GEMini Atari

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ GEMini Atari / GEMini_Atari_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1993.iso / files / games / arcade / blox / readme.doc < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1993-07-26 | 11.0 KB | 274 lines

Blox 2.0 Copyright (C) 1989 -- 1992 By David Baggett ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- User Contract This program is SHAREWARE. You may distribute it at will, provided you 1) do not charge any money for it, 2) distribute it WITH the documentation, and 3) do not change the program, accompanying data files, or documentation in ANY WAY. You are expected to register this program if you use it more than a few times. Paying the fee entitles you to Blox Plus, an enchanced version of the game for registered Blox owners only. See below for details. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's Neat About Blox? ----------------------- Aside from good ol' addictive game play, Blox features: o Stunning art-deco graphics, o Crisp, quick animation, o Vibrant digitized sound, sampled at *11 kHz* for better fidelity, o Crystal-clear sample playback on Hippo and ST Replay digitizers, o Mind-bending hexagon motif, with six rotations per game piece, o Cleverly selected skill levels, o Easy-to-use configuration program that checks your Blox directory for correctness (to ensure proper installation) and lets you set game options, and o Convenient hard drive support: will not clobber the OS or your installed resolution and palette choices like most other games. Blox is a friendly application! Blox Plus, available to registered Blox owners, has the following additional features: o Awesome *stereo* sound effects using STe DMA sound, o Nifty *special* pieces like bombs and transparents, o Challening Advanced and Tournament skill levels for Blox pros, o and over 30 *new* 5-hex pieces. Blox is shareware, but Blox Plus is not. To get Blox Plus you have to register your copy of Blox. To register, send $15 (US) to: Dave Baggett 5640 Vantage Point Road Columbia, MD 21044 USA Overseas users please add $3 for shipping and handling. It's usually a good idea to send a check instead of cash; if you send a check just write "Blox" in the memo. You don't even have to write a note to go with your registration as long as your address and the word "Blox" are on the check somewhere. Simple! Games like HacMan II and Blox take many hours to design, program and test, but it'll only take a couple seconds to pop a check in the mail to get your copy of Blox Plus! Registration money helps me keep my system current so I can support new hardware like the STe. Please help out by registering if you like Blox. Thanks! But WAIT, There's MORE! ----------------------- You know as well as I do that shareware is all about guilt. To be honest, I really hate guilt. And I know you've probably got a couple friends who want Blox Plus, but you figure it'd probably be easier just to register once and copy the game for them, even though it's illegal. Well, I've got a deal for you. It's a guilt-free "give it to your friends" plan. Here's the situation: For every person you want to give a copy of Blox Plus to, add an additional $5 to your registration and we'll call it square. This means that friends can share the cost of Blox Plus without pirating -- for each additional $5 you add to your registration, you get to make ONE (and only one!) non-archival copy of Blox Plus. Fair enough? System Requirements ------------------- Blox will run on any Atari ST or TT with a color monitor and a hard drive or double-sided floppy. It requires a minimum of 345K to run; for half-meg machines this means no desk accessories or AUTO folder programs, so if you're a 520ST owner you may find it easiest to run the game from floppy. If more RAM is available, Blox will use it to make its title logo spin around. Regardless of how much memory you have beyond the minimum, however, the basic gameplay stays the same. If Blox realizes that it's starved for RAM it will sacrifice some speed for memory; the most notable effect of this is that the screens will load slowly when just barely enough RAM is available. RAM shortage does not otherwise visibly affect the game. Playing the Game ---------------- The gameplay in Blox is simple: you place your pieces on the center structure to make rings. Complete rings disappear, causing the board to collapse in. You keep placing pieces until there's no more room on the board for a piece, at which point the game is over. Easy! The tricky part is that pieces come out from six different directions. Use the numeric keypad to steer them around -- the 8, 9, 3, 2, 1, and 7 keys move your piece north, northeast, southeast, south, southwest, and northwest respectively, where north is up on the screen. The 4 and 6 keys will approximate east and west, even though no hex actually has an east and west neighbor (look at the board closely to see this). Rotate the current piece with the A and D keys; A rotates the piece 60 degrees counterclockwise and D rotates the piece 60 degrees clockwise. If you really get stuck you can force the inner ring to collapse by "nuking" the board -- press the spacebar to nuke. You start out with three nukes and get a free one every 5000 points. Each piece is made up of 3, 4, or 5 hexes, depending on the skill level of the current game: Skill Level Piece Types ----------- ----------- Novice 3-hex Standard 4-hex Advanced 3-hex, 4-hex, 5-hex (Blox Plus only) Tournament 3-hex, 4-hex, 5-hex (Blox Plus only) Each hex can be one of the following types: Hex type Color Function -------- ----- -------- Normal Ring color Used to build rings Indestructible White Prevents rings from collapsing Heavy Clear, white outline Prevents rings from collapsing Transparent Clear, flashing outline (Blox Plus only) Bomb Flashing (Blox Plus only) You plant a piece by either allowing it to run into another piece or by sticking it sideways onto another piece in transit. When you plant a piece you are awarded points according to how quickly you planted it; i.e., the quicker you plant pieces the more points you get. (Technical note: the bonus you get is the same whether your machine is a 50Hz or 60Hz machine.) You also get points for completing rings. The animated marker that moves along the border tells you what direction the current piece is moving in. Get used to keeping an eye on it; you may need it on later levels. Completing five rings takes you to the next level. As you complete more and more levels, the game gets harder in a variety of ways. But you can find out what they are on your own... Game Keys Summary ----------------- During a game: Keypad Move piece in any of the six directions A and D Rotate piece Spacebar Nuke board (if you have a nuke to use) F1 Toggle sound on/off Ctrl-Q Quit this game During attract mode: Escape Exit to desktop/shell Spacebar Skip to next attract screen Return Start a game History ------- Blox has a long history. Version 1.0 appeared in 1989 as a four-directional Tetris-type game similar to the popular Valgus Squared (although the two games were devloped without knowledge of each other). Even then it had the flashy "art-deco" look, and many of the title pages were pretty much the same as they are today. I gave Blox 1.0 to a few friends, who all became incredibly addicted to it and subsequently blamed me for all the time they wasted on it. Copies of the game made the rounds at Case Western Reserve University, where it attracted more fans, some of whom are probably still playing it right now. So why didn't I officially release such a popular game? There were several reasons. For one thing, the game desperately needed rewriting -- Blox 1.0 was written largely over a period of a few weeks, and there were many bugs, some of which crashed the machine. Not only that, but the scoring was completely bizarre. It was written with tools that were very primitive compared to what we have now, and consequently it was (to use a technical term) "flakey as all hell." I knew that to really do it justice I'd have to rewrite it from scratch, and that's exactly what happened. In the process, I changed the game from squares to the more brain-twisting hexagon motif, partly because square-based games were already out there, and partly because I was bored with programming Blox 1.0 again and using hexagons made the game data structures a lot more interesting. Converting the game to a more modern game development system has contributed a great deal to the final product: stereo digitized sound effects, proportionally-spaced color fonts, full-screen animated sceen wipes, palette animation and more, that all go together to make what I hope you'll find to be a professional-quality piece of work. Who's Responsible for This? --------------------------- All in all, Blox 2.0 involved about 6 months of work by many people. To everyone who helped out, a big THANKS. Neil Forsyth, 68000 assembly language wizard, contributed lots of low-level code to Blox 2.0, most notably his excellent blitting routines. Getting a game to run smoothly with 11kHz samples is tough (as anyone who's tried it will tell you), and Neil's fast raster ops made a big difference. Tim "Timon Marmex" Trzepacz (pronounced "trespass") did most of the artwork, and came up with the overall art-deco concept. David Leary has selflessly playtested the game extensively in all its forms over the past two years. His unflagging enthusiasm prevented me from chucking the ST out the window in frustration on several occasions. Bryan Buck also playtested, but most of it was in one non-stop 8-hour marathon, after which he wouldn't play the game again for a long time. Bruce Davis brought the game to Case Western, where Glenn Crocker and others injured their GPA's with too many late-night Blox sessions. The sound effects are from several sources: Kraftwerk, Jesus Jones, Nine Inch Nails, Voice of the Beehive, and Carl Orff all auditioned, although some samples ended up on the cutting room floor due to memory limitations. I chose artists that I thought would lend a modern, "progressive" feel to the game. For Blox Plus I played with the stereo sounds a lot to make the whole game sound as much as possible like an overproduced Janet Jackson song (with sounds zooming across the stereo field every which way). If you can, try it with headphones. A Few Final Words ----------------- If you have any questions or comments about Blox or Blox Plus, feel free to call or write me: Dave Baggett 5640 Vantage Point Road Columbia, MD 21044 USA (301) 596 4779 Internet: dmb@wam.umd.edu or dmb@tis.com Bug reports, high scores, etc. are also welcome.