                            (August 7th, 2000)

                               - Untitled -

                       Created by FrozenEmu & Tsugumo

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Instructions:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simply type "UNTITLED" and hit enter at the prompt to start playing.
UNTITLED.BAT will set up the sound so you'll hear background music.  If you
don't want sound, or the game won't run with sound for some reason, then type
in "UNTDAT NOSOUND" and that should work.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The History:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once upon a time, FrozenEmu and Tsugumo were talking and the conversation
turned to RPGs.  After a little while, one of them said, "We should make an
RPG," to which other replied, "Okay," and thus was born Untitled, the product
of that riveting conversation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Skinny:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Untitled is just your everyday 320x200, 256 color RPG with MIDI music.  The
DirectQB library (created by Angelo Mottola) was used because of its funky
graphic routines (we basically just want to have the multiple page layer
abilities so we can have smooth animation going on...The graphic loading and
displaying routines are also extremely nice to be able to use).  Now there's
a lot of controversy over using libraries to make games, so here's our shot
at a statement about it.  If you have a problem with people using libraries,
and it's a big enough deal to you that it makes you not want to play a game,
then save yourself some time and don't play it.  It's that simple.  We're
here to make a game, not re-invent the wheel.  We're also using QMIDI
(created by Jesse Dorland) for the music, which is composed by Christopher
Toler.  There are no sound effects yet, and we'll probably be redoing our
sound setup from scratch in the future anyway, but QMIDI was quick to set up,
so that's what's running in this demo.

FrozenEmu is doing the programming and Tsugumo is doing the graphics and
annoying FrozenEmu with his constant "Shift the text in the textbox 2 pixels
over!  It'll look better, I swear!" nagging which has pushed FrozenEmu
numerous times to the brink of brutally murdering Tsugumo and dumping his
body in a river.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Information:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This demo was quite rushed as we had to quickly turn what we had of the
engine into some sort of actual demo, and wanted more than just a walkaround 
demo, so we threw in a bit of plot to keep you interested.  This demo plot is
only semi-relative to the actual plot, which means that some of the
characters behave differently, some main characters serving as simple NPCs
because we haven't got them drawn up yet.  The fight scenes are working, but
there are only 4 different enemies and the spells were extremely rushed.  We
can have full viewport spells with unlimited animation easily, so the spells
were just made up to show that fact off.  The ones in this demo will likely
never be seen again because they're just that rushed.  We can do summoning
spells, but again, because of a lack of time the one in the game (you have
to find it) is just a simple silhouette animation with scribbled fire.
There's no finished item/weapon setup yet, because we've focused on getting
the basic engine down first.

The title "Untitled" was a combination of two things, one of which may have
been us having no idea what to call it.  The name could change at any moment
because we don't really plan to settle on a final name until we get further
into making the game and setting up the plot, when we can choose a name that
we feel fits what we have.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Battles:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The battles aren't finished of course, but in the future we plan to have
multiple characters fighting, combination attacks, lots of spells, some
hidden summoning spells, and so on.  Right now there's only one super attack
(it'll happen when you select the right combo).  Damage is added up from each
of your attacks and later on we'll be putting ina more strategic setup for
their usage, so you'll have a type of fatigue bar which will require you to
plan out which attacks you want to use.  There's no MP or anything (and we're
looking to set up a more original system of using magic) right now, so you
can use any of the spells you have as much as you want.  Because the Cure
spell will max out your HP, you probably won't even come close to dying,
which is good because we don't want you to die in this demo or you won't see
all of it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Story:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The plot in this demo is just a short one, and in the main plot we're
attempting to be original.  Focusing on making a solid game instead of the
end-all walkaround engine.  In basically every RPG, you play as a hero who
generally doesn't know he's going to be a hero, and you fight a generic
villian who wants to take over the world and unleash a wave of evil for
reasons no one ever really knows.  It's just what villians do, right?  And
heroes have to stop them from doing these things, the fate of the world is
in their hands and such.  Well what happens if you ARE the villian...What's
it like to have "heroes" trying to kill you?  People who won't listen to your
reasons, people who are out for fame and fortune and don't care about why
you're doing the things you are...Is a "hero" anything more than a person
blinded by their own purposes?  We plan to develop the villian, and take you
along with us.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Controls:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you've played a CRPG before, then you know how to play this one.  The
arrow keys walk around, the spacebar activates things and progresses the text
in the textbox, and the ESC key brings up the semi-functioning menu.

There's a chance your computer might be blazingly fast and will run the game
as if the characters are all on a sugar high.  Use the +/- keys to mess with
the speed if you have to.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Secrets:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- You can summon a dragon (which will basically obliterate anything you
  fight) if you find the summoning scroll, which is hidden somewhere.

- If you do the right combination of attacks, you'll do a special attack
  which will do more damage, and can be done anytime you enter the combo.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bugs:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You may run into some bugs, but they ought to be pretty obscure ones...We've
tested this thing quite a bit and played through it numerous times, so most
of the severe bugs should be non-existant.  You might be able to screw things
up by running around back and forth from map to map while setting off
triggers in conversations, but we're pretty sure you won't be able to do so
easily.  If you find a small error in a map, like a tree is out of place or
when you talk to Silas and then walk back to the first map it runs the first
trigger cutscene again, or something to that extent, don't worry about it.
We're re-doing part of the scripting engine and you'll probably never see
these maps again so it doesn't matter if something is wrong with them.

If you find some sort of huge bug, however, like the program rebooting your
computer when you talk to Blade, or the game not running at the right speed,
or the program crashing when you're viewing a cutscene, please report it to
us so we can check out what went wrong and fix it for future releases.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Contacting:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We kept this thing a secret (we've been working on it for a while) because
we didn't want to have to answer the same questions over and over every day
about it and put up with constant "When's it going to be done?!" nagging
from anyone.  Having to go through all that slows down progress a lot, so we
feel that it was the right choice to keep the lid on things until we had a
good solid demo that we wanted people to see.

As of the date at the top of this file, we have no homepage for this project.
There's a sort of preview page we set up for the QB Expo 2000 at:

                         http://www.swoo.net/untitled/

We're planning on making a page and putting up a FAQ with questions we're
asked (saving time for both us and you if you have a question that's on it),
along with new demos, screenshots, progress updates, and so on.  We haven't
started it yet, however, so we don't know where it'll be for sure...But when
we set one up, you'll most likely be able to access it from:

                              http://www.swoo.net/

If you want to get in contact with us, you can E-Mail us here:

                         FrozenEmu - frozenemu@swoo.net
                         Tsugumo - jhangart@hotmail.com

Tsugumo has a webpage with a bunch of his junk at the URL below:

                             http://24.65.104.50/

Special thanks to Christopher Toler (Tofu - tofu@pintoburger.com) for the
music for the demo.  You can visit Tofu's site and daily comic at:

                           http://www.pintoburger.com/             
