1,000 Best Games for Windows/1000BestGamesForWindows.iso/sharewarefin/GOLD.ZIP/GPDOCS.TXT

Text File | 1996-09-20 | 19KB | 368 lines

GoldPusher, version 1.4, september 1996
by Erich Friedman, Daniel Vree and Willem Vree.

GoldPusher is a game with a mixture of puzzles, strategy and action.
The latest Macintish and MS-Windows versions are always available on
the Gold Pusher Home Page:

    http://carol.fwi.uva.nl/~wimv/gold-pusher.html

New Features:

- Bombs with various interesting physical properties.
- Large Rocks and Large Iron Balls (size 3x3, ray traced 8 frame animation).
  In combination with the old 2x2 objects we get fascinating possibilities.
- Several introdutory rooms changed to demonstrate the new features
- 30 new rooms in a second room file, 10 of which are free!
- A menu item "Open Room File" added.

Features:

- *207* rooms with action, strategy and difficult puzzles. (30 free)
- 5 monster types, each with different behaviour and capabilities
- bombs, missiles, rocks, balloons, many wall pieces, backgrounds etc.
- make your own rooms with the graphical editor.
- "show solution" feature (above room 20 only when registered).
- "record solution" feature (above room 20 only when registered).
- choose your own order to complete the puzzle- and arcade rooms.
- save feature remembers which rooms you have completed
- snapshot feature takes you back into the middle of a difficult puzzle
- topscore.
- fast color animation and very fast BW-animation for old-mac users.
- scaling of the game window to the size of your monitor
- multi-channel sound (SoundManager 3.0) otherwise single channel sound.

Installation:

The archive Goldpush.zip contains 4 files:
- The game file "Goldpush.exe"
- The help program "Goldhelp.exe"
- A data file with puzzles, called "Rooms.dat"
- A data file with new puzzles, called "NewRooms.dat"
- This file, containing a short user guide.

Installation just means unpacking these files into a directory of your
choice and that's all. No setup.exe, no install.exe.
When playing, the game creates its own topscore file ("Topsave.sav")
in the same directory as the game. The game does not touch anything else
on your system. No ini-files are changed, no shared dll's are added or
replaced.
Goldpusher requires MSWindows, needs about 2 Mbyte RAM, has 8- and
16-bit sound effects and 8-bit color pictures.

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ShareWare and Registration:

With the unregistered version you can play 30 rooms (20 in file
Rooms.dat and 10 in file NewRooms.dat).
And, you can also edit these rooms and then play the edited room!!.

To unlock all 207 rooms (and solutions) and to be able to permanently
save your edited rooms:
Send $10 (cash, no cheque), your name and address (email address
for fast response)to:

    Willem Vree
    Landschapstraat 1
    2614 WZ Delft
    Holland

and I'll send you the regsitration code that unlocks the game.
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Short guide to the game:

- goal
In the game you are the "gold pusher", a funny little man who, for some
reason, wants to push a pot of gold on top of a small "rain bow". When
goldpusher succeeds in pushing the pot of gold on the rainbow, the puzzle is
solved, you get bonus points and you move on to the next room.
However reaching the rainbow may be extremely problematic. There are
voracious monsters hunting for goldpusher and the pot might get easily stuck
by all kind of obstacles.

- pushing rocks and balloons
To help GoldPusher to complete his job there are rocks and balloons, which
can also be pushed around. They can flatten the road to the rainbow or they
can kill monsters. There is a kind of gravity, which only affects the rocks.
When a rock falls down and a monster happens to be in the way it gets killed.
The balloons do not fall, they rise, and again, when a monster is hit by a
rising balloon it dies.

- lifting the gold pot
Also Goldpusher is killed by a falling rock, or when he tries to lift a rock.
Actually, he manages to lift the rock a little bit but then his force yields
and he is crushed by the full weight of the rock.
Remarkably enough, GoldPusher is not killed by a rising balloon. He can force
a balloon down. He can even lift the gold pot (or a rock) by pushing it on a
balloon (or pushing the balloon under the pot) and then pushing the pot
upwards. He manages again to lift the pot a little bit, but now, immediately,
the balloon comes to his aid and prevents the pot from falling back on
GoldPusher and killing him.

- crushing rocks and balloons.
GoldPusher is quite strong. When he pushes a rock which can't move any
further (against a wall for instance) the rock falls to pieces and vanishes.
The same happens of course when GoldPusher pushes a balloon which can't move.
GoldPusher cannot break the iron rocks and the gold pot.

- using the spades
Another help for GoldPusher in some rooms are the "spades". He can pick up
spades and throw them in the direction his nose is pointing. When a spade
touches a monster, it freezes the monster for some time, so it can't move and
hurt GoldPusher. Another use of the spades is in filling holes, so that the
gold pot can be moved across the holes, where it would otherwise get stuck.
Also spades can be used to capture monsters by blocking their way in e.g. a
corridor. A monster cannot pass a way which is blocked by spades or rocks.

- bombs
Bombs behave like spades. Goldpusher can pick them up and throw them.
When a bomb is thrown it is also ignited!! That means it will soon explode,
killing and crushing everything in its direct surrounding. Even one type of
wall piece is destroyed by a bomb (the brown stone).
Iron balls and the chauldron are not destroyed, but they are moved by the
blast.
Of course, an exploding bomb ignites other bombs next to it.

- monster intelligence
There are five kind of monsters in the game: snails, orcs, spiders, icebears
and rock-piercers. The snails are slow and move in straight lines. Only when
they find their way blocked, they try other directions, with a strong
preference (75%) for a turn into the direction where you (GoldPusher) are
standing. So when a snail is moving freely and you are standing next to it,
but not in its way, it won't attack you.
The orcs move like the snails but much faster. Icebears move like orcs but
they can also push rocks and balloons! The rock-piercer moves like a snail,
but it crushes all rocks and balloons it comes across.
Finally spiders are the most intelligent monsters. They constantly look where
you are and try to find you. When they find their way blocked they will try
all kind of possibilities to get around the obstacle.

- choosing rooms
In the title bar of each room you can see how many points you can collect.
Because the rooms can have very different characteristics (arcade action,
strategy or just a puzzle), you can choose freely which ones you want to
solve, according to your taste.
Once a room is completed, the player has the opportunity to choose any other
room, although the game automatically increases the room-number and presents
that one as the next puzzle. To choose another room, a menu command is
available. A completed puzzle can not be solved again, to prevent a player to
increase his score by solving the same puzzle over and over.
When a player changes rooms in the middle of a puzzle in progress, the player
is punished by loosing 50 points. The effect is the same as aborting the
current puzzle and then choosing another room. One can only switch puzzles
without the 50 point penalty at the beginning of a puzzle, before the first
move is made (the game is then paused and GoldPusher is flashing).

- pausing the game takes a snapshot
Some rooms contain more than one difficult part. When you solved a difficult
passage, you can pause the game before continuing (press P, tab, cmd-P or
click the mouse). The current situation is then automaticly remembered. When
GoldPusher dies in the next difficult part (or when you abort in a hopeless
situation), you don't have to do the room all over again, but you are
repositioned in the situation of the last pause.
When you are repositioned at the situation of the last pause, but you want to
restart from the beginning, you must (again) use the abort command.

- scoring and screen lay-out.
The scoring follows a simple scheme. Every room completed adds a bonus to the
total score. This bonus depends on the difficulty level of the room. While
you play, each monster killed also adds a small bonus depending on the
"intelligence" of the particular monster. When GoldPusher is killed (or when
you abort in the middle of solving a room) you loose 50 bonus points.
The total score is in the top left corner. In the bottom right corner the
number of spades you picked up is counted.
The bonus points earned in a room by killing monsters only become permanent
when the room is completed successfully. That is, if GoldPusher is killed,
you loose all bonus accumulated in this room and you fall back to the
situation at the beginning of this room, minus 50 points. When you took a
pause and GoldPusher is killed (or you abort) you loose 50 points but you
keep the accumulated points at the time of the pause.

- saving and loading
Only at the beginning of a new puzzle, thus when the previous puzzle has been
successfully completed, you are allowed to save the game. A dialog box is
presented with four save-buttons. Each save button can store one saved game.
So up to four different games in progress can be saved.
Loading a game can be done at any time. However, a saved game can only be
loaded once!. This has to be that way, otherwise the concept of earning and
loosing points has no meaning. If one could load a saved game over and over
again, one would immediately reload a saved game as soon as one would run
into a deadly situation.
The pause feature allows you to remember a situation in the middle of solving
a room. However you can only return to the last pause situation when you die
or abort (and thus loose 50 points). A pause situation is not remembered when
you save the game.

- keys and mouse
GoldPusher can be moved using keys: h,j,k and l. h is left, j is down, k is
up end l is right. As an alternative the numeric keypad can also be used.
Another alternative is using the mouse. When the item "mouse-control" in menu
"help" is enabled, GoldPusher will try to follow the mouse-cursor. I do not
recommend mouse-control because it is less accurate then key-control when
fast reactions are required.
Spades are picked up by walking over them. Hitting the spacebar throws a
spade. A mouse click or typing 'p' (or tab or cmd-p) pauses the game. Only
then the menu-bar can be used (and becomes visible on small screens).
If you set the speed to "single cycle" in the speed-menu, all movement on the
screen will stop. You can advance the animation frame by frame, manually, by
clicking the mouse. To stop single cycle mode, hold both the command key and
the 4 down, while clicking the mouse.

- hints
Many rooms have a title containing a hint how to solve the puzzle.
When you know how monsters behave, you can use this knowledge to guide them
to a place where you can trap them or kill them. E.g. you know that a snail
will turn with high probability into your direction when it bumps into
something.
Many unexpected tricks can be played in the physical reality of GoldPusher.
To find it out is part of the fun of the game. E.g. you can throw a spade in
the air just in front of a passing icebear. The icebear is not hit by the
spade, but it bumps against the flying spade and thus changes direction. In
some puzzles you have to use this trick to guide the icebear to the right
place. This trick requires precise timing. If you throw too late the ice bear
will be hit by the spade and is lamed. If you throw too early the icebear
won't bump and won't change direction. Another trick is to use the spade as
an umbrella against a falling rock.

- show solution (above room 20 only when registered)
When you are stumped by a puzzle, you can check the "Show Solution" item in
the Help menu. You will get a real-time play back of the solution. You can
stop in the middle of a play back by pushing the mouse button. Then you can
continue "by hand"

- record solution (above room 20 only when registered)
First check the menu item "Record Solution" in the help menu. The room is
then reset to its initial state in the pause mode. Just start playing. When
you push the gold pot onto the rainbow you get a dialog, asking if you want
to make this recording permanent.
Say OK. And that's it.
During recording you can even pause the game! When you die (or abort) and the
pause situation is reloaded, the recorder is also rewound to the pause
situation. So you don't see any errors in the final recording.
You can also die during a recording and start all over again. The replay will
do exactly the same.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Puzzles: Erich Friedman
Artwork, Sounds and 50 puzzles: Daniel Vree
Programming: Willem Vree
Mail comments to Internet: [e-mail]
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GoldPusher Version History:

Version 1.4

- Big Rock and Big Iron Ball added
  3x3 object drawing, 3x3 collision logic, 8 frame animation, picts made with
  ray tracer
- Bomb added (size of spade), explodes into 3x3 area, can also remove wall
  pieces
- Increased maximum number of rooms to 300, included proper error message
  when this number is exeeded.
- Some introductory rooms changed to show all new  features
- 30 new rooms added in a second room file "NewRooms.dat"
- Added menu item "Open Room File"

Version 1.3

- Added room 167-177
- Changed the order and bonus points of all 177 rooms. The bonus points now
  have a better correspondence to the experienced difficulty of a room. All
  rooms are in  the order of increasing difficulty (and bonus, of course)
- Changed the sound initialisation: before 6.0.7 old VBL-sound, after 6.0.7
  and soundmanager 2.0 new sounddriver is used with one channel, after 6.0.7.
  and soundmanager 3.0 three channels are used.

Version 1.2

- Added new sound for dying crusher, Several other new sounds
- New speed: very slow
- Recording a solution with 0 steps removes solution
- Changing a room with Gold Edit removes solution
- Added rooms and solutions 137 to 166

Version 1.1.

- Eliminated the concept of earning and loosing lives. Dying now costs 50
  bonus points. You can die and redo a room as many times as you want, only
  your score will become a large negative number.
- Added a "New Game" command, because dying three times will no longer bring
  you back to a new game. The "New Game" terminates the current game, inserts
  your score into the topscore and shows the topscore. Then the game restarts
  with room 1.
- Added a "show solution" feature and a "record solution" feature
- Added a registration mechanism to unlock the "show solution" feature
- Added 32 new puzzzles 105-137
- The game window is now scalable to larger sizes (factor 1.25, 1.5 and 2 for
  screen sizes of respectively 640, 768 and 1024 pixels).
- 9 new Help screens
- Pausing the game automatically takes a snapshot of the current situation.
  The snapshot command in the file-menu is removed, because it is no longer
  needed.
- The snapshot remains valid until the next time you pause the game (= take a
  snapshot). You can reload the same snapshot as many times as you wish
  (loosing 50 bonus points each time).
- Starting the game enters a demonstration mode, showing the solution of room
  17
- A preference setting can disable the demo mode ( for fast switching between
  editor and GoldPusher)
- GoldPusher switches the screen depth to 256 colors if the current depth is
  larger.
- 48 wall pieces available in both Gold Edit and GoldPusher (16 new ones)
- Fast assembler support for scaling factor 1.25 (640 pixel-screens) on slow
  color machines
- Rolling rocks and iron balls look more natural
- Added a small amount of shading to the background

Version 1.0.

- Added 56 new fascinating rooms of Erich Friedman. These Rooms are 17-20 and
  53-104.
- Most puzzles now have a perfectly safe solution. If you do it in the right
  way you will never get killed. However, it may take you hours to find the
  right strategy.
- Rooms with an unsafe solution (i.e. you can get killed even when you know
  how to solve the puzzle) have a title starting with "Arcade level: ....", so
  you can skip them if you don't like playing arcade-style. Some of the Arcade
  rooms are very hard and require precise timing.
- A new monster added: the Rock Piercer. It crushes rocks and balloons that
  it encounters and it stays alive when you drop a rock on its head.
- Added the Unbreakable Iron Ball, with clank-sound. Added a money-sound to
  the Gold Pot.
- Added a Snapshot feature. In the middle of solving a room you can take a
  snapshot at any time you like. When you die in that room or when you abort,
  you don't have to redo the whole room, but you are taken back to the exact
  situation at the time of the snapshot.
- When the game is paused the GoldPusher is flashing, allowing you to locate
  him quickly in a complicated room.
- Added text to the score-display so you can see what the numbers mean.
- You can disable all sounds or only the step sound.
- Pause/Play also switches when 'p' or Cmd-P or TAB is pressed.
- Changed the physical reality in GoldPusher in such a way that you will
  always get killed when you move a rock away under another one on top of it.
  In the old version you could sometimes crush both rocks by pressing the left-
  and up-key in quick succession. This spoiled some of the puzzles.
- Increased the maximum number of moving objects in a room to 100.
- You get a file selection dialog when the program can't find the Rooms-file
  in the current directory. Formerly the program would quit with a fatal error.
- Each room now has a different room-bonus. The harder the room the more
  points you get.
- Transparent wall stones are now also in colour indistinguishable from real
  wall stones. Some puzzles therefore have become a real challenge!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Puzzles: Erich Friedman
Artwork and 50 puzzles: Daniel Vree
Programming: Willem Vree
Mail comments to Internet: [e-mail]
Registration: send $10 (cash, no cheque), your name and address
(email address for fast response)to:
    Willem Vree,
    Landschapstraat 1
    2614 WZ Delft
    Holland
-------------------------------------------------------------------------