ISV Strong Games

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Text File | 1998-06-04 | 13KB | 361 lines

S t a r B l a s t e r ========================= NOTE: This program will give a nasty message on exit if you run it from a read-only filesystem. This is safely ignored, but your highscores will not be saved if you do. We now return you to your regular !Help file. important information follows but --------------------------------- you can skip this next bit -------------------------- if you like ----------- Legal information ================== In short -------- Anyone found trying to pass this off as their own work will be found and then revoked. This is your only warning. This !Help file, its associated software, its documentation, sprites, code and all related materials are hereby governed by your license agreement, until the license agreement is repealed by written permission from KGS Computer Services or the software and its related items are destroyed in their entirety with any and all copies thereof. Failure to comply with these terms constitutes a breach of your licensing agreement and will be punished to the maximum extent possible under your country's law. Your license agreement should have been supplied to you by your software vendor or other supplier. If it was not, contact the organisation that provided you with this copy of the software and ask for it immediately. If they are unable to provide you with further information or you suspect that you have been supplied with a pirated or otherwise incomplete copy of the Software, contact KGS Computer Services immediately, using the contact information at the end of this file. Copyright notice ================= © KGS Computer Services 1995 , 1996 , 1998 ============================================================================= ##### # #### # ### #### # #### ##### # ### # ### # #### # ## # # # # # # #### # # ## # ### # ##### # #### # ###### ### # #### # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ##### ## ##### # #### ## ###### ##### ## #### # v1 ============================================================================= Which is? --------- Star Blaster is a game for two, three or four players. Who wrote it? ------------- It was written by Kira L. Brown who was whined at by Gavin I. Jenkins until it was playable. 87.6 % of the code was written by Kira L. Brown. The loading screen fader was written by Gavin I. Jenkins, and the ICE Manager module was written by Carl Declerck. The sound samples were modulised with the aid of !SoundCon by Richard Hudson. A chunk of ARM code used to speed things along a bit was written by Jan Vlietinck. Can I run it? ------------- Short answer: Yes. In detail: It should run on any Acorn computer with RISC OS 3 or above. It may run on RISC OS 2 with a bit of luck; but it has not been tested in this way. It is quite (although not very) well behaved, so it might conceivably work in a modified version on BBC micro series machines, although it would need a lot of redoing. If you want to have a go, contact us! The screen tends to flicker a bit on faster machines. This is due to naughty modules. The serial option will require the use of a properly wired null-modem cable (and two machines!) and the joystick option requires the use of at least one Acorn compatible joystick port (and presumably a joystick or two). The serial option may not work between two machines of wildly differing speeds (or at all!). This game will be hard to play on mono monitors, and damn near impossible on the A4. However it should be okay with a decent TFT screen. This program requires the fonts Trinity.Medium and Corpus.Medium, and v2 or above of the Font manager. These are in ROM on RISC OS 3. You must unplug your modem while you play this game, or it'll try to play in linkup mode. It *won't* run on machines with neither normal nor VGA modes available. It *won't* run on Arthur, although it could port. It *won't* run on Master, BBC, Electron or ATOM computers. It *won't* run on machines that aren't plugged in. The joystick option *won't* work if the joysticks are broken (hm, my problem) How do I play it? ----------------- Read on! The Controls ============ Pause : P End match : ~ (that's the one directly below Esc ) Exit game : Esc (that's the one directly above ~ ) Sound off : F1 Sound on : F2 Slow down : F3 Full speed: F4 Players One and Two ------------------- Player 1: Red Rotate anticlockwise: Z Rotate clockwise: X Thrust : C Fire torpedo : F Engage Zippy drive : G Player 2: Green Rotate anticlockwise: Keypad 1 Rotate clockwise: Keypad 2 Thrust : Keypad 6 Fire torpedo : Keypad + Engage Zippy drive : Keypad 3 Players Three and Four (Blue and Yellow) ---------------------- If you are playing via a serial link then you and your local friend will be players three and four to the remote players, and the remote players will appear as players three and four to you and your local friend. If your third and fourth players are attached to joysticks on the local machine, then the controls are as follows: Player 3: yellow: right hand port (from back of machine) Player 4: blue: left hand port (from back of machine) Rotate anticlockwise: Left Rotate clockwise: Right Thrust : Backwards Fire torpedo : Fire Engage Zippy drive : Forwards If you have, say, an A3010 and a RiscPC then you would be better running the whole game on the RiscPC but using the A3010's joystick ports. To do this, run the SerialJoy program. The controls are as above. Nothing will appear on the A3010 screen, but the joystick ports should now be connected across to the other machine. The Scenario ============ It is the year 2768 and mankind has colonised much of the galaxy, meeting many varied races as it went. Mankind was left a race of natural diplomats and skilled technicians after the Great Mistake, and has proved popular with other races. Hence war is dead and there is peace and harmony in the galaxy. There was only one problem with this. Mankind was bored. Searching for something to do in the quiet Saturday afternoons, the clever mind of Clifford J. Threlbarg, a neutronium miner in the Plantagenet system, fell upon the idea of what later became Star Blaster. Why the game became so popular is something of a mystery. Many believe it is evidence of a greater force at work in the Universe, and many others say, yes, it's the Galactic Sports Commission. However, the fact remains that two skilled opponents playing Star Blaster can create one of the most impressive sights seen by living eyes, and people like to watch explosions. Out in the Plantegenet system, and many others like it, small work pods buzz around, using tiny quantities of a substance called muonium to mine the more expensive substance called neutronium, left behind when small stars fizzle out. Neutronium is incredibly dense and systems like Plantagenet have twisted whirlpool-like gravity fields. The tiny pellets of muonium can be whipped around unpredictably by these fields. For this reason, and for other reasons, they have a finite lifetime after which they explode of their own accord. On board the workpod, many safety interlocks prevent the incredibly expensive workpods from being sucked into the spheres of neutronium and being crushed, or from straying outside the work area and becoming lost in space. If one of these things looks to be happening, the pod computer will execute a special spatial transform and reverse the movement vectors, the upshot of which is that it will bounce. If a muonium pellet is about to collide with a pod, the pod will be instantly dematerialised and rematerialised somewhere else. The same will happen if the pod is caught within an explosion. This is the arena for the game. Two players, each in their respective pods, are placed into an area of a neutronium system. They have two minutes to collect as many of the yellow tokens as they can and to shoot each other as much as possible. The tokens can be created by ramming a sphere, and got at by shooting it. After two minutes, a white locus of unimaginable energy- a wormhole- appears, to transport the players to the next area. Its extreme gravitational effects drag you- and the torpedoes- in. You must guide your ship safely into it to proceed to the next level. If it collapses before you enter it, you will have to wait for the next one! Players who get through the wormhole early will be awarded a bonus proportional to time. Tokens have many effects, one of the most useful of which is the shield. A cyan spherical forcefield is projected around the pod. This protects the ship (and its occupant!) from the effects of explosions. It gradually shrinks and turns blue just before it collapses, as the power from the token runs out. To stop it collapsing, pick up another token. It may or may not contain a Cyan energy packet to replenish the field generators. Also useful is the Zippy continuum distortion drive. When this is activated, the ship moves at a greatly increased rate. It will not function until a token containing Zippy field coils has been picked up, but will not dissipate until the end of the game. If too much Cyan energy is picked up, the field generators will overload and the shields will collapse. You'll have to pick up some more tokens to get it back. Some tokens contain upgrades to the guidance and control software (through which you view the battlefield). Unfortunately the Threlbarg Corporation's software division was bought by Microsoft (now run by Bill Gates 24th) and picking up such a token will cause your ship to explode. The game is finished when the players get bored, or when an agreed limit is reached. Press <Esc> to exit the game. Press ~ to end a match. Hints and Tips -------------- 1) Try to fire torpedoes into a planet your opponent will be near soon. 2) Create new tokens by colliding with a planet. 3) Collect these tokens by shooting the planet until it gets smaller. Then fly at them. 4) Kill your opponent immediately a wormhole appears. They'll probably miss the wormhole and have to wait two minutes for the next one, while you rack up points. 5) Don't fire off too many torpedoes, it slows things down and makes you clumsy. It's also dangerous because when the wormhole appears they all really *go* for it! 6) Set a limit that's quite high or the games don't last long. 7) Never lose your temper and hit your computer. Hit your opponent, but don't hit your computer. (Opponents are cheap and repair themselves but computers are not and require a workshop.) 8) Don't forget to breathe while you're playing or you'll black out and lose control of your ship. Similarly don't play for more than a week at a time or you will die from lack of sleep. 9) Where two planets overlap is a cave. You can enter the planet here (and excavate any tokens) but mind that the planets don't get shot. Don't pick up too many tokens or your ship will explode (see above) 10) If too many torpedoes are flying around they tend to all go off in one place (this is due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle- there's a bug [read 'feature'] somewhere but I'm uncertain as to it's position) Watch it! 11) You ain't seen me, right? 12) Don't use MSN. 13) Don't attempt to decipher the !RunImage. Read the !Source file instead. (Ignorance of this could cause death / and or massive brain failure!) Future developments =================== Updated versions will be available soon. To obtain them you must register this software. Registration ============ Simply contact KGS with the details of where you got this !Help file. Payment to the values below should be enclosed. Item Price ---- ----- Full latest version of Star Blaster, full manual, tech. support. £ 8.00 Ditto plus 1 year of updates £10.00 Latest demo version Disc or £ 2.00 Serial link up cable £10.00 Joystick interface (single analogue joystick) £20.00 Joystick £20.00 Latest version of Progger ( application/directory organiser ) £10.00 Latest version of Albert ( gravity simulator ) £5.00 Latest version of Textleytel ( teletext system ) £call Other stuff £cheap Cheques should be made payable to Kieran L. Brown. Contact information -------------------- Contact us if you don't think your copy is all there! It's best to contact us via electronic means: kbrown@neutralino.demon.co.uk gets you straight to the author, as does +44 1792 515941. Check out http://www.neutralino.demon.co.uk/ for fairly frequent updates as well as other funky stuff. A message to RISC OS 2 users ============================ Upgrading to RISC OS 3 is quite cheap these days, you know.