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Now That's What I Call Games 3 - Games & Goodies (1993)(Multi Media Machine)[!][CD32-CDTV].iso
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***************************************
** LORD OF HOSTS **
** ============= **
***************************************
** © April 1991 Tim Pietzcker **
***************************************
WHAT IS "LORD OF HOSTS" ?
=========================
Lord Of Hosts (from now on referred to as
"Lord") is a strategy game for two players.
It's played on a 8x8 board. Each player
controls seven knights and one king. The goal
of the game is to manoeuvre the opponent's
king into a situation in which he can no
longer move, i.e. to checkmate him. Another
way of winning the game is to capture six of
the opponent's knights.
ONE THING THAT SHOULD BE MENTIONED FIRST
========================================
I've made extensive use of CygnusSoft's
"req.library" in this program. So, in order
to be able to start Lord_Of_Hosts, you need
the req.library in your LIBS: directory. I've
included the req.library (V1.4) in this
distribution. Just execute the supplied
script file Install_ReqLib (either from a
Shell or from the WorkBench) before the first
time you run "Lord" if you don't already use
this library yourself.
DISCLAIMER AND COPYRIGHT NOTES
==============================
This program is supplied as is without
representation or warranty of any kind,
either expressed or implied. I won't take any
responsibility for any damage that might be
caused through the use (or better, misuse) of
this program.
Lord Of Hosts is NOT public domain! It is
Copyright © 1991 Tim Pietzcker. ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED. However, these files may be freely
copied for a SMALL nominal fee providing they
remain together and in their original form.
(a small fee is LESS than seven dollars. I
pay no more than 1,50 DM (about $1) for a
public domain disk. If you pay more, it's
your own problem.) Lord Of Hosts may be
distributed in the Fred Fish series.
Distribution in ANY other series requires
written permission from the author (see my
address at the bottom of this file).
(And Mr. Stefan O. from Essen, Germany
shouldn't even try to get it.)
***********************************
*Don't support PD software piracy!*
***********************************
RULES
=====
The rules are fairly simple. On each piece,
there's a number indicating how many squares
this piece HAS GOT TO move. After the move, a
different number may appear on this piece.
The pieces may move only horizontally or
vertically, *NOT* diagonally. One right-angle
turn per move is permitted. For example, one
piece bearing the number 3 that is standing
in the middle of the board may
- move 3 squares up
- move 1 square down and 2 to the left
- move 2 squares to the right and 1 square up
- etc.
There are only a few restrictions: Firstly, a
piece cannot jump over any other piece. Then,
it's not possible to go forwards and
backwards in one single move. There is also a
situation in which an otherwise legal move
will not be permitted: When a player's king
is threatened by an enemy's piece ("CHECK
!"), only moves that lead the king out of
this threat are valid. It's just like in
chess. Similarly, if a player attempts to
move his king to a square on which he could
be beaten, or if he tries to do a move that
exposes his king to danger, he will not be
able to do so.
Any piece can capture an enemy's knight
simply by moving onto the square that the
knight is occupying. Remember that this is a
way of winning the game: beat six knights and
victory is yours.
The idea of check and checkmate is directly
taken from chess. So, if you manage to create
a situation that leaves the opponent's king
no escape, you win the game. Of course, the
computer will tell you so if this happens.
As soon as one player does a move after which
his opponent's king is beatable, a message is
displayed "Player x announces 'CHECK!'". As
long as it doesn't also say "Player y's King
is checkmated!", there is at least one valid
move for player y left.
Well, that's about all for the rules. There
also is a menu option "Rules" to be found in
the "Game" menu (keyboard shortcut
RIGHT-AMIGA-?).
ONE WORD ABOUT THE MOUSE POINTER
================================
Since this is a mouse-controlled two player
game, I had to find a way to give both
players a chance to move the mouse pointer
(one after the other, of course). Since
fewest Amiga users have got two mice, I
decided to have player 1 take the mouse and
to have player 2 take a joystick. After
player 1 has finished his move, the mouse
will be switched off internally and player
2's joystick will become the new "mouse
mover". So don't panic if the system seems to
have crashed (a motionless mouse pointer IS a
frightening thing, I admit); just give your
joystick a little nudge and watch the pointer
float majestically over the screen (I'm
getting carried away with this, sorry). The
joystick's fire button will act just like the
mouse's select button (the left one, okay?).
Unfortunately, joysticks don't have menu
buttons yet, so if you really have to make a
menu selection while the joystick is
controlling the pointer, you have to depress
RIGHT-Alt-RIGHT-AMIGA to simulate the menu
button.
If you don't like the JoyMouse's speed, you
can change it by selecting "Set JoyMouse
Speed" (Special Menu), keyboard shortcut
AMIGA-J. And if you don't like the idea of
mouse/joystick swapping, you can turn the
whole thing off by selecting "JoyMouse Off"
(also Special Menu).
And if you don't have a joystick or if you
are a fanatic keyboard addict, you can still
use the keyboard to move the mouse pointer
(left AMIGA key plus cursor keys [plus
optional SHIFT key]).
HOW TO PLAY LORD OF HOSTS
=========================
This is really easy. First, select "Begin
Game" (Game Menu). You will be asked to enter
your and your opponent's names. After you've
done so, the computer consults his random
number generator to decide who starts the
game. Click on "Resume". You can always see
whose turn it is by looking at the two boxes
containing the players' names. The words
"Player 1" turn blue when it's player 1's
move. The same applies to player 2.
Player 1 gets the red pieces; player 2 gets
the white ones.
Let's suppose player 1 starts the game. He
should now choose the piece that he wants to
move. This is done as follows:
- move the mouse pointer over the piece -
click the left mouse button (or the joystick
fire button). A box will be drawn around this
piece to show that it's the active one.
Player 1 can now either change the active
piece by clicking on a different piece of his
or select the piece's destination square
(also by clicking on it). If there is a valid
way to move the active piece there, the move
will be executed, and player 2 will now get
control over the mouse pointer. That's it.
AND NOW FOR ALL THE EXTRAS
==========================
The Amiga is an extraordinary computer.
Therefore a game for the Amiga must have
extraordinary features. And here they are:
* Full Undo/Redo. Take back as many moves as
you want and/or replay them.
* Three different help modes for each player.
* Load/Save Game facility. All the Undo/Redo
information will also be saved.
* Four different kinds of boards - Infinite
variability => Every game is
different from the last one.
* On-line help facility.
Detailed description of the extras
==================================
UNDO / REDO (Special Menu):
Selecting Undo (shortcut: AMIGA-U) takes back
the last move. Selecting it again takes back
the move before that one. And so on. The
limit to the number of undo opeations is 500.
In other words, a game that last over 501
moves can not be undone upto the first move.
However, this limit is so high that I doubt
whether anyone can reach it in a normal game.
Redo (shortcut: AMIGA-R) does just the
opposite: The last move that has been undone
is "played back". This can only work if no
new moves have been made since the last undo
operation.
LOAD / SAVE GAME (Game Menu):
Selecting Load Game (AMIGA-L) will bring up
the CygnusSoft File Requester which is the
best one that I've ever seen (I didn't
program it, Bruce Dawson and Colin Fox did)!
On the left side, the files and
subdirectories within the current directory
are displayed. On the right side there is the
list of all mounted devices (DF0:, RAM:,
RAD:, C:, LIBS:, etc.) There's a Parent
gadget to get you one level up in the
directory tree and some other rather self-
explanatory things. Select a game file by
double clicking on it. If a directory is
changed by a different program, "Lord" will
not be aware of it until you reload that
directory using the "Get Dir" gadget.
Saving a game is just as easy: Select "Save
Game" (AMIGA-S), change to the desired
directory and enter the filename under which
the game should be saved. If the file already
exists, you will be asked to confirm whether
you really want to write over the old file.
Remember that the old contents of a file are
lost when it's overwritten.
HELP MODES:
Normally, none of the players receives any
help from the computer. However, it might be
desirable to find out what value a certain
piece will have after a move. On the standard
board, it is possible to deduce this value (I
won't tell you how, haha!), but if you want
to get a hint anyway, you can instruct the
computer either
- to show you the new value if the piece has
visited this square before (i.e., it "knows"
this square's value) or
- to show you the new value in any case,
regardless of whether the piece has been
there before or not.
This works as follows: In the Special Menu,
there are two menu items, "Player 1 Help
Mode" and "Player 2 Help Mode". Choose
between "No Help", "Show Known Values", and
"Show All Values". If you choose one of the
"Show..." subitems, the way to move a piece
will change:
- Select the piece you want to move.
- Select the destination square.
If the move is valid, the piece will move
there. If you selected "Show Known Values"
and the value is not known, a question mark
will be dis- played. Otherwise, the new value
will be displayed. Now the words "Player 1/2"
will change from blue to yellow. This
indicates that the computer is now waiting
for you to confirm or to cancel the move. You
can now
- confirm the move by clicking again on the
destination square. If there was a question
mark, it will be replaced by the new value.
- Alternatively, you can cancel the move by
clicking on any other square but the
destination square. The move will be taken
back, allowing to select a new destination or
even a different piece to move with.
DIFFERENT BOARD TYPES:
"Lord" is based on a board game. On this
board, the pieces' values are determined by
little magnets hidden under the board. This
leads to a regular pattern of values (that
you can find out by reading the program's
source code or simply by playing the game (if
you're smart enough)). This board is
simulated by "Lord". It's called the Standard
Board. If this board is rotated by 90°, the
patterns change. There's a menu called
"Board" in which you can change the type of
board. The two items "Standard Board" and
"Standard Rotated 90°" have just been
explained. Since the generation of (pseudo)
random numbers is possible, you can also
select a "Random Board". Random Boards come
in two flavors:
- Balanced: When generating the random value
patterns, the computer ensures that the
values are distributed evenly. So, each
knight gets exactly 16 squares where his
value will be 1, 16x2, 16x3 and 16x4. The
kings gets 32 squares of 1s and 32 squares of
2s.
- Unbalanced: The computer doesn't force
himself to distribute the values evenly. Thus
it is possible that p.e. one piece has a
value of 4 on every single square (but highly
improbable [1 against 3.4028e38]).
ON-LINE-HELP:
There's a menu item "Rules" (mentioned
earlier). Also, the item "Explain Invalid
Move" (Special Menu, AMIGA-E) will tell you
why the last unsuccessful attempt to move had
failed.
THAT'S IT !
===========
Exit "Lord" by selecting "Quit" (Game Menu,
AMIGA-Q). Hope you enjoyed it!
ABOUT THE REQ.LIBRARY
=====================
Quoted from the Req.library doc file:
"Req.library was written by Colin Fox (of
Pyramyd Designs) an Bruce Dawson (of
CygnusSoft Software). Req.library is a freely
distributable library [...]. Req.library is
not public domain. The requester library and
all documentation and example programs are
all copyright 1989."
I only included the files necessary to
compile "Lord". In order to get all the files
plus docs etc. buy Fred Fish's disk #419.
Better yet, buy CygnusEd Professional.
REQUESTER KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
============================
Instead of using the mouse to answer the
requesters, you can also type 'y' or 'v' as a
shortcut to a "Resume" or "Ok" gadget; ESC,
'n', 'b' or 'q' as a shortcut to a "Cancel"
or "Next Page" gadget; and finally 'm' as a
shortcut to the "Prev Page" gadget.
PROGRAMMER INFO
===============
Lord Of Hosts was developed on an AMIGA 2000A
(Kickstart 1.3, 3.5MByte RAM). It works with
Kick 1.2. However, I've had no chance to find
out whether it works with Kick 2.0. Don't
know why it shouldn't.
All the files necessary to compile
Lord_Of_Hosts (Aztec C V5.0) are included in
this release. Start up your C environment, CD
to the directory containing the source codes
and enter 'Make Lord'.
I have modified the req.h and reqglue.o files
(supplied with CEDPro) in order for them to
work with Aztec C 5.0.
Lord Of Hosts has been tested on several
different machines without any error showing
up. If something doesn't work on your Amiga,
please let me know, telling me everything
about your system configuration and the
error.
I don't think it would be difficult to port
Lord Of Hosts to Lattice C. However, I
haven't tried yet.
CREDITS
=======
Many thanks are due to:
- Bruce Dawson and Colin Fox for the
req.library
- CygnusSoft for CEDPro, the best editor for
the Amiga. If you are a programmer and
haven't bought CEDPro yet, DO IT!
- Manx for Aztec C 5.0 and the source level
debugger (Guru go home!)
- Dan Silva for DPaint that I used to design
the game's graphics
- Kevin Bjorke for NewGetImage (Demo Version
1.3) that translated the DPaint brushes into
C structures
- My brothers, Jan & Ulf for beta testing all
the bugs out of this game (knock on wood)
MY ADDRESS
==========
Send all comments, suggestions, bug reports,
dollar bills and accelerator boards to:
Tim Pietzcker
Schwarzwaldstr. 52
W-7819 Denzlingen
Germany