Assassins - Ultimate CD Games Collection 1

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Text File | 1992-09-20 | 12.6 KB | 261 lines

INSTRUCTIONS are below the version info, in case you haven't read them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- UPGRADES: If you are a registered user of a previous version of MegaBall, you may upgrade to the 2.1 board editor for $5 (five US dollars). I will try and notify all my registered users of this via US mail. However, since my mailing list is several hundred names long, you may be reading this message before you get the announcement in the mail. If so, and you want an upgrade, you can just send the $5 and be sure to write "UPGRADE" somewhere so I know to look in the previously-registered users list for your name. People who have not previously bought the Board Editor from me may purchase the MegaBall 2.1 Board Editor for $15 (fifteen US dollars). This is the same price the Board Editor has always been for unregistered users. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 2.1 note: 9/20/92 This is the first version of MegaBall to be released since I got my new Amiga 3000. I have to thank a few hundred registered users of previous versions of MegaBall for helping me afford this new hardware. I have improved some parts of the MegaBall game to work better on the 3000, without losing 1.3 compatability. Here they are: * Invisible ball finally fixed. * Music code modified -- should not skip notes on fast machines now. * Board Editor no longer messes up the display with too-large fonts under WB 2.0. * The ball still jitters a bit under 2.0 sometimes. Try removing commodities and other things from the input stream. Unfortunately there is no way I can really fix this for MegaBall. Games I make in the future will have NO hardware sprites, you can be sure. * Paddle crashing through wall bug during overscan fixed. However, there is also a "bug" where on systems that used to have the paddle-thru-wall bug, clicking the left mouse button too far to the right would pause the game. This is because intuition is letting you click outside the screen -- MegaBall gets a message that the user has started using some other program, so it pauses. This is likely to happen if you have an overscanned WB 1.3 screen, or if your overscanned WB 2.x screen is visible somewhere. It is just the way the OS works. If it happens to you, then don't use the left mouse button! The right mouse button and the left mouse button have precicely the same functions in MegaBall. So if the left is causing the game to pause at unwanted moments, use the right! * A certain form of cheating (without using the cheat keys) has been brought to my attention. Some people would pause the game as the ball was coming down, think about where it was going to land, position the mouse pointer over that spot, and continue the game. These people are in for a suprise. * The paddle is a bit more responsive this version. I tried to accellerate it just a bit, without losing that MegaBall "feel." * The default board set has changed. There are 50 new boards! * Quicksand has changed. Muhahahha. * Because of the above two changes, the name of the high score file has changed from MegaBall.scores to MegaBall2.scores. This will have the effect of reseting most people's high score list for the default board set. The original boards can be found in a file in the Boards subdir called "TheOriginal.BDS". If you want to put your old high score list on this file, you should open a CLI, and type something like the following: cd dh0:games/megaball ;or wherever you have MegaBall installed copy MegaBall.scores Boards/TheOriginal.BDS.scr A lot of people asked me how to reset a high score list. All you have to do is delete or rename whatever file contains the scores. All MegaBall score files are compatible; the format has not changed. * Funny colors in top-left corner fixed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 2.00 note: * Now with full file requesters via the req.library! Special thanks also go to Ron Schlosser for sending me a disk with the req.library and its programmer's documentation, making custom board files MUCH easier to load. Probably only registered users will ever need this, because only they can make custom boards. So the game can run just fine with or without this library. You just get a stupid filename entering mechanism without the req.library. * SHOW-THRU BALL FIXED. The ball used to show through to all screens when multitasking. Not any more... * PAUSE & SEND TO BACK. The ESC and P keys have always been pause keys, but now there is a third: The B key not only pauses the game, but sends the game screen to the back. This is useful for WB 1.3 users who cannot flip through all the screens like you can with WB 2.0 or with a neat program called Flip2 (by Timm Martin and Mike Monaco). ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 1.20 note: CHIP BARRIER BROKEN!!! YEAH!!!! Four out of five songs can now be loaded on any 1 Meg machine (I think). All five songs can now be loaded on a machine with 512K CHIP RAM and MORE than 512K of FAST RAM. But if you only have 512K of CHIP, try not to multitask very much... MegaBall still takes LOTS of CHIP... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 1.1x never existed for some reason. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 1.01 note: I fixed a bug in the sound effect routine that caused MegaBall to sometimes crash the computer by writing to low memory. Thanx to Alex Matulich for helping me find and stomp this bug! NOTHING else has changed, i.e., no new buttons or features since the first MegaBall release. --Ed. Here's the DOCs from the original MegaBall release: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ******** >>>> GAME INSTRUCTIONS <<<< ******** ------------------------------------------------------------------------- HI! Welcome to MEGABALL! I finally changed the name from BALL to something at least a little better. Well, the last version (which was called BALL) (I think I just said that) was released as public domain. But, THIS version (MegaBall) is shareware. So, if you send me a small fee (the amount is given in the scrolltext on the main screen), I will send you a very powerful, easy-to-handle board editor so you can create your own boards and play them. Also I will include with the board editor some boards I made that I consider to be better than the boards that come with the game itself. And I will of course inform users of any new versions if/when they come out. I do request that people do not spread the board editor. But, you CAN spread the game itself, so SPREAD IT ALL AROUND, OK?! Wait! I haven't even told you what it is yet! It's a clone of Arkanoid, sort of. BUT, before you start groaning and moaning about how many cheap-o clones of Arkanoid there are out there already, let me tell you that this is NOT a cheap-o version. Why? Er... Um... Well, YOU play it, and YOU'LL find out for yourself! >>>> NOT YET!!!! <<<< Before you play this, you MUST know these keys!: SHIFT-Q : Eventually, you will have a game that gets off to a bad start and you want to abort. So be sure to remember about the SHIFT-Q key which aborts your game. In two-player mode, it only aborts the current player's game. (Also this key makes a really neat sound effect). DEL : This key kills the current life WITHOUT killing all the remaining lives like SHIFT-Q. Why you would need this is beyond me, because I think I've fixed that nasty bug where the ball gets trapped in a loop (YAY!). If you think your ball is looping, press a mouse button, and let it go through the loop once or twice. If it's really a loop it should break out... (**** NEW FEATURE ****) P or ESC: Pressing either P or the ESC key puts you in PAUSE MODE! This is very useful!! Press a mouse button to leave PAUSE MODE. B : Added as of version 2.0. This is just like P and ESC except that it sends the MegaBall screen behind all other screens, making it somewhat easier to multitask. The CHEAT KEYS: I'm not telling you!! >> BEFORE THE GAME: << At the Main Title Screen, you may press: A mouse button to play a ONE-player game The number 2 key to play a TWO-player game SHIFT-Q to exit the program. The C key to continue previous game. (**** NEW FEATURE ****) >> HOW TO PLAY THE GAME: << OK. You all know how to play an Arkanoid clone, right? I don't have to explain that you have a paddle and a ball and you must bounce the ball into some blocks to score points, right? And I certainly don't need to mention that if you let the ball miss the paddle and drop off the screen you will die, right? And I also don't need to explain about how little bonuses can drift down from the blocks and if they touch your paddle they can do anything from giving you free lives to blowing you up, depending on the little pictures on the bonuses as they are drifting down, right? Good. I was afraid I'd have to put a lengthy explanation here! >> MOUSE CONTROLS DURING THE GAME: << Let's do this C= style!: If you move the mouse left, your paddle moves left! If you move the mouse right, your paddle moves right!! For pin-out diagrams of the mouse port, check the Technical Reference Section!! Long live C= Instruction Manuals!! By the way, sometimes the ball "sticks" to your paddle. A small blue force-field appears to hold the ball in place. You can press a mouse button to release it. Also, if you get Lasers (one of the bonuses), you use the mouse button to fire them. You may have Lasers and Catch at the same time, and in this case, the same press of the mouse button can both fire the lasers and release the ball. Both the left and right mouse buttons have the same effect. - - O O >> SOUND: << ) \_/ Awesome! Crank it up!! :-) >> MUSIC << (**** NEW FEATURE ****) There are now FIVE NoiseTracker music modules in the game. (There used to be none.) But, because of the music player I got (copyright info in the scroll with the rest) all of the songs must load into CHIP RAM. How lame. How REALLY lame. I'd really love to fix this. But I'm a little foggy on the details of how to buffer FAST RAM into CHIP RAM for instrument playing. So, if you have an older Agnus, you probably won't be able to get all the songs. But, if you have one Meg of CHIP, you should be able to get just about all, and if you have any FAST in addition to the Meg of CHIP you should get all 5 no problem. The game will tell you how many it was able to load. ALSO: If you catch the little bonus with the notes on it, music will start to play during the game. This cuts off sound effects, which makes it a little bit harder, which means you get one extra point per block hit while the music is on. So it's good to have the music on when possible! >> GURU ALERT: << I really think I fixed this. But still report any bugs you find... >> ADDICTION ALERT: << (**** NEW FEATURE ****) (Not really...) I didn't put this in the docs for BALL because I thought it was too egotistical. But a few users have sent me mail saying that the next version should definitely have a warning. So here it is: WARNING: You might get addicted to this game. There. Short, simple, and to the point. Don't say I didn't warn you... Various methods of communicating with me: With InterNet: elm4@lehigh.edu (this account closes June '93) By BBS: Call Somerton Telecomm BBS, near Philly, PA, (215) 464-6775. By US mail: Ed Mackey (this box will be valid for many years) P.O. Box 475 Wayne, PA 19087 In previous versions, I also had my address at Lehigh University here. However, I do NOT want people to send stuff to that address while I might be on Summer vacation or Christmas break or whatever, so I took it out. My brother, Al Mackey, did the music and most of the graphics for this game. He is now going to Rider college, and can be reached via email: Internet: MACKEY@enigma.rider.edu Bitnet: MACKEY@RIDER.BITNET Of course he also reads most of the letters I get in the PO Box. >> MOST IMPORTANT INSTRUCTION IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD: << Have fun! --Ed.