LLAMATRON 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 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 normous 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! Okay, that's the theory of Shareware, and here's how Llamasoft are putting it in to practise. 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. Here's the deal. You play Llamatron and check out the hook. If it gets you (and I reckon it will if you like mayhem), then send us a fiver and, as a reward for being so honest, we will send you an ace poster of our gun-toting llama, a newsletter, and a complete copy of Gridrunner, a classic Amiga blaster which won the award for Best Budget release in 1989. Two games for a fiver - can't be bad. And if the response is good, there will be more Shareware. And better. We're asking a Shareware fee of five pounds for Llamatron, and you should send your lolly to: LLAMASOFT, 49 Mount Pleasant, Tadley, Hants RG26 6BN, U.K. Do let us know what you think of the game and the principle of Shareware in general, too. Now, how to play Llamatron is what you want to know, so here goes: HOW TO PLAY LLAMATRON You can start the game as supplied with this initial release by typing the command LLAMA512 (half meg) or LLAMA (1meg) at the CLI. (If anyone changes the game load procedure in any way, please include docs to say how to run the game). You need a joystick in your other socket. Boot up the game from wherever you've put it. Once it 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, plug another stick into the mouse socket 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. USING THE JOYSTICK 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 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. : 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. 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 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 five quid, and you'll get the goodies. Aim, lock, and I'll see you in Herd Heaven! -- Y a K 10/04/1991 (updated 12/6/91) {YAK has been entertained during this sojourn into the Country of the {Silicon} Mind by the following artists and personalities: OZRIC TENTACLES INSPIRAL CARPETS - open your mind and groove to these geezers. At last some good new bands are happening and the Carpets prime exponents. Great songs, well prolific, AND they have a big thing about cows. Cool as [Oh F....!] GRATEFUL DEAD - I never knew until London, Hallowe'en 1990. I never knew! I never knew!!! [FUN + GOOD TIME] raised to a high power!! FLOYD - The boys just help to keep a hippy sane. Some nights we all have to come in drunk and listen to The Wall. And where would Western civilisation be without Wish You Were Here? And did you know that Clint out of Inspiral Carpets has the same kind of Farfisa organ that Floyd used on Atom Heart Mother - the album with those COWS on the cover? Yow! LEMMINGS - It is really rare these days that I see a game and it's just so original and groovy I really wish I had designed it, and Lemmings is just such a game. I haven't been so impressed by a game since I saw the arcade Marble Madness for the first time. Lemmings is almost as good a spectator sport as it is to play, easy to get in to but plenty difficult later on, makes you laugh and has brilliant music (I speak for the Amiga version). Go out, buy this, take it home and clean yer mouse. You could dye your hair green if you really get into it. Kudos to Psygnosis for a brilliant release. Watch it clean up at awards ceremonies. THUNDERSTRIKE - don't know what the ST/Ami versions are like but if they are anything like my PC {vga, 12MHz 286} version they'll be good. 3-D Defender with red pyramids instead of Humanoids and an excellent tracking-camera viewpoint. Rivals Virus in the league table of my affections. YAK greets all the usuals and anyone left of the Herd out there; hope you like Llamatron. Special thanxx to the following: my Dad for gametesting beyond the call of duty and the load of his 520; Paula for getting well addicted even though she doesn't really like shoot'em'ups [I'm sure they will always love you and everything will turn into tomatoes]; Pete for rolling along; the guys for not farting too much in the flat while we were skiing; and just anyone REAL.. Greets to Ben [hope you got a strong joystick on your ST coz you gonna need it if your Llamatron is anything like your skiing!]; Dave [that's a global Dave, I know quite a few, consider yourselves greeted]; 'Lope [where the flip have you got to, tell Yak you uncommunicative bastard!]; Wulf [how's life in the Zone? Saddamski there?]; YAK greets *.*! Everybody: spread this folder! Upload it, copy it, ARC it, ZOO it, lay it on everyone! See you at the Inspirals gig in London in Jume or else at some show giving away disks with a mad gleam in my eye! (Pass it next to Mel Croucher, for his original idea of Darren..)