Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr29/joki20.zip/JOKI.DOC

Text File | 1993-04-20 | 20KB | 445 lines

Joki(TM) 2.0 $5 Edition User's, Programmer's and Redistributor's Guide
Rev 1.1 Copyright (C) 1993 BIGGUN International. CIS 100100,574

BIGGUN and Joki are trademarks of BIGGUN International. All other names used
are marks or registered marks of their respective companies.


- 1 - Welcome
- 1 - System Requirements
- 1 - Setting up Joki
- 2 - Joystick Calibration
- 2 - Running Joki
- 4 - The hI-score Coder
- 5 - Governing Your Computer
- 5 - Disk Vendor License
- 6 - Programmers
- 6 - Joystick Manufacturers
- 6 - Wholesalers & Retailers
- 6 - Sysops and Magazines
-7&8- User Registration


o  Welcome
Welcome. Now you can play 'keyboard only' games like Qbasic Nibbles, Pacworm,
BMB Compuscience's SOPWITH and many more without saving your joystick! Don't
throw away your keyboard yet, because you'll need it to create hI-score
programs using Joki's integrated hI-score coder.

Before you get over excited, we would like to stress that Joki does not yet
support all 'keyboard only' games. You should experiment for yourself. Chances
are very good that Joki 2.0 will work for shoot-em-up games written in BASIC.

If you can't wait, read "Running Joki" on page 2. If you are desperate, you
can program Joki for cursor control in DOS applications, for example; word
processors, CAD etc. We recommend using a mouse for that instead.



o  System Requirements
Basically, Joki needs a computer running DOS 2.0 or higher, with a joystick
that is plugged into a joystick port.



o  Setting up Joki
Joki 2.0 doesn't have an automatic setup program, you should do it manually.
Make a \JOKI directory on the drive of your preference. Copy JOKI.COM,
JOKI.DOC AND README.BAT to it. If you have Joki on a floppy disk and you want
it on the hard drive, here's how:
C:
MD\JOKI
CD\JOKI
COPY A:JOKI.COM
COPY A:JOKI.DOC
COPY A:README.BAT
To run Joki from its new directory, type:
JOKI
But first read on.


                - 2 -

Include it in the DOS path if you want (can). Create all your hI-score
programs (explained later) in the \JOKI directory. The \autoexec.bat file can
be used to activate Joki automatically when you switch on your computer.

Joki 2.0 supports only one joystick at a time. If you have 2 joysticks plugged
in, try the joystick in port A. Unplug one joystick if Joki responds to both.

If you use a sticky key utility, make sure that Left Shift and Control keys
are 'up', if not, Joki won't generate input.


o  Joystick Calibration
Joki assumes that your joystick's trim control(s), is reasonably centered, so
you should tune the trim(s) before running Joki. If your joystick has nothing
like it, look again, it's usually located on the base of a joystick and looks
like the wheel of an inverted flying glider or like a radio's volume adjuster.
If you see nothing, turn the joystick upside down and if it looks like a
paraglider, i.e., no wheels, at least make sure that the stick is centered
before you run Joki.



o  Running Joki
Some keyboard games want CAPITAL input or need Num Lock locked. Joki ignores
the state of Caps Lock and Num Lock during game play, so if your game only
responds to lowercase letters, make sure Caps Lock is off before you program
your joystick.

At this stage, Joki has no idea of what game you intend playing with your
joystick. You've decided to play the 1986 version of BMB SOPWITH and got its
main keyboard control keys memorized. You leave the joystick centered and
press the comma ',' for Stick left, slash '/' for Stick right, 'x' for Stick
forward to increase RPM and '\' to decrease RPM. Joki boldly accepts these
keys. It would be nice to fire and bomb with your hands secured on the
joystick, so you press Space for Trigger1 and 'b' for Trigger2.

Joki displays its current status and goes resident. For confirmation on the
keys you've programmed, move the stick around and press the joystick buttons.
A true dogfighter might program Trigger2 to roll his SOPWITH biplane. To
reprogram your joystick, run Joki again. If you forgot your keys, you can quit
Joki by pressing Ctrl-Break. If a game has less that six controls, you can
press any irrelevant keys for the functions you don't require. Joki's autofire
is auto automatically, so switch off the joystick's autofire switch (if any)
for fastest firing results.

The following settings can be adjusted on-the-fly, e.g., during game play:
(Default settings are listed first)
Repeat rate [Standard/FFFast/Slow] : Left Shift-Trigger1
Analog stick sensitivity [High/Low] : Left Shift-Trigger2
Stick's center position [Centered] : Ctrl-Trigger1
Activity [on/off] : Ctrl-Trigger2
Example: If you want to toggle stick sensitivity to Low, press and release
Trigger2 of your joystick while holding down the Left Shift key on your
keyboard. If you know how to select a menu with Alt-F for instance, it should
be a breeze. To see which trigger is which, program the triggers with two
different keys and then press the triggers at the DOS command prompt.


                - 3 -

When Joki is active (not hibernating), it might slow down some DOS commands
for reasons beyond the scope of this text. To switch off Activity, hold down a
Control key on the keyboard and press Trigger2 of your joystick, then release
both -- Joki will go into hibernating mode. To re-center the joystick, press
Ctrl-Trigger1; the current stick position becomes the new center. The FFFast
repeat rate is game dependent and it can overwhelm some games in that they'll
freeze when you move the joystick. If you want to change the repeat rate from
FFFast to Standard, holding down the Left Shift key and pressing Trigger1
twice won't work -- you'll have to press Left Shift twice while holding in
Trigger1. Joki will pause the foreground program until you release the key,
for confirmation that a setting was changed. Note that Joki's settings can't
be properly adjusted while editing in the QBASIC EDITOR, but it works while a
QBASIC game is running.

Joki will display its current settings if you rerun JOKI.COM or a hI-score
program.

Have you ever heard short beeps while holding down a key(s) in some games even
though game sound was off? Such beeps mean that the keyboard buffer is full
and that the key should be released. Have you ever dropped a bomb just to
discover that a cannon stopped firing even though you were still pressing the
fire key? Many games can't handle simultaneous key presses, hence when you
press a new key, any other 'down' key is ignored.

If you play a keyboard game using Joki and your joystick, your keyboard will
still function normally, but you'll only use it for less frequent operations
such as quitting. With Joki and Sopwith, you can drop a bomb while blowing the
enemy out of the sky in a 5g climb, because Joki can generate 'simultaneous'
key presses. Move your joystick diagonally to make Sammy sail 45 degrees in
Qbasic Nibbles -- if you see uneven 'steps', select the FFFast repeat rate.
Sopwith will freeze if the FFFast repeat rate is selected -- Standard works
best.

Joki gives you an unfair advantage, but please, play clean.

Joki works for multi-player games if one player uses the keyboard. The
keyboard player must press and release keys, that is, not 'stand' on them.
Keyboard input from Joki won't be as crisp as for "one player at a time"
games.

For games like Qbasic Nibbles, you should use a fast flick of the wrist to
turn the snake (depending on the game speed), in other words, if you are
traveling North and want to turn East, move the stick quickly to the right and
center again. In Sopwith, you'll find that if you programmed Joki as in the
above example, i.e., Stick forward == increase RPM, moving the stick left
forward will increase RPM, but the plane will pull less G, because SOPWITH.EXE
is doing more processing internally. So, for most positive G you must move the
stick to its left only, with the triggers untouched. Select Low analog stick
sensitivity (bigger dead zone) if you want to move the stick more before
getting a response. It's easier to align for a low level fly-by while firing,
because the plane will turn slower. Hold your joystick in both your hands.

You may initially find playing your favorite keyboard games with a joystick
difficult and that the joystick seems touchy, stick with it, once you've
mastered a game with your joystick you'll never look back.



                - 4 -

Some games with built-in joystick support, like PARATROOPER, work better when
you use Joki for joystick control, just program Joki with the game's keys. For
PARATROOPER; press Space to start (to select keyboard control) and watch those
paratroopers disappear, select FFFast repeat rate and see them vanish... You
can switch off Joki with Ctrl-Trigger2 for games with good built-in joystick
support. If you unplug your joystick, Joki will stop generating input and go
into hibernating mode.




o  The hI-score Coder
The hI-score coder creates hI-score programs that automate joystick
programming.

THE hI-score coder WILL OVERWRITE ANY EXISTING FILE BY THE NAME YOU PROVIDE
WITHOUT ASKING YOU FOR CONFIRMATION, ALWAYS KEEP BACKUPS OF YOUR PRECIOUS DATA
AND PROGRAMS. Make sure you change to the \JOKI directory to create hI-score
programs. Joki's integrated hI-score coder uses DOS redirection to save
hI-score files.

To create a hI-score program for SOPWITH, type:
JOKI >SOP.BAT
Joki seems to run normally, but in the background, its hI-score coder is
recording every key you press. The new program is saved with the name you
specified which needn't have been >SOP.BAT; >These.bat >NAMES.bat >will.BAT
>also.bat >Do.Bat. Just make sure you precede the name with a greater than
sign '>' (which is not part of the name; it's a DOS redirection command) and
follow it with the .BAT extension. You should use names that remind you of the
games they're used for.

Some games use batch files to startup. hI-score programs are actually batch
files too. So to prevent game files from being overwritten, create and keep
all your hI-score programs in the \JOKI directory. Yes, advanced user, you can
include Joki in the DOS path and use a snazzy command like:
joki >c:\joki\hacker.bat. If you quit Joki with Ctrl-Break, the hI-score
program will not be completed.

Joki has a feature called ramissing, which means that if you power down or
reset your PC, Joki vanishes from RAM just to reappear when you run a hI-score
program by typing its name. So next time you want to play Sopwith, install
Joki by typing SOP and optionally its .BAT extension. Joki assumes the
joystick is centered when it goes resident. If you have a SOPWITH.BAT hI-score
program in the same directory as SOPWITH.EXE, typing SOPWITH will run
SOPWITH.EXE not SOPWITH.BAT.

Joki can be installed (made go resident and active in RAM) from the
\autoexec.bat file, just EDIT \AUTOEXEC.BAT and add these lines:
CD\JOKI
CALL SOP.BAT
CD\
where SOP.BAT is a hI-score program. For MS-DOS < 3.3 you can read a hI-score
program into autoexec.bat.





                - 5 -

hI-score programs can be run from a menu system, but keep in mind that Joki
is a TSR program and that some menu systems won't install TSRs successfully.
It is best to load your DOS menu program after Joki is installed so that it
can execute hI-score programs with confidence. DOSSHELL will install Joki
successfully if you use a command like [CALL \JOKI\SOP.BAT ; SOPWITH] and JOKI
is in the DOS path. If you launch your DOS games from Microsoft Windows, edit
the appropriate hI-score program and add the name of the game, for instance
SOPWITH.EXE, on its second line. Use the name of the hI-score program as the
startup command line. Another option is to open a DOS window, run Joki and
then your game. Make sure Joki is NOT resident when you start a Windows
session, so that Windows will load a fresh copy of Joki for each DOS game and
enable you to switch between games. If Joki was resident before Windows
started, it might need re-centering because of CPU multitasking, so rather let
Windows install it.

If you edit a hI-score program and change values to zero, those functions
will be disabled in the order: Left, Right, Forward, Backward, Trigger1,
Trigger2. Zeroing the third and last values will disable Stick forward and
Trigger2. JOKI 0 0 0 0 0 0 will disable all functions.

If Joki is 'disabled', but not hibernating, it will actually still read the
joystick. To 'switch off' Joki completely, press Ctrl-Trigger2 -- Joki will
hibernate till you wake it with Ctrl-Trigger2 again. Confusing indeed! You may
take a short break now, but don't start playing yet.



o  Governing Your Computer
Believe it or not, utilities are available to slow down computers. Some games
don't use a timer as a reference and will run faster on faster machines. If
you play BMB SOPWITH (a top end 2-D flight simulator) on a 486, it will
out-fly an SR-71 BLACKBIRD. Buy a utility like MO'SLO.COM where you can
specify how slow you want your computer. MO'SLO is very handy in that it's a
"program loader" and cripples your computer only while you're playing. Don't
play Sopwith too slow; it might get a stack overflow. Remember to re-center
your joystick (if Joki is resident) with Ctrl-Trigger1 when you toggle your
computer's turbo switch. Joki works best when your computer's turbo is on, if
you switch off the turbo (for a slower clock speed), you might also have to
adjust the Analog stick sensitivity to Low, with Left Shift-Trigger2.



o  Disk Vendor License
Any disk vendor with plans to sell disks containing JOKI must buy a one year
license from BIGGUN and pay royalties on every disk sold as follows:
Cost of one year license: $5,000
Royalties:
(Retail price of disk or pack) / (number of unique programs in package) / 3
Example:
Retail price of a disk containing 7 unique programs: $9.99
Royalty to BIGGUN = $9.99 / 7 / 3 = $0.48 per pack

For a one year vendor license, mail a $5,000 check and all your details to:
BIGGUN Dept. DVJO
(Address in "User Registration"). Continued on the next page.



                - 6 -

We will email or mail a license number and a fresh copy of Joki to you for
redistribution.

If you can't afford $5K, good, because we don't deal with Mickey Mouse
vendors.


o  Programmers
(Write, or at least, read this chapter if you write games)
Joki 2.0 works for games that poll the keyboard for input with a function like
the familiar:
...
150 A$ = INKEY$ :REM A$ = INKEY$
160 IF A$ <> "" THEN GOSUB 2000 :REM GOSUB 2000 IF A$ <> ""
...
If a game continues to read keys while there are keys waiting, as Sopwith
does, the game will pause till the cows come home if Joki's FFFast repeat rate
is selected.



o  Joystick Manufacturers
Send BIGGUN free samples of your joysticks and game adapter cards, technical
information regarding their operation as well as their multimedia drivers (if
any) so that we can incorporate specific features of your products into future
versions of Joki.

You can buy a $5,000 one year license to ship JOKI with your joysticks, at a
royalty of $0.50 per joystick.

For a one year Joki-In-The-Box license, mail a $5,000 check to:
BIGGUN Dept. JSTK
(Address in "User Registration")
We will email or mail a license number and a fresh copy of Joki to you for
redistribution.



o  Wholesalers & Retailers
Retailers and wholesalers of joysticks, magazines and books don't need a
license from BIGGUN to sell products like joysticks packaged with Joki by
their manufacturers.



o  Sysops and Magazines
A distribution license is not required if Joki is stored on a BBS or on-line
information service for retrieval by callers. This means that it's OK for a
service to offer Joki to downloaders even if they're charged a membership fee
and for connect time. Joki may be uploaded to on-line services, if the sender
doesn't charge the receiving service for uploading Joki. If you upload Joki,
use the original compressed Joki file.

Don't modify this JOKI.DOC to add your details or stamp of approval, compress
extra files if you have to, e.g., BBS_AD.COM.



                - 7 -

To include Joki with one issue of a magazine-or-book-with-disk-publication,
send your details and a $1000 check to:
BIGGUN Dept. PBJO
(Address in "User Registration")
We will email or mail a fresh copy of Joki to you for redistribution.

You may, however, publish an article about Joki without BIGGUN's permission.

The recipient may not be misled that Joki is free, because it is not. Paying
BIGGUN is the only way to register.



o  User Registration
If you bought a joystick, a magazine, a book, a disk, paid a BBS for
downloading files from it or paid a phone company for a telephone call to
retrieve files from some free electronic on-line storage/retrieval system and
you 'got' Joki in the process, congratulations, you still have to pay BIGGUN
$5 if you use Joki. Any individual who registers for Joki may copy it to all
of his or her computers. If YOU own ten computers, lots of joysticks and a
variety of games, you and your friends may use Joki in parallel on all of YOUR
machines! To register; mail your details and a $5 bank note to:
BIGGUN Dept. J200
PO Box 21122
Valhalla
0137 Rep. of South Africa

If you prefer paying by check, money order or postal order, the price is $20
due to overhead processing costs. We do accept cash in other currencies as
well, e.g.; franc, mark, peso, pound, rand, rouble, yen, younameit.

The most current edition of Joki is available for retrieval from major on-line
information services -- if you've just downloaded Joki 2.0 from a competent
service; it is the latest version. To save time, scan IBMNET on CompuServe. If
you register for Joki 2.0, you are automatically registered for future JokiX
2.XX versions, so don't pay BIGGUN again if you someday download JOKI386.EXE
version 2.5 or JOKIWIN.ZIP 2.31.

We'll make more money out of you if you use Fieldspec letters and type or
write neatly, because you'll save us work. Use the following format:
N LAST NAME, FIRST NAME, MIDDLE INITIAL
A POSTAL ADDRESS
C COUNTRY
P PHONE
F FAX
K AGE
E YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS OR ON-LINE INFORMATION SERVICE AND USER ID
V NAME OF DISK VENDOR, IF YOU BOUGHT A DISK CONTAINING JOKI
B NAME OF ON-LINE SERVICE OR BBS, IF YOU DOWNLOADED JOKI
S NAME OF JOYSTICK MANUFACTURER IF YOU BOUGHT A JOYSTICK WITH JOKI-IN-THE-BOX
J MAKE AND MODEL OF YOUR JOYSTICK(S)
G MAKE AND MODEL OF YOUR JOYSTICK ADAPTER CARD(S)
I CPU TYPE OF YOUR COMPUTER, E.G., 80386
L LIST OF YOUR FAVORITE GAMES YOU PLAY USING JOKI
W YOUR FAVORITE OPERATING SYSTEM
o OTHER FEEDBACK


                - 8 -

Precede each field with its Fieldspec letter. If a field has more lines, start
each of its lines with the same Fieldspec letter. All fields except name are
optional, for instance:

N GYPSY, JOLLY
K 32
J HOME MADE ZAPPER
J HOME MADE TETRA2
G HOME MADE ZAPADAPTER
V FA$T BUCK SYSTEMS
L SOPWITH, NIBBLES, PACWORM, PARATROOPER, MOONLANDER
W DOORS
o IT WOULD BE NICE IF YOU COULD MAKE JOKI BEEP INSTEAD OF PAUSE WHEN I CHANGE
o ITS SETTINGS ON-THE-FLY -- USE THREE SHORT BEEPS FOR FFFAST REPEAT RATE.
o I HAVE INCLUDED A DISK WITH ASSEMBLER SOURCE CODE THAT CAN ACTUALLY
o DETERMINE THE NUMBER OF BUTTONS ON A JOYSTICK AND WHETHER IT HAS TRIM
o CONTROL SWITCHES OR NOT.
o MY PATENTED TETRA2 JOYSTICK DOES NOT WORK WITH JOKI, READ THE FILE
o TETRA2.ASM (ALSO ON THE DISK) FOR COMPATIBILITY INFORMATION.

EnJoy!