Assassins - Ultimate CD Games Collection 4/Assassins 4 (1999)(Weird Science).iso/docs/shoot-ups/slot_warrior.doc

Text File | 1997-06-06 | 16KB | 449 lines

                               SLOT WARRIOR

                            (C) OverFlow 1997

               A combat game for 2 to 4 simultaneous players

                                Version 1.0
                                 14.5.1997

                              * Version 1.1 *
                                 19.5.1997

                        This game is Public Domain


         Programming, Music, Sounds, in-game Graphics and Manual -

                        Tero Heikkinen (Herra Hoo)

                  Title Screen, Logo, Icons and Manual -

                        Pete Heikkinen (Runelord)



INTRODUCTION

In the year 4000 the war between the criminal gangs and the
legal authorities is endlessly fought in the streets of the
multi-billion metropolis of Chicago. The highways have long since
become the sole property of these so-called Slot Warriors, equipped
with fiercely powerful armoured cars.

Only the quickest and the smartest can outwit the enemy robot
missiles at this high-speed chase in the labyrinth arenas of
downtown Chicago!


WHAT IS IT?

Slot Warrior is a version of an ancient forgotten classic,
'Slot Racers', released for Atari VCS/2600 console at about 1978.
We firmly believe that Slot Racers should be included in the
videogame pantheon with the likes of Pacman, Space Invaders and
Missile Command. For some reason almost no-one seems to have known
it, but it is about to change with the Slot Warrior!

The game itself involves driving around a maze and shooting
kind of guided missiles at other cars who try to shoot you first.
Sounds simple? You got it right, then. It's also enormous fun and
totally chaotic gameplay with several players!

Although we keep talking about cars all along the manual, it is not
strictly speaking something that would be taken as a 'car game'
these days. At first sight the game seems to be lending ideas from
many past games, but it really is a pretty original concept.

This program does not emulate Atari VCS in any way, it is just a
direct copy with additional features which include more players
and new sounds among others. The look and the feel of the original
have been retained.

This game is Public Domain, but you are not allowed to change it
in any way apart from the configuration and level files. The level
file is not in the package and is created by the game when you save
levels.

You are not allowed to make any profit from spreading Slot Warrior.
Aminet CDs may carry it.


WHAT DO YOU NEED TO RUN IT?

Minimum requirements are an Amiga compatible computer with 1MB RAM
and KS 1.3. You can play Slot Warriors from a floppy disk or
install it into a hard drive. No external libraries or fonts are
needed, just place the game directory where you like and play the
game, though if you run the game from shell it has to be run in the
game directory to work properly.

Slot Warrior works with both PAL and NTSC systems. However, NTSC
users will lose a lower part from the title screen and some of the
predefined levels will not fit on the screen. These levels can be
edited (and saved) to fit the screen so it is not as bad as it
might sound.

Slot Warrior has been succesfully tested with the following
configurations:

A500  - KS1.3, 1MB RAM (512KB CHIP/512KB FAST)
A1200 - KS3.0, 18MB RAM (2MB CHIP/16MB FAST), 50Mhz '030/'882, HD
A1200 - KS3.1, 10MB RAM (2MB CHIP/8MB FAST), 50Mhz '030, HD
A2000 - KS2.0, 3MB RAM (1MB CHIP/2MB FAST), HD
A2000 - KS3.1, 10MB RAM (1MB CHIP/9MB FAST), 25Mhz '030, 50Mhz '882, HD

So it should pretty much run with every Amiga. Although Slot Warrior
almost certainly works on a '040 processor, we are not sure about
those '060s.

The files that must be with the Slot Warrior package if you have
received it or intend to spread it in any way:

 SlotWarrior                      - The main program file.
 SlotWarrior.info                 - Info file for program file.
 SlotWarrior.Doc                  - This document.
 SlotWarrior.Doc.info             - Info file for document.
 SlotWarrior.Config               - The configuration file.

(SlotWarrior.Levels)              - This file will be created by
                                    SlotWarrior if you save your
                                    levels. It does not belong
                                    to the archive.


INSTRUCTIONS

The following instructions have been adapted from the original Atari
VCS Slot Racers book. As they are pretty compact and informative it
would have been waste of time to try to make a total rewrite. The
'Red Controller Button' is of course the Fire Button! (And there
are more mazes than four).

 HOW TO PLAY

 Screech! Pow! Smash! This is the super chase scene and you're in it
 - right behind the wheel of a Super Chasemobile car equipped
 with power and incredible gadgets.

 There are four chase mazes. Each player steers one car through the
 maze. Chase your opponent and attempt to hit him with one of the
 secret missiles fired from your car headlights. You score a point
 each time you hit your opponent with a missile.

 CONTROLLER ACTION

 STEERING THE CAR:

 Use your Joystick Controller to steer the car and fire missiles.

 *  Push the Joystick forward to accelerate the car
 *  Pull the Joystick towards you to brake the car
 *  Push the Joystick left to turn the car to the left
 *  Push the Joystick Right to turn the car to the right

 NOTE: You can turn the car only when the car is moving.

 FIRING MISSILES:

 To fire a missile, press the red controller button. After you fire a
 missile, there are three ways the missile can travel.

 Control the way the missile travels with your Joystick Controller.

 1. If you want the missile to turn left after firing, push the Joystick
    to the left as you press the red controller button.
 2. To turn the missile to the right after firing, push the Joystick to
    the right as you press the red controller button.
 3. The missile will automatically turn at every corner when you press
    the red controller button without pushing the Joystick.

 DRIVING TIPS:

 *  In steering the car, note that you cannot turn the car into the
    wall. The car will automatically take a corner to avoid crashing
    into a wall.
 *  After turning your car or missile onto a street, remember to return
    the Joystick to its center position. For example, if you push the
    Joystick to the left to turn the car to the left, push the Joystick
    back to its center position. Otherwise, the car will continue to
    make left turns.

 DIFFICULTY SWITCHES:

 When the difficulty switch [Catch missile] is in OFF position, you
 can shoot consecutive missiles. Note that if a previously fired missile
 is still on the screen when you fire a new missile, the old missile will
 disappear.

 In ON position, you cannot fire another missile if you already have a
 missile on the screen. Before you can fire another missile:

 *  The missile on the screen must hit your opponent's car
                             OR
 *  You must retrieve the missile on the screen by steering your car
    into it.


BACK TO 1997

The amount of hits the cars can withstand is shown as a bar at the
bottom of the screen. Regardless of the number of players or the
number of chosen hits, these 'energy bars' occupy the entire width
of the screen. As the energy bar diminishes totally, the player will
be removed. When only one car remains, the screen colours will
darken and you'll have to hit ESC to exit back to the main menu.

The 'Guide Missile' switch turns on and off the guidance system in
the missiles. When OFF, the missiles become trapped when colliding
with the walls (they do not take the corners as normal).

In the original game, this feature was linked to the type of 'game'
you had selected. It was the time when video games were advertised
to have 9 games in one, if there were 9 different difficulty levels.

The choice of speed, hits-to-win and the difficulty switches have been
entirely separated, so they can be used in any combination.
(So there are about 80 'games' included :)

The original game had two players, and 25 hits to win. The four first
levels in Slot Warrior are identical to the total of four included
in Slot Racers.

These original levels are somewhat smaller than the new ones, of which
all do not fit entirely into an NTSC screen. However, NTSC owners can
make their own additional levels with the built-in map editor - of course
PAL owners can do that too.


MAIN MENU

Main Menu options are as follows:

2 Start Two-Player game
3 Start Three-Player game
4 Start Four-Player game

  All these start the game with the respective amount of players.

G Guide Missile:
  Switch ON/OFF the guidance system for missiles. When Guide is OFF,
  you have to practically face your opponent to hit him/her since the
  missile will stop on a first corner - however, your opponents can
  still be hit by a missile even if it's stationary.

C Catch Missile:
  When ON, you have to lose or catch the missile to fire a new one.
  This really changes the style of combat. If your missile misses,
  you're in trouble since you can't defend yourself unless you get
  the missile back.

  Combine 'Catch Missile' with 'Unguided Missiles' to get into serious
  trouble!

H Hits to Win:
  Ranges from 5 to 25.

S Gamespeed:
  Slow, Medium, Fast and Turbo are the gameplay speeds. Slower ones are
  recommended, as the human brain is still somewhat capable of thinking
  ahead.

L GFX Look:
  A choice between 'Future' and 'Retro'. Retro is the original game look
  from around 1978, the Future is a bit souped-up metallic look, yet
  in similar abstract style.

I Information:
  Show the version information screen. From there you can access the
  control setup and Music options. Actually these can be modified
  from the main menu too.

Q Quit to System:
  Quits to Workbench or to your CLI/Shell.

R Reset Victories:
  Clear the victories. Shown as a bullet above the nose of the
  car in the main menu scren.

+ Next Maze:
  Change level.

- Previous Maze:
  Change level.

E Edit Maze:
  Edit current maze. You need to use the mouse to do this.


IN-GAME CONTROLS

Of course, not all of the four players participating can use the
'Joystick Controllers' since we are not able to support any
additional joystick adapters.

By Default:

*  Player One uses the Joystick in the Joystick Port.

*  Player Two uses cursor keys to steer the car, and Right Shift key to
   fire missiles.

*  Player Three uses CTRL key to accelerate, Left Shift to brake,
   Left Alt to steer left and Left Amiga to steer right. The key 'Z' is
   used to fire missiles.

*  Player Four uses the Joystick in the Mouse Port.

Other control setups may be accessed by pressing the 'J' key in
information screen or in the main menu, but only from the info screen
you can view the resulting setup.


EDITING MAZES

*  You have to use a mouse in mouse port to edit mazes. Other functions
   are accessed with (and only with) keyboard.

*  Pressing left mouse button inserts a block into the pointer location,
   and pressing right mouse button clears the block.

*  You cannot edit the edges of the maze.

*  The maze editor is always in the 'retro' look.

Press ESC to exit the maze editor.

P Clears the maze and gives you a PAL (320 x 256) screen to work with.
N Clears the screen with the original Slot Racers maze size, which
  fits into an NTSC screen (320 x 200).
M Switch on/off a mirror function. For some reason the better mazes
  usually are horizontally symmetrical, (they also fit into the original
  design) with this function it is easy to make them so.
F Enters File Options, from where you can save and load your levels.
  If you have a saved set of levels, you must first load them from here
  before you can play them. The levelset is always saved with the filename
  "SlotWarrior.Levels".


CONFIGURING YOUR SLOT WARRIOR

Editing the Slotwarrior.Config text file with any old text editor
enables you to tailor the default options to your taste, though it
is not at all necessary.

The commands MUST be written in UPPER-CASE to take effect.

By loading the file into your text editor you will understand everything
in about a second, but here are the commands anyway. Excluding a
command, typing it in lower case makes the game to ignore that
particular command entirely. If you remove the slotwarrior.config
file, no harm done, the game just uses its 'factory' default values.

Note that the commands cannot be exluded by introducing ';' characters
or other garbage at the beginning of line as the game scans for
any occurences of the word throughout the config file. The only nice
way really is to type the commands in lower case.

MUSIC ON              Turns all music on, during game & menus.
MUSIC OFF             Turns all music off, uses sound effects during game.
                      If you exclude both of these, the music only
                      plays in menus (Default).
LEVEL:n               Selects the default level to level n.
SPEED:SLOW            This set the default game speed.
SPEED:MEDIUM           -"-
SPEED:FAST             -"-
SPEED:TURBO            -"-
SETUP:AVOID JOYSTICKS Sets the control setup to avoid joysticks,
                      so that players 1 and 2 use keyboard.
SETUP:AVOID KEYBOARD  Sets the control setup to avoid keyboard,
                      so that players 1 and 2 have to use joysticks.
SETUP:NORMAL          Normal control setup.
GFX LOOK:FUTURE       Sets default look to 'future'.
GFX LOOK:RETRO        Sets default look to 'retro'.
GUIDE ROBOTS:ON       Guided missiles on.
GUIDE ROBOTS:OFF      Guided missiles off.
CATCH ROBOTS:ON       Catch robots on.
CATCH ROBOTS:OFF      Catch robots off.
HITS TO WIN:n         Sets the number of matches required for victory.


VERSION INFORMATION

Version 1.1

This is a slightly fixed version of the original. A couple of embarassing
bugs have been removed, one major bug concerning the Unguided Missile mode
and some other minor ones within the level editor. The Unguided Missiles
tended not to work properly when they were stationary.


CONTACT & ADVERTISEMENT

If you have any comments or bug reports about Slot Warrior or any
other OverFlow game, don't hesitate to contact us! Normal mail is
preferred, but E-mail will be read too.

We can be reached from the followind mail address:

  Tero Heikkinen
  Viljamintie 5
  01800 KLAUKKALA
  FINLAND

Although I like letters, I cannot always quite get myself to
answering them! If you seriously need an answer quickly, try
E-mail instead. But if you merely wish to congratulate (ahem)
I'd love a postcard or a letter.

The E-Mail address is:

  [e-mail]

OverFlow can also be reached from the Unknown Sector BBS:

  Node 1: [phone]  |  Open 24H/day since summer -93.
  Node 2: [phone]  |  Amiga only! Located in Finland.
                          |  All OverFlow products are free
                          |  download!


PREVIOUSLY RELEASED GAMES FROM OVERFLOW

Turbo Duel ............... 2 player light bike duel.

Automobiles 1.5 .......... 1-4 player top-down car racing with 17
                           tracks.

Top Hat Willy 1.2 ........ A Classic Platform arcade adventure
                           with 100 rooms. Sequel in the works.

Hardcore Bomberboy 1.0 ... 2-4 player Bomberman game with level editor.
                           Update in the works.


POSSIBLE FUTURE VERSIONS OF SLOT WARRIOR

None, unless a bad bug requiring attention arises.


POSSIBLE FUTURE RELEASES

Several. It is impossible to know which game will be finished
next, so we won't even give any hints. We start new projects all
the time, so something always surfaces sooner or later - usually
later. But don't think for a second, that we would be leaving the
Amiga!





                               Slot Warrior

                           Presented by OverFlow

                                   1997