Amiga MA Magazine 1998 #3/amigamamagazinepolishissue1998.iso/preview/foundationdemo/importantinfo!

Text File | 1997-11-12 | 7KB | 153 lines

Foundation 1st Aminet Demo
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Introduction
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This has been a difficult time for me trying to get the game ready for
it's first mass public release. I like to think I have high standards
and so I find it hard to come to a time when I'm happy with releasing
something. I've spent the past 3 days working towards final bugfixes
and adding some important necessary features that would turn the mass
of game play into a playable system. Towards the last few hours of
coding bugs did creap in and I was forced to spend more and more time
fixing and testing. The time came when I realized that I had to draw
the line as some point and finaly release it!

A compromise was made to release only the lowres version for now
which will save a lot of file size. I'll be spending the next few
weeks updating the game with new features and improoving things in many
areas. Some improovements will result in Aminet Demo 2 in about one week
with the rest of the resolutions available then. While it is
possible to go into any size screen (maximum 800x600) it is advised
to stay with lowres screens. (320x256 for AGA and 320x240 for rtg) The
lowres grapics mode means there are 4 times as many object to render
and depite the fact that they are 4 times smaller it still results in
a big slow down compared to uing the large graphics on higher resolutions.
Feel free to experiment with the screen size if you wish but the small
graphics are really only designed for low resolution screens.

I was also worried that too much time would be spent with people attempting
to run versions that they can't possibly use on their system. I must admit
that if the game doesn't get enough CPU power behind it the slowness of the
game can spoil much of the fun. If you are forced to stick with the lowres
versions for now then all of your effort will be spent playing the game
at it's full power and smoothness even though I can promise more speed
and smooth gamplay to come. Much of the code is still unoptimized so
you will see times when features are a bit jumpy and slow. Eventually
you will see very little speed change durring the gameplay.

Missions
--------

There are just three missions here. Little time was spend in the design
of the missions but they do start off very simple and small then they
get biggr and more complicated. They have been designed to allow plenty
of freedom to experiment and lost of scope to practice the finer elements
of gameplay. I'm sorry there is no special ending of demo animation or
anything lik that. I have more important features to work on at this
moment.

Features
--------

There are many features missing from this demo. The computer AI is quite
basic in these three levels. Anyone who has been betatesting the game for
the past months will tell you how quickly the computer AI is evolving and
how much more playability there is as things improove. There are also
things like Shooting Tower buildings, Archers, ships, air balloons, custom
levels, random map systems, split screen mode, TCP/IP mode,  and many
other presently developed features that are not available in this demo.
I decided o avoid too much confusion by eliminating many sections of
th game and many partially developed features to allow you time to adjust
to the way things work. I'll be very happy to introduce you to those
features as they become optimized and ready for public playing.

Bugs
----

I've already mentioned bugs. Bugs are nasty things that are there to
spoil a perfectly good demo with small (and sometimes huge problems).
The game has been tested on many systems but NO Picasso96 tests have
been made at all so maybe it won't work. Tests have not been made on
systems with only 2Meg of memory and the game is hardcoded to use more
memory than it could. The game is still in heavy development so you can
imagine that over the past week a lot of new features have been added
which may clash with previously tested features. So now I've explained
well enough that things will most likely go wrong. You are free to end
"short but sweet" bug reports to *me* and not the Sadeness address.
While I'm sure th publishers will be happy to deal with any problems
thre is little they can do to help you other that refering your mail
to me. If you're playing this game any later than November 20th then
rest assured that it's very likely that your bugs have been fixed.
PLEASE no bug reports by Snailmail! Okay, send your bugs reports to the
address at the bottom of this text file.

Future
------

As I said, there will be a new demo in the next week. Maybe there will
be a small update in the next few days. I do plan to give you a bigger
taste of the game with better designed levels, tougher computer teams
that may even beat you! and many new buildings, new features and a
total cleanup of th current gameplay. All of your suggestions will be
taken seriously although we do have a prety good idea of what is needed
to improove things. You an be sure than I'm no more than 50% happy with
the way things are at the moment and it'll only take another month to
out all of those problems right!

Final word
----------

I really don't know what to expect from your thoughts on the game. I've
spent the past year working on this and many months have been spent
getting things working right and supporting lots of different systems.
I really can't stand to look at old beta versions of the game even if they
are only a month old. Things improove so much in such a short time and
if it was up to me I'd keep things to myself until the final day :)
Now I've released this demo you can be sure that I won't let it remain
on Aminet without being updated. I cringe at th thought of people playing
with the old FoundationEd program and the same thoughts will haunt me
with this demo in less than 1 month time.

Any suggestions should be sent to my address. While Sadeness will be happy
to hear your views on the game and they would also love to receive your
support and pre-orders for the completed game it is still more efficient
to direct suggestions/bug reports to me. I must say that you may only get
a very short answer but any feedback will assist me!

I hope you enjoy what you see so far.

Cheers,

Paul Burkey
Email: [e-mail]         (feedback, bugreports, suggestions)
Email: [e-mail] (orders, feedback, information)

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Ordering Info:
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To pre-order your copy of Foundation, either send a cheque
or postal order to the address below for the sum of £30.95
(price includes postage and packing worldwide), please make
sure payment is in pounds sterling.

Alternatively, you can pay via credit/debit card.  We accept
most major cards including Visa, Switch, Mastercard, Eurocard.

Sadeness Software
13 Russell Terrace
Mundesley
Norfolk
NR11 8LJ
UK

TEL   : [phone]
email : [e-mail]
WWW   : www.sadeness.demon.co.uk

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