ARPS began life in the late 80's or early 90's as an Atari ST GFA Basic project. However, College and other factors kept me from finishing it. I did manage to create a tile and map editor as well as the basic game engine.

In the mid-90's when I got a PC and started using Linux, I began to port the ARPS project to Linux, using C. This was a slow process because I wasn't very familiar with C. My goal was to port the system "as was" from the ST. This meant that ARPS on Linux was going to use 320x200 res graphics, with only 16 colors. I expected to up the specs after I finished the system.

During this time Hrafnkell from Denmark joined the project, and created the widget set that is used in the editing tools, among other things. He eventually became busy with other things and stopped contributing.

Aronnd 1998 I finally decided that there was no point in finishing ARPS in the R1 state. I really needed to bring it into the 90's. The resolution and colors were upped, and the tiles were changed to a 3-quarter perspective.

I realized that although ARPS now had 3D looking graphics, it was still pretty much a 2D game. I figured that I could add height and depth by layering maps on top of each other, and create more realistic look graphics. This would allow for tall buildings, stairs that really went up, flying creatures, mountains, and much more. This ability has yet to be implemeted, but I expect to be able to add it to the current engine without major technical issues