Nothing but Tetris/Nothing but Tetris.iso/amiga/gyves1/gyves.doc

Text File | 1992-09-03 | 9.4 KB | 207 lines

    GYVES v1.1 (formerly SNAP)
    By Abe Pralle Using AMOS Professional
    A SPARTAN DESIGN Production

    Documentation (Updated 7/14/93)

    *****

    Deep in the heart of an alien jungle, a warrior is chained to the
Prisoners' Rock.  The sun beats down upon him, sapping his vitality
unceasingly.  He knows he must soon muster the strength and force of will to
break his bonds, the gyves that chain him to the rock, or die a slow death
of dehydration and fevered dreams.
    You play the part of this stolid, otherworldly captive as he desperately
tries to focus his mental and physical energies enough to give him the
strength to escape.  You are faced with many aberrant fragments of yourself;
organize them, stack them, and connect them to make yourself stronger.
Because you alone have the perseverance and skill to set yourself free.

    *****

    GYVES is a falling block game.  We've all seen those before.  But THIS
game is no mere clone.
    It features:

    * Selectable pit dimensions.
    * User definable pieces (up to 14 in play at once).
    * Ten distinctly different levels, each with its own original background
      art and a visually unique block set.
    * Sound and music (music for 1 meg+ only).
    * A good-sized ending animation if you succeed under certain conditions.

    GYVES is freely distributable.  Give it to whomever you wish.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS----------------------------------------------

    Any Amiga, 512k.  1+ Meg is preferable.
    To install on hard drive or another boot disk:  copy the GYVES
directory to its desired location.  Ensure that you have the library
AMOS.LIBRARY in your boot disk's LIBS: directory.

QUICK START (for those who know what they're doing)--------------

    S toggles sound.  M toggles music.  Use a joystick or the numeric
keypad.  To see the ending animation, start each time from level one and
make it all the way past level 10.  Also, don't modify or edit the pieces.
SHIFT+<ESC> ends a current game.

LOADING THE GAME-------------------------------------------------

    You can click on the icon or set the CLI directory to the GYVES drawer
and type GYVES.  Memory is a bit tight on 512k, so don't have anything else
loaded if you don't have more memory than that.

HOW TO PLAY------------------------------------------------------

    Maneuver the falling blocks to form solid horizontal rows.  When you
fill a row it disappears.  Don't let the pit be filled to the top.  The
next piece to fall will be previewed in a small square to the right of the
playing pit.

CONTROLS---------------------------------------------------------

    p            Pause - any other key to resume.
    s            Toggles sound on and off.
    m            Toggles music on and off (1 meg).
    SHIFT+<ESC>  Ends the game and brings up the setup/preferences screen.
    <ESC>        In the preferences screen pressing this will end the game.

    For the actual game play you may use either the numeric keypad or a
joystick in port 2.
    If you don't have a numeric keypad on your machine, don't despair.
There is an alternate key set which relates to the keyboard controls given
below, and it is defined thus:  456 = l;' (the "L" and the two keys to its
right), 0 = SPACEBAR, ENTER = RETURN.

    KEYBOARD    JOYSTICK            FUNCTION

    4 and 6     left and right      Moves falling piece left or right.
    5           up                  Rotates piece counter-clockwise.
    0           down                Piece moves down without delay.
    ENTER       button              Piece moves down as far as it can go
                                    in one step.

    HELP        --                  Active only on the setup screen.  This
                                    restores the shapes of all the pieces
                                    to their default mode (in case you
                                    messed up badly editing them and want
                                    to start over).

    <LEFT-AMIGA>+a                  Switch Workbench to the front or back.


SETUP/PREFERENCES------------------------------------------------

    You will be in the setup screen when you first start the game.  You
don't HAVE to do anything except click with the left mouse button on
"START" or just press RETURN.  If you want to fine-tune the game to your
liking, read on.

    From top to bottom, the first two options are START and QUIT.  Their
functions should be fairly obvious.
    Next is WIDTH.  There are twelve little rectangles to the right of the
word.  The one that is bright red represents the width of the pit that
the blocks fall into.  You may choose, by clicking on the appropriate
rectangle, to set the width of the pit anywhere from four to twelve squares.
    DEPTH works vertically the same way width does horizontally.  Note: a
wide and deep pit is easier to complete than a narrow and shallow one.
    LEVEL indicates which level you will start on.  At the beginning of the
game, you can only start on level 1.  As you reach higher levels, you will
be able to start on them.  But it only works this way up to level 9.
Even if you make it to level 10, you have to start succeeding games on level
9 or lower.  WARNING:  You must start on level 1 and make it straight
through to the end of level 10 if you wish to see the ending animation.  If
the game is over before you finish level 10, move the LEVEL light back down
to the first position.
    To the right of the LEVEL selector is a toggle button that is marked
CLEAR AT END.  If it is lit (default) then you will start each level with
an empty pit.  If you turn it off then whatever clutter is in the pit at
the end of one level will be transferred to the succeeding level.  There is
one big advantage to have it on the latter setting (off):  you will receive
1,000 points for every horizontal line that is totally unoccupied at the end
of each level.
    FILL is how many lines will be filled with squares in random
locations at the start of each level.
    At the bottom center of the screen are two switches:  BASIC and
EXTENDED.  There are fourteen possible shapes.  If the BASIC switch is lit
you can play the game with the first seven.  If the EXTENDED switch is lit
you can play with the last seven.
    At the bottom left of the screen is the shape editor.  Cycle through
the available pieces by clicking on the corresponding arrow button.  Edit
the piece by clicking on the 4 x 4 grid.  You can only view and edit the
shape sets (BASIC and EXTENDED) that you have selected.  Again, pressing the
HELP key restores all pieces to their default shape.  WARNING: Do NOT edit
the pieces if you want to see the ending animation.  It will not be shown
if the pieces are different from their default shapes.
    Lastly, clicking in the lower right hand corner displays a blurb for
another game by the same author.

SCORE------------------------------------------------------------

    Every piece you set earns you 20 points.

    For the first line completed you get 200 points.  For each succeeding
line completed (at the same time) you get double the previous score +200
points.

    LINES COMPLETED         INCREASE
    AT ONCE                 IN SCORE

    1                          200
    2                          600
    3                        1,400
    4                        3,000

    If CLEAR AT END is off, then at the end of each level you get
1,000 points for each horizontal line that has no pieces anywhere across
it.

    If the pit fills all the way to the top, the game ends and your score
is reset to 0.

PARTING WORDS----------------------------------------------------

    If you enjoy this game, you may be interested in another game of mine
called The PuzzlePits 2.  As described in the info box in GYVES, it is a
brain game with a full featured level editor.  The full version is not
freely distributable, but you might be able to find the playable demo.
You can order the demo from me for $3, or you can buy the full version by
sending a mere $10 to:

    Abe Pralle
    PO Box 2059
    Chinle, AZ  86503
    USA

AUTHOR'S NOTE (Contains some rambling)---------------------------

    GYVES is the first game of mine to come out under the SPARTAN DESIGN
label (previous games are SWITCH and JEWELS, published by AMIGAWORLD
magazine on their tool chest).  SPARTAN DESIGN is a programming force of
one, namely myself.  I used to consider it a bit pretentious to have a
design label without a design team, but that was before I got a hard disk.
When I got a hard disk, I immediately wanted to transfer all of my games
that I've made into one directory.  The problem was naming the directory.
Should it be ABE'S GAMES?  No, that's stupid.  I considered that if I had
this problem, so, hopefully, would other people.  Human beings like to
organize things, especially on hard drives, so I decided I had better create
a means to organize my games with.  Thus, SPARTAN DESIGN was created.  It is
a name intended to reflect the quality of my games:  good stuff, but lacking
the bells and whistles of commercial games due to the necessarily small
amount of money and manpower invested.  And by "bells and whistles" I mean
things like rotoscoped and raytraced animation, digitized speech, manuals,
and even decent disk labels.
    To make up for this, I attempt to make my games as fun as possible, as
well as inexpensive.  When I'm creating a game, I fully intend to make it
the best, most playable, most fun game of its class.  I won't always
succeed, of course, but it's fun to try.
    Enjoy GYVES, and Happy Gaming!


    Abe Pralle
    July 14, 1993


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