MORE ABOUT COLONIAL CONQUEST II
The following text has been written for all those people who
specially enjoyed the game and want to know more about
Colonial Conquest. Most of it is totally useless for the
understanding of the game, but like many other useless
things in the world, it might be fun to read it anyway.
THE BEGINNING
I have started to write Colonial Conquest in summer 1993
during the preparation of my final exams at the university.
As it was impossible to sit at home the whole day and learn
physics (that's what I've studied) I thought it might be fun
to have something creative and constructive beside this
tedious learning activity. As I have always enjoyed playing
strategy games very much and as I believed that these were
the easiest games to write - specially in a not-too-fast
programing language like AMOS - I started right away and
finished a first playable version within a few weeks. It
then took at least two months to debug it and make it more
comfortable to use. 80% of the development time was really
invested in details which was frustrating at times.
As soon as Colonial Conquest was out on Aminet, first bug
reports smashed my illusions to have programed a bug-free
game. Worse, the bugs were so bad that I felt that it was
necessary to release a new version very soon. At the end of
1993, Colonial Conquest v1.05 was transferred to Aminet.
Since then, more bug reports have come, but also thousands
of suggestions that - if followed - would have led to the
most incredible ultimate 20MB strategy game for 68040+
processors only with animated 24bit graphics, sampled
speech, neural network based artificial intelligence,
options for 3D-glasses and cyberspace helmets.
Well, honestly, I couldn't do it.
Some of the suggestions however were realizable without
loosing my job, and I couldn't resist the temptation to make
Colonial Conquest better and better until it became such a
monster of a program that I wasn't really sure if it was
much better.
BUGS
Bugs? What's that?
Ok, ok, I remember... ah, well, they never show up when I'm
playing. They know that it would be suicidal to do so. Maybe
they are not even that intelligent. It could be that it's
only an instinct and those who didn't have it were treated
without mercy by natural selection.
No, honestly, bugs are still there probably, but this time
they are not so bad anymore as an internal routine will be
activated as soon as an AMOS error occurs. It will inform
you that an error has happened (what a shame!) and it will
give you the error number that you should write down and
communicate me if possible. You will then have the
possibility to save the game before the program tries to
continue the game. I would say that the program will not
crash after trying this most of the times, but strange
results may occur. Of all bugs I have already removed I
would pretend that none would have led to a crash.
MUSIC
I used to sing nicely when I was a kid. One day however, I
realized that people were fleeing from me as soon as I
started to sing. The same thing happened when I was
whistling or making any other noise that was intended to be
music. I concluded that I was not a musician and stopped all
my ambitions with this respect.
I'm still not a musician. If I had tried to make music for
Colonial Conquest II, you would have turned down the volume
of your monitor after three seconds if not a natural
survival reflex had made your fist smash the speakers of
your monitor after one second.
Fortunately, one day a nice and very talented musician -
Carl Wooltorton - knocked at my door (well, he wrote me an
e-mail actually) and asked if I was interested in having
something made for CCII.
I wanted something uncommon, dark and strange and a few
weeks later he sent me an incredible masterpiece that fitted
EXACTLY to the game and to what it should express.
As I thought that it was a little bit too long for a game
music, we had long discussions about artistic integrity and
music in general. We finally agreed on a compromise: The
music included in the game is a cut down (i.e. "remixed")
version of the original soundtrack. This fact is explicitly
stated in one of the title screens of CCII.
Carl will release the original soundtrack on Aminet (as
"co.powerplay" in "mod/pro") on the same time and all real
fans of CCII should try to get it and listen to it. It has
the big advantage of being a real Protracker module which
makes possible some effects that have been discarded when I
have converted it to the AMOS music format.
If you own AMOS, you will even be able to make the
conversion yourself with the original soundtrack and save it
as "Gamemusic" in your CC directory. As the game just loads
the music file "Gamemusic" (if it exists), it doesn't matter
WHAT music you put in.
THE PLANET EDITOR
I have programmed a little planet editor that allows to
design new planet surfaces for the game. It is not included
in the Colonial Conquest II disk and it is not freely
distributable. It's a present I have ready for all people
who write me their comments and thoughts about CCII through
e-mail. The uuencoded file will be sent to those persons
directly through e-mail as well as the original "Final Copy
II"-version of the manual.
Through normal mail, everything gets more complicated as the
sending of a disk is coupled with work and money. I do not
want to spend my evenings copying disks for no money and on
the other hand I do not want to make money with a kind of
shareware service. Therefore, I will only send such a disk
to people who send me a donation of 10DM or more. Note that
the money is still a GIFT to me FOR THE GAME and the disk is
a present in return. It may not be a big difference for you,
but it is one for me.
Depending on my work-load, it may take quite a few weeks
before you get an answer by normal mail. Be patient, please.
THE FUTURE
Will there be a Colonial Conquest III?
No, I don't think so. I know that there are still thousands
of possibilities to make the game better, but I believe that
even if I make it a lot better, people who have played CCI
or CCII will get bored very quickly as all the basic
principles would stay the same.
Provided I find enough spare time during my Ph.D. thesis, I
will work on a new project or continue an old one that has
never been finished. In any case it will be something in the
field of strategy or RPG games.
Christian Mumenthaler, 23. August 1994