======================================================================== T H E S I U S X I I ---------------------- A Game By Underware Design. Version: 0.96 (Shareware) Programming By: Kevin Picone Graphics By: Ben Hemming Music By: Lars Jensen © Copyright 1993,1994,1995 by Kevin Picone of Underware Design. All Rights Reserved. Released: 17/05/1995 ======================================================================== Table Of Contents: ================== *Copyright: *Disclaimer: *Hardware Requirements: *Software Requirements: *The Story So Far: *Controls: *In Game Icons: *Authors Note: *Bug Reports: *Known Problems: *Running Thesius XII Upon NTSC Amigas: ? *How Do I Register Thesius XII: *What Does the Registered Version Include: *What Is Missing From This Version: *Thesius XII Full Game Development Interesting Info: *Thesius History: *How To Contact the Author: *What is REALITY ?: *Underware Greeting Cards Go Out To: Copyright: ========== Thesius XII is © copyright 1993-1995 by Kevin Picone. All Thesius XII documents and related files are © copyright 1993-1995 by Kevin Picone. Thesius XII is SHAREWARE. I reserve all rights to Thesius XII. You can copy this Shareware version as long you don't ask payment for it (A small fee is allowed to cover your media costs). Permission *IS* granted to upload this Shareware version of Thesius XII to bulletin boards and FTP sites. However, you must include all the files present in the original archive when distributing THESIUS XII, anywhere or to anybody. This includes all documents... Permission *IS* given for magazines too use this Shareware version of Thesius XII upon their Cover disks/Cover CD's, if they should choose too include it. MAGAZINES PLEASE NOTE: If you do include Thesius XII on your Coverdisk/CD well all i ask is, could you please send me a Copy of your magazine, Thank You. Permission *IS* given for the Shareware version of Thesius Xii to be included in Freeware/PD/Shareware CD's/Disk Packs ie. Aminet/Fred Fish.. Permission is *NOT* given for either this the Shareware or Registered versions of Thesius XII to be included in any form, in whole or in part, within any Commercial Software without prior consent from me. These are my wishes please respect them, Thank You. Disclaimer: =========== The Thesius XII software and documents are provided 'as is'. No guarantee of any kind is given as to what Thesius XII does or that the information in the related files is globally correct in any way. Please note, You are using this software at YOUR own risk. The author of Thesius XII is in *NO* *WAY* responsible for any loss or damage caused either directly or indirectly by running Thesius XII. If *YOU* are unhappy with the above Terms *PLEASE*!! turn back now and delete your copy of the T12 archive...THANK YOU. Hardware Requirements: ====================== Thesius XII has no special chipset requirements and will run on either a PAL OCS/ECS or PAL AGA machine just fine. Thesius XII only requires a 68000 processor and should work perfectly upon machines with any of the following installed cpu's (010/020/030/040/68881 /68882) You will need at least 1 Megabyte of Memory to run Thesius XII.. * 420k Chip * 470k Other (Fast/Chip) Any machine with enought extra free CHIP RAM will have access to speech SFX's. (REGISTERED VERSION ONLY :-) * PLEASE NOTE: Thesius XII will *NOT* take advantage of either 3rd Party GFX or SOUND cards.... (Sorry) * PLEASE NOTE: Thesius XII is *NOT* mode promotable.... (Sorry) * PLEASE NOTE AGA USERS: Although Thesius XII runs fine on AGA systems, It --- Makes NO effort to use any of the AGA chipset features...(Sorry) Software Requirements: ====================== Thesius XII should run upon any system with Wb1.x or higher installed and Does NOT Require any external libraries to run... The Story So Far: ================= The year is 2131, for the last half century peace has been upheld throughout the affiliated humankind planets by the United Human League of Civilizations. The peace was recently shattered when an evil splinter political faction attempted a military coup. Luckily the plot was detected early enough and was quickly quelled. In the aftermath of the failed coup attempt the four main political and military leaders of this underhanded attack on freedom fled across the universe to retreat to their various planets and bases. It is your task to track them down and capture them, so that they may be brought before the Supreme High Court for JUSTICE. (Yep it's another damn shoot'em up....*8^) Controls: ========= Requires a single buttoned joystick installed in port 2 for play. Left = Will move your fighter Left Right = Will move your fighter Right up = Will move your fighter Up Down = Will move your fighter Down Button = Will make your fighter shoot (no bullet limits) Keys: (Q) = Quit Thesius XII and Return to you Amiga Dos (O) = Select options (Within the intro) (P) = In Game Pause (P or Joystick Fire Button to Exit Pause) (ESC) = In Game Abort Both the left Mouse button and the joystick fire button can be used to advance/skip certain screens..Such As the Terminal, OPtions, Intro & Highscore Entry if you require. In Game Icons: ============== During play after destorying selected ships/objects, you may encounter a spining coin object, with one of the following letters upon it. These Coins are POWER UPS, via shooting the Coin you can cycle it thought the various available Power Ups, To Collect it, simply move your fighter over it.. (W) = Weapon Power Up (P) = Probe (D) = Shot Damage (M) = Missile (B) = Bullet Speed (S) = Ship Speed (A) = Bullet Area Please Note: To obtain some of the above power ups, you might have to collect more than the one single icon to fully enable it. (ie. Player to Alien Homming Missiles..) Authors Note: ============= Due to the fact that this is *NOT* the FIRST level in the game i've given you the player, a small shot in the arm via NOT making you start with nothing... *8^) (Now ain't i sweet ;) Bug Reports: ============ Althought this is NOT the 100% finished version of the UNREGISTERED release of Thesius XII, I am open to peoples feedback about bugs/Undoc'd features in this software. BUT PLEASE NOTE: This project will be revised when *I* firstly have the TIME and secondly see FIT to do so... I am deeply sorry for those of you who enjoyed the game 'as is' and wish to see it progress, but this is my position, so please respect it. Known Problems: =============== It's with some regret, I must admit Thesius does have some very annoying (in some cases) problems.... ;( * Icons - Thesius XII Fails to run from and them, as it doesn't path into it's dir correctly.. This can be overcome via setting up a script in your icon that Paths into your Thesius Dir and then executes it. * Keyboard Entry - Upon some (??) systems there is a fault in the Reading of the keyboard ... Where your entered keys seem to be lagged/delayed.... It does this on my (ocs) 68000 based A500... but as yet I've no idea why ;) Running Thesius XII Upon NTSC Amigas?: ====================================== At present if your System features either the ECS or AGA chipsets well then Thesius will auto detect the NTSC signal and switch it into PAL. Upon exiting the game your native NTSC standard will be reset. No Rebooting or Degraders should be needed... PAL signal is required over NTSC for one main reason, And that being, The faster frame rate under NTSC (60fps) simply makes the game completely unplayable... *8^( it's hard enought as it is... ;) Although there can be some problems, that might occur. Some TV's and I Assume some Monitors also, DON'T like changing video standards all that much, and as a result will normaly ROLL !! or just refuse to display it period. If this happens either adjust your Vertical Hold (if you have one ;) or hit (Q) to quit out of the game.. As yet there is *NO* proper support for NTSC systems, By that i Mean resizing of the PAL (intro/terminal/highscore & option) screens to fit better upon the 200 line high displays.. and no needing to switch into PAL to play the game at the correct speed. ;( People with NTSC Amigas containing the OCS chipset, I'm sorry to say will have to put up with the increased Frame Rate (until i find a better solution) , As this chipset (as far as i know) doesn't allow switching of NTSC/PAL or vice versa in software. Sorry! PLEASE NOTE NTSC USERS: Heres what you may not be able to see when running it upon an NTSC system.. Intro Screen: At the bottom of this display, which you should be able too see just a little of, Theres a bouncing "Press Fire to Start" Message. Option Screen: Although you probobly can't see it, the very bottom OPTION is "BEGIN GAME" or you can just use the LEFT MOUSE button. Terminal Screen: If your lucky nothing important should be missing, All the Action (so to speak) should be visable. HighScore Entry: At the very bottom of this screen is where you'd normaly see your NAME/CALL SIGN whatever being displayed as you type it, upon pressing return it copys this into the TOP 10 listing. How Do I Register Thesius XII: ============================== At Present there is *NO* registered version of Thesius XII as the package is NOT completed yet, I will be working on the project on/off over the next 1-2 months, It should be fully completed within this time.... Please Feel free to forward me your wishes to obtain a registered copy of Thesius XII or any feedback about it you may have. When the final product is completed, it will cost $15 (Australian) to register, this includes return shipping. When its ready i'll post various announcements to Usenet and Fidonet. (in the relative channels/echos.. ie... Comp.sys.Amiga.Games/AMIGA_GAMES etc etc) WHY RELEASE THIS DEMO THEN ? ---------------------------- Simple, After many months (5-6 months ;) away from Thesius XII working on another more interesting Amiga project, we finaly decided it would be a waste if the game was never completed or released, to you the viewing public...So finaly here it is... *8^) What does the Registered Version Include?: ========================================== Simple. * 3 More Levels. * Speech FX System * No More Bugs.... *8^) * And Maybe Some other interesting goodies... ;)) What Is Missing From This Version: ================================== * Some Small Bug Fixes... ;( * Some More Code opt's for the 68000 * A *Lot* Of Basic Playtesting. ;) * Terminal & Option Screens Sound FX's. * Options & Highscores Saving. Thesius XII Full Game Development Interesting Info: =================================================== * Completely Developed in Assembly. * 2.9 Megs of Source Code. * Dynamic Copper Display System..(Allows a Max of 384 Colours on Screen.) * Solid Hunk File System for Advanced Memory Management. * Smart Ram Disk Buffering. * Hardware Sprite Multiplexing. * Up to 13 layers of parallax. * 50 FPS GamePlay. * Auto CPU detection and Level reduction (overlayed objects-none gameplay important...) * 16 Various Sound modules. * Over 300k of Speech SFX's Thesius History: ================ -> First Release: Date: 24-03-95 Thesius XII V0.90 <- -> New features Add Since First Release: Thesius XII V0.95 <- * Ram Disk System, For Terminal and Level buffering were possible. * Pause bug Fixed. * Some heavy Code opting of the Display engine and object Control systems. * Revised Highscore Tables. * Some Small Terminal Code Opts & Bug Fixes. * Added the Terminals On/Off Options. * Revised the Highscore Entry Code. -> New features Add Since Second Release: Thesius XII V0.96 <- * Fixed a silly address alignment Problem in the Players dot Explosion Code A result of some foolish opt's, Now works correctly on 030's Again. * Fixed HighScore Entry Bug, No more Guru's upon exit. * Fixed HighScore & Options Screens Unused Sprites Faults. * Added Simple Disk Error System.. * Added limited NTSC support for AGA & ECS Amigas (more is coming) How to Contact the Author: ========================== If you feel like a contacting me, about either this project or any others we might have done or be involed in, well then you can do so via the following methods .... Snail Mail. FidoNet Kevin Picone "Kevin Picone" Underware Design, 3:637/101.2 74 Springs RD, RSD M539 Ballarat, Vic, Australia, 3352 INTERNET to FIDONET Mailing Address: "Kevin.Picone@p2.f101.n637.z3.fidonet.org" ========================================================================== PLEASE NOTE: If your a publisher well FEEL FREE free too contact us. ASAP!;) ========================================================================== What is REALITY ?: ================== Above you would have noticed that we are working on another Amiga project, which is at present, simply titled "REALITY" In short "REALITY" is a new'ish breed of Amiga Texture Map engine, which features include. * 256 Colours.... (With Depth Options) * Light Sources Upon Depth... * Texture Mapped Floors/Ceilings and Static/Flat Pattern * Walls At Any Angle / Animated Walls / See Through Walls * 2D Flat Texture Mapped Objects, (Static & Animated) * 3D Flat Shaded Polygon Objects * Various Detail Modes. 1x*1y 1x*2y 2x*1y 2x*2y * Various Screen Sizes 320*256 being the largest. * Cpu only C2P solution. (020/030/040 opt'd) * Bitmap C2P & Chunky Copper Mode Options. * 24bit GFX card support. A Game based upon the Reality is presently under construction. Underware Greeting Cards Go Out To: =================================== Gavin Close & The Entire Close Family, Simon Beggs, Marcus Macrowzski, Chris Leathley, Dan Martin, Steven Sheedy, Anne Brennan, Safron Craig (xxx) Chris (Mags) Mc'callum, Stephen Walsh, RoadRunna, Matt Dopper (The Dop-Star), Michelle (xxx), Andrew Muller, Lisa Gordon (xxx), Jamie Paynter (Mr Artist;), Craig Huggins... All the guys in the Local Ballarat Fidonet mail system. The Entire Ballarat Amiga Users Group, and all the AMIGA Fans around the world... To the AMIGA for being the only reason I still bother to call myself a Programmer... (Well Sometimes.. ;) The Music of Queensryche/Van Halen/Bon Jovi/WhiteSnake/Death/Slayer/ Metallica,etc etc Virgil Donati, Tama Drums/Pearl Hardware & Paiste Cymbals.. and most of all my family for their ongoing support...... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ T H E E N D ------------------------------------------------------------------------