Thalion presents

AMBERMOON
Amberstar 2

The preview

© 1992 Thalion Software

This program will present you with representative scenes from our forth-coming roleplaying game Ambermoon, the sequel to the highly acclaimed Amberstar. It allows you to make interesting screenshots at your leisure.

We assume you have seen Amberstar and the text will stress the improvements made in Ambermoon.

Between the pictures you will receive information about Ambermoon and its production.

Whenever the "ZZZ" mouse-pointer appears, the program will wait for you to press the left mouse button or any key on the keyboard. To exit the previewer, press <Space>.

A major feature of Ambermoon is the new dungeon system: No longer do you have to move through a blocky map, now you can move freely through creepy dungeons and fascinating cities. This is achieved by a real-time texture-mapping dungeon system written by Michael Bittner. It allows the player to move and turn smoothly through the three-dimensional maps. Special versions of the dungeon system are present in the final game which support turbo-boards, causing a significant increase in smoothness.

But as they say, a picture says more than a thousand words...

The character status screen has remained much the same but is more pleasing to the eye due to the new graphics.

The main graphics were made by Monika Krawinkel and Thorsten Mutschall.

The looks of the inventory screen have been much improved as well, but here it is the user-friendliness which has been changed most dramatically.

No longer does one need cumbersome icons to move items around - just click on an item and it is removed from the body or backpack. It is now attached to the mouse-pointer. Then click somewhere else (even in another party member's inventory!) and the program will intelligently decide where you wanted to put it.

This is just one example of the new, more intuitive user-interface featured in Ambermoon.

Again you will find chests filled with useful items, valuable gems, gold and food. But some chests are locked and you must try to open them first. A thief in the party sure comes in handy here, but you must still beware of traps...

Once you have managed to open the chest, you may take out its contents at your leisure - but now you can also put items, gold and food you are carrying back! No longer do you have to throw gold away because it is too heavy; just put it in a chest and return later to pick it up.

Here you can see how easy it is to store gold and food in a chest; when you are in the chest screen, simply enter the inventory screen and drop whatever you want.

The worldmap in Ambermoon is four times bigger than the one in Amberstar, i.e. 800 times 800 squares. All graphics have been drawn to a proper scale now, which means the party is no longer the same size as a tree or mountain.

The graphics of all 2D world maps (not the interiors) were drawn by Erik 'red-bearded giant' Simon.

Here are some picturesque scenes from Lyramion.

But there is more than just one world in Ambermoon... We don't want to give away too much, but here are some choice views of other, different worlds...

The 2D interiors of the houses on Lyramion have also been changed, as you can see in the next picture. The interior graphics have been made by Monika Krawinkel.

And so we reach the end of the previewer. To summarize, Ambermoon was made by the following people:

Production started around April 1991 and will hopefully end before April 1992. By then, Ambermoon will have taken over five full person-years.

Ambermoon will be released on the Amiga first, followed closely by the Atari ST version (probably one month later). A PC version will be made but no details are known at the moment.

We hope you have found this previewer interesting and useful. As soon as new screens are completed we will send them to you (i.e. a free update service).

If you have any questions, you can contact us in the following ways:

Hi! Here are some more screenshots of the 3D map. They are a bit more up to date. Some details: We can show any object in any size (watch the big flame!) and we can change the camera height as well! This you will see in one of the pictures where a little gnome is the active character, instead of the tall human in all the other pictures.

Now, there are lots of other graphics sets, but we haven't included them yet. Be sure that we will send more screenshots when we make new dungeons.

And here are all the screenshots of the mysterious new planets...

So, I hope that helps you fill those pages. There'll be more to come later.

Cheers,

Jurie Horneman

ADF-Diskimages (Amiga)