Articles about FTL published in Power Play

[ChristopheF]

I found these articles about FTL:
http://www.kultpower.de/external_frames ... tikel.php3

http://www.kultpower.de/archiv/heft_pow ... 3_seite116

They contain photos of the FTL team members and also a screenshot of the tool they used to create the dungeon: it is the very first time that I see one!
Unfortunately the article is in german language and I don't speak german... Would someone translate them to english?

[Gambit37]

Wow, nice find! I remember seeing a screenshot of DCS (Dungeon Construction Kit) somewhere before, but I think it was in my pile of Amiga magazines that I threw away Look at that source code print out too! No-ones prints out source code any more do they!?

I'm sure if Tobias is around, he wouldn't mind translating. This would be a useful article to help me flesh out the FTL story on DM Codex (yes, I'm still working on it!)

[ChristopheF]

DCS (Dungeon Construction Kit)

Is it DCK or what does does the S mean?

[Gambit37]

Ooops, sorry, it's Dungeon Construction Set, not Kit.

[ChristopheF]

Thanks to the OCR feature of Google docs, I have been able to get a transcript of the second article: http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/1495
You can then use translation tools like:
http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... ode%2F1495
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.a ... ode%2F1495

Unfortunately, the scan quality of the other article is too poor for OCR to work.

[Gambit37]

He he, the Google translation is quite bizarre! But it's mostly understandable. Nice job, thanks Christophe

[zoom]

Nice find, Christophe. The one article I already new from ages past gone!

-------------------

Almost the complete FTL-crew on display


Since the publishing of "Chaos Strikes Back", the Softwarehouse FTL is being talked about again.
Michael Hengst spoke with the President Wayne Holder, Marketing chief Russ Boelhauf and the technical Developmentchief Doug Bell

PP:Do you all take again a year off after there is now CSB or is it possible that DMII will be in Softwareshops by the year 1990?

Russ:Hmm, in fact we haven´t planned DMII yet. Many people believe that CSB is DMII.
It is, however only a mini scenario that became in the course of development bigger and bigger. Before we will publish the official
DMII, we want to first bring other Products onto the market, with which we want to break new ground.
So, Chaos is only an addition to DM and definitely not DMII. We want to make one, maybe two new games in 1990. As of today we do
not know yet what programs that will be.

PP: Gossip and talks provide that the next Game will be a Space-Adventure with Aliens, Laserguns and Spaceships.

Wayne:We wanna create a Game that´s based on a Horror-Story. That in itself is a huge field. MAny guys came telling us that the
Stereo-Sound-effects of the moving monsters were quite a frightening experience. Some even got truly terrified. We want to
further push it and improve on it. We work on a scenario, in which this very effect is being greatly considered. To the point where
people´s life is frightened out of them. Of course, we do think about a sci - fi scenario, too. I am not sure, which one will be
the first to be completed. There are many possible ways, with our system in which we concept games. We firsthand try out many
things, keep the best ideas. The Rest we kick out.
In effect, we are not eager to make DMII - we do want a much much bigger game.
The universe, in which you move around really has to get much bigger than in the first part.
For instance, in the next game you should be able to also go to the outside world. Furthermore, we also develop a new Graphical
System. In DM the world you were in was easy to comprehend. Thats clearly due to everything taking place in a closed up labyrinth.
In the new game, all that will really change. There you open a door and : All of a sudden you are in another world. There, rather
different things happen to you.
That is naturally a tad bit more complicated to do than the "simple" labyrith - regarding course of action of the Game and
also programming complexity.

PP:So you want to simulate Real Life?

Russ: That is one of the reasons why DM is so different from other games. We have looked at many games and our opinion is :
The Real Life has no place in the game as long as there is only the top down view.

Wayne:While developing DM, we tried to justify to the new 16-bit-computers. Back then, from all the 16-bit computers, the Atari ST
had been a good portion cheaper than the Amiga. And we wanted to get our games sold, of course. That could only be done, when the
computer is also affordable. Today we peek over the fence to see what new computers get out onto the market. We want to also
publish our System, then enhanced and improved on new and improved Computers. We currently work among other things with a new
japanese fujitsu computer.

PP:why is it that DM only runs on the Amiga with 1 MByte of memory? Where there some technical issues with the Amiga?

Wayne: Uuh yes! In deed: We had severe technical problems with the porting of SM. We crammed extremely much Information on the
disquette/disk as well as into the ST´s memory. That worked without much ado, because the OS of the ST is wonderfully small.
Looking at the Amiga things are different. Amiga´s OS simply uses up more space. We already had all the Information for the game
squeezed together to a minimum - more tightly was not doable.
Thus we would have had to cut off of the game for smaller Amigas: Here one portion less, there a monster lost - and this we did not
want, and it would not have been fair. Not to get me wrong: We find the Amiga to be a fantastic machine. On a note, it had been
quite frustating to get decently working sound on the ST. We got help from a very good article in a german Computer magazine: What
was the name again?

Doug: I believe the magazine was called 68000´er

Wayne:This very article back then had helped us much to get in terms with the ST´s meagre soundchip. The Amiga got Stereo-Sound,
therefore we wanted to use it. Maybe we will publish one day DM for the smaller Amigas. To have this, we would have to get rid of
the complete OS first and write a new one.

PP:Will there be one day a DM version for MS-DOS PC´s?

Wayne:We waited for this PC-conversion this long, because we had hoped that with the publishing of new business-products, like e.g.
Microsoft Windows there would be an establishment of some Graphics Standard. For the game programmer the PC is not all that easy to
cope with. Just look at all the different Graphic Standards out there: There´s VGA, EGA, CGA, Hercules. In addition, the IBM-PC
got terrible sound.

Doug:And a good portion of DM is through the sound culisse.

Wayne: Therefore we developed extra Hardware that is being packed at no costs with the game.

PP:Can we take a look at this wonder thing?

Wayne Holder is searching his bag.

Russ:Oh well, it is just a bit disappointing to look at, at first glance.

Wayne Holder finally managed to find the wonder thing in his huge bag and lays it on the table.

PP: That is the thing?

Russ:Yep, that is it! As I said: at the first glance is looks rather disappointing. I know, the thing looks far too small!
Something has to be wrong with it; such a sound card should really be very big.

Wayne:It is all functioning very simple: Almost any PC- owner has a parallel printer port on his machine. In this little plug there is
a small board/card. Connect the plug into your parallel port, connect this cable on a common Amplyfier and voila you got first
class 8-bit-Digitalsound. IBM should really be ashamed of themselves, to produce a computer with such rotten sound
capabilites on the market. In addition we added another Joystickport. Because this had been the second problem: Not every
PC-owner got a mouse. We think that DM is not exaclty the best game to play only with a keyboard. This problem occurs with
virtually every game with graphical-orientation, where you got to click on icons.

Doug:And concerning ourselves, a keyboard only navigation would be a confusing matter.

Russ:Another good reason to develop a plug-in module had been that many people are anxious to open their computers.

Doug:Furthermore, some guys do not have a single vacant slot in their Machine.

Wayne:We wanted it to be as easy as possible. Most of them do not look at the computer as a piece of "hardware", more as a basic
commodity. Either getting their business affairs done or to use it to play games.

Wayne opens the Card, for me to take a look at the interior.

Russ:All the pieces you see are originating from all over the world:Hongkong, Taiwan, Texas and a couple from Mexico. Looking at it
this way, we are really an international company.

Wayne:On a note, we are developing this Card currently also for the Atari ST. We can improve the ST-sound quite a bit. The card for
the ST is relatively simple. The Atari ST got the same printer port as a PC does: This way all we have to do is adjusting the
software accordingly. And we want to take this card into consideration in our upcoming games, of course.
mh



Block
What is called FTL here?
The Name FTL is ...

[ChristopheF]

Thanks a lot!

[Jan]

Good job, Zoom! Thanks!

[zoom]

second part of part 1:

What means FTL after all?

The acronym FTL is sheer exaggeration. It stands for "Faster Than Light" and the programmers form FTL are surely not faster than light.
But the time of wait is paying off: All past games so far were very good. Even today, when thinking about the debut-piece, computer-
Gamers start raving over it: "Sundog- Frozen Legacy"
FTL became widely known through the RPG-Hit "DM". It set quality standards in both ludic(game-related) and User guidance ways. This
tradition of real quality has been further continued by the Action-Title "Oids" and magnificently peaked with the DM add-on
diskette CSB as of today.



Captions
The Masters of Dungeons
Here we have almost the whole FTL crew at a glance
This smart lad is Russ Boelhauf
The miraculous/wondrous cable from FTL
He does "complete" the job: Doug Bell
This friendly gentleman is Wayne holder
The worms are back: chaos strikes back (ST)
Text Higlighted

While you scrimmage in the dungeons, we had a chat with those who bestowed the great role-playing game "chaos strikes back" upon you.

[Sophia]

Nice editor!
Looks a bit like ESB...

[zoom]

captions:
lightning fast to the top

They feel anywhere at home, be it in deep dungeons or on the surface of alien planets:
The programmers of FTL, who struck two 16-Bit-Hits with Oids and DM



How should the Dungeon look like? The Dungeon Editor of FTL

Battle with the paper streamer(ed:in german this is paper snake)
Hiding is in vain! PowerPlay will find every programmer, so it happens with Andy Jaros, FTL graphic artist
We want to be just like Infocom
Wayne Holder, president of FTL, puts in person diskettes into the copying machine
A huge tome: the source code of DM
Mike Newton programmed FTL´s Dungeon Editor and other Tools.

------------------------

If you think about California and Computers, you tend to come up first with Silicon Valley situated south of San Francisco.
Maybe one remembers dimly one or the other software company in Los Angeles. But San Diego, only a few miles apart from the mexican border, you might not hit on.

[zoom]

At the same time there are couple of companies in San Diego that attend to highly modern Computer-
technics. It is there, where you can meet the developers of a new Roleplaying System which
makes good use of the capabilities of 16-bit computers at optimal level. We are talking about
FTL Games, the creators of DM, Oids and SunDog - Frozen Legacy.

FTL stands for Faster Than Light, that translated being: Schneller als das Licht. Some roleplaying
game- freaks had a different opinion on things, because they had to wait one and a half years for
DM. But the success of the game seems to justify the naming, given that DM has hit almost
instantly the top tier of ST-sale figures. If you are picky about it the company really is
being called Software Heaven, because that is the name under which Russ Boelhauf and Wayne Holder
six years ago founded their own business under, which is as of today producing its own games by
the Label FTL Games/Software Heaven.

What does Software Heaven do apart from Roleplaying Games? Wayne Holder, president and
active programmer shows us with what he and Russ started earning money and still do up today:
Spellchecker, programs that test Textfiles on correctness. These Spellcheckers are available
for purchase for some Computers directly at Software Heaven, often it is the case that
spellcheckers are being made for other companies that integrate these then into their own programs
or computers. At the moment, Wayne is working on a spellchecker for a Magnavox-writing computer.
In the course of this endeavour he even has a totally dismantled Magnavox-Computer laying on
his desk.

While Wayne is guiding us through the bureau-rooms of FTL, he told us that we are in bad luck
visiting just now. Many of the programmers have gone on vacancies. In the last couple of Months
everyone had abstained from vacancies, to complete the job on Oids as well as DM.


While promenading through the bureau´s corridor we meet upon a young man who is grappling with a
paper streamer,couple of meters lenght pouring out of his colour printer. Andy Jaros is the
graphic artist, who created all the Pictures for DM. At the moment he is concerned with
categorizing and printing all the graphics he painted for DM - therefore the paper streamer in
his office. "It took me the best part of a year in order to finish the DM Graphics , because I
had to get in terms with a computer first. At this time, all this would probably take me only a
couple of months now. But a single monster at times makes me sit several days over my desk."
Andy is sketching all graphics down on paper, before he then creates it on the computer screen.
His graphic files for DM all together use up Memory Space far in excess of one Mega Byte. Even
though, DM fits on a single ST-disquette(which is roughly only 400 KByte), and that is not only the
graphics but also on this disk is the program and the digitized sounds.

Wayne comments on this: "The most labor for DM had been to develop methods in order to cram the
whole stuff on the disquette and into memory. At the same time the unpackaging of data must really
be quite fast, for DM planned being a real-time game. Doug Bell and Dennis Walker wrote the
graphic routines and were taking every caution to make things go as fast as possible"

Projekt-leader Doug Bell seems to be a glimmering Personality. He, however at this point, having
been on vacation, yet his associates new to report couple of things on him. Doug is an
"adrenal-junkie" and regards falling from high cliffs with a pair of long skiers to be a fun
leisure thing to do. Doug allegedly openly confesses:"I do love the feeling to risk my life".
Seven Years he and his father trampled through the West of America and did not dread to
blast their way through rough terrain with dynamite. It is not for nothing he has aquired
the nickname of THE WILD MAN.

Dougs Job as project leader, technical director and Chief designer had not been a nouveau
experience for him. He had also been responsible for the ST-version of SunDog: Frozen Legacy.
Nevertheless, when questioned about what he considers to be his best program, his answer
seems paradoxical, being: A data-compiler in Pascal which he had being made at the university.
"I wrote it on paper, typed it in, it worked on the spot, I went home. And that is with a 500
line long program."


The third Master of Dungeons is Mike Newton. He is responsible for huge parts of the gamefield as
well as many puzzles, he also wrote some helper programs like the Dungeon-Editor. With help of
the Dungeon-Editor you are able to construct a complete dungeon with all monsters, treasures and
riddles on screen. Out of this the Editor program automatically creates data which in turn can be
merged into program code of Dungeon Master quite easily. The Editor is not for sale, because you
still need a programmer to put the Dungeons together into a game. The point of the Editor
program being to get people who are no programmers to work for FTL and devise
Roleplaying games with it. Because there will surely be more RPgames alike DM.

Wayne Holder outlines the near future of FTL games a bit more in detail. " We set a high goal.
We want to become on the field of Roleplaying Games the counterpart to what Infocom has
achieved in the field of Text-Adventures: The best technically, who also got the best game-principle
and - on contrary to Infocom- also the best graphics. Therefore we spent several months
just working on completion and improving/detailing the interaction for DM.
We let dozens of guys playtest from the complete pro to the ones who had never seen a computer nor
Dungeon before, we listened to every proposal and modified the user interface several times. We did
think about things that do not appear in DM at all , which we however will need in other RPGs
and have programmed them along the line, too. Now we got a complex Program-system that enables us
to program relatively quickly RPGs with a user interaction control similar to DM´s. And it wont
stop at Fantasy- titles alone. We do think about Science -fiction games, detective stories and about a
couple of new Things nobody did to this day."

[zoom]

At the same time FTL released with Oids an action title of epic porportions. Wayne opinion on this: " we want to stay open towards every direction and do not at all want to nail ourselves down to RPGs alone. Dan HEwitt wanted to program an action-game for us really badly, so we had started the experiment Oids. If it sells well, we are going to make more action-titles.

The on-time-completion of DM was being threatened by the emerging first Oids-version: All programmers prefered to play another round of Oids, to finishing their project. Wayne had to threaten to ban Oids from the office, to make sure that work continued. Wayne tells with a little smile: " It would have broken my heart to really prohibit it, but damn they played damn much Oids!"

Although FTL consists of only close to a dozen Guys, the games here are not only being programmed but also copied, packaged and sent by mail. This means even Wayne wonßt be able, despite his president-title,to escape from copying diskettes for a couple of hours. Lucky that FTL is owner of a copying machine of the Type Formaster, it enables them to peu a peu gradually put 100 diskettes there. The disk swapping is doing the machine then on itself.

For us it had been a great surprise to see the start of a german language translation for DM
"Its not that much of work really", tells Wayne "and apart from that the german market is one of the most important in the world. After all there are almost as many STs in germany as there are in america and the amiga, too is selling well over there at your place".


Given that DM is now being re-developed for Amiga and AppleIIGs, is there safe reason to believe in Versions for 8 bit computers? "Under no circumstances, no way! With less than 512KByte RAM there won´t move anything at all and you also really need a fast processor like the 68000er. Alas, the british company that distributes DM, keeps asking every other second week if we really are not planning on doing a cassette - version for the Spectrum." To prove that there is really nothing that can be done about it, Wayne shows us the complete source code to DM: a Computer-print that is bigger than many a telephone book. About 100000 Lines Assembler-Code it allegedly is all in all.

The many work that has being put into DM seems to have payed off. While we where gossiping with the programmers at FTLs office, the phone rang on occasion. DM-players from all over the USA called and asked about how to progress on a certain puzzle or inquired how to defeat a particular monster. And practically every single one that calls congratulates FTL on this game and say how great it is. That the programmers are happy to hear is for sure and they then provide bits and pieces of hints, of course. If, however even more people are going to call them, then FTL will have to come up with another method to help out the players, because the programmers are due to code the next RPG-hit. (bs)

[zoom]

This is really a nice article and sheds some light on how FTL worked and what problems they encountered. Different times!!
Also you get to know a bit about the persons themselves as well as funny bits and pieces.

[ChristopheF]

Great article indeed. Many thanks for the translation, zoom!

[Jan]

And I thought the articles would reveal the meaning of the "Grynix jernum quey ki skebow rednim u os dey wefna enocarn aquantana" scroll.

[ChristopheF]

I remember seeing a screenshot of DCS (Dungeon Construction Kit) somewhere before, but I think it was in my pile of Amiga magazines that I threw away

I suppose you were referring to an article published in ACE that I have just added to the Encyclopaedia. It even gives a glimpse of the original source code in the background!
I also added many other scans, including some DM hints published in ACE #31 that were sent by a certain Matthew

[Gambit37]

Yes, that ACE article is the one with the DCS picture I was referring to. And the "Food Fight" which I remember re-creating in an unreleased DMUTE custom dungeon! Amazing to see this stuff again after so long!

And WOW at the last two updates with all those scans -- You seem to have every scan of every article and review of DM ever made now!

[ChristopheF]

It's true there's quite a lot of magazine scans on the site now, but some are still missing as listed here: http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/846
And the list only includes those articles/reviews I'm aware of, there must be so much more that we don't even know of. I was not aware of the existence of most of the articles I have recently posted before people sent them to me.
There must be a lot more waiting in cellars and attics