Llamatron 2

[James]

Not a news post so much as passing along a non-announcement from the Llamasoft web board-

Jeff Minter has said that his next game after Unity will be Llamatron 2, and it'll probably be done Gridrunner++ shareware PC style. He's planning on it being a nice three-month project to wind down with after the major effort of Unity.

My credit card is waiting to buy this now.

For everyone wanting to see Llamatron the first, go get Steem here, an Atari ST emulator, and the TOS file while you're at it. There's a good beginner guide on how to set it up here as well-

http://www.blimey.strayduck.com/

Get Llamatron here, it's freeware so it's available to everyone without trying to rationalize it-

http://www.medwaypvb.com/llamadloads.htm

Make sure you get the Rude Llamatron version, for it has many rude words in it.

In Steem option set Memory to 4 megabits and Speed to 32 mhz. I'll cut/paste this next bit on how to set up dual-stick shooting-

1. Reading the joysticks using DirectInput
2. On the Standard Ports tab, set both Port 0 and Port 1 as Always Active
3. Port 0 is the "fire direction" port, set the controls appropriately - including the fire button.
4. Port 1 is the "movement direction", set them appropriately.
5. To start Llamatron in two-stick mode, hit the Port 0 firebutton.

Now go shoot something.

James

[NeoZeedeater]

Cool news. I used to play the DOS port of Llamatron.

[James]

I tried that, but I couldn't get sound on it so it wasn't as fun. (This is the other day running it on WinXP Pro) Plus according to Minter the Atari ST version is the better one, and through the joys of emulation I can not only hear it, I can hear all the rude words too. Plus using a dual-shock on it means that it's being played as it properly should.

James

[elbarto]

Excellent, will be an instant purchase for me too

I'm still playing the ST one after all these years, even better (as you said) with a Dual shock in STeem.

[Frogacuda]

Can somebody explain to me how to set this thing up to use the two-stick configuration? No matter how I seem to set the joystick settings it uses the default scheme.

EDIT: Ok, I can edit the sticks ok, but I still can't get the game to recognize a second stick. What port does it have to be on?

[Frogacuda]

I can't play it in twin stick mode. I followed the directions exactly but the port 0 stick never responds. Steem says port 0 is for the mouse. Might that be a conflict?

EDIT: Got it! It doesn't work right with the later TOS. I had to try the older one... Weird.

EDIT 2: Ok, that wasn't it... now I can't figure out what makes it work, or why it stopped working when I didn't change anything. God this brings me fury.

[James]

I set the port 0 fire button to X (using a Sony Dual Shock wired in through a USB adaptor) and click that to start the game. When I was starting a game using a mouse button it wouldn't recognize that port 0 was supposed to be a joystick so it wouldn't let me use it to fire.

I meant to mention that TOS 1.02 UK version was the best one to use but forgot. Damn senility...

James

[Frogacuda]

Ok, I think I got it now.

I used to play the DOS version (or some iteration of it, as I remember it being a bit poorer than the DOS version I tried recently), and I kinda thought of it as a poor man's robotron.

This is definately a better experience since it has decent sound and I have the good control set up. But I think really highly of Robotron, and I don't like this as much. The difficulty curve is too gentle, and you have too many lives, and it's not as frantic. I know alot of people regard this as better than Robotron, but I really can't agree. Llamatron is an unbalanced gimmicky version of the same game, stripped of its frenetic energy and strategy.

Still, I'd like to see how Llamatron 2 shapes up. Chance for redemption, perhaps. His track record for updating classic arcade games is otherwise incredible.