TechnoManiac is shareware. You may distribute and copy this freely as long as no one other than the author derives a commercial benefit from distributing this software. The author retains all ownership and rights of ownership in this software. You must distribute TechnoManiac with all of it's readme documents. CD-ROM collections and commercial software distributors must obtain permission from the author in order to distribute this program. If you keep it or play it send $10 to:
Joseph Fleck
1447 Burr Oak
Homewood, IL 60430
Comments/Bugs can be sent to me at TORNADO@APPLE.COM.
The objective of TechnoManiac is to kill your opponent, and keep from
being killed. Depending on the scenario, you may be competing to get on the high
scores list, or be simply competing against another person. There are several variables you can change - Tank left - right motion, tank forward - backward motion, turret up and down, turret left and right, and the thrust of the bomb. You can also control the rotation of the world (up, down, left, right, forward, backward). You can play against the computer or against another person. There is a barrier in the center of the world that you must shoot over to hit the other tank. You can also set walls and ceiling to be reflective and get some very interesting shots. Finally, there is a grid that you are floating on, which disappears whenever it is hit by a bomb (yours or the other players). Depending on the setting you may either fall through that grid hole (don't break the ice!), or you may simply be restricted from going over it. So as play progresses, your grid slowly deteriorates. If you have the "grid-fixing demon" on, the grid will be repaired. The game can be played against the computer, but can just as easily be played against another person. You can configure the keyboard for each player (or have the green player use the mouse for most of their movement), and it works quite well. Try it out!
As I have mentioned, there are two modes of play. The first being the "Fast Play" I referred to already. But there is also a "Turn-Based" mode, which may be more reminiscient of the older 2-d games I referred to. In the turn-based mode, you each take turns shooting. There is a status indicator along the top of the screen to indicate how much turn you have left. The more you move your tank, the more you burn up your turn. There are tick marks that tell you how many shots you have left. Each person starts out with 2 maximum shots. You increase the tick marks (amount of movement and shots) for every kill you make on the other person.
Options from the main option screen :
･ "Max number of bombs in the air" sets the number of bombs that can be flying in the air simultaneously from each tank.
･ "World Rotation" turns world rotation (actually, it only half-rotates - full rotation starts confusing things). It also sets how quickly the world will rotate.
･ "Grid-Fixing Demon"turns a grid-fixing "demon" on and off, and sets how fast it moves across the screen.
･ "Sound On" - duh!
･ "Turn Based/Fast Play " swiches between turn-based play, or fast play mode. See paragraph above for a description of the two. *Note, you can only play the computer in Fast Play mode (I haven't written the turn-based computer player). You can not modify the number of bombs in the air in turn-based mode as well.
･ "Keyboard enters High Score". This switches between "picking" your name off the ground in the high score screen and just typing it in.
･ "Human Opponent" turns on and off computer player
･ "Reflective Walls" turns on and off reflective walls. You can specify which walls you would like the bombs to bounce off of.
･ "Tanks Fall Through Grid" sets whether or not tanks fall through grid. If it's not turned on, tanks simply cannot go over the holes in the grid.
･ "About Techno" tells you about me and where to send your bucks.
･ "Reset High Scores" does exactly that. There are 5 high score positions.
･ "Configure Keys" takes you to the next option screen.
･ "Default" button switches to my favorite settings.
The Configure Keys screen seems a bit daunting at first, but you'll get used to it.
To configure the controls in the Configure Keys screen, simply click on the key you wish to change, and then tap the new key you'd like instead. Controls are remembered after you quit as well.
The computer has 20 different intelligence levels, from plain stoopid to very very bent on destroying you.
It raises its intelligence by one notch every time you kill it.
The actual method for scoring is as follows (for those that care)
if (Intelligence>0)
gGreenPoints+=(20/Intelligence)*150;
else
gGreenPoints+=3500;
Intelligence is the intelligence of the computer, and it gets smarter as it gets lower. So basically you can rack up some serious points the more times you kill it.
You need a minimum of 100 points to get on the high score list.
Oh, by the way, you lose 1 point every shot you take.
If you make it on the high score, you enter your name by picking it off the floor and shooting it to the far wall. Don't worry, you don't have to set any variables to hit the position, just select the letter (with your tank movement controls) and fire it. To exit the high score list, fire on the bottom right (return) character.
If you think you have a killer high score, mail me. I'm curious what the best are out there.
The computer doesn't know about reflection off the ceiling. You do - use this to your advantage. You can get more shots off per second than the computer by bouncing them off the ceiling.
I've heard that there's too many keyboard things to keep straight. Here's a tip - don't change so many of them. Best thing to do is to set the controls so that the bombs bounce off the ceiling and land pretty much in the center of the other grid. Then move your tank around based on where the bombs are hitting. Bottom line - try not to modify too many variables, unless you're stuck in the grid. Then you gotta do what you gotta do.
Keep Moving! Once you sit still, the computer just begins to home in on you. If you keep moving, you have an excellent chance of making it far.
Slow play
There are two strategies behind slow play, an offensive or defensive strategy. With an offensive strategy, you can minimize your movement and focus on hitting the other person with your turn. Defensive strategy is to move so far away from the persons' last line of fire, that they need to totally recalibrate every turn.
A shot takes up one entire tick mark length.
You can (and should) eek out as much movement + shots per turn. You can move all the way up to just before the tick, and then shoot. In the final tick mark you can move up to almost the very leftmost point of the bar, and then shoot. This is maximization of the turn.
You can change your turret settings during the other persons turn if you like.
General
If it looks like you're hitting the other tank, but it's not detecting it, you should lower the thrust of the bomb. This is something I need to address - collision detection is still somewhat rough.
TechnoManiac may resemble a game some of you have played (if you haven't - download it from somewhere) - Arashi. Arashi (Storm) is based on a vector animation toolkit designed by Juri Munnki. I've purchased the right to use this toolkit in TM. Thanks to Juri for a great toolkit.
Thanks to Soundman Eric Strand, who helped me with some most excellent sounds (aren't they cool?), and also countless amounts of feedback and suggestions. (He helped me conceive TM on a car ride. The original drawing is on some napkin somewhere).
Thanks to the following beta-testers for priceless comments (in no particular order): Sebastian Hagedorn, Alain Roy, Chad Speers, Scott Forbes, Brian Golden, Ingemar Ragnemalm, Sam Roseman, Michael Cozzi, and "Heathen".
Big thanks to the people who paid their shareware fees. You folks are great and keep me pumped up!
Thanks also to David Bates for finding out the 1.0-1.1 bug (and for his shareware check!).
Also thanks to my fiance Elsa, who has endured my constant abuse of our time together. "I gotta get techno out!" She is a source of constant support.
1.1 - 12/94. Fixed a serious problem that fell through the cracks in beta testing! Yellow tanks didn't decrement when hit in 2 player games! ARGH! Sorry to all who had this problem. Also, I added a "sorry" message to the program to those that try to run it on something smaller than a 640x480 screen.
1.01 - 8/94. Fixed very minor problems, as well as the icon.
