ST-Computer Leser 1998 October

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Text File | 1998-09-26 | 23KB | 561 lines

DOUBLE BOBBLE 2000 oooooooooooooooooooo -A GAME BY RESERVOIR GODS- o The Excuse For A Plot Dub and Dob were two homeboys who enjoyed life "on the street". There spare time was spent "hanging tough" outside newsagents and 2nd hand car lots. Their pastimes included listening to "banging tunes" on their ghettoblasters, kicking things, shoplifting and hotwiring cars. They were just like any normal nine year olds. Dub and Dob enjoyed spending time with their girlfriends, Sub and Sob. They would skip gaily through the local park, write poems to each other and read aloud from Chaucer and the Financial Times. Their lives were carefree and happy. All was well until the son of a local German sausage-manufacturer, Darren Von Blubba, decided Dub and Dob had gone too far. Dub had kicked his football into Darren's garden and Dob had walked over his prize rhododendrons without even a word of apology. Evil thoughts formed in Darren's mind. The next day Dub and Dob were shocked by the story on the front of their local paper, The Dubshire Advertiser. "Cat Stuck Up Tree" it read. But further down the page was a story that struck fear into their tiny hearts. "Local Girls Disappear". Sub and Sob had vanished. No-one had seen them since the previous night when they went to collect some sausages from the local sausage plant. Dub and Dob decided they had to try and rescue their girlfriends, climbed aboard their BMXs, did some "radical" stunts and headed for the sausage emporium. "I've been expecting you." Darren Von Blubba looked down at the two quaking boys who had just entered the dark sausage plant. "Nobody kicks their ball in my garden and gets away with it!" and with that Darren let out a burst of manic laughter, obviously borrowed from an early adversary of James Bond. "W-w-where are Sub and Sob?" Stammered Dob. "You will never see them again!" laughed Darren "and now it is time for your prehistoric brains to get bodies to match!" Darren pulled a shiny lever and a trap door opened below the hapless duo and Dub and Dob tumbled down a chute towards the grinding machinery of the Sausage machine. o o o o o o Dub opened his eyes and rubbed his aching head. He couldn't be sure how long he had been unconscious for. As his eyes started to focus on the surroundings he could make out he was in a room with some rather garish wallpaper. There was scaffolding up the side of the walls and in the middle of the room. He heard a groan and turned to look at his companion. "Dob! What has happened...." he gasped "you....you're a Dinosaur!" "Yes Dub, that confounded sausage machine has turned us into the now extinct species 'sausagosaurus'. We will have to battle with Darren Von Blubba and get him to turn us back into our human forms." "But we must rescue Sub and Sob first...how do we get out of here?" "I think we are in the underground storerooms of the factory. There are literally hundreds of rooms down here that we will have to get through to get to Darren Von Blubba's office. And there will be his henchmen...." "Like who, Dob?" "Like those!" said Dob, pointing to the roof of the room from which three evil looking figures were descending. "Denzos!" whispered Dob through clenched teeth "not very bright, but let them get near you and they can be deadly!" "This is going to be some adventure!" grinned Dub. And with that they turned to face their advancing adversaries. o Loading & Installation Double Bobble can be run off floppy disk or hard drive. Make sure the floppy disk is write enabled as it will save the high score table when you quit. Double Bobble is a game for the Atari Falcon030. It requires 4mb of memory and runs on TVs, RGB & VGA monitors. It is advised that you de-install all resident programs before running Double Bobble. If it doesn't load, run try running from an ST compatible screen res such as ST medium, and make sure all TSRs and accessories are deinstalled. Try a control boot. If all this fails, use "God-Load", the loading system from Reservoir Gods which is included on Maggie 18. If you have any problems getting Double Bobble to run, please write to us with complete details of your system - memory, TOS version, any hardware upgrades (processor upgrades, screen enhancers etc.), monitor and give a description of the problem. We will do our best to remedy it! o How To Play Your aim is to battle your way through 100 levels of monsters. To complete each level you must clear all the monster from it. This is achieved by blowing a bubble at a monster, it will become trapped in this bubble. You then must pop the bubble to kill the monster. If you delay for too long the monster will manage to free himself from the bubble and will be in a rage! Once all monsters are killed, you will have a short time to pick up bonuses before moving onto the next level. o Lives & Credits You start the game with 4 lives and 7 credits. Once you lose all your lives you have the option of restarting by using a credit. When you restart your score will be cleared and you will lose all your current extend letters, but you do get four extra lives. Once all lives and credits are lost the game is over. Another player can join the action at any time (as long as there is a credit left) by pressing fire on the currently defined controller for that player. o Control Methods Double Bobble 2000 can be played with a joystick, jaguar powerpad or keyboard. You have three basic movement directions - up,left and right - as you can't move down. You can, however, fall off the edge of platforms and let gravity bring you down to the platform below. Here is a summary of joystick movements and their functions: ----------------------------- | MOVEMENT ACTION | |---------------------------| | UP Jump | | LEFT Walk Left | | RIGHT Walk Right | | UP/LEFT Jump Left | | UP/RIGHT Jump Right | | FIRE Blow Bubble | ----------------------------- You can jump on platforms and on bubbles. Jumping on bubbles requires a good deal of practice, but once mastered allows you to get further into the game. You can control the game on keyboard, although this is not the best control method due to a hardware bug in the keyboard chip! Basically, the keyboard won't recognise it if you hold down more than two keys simultaneously, this becomes a problem if you want to jump, move in a direction and fire. With two players on the keyboard, things become even more problematic. There is a semi-solution. The keyboard will recognise the SHIFT keys being pressed, no matter how many other keys are held down, so it is best to use these keys for fire. Also there is a key for "UP-LEFT" and "UP-RIGHT" diagonal jumping to save you having to press two keys at once. The default keyboard configuration for Dub and Dob is: --------------------------------------- | | PLAYER ONE | PLAYER TWO | --------------------------------------| | UP | UP ARROW | CONTROL | | LEFT | LEFT ARROW | Z | | RIGHT | RIGHT ARROW | X | | UP-LEFT | INSERT | A | | UP-RIGHT | CLR-HOME | S | | FIRE | RIGHT SHIFT | LEFT SHIFT | --------------------------------------- You can redefine the keys if these don't suit you, but I strongly recommend using one of the shift keys for fire! No such problems with the cumbersome Jaguar powerpads. These work fine, and you can even use their 'pause' key to pause the game. Player one is set to use Joystick 2 or Powerpad A. Player two is set to use Joystick 1 or Powerpad B Other in-game keys are: F1 - Pause Game F10 - Quit Game UNDO - Sacrifice (see below) o Sound Menu Here you can turn off the music, samples or both. You can also turn on the internal speaker (if, for example, you have a VGA monitor with no other output device). Fortunately you can control the volume of the output sound, so you can easily turn down the internal speaker without resorting to putting a book over your Falcon's case. o Sacrifice At any point in the game, should things be going horribly wrong, you can choose to sacrifice your life to the great gods (of the Reservoir variety). In return, you get to restart the level you are on. So if monster have become trapped in very awkward places and you have spent hours trying to capture them to no avail, you can restart the level. All monster return to their original start positions and you get a second bite at the cherry. Invoking sacrifice will cause both players to lose a life. To activate sacrifice, press the 'UNDO' key. o High Scores Double Bobble keeps a close track of your score, and during a game it will retain your top score. If you run out of lives and use a credit, your score is cleared, but the best score you have achieved at the end of the game will be checked against the high scores. The high scores are saved to disk for posterity. It also gives you a good chance to gloat at your unfortunate friends who can't get past level 13. o Music Double Bobble features 4 channel 50khz stereo music plus 2 stereo sample channels for sound fx. The DSP is used to handle all the music, a task it is well suited to. Sound Effects are stereo placed depending on where they occur on the screen. For example, if you pick up a bonus on the left of the screen you will hear the effect on the left speaker, whilst actions on the right of the screen will cause the sound to come from the right speaker. As you move across the screen, the samples will move between the speaker giving a true stereo effect. All music was written by Sparehead 3. Sampling was done by Sparehead 3, Mr Pink and Ripley using the excellent Graoumf tracker and Pro-Tracker. All sound coding was done by Tat of Digital Chaos. I must thank him for sending me his routines and for all the support he has given me during the creation of this game. - Blatant Plug Time - We are working on our own tracker, currently just in an STFM/STE incarnation but it will be ported to the Falcon when (if?) finished. o Graphics Double Bobble runs in true colour mode, using overscan on TV and RGB monitors. Because of the restriction of VGA monitors, the screen area is 320 x 240. This still allows for a large playing area. All graphics were created using God-Paint, probably the finest true colour art package in the world (plug! plug!). The graphics were drawn by Ripley and Sparehead 3 who literally spent hours moving their sweaty palms over their mice, only pausing to moan about the bugs in God-Paint. Not that there are any. Honest. Well maybe one. o Secret Levels There is a hidden section in Double Bobble! It is not immediately obvious how to get there, and will probably only be reached by the more experienced Bobblers. It is well worth getting to though - full marks to those who get there first, and to anyone who can decipher the cryptic message in it! There are also some hidden features on some levels - don't take everything at face value! o Points Points are scored by popping bubbles, picking up fruit and bonuses, clearing potion-filled screens, killing the end of level of monster and getting to the secret room. You get 10 points for popping each of your own bubbles, and 15 for popping your comrade's bubbles so sneakily pop them for extra points! o Fruit When you pop a monster it will spin into oblivion and be reincarnated as a piece of very tasty fruit. You can 'chain-pop' monsters, by popping the bubble when it is touching other bubbles containing monsters. The more monsters you get in one chain-pop, the bigger the fruit bonus! o Power-Ups Double Bobble features an extensive range of power-ups and bonuses. It would spoil the game to detail what individual bonus does, and how you get it. Part of the fun of Double Bobble is working all this out. However, I will whet your appetite by giving you a few examples of some of the power-ups you may come across on your adventures. You will find objects that improve your bubble range and speed, make you faster, or give you temporary invulnerability. You can even get homing bubbles - once fire they will lock onto a monster and chase him across the screen until they capture him! There are bonuses that boost your score, there are massive bonus fruit that fall from the ceiling, there are potions that fill the screen with goodies and there is even a creature who will help you battle against your foes. Use the power-ups wisely, they can be a powerful ally, but don't risk your neck trying to get a power-up in a dangerous place! o E X T E N D You will see the above letters floating around some levels. Collect them by popping them and they will be displayed on your side of the screen. If you manage to collect all of the letters of the word "EXTEND" you will be rewarded with an extra life and will automatically warp to the next level. Be prepare for massive arguments in two player mode about who should get the extend letters as you both battle for that extra life! o Fire, Water & Lightning These are special power up bubbles that appear on some levels and greatly help you with your quest. Popping a fire bubble will cause a flame to fall from it. When this makes contact with the ground it will ignite an area around it and burn for some time, frying all monsters that touch it. When you pop a water bubble you unleash a cascade of water that gushes down the level, sweeping away all monsters it touches! Dub and Dob can hitch a ride in the water, but can jump at any point. You can't be killed if you are in the water. Popping a lightning bubble causes a flash of lightning to streak across the level killing all in its path. Lighting will kill Dub and Dob so keep an eye on where your pal is before you pop it! o Hurry Up If you hang around on a level for too long you will get a "Hurry Up" and all the monsters will start to move at crazed speeds. Then the evil Darren Von Blubba will appear (with his brother Arran if there are two players) and chase you across the screen. He is a mean opponent and cannot be killed, and will only disappear if you complete the level or if he kills you. o Registering Double Bobble is a shareware game, and it would be greatly appreciated if you take time to show your support for the Falcon games scene by registering. This was originally going to be a commercial game until forces beyond our control made this impractical. The game has take us almost a year of hard work, but we are still keen to work on other Falcon projects (we must be mad!). It would be nice to know that there are people out there who see our productions and enjoy them. Is there anyone out there? Full registration costs 10 uk pounds. Not bad really considering the quality of the game, especially when you look at some of the commercial offerings about that cost 3 times as much. We are not the type of people who just pocket the cheques and forget about it. We believe in offering a service to those who register. For example, the people who registered for Tautology II were the first to get this game - they were sent it the week it was released. People who register will receive "Double Bobble - The Further Adventures" a complete new adventure for Dub and Dob to embark on, 100 new action packed levels full of new challenges and featuring some more stunning true colour graphics. You also receive the "Double Bobble 2000 Map Editor". This is a complete program that allows you to design your own levels for Double Bobble. The program has its own WIMP environment - it is all mouse based so designing your own levels is only a key click away! You have separate screens to design your level layout, graphics, sprite positions and airflow. You can even play-test the level from within the editor! The Map-Editor also has the provision for loading new graphics, so you can even create your own graphics for the game and make a truly customised version of Double Bobble. Create your own worlds! Swap them with your friends! Those paying the full registration fee also get the latest version of Double Bobble 2000, plus other Reservoir Gods Falcon productions and the knowledge that when we release our next game they will be the first to receive it! If you can't afford the full registration, you can opt for the budget registration scheme. This is only 5 uk pounds. For this you get the latest version of Double Bobble, with the facility to load in new levels. You don't get the extra game disk "The Further Adventures" and you don't get the Double Bobble Level Creator, but at least you have supported the Falcon games scene. So there you have it. If you like this game, please take the time to register. If registering from overseas, please send cash if possible. If you have to send a cheque, send a euro-cheque or a euro-giro cheque. The problem with cheques from abroad is that the bank charges are so high that it isn't worth cashing them. The address to write to is: Leon O'Reilly (Mr. Pink) Cwm Isaf Abermule Montgomery Welshpool Powys SY15 6JL United Kingdom o Double Bobble - future versions We hope that this version of Double Bobble runs smoothly at all times on all Falcons, but we realise that there may still be bugs lurking somewhere in the dark recesses of the game. I have personally spent many long hours playing through the game and eliminating bugs, but there may still be the occasional glitch that has escaped my notice. If you do come across anything then let us know and we will fix it. The will be newer versions of Double Bobble which will have any located bugs removed. We have put so much time and effort into creating this game, we don't want it to be marred by a stupid bug somewhere along the line, so we will be stamping out anything we find. o Double Bobble - The Further Adventures Yes, this isn't the end of the Double Bobble story. Those of you who opt for the full registration will get this excellent new game disk. There are currently 100 new levels, but this could end up as being more! We want to make more data disks for Double Bobble. We are also interested in any interesting levels you make. So once you get your level creators, send in your levels and we will compile some more data disks for registered users. We are also planning "Double Bobble - The Famous Mission", with levels designed by many 'famous' people on the Falcon demo and coding scene. Yes, you could play a level designed by your coding/musician/graphics heroes! We don't know when this will be finished, but registered users will be notified about it. As long as the interest is there, we will keep supporting and improving this game. If you have any suggestions for improvements to Double Bobble, or spot any bugs (surely not!) then let us no and we will do our best to change things. The Falcon is a great computer and deserves great games. We hope Double Bobble will be the first in a long line of these. o Credits Code......................Mr. Pink DSP Module/Sample player..Tat/Digital Chaos Sprites, Level Design.....Ripley Music, Graphics...........Sparehead 3 o Packages Used God-Paint.................For all graphics! Devpac 3..................For creating the game BSS Debug.................For tracking down those bugs Graoumf Tracker...........For sampling the sound effects PRO-Tracker...............For creating the music God-Map 1.13..............For designing the levels Ice Packer................For decreasing the size of the files considerably - More Blatant Plugging - One day we will release our packer! Oh yes! Three years in production and it is almost ready. (Blame Tim for this one!) o Thanks & Greets To everyone who registered for Tautology II. To all who have pestered me to get this game finished! Everyone I met at Fried Bits III. All on IRC channel Atari. I may be back! CIH for all the good publicity! Phineas - for support and trying to do things right. Tat - for the sound routines and the "sick-sample-surgery" Charles - for the penguins, despite the lack of razors. Tim - for the packer (although it is a bit late) DBA - for rescuing us from the headhunters. Richard K - for encouragement and playtesting. Daryl - thanks for the sample cable and playtesting! DHS - for Swedish compliments TSCC - for having such good taste in music Pure Bollocks - for the use of the Falcon at fried bits 3 EKO - for making impossibly good demos. LAZER - for making impossibly large demos. Lucky of ST - great minds think alike! Felice - for appreciating fireworks (at the appropriate time). Vogue - for forgetting his jammy dodgers Falcon Commando - for his amazing grasp of spelling. Chris of Passion - for the squared paper Nitrik - for ringing a bell with his name Stallion - for organising a great party Flinny - for being a certified IRC junkie Avena - for making great demos that run fine on my machine (if no-one elses) Mick of DNT Crew - for appreciating Ripley's graphics Ralph Lovesy - for creating such a great footie game Greg Lovesy - for the (very quiet) music Carnera - for the sarcasm Giants - for being dotty about tetris Dragon - for watching me suffer in my FB3 tag! Psychosis - for being English AND owning a Falcon! Richard Davey - for taking _those_ pictures Mike Goodman - for supporting Tautology II System Solutions - for the (non)-working hard drive 16/32 systems - for Robinson's Requiem (lost) Atari World - for revieiwing Tautology 1.5 years late - clumsy! For further greetings, see the end sequence of the game!