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Hi!

In this text I'll give a clue about what Strategic Army is going to be like, about the features and the minimal system-requirements.

In the year 2013 man is developing techniques to travel through space fast, and to settle colonies on other planets, even if there is no oxygen. The superpowers of the earth (the USA and Russia) directly use these new progressions on the field of space-traveling to build military bases on the Moon and Mars, in order to conquer the earth. The smaller countries on earth immediately start building lots of bases to be able to defend themselves. After a few years of balancing between war and not-war the 3rd world-war finally starts. It's a cruel war and there are a vert lot of victims but at a certain moment practically all bases are destroyed and the war comes to an end...

However, some coutries still have got some secret bases which aren't destroyed yet, and the other countries are very busy recovering from the war and are trying to become able to defend themselves. Also, few rich people have bought a small number of weapons at the beginning of the war, and they now try to fight themselves up with very loyal and dedicated private-armies. And you are one of them...

The fight for survival begins...

There is a game-field with a size varying from 512x512 to 2048x2048 pixels (5 to 77 screen 5-screens), through which you can scroll. Somewhere in this field is your base, which is composed out of some houses which supply your army eith food, power and weapons/soldiers/tanks. The enemy has also got a base like this somewhere else in the field.

The goal of a leven can be different kinds of missions. One mission can be, in example, destroy the enemy base, but another mission can be to disable all the vital structures. A good example of a mission is 'sneak into the enemy base with a single soldier, disable the force-field and then destroy the base in a massive attack.'

Well, if you construct a car, you can let it explore the environment (places you haven't been yet are black), let it attack the enemy, an you can also gather a lot of them on a open spot to let them all attack the enemy in one massive attack. If you construct a soldier, you can use it for the same things as cars, but also to, in example, repair a house which was damaged by the enemy.

Now you'll all think: "Well, then why are both cars and soldier available? Soldiers can do more thing than cars, so what's the use of them? Well, first, there are just different kinds of them to vary the gameplay. Also, men can do more things, but cars are faster, have more firepower and are less vulnerable than soldiers. But soldiers are cheaper to 'construct', and they are quite strong when working in groups. Plus, in the starting stages you can only 'construct' soldiers.

The user-interface works like this: you can order a vehicle or man to move to another place by clicking on the vehicle/man you want to move. Then there 'appears' a menu at the right of the gamefield with the orders you can give, in example Move and Attack. Then you choose Move and then you'll have to click on a destination where the car has to move to. Then the car automatically tries to find its way to the destination. It's also possible to give 'fast' orders, these can be given, by the use of the keys of the keyboard (in the previous example you could also have typed M) or by using the right-button of your mouse or the B-button of your joystick/keyboard to click on your target. Is your target just a normal destination, then it'll move to it. However, if the target is an enemy, the car will move to it and attack it.

Well, I hope you now understand how it is going to be. Finally, I'd like to mention that it's a clone of the kind of the PC-games Dune 2, Warcraft II, Command & Conquer / Red Alert, KKND, Total Anihillation, Age of Empires etcetera etcetera etcetera. I've got the idea from these games and I'll combine the good of all these games in SA, in example multiple select and multiple constructing.

By the way, Paragon is also creating a Dune 2-clone, called DOME. I just want to say that they have not ripped the idea of making such a game from me (nor have I ripped the idea from them). Really!

• Music for Moonsound, MSX-Audio, MSX-Music and there might (might, might, might!) be some music for the PSG too.
• Samples (soundeffects), replayable on as many devices as possible, ie. MoonSound, MusMod, Simpl, FM-Pa(c)(k) and anything else that can replay samples (turboR-PCM). We'll probably put PSG-soundeffects in the game too.
• Two-player-option: Play against eachother on 2 MSX-computers via a Joystick-connection or a Null-Modem-Link cable and perhaps via 2 midi-devices too (ie. 2 MusicModules, provided they generate an interrupt)!!!
• Cheatcodes, cheatmodes and secret bonusstages (with totally different-designed levels), so there will be lots of tips available for the magazines. An example of a planned cheatmode: Konami introduced it, the so-called "konami-combi". So if you put, in example, a Kings Valley in one of the slots then you will get a cool cheat.
• Ofcourse LOTS of "normal" stages...
• Playable witth mouse but also with keyboard (a very easy-to-use keyboard-interface).
• Instalable on harddisk!!!

Minimal an MSX-2 computer with 128 kB ram and 128 kB Vram!!!

But a fast MSX with more memory certainly has got its advantages, although the speed of the processor doesn't affect the speed of the game (interrupt-based).

The advantage of more memory:
Harddisk-installable and also samples available when there is no MoonSound or Music-Module connected.

The advantage of more speed:
Smoother gameplay.

For optimal gaming-fun:
A 7Mhz / turboR MSX with 256kB of memory and a MoonSound, Mouse and Harddisk connected.