Welcome to Mac Bzone 1.2

History

Mac Bzone is a version of bzone derived from the Fortran sources written by Justin S. Revenaugh.  It also contains some of the improvements found in the cbzone program written by Todd W. Mummert.

Revision history:
1.0 - Initial release
1.1 - Fixed to run on 68040 based machines
1.2 - Added:
           keyboard controls
           automatic screen depth adjustment
           accelerated line drawing routines
           enhanced radar

Hardware Requirements

The Mac Bzone program requires the following: A 68020 with an FPU (or higher) and system 6.0.7 or higher.  It will run on Mac IIs and SEs with accelerator cards.  The game does make use of the 64 point Helivetica font which may not be available on all systems.  The use of TrueType is suggested for best text display.  Mac Bzone will make use of color if available.  A color display/machine is not required.  Note that the program runs best in 1bit and 4bit modes but will run in all modes and, as of version 1.2, will automatically adapt to dynamic changes in screen depth.

Game Objective

In Mac Bzone you drive a tank through a playing field filled with indestructable obstacles and enemy tanks,  missiles and landers.  The object is simple: kill all the enemy tanks (a hopeless task as there are an infinite number of them), missles, and helicopters and shoot the landers for extra points.  Enemy tanks come in two varieties, plain and super with the proportion of each changing in relation with the score.

Scoring

Enemy tank:  3,000
Super tank:   5,000
 Missile:          5,000
Helicopter:     5,000
Lander:        10,000
A free tank is awarded every 100,000 points.

The Controls

The playing field looks somewhat like this:

Control of the your tank is primarily through the mouse, although some keyboard commands are accepted.  The mouse button will fire a salvo; the 'S' key will switch between low/high mouse sensitivity (sensitivity determines how sensitive the joystick is to pointer motion, high-sensitivity is generally required to reach higher score levels.).  The 'P' key will pause the current game and the spacebar will resume the game.  The 'Q' key will abort the current game.  Directional control of the tank is by moving the mouse to different portions of the screen.  The joystick in the lower right hand of the screen will correspond to your tanks current movement and rotation.  The user may enable/disable the sound via a menu toggle.  The user may also clear the high score file via a menu option.  The game can be reconfigured as to the number of simultaneous objects and complete radar via a menu selection.  Scores are only eligible for the high score list if they are played with the default game options.  On the radar, dangerous enemy targets appear as red crosses.  Non-deadly enemy targets, such as landers, appear as red squares.  Salvos appear as single yellow pixels.  If the 'Obstacles on radar' option is used, the obstacles appear as short, cyan, horizontal lines.

Keyboard Tank Controls

Version 1.2 adds keyboard tank controls.  There are seven functions which can be assigned to keys.  It is possible to add multiple functions to the same key (generally this is to create a full stop key from the pan stop and motion stop keys).  The defaults keys are shown below:

'M' - pan left
',' - stop panning and center
'.' - pan right
'F' - forward motion
'B' - stop forward/backward motion and center
'V' - backward motion
spacebar - fire a salvo

The sensitivity setting ('S') does affect the keyboard controls also.  To apply any of these functions repeatedly just hold the key down.  A menu option allows the user to select between mouse and keyboard games.  Menu options are also available to reset the keys to their defaults and to manually select new keys.  Key selections are saved to disk in the high scores file.

Shareware

This program is being released as shareware.  The program has a serial number system in it which limits non-registered copies to 20 salvos per game.  Registering the copy removes this limit.  If you send me $10US to the address below, I will send you a serial number.  Please feel free to pass the unregistered version of the program about freely.

To obtain a serial number send $10US to:
Randy Frank
1936 Northridge Dr
Coralville, IA 52241

Please include your name, USmail address, and Email address (where applicable).