Assassins - Ultimate CD Games Collection 4

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Text File | 1992-09-02 | 16.6 KB | 488 lines

-=* The Game *=- ©1996/1997 Dead Roo Software Dead Roo Software takes no responsibility for any damage caused to computer hardware, software or associated data, and any damage, either physical or psychological, inflicted upon users of this product by the product. So There. It's not our fault if you feel compelled to microwave the cat. This program is freely distributable. Only a very very small fee for disks or copying may be charged for this program. We mean it. Welcome To TOADS. I suppose you want an introductory story to set the scene or something. Bleh. This isn't a film you know. This is just a bit of mindless violence. But so you don't mistake it for a Jean-Claude Van Damme film I should give you a little plot or is it a theme? I dunno. In the early 1990's a commercial Australian television network which will remain nameless produced a television series called Paradise Beach. Paradise Beach was a soap opera. A truly atrocious soap opera. It consisted mainly of tanned young people running around sunny bits of Queensland. No one imagined that a television program could kill. Not until people started dropping dead in front of their TV's with a substance very similar to Camembert cheese dribbling out of their ears and noses. At first it was thought that advertising agencies had finally gone too far but studies proved that Paradise Beach was literally turning viewers brains into cheese. It was well known that soap operas could cause small amounts of brain damage in some people. A very small percentage of the population could even be turned into gameshow hosts by Home And Away. But actually killing people by turning their brains to cheese was too horrible to imagine. So horrible that the Tasmanian dairy industry went on strike. Something had to be done. Something was done. The Australian government with unusual public mindedness disposed of Paradise Beach. The scripts, the sets, the filmed episodes even most of the cast and crew (Except that dumb red haired chick who's now in MediVac) were destroyed and the bits and pieces dumped in swampland in the middle of nowhere. Everyone thought it was over. They were wrong. Five years later something emerged from that swamp. Something grown enourmous and deadly from the mutating toxins in the remains of Paradise Beach. Something with a burning hatred for human beings. TOADS. It's up to you to save the world from marauding amphibians. With a fast car and some well aimed rockets. Yeehaa. So. How's that for a story? Better than most I bet :] TOADS was written in Blitz Basic 2 on an Amiga 1200 with 8Mb of fast RAM and a 28Mhz 030 CPU. The graphics were drawn in DeluxePaint 4 AGA. Dead Roo Software consists of: Andrew Kennan Design Programming Graphics Documentation etc I can be contacted at 63 Elswick street Safety Bay 6169 Western Australia Australia If you like TOADS how about sending me a postcard or something (beer, money etc). Feel free to tell me about any bugs, or ideas you feel like sharing, or even your personal problems (I like a good laugh). TOADS should run on any PAL Amiga with at least 1MB of Chip RAM and a hard disk. The utility programs use the gadtools GUI library which (I think) requires OS2.0 or higher. However it might be a bit slow with just a 68000 CPU. The faster your Amiga the better. TOADS can't be run from floppy disk because, - It won't fit on 1 disk and I can't be stuffed making it aware of multiple disks. - Floppy disks suck. TOADS works just fine on my a1200 030/28MHz :] To install TOADS simply copy the directory to where you want it. Then copy the fonts/toad.font to your FONTS: directory. Alternatively you could double click on the Install_TOADS icon. To start TOADS just double click on the icon. After all the intro rubbish is finished with you will be presented with a title screen. From here you can decide what sort of sound you want during the game, the controllers you want to use for the game, what levels you want to play and whether you want a one or two player game. Sound SFX - Ribbits, splats, whooshes, booms and enginish noises. Music - Errrm...music None - The dull sound of silence Controls Joy 0 - Use a joy stick/pad/whatever in port 0 (The mouse port) Joy 1 - Use a joy stick/pad/whatever in the port the mouse isn't in. Keys - Use the arrow keys to move and the right shift key to fire. Choose a Game Use the buttons with arrows on them to select which playlist you want to play. One Player - All by yourself eh? Well press this button for some solo Toad squashing action. Then maybe go find some mates. Two Player - Much more fun. Now you can try and trash your mates as well as the Toads. Tip #1 Don't try to run over other cars unless you have heaps more armour and energy than them. Use Rockets instead. When you have done all that a a description of the game you have chosen will be displayed. Right. Now You're ready to Choose Your Weapon. In TOADS your weapon is your Car. It's pretty hard to kill a giant Toad with a cricket bat while it's biting your leg off so you need a turbo charged, armour plated, missile toting killing machine. Preferably with nice paintwork because it's things like that which can affect the resale value. Each car has a number of attributes. Velocity - Your cars top speed. Acceleration - How quickly the car reaches it's top speed. Braking - Useful when you need to stop. Steering - How well your car turns. Armour - The more armour you have the less damage you car will sustain due to poor driving. Rockets - Usefull things with a jet at one end and a big bomb at the other end. Nitros - A handy speed boost when you need to be somewhere else in a hurry. The screen is divided into two parts. On the left is player one's stuff and on the right is player two. Use the buttons with arrows on them to scroll through the available cars until you find one you like. Pressing the button labelled "Name" will allow you to enter your name. Press the Enter button when you have entered your name. When you are happy with your choice of car and name press the Done button at the bottom of the screen. When everyone has finished the game will start. Before each level begins a screen will be displayed showing the name, description, time limit and kills required for that level. The object of TOADS is - wait for it - to kill Toads. On each level you have a time limit and a minimum number of Toads to kill within that time limit. The Toads will be hopping from the bottom of the screen to the top. Simply drive your car around and run over them or fire rockets at them. Controls Pressing forwards or up will make the car accelerate Back or down will make the car decelerate. Left and right will rotate the car. Pressing the fire button and up will fire a nitro (if you have any) Pressing fire and down will fire a rocket if you have any. (When using the keyboard the fire button is the right shift key) Try not to run into anything besides Toads or the bonuses they sometimes drop. Otherwise your car will be damaged. If your car reaches 0% errm "Health" it will explode and it's Game Over man, Game Over! Bonuses Rocket (in a little box) - Gives you an extra rocket. Nitro (grey thing with an N on it) - An extra nitro. Armour (Metal plate thing) - Better armour. Steering (A steering wheel) - Improves your steering. Acceleration (An Arrow getting bigger) - Better acceleration. Braking (An arrow getting smaller) - Better braking. Velocity (A little car) - Higher top speed. Health (A big red heart) - Gives back some health. Extra kills (A little Toad saying "OI") - Some extra kills. If a Toad drops a little green circle with a red x on it stay away. It's a mine. Hmmmm...maybe you didn't need to know that. If the time limit expires and you haven't slaughtered enough Toads you will be out of the game. When the time limit runs out and you have killed the required number of Toads (or even better, more Toads) you can go to the Toad Shop. So, you've made it to the shop. Now it's time to turn that cruddy Datsun into a real car. For every Toad you kill you get $5 to spend at the Shop. You can spend your money on velocity, acceleration, braking, steering, armour, rockets, nitros and damage. Damage is how "healthy" your car is. If that reaches 0% you are dead. You can also make more money by selling (degrading) any of the attributes of your car. So if you have lots of rockets but you need more armour you can sell some rockets to buy extra armour. You cannot sell Damage. Click on the name of the attribute you want to buy or sell. The button will be highlighted in red. Now you can use the buy or sell buttons. Next to each attribute is it's cost. Pressing the buy button once will deduct that amount from your money. Pressing Sell will add that much to your money. When you have finished with your car press the Done button to go on to the next level. It is quite easy to create your own cars to use in TOADS. Creating The Graphics To create a new car you must first draw the graphics for it In the Cars/CustomPics drawer is an IFF picture called CustomCar.iff. Load this file into a graphics editor such as DeluxePaint. Remember: Don't alter the palette! At the top of the form are 24 boxes. In these boxes you must draw the animation frames for the car. Each frame should be rotated 15 degrees from the previous one. The top left box shouold be at 0 degrees (facing right), the box to the right should be 15 degrees, the next one 30 degrees and so on. The second line of boxes should start with a frame facing up (90 degrees). Beneath the animation frames is a large box where you draw the picture of the car to be shown in the car selection and shop screens. Under the car picture box is a smaller box where you draw a face to associate with that car. Now save the picture under a different name. DO NOT OVERWRITE THE ORIGINAL CUSTOMCAR.IFF. Now run the Car_Editor program. Click on the button labelled "Process Form". A file requester will appear. Choose the file you just saved your car into. If the form is valid another file requester will appear asking you for the name you wish to save the face picture as. Then you will be asked for the name of the large picture file and then the car animation frames file. Adding A Car Now you have drawn the car you have to add it to the car list. The list is stored in the file Cars/carlist. There are two ways you can edit the file: By Hand (The hard way) Load the carlist file into you're favourite text editor. Each car is defined within a block that begins with the line New Car=<car name> and ends with End Car anything outside a New Car/End Car block is ignored. Inside the New Car/End Car block a number of keywords are used to define a car. Face Pic= Name of the file that contains the face picture to use Car Pic= Name of the file containing the large picture of the car. Shapes File= Name of the file containing the animation frames for the car. You do not need to supply a path to the files. TOADS automatically looks in the Cars drawer. Max Velocity= A number between 0 and 127, the top speed of the car. Acceleration= A number between 0 and 127, how fast the car accelerates. Braking= A number between 0 and 127, how quickly the car brakes Steering= A number between 0 and 127, how well it turns Armour= A number between 0 and 127, how tough the car is. Nitros= A number between 0 and 127, # of nitros to start with. Rockets= A number between 0 and 127, # of rockets to start with. There must not be any spaces between the keyword and the "=" that follows it. Also it's not a good idea to put spaces after the "=" either. However, whitespace is allowed anywhere else. Have a look at the cars already there before making your own cars. Then save the carlist and run TOADS With The Car_Editor program (The easy way) Run the Car_Editor program. Beneath the list of cars is a button labelled "New". Click on this button to create a new car. Select the car you have just created in the list. Now you can change it's name, the files containing it's graphics and the statistics of the car. When you're done click on the "Save" button, quit the program and run TOADS. Making your own levels to play in TOADS is pretty simple. Each level consists of a map file and an iff picture. The levels are combined together into playlists. The playlists are stored in the Levels/playlist file. Creating a map Run the MapEd program. Using the Block menu you can select a type of background to draw with. Use the left mouse button to draw your level map. Choose Save Map from the project menu. Choose a file name for your map. For the sake of consistancy you should put a .map extension on the file name. The map data will be saved under the file name you provide and an iff picture of the map will be saved under the same name but with .iff on the end. Green blocks on the map represent grass. Grey blocks are for roads. Brown blocks are rocks. Cyan blocks are slippery stuff. You should not put cyan blocks on the edges of the map as they can play silly buggers with the cars. Now load the iff picture into a graphics program. Use the areas of colour as a guideline when adding details to the map. Remember: Don't alter the palette! If you use the MapEd program to edit a map which already has a picture you will be asked if you want to overwrite the picture when you save the map. This might not be a good idea if you have just spent a couple hours refining your masterpiece. Creating a new playlist Levels must be in a playlist. To create a new playlist you can either Edit the playlist file by hand Load the Levels/playlist file into your favourite text editor. A playlist is enclosed within a block that begins with New Playlist=<name> and ends with End Playlist Anything outside the New Playlist/End Playlist block is ignored. The name of your playlist should be less than about 12 characters. Inside the playlist you can use the following keywords Description=<description of playlist> New Level=<name of level> End Level The description should be no more than about 200 characters. Inside the New Level/End Level block you can use the following keywords, Map Name=<name of map file> Pic Name=<name of background picture> Map Desc=<description. (less than 40 characters)> Time=<Time limit in seconds> Minimum Kills=<minimum number of toads to kill> Maximum Toads=<number of toads allowed on screen> Player 1 X=<player 1 start X coordinate in pixels> Player 1 Y=<player 1 start Y coordinate in pixels> Player 2 X=<player 2 start X> Player 2 Y=<player 2 start Y> Clock X=<clock X coordinate> Clock Y=<clock Y coordinate> Chance Of Bomb=<% of items dropped by Toads that are mines> The Maximum Toads attribute can be used to make the game more or less difficult. Also on slower machines you may have to reduce the number of Toads on screen to speed up the game. You should try not to make a level impossible, eg 100 kills in 30 seconds is asking a bit too much. As a rough guide, 100 Toads will hop up the screen in 40 seconds if only 6 can be on the screen at any one time. Or use the Playlist_Ed program. On the left of the window is a list of playlists, to the right of this is a list of levels in the currently selected playlist. If you read the above section most of the buttons should be pretty self explanatory :] DO NOT CREATE AN EMPTY PLAYLIST! Once you have created your levels and playlist you can run TOADS and play them.