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TYPEORDIE.DOC
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1991-03-09
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5KB
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110 lines
Type Or Die!
------------
Type Or Die (c)1991 Aki Rimpilainen
Is it an eating maze game or a typing tutor?
You are "LetterMan" in a strangely familiar maze, surrounded by
luscious shapes...of letters. And you can eat them all simply by
typing them correctly. Meet your friends, the Wanderin' Fruit Band,
but beware of the Eraser Ghosts and nasty Rex Scorpico. You better
type fast...or perish!
You've most likely seen games similar to Type Or Die -- I took
a basic maze game format, but replaced the joystick action with the
keyboard. Now you must type to move, yet watch the screen to survive.
Basically, you must eat all the charcters scattered in the maze while
avoiding those nasty Eraser Ghosts. You eat a letter by moving over
it, and move by typing the correct character next to your hungry
LetterMan. If you've ever tried to learn touch typing, but couldn't
stop watching the keyboard, this game will force you to learn.
To run Type Or Die, simply double-click on the TypeOrDie icon.
After a short delay a charming fairy appears, and the game begins
-- in prectice mode, indicated by the white border around the maze.
In this mode there is no scoring and you can change various aspects
of the game through menus.
Press the right mouse button to see the menus at the top of the
screen. Two of the menus, 'Speed' and 'Maze', work only in practice
mode. 'Speed' controls the velocity of the ghosts, while 'Maze' lets
you select one of the four play areas.
The 'Practice' menu has a variety of options controlling the kind
of characters you find in the maze. On top of the list, 'Base Row'
builds a maze using only the eight base row characters, ASDFJKL; the
first keys you learn in touch-typing. The remaining options can be
used together -- selecting an item toggles it either on or off. For
example, if you select both 'Upper Case' and 'Space', the resulting
maze contains both upper case letters and space characters (indicated
with an underline in the maze). A Full Spread covers numbers, spaces,
returns, punctuation, and the entire alphabet, both upper and lower
case.
Selecting 'Play Game!' puts you in the game mode, recognizable by
the yellow border. Now you must eat all the letters in order to get
onto a new, even more challenging level. Every key press counts, and
you only have three lives.
As you progress, the ghosts pick up speed, the characters in the
maze become increasingly more complex, and the maze itself changes.
You begin the game typing only the base row letters, all in uppercase,
but eventually you face the Full Spread of characters.
This may sound difficult, but playing in game mode has its rewards.
Listen for a soft and regular bouncy sound -- the signal for a Wanderin'
Fruit, which you can eat for extra points. Also, watch out for Rex
Scorpio. He appears once early on in each level, and again if you take
too much time. (You'll soon learn what mean things he does.) None of
these critters appear in practice mode. Finally, to abandon a game in
progress, select one of the Practice menu items.
Hints & Tips
Pressing the ESCape key freezes the game. To play again, press
any key. You can use this pause feature for mild cheating. But there
is a better method to enable the cheat mode. In all-uppercase letters,
type the title of the National Epic of Finland. Now you can use the
keypad (keys 2, 4, 6, and 8) to move around the maze at incredible
speeds. Press the BACKSPACE key to disable this dishonourable mode.
Some characters within the maze are a bit unusual. Spaces are
portrayed with underscore (_) characters, but require the SPACEBAR.
Originally they were plain empty blocks, but this caused problems
since you couldn't tell whether you had eaten a particular space or
not. Similarly, the logical choice for RETURNs were the paragraph
markers (¶).
To clear the play area your pointer disappears after five seconds
of disuse -- it reappears as soon as you touch the mouse again. Type
Or Die multi-tasks without problems, but it uses both sound channels
and hardware sprites -- running other sprite or sound applications
might result in an unwanted disaster.
Type Or Die was written on a Amiga 500 using SAS 5.10 C compiler.
All of the graphic work was done in Deluxe Paint III, and later
converted to C language source code using Icon Magic by Glacier
Technologies. For sound editing I used Aegis AudioMaster III.
Finally, the sound files were also converted into C language statements
using a homebaked Data2Code utility.
Type Or Die is SHAREWARE. If you use it, find it amusing, or just
feel plain generous, please send a small donation ($5 & up) to the
address below. If you get a $60.000 job because of learning how to
type with this program, let your heart be your guide (a vacation to
Hawaii for me and girl friend would be nice). For $10 I'll send you
the source and put your name down for possible future upgrades and
party invitations. So, without further ado, address all (positive)
comments, bug reports, job offers (and clams) to:
Aki Rimpilainen
586 5th Ave
San Francisco, CA 94118
Permission to distribute Type Or Die is hereby granted in the original
LHARC format, providing no fee (beyond mailing) is charged for the
transaction.