Copyright 1996-97 Dadgum Games. All Rights Reserved.
Demo version -- Please distribute freely.
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Contact Info
email: info@dadgum.com
Web: http://www.dadgum.com
Dadgum Games
P.O. Box 1154
Issaquah, WA 98027-1154
U.S.A.
Buzzing fills your ears as your hive is overrun by invading bees and hornets, your Macintosh screen buried beneath a carpet of 75+ insects…
Welcome to Bumbler, an action game for the Power Macintosh with the speed and quality of a dedicated game system title. Bumbler is an original design, being released first and only for the Power Mac; revel in the excitement of playing a brand new game.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Bumbler should run fine on any PowerPC-based Mac with 256K or more of Level 2 cache (and many Power Macs with a PCI-bus can get away without the cache). This includes machines right down to the original 6100/60 (68K users please see the “Questions & Answers” document). Bumbler requires one and a half megabytes of memory and less than a single megabyte of hard drive space.
PLAYING BUMBLER
Basic Controls
Your bee is controlled by four keys (and these keys are configurable; the defaults are used here). Pressing the left Command key turns the bee clockwise. Pressing the left Option key turns the bee counter-clockwise. Shift shoots a stinger; hold down Shift for rapid fire. The Control key is “speedy bee”; it causes your bee to zip forward to get out of a tight spot. After activating the speedy bee, you can't turn or shoot until your bee slows down again.
Practice Mode
To get used to controlling the bee, click the PRACTICE button on the title screen. You can fly around and get the feel of things without being attacked by other insects. Practice mode ends when you have collected all the flowers on the screen by running into them.
If the bee controls seem reversed, it is probably because you are using the Command and Option keys on the right side of the keyboard instead of the left. If this feels more comfortable, go ahead and change the keys (click the KEYS button on the title screen) and make the “turn left” key be Command and “turn right” be Option.
Everything Else?
The gameplay itself is simple to get the hang of. Shoot stingers at anything and everything; this is your hive and trespassers are not welcome. When an insect is splatted, it drops any pollen it may have been carrying, causing the “cells” beneath it to fill with honey. At the end of a swarm you get bonus points for each honey-filled cell.
Some cells turn red when they are filled. These are “specials” and you can fly over them with your bee. Doing so triggers a random event. Sometimes you'll get points. Sometimes a swarm of mini-bees will be released and help take out your attackers. Sometimes…well, you'll see. There are a variety of things that can happen, most of which are good.
Many different types of insects can invade your hive. You'll learn about them by playing and watching, so let's not ruin the surprises up front. One benign non-enemy that's worth noting is the daisy. Running into a daisy gives you 100 points.
Be sure to take a look at the options screen for ways to tweak the difficulty level and skip swarms. These options are saved when you quit Bumbler and are automatically set the next time you play.
MISCELLANEOUS KEYS
Command-W aborts the current game (or practice round) and returns you to the title screen. TAB pauses the game. Command-Q quits Bumbler.
Pressing ESC (escape), either while playing or looking at the title screen, immediately switches you to the Finder. You can return to the game by selecting Bumbler from the applications menu at the right end of the menu bar. If you hit ESC in the middle of a game, you will be paused when you return. This behavior of the ESC key is different from some other games, but it's simple and it feels right; give it a try.
If you'd like to use Bumbler in an entirely mouseless manner, you can start a game by pressing the Return key from the title screen.
SO WHAT'S IN THE FULL VERSION?
The demo is just a taste of what you'll get in the all-out full version of Bumbler:
• More insects: Stink bugs! Armored beetles! Different kinds of spiders! Dragonflies! And they all have their own behaviors and quirks…
• More “specials”…
• More sound…
• Lots of completely insane levels…
• A “screen-saver” mode that lets you leave your screen filled with up to 200 milling bees while you pop out to lunch.
• The ability to personalize your copy –– have your name displayed on the title screen.
Bumbler would fare well as a Sony PlayStation™ title, but it's not out for that system. It's available first and only for the Power Macintosh.
When you order Bumbler you'll also get an entirely separate bonus game: Boingo Electro. It's an original design and a good game in it's own right, yet different enough to be a nice complement to Bumbler. You'll also receive advance notice of new releases and happenings at Dadgum via our low-volume email list.
The price for everything––the full version of Bumbler, the screen-saver mode, and Boingo Electro––is $25 (U.S.). And shipping to the United States and Canada is free.
ORDERING
Bumbler, including everything listed above, is $25. Shipping is free. To pay via check or money order in U.S. funds, use the “Order Form” document. To pay via credit card, order on-line from http://www.dadgum.com/ordering.html
If you would like to purchase a multi-user licensed version of Bumbler (to place on a network at your company or school, for example) please contact us for details.
PLAYING TIPS
• If the game seems too difficult, try switching to a lower difficulty setting.
• Sometimes things aren't as hectic as they seem; you can stop shooting and weave around insects to pick up specials and daisies.
• When a swarm ends and the honey-filled cells are counted, you can use Speedy Bee to dive for specials before they disappear.
• Rather than lifting a finger from one left/right turn key and then pressing the other, keep your finger on the first key while you press the second (the bee responds to the most recently pressed key). You can use this technique to move more smoothly than is first apparent.
• Rocking back and forth on the left and right turn keys while shooting causes your stingers to spread out in an arc behind you while you move forward. This is handy if you have a bunch of insects on your tail.
• If it looks like you're going to be killed anyway and there's a special nearby, go for it. There are two outcomes that could save you. Or getting bonus points might net you an extra bee.
TROUBLESHOOTING
• If you have a low-end Power Mac and experience some slight slowdown on busy levels, check to see if your sound output rate is 22KHz (22.050 to be exact). You can check this using the “Sound” or “Monitors & Sound” or “Sound & Displays” control panel––whichever one is installed on your Mac. If the rate is greater than 22KHz, reduce it to 22KHz.
• If you notice the sound breaking up every once in a blue moon, that's probably because virtual memory is turned on. As a rule, games and virtual memory don't get along all that well, but Bumbler fares well most of the time. You can turn off virtual memory from the “Memory” control panel.
• If the title screen seems unusually slow and you have RAM Doubler installed, it might be the culprit. RAM Doubler is in the same boat as virtual memory when it comes to games.
• Some screen-savers don't recognize that you're playing Bumbler and so they kick in while you're playing. If this happens, disable the screen-saver before launching Bumbler.
• If your keyboard stops responding to keypresses, it might be because you have the “Easy Access” control panel installed on your machine. Look in the “Control Panels” folder of the System Folder for a file called “Easy Access.” If you find it and didn't even know it was there, you can safely throw it in the trash. Restart your Mac after deleting it.
• If you're using a Kensington TurboMouse trackball and the buttons on the title screen aren't responsive, check to see if you're using version 4.22 of the Kensington MouseWare software (be careful, the version of the software is independent of the version of the TurboMouse itself). If so, download the upgrade to version 4.22 from http://www.kensington.com
ABOUT DADGUM GAMES
Dadgum Games is the brainchild of James and Jessica Hague. We believe in fast, smooth, and tight action games and that's what we're out to create. We've also got a beef about originality; new and different titles make the Mac gaming market exciting and distinctive. Of course, fun and playability are––as they should be––the primary concerns.
We're doing some pretty crazy things in the name of top-notch Mac games. Like working entirely in assembly language for speed and smallness of code. And all of the art is meticulously done by hand. We would be mortified and embarrassed to release a game to Mac owners that didn't crackle with enough speed and quality to be published for a dedicated system like the Sony PlayStation or Super Nintendo.
Our business principles are simple: low prices with lots of freebies; low environmental impact (minimal packaging––heck you just throw away the box after you've installed the software, and recycled paper whenever possible); and complete honesty (no weird marketing tricks; no hype we can't live up to).
We're a new company, but we're not new to the game industry; James most recently had a hand in the Sega Saturn version of “The Need for Speed” from Electronic Arts and goes way back to writing magazine type-in games for the Atari 800 back in the mid-80s.
Feel free to bug us via email or the old-standby paper method. The addresses are at the top of this document.
CREDITS & THANKS
Testing, criticism, and comments:
Mark Phaedrus
Jessica Ball
Kevin Avila
Mandus Soderberg
Kevin Tieskoetter
Michael Sheets
The smokin' bit o' music heard while the Dadgum logo is displayed was written, performed, and recorded by T. Spae. Some days he's part of the duo “Amber Tide”; you can visit their web page at http://members.aol.com/amberspae/amberhome.html
Bumbler was created exclusively with the PowerFantasm assembly language development system from Lightsoft (http://www.tau.it/lightsoft or lightsoft@zedworld.demon.co.uk). A round on the house for the authors, Stu Ball and Rob Probin, for letting us in on the testing when it was still in its gestational period. As a result, Bumbler is the largest product to be written entirely with PowerFantasm and, quite possibly, the first game written entirely in PowerPC assembly language (excepting a demo game written by Stu). We're certainly willing to help other folks & companies get started with PowerPC assembly too. Give us a holler.
Some of the buzzing noises were recorded by Per-Olof Gustafsson at his own hives and used with permission. For information on beekeeping and some nifty bee pictures, check out his home page at http://www.kuai.se/~beeman
