About Catch the Buzz (also known as CTB) has been written by: Lionel Cons 5, rue du Levant 74100 Annemasse FRANCE e-mail: Lionel.Cons@cern.ch This program is not free, it is distributed through the shareware system. You can try it for a few weeks but if you decide to keep it please send your shareware contribution (10 US$) to the author. Anything else will also be appreciated: bugs, comments or even a simple postcard… This program is not freely distributed: • distribution by BBSs, Information Services, non-profit User Groups is permitted • distribution by Profit Shareware Distributors is only permitted with the explicit agreement of the author. This game is distributed with no guarantee that it is bug free. The author is not responsible for any malfunction of this program but he will do his best to fix any problems as they are discovered. Catch the Buzz © 1990-95 by Lionel Cons. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Acknowledgements This program has been written with the help of the following libraries: • TransSkel, a Transportable Skeleton for the Mac, version 3.18 from Paul Dubois (dubois@primate.wisc.edu) • SAT, the Sprite Animation Toolkit, version 2.3 from Ingemar Ragnelman (ingemar@lysator.liu.se) • ShowHelp, from James W. Walker (76367.2271@compuserve.com). Many thanks to these authors for their very useful packages. Many thanks also to my wife and children who gave me some time to write this game… Introduction The principle of the game is to move falling elements like this one:   in order to catch a little thing called the Buzz which looks like this:   Each time a falling element cannot go down anymore (i.e. it lies on the bottom), another one appears at the top of the game area and the Buzz makes one move either horizontally or vertically. Each line that is complete (full of blocks) disappears, all the blocks above (including the Buzz) are shifted down. The game is stopped when no more element can fall. How to move There are two ways of moving the falling elements: • with the mouse. The position of the mouse within the game window settles the position of the element. Clicking rotates the element clockwise, shift-clicking rotates it counter-clockwise. • with the keyboard. You can use the keys : '4' or 'J' to move left, '6' or 'L' to move right and '5' or 'K' to rotate. Nota : - a falling element will rotate only if it has the space to do so. - to switch between mouse and keyboard, just click or hit a key. - some other actions are described in the section "More". How to catch You catch the Buzz when: - it disappears with a completed line - it has no legal move, i.e. it cannot move up, down, left or right. Everytime you catch the Buzz, your score grows and the Buzz reappears somewhere else. Nota : the number of points that you get depends on the time spent to catch the Buzz... Level and Speed There are three main parameters to configure the game. You can adjust them from the 'Settings', 'Level' and 'Speed' menus. • Show next piece. When checked, you can see in the top right part of the game window the next element to fall. Of course this will slow your score. You can turn this option on or off during the game. • Level. This will set the difficulty of the game and of course the more difficult it is, the quicker your score grows. • Speed. When a new element appears, the game speeds up a little. The 'Speed' menu will set the initial speed and the lower it is, the faster it will speed up. The 'Tempo' box indicates the current speed, its value is the number of ticks (one sixtieth of a second) before an element goes down one step. Training and CTB There are three ways of playing: • Training. There is no Buzz, you just have to manipulate the falling elements. Choosing a high level will add residues at the bottom of the game area but if you succeed in removing them you’ll get a bonus. Your score grows each time a new element falls. • Advanced Training. There is no Buzz, you just have to manipulate the falling elements. A line of residues is inserted from time to time at the bottom of the game area. Your score grows each time a new element falls or a new line is inserted. • Catch the Buzz. This is the real game. The Level that you choose will settle the average height at which the Buzz reappears. Your score only grows when you catch the Buzz. High-scores Your higher scores and your preferences (level, speed, sounds…) will be saved in a file named by default 'CTB Settings'. At launching, the program will search for this file in the Preferences folder (or System folder for system version 6), if it cannot find the file, it will create a new one. You can rename this file as you want to, but if you want to use it, launch the program by double-clicking on it. This is an easy way to have different high-score sets… More There are a few more things that you may want to know : • you can press the space bar (or type '2'), the element will fall straight down. If the height is sufficient (more than the half of the total height of the game area), this will prevent the game from speeding up. • you can buy square blocks by pressing 'X'. This will fill the uppermost lefter hole (i.e. an empty place where the next place up is filled). • you can pause the game (a limited number of times, to avoid cheating…) by pressing '!' or choosing 'Pause' from the 'Run' menu. Note that the game checks how long you interrupt it (by dragging the game window, pulling down menus…). If the interruption is longer than 3 seconds, it considers that it's a pause! If you use the pause too many times, your score will be decremented. • you can abort the game by pressing the escape key or choosing 'Stop' from the 'Run' menu. • in the 'Settings' menu, you can choose between a fast animation or a normal one using the QuickDraw library; you can also enable background tasks (but this may slow down the game interaction). CTB versus Tetris CTB is very different from Tetris, the popular 'Russian' game. Althought the background is similar, there are three major differences: • the aim of the game is to catch the Buzz, so the classic strategy of Tetris (a minimum number of holes) is no longer efficient. Here, a good strategy is to let many single holes in order to catch the Buzz as soon as it reappears. • the combination of Speed and Level allows a more tactical choice of the parameters. Anyway, scoring is entirely different. • the use of the mouse to control the falling elements changes the user abilities and removes the frustration of having a Macintosh with dead mouse… Version history • May 6, 1995. CTB 2.0 This is a total rewrite of the game; new features include: better animation, color, new sounds… • Previously. CTB version 1.* Let's forget about the past…