17 Bit Software 2: Collection B

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Text File | 1992-10-27 | 13.3 KB | 339 lines

============================================================================= ### ##### ### ## ## #### ## ## # ## ## ## ## ## ## ## # ## ## # # # ## ##### # ## ## # # # ### ## ## # ## ## # # # ## ## ## # ## ## # # ## ## ## # ### # # #### ATOMS (c) 1992 Halibut Software ============================================================================= 1. Biased opinion ----------------- Congratulations ! You now have in your possession one of THE best Amiga PD games ever. At least, thats what we think. 2. Warning ---------- There will be a lot of slagging of ST's in this document. Because they are crap. And dead. Dead and crap. See that dead and crap thing ? Thats an ST, that is. 3. What is Atoms anyway ? ------------------------- Atoms is a game for you Amiga. No doubt about that. Its one of those "social games" that get better as more players join in. Its also one of those games where you get to stomp on your best friends in the name of friendly competetion. Sounds good eh? 4. History of Atoms ------------------- Atoms is an Amiga-ised version of an ST (@£&^$^!) PD game that we found to be totally addictive, but lacking something in the presentation department. Probably to something to do with the "hardware" it had to run on... ST-Atoms was itself a version of a *very* old game called "Critical Mass" that was around as a type-in listing for various 8-bits at one time or other. I think there was even a Vic-20 version ! We discovered ST-Atoms lurking on an unlabelled 3.5" floppy one night while killing time playing with an ST (sorry, but we were ***bored***). Imagine our surprise when we found an ST something that was actually halfway decent ! Many a happy hour was passed playing this "Atoms" thing to death, gleefully wiping each other out with a well placed left button click. But then a slight problem arose. The bloke (Mark) that owned the ST was doing a degree and had to go away for a year. Working for BR he claims... No-one else had an ST (at least, no-one we would speak to. I mean - would *you* speak to an ST owner ?) so no-one could play Atoms. Bummer or what ? Then someone had a great idea - there were a fair few Amigas about, so why not convert Atoms to this much superior platform ? Inspired suggestion ! Keep the original addictive gameplay but add the nice graphics, sampled sound and loads of options that the ST version lacked. And so it was that Halibut Software was born, with the sole intention of recreating Atoms on the Amiga. I (Girv) was drafted in for the complicated bits that no-one else could do, Dave and Judith drew the new graphics and Cath/Gav assisted (ahem) in the best way they could. Gav stayed out of the way, and Cath came up with the right RGB values for a nice purple colour. Mark cleared off and worked for BR. The fruits of our labours are in your possession right now! 5. All very nice, but what do I do ? ------------------------------------ First thing is to grab up to 5 friends to help you play. Atoms is crap when played by yourself, mainly because there is no 1-player option! What do you mean "I dont have that many friends"... ? Playing the game is easy. Winning is the difficult part. You win by wiping out all the other players' atoms before they do it to you. Players take turns to place an atom of their colour on the playing grid. Move the cursor using the mouse and place an atom by clicking the left mouse button. You may only place an atom in an empty grid square or in a square that already contains atoms of your colour. When too many atoms get together in a single square the fun begins! When this happens the square will overload and the atoms contained therein will be blown outwards to the surrounding squares, possibly overloading them and causing them to explode also! So you see, huge chain reactions can be set up that go on for ages ! When atoms a blasted into surrounding squares, any atoms in these squares will change to the colour of the current player. This is how you destroy other players - you cause explosions that fling your atoms into their squares so converting their atoms into more of yours. A player with no atoms is a dead player. Remember this. Corner squares explode when more than 1 atom is placed in them, edge squares can hold 2 atoms before exploding and all other squares can hold 3. Play continues until only one player is left. Said player is then declared, surprise surprise (the unexpected hits you between the eyes), the winner of that game. 6. Hmm. Anything else I should know ? ------------------------------------- There are loads of play options. Well, a few anyway... You can choose between an empty initial grid and a quickstart option that gives players a random number of randomly placed atoms at the start of each game. This was included because I thought it took too long for a game to "get going" if the grid was empty. Indestructable squares: these appear as filled in squares. You may not place atoms on them and any atoms that get blasted into them will be lost. I dont like these very much - they cut down on chain reactions! Sound on/off is pretty self explanatory I think... There are also several game types: single, continual, fixed length and "first to...": "Single" means just a single game. No shock there. "Continual" means as many single games as you like (or can stomach), with a record kept of how many games each player has won. "Fixed Length" is just like continual, except that only a certain number of games is played. Final scores (number of games won) are displayed after all games have been played. "First to..." is a series of single games that finishes when one player wins a certain number of games. All these options (and more!) are controlled with standard Amiga pull down menus. Read up on your Workbench manuals if you dont know what these are or how to use them (!!!!). Clue: use the right mouse button... 7. Great! How do I start Atoms ? -------------------------------- Dead easy. This disk *should* autoboot and display a menu with an option of loading Atoms. Failing that, double click on the Atoms icon from workbench or type "Atoms" at a CLI/Shell prompt. Think you can handle that ? Atoms should work on just about ANY Amiga. It doesnt need huge amounts of RAM, terabyte floptical drives, 88090 processors, 68887 maths copros, Kickstart 8.24 etc. etc. What it *does* need is the file "AtomsData" to be in the same directory as the main program. If the program cannot find this file it will display a file requester and ask *you* to find it. This should not happen. Ever. If it does, contact us at the address later on in this document and we'll try to sort you out. No problem :) 8. Legal crap ------------- Not too much of this, you'll be pleased to hear ! Atoms is public domain, but its program code, data and this document are (c) copyright 1992 Halibut Software and may not be changed in any way without our express permission. "Packing" or "archiving" Atoms does not count as altering the files. Atoms may not be distributed commercially by itself or as part of a larger package. Non-commercial distribution is most welcome, but we must insist that the following rules are observed by any distributor: Rule 1 ------ The files "Atoms", "AtomsData" and "Atoms.doc" must be included unaltered with any distribution. Rule 2 ------ No money is paid for the distribution, except for "reasonable copying charges". We leave it to your conscience to decide whether to charge anything at all. Keep PD free sez me... Rule 3 ------ There is *NO* rule 3 Apart from that, Atoms may be freely spread about the cosmos. Bring a little happiness to everyone, whydontcha ? 9. Notes for distributors ------------------------- You may distribute Atoms in any way you see fit, so long as the rules outlined in (8) are followed. This includes distribution on compilation disks, BBSs, FTP sites and so on. Anything really. A few snippets of info that may come in useful... Atoms should be started by executing the "Atoms" file from WB or CLI/Shell. The file "AtomsData" is read by the program and should be in the current directory when "Atoms" is executed. If the file is not found in the current directory the logical ATOMS: and a subdirectory "atoms/" will be searched for and, if found, the program will look there for "AtomsData". I suggest you distribute Atoms on a disk called "ATOMS". If you are placing the game in a compilation, you should create a subdirectory off the root directory called "Atoms", and place the files "Atoms" and "AtomsData" in it. If you have any queries or problems please contact us at the address given at the end of this document and we'll try to sort you out. 10. The how-to-contact-us bit ----------------------------- If you feel you simply *must* contact us please write to the following address, enclosing a stamped, self addressed envelope if you expect a reply - we're all poor students here! Contact us for anything - problems, bug reports (aggghhh!), ideas, money ;), ST hate mail, parties, tales of alchoholic excess (where do I sign ?) or just a general old chinwag at... 25 Moorgate Street, Belfast BT5 5BZ, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. And REMEMBER YOUR SSAE!!!!!!!!! Quite important, that part. I would be *especially* interested in anyone claiming to have come up with a strategy for winning games of Atoms (could be useful for Atoms+...) 11. Credits, greetings and other stuff. --------------------------------------- Atoms was developed entirely on A500s using GFA-BASIC 3.51 (with compiler) and DPaint III. Time between inital meeting and first playable demo was about 2 days, thanx to a late night/early morning session by me (Girv). Credits as follows: All code and docs, plus some graphic fiddling to convert between ideal and practical ie: most of the hard work : John Girvin (Girv [me!]) Nice, luvly, wonderful and generally good graphics : Judith Irwin Ideas, DPaint 3 (use of), another A500, all the graphics not done by Judith and persuading me to buy an A500 and not an STE : David "Dave" Ewing RGB values for a nice purple : Catherine "C4D" Thompson Deep thoughts on the (ahem) "direction" of the project : Gavin Beattie (Gav) Beta testing and ideas for improvements : Norwin "Norwin" Simms Geoff "Geoff" Elliott Interruptions : My little brothers Queens University of Belfast Sleep I would also like to extend my personal thanx to the following entities, without whom Atoms would not have been possible (or at least a lot less fun/more difficult). So thanx-a-bundle to... Commodore-Amiga : for making the Amiga so good Atari : for making the ST so crap so ST-Atoms would inspire us to make something great The Coca-Cola company : for caffiene laden drinks to fuel late night coding sessions! Various local bars (Limelight, Eglantine Inn QUBSU and more) : stress-relieving Guinness, Scrumpy Jack and Smirnoff :*) Various local record shops : for all those *loud* CDs And now the final bit. Greetings to people that had nothing to do with Atoms but deserve a mention. So "hows-it-going"'s go out to... Git (Graeme "not Graham" Wilson) - long haired molester of all things cute and fluffy (his words) Well, thats what you get for living in Comber. Mad mosher too. Ah well, no accounting for taste ;) Antarian (Mark "involuntary protein spill" Gowdy) - a complete drunkard of the highest order. And a cyclist too. No hope... Crusher (Bruce) - be *nice* to this one... Venger (Dave), Dougall and everyone else on the VR Amiga Conference (telnet 128.252.136.100 3019) - Solid dudes. 12. A final swipette -------------------- Did I mention ST's are crap ? I did ? Oh, that's alright then then. 13. The end bit --------------- Thats all. No more. The end.