Baroll 1.03 04/02/2000
(C)2000 Robin Burrows. All Rights Reserved.
Everything by me except spot sound effects (which are PD).

rburrows@bigfoot.com
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/7336/robcstf.htm
http://www.rbsite.freeserve.co.uk/robcstf.htm

Disclaimer:
By using this software you agree that you do so at your own risk,
and will assume full responsibility for anything that may occur. You
also agree that the author will not be held responsible for anything
that may occur.

Licence:
This may be freely distributed as long as you are not profitting
from it and this zip archive and the contents (including when
unzipped) remains unaltered.


This is the DirectX version, a DOS version should also be available.


Unzipping:
==========

IMPORTANT: You must unzip with paths preserved! With pkunzip you
must use the -d option. You should get a BDATA subfolder when
you unzip it.

TechStuff and Bugs:
===================

If it doesn't work, try updating your video and sound drivers,
in particular, the current Nvidia Detonator drivers have problems.
Also the Voodoo3 drivers only appear to work properly with
fliptype=3

If you get flickery graphics, or it doesn't start, in the textfile
BDATA\BPREFS.TXT change fliptype:

fliptype=0        Default, pageflip, best.
fliptype=3        Double buffer. Slow, but very compatible
Change it with Notepad if you want.

mousespeed=1
You can change this in the options in the game, but if for
some reason the mouse is too slow, change to:
mousespeed=0
and it will use the Windows defaults.

Win 95 users, you may get a message about 'DCOM', just OK it.
This doesn't happen on Win 98, you may want to do what it
suggests, but the game will run OK anyway.

I am on my 3rd sound library, MIDAS (see licence at bottom of
text).


If you have any bugs etc email me.


Options:
========
These are fairly obvious, Baroll now comes with two level sets
(and you can add more), toggle between them with the Levels button.
Mousespeed. The higher it is the slower the mouse this takes effect
immediately so try it on the options sreen.
Music and Sound effects volume, try them and see.
Brightnesses, best left on default, but change if you have trouble
seeing things ingame. These only affect ingame graphics.


Ingame Keys:
============
F1 toggles pause
ESC quits
A accelerates time by a factor of 4 while A is pressed
F10 takes a screenshot

Playing Instructions:
=====================
The object is to get a certain number of barrels from one or more
starting locations to one or more end locations. When you start a
level, there is no shame attached to pausing it and working out a
plan...

The starting locations show how many barrels are contained, and
the direction the next barrel will go as a green arrow. If there
are red arrows, these will go green in a clockwise direction,
just play a few games to see. When there is less than 10 seconds
until a barrel appears, a clock shaped timer will appear.

The end locations show how many barrels are required, and from
which directions barrels will be accepted from with inward
pointing green arrows (you can use any of them to deliver barrels).
There may be a time limit on how long you can take to get a barrel
to an 'end', when there are 30 seconds left, a timer will appear.
If you fail to get a barrel to it and time runs out, it's game over.

You control where the barrels go by moving bits of path. Move
your mouse to any area where a green hexagon appears and click
the left mouse button to pick it up, you can now move it to any
clear area and left click to put it down. You can 'swap' the
selected piece with another (the hexagon round the mouse pointer
turns yellow) by clicking on another piece, the two pieces will
be exchanged, but this will incur a short time penalty (mouse
pointer turns into hourglass) before you can move more pieces.
If you select a piece, but deicde you don't want to move or
exchange it, click it again to deselect, there is no time penalty.

The hexagon round the mouse pointer will turn red if you cannot
move a piece, this is usually when there is a time penalty, or
a barrel is on the source or destination area.

When a barrel gets to an end location, and enters at a point with
an arrow, you get points depending on how far the barrel rolled.
For the first section, you get 1 point, this doubles for every
additional section travelled until 512 points, the next section
will bring the total to 1000 points, a further 1000 points is
scored for every section after that. The points will be displayed
at the point the barrel enters the end. You can still dock
barrels at an end that has '0' required (arrows are red) and
get the points for it, but beware about running out of barrels
for other ends...

If a barrel collides with another barrel, or rolls off the end
of a path, the barrel will be smashed, and you will lose 500
points.

If you beat the highest score on the scoreboard during play, your
score will be shown in red.

Everything else should be pretty obvious.

Restart Points:
===============

This depends on the level set, if you are playing the supplied
'Original Baroll Levels' this is every 3 levels (1, 4, 7 etc).
For the 'Easier Baroll Levels' this is every level.
If you fail a level, the next time you 'Start Game' you get a
choice to start at a restart if you got that far. If you exit
the game, restarts will be lost.

Changing the music:
===================

If you don't like my music, it's understandable, to change:
You will need IT, XM, S3M or MOD format, put it in the BDATA folder
and rename it INTRO.? if you want it to be the intro music, or
INGAME.? for in game or HIGHSC.? for highscores (Replace the '?'
with the correct extension, ie. for S3M INGAME.S3M)


Level Editor:
=============
Press F1 for help in the level editor.
Use the up/down arrows to change between back/path/over.
Use the left/right arrow keys to change piece.

BACK. This is the background graphics, they are just what the
level looks like.

PATH. These are the pieces the player can move about and the
barrels roll along.

OVER. These appear over the barrels and are used for start
and end locations as well as tunnels etc.

Zero (0) is a useful key as it toggles on/off the outside area.
Nine (9) toggles placeability for an individual hex, a player
cannot place a path on that hex.
Keys 1 to 4 toggle a start location (set properties with F6),
you should NOT put a path on here, and MUST be nonplaceable.
Keys 5 to 8 toggle an end location (set properties with F6),
you should NOT put a path on here, and MUST be nonplaceable.

F6 Sets properties, times are in 60ths of a second. For
Barrelspeed, 1 is fastest, 2 is half as fast as 1, 3 is half
as fast as 2 etc...

When you want to playtest, press the 'T' key, you can abort with ESC.

Other keys are detailed in the F1 help.
An example level EXAMPLE.BRL is included. The level TESTXYZ.BRL
is created when you playtest a level, just ignore it.

Making a set of levels:
======================

Use the Allegro grabber and add all your levels (.BRL files) as
'Other' or 'DATA', You will also need to add a text file that 
has the number of levels, the gap between restart points, and
the full name of the set on the first line, The rest of the file
should be a message you get for completing all the levels, each
line separated by returns.
Example:
20 3 Barrel Rolling for Beginners
You are now a proficient Baroller!
Well done on finishing.

The levels should be called LEVEL01 LEVEL02 and so on in the
grabber. The description textfile should be called CONTROL
You will also need an 8bit RLE_SPRITE size 640*480 called END
and the palette for it should be called ENDPAL
This is show as the game complete sequence with the text over the top.
Do not compress the datafile, and keep it in the BDATA folder.
Load the EASYL1.DAT levels into the grabber for an example.

All that remains is to add the datafile to the listfile which
is called BDATA\LEVLIST.TXT, just add a line with the name of the
datafile, like this:
BEGINR.DAT
You can add up to 32 sets. You can select which set is being
played in the 'Options' in the game. Each set has its own
highscores, like BEGINR.HIS.

If you want to protect the levels, send me the level .DAT file,
and I will return a passworded one.

Making level graphics:
======================
This is slightly tricky, at the moment I would suggest emailing
me about it.


===================================================================


Compiled with MingW32:
http://www.xraylith.wisc.edu/~khan/software/gnu-win32/

Uses Allegro WIP 3.9.30 by Shawn Hargreaves etc
http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/

Uses MIDAS, the licence is included in the SOUNDFX folder