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The Slime Invaders Story…

- Once upon a time, the city Arcadopolis was attacked by the evil Slime people, who intended to enslave the poor citizens of the city. However, their evil plans were discovered by the Arcadopolis Special Intelligence. A special defense system, the Slime Defense Initiative, was organized. When the slimy attackers arrived, the defense system was ready...

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- Stop it! Stop it! Please, what are you trying to tell us? It's just a stupid game, no science fiction novel!
- Ahem... OK, I guess you are right. How about this, then. This is Slime Invaders, a shoot-em-up game for the Macintosh. The game is in the Space Invaders genre, with a gun at the bottom of the screen and various enemies attacking from the top. Fast enough to be enjoyable on a Classic - or at least a Classic II. Supports both color and black-and-white graphics.
- Much better.

>Topic<Introduction

Slime Invaders is a straightforward arcade game in the Space Invaders genre. You move a gun sideways and shoot down various enemies as fast as you can. Shoot everything, don't get hit, the usual kind of shoot-em-up action.

Slime Invaders started out as an exercise in animation on the Mac. When it started to look decent and I thought the game was fun to play, I released the b/w version in early 1992. Shortly after that (april 1992) I cleaned up the routines and made Sprite Animation Toolkit (SAT). After adding color to SAT (january 1993), it wasn't a very hard task to adapt Slime Invaders to the new SAT and make this color version.

The game is freeware: no charge for personal use. If you like it, consider paying the $15 fee for my shareware pack #1, which Slime Invaders is part of. Bug reports and fan-E-mail can be sent to ingemar@isy.liu.se, or by ordinary mail to Ingemar Ragnemalm, Plöjaregatan 73, S-58330 Linköping, SWEDEN. See further below.

Slime Invaders is © 1991-1994 by Ingemar Ragnemalm. It may be distributed by any non-profit organization. For-profit distributors (CD-ROM, books, magazines) should send me a reference copy of the product where Slime Invaders is included.

>Topic<How the game works

Is there more to it than a bunch of slimy things dropping stuff on you? Well, not a whole lot more. The following objects will appear on the screen:

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Your gun. Looks like a bunsen burner, according to Don Rittner, and I suppose he is right. You control it with the mouse. Don't move the mouse too fast, or the gun may move in unexpected ways. When you loose a gun, a new will slide in from the right, and wait outside the arena until you click the mouse.

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Your shots. The normal shots are in unlimited supplies, and are fired with the mouse button. You will fire lots and lots of them during a game. There is, however, one other kind of shot, the codshot. They are in limited supply. You have none from the start and must earn them. Codshots are enhanced shots.
       You fire a codshot from the keyboard, using any of the following keys:
       Up-keys: tab, backspace, space, up-arrow.
       Down-keys: shift, return, zero, down-arrow.
       (Sorry, no remapping of these keys in this version.)
       With an up-key, you get a shot that goes from bottom to top like normal shots, but that are not consumed by hitting something. With a down-key, you get a shower of shots to both sides and downwards. You will find both very useful in the right situations, but you might also find that you don't think of using them until it's too late.

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Slimes. These silly, ugly, yellowish creatures are your primary enemies. They glide about in more or less random ways, dropping different kinds of bad things around. Really lame monsters, but what they drop if you don't shoot them is less lame.

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Bouncers, Blobs, Slime Droppings, Arrows, Smart Bombs and the 16-ton Anvil. These are the stuff dropped by slimes. Bouncers require two shots to go away. Anvils can't be shot by normal shots (and are far too fast for a codshot).

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Death. This is a nasty creature that appears when you don't shoot slimes fast enough. Why? Well, I guess he gets his energy from slimes and other stuff, who draw it from your nice city - right? Anyway, Death can't be shot, but will go away when nothing else is left. You can shoot at it to delay it. You usually don't get points for shooting Death. When Death is retreating, however, (when you have cleared a level), you get a little bonus for shooting it.

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Slimy cod in a toaster. This is a "bonus" object. Shoot the toaster and then catch the falling cod, and you get one more codshot plus a nice bonus. Don't shoot the cod!

Each level is a bit harder than the previous one. Play goes on until you have no lives left. You get an extra life at 250, 500, 750, 1000, 1500, 2000, 3000, 4000 and every 2000 points after that.

>Topic<Enhancements over versions 1.x.x

If you ever played version 1, you have probably noticed most changes already. Here's a brief list:

• Color. You probably noticed that already, if you have a color Mac.
• The slimy cod in a toaster and its codshots.
• No delay when shooting normal shots. I thought the animation was funny, but the delay wasn't good for playability. Codshots have the delay, though. (They are bigger, right?)
• Intermission. Everybody needs a break once in a while, right? Click mouse to speed it up when you are tired of it.
• Somewhat better b/w graphics. 

>Topic<Command-keys during play:

When a game is in progress, you can't access the menus. However, you can use the following commands:

Pausing is done with command-P.
Aborting is done with command-period.
Quitting is done with command-Q.

>Topic<Shareware pack #1 and #2

The game is free, with no obligations, but if you want to support my work and/or get my other games, please consider paying the shareware fee for my Shareware pack #1, which is $15. Cash is best, though I recently did find a way to process US checks, so US checks are OK too. European users can consider paying 100 SEK to swedish postal giro 620831-2014. In such a case, I recommend that you also write a letter, clarifying what you are paying for. Even if you don't pay, I appriciate letters with comments on the game.

My idea with shareware is not only that you should pay me for what I've already done, but also that those who pay should get a little bit more than those who don't. In both packs, at least one game (Bachman and ISG) include an editor which is not in the freely distributable versions. Moreover, some games are in newer versions than what you will find in the archives. You might also find some extra minor items on the disk you get.

Please include the following information:
• Name and address.
• Mac model and system version.
• What games you are most interested in.

For that you will get a diskette with recent versions of as many games I can fit on it. The current collection (likely to grow in the near future) includes:

Shareware pack #1 ($15 ≈ 120 SEK):
Bachman – Pacman in pseudo-3D perspective (registered user version includes editor).
Bikaka – hexagonal Tetris, far better than Hextris.
Classic Daleks – fool-the-robots, re-implementation of an old classic from 1984.
HeartQuest – A non-violent arcade game, made for my wife for Valentine's.
Hexmines – Mines on the hexagonal grid.
MacSokoban – Mac version of a well-known puzzle game. 85 levels included.
Slime Invaders – this game.

Shareware pack #2 ($10 ≈ 80 SEK):
Bert – quite a bit like QBert.
Ingemar's Skiing Game – downhill skiing (registered user version includes editor).
Christmas '93 - jigsaw puzzle. (Might be modified for other times of the year.)

All games listed above support both color and b/w graphics.

I also enjoy fan mail, suggestions and bug reports. Send them either by E-mail to ingemar@isy.liu.se, or by ordinary mail to:

Ingemar Ragnemalm
Plöjaregatan 73
S-58330 Linköping
SWEDEN

Are you a programmer, interested in the source code? In that case, I have good news and bad news for you. The bad news is that the sources for Slime Invaders isn't availale. The good news is that the Sprite Animation Toolkit (SAT, a programmer's library for Think Pascal and Think C), with which I made Slime Invaders, Bachman, HeartQuest and Bert, and other people have made several other great games (Missions Of The Reliant, Asterax, Invaders, CyberNation…), is available from major archives. Version 2.2 is the most current version.

>Topic<Acknowledgements

The initial inspiration for making this game came primarily from the games by Duane Blehm and John Calhoun. Voices by my friends Chrisp, Folke and Eva. The help from the testers is much appriciated (e.g. Fredrik Bonander who suggested the coffee-breaks). Special thanks to Juri Munkki for help solving the direct-to-screen graphics on some Macs where it didn't work before.

The original skull icon is from the TransSkel package by Paul DuBois. This package was used for event processing (window and menu support).

This help system was programmed by Cary Torkelson, author of several fine shareware products. Support his work too!

>Topic<Final remarks

Do you think the game is silly? Good. You should.
Do you think it's fun? Great. That's the idea with games.
Do you wonder why anyone would have a slimy cod in a toaster in an arcade game (rather than birds, turtles or whatever)? Don't.


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