Merciful 1/Merciful - Disc 1.iso/software/l/lsd_sprint_docs_disks/lsdsprintdoc'sdisk05.dms/in.adf/Boing.doc.pp/Boing.doc

Text File | 1990-09-07 | 22.5 KB | 868 lines

    BOING! THE GAME--------------------------DOCS

Password protected...do not change this doc....typos most probably in the
original manual....


PAGE 1            MANUAL PROTECTION

    Boing! The game uses manual copy
protection.  You will be asked to enter a word from
the manual before the game will start.  You will be
given a page number, a paragraph number, and a
word number for the required word to enter.

    When counting paragraphs and words ignore
headings and chapter numbers.  Omit all
punctuation when entering the word.  Enter
alphabetic characters only.

PAGE 2

        The Saga of Seymour Greene

    Once upon a time there was a group of investors
who wanted to make the world's best beach ball.  But
they couldn't afford the high-tech equipment or
engineers.  So they started out selling beach towels.

    The beach towels sold well.  Finally, the investors
saved enough money to buy fancy equipment and
hire some engineers.  One of these engineers was
Seymour Greene.  Anxious to design the world's best
beach ball, Seymour and the other engineers
immediately set out in their efforts.  Everyone worked
hard, putting in long hours to create the world's best
beach ball.

PAGE 3

    They knew that their beach ball would sell
millions because the competition was not great.  There
were only three other companies making beach balls.
International Beach Ball Manufacturers was one of
them.  IBBM was by far the biggest beach ball
company.  But all their balls were blue.  And they
thought that all beach balls should be blue and cost a
lot.

    AppBall was another company with expensive
balls.  They did have the biggest balls.  But their balls
were only available in black and white.

    Cute Beach Ball Manufacturers also sold beach
balls.  CBBM had a nice beach ball that was
inexpensive and even came in many colors.  But
because their beach balls were so cheap, the serious
beach goers thought they were just toys.  Besides that,
the company was run by Mr. Evil.

    Then the
engineers did it!
Their beach ball
was completed.  It
was by far the best
beach ball in the
world.  It was
reasonably priced,
allowed you to use
several of them at
the same time, and
came in a flashy
red-and-white
checkered design.

PAGE 4

    The beach ball was a true work of art.  They
named it the Boing! Ball.

    But then the investors ran out of money. They
couldn't advertise their new Boing! Ball because they
were broke.  Bankruptcy was just around the corner.
The investors had to do something fast!

    They panicked and sold their company to CBBM
and Mr. Evil. It was a sad day.  All the engineers were
angered because the new company didn't want to
keep them.  They didn't even want to keep Seymour,
but they did.

    Soon people realized that Mr. Evil wasn't the right
man to run CBBM, and so they fired him. Mr. Evil was
persistant though.  He bought another company who
thought they were in the beach ball business but, in
actuality, made woofle balls.

    This didn't help CBBM much though.  They
themselves didn't have much money to advertise the
new Boing! Ball because they had spent so much
acquiring the small company.  Some Boing! Balls sold.
The people who bought them loved them.  They told
their friends.  They brought their Boing! Balls to the
beach and showed others that there really was a good
beach ball they could buy.  People couldn't believe
how easy the Boing! ball was to use.  Some
people couldn't understand why it wasn't blue and
expensive, or why it wasn't black and white.  They just
didn't understand.

PAGE 5

    CBBM had problems convincing people that their
Boing! Ball was the best.  They seemed to muff things
up a lot.  People who owned the Boing! Ball were
frustrated with CBBM.  They wanted everyone to know
about this marvelous new beach ball.  Years passed
and CBBM tried to sell the Boing! Ball.  They didn't do
well.  They even made some improvements to it,
although some of the improvements weren't as good
as the people expected.

    Seymour had many ideas, but nobody at CBBM
would listen.  You see, the other beach ball companies
soon realized that the Boing! ball was the world's best
beach ball, and they started to copy it.  Soon the
Boing! Ball would be surrounded by imitattions.

    Then one day He
arrived.  He promised
much, but so did his
predecessors.  He was
charming and motivating,
as a prince should be.
Prince Nickleman
advertised the Boing! Ball.
He hired and he fired.  He
reorganized.  He knew it
was important to convince
the serious beach goers
that the Boing! Ball was
better than the rest.

    No one knows how
the story will end.  Prince

PAGE 6

Nickleman is trying.  Some people think that
Prince Nickleman could do much better if old
King Irvine would retire.  King Irvine has been at
CBBM forever and it seems he may be
clogging up the pipes a bit.  We would like to
say that they all lived happily ever after.  But we
will just have to wait and see.

    Meanwhile, Seymour has become
disillusioned with his job, often slipping into
daydreams filled with evil green Boing! Balls
that would like to have him for a snack.  Help
Seymour escape from his imaginary
underground
cave system so
he can snap out
of his daydream
and return to
work.  He's
already been
warned about
his daydreaming
and this time
he's sure to be
fired.  Keep
Seymour from
getting canned.
Who knows, he
might replace
King Irvine
someday and
save CBBM.

THE END

PAGE 7

    A DAY IN THE LIFE OF
    SEYMOUR GREENE

    The alarm went off.  Gradually, portions of
Seymour's brain realized this.  He opened his eyes
and eventually made out the numbers on the clock.
They said "7:00".  It seemed as if he'd only gotten to
sleep an hour before.  In fact, he had

    Seymour Greene had
been practicing all night
long.  He played bass for a
small band with big
aspirations.  Though they
had not actually produced
an album or even played
for an audience larger than
their neiborhood, they
looked forward to the big
time.  For instance, it had
already been decided that
they would not only smash
their guitars after each
concert, but they would
shoot the backup singers
and set fire to the
auditorium as well.

    It was only after pondering his bladder pressure
that Seymour remembered that today was his first day

PAGE 8

on the job with Cute Beach Balls, or Beach Balls 'R'
Us, or whatever it was they called themselves; he
couldn't remember.

    Seymour rolled out of bed and trod over to his
desk. There he found the remains of a Twinkie and
and a cold cup of coffee that had been there for as
long as he could remember.  Ignoring the sweatsock
steeped in it, he took a swig and downed the Twinkie.

Not much refreshed, Seymour
then stumbled into his
bathroom and started a nice,
steaming shower, which
awakened him enough to
realize his pajamas were still
on.

Later, as he dressed,
something bothered him.  "Is it
that this is the last job I could
possibly get, and I'd better not
blow it?" he wondered.

"No, no. Is it that I've got a
hangover so hungover that I'd
rather die now than avoid the
rush?"

    "No, that's only part of it."  It was like a
high-pitched squeal that made his head hurt.

    He paused to comb his remaining hair. "Oh, right.
That's it."

PAGE 9

    Seymour turned off his alarm clock and went to
the living room.

    He peered ou through the fornt window shade.  It
was the knid of warm, beautiful, sunlit day that uplifts
everyone.  Seymour only noticed that the neighbor's
dog had pooped on his lawn again.

PAGE 10

    This page for doodles.

PAGE 11

            II.

    By education, Seymour was a plastics engineer.
He attended the Pompous School of Technical
Design, where he majored in Polymer Engineering. In
grad school he invented those little lids that prevent
one from spilling hot beverages.  Their only drawback
is that they don't let any of the actual beverage reach
the mouth

    On the way to work, he stopped by a
convience store for gas.  he also bought an
Extra-Large Gulp of their patented 781 degree coffee,
which he spilled in his lap only two blocks away.  He
invented several new words in the process.

    He pulled
into a parking lot
and stopped the
car.  Seymour
had a patented
technique for
taking up almost
seven parking
spots with one
car.  Normally
done to protect
expensive
foreign cars,
Seymour had an
even better
reason; he drove
a Pinto.

PAGE 12

    He checked his watch and was unpleasantly
surprised to find that it read "8:04".  He dashed madly
into the building and up to the receptionist.

    "Where is Research and Development?"

    "Left around that corner, down the hall, third floor,
door to your right."

    Seymour was already in motion before she
completed her sentence.  He went left around the
corner, down the hall, third door, which read "Men".

    "Couldn't be right," he thought.  He retraced his
steps. After several more tries, he gave up and
wandered dejectedly around, totally lost.

    A man walked by wearing an
official-looking badge.

    "Err..can I help you?" he
asked.

    "Yah," Seymour said, taking a
bit of paper from his pocket.
"I'm looking for a...Dr....
Bolchetzky."  He looked up.

    The man waggled his badge
at Seymour.  It read "Dr.
R.M.S. Bolchetzky". "That's
me.  And you're...?"

PAGE 13

    "Greene. Seymour Greene."

    "Ah, yes.  You'd be our new engineer, hm?"  He
checked his watch.  "You're a tad late, Greene.
Tomorrow I expect to see..."

    Bolchetzky's eyes wandered off to the ceiling and
seemed to shut down.  Seymour waited for him to
finish his sentence.  He waited some more.  He turned
to see what the man was staring at and didn't.

    "Ahh. ...Sir?"

    Bolchetzky's eyes lost their glaze and he
harumphed.  "Well, shall we get to work, Greene?"

    "Seymour, sir.  Yes."

    "More what?"

    "Seymour.  Call me Seymour."

    "Right." Bolchetzky opened a door and invited
Seymour in.

PAGE 14

    This page for doodles.

PAGE 15

            III.

    As he stepped through the door, a wondrous
sight met Seymour's eyes.  Before him was one of the
best-equiped polymer labs he had ever seen.  It even
had a new Polydistildripulatizimation machine.

    "Here we are, my
boy.  Here you will find
all of the tools needed
for our research.  But
first we need to set you
up."

    After introducing
Seymour to the lab's
current occupants,
Bolchetzky instructed
one of
them to
raget Seymour down to
personnel.

PAGE 16

    Seymour spent much of the morning filling out
forms and other supposedly necessary bits of
paperwork.  He was also assigned an employee's
badge bearing a hideous photograph, some
meaningless identification numbers, and a large
barcode.

    Later, he was led to the men's room, handed a
small jar, and instructed by the company nurse to fill
it.

    Confused, he thought, "Must be some intelligence
test," as he went to the sink and filled it with water.
He got a terrible scowl and a great deal of verbal
abuse out of her when he returned.

    Finally, about lunch
time, they sent him
back up to the lab.  He
was feeling terribly
hungry and tired.

"Mumfph! Your boak!"
said his boss through a
mouthful of cold
lasagna.  The R & D
crew was on their
break.  "Haff fum."

Seymour sat down and
wolfed it down, ignoring
the fact that Italian food

PAGE 17

gave him a bad time.  He finished feeling much better,
though still rather sleepy.

    "We've been working on designing a better air
seal around the edges of the plastic panels that form
our beach ball. Any ideas, Seymour?"

    Seymour grabbed a piece of the plastic material
and pondered. "Hmmm. Well, yes. I think we could
inpregnate it with a solvent while it is under pressure
and at 400 degrees. That should fuse the panels well
enough."

    "We tried that once before. You think you can
come up with the right solvent?" Dr. Bolchetzky
asked.

    "Yah. Give me a little while to work on it."

    "Ok. Well, I and the rest of the guys are going to
visit International Plastics to look into some new
materials. Meanwhile, we'll leave you to work on it.
Good Luck!"

    Dr. Bolchetzky and the rest of the R & D crew
filed out of the room and could be heard walking down
the hallway. Seymour sat down at one of the lab
benches and started writing down some equations.

    "My, it feels good to sit here," he thought. "I'll bet
it would be really comfortable to fold my arms like this
and lay my head down like this and... and then..."

PAGE 18

    Seymour dreamed a wonderful little dream. It
involved diving into a vat filled with chocolate and
scantily-clad women. It ended abruptly when he
slipped off of his stool.

    Dazed and hurt, he got back up and resumed
working. Again, his eyelids drooped. "No. I've GOT to
work on this," he thought. His thoughts drifted back to
the women in the vat, one of whom he was really
hitting it off with.

PAGE 19

    He dozed back to sleep. This time, the women
were nowhere to be found, and he had this disgusting
little multi-headed creature following him about,
asking if he'd like to play a quick game of cards.

    "No," he would tell it, "I'm looking for someone."

    The little creature suddenly morphed into
something vaguely resembling Morgan Fairchild,
except for some interesting anatomical
rearrangements.

    "You mean like this?" it asked.

    Seymour woke in a cold sweat. "It must be the
lasagna," he thought. He really wanted to resume the
first dream, but he couldn't. He was torn between
manipulating more chemical equations and going
back to sleep.

    "I will do MUCH better work when I'm well-
rested," he rationalized.

    Seymour went back to sleep. He did indeed
dream again. He caught a quick glimpse of the
women, this time bathing some kind of pudding, but
they suddenly disappeared. He was alone in a barren
dreamscape.

    He tried running in a direction. Nothing. He tried
another direction. Nothing. He sat and whimpered,
wishing he could wake up.

PAGE 20

    Off in the distance, he heard a faint sound, There
was a dot on the horizon. He got up and ran frantically
toward it. As he got closer, he could make out a faint
"boing!..boing!boing!"sound, and he began to make
out details of what looked like a tall, stone building. He
stopped to analyse the situation.

    "What the hell IS that?"he wondered. The
building had very odd dimensions. It was 24 stories
tall, a couple hundred meters long, but only a few
meters thick. Even more striking, its faces had no
perceptible walls.

    Before he had a chance to come to any
conclusions about it, about it, he blinked and found himself
standing in it.

    "Oh, nooo."

    He heard that bouncing sound again. It was
getting louder. And louder. Shortly, a black and green
ball with large, sharp fangs sailed into view.

    Seymour had no idea what to do.......

PAGE 21

            IV.
        PLAY BOING! THE GAME HERE.
          IF YOU WON, CONTINUE READING.

PAGE 22

    This page for doodles.

PAGE 23

            V.

    With a startle and a gasp, Seymour awoke. He
was standing in front of the lab bench with a pencil in
his hand. Wild scribbles covered his worksheet. Dr.
Bolchtzky and the rest stood in the doorway, staring
at him.

    With obvious concern in his eyes, Dr. Bolchetzky
approached the bench. "Let's see what you have done,
my boy."

    He picked up the notebook
and stared at it. Seymour,
still recovering, put down
the pencil and sighed.
"This is it," he thought, "I'll
be sacked."

Dr. Bolchetzky flipped
through several pages of
Seymour's scribbling.
"Ah-huh....Hmm....Yes....
Well." He periodically
looked up at Seymour,
who began to collect his
thoughts.

    Bolchetzky tossed the notebook on the table.
"I've got to tell you Greene..."

    "Greene...He called me Greene,"Seymour
mused dejectedly.

PAGE 24

    "That's a fine piece of work. I think we can do it."
I'll send your specs down to the fabrication this afternoon
and we'll see what comes of it." Bolchetzky patted him
on the back.

    This was not
what Seymour
expected. He
looked at the page.
To his immense
surprise, it contained
a long sequence of
equations
representing a new
bonding technique.

    "I can see
we've got a
dedicated engineer
with you, Seymour.
Not many people
would work through
the night on their
first day." Dr. Bolchetzky said.

    "Through the...! You mean it's tomorrow? I mean
today? I mean...," Seymour sputtered. He looked at
his watch. He had gone to sleep 2o, much to the amazement of everyone? Yah,
that one. Boing! The Demo was written long ago by
three of the original Amiga Gurus: Sam Dicker, Dal
Luck, and =RJ= Mical. Thanks go to Dale Luck for
permission to use the name "Boing! The Game."

        GAME PLAY

    Game play is very simple, really...normally the
controls are no more complex than those of Pac-Man.
Plug a digital joystick into port 2.

    To start a game, simply insert the disk labelled
"Boing! The Game" and reboot your Amiga.

    Watch the introduction until the word "Boing!
bounces on the screen.

    To start the game, press the FIRE button on your
joystick.

PAGE 27

        ACTUAL GAMEPLAY

    The game centers around Seymour Greene, a
plastics engineer at a beach ball company.

    There are two "critters" in his world: the good,
red-and-white-checkered Boing! balls, which he is to
collect for points, and the evil, black-and-green-
checkered balls, which for some reason not explained
by modern science, are ravenously hungry. For
Seymour, His only defense is to find a large needle
and poke a bad ball with it, after which the needle is
ruined. Listed below are the controls:

P Key:Pause the game. From here, pressing either
ESCape or the FIRE button will return you to game
play.

ESCape:Kills Seymour. If he is on the initial screen,
the game is immediately ended. If he is on another
screen, then:If he is EXACTLY where he entered the
screen, he is returned to the initial screen. If not, he is
returned to where he entered the screen. The reason
for this is that Seymour can easily get into unsolvable
trouble, and losing a life is sometimes preferrable to
losing the whole game.

LEFT:Moves Seymour left,where possible. He
cannot jump or fall off the end of a floor.

RIGHT:Moves him right, where possible.

PAGE 28

UP: One of two things. If can climb a ladder, he will
move up. If not, then he will perform some operation
(possibly (NONE), depending on what he is standing in
front of. See below for more info.

DOWN:If Seymour can climb down a ladder or slide
down a pole, he will do so when you press down. If
not, he will "duck" down a bit. This can be useful in
avaoiding evil balls.

    And that's it for control! Now we will go through
the kinds of things in his world. They are drawn below
in no particular order:

    ____  = A floor. Walk on it.

    |_|
    |_|
    |_|   = A ladder. Climb it.
    | |

    |
    |    = A slide-pole. Slide DOWN it (only).
    |

    \__/
    ----    = A telepad. Press up on the stick and
          appear God-knows-where on another
          telepad.

PAGE 29

    \
      -----    = A floor lever. Press up to flip it. Wall
          rocks will move.

    |
      -----     = A wall switch. Press up to flip it. Floors
          will move.

    O
      -----     = An arch-way. Press up to EXIT THE
          WHOLE LEVEL. This is considered an
          achievement; in V1.0, exciting is how you
          move to the next level.

    o
    |       = A needle. Press up to grab it. You can
    |         then kill one evilball. If you already carry
          a needle, it disappears and this one is
          picked up(one is lost...for good).

      \|/
     -----    = An intermittent flame jet. Avoid being
          melted at all costs!

    "Connectiveness" is a noteworthy concept here. If
a floor is very close to touching a ladder or slide-pole,
you can move from one to the other. If they are not, it
is unreachable from here.

    Also, keep in mind that "Boing! The Game" is a
multi-screen affair. Always test the screen boundaries
to see if they connect.

PAGE 30

        FURTHER RULES

    If you fall through a crumbling floor or a
disappearing floor, you will continue to fall until
Seymour:

    A)Lands on another floor, B)is killed along the
way by something, C)Hits the bottom of the screen.
If it is possible to fall into the screen below, he will. If
not, Seymour dies.

        THE SCORE BAR

    From left to right, the numbers are:

LEVEL-NUMBER    LIVES-LEFT    SCORE    SCORING

1) Catch a good Boing! ball................10 pts.
2) Pop an evil ball with a needle..........25 pts.
3) Exit a level............................100 pts.

    Every 1000 points, you get an extra life. If you
get every point possible in a level, you are designated
a MASTER of that level, and if your score is high
enough to get on the high scores list, it will say
"MASTER".

    THE GAME EDITOR

    Use the game editor to create your own Boing!
game levels. To start things rolling, insert an
INITIALIZED, BLANK AmigaDOS Disk in DF0: and

PAGE 31

select the menu, Create Game. This will setup the
disk as a Boing! Data Disk.

    Next, using the mouse, select image blocks from
the menu on the bottom and place them in the screen
to create floors, ladders, etc. Use the red arrow
gadgets on the bottom to move from screen to screen,
and the menu "Go To Level" to select which level you
want to visit.

    Clicking on the three color gadgets in the middle
of the menu let you change the colors for the current
room.

    In the lower right corner of the template gadgets
you will find a question mark. This is the "query"
gadget. Select it and click on any square in the
current room and if there is information about that
square that is not plainly obvious, the editor will tell
you about it. Doing this to flames and balls will let you
modify their characteristics.

    Following are some guideline about Boing! game
creation:

    -Avoid putting more than 5 balls in any one
screen.

    -Be sure to provide at least one exit for each
level.

    -Don't forget to place the player in the level. You
may put more than one image of the player in the
level, but only the bottom-right-most one (in the whole
level) will be used.

    -For best results, be sure that it is possible to
make it through the level without dying.

PAGE 32

    -Also be sure that it is possible to MASTER the
level without dying.

    -ALWAYS ALWAYS save each level to disk
before exiting or moving on to the next. If you do not,
your changes will be lost.

    -The system game levels (those included) are
not editable.

        BOING! EDITOR MENUS

STUFF
    About:Tells about the editor and Boing!

    Exit: Exits the editor

GAME
    Change Disk: Allows the user to switch game
    disks being edited.

    Create: Turns the blank, formatted disk in drive
    DF0: into a valid Boing! game disk. If there is
    already Boing! data on that disk, IT WILL BE
    ERASED!

LEVEL
    New: Erases all information in the current level
    back to floor plans. This occurs only in memory;
    the disk is not affected.

    Goto: Jumps from the current level to another
    level on the same disk. If changes have been
    made but not saved, they are lost.

    Save to disk: Saves the current level to disk.

PAGE 33

ROOM
    New: Erases all information in the current room of
    the current level, but does not affect the disk.
    Any changes made before to this room are lost.

    Save to buffer: Save the current room and its
    colors to the buffer.

    Get from buffer: Sets the current room to the
    contents of the buffer.


DOCS typed by the nimble fingers of  /'Valkyrie