KRYPTON EGG 1. INTRODUCTION. "Krypton Egg" is the ultimate break-out. It runs on P.C. under DOS. Some versions are Windows compatible. It is an easy and fun game to play. To play, hit on the command line: ke . 2. AIM OF THE GAME. You must demolish a bricks wall by hitting them with a ball. You must send back the ball with a racket that you move with the mouse. Some bricks when they are hit by the ball, release a spell (bonus or malus). These spells, when they are caught with the racket, influence some of the game parameters like the size, the speed, the consistency and the number of balls; the size, the possibilities of the racket,...etc. 3. DESCRIPTION. "Krypton Egg" includes 60 levels with increasing difficulty. Every five levels, you fight a horde of monsters, you must kill all of them to go to the next level. Every ten levels, you fight a big monster. When you kill it, you receive an access code. It allows you to restart from this point. The access code is given after you died on the bottom of the menu screen. This code must be noted for a further use. To restart your game, you must press the space bar key on the menu screen and enter your access code with the letters and the numeric pad. 3.1 The spells. "Krypton Egg" includes 28 spells . A same spell can have different powers, action times. And the best of... they are all compatible : you can have two different spells at the same time ...and cumulative : if you take two growers, you will be greater than if took one. The good spells. 1) Pumper: It pumps all your balls. (maximum 7 times) 2) Extender: It extends your racket. (maximum 13 times) 3) C.A.G.: Computer Aided Game: The computer plays for you for a while. 4) Reactor: You can fly and go everywhere on the screen. 5) Multiplier: All your next points will be multiplied by two. 6) Bier: It inverts the left & the right direction. 7) Glue: It pastes the balls on your racket. You can send them back when you want with the left mouse button. 8) Dynamite: It kills all monsters present on the screen. 9) Shield: Each time you catch it, you receive additional shields (from 1 to 3). The red star indicates that you have one shield, the blue star more than one. 10) Slow Ball: It slows down the balls speed. 11) Spectre: It gives you an help racket to send back the ball. 12) Power Ball: It transforms all balls in lead. You can now break everything. 13) Rapid Shoot: It enables you to send light shoot one by one to kill monsters or break bricks. 14) Rapid Multi Shoot: It enables you to send light shoot more than one at a time. 15) Double Shoot: It enables you to send shoot one by one. 16) Double Multi Shoot: It enables you to send shoot more than one at a time. 17) Bonus Racket: It gives you some extra lifes. 18) Bonus Ball: It gives you an extra ball, enabling you to play with more than one ball. 19) Canon Shoot: It enables you to send heavy shoot one by one. 20) Canon Multi Shoot: It enables you to send heavy shoot more than one at a time. The bad spells. 21) Speed Ball: Each time you catch it, your balls will go faster. 22) Cage: It immobilizes you for a while. 23) Interrogation point: A randomized spell which affects your ball or your racket. 24) Bulb: The general brightness will diminish, disturbing your sight. 25) Transpa Ball: The balls become green smoke and break nothing more for a while. 26) Deflater: It deflates all balls, shrinking them. 27) Shrinker: It shrinks the size of your racket. You can have a smaller racket than the starting one. 28) Knife: It takes off a shield one by one, then one life. ... 3. 2 The bricks. The game includes 256 different bricks, no way to describe each of them. So here are the 6 main categories of bricks. 1) The normal bricks: You must hit them from one to three times to break them. 2) The spell bricks: Those bricks content a spell. You can easily recognize them to the little blue star that they bear in their bottom right corner. You must sometimes hit them more than once to release the spell. 3) The teleporter bricks: Always present by two: they teleport the ball from each to other. 4) The death bricks: Each time you hit one of them, your racket will shrink. 5) The temporary bricks: Never broken, they only disappear for a while. Some of them must be hit till 7 times to disappear. 6) The indestructible bricks: Never broken and never disappearing. They can only be destroyed by a powerful weapon or a lead ball. 3. 3 The little monsters. Most of the monsters are not really dangerous. They take off one shield or deviate the ball but they can not kill you. Except the Picus Vulgarus, the most dangerous one. Its contact will cause an instant kill if you have no shield. You can recognize it by its red shimmering halo. 4. PRAGMATICAL EXPLANATIONS. 4. 1 Controls. You can play the game whether with a mouse, a joystick or the keyboard. You control the racket with the mouse. With the left mouse button (LMB) you throw the ball, either to start the game or when it is glued on the racket. You can shoot, when you got the good spell, with the right mouse button (RMB). A very important feature of the game is that you can give some effects in the ball by moving the racket when hitting the ball. It is not an easy technique but it is indispensable to master it to finish the game. 4. 2 Useful keys. On the Menu: SPACE to enter your access code to continue a previous game After having entered your code press ENTER to validate it. ESCAPE to quit the game. P to play S to go to the high-scores screen. O to go to the order screen. I to go to the informations screen. LMB + the mouse pointer in the upper left corner also quit the game. LMB + CTRL to decrease the mouse sensibility. RMB + CTRL to increase the mouse sensibility. In the Game: CONTROL KEY or LMB to release the ball when it is pasted on the racket. ALTERNATE KEY or RMB to send a shoot when you have caught the spell that enables it. ESCAPE to kill the racket. P to set or remove the pause. For both: S to switch the sound on or off. 4. 3 Horde attack. This kind of fight appears after level 5, 15, 25, 35, 45 and 55. You got a weapon and you send your shoots with the RMB. At the beginning, you own one shield and you can have more if you shoot them up. Each monster knife touching you takes one shield away. You die when you are touched by a knife without any shield more. You can only go to the next level after all the horde is killed. Do not forget that the monsters must be touched several times to die. If you want to skip this phase of the game, you must enter the code 'DADA' in the bottom of the menu screen. To reactivate it, enter the code '0000'. 4. 3 Monster attack. This kind of fight appears after level 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60. You got 2 weapons of different powers. You use the slow, single and powerful weapon with the LMB, and the rapid, double but light weapon with the RMB. The head of the monster is its weak point. To touch other parts of its body does not cause it any damage. At the bottom of the screen are shown on the left, the player's energy and on the right the monster's energy. Try to touch it the most at the beginning because it becomes more and more angry and dangerous. If you are awaiting the propitious time, you have no chance. Remember you have only one chance to beat it, the number of lifes you have makes no difference. If you want to skip this phase of the game, you must enter the code 'D0D0' in the bottom of the menu screen. To reactivate it, enter the code '0000'. 5. TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS. 5. 1 The Animation. The animation speed is 70 frames per second. It is one of the only game offering 70 different images per second. And that whether you are under DOS or Windows. That is not so much important for the technique itself but it provides to the player a greater playability. For instance, it offers a real fluidity of the objects in motion as a smoother and more manageable mouse. 5. 2 The Sound. The game includes digital musics and background noises (8 bits) on SoundBlaster or compatible cards. We are sorry but we actually don't manage the GUS Sound card. You can also have sound on the PC internal speaker if you run the game with the appropriate switch. 5. 3 The Switches of the game. On the command line, you can enter some switches. Write the switche(s) after the executable name. List of useful switches: -f to enable a french keyboard ("azerty"). -k to enable the sound speaker. -s to remove the sound card test. -t to remove the timer manager. Example to run Krypton Egg with the sound of the PC Speaker enabled: > ke -k 6. MINIMUM EQUIPMENT. 1) An IBM or compatible PC with a 386 processor. 2) A VGA video card 8 bits with 256 kilobytes. 3) 1,6 megabytes of free space on the hard disk. 4) 2 megabytes of memory. __________