laser
Zone, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, Hover Bovver, Sheep In Space,
Metagalactic Llamas etc., Mama Llama, Ancipital, Batalyx,
Iridis Alpha, Return of the Mutant Camels, Hell Gate, Voidrunner.

Atari 8-Bit: Gridrunner, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Hover Bovver.

Atari ST: Andes Attack, Super Gridrunner, Photon Storm, Defender II,
Llamatron, Revenge of the Mutant Camels.

Amiga: Super Gridrunner, Photon Storm, Defender II, Llamatron,
Revenge of the Mutant Camels.


As well as games, Llamasoft have been developing the concept of
the 'light synthesiser' (like a musical instrument except that
the performer composes in dynamic interactive light and colour instead of
music, designed to be used WITH music) - and this has appeared
in various incarnations as Psychedelia (Vic20/C64/MSX/Spectrum),
Colourspace (Atari 8-bit/ST/BBC) and Trip-A-Tron (ST/Amiga).
Yak is currently working with a couple of most excellent hardware
and software dudes on the next generation of light synthesiser
running on a proprietary transputer-based system.

YAK branched out into Shareware in 1991 with the release of Llamatron
on the ST and Amiga, and Llamasoft are very pleased with the result.
Yak also does commercial games and is currently under contract to
Atari to develop a game on the new Falcon 030 platform.  Expect lots
of giant camels and flying killer sheep.


YAK would like to thank:  Jonathan Howell for an excellent job
of conversion, all the regulars down the Fox and Hounds for
putting up with the weirdo, Primal Scream, The Orb, The Shamen,
whoever wrote Super Mario Bros IV and F-Zero on the Snes, Eugene
Jarvis for the best arcade games ever created, the makers of
PG Tips tea, the makers of 'Sheba' and 'Hartz Cat Treats' (on
behalf of Denis),  HiSoft for an excellent 68000 assembler,
Rizla, Atari, the Virtual Light Co., and of course all those
excellent souls who are going to shower us with loot for this
game.

YAK greets *.*

-- 11/8/92


(Pass it next to Mel Croucher, for his original idea of Darren..)