Assassins - Ultimate CD Games Collection 4

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Timewarrior ~~~~~~~~~~~ It is better to start the game using the 'How to Play' write up. Once you have an idea how the game operates then read these instructions. 1) Introduction....talks about the game 2) Instructions....control of the game 3) Of time and Time Warrior This version of 'Time Warrior' is intended for the standard 1 meg A500 or A600, extra ram is welcome. The game should be booted from disk although it could be booted from workbench if enough chip and fast ram is available. It is not intended to install on a hard drive as there is a special 10 disk hard drive version available. Introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Although at a glance Time Warrior(TW) looks similar to other graphical adventures. In reality it has little in common. Computer adventures are about graphics, puzzles, fighting, animations, wandering around and finding things. Real adventures differ because they are built chiefly around character interaction. TW steps into this world. TW was based upon two books, 'Shades of Evil' which is available on disk and 'Axe: A Tale of Carthelion' which was also written by myself and is available in paperback, its ISBN number being 0-9510361-0-6. Both books have been well tried and tested. They are two very different stories. Axe is written in Tolkien style without borrowing the mythologies of others while 'Shades of Evil' is a much shorter story and written in my own style. Comments on the stories are always welcome. Reviews from people who only read the introduction are not. As you may have gathered TW was intended for those who wish to become immersed in an adventure, I always thought this was what adventures were about, not just simple puzzles which can be found in a puzzle book or the ones with the magical graphics. The type which demand you to run through a set of preset options before moving onto the next location. I must confess I do like the location graphics with the latter. TW uses digitised pictures because they are more real, not because they look better or were easier to produce, which they are not. They are intended to match the adventure. TW normally displays a screen from which you can control the game, however it is possible to travel around in full screen graphics(landscape mode) if you have the hard drive version. The name 'Time Warrior' originates from the fact that you travel from the future to the past to change the future or to be more accurate, create another timeline which already exists. Confused? Read the chapter on time. I will say no more about this here because this story is told in dreams. Again if you have the hard drive version the dreams have animations. TW covers a large game playing area but allows very rapid movement. Instead of moving yards with each move you move miles, the areas between moves can be accessed when relevant, you could call them hidden locations. You are not meant to search for these locations randomly. If there is somewhere of importance someone will tell you about it. The idea of moving large distances was mine. It is for instance no harder to produce a million forestry locations than it is a hundred..but what's the point? You should not have to spend half your life travelling. The main control screen has a systems window(top), text window(bottom), character window(right) and a location picture window(left). The picture window is a representation of where you are. The village hamlets contain one picture per location for ease of finding your way around as do the hidden locations. In all other locations it is possible to look around. If you wish to look west while travelling east you can always type 'look west' or 'lw', alternatively click your left mouse button on the last icon then use your right mouse button to choose a direction. PS Don't forget rest at night, but not the first night. Not only does this refresh you but vital clues are hidden in dreams. Instructions ~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1) What are the icons(buttons) for? If you press key 0 the icons are disabled, click on each one in turn to find its use. Look in the systems window at the very top of the screen for this information. For those who wish to control the game solely from the keyboard, you should note what it says in the systems windows because you can type these commands to get the job done if your own pet commands are not recognised. Most of these words can be abbreviated, for instance the command to give a write up on your location can be shortened to loc, instead of typing location. Most icons are self explanatory but there are one or two unusual ones. As you will note when playing, some icons utilise left and right mouse buttons. For example there is a standard seek icon, however pressing the right mouse button on this icon means seek for hidden locations (You don't have to remember this, these commands display on screen all the time). If you are told to go to a particular place and there appears to be nothing of interest try this icon. Knocking on doors is another good idea. All icons are displayed all the time. There are no sub-menus. Perhaps the most important icon is the talk/text(command) icon. This allows the computer to differentiate between speech and when you are telling the computer to do something. Virtually all the game can be controlled via the mouse, but there are no pre-selected questions to ask. The icon with the question mark will help you out with what to say but as the game is based around character interaction, allowing the player nothing more than a pre-selected option would kill it dead. Conversation can be very smooth, for example when you click on the question mark you may be given a question to ask such as 'who are you' the answer may be 'I am Fred, I have driven down from Carlisle in my Fiat'. You could leave the conversation at that but there is nothing wrong with asking 'what is a fiat' or 'where is carlisle'. You simply type as you would talk to someone next to you. All questions can be put to all characters. Sometimes you will get the same answers, sometimes you won't. Probably the best two questions to put to anyone are 'who are you' and 'what can i do'. If you control the game via the mouse, and you are talking to someone, clicking on another command icon will automatically return you to command mode. Keyboard users can use keys 2 and 3 for switching modes.Alternatively you could type 'command or talk' or more realistically 'lo or bye'. There are three sliders on the lower half of the screen, they indicate how tired you are, how much water you carry with you and how much food you carry. When you start your adventure you will be pretty fit and well topped up with food and water. After a long while you will become tired, hungry and thirsty, the 'crown' which is your status icon will inform you when you are running low. Resting restores energy, but every time you take water or food from your backpack the relevant sliders will fall. These supplies do need replenishing. Travelling around can be done via the right mouse button. Alternatively if you have a joystick plugged in and you wish to travel north, push the joystick forward as indicated on the screen compass, then allow the joystick to return to its central position and press the fire button. Normal text commands may be used. IN COMMAND MODE To restart a game type begin. To save a game type savegame. Be patient when saving to a floppy disk. To load a game type loadgame. This is very fast. To check remaining memory type mem To enable and disable the control icons key 0 Of Time and Time Warrior ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Most people at sometime in their lives, sit and say 'Why am I here? Why at this particular time and place am I saying this?". The answer to this is a simple one. To be at that particular place and time saying that, then you had to be at that particular place and time saying that. If time travel were possible then it would mean that past present and future co-exist. Travelling back in time would not alter the future you came from because that future already exists. So do you create another time line? Well, yes you would but you have to bear in mind that the timeline you have just created already exists, past present and future. Everything co-exists. Does that mean a conscious decision to travel back into the past to change the future is a waste of time? Certainly not. Conscious decisions would of course really be inevitable decisions, but you have to play the game. If time travel were possible all we really have to cling to is the belief that we are making our own decisions, and in reality we are, the fact that the future of all time lines already exists doesn't change this. Ok that's the simple stuff dispensed with. What of the future where 'Time Warrior' originates. Firstly they have interstellar travel. Warp drives and jump gates do not exist. In the late twentyfifth century of that timeline the wording of the theory of the origins of the universe was changed. Instead of saying the early universe contained matter and anti-matter, which collided and left remnants of matter and energy, they said the early universe contained time and anti-time stuff. When time and anti-time merged it produced no time which is energy. The remnants of the merging instead of being called matter, was called time, which gave the impression that it travelled from yesterday to tomorrow. It was however discovered that anti-time had not been totally annihilated. In fact anti-time was responsible for things like gravity (run a film backwards and pressure becomes suction) and the strange forces which hold the subatomic universe together. Once they understood gravity it didn't take long to manipulate it. People are good at manipulating. Gravity is produced by mass. If you manipulate the gravity of an object you also alter its mass, thus came the inertialess drive. This was one of the oldest science fiction ideas created in our timeline by 'Doc Smith' (also famous for his saying "as has been said before but"). It just had to be? The implications of manipulating gravity are immense. Pilots of spacecraft had few energy problems, G-force problems and even time problems were minimised. This is the era in which the Convention of Time Travellers was assembled. The Convention of Time Travellers consisted of a bunch of playboys, knobheads and cavaliers, who journeyed to the past to live the lives of others. After becoming fully gratified they would return to the future with all their memories simply to do it all again. Sadly for them the master of this timeline was not only a nasty piece of work and clever with it but he was also immortal. He had been running the show since records began. What he wasn't was all seeing and all knowledgeable, thus the idea of time travel worried him. He was going to close the show down. He guessed the convention would try and dispose of him in the past and he was right. This story is told during the adventure dream sequences. Was it possible to remove the bad guy in that timeline? Of course not. So if the mission was a success (which is of course in your hands), which timeline was he removed from. Answers on a postcard. End.