ISV Strong Games/ISV_STRONG_GAMES.iso/shootemup/swarm/!Swarm/!Help

Text File | 1998-03-22 | 8KB | 175 lines

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                                 release 1.05a

Introduction
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Way back in 1987, Broderbund Software released a game called Crystal
Quest which was rather fun to play. The idea was to move your ship round
the screen with the mouse, pick up crystals, zap baddies and generally
have a groovy time. And of course there were one or two silly sound
effects.

Nearly ten years later, there's a new version called Swarm. Written in
about eight months for RISC OS, it's a little flashier than the
black+white Mac version I played :-) You'll find parallax backdrops,
particles flying everywhere, smoother animation, bonuses and a few other
hidden features. I'd say that Swarm is a little bit tougher than Crystal
Quest, but you'll find more bonuses available in Swarm.

Setting up
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Swarm now needs a 4Mb machine (at least) to run on-- this is due to the way
it loads all its resouces into memory to avoid any messy disc access during
gameplay.

Playing
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Use the mouse to move the lil' jet-packer around, and click the
left-hand button to shoot. Hold it down and let go for a spray of shots;
the longer you hold the button, the larger the spray. Click the
right-hand button for a bomb, which will destroy damned near everything
on the screen. You start with four bombs, but there are more to pick up.
As you shoot aliens, little yellow cylinders will fly out. Pick them up;
they can either:

  • award an extra life
  • award an extra bomb
  • destroy all the aliens on the screen (phew!)
  • remove all the mines

Big crystals occasionally pop out - DON'T SHOOT THEM! They're worth a
lot of points if you can catch them. Lots of little surprises happen on
later levels just to keep you on your toes. Oh, and don't hang around
just to pick up bonuses at the end of each level - it's not big, it's
not hard, it's not clever. Just don't do it :-)

If you want keyboard control, you should press space to start the game,
and then you can use these keys to control the character:

  Z ....... left    @ ....... up
  X ....... right    ? ....... down
  Return .. fire    Space ... bomb

But keyboard control is *not* recommended, since you can't get out of
tight situations by pressing the keys harder.

You can also use a joystick; if your stick doesn't have two fire buttons, you
can press Space to use a bomb.  Both analogue and digital sticks are
supported, but digital ones come with the same caveat as the keyboard
controls.

To succeed, you'll need to keep moving and firing all the time. If
you're surrounded by aliens, use a bomb and you should pick up loads of
tokens very easily. Getting stuck in one of the corners is a bad idea;
the more intelligent aliens will nail you!

Tab freezes the game, escape aborts the current game, and Ctrl+Escape
will return you to the desktop.

Hackery and other black magic
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There are several options in the !Run file of the game, where you can turn
off the backdrop, change the speed of the craft, and select a special fast
frame rate option (turned on by default). This ensures a faster frame
rate at the expense of a slightly flickery screen. Edit the last line
!Run file to suit. ARM2 owners should have the -nobackdrop and
-noflicker options set, but the game still won't work too well. It
should manage okay on anything else, but you *will* get a substantial
speed increase from turning off the backdrop. Owners of ARM700 cards can
gloat, since the game runs at a fairly steady 50fps :-) Please remember
this game does need a bit of speed, and 8MHz processors just can't keep
up! I developed this game initially on a 4mb A3000 with a 35MHz ARM3, so
the speed and memory requirements were based on this.

Note also that the game should be run from a read/write filing system so that
it can save the hi-scores.

Problems
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I hope I've now ironed out any serious (crashing) problems, but if you
find any, please let me know and I can probably fix it very quickly.
The only thing I can think of is that the collision detection is a bit
dodgy around the generators, but it does err in the player's favour.

Owners of RISC PCs should note that the mode module included with the
game will drive the monitor at 100Hz, which is above Acorn's recommended
maximum of 90Hz (for the AKF60 anyway). If you are not happy with this,
you should change the appropriate line in the !Run file to load the 90Hz
mode module. This one has a distorted display, which isn't nearly as
much fun.

If you get an error while the game is loading, it is almost certainly
due to memory troubles, so try starting your machine from a cold start
(i.e. press Ctrl+Break, then Shift+Break immediately afterwards and hold
down shift) and then running !Swarm again.

History
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The version history runs like this:

1.00    12/02/96    - Version with evil bug in - never released.
1.01    17/02/96    - Original Acorn User March '96 release.
1.02    06/04/96    - Bug fixes, and a few cosmetic tweaks.
1.03    14/04/96    - Keyboard control added.
            - Changed compression system so that the game
              fits onto a signle 800K floppy.
1.04    04/09/97    - Source recovered from trashed hard disc
            - Loads all resources into memory now
1.05    27/02/98    - Supports analogue and digital joysticks
1.05a    22/03/98    - Supports analogue and digital joysticks
               a little more sanely.

License
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Swarm is FREEWARE. This means that you can distribute the game without paying
the author (me) any money, as long as you do not charge for distribution,
alter any of the files in any way, or make any profit on the game's use.

Specifically, if you are a PD library other than the Datafile, you should
contact me for a recent release of the game before distributing it any
further. Also, ALL shareware/freeware CD compilers should do the same,
mentioning no companies in particular.

Thanks to...
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• Robin Jubber for drawing nearly all the sprites, suggesting a new name,
  supplying lots of sound effects and putting in lots of hard work.
• Andy Southgate for writing GameSuite, which Swarm relies on heavily!
• Philip Banks for writing DataVox and giving me permission to use it.
• Straylight for letting me use Dynamite with the game; lurvley memory
  management.
• Daniel Oram for letting me use CAIFS2 to compress this game. CAIFS2 is
  a read/write image filing system like !ArcFSr/w, but it is shareware and
  achieves better compression. Highly recommended.
• Andrew Clover for letting me use WimpSWIVe with the game for all the
  hackery in the installation program.
• Joe Kelleher, James Staples, Michael Chappell, Pat Clough, Richard Barlow,
  Alex Young and others for testing the game, pointing out some horrid bugs
  and suggesting improvements.
• Berty for telling me all about frame-rate control. But he runs puppys
  over, he does.
• Martin Dunmore for saying 'not bad for a steaming pile, is it?' when I
  mentioned AU were going to publish it.
• My sister Hannah for drawing a truly lovely star - I am eternally indebted.
• David Coleman + David Dade for running Arcade BBS, providing me with
  access to the c.s.a. newsgroups, an email address and the odd night out,
  without which this game would never have got this far.
• Stuart Tyrell for lending me the relevant joystick interfaces and helping me
  iron the joystick code out properly.

Me
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If you have any suggestions for improvements to the game, or have any bugs to
report, please contact me as soon as you can. I'll be happy to send out
fixes if you find problems.

by post:  Matthew Bloch, 5 Brookside, Headington, Oxford, OX3 7PJ, England.
by email: [e-mail]

Have fun,

Matthew