@database Scions Preview Second Release @Author Jimmy Westerlund @(C) Copyright 1996 DSP, All rights reserved @tab 4 @Node Main "ALMAGICA -- Scions of a Forgotten World -- Preview Version 2 ©Copyright by DSP 1996, All rights reserved" Welcome to the Second Preview of ALMAGICA - Scions of a Forgotten World. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the second preview version of a new realtime strategy war game, called Almagica - Scions of a Forgotten World. The reason for us realeasing this preview is to give you a chance to see what kind of game this will be. And I would like to say a few words before you start this preview. This preview IS NOT ment to impress anybody with blending full framerate 256 color graphics or to make you howl with joy about the stunning soundfx or make you spending hours trying to outsmart the AI. This IS STILL only a preview, so don't be disappointed if Scions doesn't kick WarCraft 2's ass... @{"Disclaimer" link disc} @{"Installation" link install} @{"Requirements" link require} @{"Limitations" link limit} @{"Game description" link game} @{"Units and Houses" link units} @{"How to train more units" link moreunits} @{"Configuring" link setup} @{"The Keyboard" link keyboard} @{"New Features" link newfeatures} @{"About DSP" link aboutdsp} @{"How to contact DSP" link dsp} @{"Bugreports" link bugreport} @{"Credits" link credits} @EndNode @Node disc "Disclaimer" Disclaimer --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Almagica - Scions of a Forgotten World is ©Copyright by DSP 1996, All rights reserved. This preview version of scions is FREEWARE. You may copy it as you like and how much you like (that's the general idea with a preview release) as long as you do not alter the contents of the archive in ANY way. Magazines/PD libraries/etc have our permission to include this preview on Cover Disks or similar IF AND ONLY IF we can have ATLEAST ONE FREE COPY of the issue/disk/CD in question. This does NOT apply to AmiNET or AmiNET CD. Please note that the above ONLY apply for THIS release. The final version of Scions WILL NOT be freeware. Needless to say, you MAY NOT sell Almagica for profit. And as usual... You use this software ON YOUR OWN RISK. DSP cannot be held responsible for ANY kind om damage Almagica may produce. @EndNode @Node install "How to install Scions" Installation --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Installing Almagica shouldn't prove any difficulties. SImply run the supplied installation script. Almagica uses the AHI (Audio Hardware Interface by Martin Blom) for the audio. A minimal installation of AHI will be made if you want by the installation script. If you sould want for some obscure reason remove Almagica from you system, you sould know that all files are kept together in the directory created during the installation, with the exception if AHI, which is placed in your DEVS: directory. @EndNode @Node require "Requirements" Requirements --------------------------------------------------------------------------- To be able to run this preview, you will need atleast this equipment. o AGA chipset or a CyberGraphiX card. o AmigaDOS 3.0 (V39) or better. o We can't guarantee that this version will work properly on a machine with only 2 MB of ram. 4 MB of ram should be enough by a fair margin. o 68020 or better. o Harddrive with about 1.2 MByte free space. o For the audio, Almagica need AHI to be installed. o Default stuff like a mouse and a keyboard. @EndNode @Node limit "Limitations" Limitations --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This preview has the following limitations. o Only 5 levels. o Only 4 different kinds of troops. o Only 4 different kinds of houses. o You cannot load or save games. o No surprises. @EndNode @Node game "About the game" About Scions --------------------------------------------------------------------------- As said before, Scions is a realtime strategy war game. Other simular famous games in this genre are Dune II, War Craft (NoAmiga) and Command & Conquer (NoAmiga). Since fewer and fewer games are ported to the Amiga platform, we decided that something had to be done. Anyway, this preview isn't very complicated, only a few minutes of gameplay is needed for you getting acustomed to how things are done. But to give you all a headstart I'll try to describe what you're supposed to do. After you have started the preview you will be presented with the main game view. Here you will see that most part is taken up with a map showing different kinds of terrains with troops and houses placed here and there. It's on this map most of your gameplay will take place. On the bottom right corner you have a smaller map. This overview map shows the entire gameplay area, with parts that you haven't discovered colored black. Enemy houses and troops are displayed as red dots and your troops and houses as blue. Above this smaller map is the "currently-activated-item-picture" box. Here you will see a picture and the name of the currently active object (troop or house). Also when something is activated you may see a number of boxes appear beneath this box. These boxes are called "orderboxes", because they represent different kind of orders you may give your troops or houses. And finally, on the top-right of the display you have the amount of resources you have. Resources are needed for you to build and repair houses and troops, and a couple of other things. If you ever run out of resources, then it's time for you to consider yourself in trouble. In this release there are five levels. Since you cannot save or load games yet, we have included a simple code system. When a level is won, you will be presented with a four digit code. Simply type this code at any time during the game and that level will be loaded. @EndNode @Node units "Houses and Units appearing in this preview" Units & Houses --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is a brief description of all units and houses appearing in this preview, together with a summary of the different orders they can perform. Note the the keyboard shortcut for each order is within parantesis. The Farmer --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The farmer is your hardworking man. He is responsible for tasks such as harvesting and mining, building and repairing. The farmer is quite ordinary, only equipped with an axe and some other useful tools. He does not know anything about warfare, but if neccesary you can order him to attack. As the farmer becomes more experienced, he will be able to both carry more goods and become better in working in the forest. The farmer can be ordered to: (M)ove to a position (R)etreat to the inn (G)uard a position (H)arvest tree or mine Re(p)air a house (A)ttack an enemy (D)rop some resources Build a (F)arm Build a (B)lacksmith Build a (W)ell Build an (I)nn The Militia --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The militias are ordinary villagers that has been equipped with light armor and has been somewhat trained in the art of battle. Far from being professional warriors, they are still the best defense you can hope for in a small village. Since they are carrying armor, they cannot move as good as the farmers, but on the other hand, they can survive much longer in battle. The more battles a warrior survives, the better and more experienced he will be, becoming more and more deadly. The militia can be ordered to: (M)ove to a position (R)etreat to the inn (G)uard a position (P)atrol a route (A)ttack an enemy The Archer --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Villagers with a talent from archery can prove very handy to have in battle. The Archers are equipped with a bow and a large quiver of arrows. Unlike the militias, they are not armored in any way, so they are easier to kill. But because of the lack of armor, they are of course faster then the militias. The Archer can be ordered to: (M)ove to a position (R)etreat to the inn (G)uard a position (A)ttack an enemy The Scout --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scouts are faster then both farmers and archers, and when becoming more experieced, they can see farther then any other unit. Their only weapon is a dagger, so they should not be used in offensive attacks. The Scout can be ordered to: (M)ove to a position (R)etreat to the inn (G)uard a position (A)ttack an enemy The Inn --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The inn is the natrual place for you headquarter. It's here that the young people in the village gather, waiting for the elder people to allow them to serve the village in what they think is the best way. The inn is also the natrual place for storing all the resources the farmer bring back to the village. The inn got a status bar telling you of how many free citizens that can be trained into units you got, in relation to the maximum number of citizens you can have. The Farm --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the farm, young people learns what it takes to become a farmer, including mining and foresting. They also learn the craft of building and maintaining different kinds houses. The farm has a statusbar which displays the amount of units in relation to the maximun number of units possible. If no bar is shown, you got more units then can be supported by the farms. The farm can: Build a (F)armer The Blacksmith --------------------------------------------------------------------------- When someone is selected to be a warrior, they are sent to the blacksmith to be equipped and receive a little education. The blacksmith can: Build a (M)ilitia Build an (A)rcher Build a (S)cout The Well --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Without a well a village cannot survive for long. Its water is essential for human and animals both. Without a well, the risk for a plauge becomes greater, preventing your village to grow. The well have a status bar telling you of how long it will take before a new citizen is created. @EndNode @Node moreunits "How to make more units" How to make more units -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Creating new units is not as simple as just to make them, there are some limitations that must be considered. Maximum population limit ------------------------ The first limit limits how many units you can have totally. This limit is raised by building either inns or farms. Inns raises the limit by two and farms by four. If this limit is reached or exceeded, no more units can be trained and a message will appear telling you to first build more farms. Difference between citizens and units ------------------------------------- The second limit is not as much a limit as it is a principle. You cannot "create" units, you rather "train" units. This means that you must have someone to train. These someones are called "Citizens" and are people that you cannot see. They sit inside the inn waiting for you to select them for training. If you are to train a unit you will need a citizen. If you are out of citizens a message will appear telling you of the problem. New citizens are created by building wells. By selecting a well, you can see how long it will take until a new citizen is created. An Example -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Suppose you got one inn and two farms. This mean that the Maximum Population Limit is 10 (2+4+4). Now suppose you got 2 farmers and 4 militias out (totally 6 units). The maximum number of citizens you can now have is then 4 (10-6). If you select an inn then the CITIZENS bar will show you how many you have, and a full bar then means 4. If you now got 4 citizens (the bar is full), then you cannot create more citizens from the well. The GROWTH bar on the wells will stop on maximum waiting until a new citizen can be created. Training a new unit will remove one of your citizens (3 left) and make him into an unit (7 unit totally). Selecting a farm will display a bar telling you that you got 7 units of a maximum of 10. @EndNode @Node setup "Configuring Scions" How to configure Almagica - Scions of a Forgotten World --------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are a number of options that is either impossible or senseless to change "in game". These options are placed in an external program. To configure Almagica, run the program called 'setup' placed in the scions directory. The setup window consists of a number of buttons and checkboxes and slider. Title Description -------------------- ----------------------------------------------------- Select Screen Mode: Use this to select what screen mode to run in. Note that the width of the screen MUST be an even count of 64, if not, the width will be rounded down. The minimum allowes size is 320x200. Select Audio Mode: Simular to "Select Screen Mode", but lets you select what audiomode and mixfrequency to use. Emulate Blitter: If checked, then all blitter actions will be emulated by the CPU. If not checked, the blitter will be used directly. Using "Emulate Blitter" will save a lot of CHIP memory if you have some FAST memory installed. Bitmaps in FAST: Checking this will force scions to place the render bitmaps in FASTmem instead of CHIPmem. On ordinary computers (i.e. no gfx card and such) it's slower to have them in FAST, since then they have to be copied to CHIP before they can be displayed. Pause when inactive: Check this if you want scions to pause whenever you deactivate its screen. CyberGraphX: Set up scions to be used with a CyberGraphX screen mode. No Audio: Disables all audio. No audio resources at all will be used if this option is used. Audio Channels: Lets you select how many audiochannels to use. Priority: Sets the priority of Scions when it is activated. Sleep Pri: Sets the priority of Scions when it is inactive. Note that this slider is disabled when the 'Pause when inactive' checkbox is active. Hot Spot X & Y: Due to a bug in either CybGfx or Scions, the hot spot on the mousepointer isn't correct when using a CyberGraphX screen mode. You can manually correct this with these sliders. Note that different screen modes may/will require different settings. Save & Run: Saves configuration and runs scions. Save: Only save configuration. Cancel: Forget changes and quit. @EndNode @Node keyboard "The Keyboard" The Keyboard --------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are several keys used in Almagica and here is a brief summary: F1 to F4 Snapshot up to four different positions on the map. F1 to F4 Recall a previously snapped position of the map. Tab This key has different meanings when different objects are active: A bounch of friendly units: Rotate the leader in the group. A friendly house: Activate the next friendly house. Tab The same as Tab, only backwards. Esc Bring up the menu. Esc Fast quit. RMB¹ Performs a default action on a unit, or a group of units. Return Centers the view over the place the last message refered to. Enter Zooms the overview map if you are playing on large maps. Apart from the above keys, there are some keys that can be used to select an order. These keys vary from unit to @{"unit" link units}. ¹: RMB is short for Right Mouse Button @EndNode @Node newfeatures "New Features" New Features --------------------------------------------------------------------------- These are the major improvents done since the first preview version was released. o Dynamic Screen Size The first preview allowed the user to choose which screen mode to use, but the game area was always set to 320x200. This has now been changed. Almagica should now be able to handle screensizes up to 8192x6144 in theory, but the highest practical resolution is problaby somewhere around 640x512. Anything bigger then that will make it hard to see your units. Ohh.. Just one more thing. Don't blame the low AGA bandwidth on us , or to put it simply, DBLPAL:Hires No Flicker in 256 IS slow, and will continue to be slow. o Support for Audio Cards Almagica now uses the AHI audio system. AHI is a system for Audio Hardware independent sound, giving Almagica support for different Audio Cards. o Default Actions This is one of the most frequently wanted features. What it means is that the unit itself decides what to do in a specific siutation. For example, it ordering a unit to perform the default action on an empty grass spot on the map, the unit will move there. Ordering a default action for a militia on an enemy will make him attack him. For a farmer on a damaged house, the farmer will start repairing it etc etc. The default action is invoked by pressing and Right Mouse Button. o New order system The orders are now processed in a totally new way. The user will not notice much about this change, except that orders are now much more intelligent. Previously units tended to constantly forget what they where supposed to do, which should no longer be the case. o New order icon system In the first preview, all units had a fixed maximum number of different orders (9). We could not accept this and so the entire order giving system was rewritten. All orders are now devided into three different groups, Action orders, House building orders and Troop building orders. Action orders are "normal" orders such as Move, Harvest and Attack. These orders are displayed one group at a time. If there are more orders of a group then can be fitted on the screen at the same time, they will be displayed in pages of six orders at a time. The lowest three ordericons does not connect to normal orders, but are used to control the display of ordericons. There are five different types of controlorders. The first three are to move to the Action, Build House and Build Troop groups. The last two is used to scroll between the different pages. It's not as complicated as it sounds, try it out and you should get the hang of it pretty soon. Please note that default actions and keys are totally independent on what's currently on the screen. o Unit experience Units now gets experience. This means that units surviving for a long time gets better and better. A unit may for example become tougher, or can get to carry more stuff, when raising in experience. o "Big graphics" Well... Couldn't think of any better title for this. Previously a unit could not have graphics that extended into another square (if a unit attacked another, there was no way of actually making his weapon seem to touch the enemy). This has now been fixed. o Farmer no longer disappears when building houses The farmers used to be removed when they built houses. This is no longer the case. When houses are built now, they are built with only 1 hitpoint. The farmer then automatically starts repairing the house unit it is fully "healed". The only differnece between a hurt house, and a not yet built house, is that the hurt house still have it's orders functional and performs special stuff like increasing population pool. Stuff NOT made in this version --------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are some stuff that we are thinking of implementing, but that is not present in this demo. o Direct CyberGraphics Support The current support of Cyber Graphics is quite primitive. The reason is simple. Cyber Graphics are chunky modes, and Almagica is purely planar. Because of this we need to reserve temporary memory to first build a planar version of the display, which is then converted into chunky and copied to the graphics cards internal display memory (made by a call to graphics.library/BltBitMap(). We ARE however, considering to support chunky mode directly. This would mean that all graphics are converted into chunky when loaded and that all parts of the code writing to the display would be created in one planar and one chunky version. Now the only problem is this... I don't have CyberGraphics, and trying to make this support without being able to test if myself would only result in me eating Losec as candy. o ECS version We have been asked to make an ECS version of this game as well. We have not yet decided if we should make one, but we do know that we won't start on it before the AGA version is finished. However, an ECS conversion should be fairly easy to do. o Traps Different kinds of traps will problaby be implemented at some time. o Strategy part in addition to the action part. We are problaby going to devide the game into two parts, one strategy part and one action part. This would result in a game quite simular to the concept of Dune II, but much more advanced. The strategy part would hold stuff like moving troops, spying etc. o Multiplayer game Yes, I know you all want this one. We will see what we can do about it, but I can't promise anything(!!). More details --------------------------------------------------------------------------- For a more complete documentation of all the changes made to almagica since the last preview version, please refer the the text "Recent_Changes" in the root directory of Almagica. Please note that the translation of this text into english started quite late, so some of the oldest entries are still written in swedish. @EndNode @Node aboutdsp "About DSP" About DSP --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DSP currently consists of the following people: Jimmy Westerlund (nick krywes) That's me. I'm the main programer. That means that if the game crashes or something, it's me you should blame. It also means that you shouldn't blame me if you don't like the graphics :-) Björn Hagström (nick orgin) Björn is our misc guy. We havn't really been able to find out exactly what he does yet, but I'm sure it's something important. But we do know some of what he does, and that includes writing a level editor, thinking up nice pathfinder algorithms, making contact with various non-DSP people on the net etc etc. Per-Anton Aronsson (nick Dahmal) Per-Anton (or more shortly, just PA) is the one that is to blaim for the graphics. I know I should be writing a little more about him or he'll just be envious, but I really can't come up with somthing... He's simply making the graphics, and belive me, that's quite enough. Fredrik Svensson (nick digital) Fredrik is the person responsible for the music. In his defense I have to note that the sounds effects are not his doing, but I'm sure you like the music which is very much his creation. We are all about 20 to 23 years old and VERY dedicaded to our lovely computer. For this reason I think I speak for all of us when I say that we WON'T abandon the Amiga for the PC. Please, don't ask us to make a PC version of Scions, we may get rather upset... Except for the four of us there's a number of other people that has in different ways helped and inspired us all. These are people like Magazine editors, betatesters, idea sharers and not the least, all of you who have bothered to send us an e-mail. Without all of you, there would have been a risk that Almagica, due to the amout of work it needs, would have died a long time ago. Thanks... @EndNode @Node dsp "How to contact us" Contacting DSP --------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can contact us on the following addresses: E-mail Snail mail IRC ------------------ --------------------- -------------------------------- orgin@medio.mh.se Jimmy Westerlund krywes (Jimmy Westerlund) ing9435@ind.mh.se Ringvägen 15 orgin (Björn Hagström) S-890 42 Mellansel #AmigaSWE Sweden WWW ----------------------------------------- http://www.ind.mh.se/~ing9435/DSP And please... we prefer E-Mail before snail-mail... Don't expect answers on snail-mails... @EndNode @Node bugreport "How to write a bugreport" How to write a bugreport --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you find a suspected bug, we would like it if you could write us a bugreport. If you decide to send us a report, please have these things in mind : o Your system (Computer, CPU, memory, GfxCard, OS version, etc etc). Althought this never should be the cause of the bug, it still might. Better give to much info about your system then to little. o What happens? Describe what happens. If you get an enforcer/mungwall hit you should include where the hit happend (hunk and offset). See if you can get to reproduce the bug regulary. If you can tell us exactly where, when and how to get this bug, it will be much easier for us to track it down and remove it. o Is there another program interfearring with scions? If you get a bug and is able to reproduce it, see if it is still there if you boot with no startup-sequence. If the bug has suddenly gone away, then you are running a program that for some reason interfears with Scions. In that case, try to find out which this program is. @EndNode @Node credits "Credits" These people who were involved in this release --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Programming: Jimmy Westerlund - Krywes Björn Hagström - Orgin Graphics: Per-Antron Aronsson - Dahmal Björn Hagström Music: Fredrik Svensson - Digital PT-replayer routine is taken direktly from the AHI distribuation. In addition to the above, a whole bunch of other people been of much help to us. These are all our betatesters, all the people who sent us reports of bugs an suggestions for improvements etc. @EndNode