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1994-05-16
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TANK FOR TWO
USER GUIDE
Version 1.00
Copyright (c) 1994
Steven Atkinson and David Leadbetter
All Rights Reserved
CONTENTS
[1] Introduction
[2] Disclaimer
[3] Requirements
[4] Quick Start Information
[5] Playing the Game
[5.1] The Object of the Game
[5.2] Walls
[6] Using the Setup Program
[6.1] Quitting and Saving Options in SETUP
[6.2] The Default Setup
[6.3] Menus
[7] TroubleShooting/Bugs
[7.1] Troubleshooting
[7.2] Known Bugs
[8] Acknowledgements
[1] Introduction
Tank for Two is a two player tank combat arcade game. One of the
best features of the game is the ability to customise the
battleground layout and background.
This game is released as cardware; in other words if
you enjoy the game or have any comments/suggestions,
we would like to hear from you, so send us a postcard
or email us. Who are we?
Name: Steven Atkinson David Leadbetter
Internet: atkis@cs.uq.oz.au davidl@cs.uq.oz.au
Snail Mail: 12 Balanda St, 174 Burbong St,
Jindalee, QLD, Chapel Hill, QLD,
AUSTRALIA 4074 AUSTRALIA 4069
We have been developing this game part time since June 1993.
[2] Disclaimer
The authors make NO warranties, expressed or implied, as to the
quality or performance of this program. The authors will NOT be
held liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, or consequential
damage resulting from the use of this program. Your use of this
program constitutes your agreement to this disclaimer and your
release of the authors from any form of liability or litigation.
Copies of Tank For Two may be distributed under the following
conditions :
- All files associated with the program, including user's
manuals and other documentation, must be distributed
packaged together.
- No person or agency (other than the authors) may sell
or profit from the Tank For Two program (including
any associated files) or any modified version of it.
- The program will not be bundled for sale with any other
software or hardware.
- Recognized users' groups or clubs are authorized to
charge a duplication fee not to exceed $5.
[3] Requirements
- An IBM-PC or compatible with a 386SX-16 processor or better
- A VGA video card capable of supporting the VGA 320x200x256 graphics mode
- An AT-style keyboard
- A Microsoft compatible mouse
- About 1Mb of hard disk space
- A Soundblaster Card v2.0 (or comaptible) if you want to play with sound.
The Soundblaster must be running with factory default settings,
i.e. IRQ 7, Port 220H. (See [6] for the reason).
- Two willing participants
[4] Quick Start Information
Type TANK to start playing. You must run TANK when the executable is
in the current directory.
The playing keys are (hardwired in this version):
Tank 1 Tank 2
------ ------
Move Forwards: W Up
Turn Left/Right: A D Left Right
Move Backwards: X Down
Fire Bullet: Left Shift INS
Quit: ESC
Note that certain combinations of these keys may cause key conflicts
with some keyboards. In order to minimise these conflicts, we suggest
that the player for Tank #2 uses the numeric keypad arrow keys rather
than the dark coloured arrow keys that are present on most 101-key AT
keyboards.
[5] Playing the Game
See Section [4] for information how to start running the game.
[5.1] The Object of the Game
The game takes place on a battleground (the screen) looking at two
opposing tanks from overhead. Each tank can move and turn, and shoot
bullets at the other tank. The object of the game is to kill your
opponent by shooting them with tank bullets before they kill you.
Each tank has a number of lives, displayed at the top of game screen.
If you are the first player to lose all your lives, then you lose the
game. Note that your own bullets are fatal to you as well as your
opponent, and that bullets run out of energy after they travel a
certain distance. Also, each tank can only fire one bullet at a time.
[5.2] Walls
Wall obstacles have been placed (and can be configured by the players)
in the middle of the battleground, in order to make the destruction of
your opponent a bit more difficult. Tanks cannot drive through walls
(unless the walls have crumbled -- see below). There are two types of
walls:
(1) Hard Walls: these walls bounce tank bullets
(2) Soft Walls: these walls will crumble with each
bullet that hits them; after 3 bullet
hits the rubble of the wall is low
enough to drive a tank over.
[6] Using the Setup Program
The purpose of the setup program is to allow you to configure the
following game parameters:
- the number of lives for each player
- the distance tank bullets travel
- the starting positons of the tanks
- the wall types and positions
- the background picture (i.e. the battleground picture)
- sound enabling/disabling
The SETUP program can be run by typing SETUP when in the TANK
directory. A screen which looks like the tank battleground will
appear, with a menubar at the top of the screen. Menu options are
chosen using the mouse (required for the setup program) and clicking
the LMB when a menu option is highlighted. This initial mode of
SETUP is called the menu mode.
I use LMB and RMB as abbreviations for Left Mouse Button and Right
Mouse Button respectively throughout the rest of this user guide.
[6.1] Quitting and Saving Options in SETUP
To quit setup without saving changes, choose the FILE/QUIT menu option.
To save any changes made in SETUP, choose the FILE/SAVE menu option.
[6.2] The Default Setup
Tank for Two comes with its default setup (*). At any time, if you
want to reset all settings to default, run the SETUP program with a
single parameter '-d', e.g.
C:\TANK> setup -d
This will start the SETUP program with all game parameters set to their
original values. Then you can simply save the changes from within SETUP
and quit the SETUP program to play the game with the default settings.
(*): The wall setup that came with the game is not actually the default;
we thought that the default (no walls at all) is not very interesting to
first play the game with.
[6.3] Menus
The following sections give information on how to change each of the
game parameters.
SETUP/LIVES
Description:
Brings up a dialog box that allows you to set the number of lives
each player commences the game with.
Dialog Controls:
LMB (click): add/subtract 1 life at a time
RMB (click): add/subtract 5 lives at a time
DEFAULT: Player 1: 5 lives
Player 2: 5 lives
Click on the OK button to take down the dialog box.
SETUP/BULLETS
Description:
Brings up a dialog box and a bullet distance indicator below the
box. This option allows you to set and view graphically the distance
that both players' bullets will travel before running out of energy
and disappearing.
Dialog Controls:
LMB (click): add/subtract 1 bullet distance unit
RMB (click): add/subtract 5 bullet distance units
DEFAULT: Bullet travels 100 units before disappearing
Click on the OK button to take down the dialog box.
SETUP/TANKS
Description:
This option allows you to set the starting position and orientation
of each players' tank. A dialog box appears when this option is
chosen. Either select the tank number which you want to re-position,
or click on the OK button to cancel this operation.
Once you select the tank to position, the dialog box disappears and
you are left with a tank-shaped mouse cursor. Then you can position
the tank using the following controls.
Controls:
Move Mouse : moves the tank cursor around the battleground
RMB (click): turn the tank cursor around
LMB (click): position the player's tank back onto the battleground
at the current mouse position and tank cursor direction.
Once the tank has been placed back on the battleground, you return to
the menu mode of SETUP.
SETUP/WALLS
Description:
Choosing this menu option will temporarily hide the tanks on the
battleground and take you into wall editing mode. The wall editor
interface comprises:
- a row of buttons across the top of the screen
- a grid overlay on the battleground
The basic method of operating the wall editor is outlined as follows.
The tiles (i.e. grid squares) of the grid can be individually selected
using the mouse, and then walls can be made out of these selected
tiles. Additional features such as erasing and crumbling walls are
also provided. We now list in detail the various operations of the
wall editor.
SELECTION
When a tile is selected (using the mouse, explained below), a
series of dots appears as a flyscreen over the tile.
MOUSE BUTTONS
For each of the mouse buttons, they select grid tiles if the
first tile they change was unselected, and vice versa.
LMB (drag) : Select/Deselect tiles which the cursor points at
RMB (drag) : Selects/Deselects a rectangular area from the
initial tile down and to the right. Useful for
making large areas of walls easily.
EDITOR BUTTONS
MAKE SOFT: Put soft wall pieces in all selected tiles;
deselects all selected tiles
MAKE HARD: Put HARD wall pieces in all selected tiles;
deselects all selected tiles
CRUMBLE : Crumbles all selected soft-wall tiles;
deselects all selected tiles
ERASE : Erases all selected tiles;
deselects all selected tiles
UP/DOWN : Cycles all selected HARD or SOFT walls tiles
through wall images; deselects non-wall tiles
OK : Deselects all tiles, and exits wall editing mode
SETUP/BACKGROUND
Description:
This option allows you to select picture images for the battleground
on which the game takes place. The default background is a plain
cream-ish colour. NOTE: all potential background picture files must
be 320x200 in size.
Upon choosing this option, a dialog box appears, and prompts you to
choose the type of picture file you wish to load in as a background.
The options it presents are:
PCX } These are the three picture types currently
CEL } supported by the SETUP program.
BLK }
DEFAULT: Choosing this will load the default picture
(cream) in, and return the SETUP program to
menu mode.
CANCEL : Choosing this will return SETUP to menu mode
without altering the current background picture
being displayed.
If you choose PCX, CEL or BLK, a file selection screen then appears,
and it lists all picture files in the Tank For Two directory of the
type chosen. You can either CANCEL the operation by clicking on the
CANCEL button, or choose a picture file to load. If you load a
picture file from this screen, a brief "Loading..." message will be
displayed, and you will be returned to menu mode with the new
background if the picture was successfully loaded.
SOUND/ENABLE/DISABLE
This option allows you to disable or enable sound as desired.
The main reason behind having such an option is that because the
toolkit used to develop the game (WordUp Graphics Toolkit v3.5) does
not support any sound cards other than a Soundblaster Card v2.0
running with factory defaults. So if you do not have such a card (or
compatible) you will probably want to disable sound.
[7] TroubleShooting/Bugs
[7.1] Troubleshooting
- The only sound card supported by this game is Soundblaster
(or compatibles) running with factory defaults.
- If you are having problems reading the setup file,
i.e you see "Error reading SETUP.DAT" when you try to run TANK,
run SETUP -d to restore default values (see [6.2] for more info).
- Try to avoid positioning tanks over each other or over/under walls.
We have tested these cases, but it makes the game less enjoyable
because we decided to disallow tank movement when tanks are over
walls or other tanks.
- Tanks are unable to turn if that turn will result in one tank being
partly on top of the other tank. If you find your tank is stuck in
such a predicament, simply drive away in the opposite direction
than the direction from which you approached the other tank.
[7.2] Known Bugs
On rare occasions, we have seen the following three unwanted behaviours.
We should emphasize that these happen rarely, and we cannot (as yet)
isolate the problems.
- upon exiting the game, you are in 40 column monochrome mode.
- the game will lock up (hang) while playing (very rare)
- If playing under the QEMM memory manager, sometimes QEMM reports
an attempt to execute an illegal instruction and aborts the program.
[8] Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Barry and Chris Egerter for developing the
WordUp Graphics Toolkit (WGT v3.5) for IBM-PCs. Tank For Two was
originally created in order to test the capabilities of this toolkit,
and would never have come this far in the toolkit's absence. A later
version of this toolkit (WGT v4.0) is now available, and improves on the
features this game uses.
For more information about the WGT toolkit, contact:
Chris Egerter
94 Andover Drive
London, Ontario
N6J 3X2 CANADA
Email: chris.egerter@homebase.com OR
barry.egerter@softnet.com
If you have actually read this far, go and enjoy the game!