Welcome to the Absolute Zero Demo CD-ROM! You are about to experience an alpha version of the game, but we think you'll find it entertaining. In it, you'll move through the Europan Mining Consortium's Virtual Tunnel interface, fly around the colony on Europa, see mining operations, the floating city arcologies, and even experience battle with the aliens.
If your machine has 8MB RAM, turn on your Virtual Memory so the hard disk can be accessed during the game. If you have more than 8MB RAM, then no special preparations are necessary.
After installing the demo from the CD to your hard drive, you should have two folders: "AZ Game Demo Δí" and "AZ Interface Demo Δí". Inside each folder, you will find a program with the same name as its folder. Double-click on that item to launch it.
The stick will move the entire turret as you move it. Control is like in an airplane, where pulling back on the stick angles the turret up, and pushing forward angles it down. Button 1 (the trigger) will fire the selected weapon while Button 2 will cycle through your available weapons.
Keyboard
-Turret Movement-
Pitch Up Down Arrow
Pitch Down Up Arrow
Rotate Left Left Arrow
Rotate Right Right Arrow
-Weapon Systems-
Select Next Weapon Delete
Fire Weapon Spacebar
Mouse
Moving the mouse will swing the turret up, down, or sideways, matching the movement of the mouse. Clicking the mouse button will fire your weapon.
Europa City, the largest arcology on Jupiter's moon Europa, was destroyed recently by aliens who have been living under the moon's icy surface. The resulting explosion of the city leveled 30 square kilometers of the moon's surface. Areas on the outskirts of the explosion were pounded by the massive shockwave.
Playing the game:
You play a newly arriving SysDef Commander coming to replace the resident commander, Toshiro Watanabe. When you were arriving in orbit, the aliens erupted from the moon's interior, thus putting you on uncertain footing and in a hostile situation. You meet with a resident maglock pilot who plans to take you on an inspection tour of Europa. You will be in a controllable turret on a Maglock Cargo Carrier. The Maglock has been refitted with weapons to better defend itself in case of alien attack. Control with a joystick is simple, push the stick left to rotate the weapons platform left, and push right to rotate it right. The tricky part is that up and down on the stick act like an aircraft, where pulling down on the stick will angle the turret up, and pushing forward will angle the turret down. Your viewing angle up and down is restricted to about 60 degrees from horizontal. You will be looking out of the helmet of a Vac-Suit, with your view of the world out the faceplate. Two monitors below the faceplate are used for displaying various system status screens and incoming information, but are not implemented in the demo.
You have the ability to switch between three weapons while in the turret, the Laserlance, Fusion Cannon and the Gatling Blaster. You can do this by using the "Delete" key. The Blaster and Cannon generate heat and require a cool-down period when it reaches it's tolerance level of100%. The two numbers next to the weapon show the ammo count and heat level. The ammo count is not used in the demo, so you only have to worry about heat.
Targets will appear on your Top-Down radar (the circular radar on the right). The red blips near the top of the radar are in front of you, while those near the bottom are behind you. Blue blips are "friendlies", so you won't want to shoot at them. Get a target in front of you, and use the Bore Sight to locate them. The nearer to the center of the radar, the closer the target is to you. Line the sight up on the target and fire. The Bore Sight Radar is the Box to the left, and shows targets that are directly ahead of you. To center these targets onto the crosshairs, bring the diamonds to the center of the box. The selected target should be in the center of your screen. The Laserlance needs very little lead time, so try to advance the sight just in front of the target. The Gatling Blaster has slower projectiles, so you will need to lead moving targets by an inch or two, depending on the alien's distance and speed. The Gatling Blaster also fires in a spiral pattern because of it's barrel configuration, so you may have to adjust for that. The Fusion Cannon fires balls of super-heated Plasma, which are slow but do devastating damage. You will need to lead these on moving targets as well.
Listen to your pilot as he will point out areas of interest. You'll start out over friendly territory, and they don't want you firing at the valuable equipment, but there will be targets soon enough.
A: You're not driving it. Greg (your pilot) is. Don't worry. You'll drive, fly and move your way through the world in a lot of different scenarios in the real game. But, in the demo, you just man the weapons.
Q: How do I get my turret to face forward?
A: Just move the turret sideways until the landscape is moving toward you. In the final game, you'll see "ghost line" computer imaging of the vehicle you're in so you'll have easy referenceas to which way the vehicle is moving.
Q: Why does the Gatling Blaster fire slower sometimes?
A: It's overheating. Watch the numbers on the bottom of the screen and wait for it to cool down to 50% or so. When it does, you'll be able to volley fire again.
Q: Why can't I see my vehicle?
A: Your computer is showing you a virtual display of the world in your VR helmet. This eliminates "blind spots" in your vision by not drawing the vehicle you're in. However, since the inception of this feature, the company has found that some pilots are acrophobic, so the "ghost line" feature (not yet implemented in this demo), has been implemented to give pilots a frame of reference.
Q: How do I exit the game?
A: Hit ‚åò-Q, or hit Esc and ‚åò-Q, or hit Esc and pull down the File menu to the Quit command.
Q: How do I exit the interface?
A: Click on the small picture in the bottom-right side of the screen.
