(·· AMIGA · ARENA ··) .----------------------------------. | I · N · T · E · R ·V · I · E · W | `----------------------------------' ¸=====================================================================¸ | | | Developer: Team Chaos | | | | Software: Total Chaos: Battle at the Edge of Yesteryear | | | | Version: 4.03 | | | | Homepage: http://users2.ev1.net/~jconwell/TotalChaosAGA/chaos.html | | | | | | Email: JamesConwell@Yahoo.com | | | `=====================================================================' *Please introduce yourself to the readers!* My name is James Conwell. I am the leader of Team Chaos. My sole purpose in life is to make the world's best strategy game. This requires using an Amiga for obvious reasons. I am building an army of elite Grafix Mages, Code Wizards, Audio Engineers, Animationographers and Fantasy Artists for this purpose. We have some very talented people on our team but we need more, particularly we could use some talented 3D renderer-animators and others. Our goal is to conquer the strategy gaming world, subjugate it and rule it with an Iron Fist. We can (and will) do it with you or without you, but it would make things faster and more fun if you helped us out. :) Drop me a mail if you are interested in becoming a Holy Warrior in the Army of Chaos. *When did you start working with the Amiga?* In September 1985 when the A1000 was first released. I immediately began demoing them at the local computer store, showing off the amazing music and graphics capabilites. Before the Amiga's release I bought every single magazine I could find about the amiga and read them voraciously. Amiga saved me from the tortuous limitations of the C64! Jay Miner rules 4-eva! *Which Amiga model do you own* I currently own an A1200T, A3000, A1200, A2000 and 2 A500s. I also own 1 broken A4000 :( I had another A3000 and another A2000 but I sold them long ago. I gave away my A1000 and my 3rd A500 many years ago. *Which version of the operating system is running on your computer?* I use OS 3.9 on the A1200T and OS 3.1 on the A3000. *Which software are you developing?* Total Chaos: Battle at the Edge of Yesteryear. The Ultimate strategy game. Ultimate in fun, not complicatedness. :) *What languages does your game support?* It is fully playable in English, Deutsch, Français, Magyar, Polski and Italiano thanks to the huge support of the game in those countries and the hard work of the translators who translated the 150K of texts. *How many players does your game support?* 1 to 8 players. Any of the players can be human or cpu controlled. You can play on teams or every man for himself. *Can you tell us what your game is about?* Total Chaos is a strategy game about the eternal unending battle between good and evil, light and dark, life and death. It is about power and dominance, death and destruction, monsters and mayhem. It is about the forces of magic and the rulers of darkness in high places. If you want more detailed info you should read the aminet readme file. :) Or you can visit our website, go to the downloads section and click the readme link. http://users2.ev1.net/~jconwell/TotalChaosAGA/chaos.html Don't forget to check out the screenshots. *How do you create the graphics for your game?* Mostly *I* don't create the graphics. I have a small army of powerful GrafixWarriors who do that for me. They hunt down and kill the blocky pixels, they seek out and destroy the jerky animations! They march out to battle chanting "Death to lores graphics"! They are quite lethal and effective in their job but there is so much work to be done that I am not sure it will ever really be finished. The main trouble is that Total Chaos features hundreds of monsters and hundreds of inanimate objects and hundreds of magic spells + special fx gfx. In the rare instances where I personally make gfx for the game, such as the Points Spell, I use Deluxe Paint 5. *What has created the idea in you to develop this game?* The desire to create the best strategy game ever produced by human civilization. Plus I have always wanted to make a game that actually made decent use of the AGA chipset. Most AGA strategy games have been in super lores mode 320x256 such as Civilization AGA or they ran in hires mode and were megaridiculously slow such as Sim City 2000 AGA or A-Train AGA. Total Chaos is quadruple the resolution of Civilization AGA and a lot faster too. *How long has the development taken so far?* I have worked on it continuously since January 1997. I have added many new monsters, magic spells, features and capabilities during that time. My prgramming partner (now retired) worked on it for years before that. *What can we expect of future versions?* You cannot expect anything of future versions unless someone registers the game and asks that new versions be produced. *What kind of Games do you like and play on the Amiga? Well in the olden days I loved all the hot games like Turrican 2, Superfrog, Hired Guns, Stunt Car Racer, Dune II, Pinball Dreams, Another World and countless others. I could write a large book about all the great amiga games I have played since 1985!!!!! I remember when Amigas were used in arcade machines playing Sidewinder and Space Ranger and many others! YEAH!!! Amiga Rules! As I got older I yearned for more strategy and less action. But there are precious few really good strategy games for computers in my opinion. Admittedly I am very picky about what I like and don't like in games and I'm a very tough person to please. Since 1996 the main game I play is Total Chaos. I have played many other games during 1996-2002 on many different systems but none of them hold my attention the way Total Chaos does. I get many emails from Amiga users (and many non amiga users) who tell me more or less the same thing. A typical "really fantasitically great game" holds my interest for a solid month, maybe 2 at max. Then its time to move on. Yet for some reason I never get bored of Total Chaos. It must be that secret magic ingredient I cooked into the coding recipe. ;) *Which software are you using for developing?* My primary development software is: SASC 6.58, Cygnus Ed Professional, YAM 2.0, Ibrowse 2.2, Deluxe Paint 5, SampleZ, GfxConv, DevPac Assembler and probably lots of other great Amiga software that I have forgotten to mention. My Gfx-Battalion utilizes a wide range of high-powered Amiga software artillery in the Chaosian Battles such as PPaint 7.1, Photogenics and many others as well as custom designed gfx software. *For which system (AmigaOS, AmigaDE, MorphOS) are you developing?* AmigaOS. I am a 100% AmigaOS coder. Total Chaos: Battle at the Edge of Yesteryear is a 100% AmigaOS game. Intuition(tm) Rocks! Exec Rules! *Which OS will you support in the future?* AmigaOS. 100% 32-bit multitasking since 1985! Wahoo! *What is the reason to Support this OS? 1. It works. 2. It is fast. 3. I have it on my computer. 4. Every piece of software I own is compatible with it. 5. What is wrong with it? *What features do you miss on the AmigaOS for developing? Oh I miss that feature that Windows 95, 98 and 2000 have where your system mysteriously crashes every month and you have to reinstall your entire OS, lose some of your pograms and a bunch of your settings and waste a jillion hours each month trying to rebuild and reconfigure your system back to where it was and ... WAIT! AUGH! What am I saying!?!?!? I don't miss that feature at all!!! << Hitting self upside the head >> *What features do you wish for the AmigaOS? Any and all features imaginable as long as: 1. They actually work. 2. They are fast. 3. They are usefull. *Don't you lose the fun and the interest in programming if you see the small amount of feedback you get from the small Amiga market?* There is no such thing as "small amount of feedback" from the Amiga market. Several million Amigas have been sold. Obviously at least several 100,000s of them are still in use. I get lots of feedback. Perhaps I only get so much feedback because the game is so popular. *Don't you lose the fun and the interest in programming if you see the small amount of registrations you get from the small Amiga market?* Unfortunately the answer is sometimes "yes". :( *Do you receive enough feedback for your software?* I receive tons of feedback from many Total Chaos players around the world. More is always welcome though. :) It is not uncommon for me to receive 20 emails about the game per day. Sometimes it is as high as 40. (!) Feedback is not the problem. Registrations are the problem. I have spent well over $150,000.00 developing this game. It would be nice if some people registered the game every once in a while instead of just playing it for free. *Which software did you last buy for your Amiga?* Amiga OS 3.9 + Developer CD. *Which software do you still use?* Mainly the programs I listed earlier. *Which hard/software are you planning to buy?* I have no $. I am broke. I cannot "plan to buy" anything. If someone would like to buy _me_ some hardware then I could really use a PCI Voodoo 3 2000 or better, or 2 megs of ram chips for an old PCI S3 Virge DX or if you have an old S3 Virge DX or Voodoo 3 laying around in your closet you could donate it to me and it would be very much appreciated and then maybe I could start work on a gfx card version for 2004. *Do you believe in a comeback of Amiga?* Hopefully. :) *Your final words for the readers?* Amiga Rules! Total Chaos Rules! Amiga Users Rule! .... __ -- © Amiga Arena 04/2002 -- __ .... aMIGA aRENA - fEEL tHE fIRE!