home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- 14th March 2000
-
- STune - The Battle for Aratis
- Version 0.72
-
-
- For news and bugs, please read HISTORY.TXT.
-
-
- The story:
-
- A war broke out in the universe. The Macrosap Empire has left his solar system
- "Pessimi OSi" to conquer the solar system "Boni OSi". Relentlessly the Empire
- is stealing the Sap of Life of the planets Aratis, Acoris, Amigis, Applis and
- Lunis. But the ones who control the Sap are controlling the whole universe!
- To stop the Macrosap Empire, rebellions on the planet came together to beat
- the Empire out of their solar system.
- Now, the people of Aratis have chosen you to be the leader of the rebellion
- of Aratis, the steppen planet. It's up to YOU to save the people of Aratis!
- You have to harvest the Sap and to fight against the evil Empire at the same
- time... are you hard enough for this challenge?
-
-
- Deja vus:
-
- Some of you might now have some "deja vus" after having read the story.
- But I can ensure you that we have not borrowed it...
- ...well, perhaps we were "inspired" by some other things after all.
- We have started in spring 1998 when Matthias suggested to program an Atari
- game together. Matthias is a great fan of realtime strategy games like Dune 2.
- And because we didn't know of an existing and good realtime strategy game for
- our Atari, we have decided to write a Dune 2 clone.
- So we started coding and now, we have released this preview: The game is not
- yet finished, you can only play partially, the computer opponent is not yet
- very clever, the grafics don't lool very professional (Spion is working on much
- better grafics!)... but I think you can get a good impression how it will feel
- & look like one day and how a modern game uses the GEM graphical user
- interface.
-
-
- Needed hardware:
-
- Be happy: You only need a Atari TOS compatible computer (that includes the
- clones like the Milan, Hades...) with at least 1 MB RAM to run STune! You know,
- STune is completely designed to run under GEM. The disadvantage of this feature
- is the lower speed, so that you should have at least a computer with a CPU
- clocked with 16MHz. Having FAST-RAM is also an advantage because STune often
- accesses the RAM.
- The actual demo version runs best in 16 or 256 colors because corresponding
- images to these color depths are included in this distribution.
- But by adapting the grafics, STune is able to run in all color depth up to 256
- colors! High and true color modes are now also supported, the 256 color images
- are then converted to 16 or 24 (but this may take a while at the beginning).
- To hear the included sound samples, you need a Falcon compatible Sound-XBIOS.
- If you have not an Atari Falcon, you may use Thothys program X-SOUND
- (http://www.crosswinds.net/~thothy/atari/xsound.html - but it doesn't yet works
- stable on normal STs) to hear the sounds.
-
-
- Some words about the usage:
-
- STune should be easy to control due to the GEM interface (at least when we
- have fully include the English language support in the program...).
- You can select a unit or a building by clicking with the left mouse button on
- it. Clicking on a free place will make a unit to go there. When you also hold
- down the SHIFT key, the unit will patrol between two points. Clicking on a
- enemy unit or building will make your combat unit to attack this as soon as
- possible. To deselect a selected unit/building, just move your mouse pointer
- over a free place and click on the right mouse button. If you have selected a
- building and you press the right mouse button over the right building, a popup
- appears where you can choose a new building (when the selected building was a
- "Bauanlage") or a new unit (when the selected building was a "Fabrik" or a
- "Kaserne"). Watch the information window to see when the production has
- finished (KLF stands for small factory, GRF is the big factory, KAS are the
- barracks and BAU is the building construction).
- To repair or sell a building, select the menu entries "Repair building"" or
- "Sell building", move youre mouse over the building (the mouse pointer should
- change its form) on press the left button. Press right to leave the repairing
- or selling mode.
- Note that you will first to have a "Radar" and enough energie stations to get
- a map in the information window. But you can move the red rectangle anyway.
- There are also some keybord shortcuts. Look at the menu to learn some (e.g.
- ^Q means pressing CNTRL + Q). But there are also some other shortcuts:
- CTRL-W will cycle the windows and with "y" or "z" you can place a produced
- building on the playing field.
- You can also use the cursor keys to scroll the window.
-
-
- Credits:
-
- * Idea, story, code: Charon (mega_metty@gmx.de)
- * Code, graphical interface: Thothy (thothy@atari-computer.de)
- * Grafix: Spion of Escape (spion@atari.org)
- * The female voice: Julia Ley
- * French translation: Guillaume Deflache
-
-
- Thanks to:
-
- * Christian Jost: For his tips about the artificial intelligence.
- * Alexander Kirchner: For the IMG loader
- * Dan Ackerman: For the high/true color convertion routine.
- * bITmASTER: For the DSP MOD player
- * NoCrew: For patching bITmASTER's player
- * Vassilis Papathanassiou: For his RSC-TRANSLATOR (a great help!)
- * Milhouse: For the nice STune picture (at the top of the STune
- homepage)
- * All persons who send us criticism, praise and information about errors
- (I can't count anymore ;-) ... )
-
-
- Contact:
-
- You can send your criticism, praise or error reports at any time via e-mail to
- Thothy or Charon! Or use: stune@gmx.net !
-
- The newest version of STune can be found in the internet:
-
- http://stune.atari.org
-
- ( or if this does not work, try:
- http://www.atari-computer.de/thothy/e_stune.htm )
-
-
- May the sap to be with you!
-