*** 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 s...
kucykpl