about

Infiltration started life on the Amiga in 1999 as an entry into a
readers competition in Amiga Format. We didn't know it at the time
but the Amiga was nearing the end of it's life and was close to the
end of it's days of official support from Commodore, there was talk
of a takeover and a new machine but sadly it never materialised and
because of this limbo state there was not a lot of new software being
published, to their credit Future Publishing who produced Amiga
Format magazine were doggedly trying to keep the Amiga alive and
started running competitions for readers and genuine Amiga
enthusiasts to produce software to keep us ticking over during the
limbo period, my contribution to this was 3 games and a few
utilities, two of the games were lucky enough to win "Game of the
month" and all the software I submitted was included on the cover
CD's and cover disks of the magazine, one of the games I entered in
the competition was Infiltration which won in issue 120 Feb 1999
and was covered in the mag on pages 32 and 33.

When I finally accepted that the Amiga was finished I decide it was
time I got a Windows based PC, after using Workbench on the
Amiga it was quite easy getting to grips with Windows so I decided
to go straight into game making and decided as Infiltration did so
well on the Amiga that I would make a PC version.

On the Amiga I used Blitz basic, Amos basic, Deluxe Paint and
various utilities to make my own programs so I decided to look
around for the PC equivalents, I got quite a bit of software with my
PC but none of it was what I was really looking for apart from
Lotus 123 which came in very handy for keeping track of various
parts of Infiltration especially my AI (Artificial intelligence) scripts
and my use of Universe registers in the game.

As I had decided to make a 3D FPS game I needed a 3D engine
capable of making it that was affordable, I had seen the engines that
were used to make QuakeII, Half Life, Unreal etc. and the license
prices were obscene so I set my sights a little lower and came across
GCS from Pie in the Sky software which cost me Ł48 and had no
restrictive license agreement, obviously it was not capable of
making games as good as QuakeII etc. but it was entry level for me
and the start of my learning curve, fortunately for me the GCS
engine was a beta and was being updated all the time with new
features so I was learning as the engine was developing into
something a lot more powerful than the Ł48 engine I had initially
bought.

When I got GCS it was a DOS sprite based engine at version 1.13, it
had a dubious AI system that just had detect, random movement
and attack functions for the in game enemies, the graphics were 256
colour VGR's that all used the same $RP9A palette which was
seriously limiting ,at a push you could just about make a game on a
par with the very first Doom incarnation with it, there was also no
full screen mode as 30% of the screen was a console.