17 Bit Software 2: Collection B

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__________________________________________ | | | BATTLE CARS II | | ============== | | | | Copyright (c) 1992 by David Jameson | |__________________________________________| Contents -------- 1 - Introduction 2 - Loading Instructions 3 - Driving The Car 4 - Weapons 5 - One Player Game 6 - Two Player Game 7 - Menu Options 8 - Installing NTSC Version of The Game 9 - Using The Serial Datalink 10 - Hints and Tips 11 - Credits 1. Introduction ------------ This game is the sequel to "Battle Cars", the public domain game released in 1991 (not to be confused with the Amos Licenseware game of the same name). For either one or two players, the game is played inside one of four 800m by 800m arenas with the two cars starting at opposite ends. The aim is simply to destroy your opponent's car, which is done by breaching the armour on one side of his (or her) car. To help you in your task, your car is equipped with a 30mm cannon, radar guided missiles and (in the two player game) a set of ram-plates. 2. Loading Instructions -------------------- To load the game, simply reset the computer and put the disk into the drive. You will then be asked if you want to view these instructions - just type 'Y' or 'N' followed by <RETURN>. The first thing to load will be an animation of a flight around the city where the arena is situated - just press the left mouse button or the joystick fire button to quit. Next, the game itself will load and you will be presented with the title screen. Press a key to go past this and then type in your name at the prompt, followed by <RETURN>. The next screen is the main menu where you can start a game or change the options such as track number and ramplates on/off. The game will run on half-meg machines but you won't get any music during the intro animation. Tests have been done on the A500+ and it works fine. Although I haven't been able to test it on an A2000 or A3000, I don't think there would be any problems. NOTE: This version of the game is PAL ONLY. If you have an NTSC (American) amiga, you will need to install the program as explained in section 8. 3. Driving The Car --------------- The game is played using the joystick - left and right turn left and right, forward and back accelerate and decelerate the car and *FIRE* fires fire your gun. The only other controls are <SPACE BAR> to fire a missile and <ESC> to quit from a game. The dashboard at the bottom of the screen displays the following information : At the left hand side is your speed in mph (with a minus sign if you are going backwards). In the middle are two gauges showing how much ammo your gun has left and how many missiles you have. Your armour and your opponent's armour are displayed at the right hand side - yours in red and his in blue. The car is also equipped with a radar which tracks the enemy car and shows its position on the screen; if your opponent is in front of you then a green targetting box will be displayed showing where he is, otherwise an arrow will be displayed telling you to either go left or right. When one of your missiles is locked on to the enemy car, a diamond will light up inside the green targetting box. The maximum speed is 100mph either backwards(!) or forwards. When you steer, the wheels turn gradually in the direction you want to turn i.e. to do a hard turn you need to keep pushing the joystick in one direction. The wheels will gradually straighten when you stop pushing the joystick sideways, so a slow turn rate can be achieved by alternately pushing the joystick sideways and then letting go again. A feature not present on most driving games is that when you push the joystick in the opposite direction to the direction you were steering, the wheels will immediately straighten, allowing very fast changes in direction. As with a real car, if you try to steer too hard the car will begin to skid. The amount of skid depends on the speed you are going at and also how hard you are turning, and generally tends to increase if you keep steering in the same direction. A small amount of skid is nothing to worry about but if you keep skidding your speed is likely to decrase, a fact which can be used to advantage when you want to stop quickly. Crashing into buildings or walls doesn't do your car any damage, but will decrease your speed. The outcome of a collision with another car depends on whether you are playing a one or two player game. In a one player game you cannot crash into the computer car but during a two player game the outcome is the same as crashing into a wall (unless ram-plates are on - see section 6 for more details). 4. Weapons ------- Your car has two weapons - a very big, powerful gun and also 3 radar guided missiles. To fire the gun simply hit the fire button whenever you have your opponent in your gunsights. You have a limited amount of ammo, but there should be enough to keep most people happy. Missiles do a lot more damage than guns, but you only have 3 of them so they need to be used wisely. The missiles automatically lock on to the enemy car and try to follow it around the course at a speed of 200mph, but they do have a limited turning circle which means that they will sometimes just crash into a wall or building. There is a proximity fuze built into the missiles so that they automatically explode when they are within 10 metres of the enemy car. Each missile has enough fuel to fly for 30 seconds which, although it might sound a bit low, is more than enough to enable it to fly right round the arena several times, and it is very rare for a missile to last more than about 10 seconds after being fired. An important thing to consider when using missiles is that they take time to "warm up" - for the first 1.5 seconds of flight (about 150 metres!), the missile will just fly straight ahead in the direction it was fired and will not explode even if it goes right past your opponent's car. This means that there is an effective minimum distance for missiles. The diamond shaped "lock on" indicator will only be displayed if you are outside this minimum range (and, obviously, only if you have some missiles left to fire!). However this indicator is only a guide - a missile can still be launced when there is no lock and could still hit the enemy car if the car is travelling away from you. Similarly, if the enemy car is coming straight towards you then you will need to be slightly further away than the minimum distance. In general, the further away you are from your enemy, the better chance you have of hitting him, but it also gives him a chance to try and outmanoeuvre your missile. In a two player game, if you hear a missile being fired then its time to panic! You have roughly 5 seconds (at most) to try and lose the missile by either driving behind a building or turning hard in an attempt to make the missile fly past. Using either approach does not mean that the missile actually loses you but it does greatly increase the chance of the missile hitting a wall or building and exploding harmlessly. Your car has armour on four sides - front, back, left and right. Each side has 48 points, one point being taken off by each hit by a gun, 10 points for a missile hit and 15 points if you are hit by the other player when he has ram-plates. Armour is taken off the side of the car which is hit except for the missiles, which take armour off all four sides of the car. 5. One Player Game --------------- In the one player game you play against a computer driven car. You can't crash into the computer car and it can't fire back at you. Sound a bit easy? Not when you realize that you have a time limit of three minutes in which to win, otherwise the computer automatically wins. The computer car drives a set course around each track ranging from a Sunday lada driver on track 1 to a Formula one driver on track 4. However, even on the harder tracks the computer car has no built-in advantage over your car i.e. it has the same turn rates, acceleration/deceleration etc. Both standard weapons are available in the one player game - missiles and machine gun - but it won't make any difference whether ram-plates are on or off because you simply pass through the drone car if you hit it. The one player game is started by selecting "one player game" from the main menu and can be quit simply by pressing <ESCAPE> during a game. 6. Two Player Game --------------- In a two player game you play head-to-head against another human player using two amigas connected by a null modem cable. Full details of connecting the computers together can be found in section 9. Assuming that you have connected both computers together and the game is loaded on both computers, the next step is to "connect" the two computers. This can be done by choosing the "two player options" from the main menu and then "make connection". The computer will then print "trying to connect". At this point "make connection" should be selected on the other computer and if all goes well the message "connection established" should appear on both computers. If not, press <ESCAPE> and refer to section 9. Once the two computers have been successfully connected, the computer which selected "make connection" first will be in control - any mouse movements or menu selections made on that machine will also be carried out on the other machine. Note that any options such as track number or ram-plates will be automatically be synchronized on both computers to the settings on the controlling computer. Selecting "break connection" from the "two player options" menu will break the connection between the two machines reverting to normal control on both machines. To actually start a two player game, select "return to main menu" and then "two player game". It is possible to start a two player game simply by choosing this option without first having selected "make connection"; the two machines will automatically connect before the game can start. However, it is better to make the connection before this point so that both players can see exactly what options are being used in the game. The two player game starts with both cars at opposite ends of the arena. Both players have guns and missiles as in the one player game but there is also the option of having "ram-plates". These are large pieces of metal bolted to the front of your car which make collisions a lot more interesting; each time you hit your opponent with the front of your car, the ram-plates will remove roughly one third of his armour (on the side of his car which is hit). During a head-on collision BOTH cars lose armour, so it is a good idea to avoid crashing head-on unless your opponent has a lot less front armour than you. Even when ram-plates are off during a two player game, collision detection between the two cars is still switched on, so crashing into the other car will have the same effect as hitting a wall. Pressing <ESCAPE> during a two player game will quit the game for both players meaning that nobody wins. There is no time limit in the two player game - you have as long as you like to try to blow each other off the face of the earth, although in practice games don't tend to last much longer than about 10 minutes at most and ram-plates reduce life expectancy even further. NOTE: If for some reason both machines hang up, it is sometimes possible to regain control by keeping your finger on the ESCAPE key while selecting "break connection" from the menu, or (during a game) by simply pressing <ESCAPE> a few times. 7. Menu Options ------------ All options are selected using the mouse - move to the option you want and then press the left mouse button to select it. Following is a brief summary of the menu options: Main menu: One player game: Begins a one player game against a computer opponent on the currently selected track. There is a time limit of 3 minutes and there are no collisions with the computer car. Two player game: Begins a two player game (two humans on two computers). If "make connection" has not been chosen at this point, the machine will automatically try to establish a connection. The two machines remain "connected" after the game is over. There is no time limit and it is possible to use "ram-plates" for enhanced violence and destruction. Two player options: Moves to the "two player options" menu (see below). Track: The currently selected track (1-4) on which either a one or two player game will be played. Select this option to change to another track. Exit: Quits to amigados. Two player options menu: Speed: Speed at which data is transferred between the two computers, either 153600 or 200000 baud. It is generally a good idea to have this set to the same speed on both computers before attempting "make connection". To change the speed, simply select this option, although there is really no reason why the speed should ever need to be changed from the default 200000 baud (see section 9 for more details). Ram-plates on/off: Toggles ram-plates on/off. Only affects two player games. Make connection: Attempts to connect two machines linked by a null modem cable. This option should be chosen on both computers. Break connection: Break the connection between the two machines formed by either "make connection" or "two player game" and allows both computers to operate independently again. Return to main menu: Does what it says. 8. Installing NTSC Version of The Game ----------------------------------- As it stands, the game will only run on a PAL machine. However, the NTSC (American) version has also been included on the disk. To get the NTSC version up and running you simply need to rename the file "s/NTSCstartup" to "s/startup-sequence". This can be done simply by putting the game disk in the internal drive and typing: df0:rename df0:s/NTSCstartup df0:s/startup-sequence Before doing this, however, it would be safer to make a copy of the original disk and then type the above command with the backup disk in the internal drive. The game itself is exactly the same as the PAL version except that the main display window has been slightly reduced in size. This just means that the 3D action is slightly more squashed in the vertical but not enough to detract from the game (and hardly noticeable, anyway). 9. Using The Serial Datalink ------------------------- In order to have a two player game you will need to have two amigas connected together with a serial null modem cable. This is a lead which is simply connected to the serial ports of the two computers to allow them to transfer data at high speed. An appropriate cable can be bought from any good computer store or can be easily made up yourself (see end of this section). One note of warning - a "modem" cable is not the same thing as a "null modem" cable and should never be used for connecting two computers together. To use the datalink, firstly switch off both computers and connect the null modem lead to the serial port of each computer. Load the game on both machines and choose "two player options" and then "make connection" and if all goes well a message should come up saying "connection established". Two speeds are used for the datalink - 200000 baud (default) and 153600 baud. These speeds may seem quite high but it makes the game run that little bit faster and, although you might find it hard to believe, the amiga is more than capable of transmitting and receiving at these speeds, even with a null modem cable of 3 or 4 metres in length. If there are any transmission errors during a game, the message "checksum error" will flash on the screen momentarily, although this is very unlikely to happen unless you have a VERY faulty connection. It is possible to reduce the speed from 200000 baud to 153600 baud, but this is unlikely to have any effect on checksum errors. If you've got a soldering iron and know how to use it, it is possible to make up your own null modem cable using two female 25-way D-connectors and some wire: 7 ____________________________________________________ 7 2 _______________________ ___________________________ 2 \/ 3 _______________________/\___________________________ 3 Connect pin 7 to pin 7, pin 2 to pin 3 and pin 3 to pin 2. Double check the connections before plugging it in as you could seriously damage your amiga by connecting a 12V signal directly to ground. N.B. For an A2000 or A3000, male connectors may be necessary - check your manual to make sure. 10. Hints And Tips -------------- 1 - In the one player game, you need to learn the course driven by each computer car. 2 - If the enemy car is travelling fast, it is better to cut him off rather than trying to follow at a distance - your gun is much less likely to hit a target which is far away. 3 - Learn to predict the effect skid has on your car so that you can turn very sharply at corners. 4 - Hitting walls slows you down. This can sometimes be an advantage and sometimes a disadvantage. Head on collisions cost more speed than glancing collisions. 5 - Use missiles wisely as you only have three of them. 11. Credits ------- The game design and coding was done by me, David Jameson, and the music was composed by Mark Gowdy (who also helped with certain programming tasks such as the blitter polygon routine). Thanks also to everyone who helped with the playtesting. Feel free to contact me at one of the following addresses: I can be reached at the following email addresses during term-time: ae553@yfn.ysu.edu (INTERNET) u9108009@[143.117.254.4] (INTERNET again, but not very reliable - use only if above address doesn't work) or by mail: David Jameson, 14 Glenview Avenue, Belfast, BT5 7LZ, Northern Ireland.