Assassins - Ultimate CD Games Collection 4/Assassins 4 (1999)(Weird Science).iso/docs/shoot-ups/taskforce_27.doc

Text File | 1992-09-02 | 24KB | 502 lines

         TaskForce V0.27 (08.08.98)
          ©1997-1998 Jens Granseuer

 TaskForce is a strategy game in the tradition of Laser Squad, Act of
 War, or Jagged Alliance. If you aren't familiar with any of these,
 just imagine a bunch of mercenaries packed with some mean equipment,
 operating in enemy territory.

 In TaskForce you take control of such a group of soldiers and try to
 accomplish certain objectives by wise employment of your powers.
 Your opponent will be either the computer, another human player,
 or time itself.

 A special feature of TaskForce is the mission editor included in the
 archive. This way you can easily design your own maps and define
 individual mission objectives.

 TaskForce is Mailware. If you like the game, you should feel obliged
 to send me a short notice, by either email or snailmail.
 You may copy and use TaskForce for free, but I retain the copyright
 for all files included in this archive, unless otherwise noted.

 TaskForce may be redistributed for non-commercial purposes provided
 no changes are made to the archive.

 DISCLAIMER:
 USE OF THIS PROGRAM IS ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. THE AUTHOR CANNOT
 BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGE DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY CAUSED BY USE
 OR MISUSE OF FILES IN THIS DISTRIBUTION.

 This program makes use of the ReqTools package which is
 ©1991-1994 Nico François, 1995-1997 Magnus Holmgren.

 TaskForce and all related files are ©1997-1998 Jens Granseuer.

 To run TaskForce you need any Amiga model with at least
 Kickstart 2.04 and about 0.5 MB of free RAM.

 reqtools.library V38 or higher must be installed on your system.
 The library is included in this archive.

 If you intend to replace the program icon or run TaskForce from
 Shell you need to increase the stack size to about 8000.

 To make use of the install script you must have Commodore's
 Installer utility, which is part of your workbench since
 release 2.04.

 To install TaskForce to your harddisk, simply execute the install
 script provided with this archive.

 If you want to install the required files manually, copy the
 TaskForce directory to the place of your choice and reqtools.library
 to LIBS: if you haven't got it, yet. That's it. Simple.

 On the options screen you can select the number of players and the
 difficulty settings, enter your names and choose the mission you want
 to set out on. Before playing a mission, you should have read the
 appropriate briefings so you know what you are expected to do.
 After accepting the current settings, you will find yourself right on
 the playground.

 Apart from the main playing area, there are three others of some
 importance to you and your troops. To the right you see a list of all
 mercenaries under your control. The colour they are printed in tells
 you about their current condition. Black means everything is alright,
 while yellow indicates critical health and red unconsciousness. If a
 name appears in green, that character is poisoned.
 The small area below contains more specific information on the
 currently selected character, like hit points or weapon.

 Below the status bar is a small map of the area of operations. Pressing
 the left mouse button on a spot of this map will take you to the
 selected part. All mercenaries under your control are represented by
 yellow dots, while all enemy and neutral characters are displayed red.
 You better make sure if it's really an enemy before you take him out.

 At the bottom of the screen important messages will be displayed.

 Your characters are controlled either by keyboard, by mouse or by a
 combination of both. To command a mercenary, he must be selected. This
 is indicated by a red cursor drawn around him. To deselect him simply
 press space or click the left mouse button on his image. Do the same
 to select him again.

 For most actions in TaskForce action points (AP) are required. If a
 character has no AP left, he can't do anything. AP are regained at the
 beginning of a new turn.

 You move your characters using the number pad or the mouse. If you want
 to move using the mouse you must guide your characters one step after
 another, as there is no pathfinding for player characters, yet. Any
 kind of movement costs 1 AP.

 Pressing 'i' or the leftmost gadget at the bottom of the screen will
 bring up the inventory. Here you can pick up and drop objects and
 select another weapon as well as inspect items you found.
 If you have a gun equipped as your current weapon, you can enter firing
 mode by pressing 's' or the second to left button. Move the cursor over
 a target and press '5' or the left mouse button to release a shot
 (costs 2 AP).
 The third button (n) will select the next of your mercenaries, and the
 last (e) will end your turn.

 All other actions can be accessed by pulldown menus (Action menu). Some
 objects may be operated (doors or computers, for example). This action
 is also used to talk to other characters. In TaskForce there are no
 real coversations, but you may provoke some reaction from that
 character.

 Certain items you may find have special abilities. You usually use (u)
 these items (2 AP). This is possible on and outside of the inventory
 screen. However, the latter is the only way to use items such as
 Medkits on units other than the active one.
 If you use items on the inventory screen, they will always be applied
 to the item carrier.

 There are two ways to engage another character in close combat. You can
 either just try to walk onto the occupied square, or you can step up
 next to him and then press 'a' (2 AP).

 If you expect to be attacked you may set your soldier on guard (g).
 This enables him to return fire if he is shot at during the next
 turn. It is only possible to enter guard mode if the mercenary has at
 least 4 AP left. This decision is final, that means, all his AP are
 cleared and he can't act again until the beginning of your next turn.
 If somebody shoots at him, he will return fire and, even better, if he
 has got a higher Perception rating than the attacker, he will
 shoot first!
 Guarding won't help against thrown weapons, though.

 There are still a few other actions but these are left for you to
 find out.

 If you are not in move mode and press 'i' you will get some more
 information about the terrain or units beneath the cursor.

 Clicking the mouse on one of the names from the units list will
 activate that unit and, if neccessary,  the view on it.
 If you hold down one of the <SHIFT>-keys while selecting one of the
 names, you can rearrange the order of your units and thereby the
 activation sequence.

 A mission is considered completed if one of the players has scored 100
 points. Points are awarded on reaching certain goals which are usually
 described in the mission briefing.
 If you play against a computer opponent, the mission is considered a
 total failure if all your mercenaries are killed. This is not
 neccessarily the case in a two-player scenario.

 All characters you can control in TaskForce have some values that
 represent skills and other aspects of their personality. These
 values decide how well that character performs in a particular
 situation when the skill is needed.

 All skill values may range from 1 (worst) to 10 (best) and can be
 inspected on the inventory screen ('i').

 Strength is used to determine how much a character can carry
 around with himself and how far he can throw items. The damage dealt
 in close combat also depends on the strength value.

 Firearms is a measure for the character's marksmanship. The
 higher this value the better the odds to hit a target with a gun.

 Close Combat is similar to the firearms skill, but defines the
 chances to hit an opponent in close combat.

 Perception has two main purposes in TaskForce. First, during a
 mission a character may be required to make a Perception test. The
 result of this test determines what happens then. You will not be
 informed about such a test taking place, so if the character fails
 you won't even know about it. Second, if a character is attacked
 when in guard mode and he has a higher Perception rating than the
 attacker, he may "return" fire first.

 If a character has zero HP, one additional point of damage will
 be inflicted each turn, and he will eventually die from his wounds
 unless he regains some of his hit points.

 In TaskForce there are three different difficulty settings.

 As a Rookie you will always see all of your enemies. This spoils
 a lot of the fun and is only recommended for absolute beginners.
 Therefore Intermediate is the default setting.

 An Intermediate will only be aware of enemies that enter his line
 of sight. You never know what's waiting behind the next corner.
 You should always try a mission on Intermediate or Advanced
 level, and only switch to the next lower setting if this proves too
 difficult for you.

 Advanced players finally suffer from some malfunctioning of
 the eyes and their perception radius is limited to fifteen squares.
 What do you think you've got this seventh sense for?

 Unless there are really vast differences in skill or a heavily injust
 mission setup it is highly recommended that both parties are set to
 the same level.
 There is absolutely no point in making the computer player a Rookie.
 In this case he will immediately throw all his troops into the battle.

 Some items in TaskForce have special uses. These are:

 * crowbar: A crowbar can of course be used as a hand-to-hand weapon.
    What's more important, though, is that you'll be able to force
    jammed doors to open - if your soldier happens to be strong
    enough.
 * data disk: Data disks are required in some missions to upload or
    download information to or from a computer system.
 * explosive: A nasty and powerful weapon, explosives have to be primed
    before use. If you use them you are asked for a value to set the
    counter to. This value is given in turns, that means if you set it
    to 1 the fireworks will start at the end of your turn, 2, at the
    end of your opponent's turn, 3, at the end of your next turn, etc.
    Don't forget to drop them once you have set the timer!
 * keycard: They are sometimes needed to open doors. If you carry the
    keycard when you try to open a door it is required for, it will
    automatically be used.
 * medkit: Medkits can restore some of your lost HP. It is not
    possible to exceed your maximum HP value. No matter how many HP
    you regain, a medkit can only be used once.
 * radio transmitter: With the help of radio transmitters you can call
    for air support. A plane will pull in and launch an attack on a
    target you selected, which may be anywhere on the map! The bombs
    are not as powerful as grenades and you should not expect clinical
    hits, so be careful and don't stand too close. Radio transmitters
    only have a limited power supply.
 * steroids: If you take these, they will increase your available AP for
    a short time (until end of turn).
 * thermal scanner: A thermal scanner will reveal the position of all
    "warmblooded" units within its range to you.

 The following people have contributed their time, work, and faith to
 this project and their support has shaped TaskForce quite a lot.
 Thanks all, and keep it going.

 MissionsLEFT

   Daniel Aufermann   -   Prison

Suggestions, bug reports, etc.LEFT

   Daniel Aufermann (additional graphics, bug reports)

   Gaelan Griffin (lots of bug reports, ideas, technical support)

   Robert Müller (encouragement, bug reports, ideas)

   Dave Sealey (ideas, additional graphics)

 ...and everyone else who sent me their comments.LEFT

If you feel you still need to know more read on.

 The true history of TaskForceLEFT

 This is for the eyes of those of you who always go straight down to
 the roots of things. Now, I think that should have been enough of a
 warning.

 Actually, TaskForce started out as a test in November of 1997. The
 days were getting shorter and I was expected to learn for my final
 exams next spring, so I had to do something, right? I had been at
 (serious) programming for exactly one year, and I thought it was
 time to know what I was up to so I needed some kind of a large
 project, a challenge. I settled on a game rather soon. There was
 simply no application I could think of that I was lacking - or I
 didn't have the knowledge of the Amiga internals (I'm still looking
 for a decent system monitor, for example. Scout's rather nice, but
 it's MUI...). I had picked up C from a book I had borrowed from the
 local library and gathered some Amiga specific information from
 examples I found on aminet and various other sources. A little later
 I even got my hands on a copy of an Amiga C book. Of course it was
 still about KS1.3 and I had already heard some indefinite rumours
 about version 3.1 of the OS. I didn't really matter, though, because
 the author of that book couldn't even tell the difference between
 MEMF_ANY and MEMF_CLEAR. I'm sure you can see when all those bugs
 began creeping in.

 The fact that I was still working with the DICE freeware version was
 somewhat hindering. It only supported small code and small data, so I
 would have had to keep the executable down to 64k at maximum, and that
 would have been quite a problem if you take into account that the
 program is approximately twice that size now. Then vbcc appeared on
 aminet and the world was bright from then on...

 Well, almost. The most difficult issue, it turned out, was the
 decision about what kind of game it should be. I'm very fond of
 role playing games, but I didn't have a particularly original idea
 for the story, so it had to be something else. (I still would like to
 do an rpg sometime, though.) Next was the notion to produce a SimCity
 clone, but this also didn't last very long. After that it was The
 Settlers and I had already started to draw graphics when I realized
 I'd have to make it turn based and there wouldn't be much left. Then
 there was Battle Isle. That was a great game. I still play it
 occasionally today. There wasn't too much to improve but nevertheless
 I had some ideas about it, so I set out to produce a "new"
 strategical.

 I started drawing graphics again, and modified the already existing
 code from the Settlers engine to fit the new needs. When I was ready
 to display graphics I realized I didn't know how to mask bitmaps. I
 thought I had understood what I needed by reading some usenet threads,
 but it didn't work (I still don't know how to use BltTemplate() as
 someone suggested there)! The only way to work around this was to use
 square graphics. Battle Isle with "square hexes"? Nah! That wouldn't
 be what I wanted. I had to find something else again, but I was
 getting good at it (I had done it often enough, don't you think?) so
 it didn't take too long to come up with an Act of War clone. Act of
 War was a rather nice shareware game already, but its author stopped
 its development even before I could register, and it was still
 somewhat buggy and rather limited. So that was something to work on.

 The first working title was TaskForce and it didn't really change
 very much afterwards. I coaxed Daniel to help me with the graphics
 as I had enough to do with the coding part. The exchange of those
 graphics wasn't quite as easy because he doesn't have an Amiga himself
 (there seems to be an awful lot of those people these days) and his
 stupendous operating system kept altering the colours again and
 again. He usually had to rework them on my computer.

 The first "outsider" to ever get to know TaskForce was Robert. I had
 been playing his games JdL and Silver for quite some time, and he had
 talked me into writing a character editor for the latter before I had
 started on TaskForce. I did it because I didn't have anything better
 to do, and some time after I had taken up work on my own project he
 also proposed that I take over the development of Silver. I believe
 it's really got a lot of potential but I had my own baby now so I
 turned down the offer. Of course he wanted to see my project then and
 so I sent him a beta version. This turned out to be a mistake. Robert
 has ever since come up with lots of ideas for improvements
 (exorbitantly silly for the most part) and bug reports which usually
 keep me from sleeping. Anyway, sometimes he seems to have flashes of
 insight, I'll grant you, so it's usually not a good idea to discard
 his mails on the first glance. And besides, he's one of the few
 betatesters who can run Enforcer...

 Finally, on 6th March, 1998, I thought myself ready for the first
 public release on aminet. The release date had been delayed for a
 number of times because everytime I was going to do a last check
 before uploading I discovered another bug. This first official version
 was released mainly for reasons of probing the support for such a game
 out on aminet. I wanted to know whether it was worth all the time I
 put in, whether anyone apart from myself was ever going to play it.
 During the next week or so everything went the usual course, but then
 there were the first reactions to the game. Among the first to answer
 was Gaelan, who has ever since read me bedtime stories from the RKM's
 and has helped me surmount some technical problems I couldn't get by
 myself. Sometimes I strongly suspect he breeds bugs, though. He was
 also the first who dared to openly insult me. He actually claimed that
 my shotgun shells looked like beer bottles! Imagine! (Open to a
 suggestion? Why don't you do the graphics? That would be less work for
 Daniel and me, people would be laughing about you, and you had reasons
 to insult yourself - or TaskForce might really look better, if nothing
 else. Just for a change...)

 About April I got a message telling me that TaskForce generated tons
 of Enforcer hits. That was somewhat strange because none of the
 betatesters had reported on this. A little bit of investigation
 revealed that this only happened when mapping the display to a
 CyberGraphX screen with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. Argghhh!
 What had I done to deserve this? Nevertheless I set out to fix this
 if possible without being able to check it myself. Ultimately, the
 goal was (and still is) to let the player choose the desired screen
 mode anyway, so I could as well start on this. I've worked on it and
 I didn't get any more reports about such problems since then so I
 assume it's fine now. Might be that I'm wrong but as long as noone
 tells me I won't know.

 Anyway, during the few months TaskForce has been out now I've got a
 lot more mails than I had expected. Even more surprising was that most
 of their writers pretended to like the game (though there were few who
 didn't have at least one bug for me). That's probably because those
 who don't like it don't bother to tell me about it, either. Perhaps
 it's better this way, to me it sounds nicer, at least.

 Just thought you might want to know...

 V0.27 (20.08.98)
  * didn't update explosion areas
  * removed another Enforcer hit
  * 'Operate/Talk' accessible via button
  * added invisible units and @{"Camouflage Armour" LINK "Items"}
  * improved interface design

 V0.26 (02.08.98)
   * didn't update overview map
   * didn't always update the selected unit's HP display
   * removed more Enforcer hits
   * units don't obstruct line of sight
   * computer won't shoot downed units
   * computer can handle more than one target per turn and unit
   * improved hand-to-hand combat
   * added sniper rifle and Thermal Scanner

 V0.25 (16.07.98)
   * newly created items were not correctly initialized
   * new and improved inventory display
   * new items Crowbar and Data Disk
   * added jammed doors which can only be opened by employment of
     crowbars or brute force (explosions)

 V0.24 (20.06.98)
   * fixed possible system locks on computer turns
   * removed even more Enforcer hits
   * improved line of sight
   * if the third player was enabled timers would be confused
   * order of units can be changed using <SHIFT>+LMB on the units list
   * significantly sped up overview map display
   * enhanced the computer players again
   * increased visibility range in Advanced mode to fifteen squares

 V0.23 (05.06.98)
   * removed a bug that could cause TaskForce to freeze
   * computer didn't like to be shot down by guarding units
   * removed an Enforcer hit that occurred when operating doors
   * completely reworked the computer opponent
   * added some keyboard control to mission menu

 V0.22 (21.05.98)
   * loading saved games was rather unstable
   * when saving games items and most events would vanish
   * no more crashes if audio device couldn't be opened
   * hopefully fixed some of the problems with non-native screen modes
   * if an object to use was selected by mouse it could happen that
     a different object was incorrectly removed from inventory
   * explosives sometimes didn't work correctly
   * unconscious computer-controlled units could still heal themselves
   * picking up objects now costs 1 AP
   * guarding units only return fire if they have a direct line of fire
   * during computer movement other input is disabled
   * weapon info now also contains current and maximum ammo
   * improved deployment of reinforcements
   * added indestructible windows

 V0.21 (28.04.98)
   * fixed serious bug in scrolling routines
   * didn't close sfx file
   * Grenade Launcher didn't accept grenades but knives as ammo
   * increased disadvantages when shooting at distant targets
   * new item Radio Transmitter to call in air support
   * added teleporters
   * slightly improved computer player again
   * added some more sound effects

 V0.20 (15.04.98)
   * now supports a third player (computer controlled only)
   * removed another Enforcer hit
   * reduced explosion power to make it possible to survive a blast
     it's still not very likely with average hit points, though
   * fixed some minor bugs

 V0.19 (10.04.98)
   * TaskForce would crash if it didn't get the audio channels
     it wanted
   * units can be selected even if they have no AP left
   * <Esc> cancels firing mode
   * the game can be controlled entirely by mouse now
   * on the mission selection screen the first mission is selected
     by default
   * two more weapons available

 V0.18 (06.04.98)
   * if the active unit's HP sank below 0 it only pretended to
     become unconscious...
   * shot down units blocked line of sight and line of fire
   * time limit didn't work properly
   * use of items didn't reduce the unit's load
   * removed some Enforcer hits
   * TaskForce no longer terminates if the allocation of the
     audio structures fails, but will remain silent
   * using <shift> number pad you can now scroll half a screen
   * in a single player game, you will be informed of explosions
     in the gap between two turns if one of your units can
     observe them
   * major change in AP system and reduced HP values
   * you are notified when you successfully activated an event
     of the type Find Item
   * clicking on one of the names will take you to that unit
   * slightly improved computer opponent
   * new item Steroids

 V0.17 (06.03.98)
   * first public release

 If you encounter any bugs, have some ideas for improvements, or
 just want to tell me how much you (don't ?) like TaskForce, send
 your comments to this address:

 Jens Granseuer
 Junkermanns Weg 7
 59071 Hamm
 Germany

 Email: [e-mail]

 If you create any missions for this game, feel encouraged to send
 them, too. If I like them, I may include them in the archive.

 Have fun!