1,000 Games/Disc1.iso/ARCADE/BBATTLE/MANUAL_E.TXT

Text File | 1995-09-21 | 25KB | 637 lines

                       BIKE BATTLE

            THE ULTIMATE MULTIMEDIA GAME FOR TWO

                      VERSION 1.95

                    SpotPrice: 30 $

             ORDER-FORM IN THE FILE ORDER.TXT

            (C) Copyright 1995 by Jürgen Thumm

                   Distribution by

                 BROKAT Systeme GmbH
                 Hanns-Klemm-Str. 5
                 D-71034 Boeblingen
                 Email: [e-mail]

             AVAILABLE PUBLIC DOMAIN DEMOS:
             Playback Demo (BBDEMO1.EXE)
             Playable Demo (BBDEMO2.EXE)

Make my day ...

BIKE BATTLE is a GladiatorActionGame for two RemoteControlPilots,
whose fascination is unparalleled by other multimedia games. No
painted pictures are it's strength, but the 4S: Speed,
Smartness, Strategy and Sound. Each pilot has a FightBike
wherewith he is cruising in a fighting arena. The task is to pick up
weapons which lie around, to attack the opponent and to turn him
into a pile of dust. The fight takes place in a randomly
generated maze of walls, containing DisplacerGates which beam
you from one side of the field to the other. As soon as a weapon
is shot empty you have to pick up further ammunition or replace
it by another. If you don't want to be killed by the first hit,
you have also to collect ProtectionShields.
Unfortunately, with each hit, one shield is destroyed again.
Luckily enough, new weapons, ammunition or shields appear everywhere,
so you have always enough material to continue your fight.
The RealitySound provides the very cool MadMaxFeeling that makes
you sweat. Whoever's frightened by the use of Machineguns,
Cruise Missiles, Pump Guns, Rocket Launchers, Light Swords
or Bazookas should better play Tic-Tac-Toe...

But, whoever felt the Force of Action and triumphated in a
hard fight, shalt be addicted.

This ain't no game for youngsters under 16, or for a calme
office atmosphere.


                       Contents
                       ========

             System requirements        (1)
             Installation               (2)
             BIKE BATTLE GameDefiner    (3)
             Fighting Arena             (4)
             FightBike Throttle         (5)
             FightBike Equipment        (6)
             FightBike Usage of Weapons (7)
             GladiatorDream:
                 Set, Point and Match   (8)
             FightDetails               (9)
             BikeDetails               (10)
             StrategyDetails           (11)
             ConfigurationDetails      (12)
             Memory Optimization       (13)
             Demo Restrictions         (14)
             Final Remark              (15)


(1) System Requirements
=======================

   What Hardware do you need to run BIKE BATTLE?

      Minimum for novices:

         486 DX2/66 with 4 MB RAM
         8 Bit Soundcard
         2 analogue Joysticks and 2 Gameports to connect them
         2 Speaker boxes

      Recommended hardware for intense players:

         486 DX2/66 or Pentium with 16 MB RAM
         Soundcard for 32 kHz stereo Sound, e.g. SoundBlaster 16

      Only use Joysticks with 2 axes and 2 buttons, no "Flightsticks"
      (3 axes, 4 buttons)!

   Required Software:

      Windows 3.1
      Windows Sound driver
      Joystick driver (also provided in this package)

   8 MB of hard drive space are required.

   In the minimum configuration, severe losses in Sound Quality
   and/or speed must be accepted.

   With 8 MB or less or memory the system should have enough
   Swap-Space (on hard drive).

(2) Installation
================

   Select a target directory on your hard drive, uncompress the
   BikeBattle packages which you've downloaded or copied there.
   Make sure pathnames are preserved while uncompressing.

   The following directories should now exist in your
   target directory:

      BBATTLE        containing the main program(s), manuals etc.
      BBATTLE\SND    containing the sound files

   Perform a sound-check; to do so, start the Sound-settings in
   Windows' system settings and try to play the Windows-Sounds. If
   nothing's audible, check the sound driver and (re)install it if
   necessary. The sound driver was delivered with your Sound card
   or with Windows. Read the sound card's manual or the
   Windows-documentation for details.

   If the joystick driver is missing (only needed with DEMO2 or the
   original version), install it this way:

   - copy IBMJOY.DRV and JOYSTICK.CPL from your targetdirectory\BBATTLE
     into the Windows\System directory. For example, if both BIKE BATTLE
     and Windows are installed on drive C:, the following commands must
     be typed:

       copy c:\bbattle\ibmjoy.drv c:\windows\system
       copy c:\bbattle\joystick.cpl c:\windows\system

   - now go into the Windows directory and edit the file SYSTEM.INI
     with this command:

        edit system.ini

   - In the opened file, add the following line in the [drivers]
     section:

        joystick=ibmjoy.drv

   Now, the joystick driver is installed. Start Windows.

   In Windows, start the joystick calibration program. To do so,
   search the joystick symbol in the main group's system settings.
   Calibrate as described by moving the stick into the four
   corners of the joystick's foot. Calibrate as exact as possible!
   The joysticks have trimmers to adjust the X- and Y-centering.
   After changing the centering, the calibration should be repeated.
   Maybe the joystick calibration must also be repeated after every
   restart of Windows (depends upon the joystick driver used).

   If the joysticks can't be calibrated, the reason for this
   might be that you didn't select 2-dimensional joysticks in
   "System Settings/Drivers/Game adapter". Furthermore the
   game ports or the adapters on which they reside might be
   badly configured (depends on your PC hardware).

   If anything's set, start Window's file manager, go to your
   target directory and double-click on:

        BBDEMO1.EXE   to start the playback demo
   or   BBDEMO2.EXE   to start the playable evaluation demo.


(3) BIKE BATTLE GameDefiner
===========================

   You see a grey screen with blue shiny letters. If not,
   your Windows-System is probably overloaded (e.g. with an
   alternative desktop, tools or unnecessary extensions in
   CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT). It may suffice to reduce the
   system (see also Memory Optimization), or in the worst case
   Windows must be reinstalled; in that case the game should
   usually work.

   The first BIKE BATTLE sound is heard and pushes the heart
   beat... If no Sound is audible, either the speaker boxes are
   turned off or the Windows sound driver doesn't work. If it's the
   sound driver, the sound check wasn't done correctly (see
   Installation; in the Compact Demo, the title music is played
   with 11 kHz 8 bit mono sound).
   In that case, leave the program with the ESCAPE key, go back to
   Installation and install your Windows Sound correctly.

   In the BIKE BATTLE GameDefiner, playing parameters are adjusted.
   The parameters are changed by pressing those keys that are
   framed by a box. These settings are available:

   HUMAN PLAYERS
      Number of RemoteControlPilots. For two humans,
      select '2'. For a demo or to practice targeting change the
      number: select '0' for demo mode. Two robots will then "fight"
      each other. Select '1' to practice targeting. One
      RemoteControlPilot may meet upto 5 RobotPilots, which could only
      be considered as moving targets due to their non-existent
      intelligence.

   ROBOT PLAYERS
      Number of RobotPilots.

   JOYSTICK SWAP
      With this you may swap the joysticks.

   WEAK SUPPORT   (Original version only)
      With this, the weaker of the pilots may get
      additional shields. The number of shields is determined
      automatically during the game. You can also pre-select certain
      values, e.g. 0:3 means that pilot 2 gets 3 additional shields
      from the start (shields are explained later).

   MUSIC FX
      If you can't bear the music effects played during the
      game, switch 'em off with this.

   STEREO SOUND
      If you're using a mono sound card, the program
      should select mono sound automatically as soon as the fighting
      arena appears. Just in case it doesn't, select 'NO' here.

   LOAD 32 KHZ, 22 KHZ, 11 KHZ, oder NO SOUND
      Bike Battle is capable of playing 32 kHz Sound, the best sound ever
      heard with an action game on the PC. If your sound card doesn't
      support this or if you're low on memory, you have to select a
      lower quality.
      22 kHz should be supported by nearly every sound card; the memory
      usage is reduced by 1/3. With 11 kHz, again 1/3 less memory is
      needed, and that's also the way it sounds then. NO SOUND starts
      the game without sound. This is usually used to quickly check
      the calibration of the joysticks, before one returns to the
      GameDefiner and then loads the sound.

   SWAP PIXCOLOR
      If the FightBikes leave red tracks (which may
      happen with certain graphic boards in TrueColor-Mode), change
      this option. On pressing the key, check patterns appear at the
      left border: the first line must appear completely in red, the
      2nd green and the 3rd blue.

   TIMING SPEED
      Depending on your Systems's performance, the game
      might be sped up with this. If the game runs permanently with a
      varying speed this value may be selected too large, or the
      systems suffers from a performance overload in other ways (e.g.
      by intense memory swapping to the hard drive, which may happen
      especially in Win-OS/2 sessions).

   When all settings done, press the SPACE bar. In endlessly-seeming
   seconds the ultimate BIKE BATTLE sounds are loaded. Off we
   go-o!! Off we go-o!!

(4) Fighting Arena
==================

   The Fighting Arena appears blue with a green-gray, randomly
   created maze of walls. To the left and right of the arena's
   middle you see two remote-controlled FightBikes:
   triangular-armoured, colorful units,  ready for action.

   The FightInfos below the arena are for both pilots. The left
   half belongs to the green, the right one to the red bike.

   The following infos are displayed:

   1:/2  FightInfo section for pilot 1 or 2
   SHD   number of ProtectionShields
   PTS   achieved Points
   S     achieved Sets
   M     matches won so far

   Furthermore, the Protectionshields are also displayed graphical
   as a blue bar, and below that, you find a line for infos
   and status messages.

   Besides, the FightInfos display a list of weapons that were
   collected so far. Initially this list is empty.

   The action starts as soon as both RemoteControlPilots move their
   joystick or press button 1. Every joystick has two buttons;
   which one is button 1 or 2 depends upon the model used.

(5) FightBike Throttle
======================

   The bikes accelerate by pressing the joystick as far as possible
   into a direction. Check this for all directions! If there's no
   acceleration in one or more directions, the joystick is badly
   calibrated (Bad luck: in that case, recalibration of the sticks
   in Window's system settings is necessary). The bikes decellerate
   if you elongate the joystick less.

   If no sound is audible on acceleration, there was probably a
   too high selected value in the GameDefiner's LOAD SOUND option.
   In that case you'll have to leave the arena, back to the
   GameDefiner with ESCAPE, then select 22 or 11 kHz and go back
   again to the arena with SPACE.

(6) FightBike Equipment
=======================

   In the fighting arena, weapons appear at random places. These
   weapons appear as blue boxes with a letter on top. To collect
   it, drive into such a box. The weapon is ready for action
   immediately and can be fired using button 1. By default, every
   bike has a simple pistol with 30 bullets.

The following weapons may be collected:

Weapon   ID Description                            Usage in
                                          Attack            Defense

MACHINE  M  To straightly shoot the direct:  shoot the   Against Cruise
  GUN       opponent.  The nearer   other bike.          Missiles and Rockets,
            the target laser lies   indirect:  shoot     provided of course
            on him, the better.     uncollected weapons  one has enough time
                                    that lie around the  and distance to aim.
                                    other bike.

  PUMP   P  To "blow away" the      direct:  blow the    Against Cruise
  GUN       other, in literal       other into the next  Missiles
            sense.  The impacts     wall.  indirect:     and Rockets.
            create pressure waves   blow up uncollected
            which do not harm the   weapons lying around
            opponent in any way,    the other bike.
            except that they make
            him fly.

 LIGHT   L  Near distance           Strike.  The re-     Not usable in
 SWORD      weapon.                 pulsion of a hit     defense (espe-
                                    slows down the       cially not
                                    attacking bike.      against
                                    This gives the       Cruise Missiles).
                                    victim a better
                                    chance to escape.

BAZOOKA  B  Straight flying         direct:  Not easy,   The rubbish piles
            warhead which ex-       but possible:  a     left by the explosion
            plodes at the first     precisely aimed      provide a good
            obstacle or on reach    Bazooka that ex-     coverage, especially
            of the joystick-        plodes on the other  against MG.
            selected flying         one's feet may cost
            distance. The explo-    him several
            sion leaves a pile      shields. indirect:
            of rubbish.             If the other one's
                                    moving nearby an
                                    obstacle, shoot it.

CRUISE   C  Self-guiding missiles   Fire and forget. The firing
MISSILES    that follow the oppo-   direction should lead into
            nent if he's in sight.  open space.

ROCKET   K  Straight flying rockets Aim into the right direction and fire.
LAUNCHER    with heavy impact.      The stronger the rockets are, the more
            No distance selection.  walls are broken through.

Besides these weapons the FightBikes may collect Ammunition,
ProtectionShields and Reinforcements:

Extra       ID Description

AMMUNITION  A  Nearly every weapon may be reloaded with this.  For every type
               of weapon, one A counts different, e.g.  for MG 30 shoots, for
               the Pump Gun only 3.

PROTECTION  S  Every S is a single ProtectionShield. Whenever a bike is hit or
SHIELDS        it drives through an obstacle (with exception of the arena
               border), is looses one shield. By default, every bike has five
               shields.  Shields are very valuable; if none are left, an alarm
               sound is played and the whole cockpit blinks in red. The single
               task of the pilot is now to collect a 'S', because the next hit
               or collision will crash his bike.

WEAPON      +  Strenghtens the effect of the current weapon.  If the weapon
REINFORCE-     already reached it's maximum effect, only the pistols's
MENT           ammunition (if there's any) is reinforced.

(7) FightBike Weapon Usage
==========================

"Aim"

   Pistols and Rockets:

      just move the stick into the desired direction. Aim slowly when
      using rockets, rapid changes of direction usually don't hit the
      target.

   MG and Pump Gun:

      With these, the distance of the impact must be selected
      additionally. To do so, these weapons have a target laser. The
      more the joystick is elongated in a direction, the more the
      laser's end point (the only thing visible) moves away.
      Exception: if there's an obstacle in the chosen direction, the
      laser will stay on it.

      Pressing the fire button will always lead to a detonation at the
      selected target point.

      When using the MG, theroretically it would suffice to elongate
      the joystick maximally into the opponent's direction and fire.
      Practically one hits this way only sometimes, because you can't
      select the shooting direction that precise and thus miss the
      other bike by one or two degrees.

   Bazooka:

      The more the joystick is pressed, the farer the bazooka will
      fly. Basically it's the same as with MG, but you have no target
      laser. Usually it's very effective to elongate the stick just a
      little and to throw the bazooka right in front of the other
      one's bike.

      The maximum distance of MG, Pump Gun, Rockets and Bazooka is 2/3
      of the arena's width.

"Fire"

   A bike may collect an unlimited number of weapons, but only the
   two frontmost, i.e. latest-collected, are usable at the moment.
   As soon as these are empty, the ones behind that were collected
   earlier move up. Button 1 fires the frontmost, button 2 the
   second-frontmost weapon. Only the frontmost weapon could be
   reinforced or reloaded.

"Switch"

   If you have lots of weapons on board you may change their
   sequence by driving through one of the violet cross-shaped
   switches which are found in the arena. If you have more than 5
   weapons, only the 5 frontmost ones could be cycled.

"Reload"

   Weapon           Reinforcement "+":         Ammunition amount "A":

   Machine Gun      Creates more horrible
                    dust in the target area.  30 bullets
   Pump Gun         Opponent flies longer.    3 bullets
   Light Sword      Longer and more inert.    50 energy units
   Bazooka          Larger rubbish piles.     nothing (pistol is loaded)
   Cruise Missiles  Larger impact radius.     one missile
   Rocket Launcher  Breaks more walls.        three rockets


(8) GladiatorDream: Point, Set and Match
========================================

   If a FightBike explodes, the opponent may carve a Point into his
   joystick. Exception: both explode. He who first gets 4 points
   and has a lead of at least 2 points wins a Set. The one winning
   3 Sets leaves the arena as the winner.


(9) FightDetails
================

   Shield-loss-timing:

      After the loss of a shield it takes at least 250 milliseconds
      (with Weak Support even longer) until the next shield could be
      destroyed. This avoids for example that driving into a wall in an
      unlucky angle costs 10 shields in one instant.

      After the loss of the last shield the bike is protected one
      Second against destruction. Therefore the last shield is the
      most important! It guarantees a second of life even under
      hardest fire. Whoever has no shield left must collect at
      least one.

   Bike-explosion-timing:

      The explosion process of a bike takes several seconds. The other
      bike must survive this time to get the point.

   The Jedi Convention for Grandmasters:

      "He who thinks he's unfailable may try to terminate his
      opponent, as soon as he lost all his shields,
      with the Light Sword only."


(10) BikeDetails
================

   Change the Target Laser's shape:

      Press 'T' during the game to select 1 out of 8 shapes.

   Clock display:

      Press 'C' during the game to select one of these displays:
      - no clock
      - short format  with time, round time,  session time in minutes
      - long format with the same infos plus date.

      After pressing the key, wait a second until it's displayed.

   Hiding the mouse cursor:

      In Window's Program Manager, create a program symbol with
      File/New/Program, to start the game with.
      As the working directory select the directory in which bb.exe
      resides.

   Saving the current score   (original version only)

      Press F7 during the game or in the main menu.
      This will save your current score.
      You can leave the game then and, for example,
      re-calibrate your joysticks.

      If the score cannot be saved, check your harddisk
      if write access is allowed and if there is any free
      space available.

   Loading the score          (original version only)

      Press F5 in the main menu.
      This will load your score;
      enter the Fighting Arena then and continue your match.

(11) StrategyDetails
====================

   The "most popular" errors of novice pilots are these:

   Aimless collecting. The rule is: Quality before Quantity. For
   example, one MG with 3 plus and 100 shoots of ammunition is much
   more useful then five weak MG's with 30 shoots each.

   Inadequate Distance. For example, holding a MG under the
   opponent's nose though the opponent has a Light Sword is as
   brave as insane, and usually results in sudden death (of the MG
   owner).


(12) ConfigurationDetails
=========================

   Settings which are selected by hand at every start of BIKE
   BATTLE should be entered in the configuration file bb.ini. To do
   so, load this file from the bbattle directory with a text
   editor, e.g. the Notepad of Windows (but not with a word
   processor). Before changing the file, first create a backup
   copy! Each line contains a keyword with a single value (both
   separated by blanks), and remarks beginning with ";" and lasting
   'til the end of the line. Remarks are ignored by BIKE BATTLE und
   just serve better understandability.

   The following keywords are recognized:

   Keyword        Description                    Possible values

   humans         number of human players        0,1,2
   robots         number of robot players        0 to 5
   swapsticks     swap joysticks                 0 = no, 1 = yes
   weaksupport    automatic force balancing      0 = no, 1 = yes
   music          music effects                  0 = off, 1 = on
   stereo         Stereo Sound                   0 = off, 1 = on
   khz            sound quality in kHz           0 (no Sound), 11, 22, 32
   clock          clock display                  0 (none), 1 (min), 2 (max)
   width          minimum picture width          640, 800, 1024, 1280, ...
   height         minimum picture height         480, 600, 768, 1024, ...
   yshift         vertical picture shift to
                  top of screen                  0 to ca. 20
   swappixcol     see GameDefiner description    0 = no, 1 = yes
   usepalette     use palette (is the default)   0 = no, 1 = yes
   tlasershape    target laser shape             0 to 7

   colback1
   colback2       change background colors       12-Bit RGB-value
   colback3       (only for freaks)              from 0x000 to 0xfff

   coltlaser1
   coltlaser2     change color of target lasers  like colback
   coltlaser3     of player 1, 2 and others


(13) Memory Optimization
========================

   With 8 and especially 4 MB of RAM it is highly recommended to
   remove all superfluous memory-eating extensions (e.g.
   SmartDrive) from the system files CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT.

   A maximum-reduced CONFIG.SYS may look this way:

      DEVICE = C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
      DOS = HIGH

   The meanings of these entries can be looked up in your DOS- or
   Windows manual.

   The recommended screen resolution for playing is 800 x 600
   pixels.

   The program uses at least 1 MB of additional memory in
   resolutions higher than 1024 x 768.


(14) Demo Restrictions
======================

   In the Bike Battle Demo package which is available through the
   Internet, the playable demo BBDEMO2.EXE has the following
   restrictions:

      - in the Compact Demo, all sound files have only 11 kHz quality.
      - no "Weak Support" settings in the GameDefiner.
      - no Rocket Launcher available for the players.
      - 20 minutes after the game was started, a terminator robot (which
        looks like a snake) appears and terrorizes the players. To get
        another 20 minutes of free playing time, you have to leave and
        restart the game.

        If you can't stand this torture,

                                 ORDER THE ORIGINAL VERSION !!!


(15) Final Remark
=================

   "So Then, Drive On And Strike Each Other In Peace."

            J. Thumm, 20-Aug-1995