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Creative Computers CD-ROM, Volume 1 (Legendary Design Technologies, Inc.)(1994).iso
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1994-11-17
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Solar System Wars -- Version 1.14
Copyright © 1992 James Cleverdon. All Rights Reserved.
The binary copy of THIS version of SSW and its other files may be freely
distributed for non-commercial purposes, including and especially by
Fred Fish's wonderful collection of software.
More legal garbage and disclaimers below.
New Features for Version 1.14
* First public release!
* All new support for two-button joysticks!
* Everyone now gets Hyperspace all the time, as well as an extra weapon
from the Options menus!
* Double-thick shields for EXTRA protection!
* Improved color register handling for superior performance
without
the earlier glitching problems!
* Much smoother motion, because now SSW does one game cycle (complete with
all gravity calculations) for every screen frame, even on standard A1000
and A500 machines! Yes, that's 50Hz for PAL and 60Hz for NTSC. The only
exception is for cycles involving sprite collisions, which take two
screen frames per game cycle.
* All of the gravity and update subroutines have been redone in
hand-optimized assembly code for extra speed,
plus
the added bonus of
now fitting entirely in the instruction caches of 68020 and 68030 CPUs!
* Tested on A1000 (OS 1.3), A500 (OS 1.3), and A3000 (OS 2.04).
Should run under OS 2.1. Will almost certainly break on an AGA chip
machine. Is free of Enforcer hits on A3000.
* Multi-tasks. (SSW should be the highest priority CPU-intensive task
for smoothest game play.)
Throw away any older versions of SSW that may have escaped earlier! This
is the latest and greatest!
Requirements
* Runs under OS 1.3 or 2.0X, and probably 2.1, but not 3.X.
* Needs 195K of Fast RAM and 39K of Chip RAM, in fairly large pieces.
(Fragmented memory may prevent SSW from running, even if there is enough
chip and fast ram listed by the Avail command.)
* Only needs 4K of stack space, but I'm keeping SAS/C's default of 8K
in SSW.info.
* Requires all of the hardware sprites and all 4 audio channels.
* Works with one-button digital joysticks (standard Amiga joysticks), but
two-button digital joysticks are strongly advised. Instructions for
joystick re-wire are included below. Does not support analog joysticks.
Quick Start-up
* Install SSW.
+ If SSW isn't compressed and came on a floppy, either run it from
the floppy, or just drag the SSW drawer to RAM or onto your hard
drive.
+ If SSW came compressed, or was downloaded, create a drawer named SSW
and decompress the archive file in the usual way:
* Make a new drawer (directory) named SSW
* open up a shell and CD SSW
If you have SSW.lha: lha -x -a -m x SSW.lha
If you have SSW.zoo: zoo -extract SSW.zoo
* If operating under OS 1.3, then:
- delete SSW.info
- rename SSW.1.3.info SSW.info
Otherwise, if operating under OS 2.0 or greater:
- delete SSW.1.3.info
* Hook up a joystick to Joyport 1, and either be ready to plug in a second
joystick into Joyport 0, or familiarize yourself with the keyboard
control keys. If you have two-button digital joysticks now is the time
to use them! Or, you can use ordinary one-button joysticks and some
keys on the keyboard.
* Start up SSW. Use either the Workbench or the Shell. Be sure that
either its files are in the drawer with SSW, or else enter in the Shell:
assign SSW:
drawer_containing_files
* Select any desired options from the menu with the mouse or keyboard.
(See below for a list of menu command keys. Also, a file named
Menu.keys has been provided for easy reference and printing.)
An especially fun option is the Random Game (
RightAmiga-R
), which will
randomly select solar systems for each round, along with a random extra
weapon for each player. There are also menus for torpedo velocity,
torpedo life, ship thrust, etc.
* If you will be playing with two joysticks, then replace the mouse with
the second one now. Then press
RightAmiga-1
to switch to joystick
control.
* Enjoy! The first player to reach 20 points wins!
Joystick and Keyboard Control
Joystick control:
Button : Fire photon torpedo
Left/Rght: Turn Left/Right
Forward : Thrust
Back : Hyperspace
Button2 : Extra weapon
(If you do not have two-button joysticks, the keyboard Extra keys:
port 0:
ENTER
,
RSHIFT
port 1:
LSHIFT
)
Keyboard control:
(the numbers are on the keypad, not above the keyboard)
DOWN
, 5: Fire photon torpedo
RETURN
, 0: Hyperspace
LEFT
, 4: Turn Left
RIGHT
, 6: Turn Right
UP
, 8: Thrust
RSHIFT
, 2: Extra weapon
7 : Left & Thrust
9 : Right & Thrust
Program control:
ESC
, Q: Quit
P : Pause
HELP
: Displays Help requester
Common Gotchas
* Make sure the file named
SSW.grv
is in the current directory, or located
at the
SSW:
assignment. Otherwise, SSW will complain and die.
* You may need to adjust the screen position Preferences in order to see
the seventh sprite. In other words, if the purple ship's plasma bolt
and seeker don't show up on the screen, do the following:
+ quit SSW -- type 'Q', followed by 'Y'
+ open the
Preferences
program for OS 1.3, or for OS 2.X and beyond,
run the
Overscan
program in the Prefs drawer and select
Edit Standard Overscan
+ shift the default screen position a little bit to the right
+ leave via the
Use
gadget
+ run SSW again
Keep trying this until you find a screen position that allows the 7th
sprite to appear, and best fits your monitor. Once you have this,
either save this setting in Preferences, or use one of the public
domain Preferences savers to save this setting in a file for easy recall
later. (Prefs savers are available on Fred Fish disks and many BBSs.)
* If you've forgotten to press
RightAmiga-1
, then a joystick plugged
into the mouse joyport won't do anything useful.
Menus Explained
A = Right Amiga Key, C = Control Key, other keys such as
ESC
are named
Project
Pause? A-P Pause the game
New A-N Start a New game
About...
HELP
, AC-A
Screen To Front A-[ Move the SSW screen to the front
Screen To Back A-] Push the SSW screen to the back
Quit... A-Q Leave SSW
System
No Primaries A-0 No stars at all
One Primary Your ship orbits one star
Red Dwarf A-E
Yellow Star A-Y
Blue Giant A-B
Small Black Hole A-T
Medium Black Hole A-U
Large Black Hole A-I
Two Primaries Your ship orbits two stars
Red Dwarves A-O
Red / Yellow A-{
Red / Blue A-}
Red / Sml BH A-D
Red / Med BH A-F
Red / Lrg BH A-G
Yellow Stars A-H
Yellow / Blue A-J
Yellow / Sml BH A-K
Yellow / Med BH A-;
Yellow / Lrg BH A-:
Blue Giants A-'
Blue / Sml BH A-"
Blue / Med BH A-Z
Blue / Lrg BH A-X
Small Black Holes A-C
Sml BH / Med BH A-V
Sml BH / Lrg BH A-,
Medium Black Holes A-<
Med BH / Lrg BH A-.
Large Black Holes A->
Three Primaries Your ship orbits three stars
Red / Yel / Yel A-/
Yel / Blue / Blue A-?
Yel / SBH / SBH A-
DEL
Blue / MBH / MBH A-
ESC
BH: S / M / M AC-B
BH: M / L / L AC-G
Misc. Systems Other solar systems
Black Ellipse A-
BackSpace
Wide Red Binary AC-J
Wide Yellow Binary A-)
Wide Blue Binary A-`
Wide Sml BH Binary A-~
Wide Med BH Binary A-
Space
Wide Lrg BH Binary A-
Tab
Asteroid? A-A Add an asteroid to 0/1 star games
Random Game? A-R