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Text File | 2000-05-29 | 14.2 KB | 461 lines

KNOCKIN --------- by Brainchild Design in 2000 Contents of this Readme: 0. Introduction 1. Starting the game 1.1 Starting a server 1.2 The lobby 1.3 Connecting to a server 1.4 Starting a game 1.5 Quitting 2. Playing the game 2.1 Controls 2.1.1 Changing the controls 2.2 Teams 2.2.1 Changing team members 2.3 Points 2.3.1 Player points 2.3.2 Team points 3. New levels 3.1 Installing a new level 3.2 Making your own level 3.2.1 Graphics 3.2.2 Sound 4. Troubleshooting 4.1 Requirements 4.2 Questions & Answers 5. Brainchild Design 6. Credits ============================================================ 0. Introduction ============================================================ Multiplayer gaming has never been this easy! Connect to your friends on the internet and show them who's the boss. The rules are simple: score points by collecting coins and loose points by falling down the hazardous holes. Team up with your buddies and do some strategic teamplay. Chat between the rounds and check the tournament scores. The game is totally configurable and easily lets you add your own levels. Features: Internet play Realtime chat Total flexibility Teamplay Up to 8 players simultaneously, 4 on the same computer ============================================================ 1. Starting the game ============================================================ Knockin is a server/client game. That means that you must either start a server och connect to a server to be able to play the game. Even if you just want to play locally, you must still start a server. 1.1 Starting a server In the menu, select Game->Start Server. You will be presented with a dialog box, which contains these fields: Player Settings The Playing checkboxes enable/disable the players. The Name fields contains the names of the players. Max Players decides how many players will be allowed to participate in the game. The Local Play checkbox decides whether somebody will be allowed to connect to the server. If it's checked, nobody will be able to connect. Press Start Game when you are done. 1.2 Connecting to a server In the menu, select Game->Connect to Server. You will be presented with a dialog box, which contains these fields: Player Settings The Playing checkboxes enable/disable the players. The Name fields contains the names of the players. IP Adress is the adress of the server which you want to connect to. This can either be a IP number or a DNS name. Press Connect to Server when you are done. 1.3 The lobby The lobby is the meeting place between the game rounds. You can check the score of the game, both player points and team points, see the team line-up and of course talk to the other players. Most of the lobby is pretty self-explanatory. Worth mentioning is that Last points is what was scored in the last game, and Total points is the total amount of points that a player/team has gained. To say something to the other players, just type it in. You will see what you type in the line in the bottom. The text is sent to all the others when you press Enter/Return. 1.4 Starting a game Only the server can start a game. This is done by selecting Game->Start Game in the menu. Again, you will be presented with a dialog box, which contains these fields: Level cointains all the levels you have installed. Select the one you want to play. Acceleration is how fast you will be able to accelerate. Friction is the amount of friction in the game. Duh! Coin Amount is how often coins will appear. Points to win is the amount of points needed to win the game. When somebody reaches this the game ends. Points per coin is the amount of point awarded a player when he/she collects a coin. - Points per fall is the amount of points that a player looses when he/she falls down. Negative points decides whether a player will get negative points if he/she falls down too much. If unchecked, players will never get less than zero poins. Reset Game Settings will reset all settings to their default values. When you're satisfied with your settings, press Start Game. 1.5 Quitting To quit a game in progress, select Game->Quit Game in the menu. The game will be aborted, no points will be awarded and everybody will go back to the Lobby. Only the server can do this. To quit Knockin, select Game->Quit. If you're running a server, all the clients will get disconnected. ============================================================ 2. Playing the game ============================================================ The rules of the game are very simple. If you collect a coin you will get points, if you fall down you loose points. So all you have to do is to collect as many coins as you can and avoid to fall down. But watch out for the other players. They WILL try to make things difficult for you! 2.1 Controls Each player has four inputs: Left, Right, Up and Down. These can be fully customized to what you feel is best. The default settings are: Player 1: Player 2: Left: Left Arrow Left: A Right: Right Arrow Right: D Up: Up Arrow Up: W Down: Down Arrow Down: S Player 3: Player 4: Left: J Left: Joystick Left Right: L Right: Joystick Right Up: I Up: Joystick Up Down: K Down: Joystick Down 2.1.1 Changing the controls To change the cotrols from the default settings, select Options->Change Controls in the menu. You will be presented with a dialog box. On your left you will see the names of the players. To change a control, simply press the button which corresponds to the right player and control, and then press the new control that you wish to set. For example, say you want to change the Up control for player 2 to Y. This is what you would do: Press the button which is on the Player 2 line and the Up column. Press Y. 2.2 Teams Each player can, if he/she desires, be part of a team. Teamplay will lead to a much more strategic gameplay. 2.2.1 Changing team members You change what team each player is part of by selecting Options->Names/Teams in the menu. You will be presented with a dialog box where you can change the names of the players, whether they're part of a team and in that case, the name of the team. The various fields are: The Name fields holds the names of the players. The Solo/Team checkbox decides whether the player is on his own or in a team. If it's checked, the player will be on the team with the name typed in the Team field. The Team field holds the name of the team that the player will be on. 2.3 Points There are two different types of points: Game points and Tournament points. Game points is used only in the game rounds, and is what you get when you collect a coin or loose when you fall down. When one of the players reach the Point limit, the game round ends, and each player is awarded Tournament points, depending on how well he/she performed. Each team will also receive Tournament points, depending on how well all the members of the team performed. 2.3.1 Player points After a finished game round, each player will receive a certain amount of Tournament points, depending on which place he finished in. The points awarded are: 1st place: 10 Points 2nd place: 8 Points 3rd place: 6 Points 4th place: 5 Points 5th place: 4 Points 6th place: 3 Points 7th place: 2 Points 8th place: 1 Points 2.3.2 Team points The points awarded to each team is a bit more complex. Firstly, the team ranking is calculated by counting each team-members Player points. Then each team will receive Team points according to the same list as for Player points. ============================================================ 3. New levels ============================================================ All the levels have their own file directory placed under the 'Levels' map in the 'Knockin' directory. The name of the level will be the same as the name of the directory. C:\ | +-[Knockin] | +-[Gfx] <-- The default level data (don't +-[Sound] <-- change in these) | +-[Levels] <-- Place your level under this map. | +-["Levelname"] | +-[Gfx] | imagefile.bmp +-[Sound] soundfile.wav 3.1 Installing a new level If you find a level on the internet it's probably packed in a zip file (learn more at www.winzip.com). After you've downloaded the zip just unpack the file with subdirectories and place it under the 'Levels' map. That's all you need to do, the game should now present you the new level in the dropdown menu when you start a new game. If you want to play the new level with other computers over internet they must also have the exact same level. (Go to www.brainchilddesign.com to find out where to get new levels.) 3.2 Making your own level 3.2.1 Graphics To make your own level all you need is a paint program that can save pictures in bmp format. Before you begin to paint spend some time studying the graphics from the default level. These are the files that the level is made up of: Coin.bmp - The token you collect for points Level.bmp - The background playingfield Lobby.bmp - The chat/score board (why change?) Mask.bmp - Map on where the holes are Players.bmp - A column of eight players PlayerIcons.bmp - The icons to the left of the playernames Scores.bmp - The scorewindow background TeamIcons.bmp - The icons to the left of the teamnames Teams.bmp - The tag shown on the players in teamplay You don't need all these files to make a new level. If a file doesn't exist in the level's directory it's replaced by the corresponding default one. Things you need to know: Transparency The color that represents transparent is fuchsia, that's maximum red and blue and no green. Players The players are always considered as round disks with the same diameter as the width of the players.bmp. The game will cut the column into a new player at the same distance down the column as the picture is wide. There should be eight players. The mask Holes are represented by absolute black. Any other color are considered playable area. The picture must be the same size as the levelpicture. Icons The iconfiles are split up in the same way as the players and in the same order. Make it clear which icon that represent which player or it could be very confusing. 3.2.2 Sound The soundfiles are as follows: CoinSpawn.wav - The sound that's played when a coin appears Death.wav - Okay it's quite obvious what they all do... GetCoin.wav Knock.wav PlayerSpawn.wav ============================================================ 4. Troubleshooting ============================================================ Knockin is our first multiplayer game with internet support. Due to our lack of resources, Knockin is probably not perfect. We have tried to iron out all the bugs, but there is bound to be more. One major issue is that Knockin is very sensitive to high ping-times. This means that you probably can't play the game over a modem connection. Sorry. 4.1 Requirements To play Knockin you will need: A decent computer A new version of Direct X A really fast internet connection (for net play) We're not sure about what you actually need, since we haven't tried Knockin on that many computers. But if you have something like a Pentium II 233 or better, you will have no problems running Knockin. If you intend to play Knockin over the net, we suggest that you find someone pretty close to you to play with. This will reduce the ping-times to a minimum. Hopefully you will be able to play without getting too annoyed... 4.2 Questions & Answers Question: I get the error "You need at least 16-bit colours to run this. Please change your settings." What is wrong? Answer: You are running Windows with only 256 colours. Please change your display depth to at least 16-bit, and restart Knockin. Question: When I play Knockin over the net, everything gets jerky, and I have difficulties steering. How can I fix this? Answer: Are you using a modem? In that case you probably can't fix it. If you're using a LAN connection, try playing with a friend that is closer to you. Best is if you share the same LAN. ============================================================ 5. Brainchild Design ============================================================ Brainchild Design is a small group of people trying to make good freeware games. We all do this in our sparetime, so we can't really compete with the big guys. But we believe that a game doesn't have to be that complex to be fun. "Simple but yet addictive!" is what our games are all about. Please visit our homepage: http://www.brainchilddesign.com There you might find a newer version of Knockin, and possibly even the source code. You can also download all our other freeware games. ============================================================ 6. Credits ============================================================ Code Mattias Brynervall Graphics Andreas Brynervall Martin Magnusson Music/Sfx Anders JG Nilsson