Happy New Year '14

Do you remember that good old times, when the game on five floppy disks seemed to be unbelieviable huge? When illegal copying of games over from friends was normal? When there was almost no person in the world with virus-free computer? Of course that this is little exaggerated, but you surely know, what I mean, right? Well, nowadays, after interenet boom, classic viruses are mostly gone, we are no longer using "anti-virus" software, but "protection software" against Trojans and similar scum. When was the last time, I hade to desinfect my computer? I remember it was in mid ninetees, when my 386 machine was attacked by popular OneHalf. On the Amiga - at that time - I didn't even had an harddrive, so I never really payed attention - actually, back then, I didn't even knew, that there are antivirus application on the Amiga.

Strangely enough, it was actually my emulator, who brought a virus into a game. I have this WinUAE configuration isolated, strictly for Chaos Guns, what makes me wonder, what is the source of infection.

I clearly remember my surprise, when I have seen my friend's (hello Kvin! ;) Amiga, where VirusZ program was in WBLaunch folder. I asked him why? And he told be that wonderful story, that Amiga platform was extremely popular target for virus creators. This was in 1999 and since that I never seen VirusZ again. Why to bother?

Over 300 hundred of infected files! It was clean within few seconds, of course. My personal Amiga was against my expectations absolutely clean (with obvious exception of our demo release file, which was created in emulator).

Well, now in 2014, I just did my biggest faux pas ever, by releasing INFECTED DEMOVERSION OF OUR GAME (infected filename BlazeWCP)! This terrible issue should have never happen and I can't apologise enough! Of course, that current LHA package is cleaned, so you don't have to worry now. If you have downloaded mentioned file earlier, I strongly recommend to redownload it and delete old archive. Or just use some VirusZ-like application. It's very easy to use (and it can disinfect files while scanning as well, truly Amiga powered software)!

I was shocked by SMS sent to me by Předseda yesterday afternoon, that ModRobert from EAB discovered classic virus Happy New Year 96 inside our demo. Situation was normal in few hours, thank you guys for great work! You have my promise, that from today, I will run VirusZ every day! Or at least once a week.

On the other hand - we wanted to recreate good old Amiga spirit, right? ;)

Chaos Guns Demo released!

It's finally here! With little delay, but finally here! Prepare your Amigas (with at least 040 accelerator, optimisation in the demo is not finished, so on 030 expect unplayable speed performance) or even better 060 (or WinUAE). Read readme.txt below and when ready - DOWNLOAD (LHA) the demo (4,8 MB)!

Feel free to leave us any comment, impressions or another feedback, we surely will appreciate it!

Thank you for your patience, enjoy and share!

README.TXT

Chaos Guns / TECHDEMOVERSION * ALPHA
Release Friday 13th 2014

Install info:

Unpack, run PREFS and set your configuration (it will be saved in S:).
Before finally starting a game, please run BlazeC2P (see "support" folder)
to get higher performance!
To hear the music during intro/outro, you have to have dbplayer.library
installed in LIBS: - just copy it over from "support" folder.
Then start the demo (normal or AHI sound)!

Tech info:

Minimal configuration: Amiga 1200, 030 accelerator, 16 MB RAM. At least 040 highly recomended.
There are MANY known issues with the demo, it's still work in progress,
optimalisation is not finished yet, so recommended is to use 060 accelerator.

Controls:

Up to 4 joysticks (one FIRE button) via splitter
Keyboard 1: Arrow keys + RSHIFT
Keyboard 2: WSAD keys + LSHIFT
Switch characters: LAmiga or RAmiga
(depends on which player selects which characters)

Pressing FIRE will cycle three modes of your character.
Modes are WALK, ATTACK, MINI-MENU.
Full cycle (three times FIRE) will automatically reloads
your primary (and ONLY your primary) weapon.

MINI-MENU contains four shortcuts:
UP = pick up object beneath you
LEFT = swap primary weapon
DOWN = access inventory
RIGHT = nothing ;)

INVENTORY is controlled by four directions of your joystick or keyboard:
UP = equip or use item
DOWN = drop item
LEFT + RIGHT = move items in respective direction
FIRE = quits inventory to WALK mode, including reload of your primary weapon

HELP button should show you summary of control scheme anytime during play.
P or ESC will pause the game. Press ESC again to quit to main menu.

Full game info:

Game will feature seven dungeons, one vast overground (cca 2 square kilometers)
to get lost in.
All players are fully independent, they can leave the game or join any time.
Each of twelve characters has it's own individual goal, which is finishable
in single player mode, while main story is designed for cooperative multiplayer.
However friendly fire can turn game easily to survival deathmatch.

Credits:

Dave de Sade - design, graphics
MarK - code
Tsak - graphics, level design
Nooly - music, sounds
Hevo - fullscreen images
Jack3D, Predseda - additional graphics
Drokk - concept art


MarK's note:
Due to lots of internal changes in last few weeks/days there are some graphical
problems, like missing shadows in places, where they should be, this is the
code problem, not the gfx itself. There is still lots of work to be done. Right
now the game is almost impossible to play under 030 due to speed problems, this
will change in future, the full game should run on 030 quite smooth. The game
misses lots of optimisations, there simply wasn't enough time.
The game is developed under MorphOS 3.5 in PowerD v0.40, and it's pretty
unstable, if You have more powerfull machine (like uae or MorphOS) try the ahi
version, it uses 8 channels for sounds, the non ahi version plays via
audio.device, and uses only 1 channel right now, but hey, it's just techdemo
so You can see, we are working on it hard :) no more talking needed, let's
play :)

Visit us and leave feedback at www.chaosguns.com !

Good news, bad news, great news

I love those statistics, published by game developers after game release, how many coffee they have drinked, how many keyboards were smashed by anger or how many hair were lost. I'm proud to announce, that for Chaos Guns we already have at least one amazing statistics. How many kids were born during development: 1.

On 5th June, my first daughter Libuše was born, 3.3 kg, 50 cm, perfectly healthy. I'm so happy!

However, planned date for labour was 12th June, so you may easily figure out, that this wonderful ocassion is actually a good cause for delay of our release. Last four days I'm at hospital, day and night, helping my wife with everything. Actually even this blogpost is written at the hospital.

Picture above is NOT staged - this is how I actually work now. It's little bit more complicated, but at least I'm in touch with MarK, Tsak and Nooly, while playtesting and polishing the demo.


I think it's almost tradition to delay of release of any piece of software for Amiga. To keep this "true Amiga spirit", we have no other option then to ask you politely for few more days of patience, to be more specific - Friday 13th June is set as release date of Chaos Guns demo. I truly believe, that this extra time will alow us to present you finished product. We apologise for this delay and hope, that you will stay with us.

Because what I can see now - this 99% finished piece - is really great fun to play!