@DATABASE Programmers Information @NODE main "Programmers and Submissions Information" ======================================= PROGRAMMERS AND SUBMISSIONS INFORMATION ======================================= If you are a programmer or individual who has written a software product, or is in the process of writing a software product, and believes it is of the high quality demanded by F1 Licenceware then this guide is for you. @{" CLICK " LINK intro} for Introduction for All Amiga Programmers @{" CLICK " LINK howto} for Information on How to Submit to F1 Licenceware @{" CLICK " LINK accept} for Answers on Acception to F1 Licenceware @{" CLICK " LINK quest} for Questions and Answers for Programmers Queries @{" CLICK " LINK sub} for the Submissions Check List @{" CLICK " LINK want} for the Wanted List for F1 Licenceware Remember more detail can be obtained by phoning or writing to F1 Licenceware. @ENDNODE @NODE intro "Programmers Introduction" ======================================== TO ALL AMIGA PROGRAMMERS IN ANY LANGUAGE ======================================== Why not join the HAPPY band of F1 programmers and join in the thrill and fun of seeing your software reviewed and advertised in the Amiga press and hopefully even make yourself a few bucks beer money into the bargain? You will find F1 a bit friendlier than your usual Licenceware vendor as we DO CARE about your product and we work hard to make it available to the Amiga software buying public, after all it's our living! Just take a look back over the last year in all the Amiga magazines and you will see more than 117 reviews of F1 Licenceware products, we have even won awards for best games software of 1994 from Amiga Format. Any one of those reviews could of been yours, what are you waiting for? O.K let's be honest and realistic, not all of our programmers make much money, some very little indeed, all we can do is get your reviews in the mags spread demo versions into the P.D and ask our distributers to promote your products the best they can in their adverts and catalogues. It is a fact that some software will sell like hot cakes and other titles, no matter how good, just do not sell. This part is up to you, send us something that people want, make it of a very high standard and you are well on your way. Here at F1 we recognise the need for speed, we won't keep you on tenter-hooks waiting for months to find out if your product has been accepted or not. As a general rule you will receive a reply from us within FOUR DAYS, yes I will repeat that, F O U R D A Y S, not six months or even worse, no reply at all, we ALWAYS reply to your letters. We would appreciate a stamp if you have never submitted to F1 before though, to keep costs down. @ENDNODE @NODE howto "How to Submit to F1" ===================================== HOW TO SUBMIT PROGRAMS FOR EVALUATION ===================================== 1) The program you are submitting must be 100% your own work, you will be personally responsible for any breaches of copyright and as the copyright of your program will stay with you and not F1, we will be sued and have to sue you for compensation. Also the program must be exclusive to us and previously unreleased, except in demo form or if you have upgraded the software sufficiently. There may be other exceptions, ask us if you are not sure, we can only say no at worse. 2) All programs submitted must be compatible with at least Amiga`s 500,600 & A1200 standard memory/hardware configurations. Exceptions being things like AGA only. We can be flexible here if the program is outstanding. 3) Please include the following details about your program: Basic outline of what it does, Language written in, Cheat modes (if any) How many levels (if applicable) which Amiga`s you have been able to test it on. Your name, address and phone number. 4) Please supply full documentation on disk in ASCII, or in the program itself.*PLEASE NOTE* THIS IS ESSENTIAL. 5) The final version for distribution must be standard AmigaDos format. No custom formats please. We need to be able to DMS it and have it run from a CD. 6) If accepted, we will require you to insert an IFF picture file (supplied) of the F1 label INSIDE your main executable. 7) Please supply a stamp with all correspondence if you want a reply. 8) If you want to enhance your chances of sales please supply us with a demo version for the Public Domain (Saying how much and where to buy it) We will give it to our distributers to spread and you can send it where you like too, if you want. 9) One other thing you can do to help us/yourselves is to supply a screenshot of your game/program that we can use in advertising/on the F1 cat disk and more importantly send to the mags with your review copy. It means less work for the mags and enhances your chance of a review. @ENDNODE @NODE accept "Accepting Your Program" ====================== ACCEPTING YOUR PROGRAM ====================== Your program will be sold for £3.99 if it is on 1 disk £4.99 2 disks etc. Your royalty per copy sold will be approx 25% of the selling price for example: Sold at £3.99 (£1 royalty) £4.99 (£1.25 royalty) etc. Our top selling programs author each quarter will receive a small cash bonus. If we accept your program you will be sent a contract to sign, read it carefully and if you are happy with it, sign it and return it as soon as possible. All programs accepted will be sent to all relevant magazines for review. Please leave sending review copies out to us as this is part of our service to you. Every three months you will receive a cheque from F1 if your program has earnt £10.00 or more. If it has not earnt you £10 then that money will be held over until the next quarter or until you have earned £10+ or you request payment. If we cannot accept your program we will let you know within a week, maximum. We will usually tell you what we think is wrong with it and may offer advice and/or ideas to make your program acceptable to us. @ENDNODE @NODE quest "Some Questions and Answers" ================================= PROGRAMMERS QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ================================= Q. How, when and how much will I be paid for my program? A. Royalties are calculated at roughly 25% of the purchase price of your program so if your program is being sold at £3.99 you will receive £1.00 for each and every copy we sell for you. Cheques will be sent directly to the programmers every quarter. Q. What type of programs are F1 looking for? A. Anything of quality, including games/utilities/educational/Hyperbook etc. as long as your program is of better quality than a good P.D equivelent then you have a chance of acceptance, only about one in five programs are accepted by us though as the standard is quite high. SEE WANTED DOC. * * PLEASE NOTE, we cannot accept games written using S.E.U.C.K. * * Q. What else can F1 offer us programmers apart from our royalty? A. Not a lot! Well you can get 20% off of all our Licenceware products, and a friendly/fast/helpful service. Q. How are you going to sell my program? A. We will do everything in our power to sell your product, At the time of writing we have 12 distributers selling F1 products. We will send review copies of all our products to the relevant mags and will be coaxing news stories and plugs in any and every mag on the market. Selling your program is the only way we can survive so you can be sure we will be doing our best. Q. How do we know you will pay us the correct amount of royalties? A. You don`t! This is a trust thing, but saying that 99% our income will be from postal customers and they will mostly be paying by cheque which will have to go through the F1 bank account which the taxman will have his eye on for any discrepancies, we will publish sales records of every disk which will be sent to you with your cheque, in any case we are honest people (Husband, wife and two kids) trying to make an honest living and we want F1 to be a long term job for us and to do this successfully we have to build a bond of trust with our programmers. I have been stitched up in the past myself and you get to know who the straight people are very quickly, we wouldn`t last long being dishonest it is in our interest to be straight with you in the long run. Just ask yourself why F1 has suceeded where other Licenceware schemes have failed! It's because we are HONEST. Q. What happens if my program just simply does not sell? A. We will give it every chance but if sales are very bad we may offer to release it back to you. Q. Can I put adverts in my program for other products of mine not Licenced to F1? A. Within reason, yes you can, most other Licenceware outfits won`t allow it. We don't mind as long as you don't go over the top. There may be some subject limitations to this though, please ask. Q. How long before I get some dosh! A. From the day we take a new title on it can take anything between 6 weeks to 3 months for your title to get reviews and into our distributers adverts/catalogues. So your first royalty cheque may be quite small. Normally your second royalty cheque will be your best. In a nutshell it could take anything from 1-6 months to get some decent royalties under your belt. Having said that two of our most succesful titles sold loads almost straight away. Q. Will my programs get reviewed? A. As I have said, we send all our titles to ALL the relevent magazines. We have no power ovr what gets reviewed, in fact we have a few titles that have never been reviewed. But then again we have some that have been reviewed in EVERY magazine. Basically if your program is good enough (In the eyes of the reviewer) it will get reviewed. Q. I am in a programming team consisting of five people how much money will we get each? A. The same as everyone else, you will have to split the 25% between you I am afraid. Think about it, we would never cover our costs and the system would be open to abuse ("I wrote this game with 10 other mates" etc.) If you have any other questions or anything you are not sure of drop us a line and we will be pleased to answer your questions. F1 Software F1 Software USA 1 Lower Mill Close, 75 North Perry St. Goldthorpe, Rotheram Elizabethtown South Yorkshire PA 17022-1146 S63 9BY USA ENGLAND Phone 01709 888127 Phone (717) 367 6210 E-mail: phil@ware5d.demon.co.uk Email: mushypd@redrose.net This text does NOT constitute part of the F1 contract and does NOT apply to F1 Gold titles. The contents of this text are subject to change without @ENDNODE @NODE sub "Submissions Check List" ===================== SUBMISSION CHECK LIST ===================== Please complete the following to the best of your knowledge to save us time and help us deal quickly with your submission. Please return this form with your submission. If you don't have a printer please answer the questions in writing. YOUR NAME__________________________________________________ ADDRESS____________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________ PHONE______________________________________________________ PROGRAM TITLE______________________________________________ Known compatability:_______________________________________ Minimum memory required:___________________________________ Language written in:_______________________________________ Basic outline of game or util:_____________________________ ___________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________ Demo or full version supplied?:____________________________ Instructions on disk?:_____________________________________ How many levels? (If any):_________________________________ Cheats (If any):___________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________ Age range (If educational title)___________________________ If accepted can you supply the following? A Screenshot in IFF________________________________________ A Demo version_____________________________________________ @ENDNODE @NODE want "Programs Wanted by F1" ================================= PROGRAMS WANTED BY F1 LICENCEWARE ================================= We are always on the look-out for superb software. Here is a list of software that we are particularly interested in for the F1 Licenceware range. Remember it could be included in the prestigous F1 GOLD range for the most innovative, quality based software. High quality graphic adventures. If it's good it will sell well. A top class Text editor or Word Processor/DTP program. F1 GOLD title!? An extremely good Amigaguide editor would be really nice, one which doesn't destroy the layout of the document you are editing!! A really good racing (car/mbike) game, strategy and/or action game. These are standard good sellers. A Blitz Basic disk magazine series or just tutorials. Blitzers are crying out for this, wether they will pay is disputable?. A general, updated bi-monthly, disk magazine covering the entire Amiga market. A seriously good Art package rivalling commercial versions. An in-depth Deluxe Paint Tutorial from beginners to expert and others. Anything else original and of a very high quality. @ENDNODE