EnigmA Amiga Run 1998 May/EnigmA AMIGA RUN 27 (1998)(G.R. Edizioni)(IT)[!][issue 1998-05].iso/earcd/mags/hd-utils/txt/news.txt

Text File | 1998-03-27 | 20KB | 461 lines

NEWS ABOUT AMIGA GAME-SCENE
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Genetic Species Information Pack
==================================
The game is now virtually complete, however, it has been delayed
a little and will probably now not reach us until late April.
Something that has not been talked about much is the level editor
that will be released for the game.  This won't actually be released
at the same time as the game but shortly after.

Dottet through this article you will also find some new screenshots
of the game, I m sure you'll agree that these look utterly brilliant.
Anyway, enough of the chat - read the information pack below and
if you require any further information check out the developers
webpage which is linked at the bottom of the article.

Development on Geneitic Species is in full steam and around the
clock, even though we have experienced some delays in it`s
release date we are confident that this awesome 3 year project
will be ready towards the end of April 98 with a full promotional
release at the World of Amiga (London) in May 98. Pre-orders are
recommended and further details can be found at the Vulcan
website www.vulcan.co.uk with on-line ordering facilities and our
world wide stockists list.

To fuel the excitiement and build up of this title we have released
the following extensive information pack to clarify exactly what
Genetic Species Offers. Enjoy!

FOREWORD
Genetic Species offers furiously invigorating and thrilling 3D action
with texture mapping speeds never before seen on any Amiga
entertainment title! With Atmosphere, Gameplay, Addictiveness
and Presentation as its highest priorities you will experience the
ultimate escapism in a violent and puzzling 3D world coupled with
the most awesome environmental effects and imagery which are
all proudly displayed in 256 colours at an incredible (1x1) Pixel
Resolution using the most sophisticated Texture Mapping Engine
to date.

In its simplest form Genetic Species requires an AGA Amiga with
an 020 CPU, a minimum of 2mb Chip and 8Mb Fast Memory, a
Hard Drive and a 2 x Speed CDRom Drive. With more Fast
Memory and a Faster CPU you will soon discover that Genetic
Species excels in visual presentation and by choosing the
appropriate window size, you will be spoiled by blindingly fast
action. Pushing the quality further, if you have a CyberGfx or
Picasso96 Graphics Card then you will soon realise what the
Amiga was made for! Graphics card users require only 0.5Mb of
Chip Memory and a minimum of 8mb Fast Memory.
The first thing you will see is an awesome 200Mb 3D rendered
intro animation that sets the scene and atmosphere for the
experience that follows, in order to get the best out of the intro
animation a 4 x Speed CDRom is recommended. Once into the
game you are bombarded with a Visual & Audio splendour that is
matched only by the speed, response time and gameplay. Genetic
Species has been written in 100% assembly and for the last 3
years has seen many talented individuals eat, sweat and sleep
nothing else to bring you the ultimate 3D experience, so venture
forth over the many Huge Levels and frightening locations, all of
which Demand a High Element of Genetic Warfare and Logic Plot
Based Puzzle Solving.

Not only will you have a horrific weapon array (for mass murder)
at your disposal but you will also be equipped with the latest
`In-Built Portable Probe Device` were you will be able to `Psyche`
Travel through your Environment and even engage in `Body
Transfers` to Assume the Identity of other Entities. For navigation
purposes your Portable On- Screen `Alpha Map Display` with Size
and Luminance Controls comes in very handy. The Many
Enemies encountered are superbly rendered and all have their
own unique `high level` artificial intelligence routines, each
animated in true to life multiple positions and each as deadly as
the next. And finally, Genetic Species is brought to life with a
massive selection of High Quality Digital Sounds & Effects with
Stereo Surround and an incredible 30 Minutes of High Quality (in
game) CD music.

PRESENTATION
* 200Mb 3D Rendered Intro Animation

FEATURES
* 3D Light Sourced Texture Mapped Environment
* Huge Levels Made Up From Multiple Complex Platforms
* 16 Enemy Character Types
* Massive Weapons Array
* Supports 3D Based Objects
* High Element of Genetic Warfare
* Logic Plot Based Puzzle Solving
* 3 Years of Development Time

SPECIAL FEATURES
* Portable Probe Device for Body Transfers or `Psyche` Travel
* Portable On-Screen `Alpha Map Display`
* Environmental Chain Reactions
* Enhanced Artificial Intelligence Routines
* Awesome Death Sequences

DISPLAY
* 256 Colours; 1x1 Pixel Resolution Definition
* Changeable Window Sizes; Screen Promotion
* Ntsc, Pal or Multiscan

GRAPHIC EFFECTS
* Distance Shading
* Distortion Mapping
* Shot Lightsourcing
* Dark Light Routines for Pools of Shadows

SPECIAL GRAPHIC EFFECTS
* Environmental Rain
* Environmental Steam
* Heat Distortion
* Fire Effects
* Explosions
* Weapon Projectile Smoke Tails
* Animated Floor Routines
* Floor Reflections

SOUND
* High Quality Digital Sound Effects
* Character Digital Speech
* 30 Minutes of High Quality (in game) CD Music

SOUND FEATURES
* Stereo Surround Effects
* User Defined Mixer Frequencies
* Supports AHI giving Paula 8,14,14c bit on any Amiga
* Supports Wavetools
* Prelude & Toccata Support giving 16 Audio Channels

ENGINE
* Fully Multitasking
* 100% Assembly Language
* Optimised for 030, 040 and 060
* Supports AGA, CyberGfx or Picasso96
* Single Buffering, Double Buffering or Triple Screen Buffering
* Draco Support
* Delfina & DraCo Motion Support

PLAYER MOVEMENTS
* Walk/Run
* Strafe
* Rotate
* Look Behind
* Operate/Fire
* Initiate P.P.D. (Take Over Other Entities)

INPUT DEVICES
* Keyboard Support
* Joypad Support
* Joystick Support
* Mouse (3 buttons) Support
* Full control customising

GENERAL
* Easy/Hard Difficulty Mode
* Object Based Save Game Option
* Pause Game Function
* Visual Frame Counter
* Luminance Controls

ENEMY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
* Attack
* Retreat
* Hide
* Roam
* Lure
* Group Fighting

WEAPONS ARRAY
* Mini Gun
* 44 Pistol
* Flechette
* Tazer
* Flame Thrower
* Gire Axe
* Silenced Pistol
* Laser Mine
* Stun Launcher
* Laser Rifle
* Plasma Gun
* Industrial Drill
* Rocket Launcher
* Assault Rifle
* Hand Grenade

ENEMIES & CHARACTERS
* Security Soldier
An ordinary corporation security soldier wearing a light ergo suit
which is capable of resisting a few direct hits. Security soldiers
prowl the corridors of the base, gunning down intruders with their
.44 pistols and they never stop to ask questions first. Their
implants are of a low grade and they are vulnerable to probe
attacks.

 * Security Officer
High rank Security Officers are tougher, quicker and meaner than
ordinary soldiers. They wear upgraded ergo suits and carry the
.44 automatic gun. Their implants are simplistic to preserve
human intelligence and initiative. Important rooms are often only
accessible to Security Officers.

 * Cyber Scout
The echelon of the automated defence forces. Hovering a few feet
above the ground they are a deadly foe in deserted corridors due
to their speed. The little human flesh and brain that remains is
hidden within a steel case. Their implants are protected by extra
circuitry, making it difficult to take them over without killing them.

 * Face Hugger
This genetically engineered creature has no official name. We
believe it is a new prototype war-unit escaped from some
laboratory, and apparently capable of breeding without artificial
support. Being the perfect base invader it is extremely fast and its
spitting of acid creates a very dangerous entity. They have no
implants but their genetic control mechanisms are very vulnerable
to entity take-overs.

 * Engineer
Otherwise know as the `Dirt Rats`, The Engineers keep the bases
running, they wear no armour and their implants are primitive, but
simply spotting an intruder is enough to bring them to a blood
frenzy. If you get too close, he will try to chop you to pieces with
his fire axe, show him mercy and kill him. Engineers are also
needed to access some systems.

 * Commander
The commanding officer of the base is the toughest and most
dangerous human you will come across. He throws lethal
grenades at intruders. Some restricted areas are only accessible
by the commander or someone carrying a commander access
card.

 * Zombie
Zombies are the victims of evil Genetic experiments. Dragging
their rotting limbs along, they are slow but also hard to kill.
Silenced guns are not very powerful but zombies will happily keep
shooting at you forever. Their implants have difficulty controlling
the damaged brains and taking them over is often the easiest way
to give them eternal peace.

 * Gel Man
Little know information on this abdominal creature but the Gel Man
is another genetic creation designed for environments with
extreme pressures.

 * Mantis
Little is know about these creatures. They seem to boast some
kind of Psi-weapon.

 * Mechanoid
Strong defensive units carrying lethal flechette guns. 90% of their
bodies have been mechanised and armoured to take a
phenomenal amount of damage. Their implants are strong, and a
PPD attack without stunning will leave them severely damaged.
Notice that they are limited to warfare and cannot handle delicate
objects such as keycards or small weapons.

 * Scientist
The science personnel of the laboratories. They wear no armour
and carry weak weapons. Their implants are not designed to
repulse a probe attack so they can easily be taken over. Some
areas are only accessible to scientists.

 * StormTrooper
Aggressive commando troopers, specially trained to locate and kill
intruders. The standard weapon is the laser rifle which they will
happily use to snipe on you. Their armour is light to allow
maximum mobility and their implants are medium grade.

 * Chameleon Soldier
The skin of the chameleon man has been altered to camouflage
the body.This works best when he is standing still, only when
shooting and getting hit will the camouflage field disrupt to show
the puny human inside. The high speed assault rifle carried by
chameleon soldiers is too dangerous to ignore, so don't. The
implants will yield to persistent attacks.

 * Wolfhead
This biped killing machine is one of the most dangerous units
around.Mounted on the left arm is a rocket launcher. You guessed
it, Rocket launchers are bad for your health. Some units come with
a Vulcan minigun instead. The controlling implants of this unit will
only disable if stunned.

 * Space Pilot
When not piloting space ships, the pilots are in an understandably
bad mood. The Space Pilot carries a grenade launcher which fires
stun grenades capable of putting even the biggest brute to sleep.
The clumsy space suit puts some restraint on his mobility, but
protects against vacuum and probe attacks.

 * Battle Cyborg
Battle Cyborgs are enhanced, heavily armoured humans capable
of high speed. They carry flame throwers for toasting enemies.
Due to the exposed upper body, the implants are weak compared
to the durability of the body.

ODDITIES
* Real-time Screen Saver Which Can Also Create Player
Animations Direct To Disk

LANGUAGE SUPPORT THANKS TO THE A.T.O.
Croatian; Danish; Dutch; English; Finnish; French; German;
Italian; Norwegian; Portuguese-Europe; Portuguese-Brazil; Polish;
Serbian; Slovak; Spanish; Swedish; Turkish.

===============================================
Max Rally Preview
===============================================

I brought you exclusive news on this game quite a while ago, well,
now I have aquired a preview of the game.  Time for a more in
depth look at the game....

The preview I have seen only contains a few tracks, however,
there is enough there to give the impression that the full game will
turn out to be quite a corker. For those of you out there that
haven't heard about this game, it is a top-down racer, similar to
the likes of Supercars and All Terrain Racing.  Going against the
trend of recent Amiga releases the game only requires a 'modest'
Amiga to run, it only requires 2Mb of memory and comes on disk
instead of CD-ROM.

The game offers four different race types. Championship,
Multi-player battle, multi-player race and Time trails.The action in
very fast, almost too fast. You race around the tracks and an
amazing speed and it is very easy to loose control of the car and
go flying into a wall.  If you do this, your car is slowed down to
alost a complete halt and more often or not your opponent goes
speeding off into the distance.  This is one part of the game that I
initally found annoying, the computer cars were too fast and I was
often left langusishing miles behind in last place.  However, once
you have got around the controls and have had a bit of practice
they become a challange more then an annoyance.  Even so, the
inclusion of different difficulty levels would be nice.

As I mentioned before, the game features four different game
modes. Of these the one that really interests me in the time trail
mode.  In this you can race on any of the tracks with a aim of
beating the previous best time. In the full version these times will
be saved to a file so you have a list of your bast times. Something
that would be nice to go along with this is a Hall of Fame in which
racers can combine other racers times with there own (Like the
excellent XTR allows), this will add more incentive to improve your
times.  If all goes to plan, I will be starting a Hall of Fame for Max
Rally on these pages, more news on this soon.

One down point of the game is that it disables the OS and so
doesn't allow multi-tasking.  This is not a massive problem but it
would be nice if it did. Anyway, I'm quite looking forward to this
game, it should be released very soon. You can find more
information about that game at the Fortress Software Website :

http://www.allcomm.co.uk/~fortress

==============================================
  NEWS FLASH
==============================================
PPC Trauma Zero
Some of you may remember a game called Trauma Zero that I
featured a while ago. Well I have recently heard news that a PPC
version of the game will be written. Actual features of this are yet to
be confirmed, however, I have heard that is will contain raytraced
full screen 256 colour (Maybe HAM8) graphics and real time
animated background.  More info on this when I get it...
***************
Ultra Violent Worlds
You may remember this as a game that was going to be released
by Vulcan quite a while ago, well, it is still to see the light of day.
The game will now be released on a multi-format CD-ROM
containing AGA Amiga, Windows 95, Lunix and MSDOS versions.
The programmers are still looking for a buyer for this package, any
interested publishers out there?
***************
And last but by no means least...
SWOS tournament at the WOA. Well, this ain't so much a piece of
news, more of a thing to see if anyone is interested.  As there is
more then likely to be a Quake tournament at the WOA I though the
same for the old classic SWOS could be done.  Now I haven't
contacted the orginisers about this yet, I'm just checking to see if
there is any interest in the idea, if so I'll take the proposal to the
appropirate parties.
***************
Wasted Dreams Development Re-started.
Earlier in the year Vulcan released a statement to the Amiga
community regarding their position in the market. One thing that
was mentioned in this statement was that the development of
Wasted Dreams had been put on hold while the market was
reaccessed. Well, I can now tell you that the developers have
decided to continue with the game, this is excellent news as this
was a game that was eagerly awaited by many Amiga owners. For
those few people out there that do not know what Wasted Dreams
is. Well in Vulcans words it is 'Mystery and suspence from a
gigantic alien adventure in a violent reality'.  Basically it is an
action/adventure type game, however, it is quite different to
anything that has been seen on the Amiga before. The game is
viewed from an isometric viewpoint, similar to that of Diable on the
PC.  Over ten areas each containing many screens of action have
to be fought through. The game offers a neat 2-player option where
they can either co-operate or fight with eachother.
Currently the development team, Digital FX, are just busy
roto-scoping the last few charactors for the game. They are also in
the process of recording over 350Mb of digital actor speech to be
implemented into the game. Currently Vulcan are hoping for a May
'98 release.
***************
Worms Updates Out Soon.
Below is a post that was recently made to the
comp.sys.amiga.games newsgroup on Usenet.  It would seem that
Andy Davidson is (at last :p) going to finish of the updates to the
worms series of games, read below for full details. Now things are a
bit less hectic here at Team17 a bit ( only a bit though ). I'll have
some time to hopefully finish off the patches for Amiga
Worms/WormsDC this week and next week. There are 3 of them :
One for the Amiga Worms (ECS), which doesn't default to joypad
on machines with cd drives, is more stable, has a few other
changes which I can't remember, and removes the protection.  This
was the last version of Worms before it went AGA - I found the old
files and got it running again, after my Amiga being set up for
WormsDC for the last few years.  It will also be packed with an
040/060 friendly packer. A WormsDC upgrade for all Amigas -
Option Set loading fixed, all other small obscure bugs fixed (like
dynamite replays occasionally going wrong), keyboard can be used
to enter names when using joypad, both mouse+joypad work at the
same time on title screen, improved rope, fixed positioning/sizing of
sleep window, rescan option to check for new levels installed while
the game is sleeping, cursor keys scroll around in Graffiti Mode,
cursor keys on numpad scroll around in game, normal landscapes
can be edited in Graffiti Mode after they are generated (like
Worms2), compatibility with MCP and runtime unpackers, TAB on
landscape generator cycles through landscape types, multiple
sample-sets for different teams ...  and other things that I've
forgotten. After this upgrade all future updates will be for
hdrive/fastram only as the game is just getting too tight to run in
2meg and off floppies. The hdrive/fastram update will add the
cdrom support. This is the reason for not having this done by now -
I haven't had much time to devote to WormsDC at all, and adding
these features makes it too big for standard machines.  I wanted to
get a universal update done first.

5 types of WormSelect and Manual Worm Placing (from Total
Wormage) may make it into both updates, along with some other
stuff that isn't even in Worms2 yet. All updates will be freely
available and posted to Aminet as soon as they are finished - like I
said, hopefully in the next 2 weeks, but things are still pretty mad at
the moment with Worms2, the Worms2 expansion pack and the
top-secret non-Worms game ...

Thanks again for the support and comments from people who take
a more realistic view of the Amiga's situation - rather than just
endless criticism, slagging etc.  To see people on here slagging off
a game (BlitzBombers) which was being given away free - and is
far better than any of the post-Dynablaster alternatives (as it puts in
more of the features of the later Bomberman games) - is just
another example of how frustrating some Amiga owners make it for
developers. Criticism is good, when it's constructive ...