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Creative Computers CD-ROM, Volume 1 (Legendary Design Technologies, Inc.)(1994).iso
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llamatron
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readme
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Text File
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1994-11-17
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21KB
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473 lines
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Llamatron README File by JEFF MINTER
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12 June '91 - Greetings Amiganuts! I have just finished your
version. I've been playing it on my Amiga whilst listening to the
Shamen extremely loudly, and it all seems to go; verily it shall
be rendered into an executable and committed to diskette.
Once again the game comes in two flavours; a 512K version and
a 1meg version with clearer samples (although the 512 Ami
version sounds better than the 512 ST one!). You type
LLAMA512
to launch the half meg one and
LLAMA
for the 1meg.
Doubtless the game won't appear to be technically blinding to all
you Amii freaks. There is no scrolling as the game design doesn't
need it, no million-colour rasters; just a lot of blitting and
collision-detect! And as you've got a real sound chip it's not
quite so astonishing to be able to hear high quality sampled sound
effects and have loadsa moving objects on the screen, as it is for
the poor beleaguered ST user!
Nonetheless, Llamatron stands on the strength of its gameplay and
the ferocity of its hook. ST users who don't normally play shoot-
em-ups and who are usually frightened of the ferocity of my games,
have become mightily addicted even unto the point of needing
plasters for a bleeding joystick hand!
The Amiga version loses the high-score save (Amigados wants so
much memory) but gains the larger screen display and some
interesting stereo phasing of the sound FX (blast it out yer hi-fi
when the Shamen have finished and see).
Initial response to the ST distribution has been good. It's been
really good to see so many people take the trouble not only to
register but also to tell me what they thought of the game and
method of distribution. All criticisms and comments are being
noted and will be borne in mind when I'm writing my next piece of
Shareware, which will be a proper version of Revenge of the Mutant
Camels to finally lay the ghost of those God-awful ST and Amiga
conversions which Mastertronic released a few years ago and which
I had nothing to do with. It will feature a lot of new stuff
including 2-player simultaneous, and as it is a scrolling game I
shall take a few weeks extra on the Amiga version to amigize it
properly.
Of course now all the comments pertaining to Panther are
irrelevant. That's the second time I've been working on a system
only to have it shot down underneath me; at least this time it
hasn't cost me much except time. Pity; the Panther was good. I had
some wicked demos coded when the axe fell. It doesn't look as if
I'll get my hands on the fabled Jaguar for a few months, so until
I do I'm doing Revenge. (And it looks like I may have some
Transputers to play with pretty soon, but that's a parallel
process).
Recommended soundtrax for your blasting: Shamen, Gary Clail/On-U
Sound System, the KLF, Inspirals especially Further Away, Grip,
Joe, Commercial Reign; whatever, blast it out to the max.
Well, enjoy this Ami version of the game. You're getting hot
when you can score over a million without the Droid. Good luck!
}
I believe I neglected to mention in the body of these instructions,
if you press 'x' during any wave you will be returned to the title
screen {so you don't have to get yourself killed when you want to
restart a crap game!}.
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!
This is the Ami version of the latest Llama blast. It can be transferred
freely to hard disk. Please transfer it, and this README file in
an easy-to-read format, to anyone you think might
benefit from a bit of serious mayhem. Upload it onto BBSses. Send
it to your favourite contacts. Only circulate it, iz all!
-- 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.
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