You may use any keys to control your ship, except the reserved keys described below. To change the key assignment for a ship function, click on the ship that is performing that function and press the new key that you want to use.
A few keys are reserved for special functions. These keys may not be used for ship controls, and they cannot be changed.
'Q' is reserved for quitting the game.
The 'tab' key is reserved for pausing the game.
'0' through '7' on the main key island are reserved for volume control.
The 'delete' key is reserved for resetting the sound. See below for details.
If you want to use the shift key, be sure to turn off Easy Access. Also, be aware that more than two keys used at the same time, other than Shift, Option, Command, Control and Caps Lock, may not work correctly. This is due to a hardware limitation in all keyboards.
And those of you with the Apple Adjustable keyboard need to be aware of a bug in either the keyboard itself or the software that controls it (we’re not sure which) that causes problems when you use keys on both the keypad and the main key island. Apple will be releasing a bug fix someday, but until then you should choose your key settings so that they are all on the keypad or all on the main island if you have problems.
Some machines have a hardware problem that causes the sound to go out when many sounds are played within a very short time. This means that those people who have those systems may find that the sound goes out occasionally while they are playing the game. Unfortunately, there is no way for the program to detect when this has happened, so it just resets the sound at the beginning of each level. If you don’t want to wait until the next level to get the sound back, you can press the delete key to reset the sound immediately.
• Original game •
Cyclone is based on an old (c. 1980) arcade game called Star Castle. If this option is on, the game reverts to the original design. In Original Game mode, there are no yummies, no bonus, and no status bar. Also, the upper limit on the difficulty of the mines is increased, and the speed of the enemy base’s plasma ball is decreased. The overall difficulty level of the base and mines maxes out on level ten and stays at that level forever. And instead of getting a new ship based on your score, you get a new ship every time you destroy the base.
Since scores from the normal game will always be bigger than scores from the original game, there is a separate high score list for each mode.
• Reduced ring quality •
If this option is on, the rings might flicker a bit, but it can speed things up considerably on any machine slower than a Quadra. Try this first if the game is running slow. The ‘Sync to system clock’ option might counteract the flicker.
Flicker is a natural consequence of animation; programmers have to use special techniques to avoid it. Unfortunately, these techniques add a lot of overhead to the drawing algorithm, and they tend to slow things down quite a bit. This option eliminates the flicker prevention from the drawing of the rings, which speeds things up, but can cause flicker on many machines. See the ‘Sync to system clock’ option for further explanation.
• Reduced animation quality •
If this is checked, the animation will run at approximately 30 frames per second instead of 60 frames per second. This means that the screen will be updated 30 times per second instead of 60. This makes the animation look a little jumpy, and tends to create double-images of fast-moving objects. This is an optical illusion, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. But, if you can put up with these problems, this option will speed things up quite a bit. You might even be able to turn off the ‘Reduced ring quality’ option with this option on.
Object motion and collision detection will continue to run at 60 frames per second, so you don’t have to worry about this option affecting the accuracy of your shots.
• Sync to system clock •
If this option is on, animation will be synchronized to the internal system clock instead of the vertical retrace interrupt. Use this option to help eliminate the flicker caused by the ‘Reduced ring quality’ option.
A beam of electrons is constantly fired from the back of your monitor towards the front, tracing out the pixels on your screen one line at a time, moving left to right and top to bottom. When this beam gets to the bottom-right corner, it moves back up to the top-left corner and starts over again. The vertical retrace interrupt is a signal that is generated when the beam reaches the bottom-right corner and starts its journey back to the top of the screen. The frequency of this signal is very consistent, and is usually around 67 times per second, which makes it ideal for timing an animation.
When an object is drawn to the screen, you won’t see it until the retrace beam passes over the area occupied by the object. So if an object is drawn so that half of it is above the beam and half below, you’ll see the half that is below almost immediately, but you won’t see the half that was above the beam until the beam has travelled full-circle, tracing out all of the pixels on the screen.
To animate an object on the screen, the object must be drawn in one position, then erased in that position and drawn in the next position, and so on. If the retrace beam passes over the area occupied by the object after the object has been erased in the old position and before it has been drawn in the new position, the object will seem to disappear for that frame of the animation. If this happens frequently, the object will flicker.
An object is more likely to flicker frequently if the retrace beam is often in the same area during the drawing operation. When the animation is synchronized to the vertical retrace interrupt, the retrace beam is always in approximately the same area when the objects on the screen are being updated. So if this option is off, and you have the ‘Reduced ring quality’ option on, there may be a band across the screen in which the rings flicker badly or disappear completely.
If you turn this option on, the animation will be synchronized to the system clock, which runs at a constant 60.15 frames per second, and has no relation to the vertical retrace. This means that the retrace beam could be anywhere at any particular point in the drawing operation. What you tend to see with this option on is a slight flicker everywhere on the screen instead of an intense flicker on a small part of the screen.
If, with this option off and the ‘Reduced ring quality’ option on, the retrace beam is consistently outside the ring area when the rings are being drawn, you won’t need to turn this option on. If it flickers with this option off, and you can’t stand the slight overall flicker when this option is on, try turning the ‘Reduced ring quality’ option off, the ‘Sync to system clock’ option off, and the ‘Reduced animation quality’ on. Or buy a Quadra and turn all three options off.
• Reduced screen size •
If this option is on, the game screen will shrink to 12 inch screen size (512x384). This can speed things up quite a bit, but probably not as much as the ‘Reduced ring quality’ and ‘Reduced animation quality’ options. If you’re already running the game on a 12 inch screen, this option is not available.
Your ship, the enemy base, and the rings will all shrink accordingly, and space will shrink as well, so that playing on a 12 inch screen is just like playing on a larger screen from farther away. That is, you’re not missing anything if you’re playing on a smaller screen - the playfield is essentially the same size.
• Edit the sounds •
You can change the sounds in Cyclone to whatever you like. To customize a sound, select it from the list and press the ‘Replace...’ button. A standard open file dialog will appear; find the sound you want to use and Open it. The sound editor only recognizes System 7 sounds (files of type ‘sfil’ containing a resource of type ‘snd ’).
The ‘Replace With Default’ button will replace the selected sound with its default sound. The ‘Replace All With Default’ button will replace all sounds with their default. If the ‘Play Sound When Selected’ box is checked, the selected sound will be played when you click on it.
The default sounds in Cyclone are sampled at 22kHz. If your custom sounds were sampled at a lower frequency, you may notice some degradation of sound quality.
• Reduced sound quality •
If this option is on, only one sound will be played at a time. This might speed things up a bit on slower machines. If this option is off, up to two sounds can play at the same time. This increases the depth of sound considerably, but may not sound that great to some people. If this option is on, the enemy base hum will not play, regardless of the ‘Play enemy base hum’ setting. This option is not available if you don’t have Sound Manager 3.0 or greater.
• Play enemy base hum •
If this option is on, and the ‘Reduced sound quality’ option is off, the base will make a sort of humming sound, the frequency of which varies with the number of active ring segments. This option is not available if you don’t have Sound Manager 3.0 or greater.
• Reduced game speed •
If this option is on, the game will run at about half it’s normal speed. You might want to turn this option on for young children, who don’t have the hand-eye coordination it takes to play the game at normal speed.
