Whiteline: Alpha/Whiteline Alpha.iso/dl_serie/056/munchie/munchie.doc

Text File | 1994-09-25 | 21.7 KB | 458 lines

Hello and welcome to Mrs Munchie 1.21-SW.  This program is SHAREWARE
and may be distributed freely as long as this Munchie.DOC file is
kept with it.  Mrs Munchie is (C) 1992 Robert W. Dytmire.


OPPS Section.

Before you go any further please be aware that version 1.10-B is
NOT supposed to be on any NET,BBS, or Shareware/PD disk.  It was
intended as a demo for ST Format ONLY and got released by accident
at my first show in Ashville( I intended to release this version
but I didn't get the right version.  NOTE: NEVER store two
versions of your stuff on the same drive!!)  Version 1.10-B
flashes ST Format's name in the decrunch/load header, which is
WRONG.  ST Format had nothing to do with that version and I
apologise to them here and now for the accidental use of their
name.  I did not gain anything from it's use (No propriety use was
desired or gained) and I have sent ST Format an advanced
(Improved) copy of this game as an exclusive.  I encourage people
who want the old-fashioned mode to work to purchase an ST Format
if and when they publish Mrs. Munchie 1.31.  They may not after my
screw up.  This version, 1.21-SW, is the only proper SHAREWARE
version and I ask anyone with Version 1.10-B to delete it.
Thanks, for your corporation.

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SECTION 1  PLAYING MRS MUNCHIE
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BOOTING:  The game requires at least 1 Meg and a 520ST
(everybody should have at least this much, eh?).  Click on
Munchie.TOS to self Extract to a disk of your choice.
After the program has extracted itself, double click on
Munchie.PRG to run the program.
   The File Munchie.Prg should be OUTSIDE the folder MUNCHIE.
All other files should be inside the MUNCHIE folder.  Also, the
Munchie folder cannot be embedded in another folder.  For best
results put this program on a blank disk with just 1 folder
(Munchie) or make sure it is in the upper-most level of your hard
drive.

NOTE: Hitting a null key will advance you through the different
title displays.

TITLE SCREEN KEYS:

Pressing F1 Allows you to set your start level (via moving the
joystick) to the highest level you've reached so far.  It won't
allow you to skip levels you haven't played yet.

Pressing F2 sets Adult Mode.  This is the default game mode and
will cut you no slack.

Pressing F3 sets Kid's Mode which will play a little slower, have
dumber ghosts,and fewer bad guys appearing on the screen.  This
mode is designed to allow smaller kids to play Mrs. Munchie.

Pressing F9 sets the computer to 50Hz.

Pressing F10 sets the computer to 60Hz.

Pressing "O" gets you the old-fashioned game, with no extras.
THIS FUNCTION IS DISABLED IN VR 1.25!!!!
Note: Thanks to all the beta-testers at the show for requesting
this feature.  A lot of players thought the game got too frantic.

Pressing "Q" during the game will exit back to the title sequence.

Pressing "P" will pause the game.  Pressing fire or any other key
will start the action again.

Pressing "S" will toggle between Digitized Dot eating and XBIOS
dot eating.  This is mostly for 60Hz users.

Mrs Munchie is basically a Mrs. Pac man clone with lots of extra
features.  The display is laid out fairly simply.  Your score is
in the lower left hand of the screen, A Zap display shows how many
zaps you have (NOTE: You CAN have more than the 4 lives or Zaps
the game is limited in displaying), and number of lives are in the
right hand corner.


Movement is via the joystick and may require a little practice
before you'll feel comfortable with it because Mrs. Munchie turns
on Character boundaries only.  Move a little ahead of time and
you'll be ok!

Pressing the Fire button will activate a Zap.  The Zap will
destroy all Ghosts, Bugs, and Bees currently on the screen and
award you the values for each.  This is your most powerful weapon
and should be used sparingly.

The maze is composed of several different parts.  The walls
which you cannot move through, the regular (yellow) dots, the
Power Pills(Flashing dots), the Sugar Treats (Bonus Points) and the
Trap Dots(Slightly different from normal dots).

Regular Dots are worth 10pts each.

Power Pills Scare the ghosts and allow Mrs. Munchie to kill 'em
The Ghosts will flash when they get ready to change back to
normal.  My advice is NEVER attack a flashing ghost.

Sugar Treats score bonus points and give a real boost to your
score.

Trap Dots.  When eaten these dots cause a random effect to happen.
These effects can be:
     Add a Bee to the maze
     Add a Bug to the maze
     Add a lightning Bolt to the maze
     Add 1,2 or 3 ghosts to the maze
     Kill everything on the screen and eat all dots!!(Super NOVA)
     Slow down munchie.
     Activate a Majik Mushroom
     Send out a Fruit
     Activate the Extra Life Mushroom
     And even more impressive things....Find out when you play

NOTE: The effect of a trap dot may not be apparent at first.  If
you wander around and discover, say, a power pill missing you can
bet it was the work of the Trap Dot.


The Enemies:

The Ghosts - No less than 4 start the game but up to 7 may chase
you at a time.  Beware that certain effects can speed these guys
up to HIGH speeds and they can become VERY intelligent.  Killed
Via Power Pill effects, Zap, or NOVA.

The Maze Bug - Wander on top of the maze searching back and forth
for the Munchie.  Pretty mindless but a few of these will really
drive you up the wall.  Killed by a Nova, Zap, or DDT.

The Bee - These creatures don't kill Mrs. Munchie, just sting her
and then watch with glee as she crawls along VERY slowly.  The
effect only lasts a few seconds but it can get very bad with 3-4
bees flying around.  Killed by Nova, Zap, or DDT.


The Fruit - Pick up the bouncing fruit for various bonus scores.
Eating more dots will coax them out for you.

The Extra Life Mushroom - Has spinning eyes and runs around the
maze pretty much at random.  Eating him will gain you a life.

The Bonus Mushroom - Both a boon and a bane.  Watch the color
closely as Munchie's life may depend on it.  The colors of the
spots and corresponding effects are as follows:

White - Freeze all ghost's in place for a few sec.
Med Grey - Slows the ghosts down to a crawl.
Dark Grey - Slows Munchie down to a crawl.
Bright Red - Speeds Munchie up to MAX speed.
Med Red - Speeds all ghosts up!!
Dark Red - Adds a bee to the maze.
Lt Green - Calls a fruit onto the maze.
Med Green - Takes a power pill from maze.
Dark Green - Freezes Mrs. Munchie in place.
Lt. Blue - Gives you an extra Zap.
Med Blue - Takes a Zap from you (If you have one!!)
Dark Blue - Add a lightning bolt to the maze.
Lt. Purple - Super Nova. GRAB IT!!!
Med Purple - Adds 1 ghost to the maze
Drk Purple - Adds 2 Ghosts to the Maze


The Lightning Bolts - These little sparks drain your score as you
pass through them.  They're worth quite a large bonus if killed.
KIlled by: The POW.

DDT - This power Icon will Kill all Bees and Bugs on the screen
(saves you from using a ZAP).

POW - Deactivates all lightning bolts on the maze.  Big Points!!!

ZAP - This Icon will get you another ZAP.  Grab IT!!

Enough for you yet??? well there are still a few things I'm not
telling you about.  Just have fun finding them as you play.


Advance to the next maze by eating all Dots, Trap-Dots, Power
Pills, and Sugar Treats in the maze.  There are 20 different maze
styles but the contents of these mazes change until about level
200 or so...find out if you can!!

Hints on play:  Don't waste Zaps. You start with three and don't
get many more.  The trap dots can be a pain, don't activate one if
you're already in a slight jam.  ALWAYS activate a trap dot if
your in a Heavy mess, after all...it can't get any worse(ha..ha).

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2: GENERAL TECHIE TALK
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Let's See...Where do I begin?  This is my first attempt at a
quality Shareware product.  I hope it entertains you.  The Atari

Market in the U.S. seems to be picking up, after about 4 years of
sloth Atari Corp seems to have FINALLY gotten the message that it
needs to support us as well!!! I get so lonely out here in North
Carolina with my nearest Atari shop 4 hours drive from here.  That
should change soon, I hope.

The history of Mrs. Munchie....  Mrs Munchie started out when a
Mrs. Pac-man clone by Dave Munsie was released in the GP Edit
Library.  This game provoked a desire in myself to do
something wildly better, and after Dave challenged me, I set out
to see if it could be done.  You can be the judge of the
improvement since Dave's very reliable Mrs Packy is still available
in the PD/Shareware World.
     Version .01 of Mrs Munchie was not anything like your seeing
today.  It had a much smaller maze size, only four ghosts a fruit
and no animation in the lower part of the screen.  The biggest
thing I learned in the first version is how to move creatures
intelligently and (more importantly) quickly in a changing maze
environment.  This first version also suffered from a "Stutter"
when the packy reached a dot and ate it.  This gave the game a
very BASIC look to it and just wouldn't do.
     Version .02 took less time and got rid of the stuttering
look. It was also the first use of the GP Graphics Engine in my
code.  I added some animation to the lower part of the screen and
improved on the Ghost's intelligence and speed.
     Things were bogged down for about 2 months while I waited for
the first full version of the Engine to be sent to me.  Meanwhile
I designed Bigger and Better Mazes, came up with the Bolts, bugs,
and Flames (later replacing them with bees.)   At last I got the
engine and immediately had to redraw all of the mazes in a new data
format because of Dave's changes to the engine.  This did allow me
to come to grips with the new editors and such but I lost a week
of programming because everything had to be shifted to new formats.
     The program took only about 3 weeks to write and about 2
weeks to beta-test and debug/insert new things (Like a children's
mode).  This is a testament to GFA Basic's Really nice editor, The
incredible power of the Gp_Graphics Engine and my trusty Supra
Hard drive.  Oh, and before I forget, the Ghost in this version
are set pretty stupid ON PURPOSE.  They could all be vicious
little trackers but then the game falls out of the balance I've
sought to achieve.
     During the haze of programming I thought up the Mushrooms,
Extra Lives, Zaps, and Trap-Dots(He..He..he) and now it here
stands,a finished program.  Thanks to Dave for the snow on the Ice
levels, it really DOES add atmosphere!!.  BTW the source code uses
nice big variables like: MUSHROOM_LAST_DIRECTION&, and
CURRENT_NUMBER_OF_DOTS& so that when you examine the source code
it should be really easy to follow. Buying the source code does
NOT register you with me so do the right thing and register today!

ROBS WORDS ON DIGI SOUND AND MISSING VSYNCS.

     I like digital sound effects in a game.  I also like lot's of
action at the same time.  As a rule these two things don't mix on
the ST machines.  The only way I've seen it done is to use pure
Machine Code and then play very slow digi effects (in the 2-3khz
range).  The only programs that pull it off successfully are Jeff
Minter's stuff (But I suspect he is cheating on his graphics
somewhat...time will tell). So I have come to this conclusion on
my games, which are not pure machine code but essentially BASIC
games.  I will add digital sound effects in my programs only when
the gameplay will not suffer.  If I have lots of things I want
happening, I'll have some nice XBIOS sound effects thank you
very much.  The result is that I can move about 63 sprites on the
screen at one time with a frame rate of 20.  This would drop to
about 10-12 if I added digi sound.  Get it?  Summary: I feel that
displaying more stuff is of greater importance than digi sound,
hence Mrs. Munchie has lot's of XBIOS sound effects during game
play.  If you want digital sound only then buy an STE.
     After the Show note: Most people who answered my questioner
were split on whether they wanted better speed or better sound in
their games.  So far I think I'm about right in this game.
     Additional note: The Digi sound of munchie eating did NOT
slow down the game as much as I feared.  This is now default but
if you want a bit more speed Press "S" to toggle back to an Xbios
effect.
     BTW the sound for this ST FORMAT version of Mrs. Munchie was
Master sampled at 32kHz but because of space limitations it has
been compressed to 4kHz samples.  Don't worry 'cause it still
sounds great.  Later releases of Mrs. Munchie will have at least
8Khz samples (maybe 16Khz depending on memory restraints!).
     VSYNC.  Wow, did I ever get sick of this word when
programming this game.  It is of great importance to me
nevertheless.  When programming a video game it is important not
to miss a VSYNC (Screen redraw).  The amount of VSYNCS your
program can "catch" directly effects the smoothness of your
graphics.  Note I didn't say "speed" because it is a neat trick of
some software to move their sprites bigger distances at slower
speeds to keep up the appearance of speed (LLamatron uses this to
a huge extent, so does Parasol Stars).  Missing a VSYNC will drop
the program's visual speed or, more correctly, your program's
slower execution speed is causing it to miss VSYNCS.  Example:
MRS Munchie "catches" about every 3rd VSYNC.  Thus there are 60
VSYNCS(at 60 Hz) divided by 3 gives you 20 frames/sec Mrs Munchie
can draw.  BTW, this speed is called a "3" in Engine Terms because
I'm hitting every 3rd VSYNC.  A game should run faster at 50Hz
because the program has more time to execute between VSYNCS
(1/60sec vs. 1/50sec). Now, following this logic I should expect
the game to run faster (Greater frame rate) at 50Hz.  This does
not happen with Mrs. Munchie.  Why?  Because Mrs. Munchie is
running at a "Slow 3" which means that the extra time gained in a
slower refresh rate does not quite give me the "Slow 2" I need to
increase my frame rate to 25 frames/sec.  The "Slow" part is the
fact that Mrs munchie will occasionally drop to "4" every 16
cycles or so, you don't notice the speed change because it happens
for only one game loop.  It is, however, enough to keep the
program operating at a solid "3" at 50hz which is 17 Frames/sec.
The bottom line is run this program at 60Hz mode if possible as it
runs VERY smoothly at that frame rate.  Don't worry all you 50Hz
users, 17 frames/sec is still a respectable speed and I'm sure
that you'll enjoy the game just fine.
     Yet another note: 50Hz players have the additional advantage
of losing NO frame speed because on my new Digitial "Waka" sound.
This should compensate a bit for not having those extra 3
frames/sec!!
     Another note, the child's mode will run at either 15 or 13
frames/sec depending on the Hz rate you are running in.  The
child's mode will also stay ROCK SOLID at these speeds no matter
how much Mrs. Munchie is doing.

NOTES AND/OR RANTINGS:

This game is TIMER controlled.  It will run at a MAX of 20
frames/Sec on even the fastest ST/STE/TT's.

Post Show Note: This game is now tested on the MEGA STE series and
works just fine.  The game has not yet been tested on a TT, but
this version SHOULD run on one.  If anyone out there has a TT
please let me know if it works on your machine.

After I finish this game I have three game projects in the works,
in what order they get finished is still up in the air but I hope
to have all three done by the end of August: Megapede-Millipede
clone done up like this Mrs Pacman clone with lots of extras
ect.., Dropix ST - What I hope will be the FINAL word on Tetris
clones, will have the ability to collect power and throw effects
at each-other (sorta like Populas mixed with Tetris). Cyberdroid-
Imagine Smash T.V. mixed with Logan's Run and Orwell's 1984.  In
other words, lots of blasting everything in sight mixed with a
series of adventures and puzzles.

After the show note: Dropix ST is going to be my next project.  It
should be finished by the time Most of you read this.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

What do you folks want in the way of games?  Would you like more
clones (Done up like this one) or more original stuff?  Got a game
idea...contact me, got some neat graphics or huge monster that I
might be able to use?  Send it to me and if I use it I'll credit
you with helping with the game.  I'm not too proud to say that my
graphics can ALWAYS use improvement.  I won't mention any names
but I have seen some potentially killer shareware bite it in the
graphics department (maybe this is silly of me but the Bitmap
Brothers and others seem to share my desire for at least decent
graphics in a product, no matter how much sampled sound.)
I hope to develop on the TT and MEGA STE Computers in the future.
Maybe even a game designed for the faster systems only??  How many
16Mhz+ machines are there?



Some Techie notes:  I do cheat a wee bit by placing my score/lives
display on word boundaries, thus speeding up the Sprite drawing
significantly.  ALL objects on the screen are FULLY MASKED and 4 bit
planes.  Look closely, you'll see.  Would someone who knows how to
use the 8 channel sound on the STE please contact me!! (HELLP!!).
The Digitial Waka sound does slow things down in 60Hz mode (But
not a whole VSYNC!).  Can anyone get me that neat XBIOS player
that all the demo groups use?  I would love to have some neat
soundtracks without eating my memory in huge, non-compressable
chunks.  Do MY graphics suck wind?? Please tell me one way or
the other.



HELLO:
Mike Aubrey:  Wherever you've disappeared to
Cory Chapman: See above.  Plus are you still working for Henry?
Jeff Minter: Really cool games...I'll catch you one day!
Demo Groups: I'm 2 years behind...Can you spare a demo brother?
SLIME: Please write to me as have no address for you but
       maybe a project (If you're interested).
PHAST: Keep the spirit alive guys.
Anybody who KNOWS 3-d Graphics: I wanna do something with 'em in
the future.

Wanna know how it was written?
The ENTIRE SOURCE CODE plus a detailed explanation of major
procedures will be included in the DSA Graphics Engine Manual!!

This game is written in GFA Basic, odd that it's got so
much going on eh?  Well the New GP Graphics engine will change
things in the future.  I get to be a Beta tester and one of the
fine things about this job is that I get to release games ahead of
the crowd.  I do feel once DSA releases this product the quality
of Shareware and PD will greatly improve.  This is not another
SUCEK or STOS (Does anybody write anything good in STOS??).  This
product has no such restrictions as 16 sprites at a time or
vertical shoot 'em up format only.  Programmers: Wait till you see
this thing!! This program has 65 (YES SIXTY FIVE!!) sprites on
the screen at once on the higher levels and I dare say the speed
is adequate for a BASIC game(No less than 17 frames/sec at 50Hz)
or for that matter a lower level language!!!!  The Engine  Plots,
Tracks, Animates, Patterns, Offsets, Follows, Explodes up to
32000 sprites at once.  Allows Automatic Scrolling starfields,
Digi and XBIOS music, Flashing and Color shifting, Special
distortion effects (such as mirror and barrel scroll), several
different  fully controllable collision detection routines,
automatic FAST map plotting, character handling, AND such things
as Global Sprite movement (For Defender type games), character
scrolling and so on....(WHEW).  OK, So much for the bragging on
the GP Graphics Engine for awhile.

This game WILL be improved upon.  More creatures are in the works,
different treat mazes, lots of extra maze files, STE support, and
more intermissions.  These improvements will only be available to
REGISTERED users (Nudge, Nudge....Wink, Wink!!)


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3: SHAREWARE
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I'm not gonna bug you with a long story on why you would support
shareware.  If you're reading this then you know the deal.  Here's
mine:  I'm going to write a few of the highest quality games I can
over the next 6 months or so.  If the shareware market supports me,
I'll continue to write.  If not, I still have college and a degree
to finish.

The Deal:  Register Mrs. Munchie and I will send you your choice
of one of the following: Mrs. Munchie 1.5 (With enhanced digital
sound effects), Cyberdroid, Megapede, or Dropix ST.  Send a SASE
with your registration and receive 20 new mazes in addition to the
above offer!  Please send you name, address, your desired
software, and any comments CLEARLY PRINTED (you wont believe some
of the handwriting I get!).

To Register: Send $5.00 U.S. to:

          Robert Dytmire
          633 Pony Farm Rd.
          Jacksonville, N.C. 28540
          (USA)  ATTN: MUNCHIE

I know I'm asking a lot from UK users in sending all the way to
the United States but $5.00 is about half of what you'd normally
pay in your currency for home grown shareware.  This discount to
you is my way of paying you for taking the trouble in supporting
an American Shareware Author.
Extra note: Overseas users please make funds payable in United
States currency.
EXTRA EXTRA note: Thank you to all the Beta users that have
contributed, DROPIX ST is on it's way!!