The Great Giant Sisters

	Copyright questions have been solved (07-07-01)
	Yesterday I had a nice phone call with Armin Gessert (the original c64 author and inventor of The Great Giana Sisters). It turned out that he has the rights for Giana Sisters and he was so kind to give us the permission to continue publishing giana worlds (I am very glad that issue has been solved). In case you may want to have a look at what Armin Gessert does now try out the web-site of his game development company: http://www.spellbound.de.
	Giana Worlds updated to version 0.83 (23-02-01)
	After years of silence in the giana worlds development we added a small upgrade (though we still have lots of levels and world graphics to include). The update just features less required diskspace and faster loading times due to the new added virtual filesystem (with compression). Please note that we are busy doing other things right now so there won't be any update for some time - however there are lots of new routines just waiting to be released - so stay tuned ;) In the meantime you may have a look at T32k, a small turrican clone for pc windows based systems developed for your pleasure, only.
	Giana Sisters Domain ready
	We are proud to announce that we now have the official domain-name www.giana-sisters.de! Netbeat was so kind to support us with this service for free.
	Version 0.82 released (27-11-99)
	Due to the fact that giana may get stuck in some walls I added a restart level function. Simply press DEL (not backspace!) on your keyboard to restart the current level. Unfortunately this will cost you one live, though it is necessary to make sure noone cheats the highscore by collecting an unlimited amount of bonuses (by restarting).
	Worldwide Giana Highscore enabled (18-10-99)
	This new option available online gives you the possibility to upload your personal highscore and merge it into the worldwide TOP 50 (see left). Please note that the current CGI is very beta and has no design, though it works fine.
	Version 0.81 released (15-10-99)
	Since many people asked for gamepad (microsoft sidewinder, etc) support I decided to release this updated version. It automatically detects if a joystick is installed and enables it (if it is connected). If more than one Joysticks are connected the last one will be used. You can either jump by pressing up or by pressing Gamepad button no. 2.
	Good news (06-10-99)
	Chris Huelsbeck himself gave us his permission to include the original Giana SID-music. Though SID music currently is enabled for hardsid, only, I will add softsid support if you want to (send me an email!). Please be sure to have a look at C. Huelsbecks and synSONIQ Records website: http://www.synsoniq.com/
	Bad news (05-10-99)
	Due to some copyrights we have to rename our project to Giant Worlds.
	Beta 0.8 finished
	Looks like we're getting closer to the target. Beta 0.8 features nearly all of the things which we wanted to include in the final release - World Wide Highscore Simply upload your highscore at this page and it will be put together with the other gamers highscore so we can have a worldwide TOP 50. Though the web-based part has not been coded yet all necessary things are included already. - Lots of Levels We will not tell you how much levels beta 0.8 has, but it should be more than enough ;) - Demo Game You can record and display now your own gaming. This feature also allows us to release sollutions for difficulty levels (there are lot!). Of course some predefined level-demos come with the game.
	Beta 0.75 finished (28-09-99)
	Version 0.75 has currently been send to the beta-test team. If it passes their tests it will be available online, soon. Whats new: - MMX support (3-10% faster graphic-routines) - Final support for HardSID - Customizing Setup Utility - Lots of bugs ;) Kojote has also finished designing lots of cool new levels. Expect them to be in the next release.
	Beta 0.72 released (30-08-99)
	Since version 0.7 had some (minor) bugs, plus some features where missing, we added a bunch of new features: - Hardsid support (currently compiled in, but deactivted) - New music from Dalezy - Lava Levels - Bug fixes You can grab the 0.72 preview-beta here: diskette 1 (1457500 bytes) diskette 2 (1457500 bytes) diskette 3 (1457500 bytes) diskette 4 (195222 bytes) Files are in WinRAR selfextractable fileformat. You can either copy them all in one dir and start the executable (in order to decompress the file), or copy them onto disk (e.g. for shipping purposes) and start the executable directly from there. Once these file have been unpacked successfully you can run the game.
	Hardsid support added (25-08-99)
	For all those dudes out there who own a hard-sid card for the PC (Yes! A soundcard with the original 6581 SID-Chip, have a look at www.hardsid.8m.com) I included native hard-sid support in order to listen to the original game-tunes during gameplay. If you have a hard-sid card and like to test it simply drop me a mail.
	Beta 0.7 released at Evoke'99 Party (22-08-99)
	The preview beta-version of Giana Worlds has been officially released to the public at the Evoke'99 demo-party held in Langerwehe. New features: - Final textures available! - Fixes and optimizations in the gfx-engine - Transparency water effects - Lots of levels Due to the new highcolor transparency effect hardware-requirements increased to at least 233Mhz (or works fine with 200Mhz without transparency).
	Beta 0.7 near release date (08-08-99)
	Since version 0.6, various bugs have been eliminated. Version 0.7 will come with a setup tool to customize the game individually for your PC. You can not only change the sound attributes but the refresh rate of your monitor so you are able to experience REAL smooth-scrolling. This method even will get NVidia cards to work fine with Giana Worlds.
	Playable beta 0.6 released (24-07-99)
	The first real playable beta has been shipped to our beta testers. Beta 0.6 nearly features the complete game, though it Features - 5 complete levels (out of 26 currently designed) - 3 complete worlds (out of 10 currently designed) - 32 Channel music + 4 Channel Sound Effects - 4 layer parallax scrolling - new background-design by Arthus New game features are included like - Bonus Items - Stormy Hairstyle + Crumble Stones Please note that we are currently looking for more beta testers. If your system is faster than 166Mhz, you have another gfx-card than from Matrox and you like to support us send a mail to Rainer Sinsch. Some Screenshots: Title scroller Ice level
	Back from lazyness (08-05-99)
	Quite a few improvements have been implemented: - Multithreaded timing The engine should now work on every machine with highest framerate at normal speed - RGB mode fixed I forgot to add support for other modes than RGB 565. The new routine supports now ALL graphic-cards
	Multichannel ingame-music has been finished
	We are happy to announce that the new giana game music has been finished: - Title music by INSTANT REMEDY (check out his c64-remix songs!) - Level music by Unconsciousness - Pink of Abyss sponsored one of his songs as level-music
	Sprite routines added (03-02-99)
	Support for sprites (up to 32x32) has been added. The new feature: Sprites may fall down (includes gravity algorithm) when you destroy stones they walk on.
	First screenshot available (31-01-99)
	After weeks of development we can offer the first shot of "Giana Worlds". The current shot features only one single world out of many different. The background image contains many parallax- scrolled parts, so watch out for the final version. The current images are test-images, only! Kyp hasn't had any time to paint the new bitmaps yet. So don't judge too hard, the new graphics is in development. The picture ist just meant to give you a "what it will look like" impression.
	First routines of "Giana Worlds" finished (26-01-99)
	The next version of Giant Sisters will be called Giana Worlds. It currently features: - DirectX support - Highcolor (65536 Colors) - Upgrade support (crumble wall stones) - Parallax scrolling The final version will feature all missing things from the last version, plus addionatal new addons, of course. Screen shots will be available, soon.
	DirectX5 calls added (23-01-88)
	I decided to do a complete rewrite. The old sources were too DOS-related which caused a slowdown on many machines, thus many features wouldn't be possible. Thanks must go to Andreas Kahn for various good ideas. Support for Hardware blitter and Direct Input has been enabled. Support for Force Feedback devices may be added (do we want to feel when giana runs against an enemy or a wall?).
	Started DirectX developing (08-01-99)
	The DirectX developing has started. I began to convert the old pascal routines to VC 5.0+. The title-screen works fine, now. Unfortunetely DirectX behaves different on nearly every machine, thus Giant Sisters requires a resolution which is not available on every machine. Let's see how we solve this problem.
	Added TGA Saver for the level-editor (24-12-98)
	I found out that it's useful saving images directly out of the editor instead of ripping it. Windows'9X reacts somehow weird on 360x240 ModeX resolutions. So you can simply save a TGA image during editing pressing "*".
	What's new in the X-Mas Edition (22-12-98)
	- Added Giana-cry when dying - Added Snow (can be disabled with the /NOSNOW option) - Added lots of music (every level has its own music, now!) - Completely new level-design by Kojote - Fixed a bug in the sprite-movement
	What's new since version 1.2
	- Sound effects have been updated to amiga-style (sounds much better) - Added 4 new enemy-types, which now makes a total of 7 different enemies, including the new feature of different movement-speeds and different enemy-behavior. - Added bidirectional enemy-walking-animation - Added new levels! - Added 4-button joypad support - Added beta background copper-colors (looks nice, though) - Fixed a bug when using sound-blaster (memory hadn't been freed) - Bugfixed the Live-Bonus. The status-line hadn't been updated, thus there'll be played a bonus-sound, now.
	What's new since version 1.1
	- Sound effects (not very much right now, if you think that you've better samples, please send them to me) - Joystick/Joypad support If a joystick has been detected you'll be prompted at the very beginning to calibrate you joystick. If this screen doesn't appear your joystick is not supported. Since I don't own a joypad I'm not sure if this routine is really compatible. Bug reports are welcome. To overpass the calibration you can start giana with the /NOJOY option.